Kakistocracy, page 1
Kakistocracy copyright © 2023 by Alex Shvartsman. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means (electronic, mechanical, or otherwise), without written permission, except for short excerpts in a review, critical analysis, or academic work.
This is a work of fiction.
Cover art by Túlio Brito.
ISBN: 978-1-64710-082-7
First Edition. First Printing
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
An imprint of Arc Manor LLC
www.CaezikSF.com
“Is ours a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
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Chapter 1
I stalked the fae serial killer across Green-Wood Cemetery.
The maniac was seven feet tall, skeletally thin, and freakishly strong, given the apparent ease with which he carried the overstuffed burlap sack slung over his back, like some malnourished Santa. The sack shifted and swayed as his next intended victim tried to claw their way out, but the fae paid them no mind. His long legs carried him steadily past the headstones.
Even without the added burden of hauling about a fully grown person I barely managed to keep up with my quarry. I followed him at a respectful distance, fervently hoping the amulet I was using would shroud me from his heightened senses. I’d bought it via mail order, for top dollar from a second-rate sorcerer in a third-world country. He had assured me the amulet’s magic would make me invisible to the fae. Given how rare such beings were in our world, there was no good way to test the seller’s claim in advance. I had to hope for the best. The amulet did nothing to prevent the combination of September sun and New York City humidity from slowly cooking me in my own juices.
There was no one around, not even the ghosts of the dead. I was tempted to confront the fae there and then rather than try to keep up with his inhuman pace. I wanted to liberate his prisoner and make certain this lunatic could never abduct or hurt another living soul again, but patience and better judgment won in a close contest over impulse. I needed to follow him to his lair. There was a chance, however remote, that some of his previous victims were still alive.
It had been five months since Daniel Chulsky, the CEO of Abaddon, Inc., had asked me to save the world. I owed him a favor or five, so I said yes, but when I showed up ready to thwart whatever epic-level peril he had in mind, all he asked of me was to find the serial killer who’d turned my home borough of Brooklyn into his personal hunting grounds. This was a bit of a letdown. It’s not every day that heads of mysterious and powerful corporations ask you to save the world, and when they do, you might expect a little more pizzazz.
I’d pressed Chulsky on why this particular scumbag was on his radar. He hadn’t been forthcoming on the details, but he’d told me the perpetrator was fae, and a blood relative of some bigwigs in his realm to boot. Nepotism appeared to be alive and well across all species and planes of existence. “You’re the right man for the job, Conrad,” Chulsky had told me. “Do not underestimate its importance.” He said I must capture the killer alive, and that Abaddon would then return him to the care of his fellow fae, so as to avoid an interdimensional incident.
None of that seemed particularly apocalyptic to me, but I was interested in the case all the same. Protecting mundanes (humans without magic) from the gifted (humans with magic) and from all sorts of arcane threats is what the Watch—the organization I belonged to—was created to do. It was my duty to find and capture the murderous fae. Squaring my accounts with Chulsky in the process was an added bonus.
That had been back in April. Months went by, and my quarry proved as elusive as he was brazen. The crazy bastard would walk up to a seemingly random person in the middle of a busy street, shove them into his oversized burlap sack, and disappear down some alley or backyard where there were no egresses. He used fae magic to step across the in-between and emerge elsewhere, which allowed him to easily avoid his mundane pursuers and confound human magic users like me.
A week or two later, the skull of his victim, clean of skin and muscle, would show up somewhere in the vicinity of where the poor soul had been abducted in the first place. Not the entire skull though; only the cranium. The jawbone would always be missing. This prompted the media to call him the Mandible Killer, once DNA testing connected the craniums with the abduction victims. The entire mess was catnip to the reporters. With each subsequent abduction, their headlines grew more macabre, more similar in tone and content to the pulp horror stories of the bygone era. The pressure to solve the case grew, both on the police and on me. I had to hope I’d get to him before the police did; there wasn’t a whole lot New York’s Finest could do to capture or contain a fae.
Having tried lots of different approaches that had yielded no results, I’d caught a break. An informant of mine had seen someone matching the fae’s description in Green-Wood. After months of failing to so much as catch a whiff of the guy, I finally had the opportunity to catch him red-handed. All I had to do was wait for another abduction to be reported on police channels, then use a portal to arrive at the cemetery before the fae. Although the cemetery was by no means small, I had a pretty good idea of where the Mandible Killer might be headed.
As I panted and wiped sweat off my forehead, each step the killer and I took brought us closer to the Necropolis.
Green-Wood Cemetery rests on five hundred acres of what used to be a Revolutionary War battlefield. It was established in the early 1800s and became a final resting place for many New York luminaries. But it wasn’t until the 1860s that a vast cavern was dug under the cemetery using magic, and the Necropolis was created. Its original purpose was to house the gifted who perished in the Civil War. The gifted abolitionists ensured that war heroes were interred in the Necropolis regardless of their color or species. Trolls and giants and all manner of creatures were allowed to be buried alongside the humans, so long as they’d fought for the Union.
After the war, the Necropolis became a symbol of integration among the gifted, and what few burial spots it had left were eventually filled with remains of respected members of New York’s gifted society. By the turn of the twentieth century the Necropolis was full. It was a venerated but seldom-visited place. The sort of place a serial killer from another dimension who held nothing sacred might use for a hideout.
My hunch proved to be right. The Mandible Killer squeezed into an unmarked mausoleum that housed an entrance to the Necropolis. Since his kind could teleport at will, I wondered why the fae hadn’t just teleported to the Necropolis entrance and saved both of us the trouble. Did he enjoy a brisk walk and some fresh air before he got to the killing? Was he too far gone to be logical? Or was it me who was being irrational, trying to ascribe human logic to an unhinged interdimensional interloper?
The mausoleum door was unlocked; the gifted were meant to have access to the secret burial chamber whenever they pleased, while any mundane who might accidentally stumble into the mausoleum wouldn’t be able to perceive the descending granite staircase located behind a decoy stone coffin; the mundane minds would permit them to see only an unremarkable gray wall.
Unencumbered by such illusions, I followed the Mandible Killer down the stairs. My footsteps echoed in the silence of the subterranean chamber, despite my best efforts.
Perhaps the amulet’s magic concealed my footsteps from the Mandible Killer, or perhaps the muffled screams from inside the sack drowned them out. Either way, he didn’t appear to notice me as I descended into the baseball field-sized cavern. Ranks of tombstones lined much of the ground while the walls served to house a chessboard of plaques, each sealing off an urn with the ashes of some permanent resident of the Necropolis. Wards were in place to ensure the interred would enjoy uninterrupted rest.
The Mandible Killer had made himself at home at the far side of the cavern. As I quietly edged toward him, I began to make out the details by the dim, green-tinged light of the handful of eternal flames suspended on pillars scattered throughout, enchanted to burn continuously to both provide illumination and commemorate the Civil War heroes buried here. A dirty mattress with several springs sprouting at the edges lay on the ground. A plastic lawn chair that had one day been white stood next to it.
Evidence of the fae’s grim workings extended in a wide semicircle from the spot where he presently dropped the sack and was examining something I couldn’t yet see on the ground. Bloodstained items of clothing that must’ve belonged to his victims were strewn around, mixed with fast-food wrappers. The place stank of piss and rot. A child’s yellow windbreaker with its right sleeve ripped off below the shoulder was hanging from one of the grave markers. I’d seen a lot of grisly stuff in my time, but this visual got to me; I had no doubt I’d be reacquainting myself with it in my nightmares for weeks to come.
I shook off the sense of dread I was feeling and got my adrenaline under control as best I could. I concentrated on the task at hand, cautiously edging close enough so that the killer couldn’t teleport away. I grasped the charm Chulsky had given me tightly. It felt smooth and cool and calming in my fist as I crept toward danger.
The Mandible Killer picked out a wicked-looking machete and lifted it close to his gaunt face. Bits of blood and gore were caked along its blade. He turned toward the shifting sack with a content smile on his lips.
I willed the charm I was clasping to activate and dropped my concealment.
“That is a fish knife,” I said. “Don’t they teach table manners where you’re from? Regardless, you won’t be needing the cutlery today.”
The Mandible Killer whirled to face me. Up close he couldn’t be easily mistaken for a lanky human. His skull was a little too long, his cheekbones too prominent under the wispy beard. His unkempt albino hair too thin and delicate. His unnerving chartreuse eyes narrowed as he looked me up and down.
“Tomorrow’s not looking likely, either,” I added.
Whatever interplay between fight-and-flight syndromes took place in the fae’s brain, fight won a decisive victory. By the time I finished speaking he was already lunging at me, machete raised. He was pretty fast, but I was no slouch, either. I sidestepped his attack and used his own momentum in a judo-like move to send him tumbling to the ground.
The fae rolled away from me and into a crouch, quickly recovering into a defensive position. One knee pressed into the dirt and his machete still in hand, the murderer whispered a curse under his breath. His words of power would have punched an unprepared opponent worse than a well-aimed uppercut, but I was wearing more trinkets than a fully decorated Christmas tree. The curse slid off me, its power sapped by my protections. All I felt physically was the equivalent of a light shove.
That’s when he must’ve realized I was a more dangerous opponent than I looked, and his flight syndrome took over the driver’s seat. He tried to open a portal and step through the in-between, several times in a row, as the haptic feedback from the charm in my fist confirmed.
“The fun rides are closed,” I said.
He must’ve not liked that idea one bit, because the fae growled and then launched another attack, tackling me head-on before I finished speaking. He didn’t have the mass of an offensive lineman, but he sure had the speed any quarterback would have envied. Even though I’d expected the attack, he managed to drive a bony shoulder into my jaw and the two of us rolled onto the ground.
In a fair fight, he might’ve beaten me, but if I ever found myself in a fair fight I actually had time to prepare for, then I’d be a terrible tactician and would deserve to lose. As it was, I wore an iron belt buckle and two wide iron bracelets like a gender-swapped Wonder Woman. I’d also inserted strips of iron into my pockets. In such close proximity, I could probably do more damage to my opponent by hugging him tight than by trying to punch and kick him. Which didn’t stop me from punching and kicking him. The psycho murderer deserved it.
Despite whatever pain and suffering I was managing to inflict, the fae reciprocated by landing a good number of hits. I kept as close to him as I could so that he wouldn’t be able to properly swing his machete—I briefly wondered again if its blade was cobalt, titanium alloy, ceramic, or obsidian: all non-steel options a fae could handle—but he bruised me well enough with his fist and the hilt of the machete to ensure I’d be popping ibuprofens later.
Entangled in close combat, we rolled past the smorgasbord of sharp utensils and crashed hard into an ugly brown pot the size and shape of a thirty-gallon trash can. Clay shattered loudly against the granite memorial plaques in the Necropolis wall and a plethora of mandibles spilled onto the ground.
I recoiled from the gruesome sight. I’d known the Mandible Killer must’ve been responsible for dozens of deaths, but the sheer number of trophies in that pot adjusted my estimate into the triple digits. I paid for being distracted. The fae landed a mighty sockdolager to my jaw. Pain intermixed with a renewed infusion of anger, and I lashed back at him, aiming a series of blows with my bracelets upward to the sides of his head.
He tried teleporting away again, which was futile and cost him precious seconds. I gained the upper hand, and soon he collapsed half-dazed upon the ground.
I retrieved a special pair of handcuffs. According to Chulsky, they’d cancel all fae magic—and not just their ability to teleport.
“Earth vacation’s over,” I said. “Next up is the slow and not-so-scenic cruise back to the fae realm.”
As I attempted to clasp the handcuffs on him, the Mandible Killer twisted and kneed me hard above the ankle. He managed to knock me off balance long enough to scramble past me and half-tumble, half-run toward the staircase. His long legs carried him impossibly fast while I struggled to get back on to my feet. Even without using magic, he could easily outpace me.
There was no way I was letting him escape and add to his body count. Visions of a bagful of mandibles spilling from a clay pot swam before my eyes as I drew a pistol from the inner pocket of my trench coat and disengaged the thumb safety. Chulsky wanted this maniac taken alive, and I did everything in my power, even risked my own life, to make that happen. But there was absolutely no way I’d take the chance of letting a mass murderer escape to prey upon another victim. Another child. I thought back to the yellow windbreaker draped carelessly over a tombstone.
I lined the fae’s lanky frame in my pistol’s sights and fired three full metal jacket bullets encased in solid-iron shells, in rapid succession. The noise of discharging a firearm in the enclosed space was deafening. The shots echoed against the walls. My ears rang. The acrid scent of burnt gunpowder joined the medley of unpleasant odors around me.
The fae stumbled and fell face forward onto the ground, one of his long skeletal arms extending to within a few inches of the staircase. His body spasmed as though a jolt of electricity had passed through it, and then was still.
I approached warily, mindful of another trick. I put my gun back into the inner pocket where the fae couldn’t grab at it and turn the tables on me. I needn’t have worried. When I got close enough, I could see that two of the three bullets had found their target. One had entered at his left shoulder. The other had been a headshot; it entered at the top of the neck, just below the elongated skull.
The Mandible Killer was dead.
Chapter 2
I sat on the bottom stair and placed a call to the offices of the Watch. A cleanup crew would be on its way to deal with the, well, cleanup. If anything, the privacy of the place made their job a cakewalk. Far less stressful than mopping up chunks of exploded goblin in full view of the tourists in Midtown.
I caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye and focused on the far end of the mausoleum. The would-be victim of the fae serial killer had finally escaped from inside the sack and was shambling unsteadily past the headstones, gaping at the evidence of the decedent’s crimes.
I cursed under my breath and wondered what he must be thinking, what he must be seeing around him. Only a tiny percentage of humans have the gifted gene that allows them to perceive and perform magic. The rest are mundanes—regular people whose brains go into overdrive to prevent them from sensing anything unusual, anything beyond what’s dreamed of in their philosophy. If a mundane meets a troll or a fae they’ll perceive nothing more than a slightly unusual-looking human. Their brain will interpret a supernatural beast, no matter how exotic, as a wild dog/raccoon/wolf/fill-in-the-blank based on the creature’s general shape and size. Where mundanes are concerned, magic is something that happens to fictional characters.
This particular mundane appeared to be in his late thirties. He wore slacks, a short sleeved button-down shirt, and a bewildered expression.
I rose to meet him, projecting the maximum amount of confidence and authority I could manage to fake.
