Part 12 (2/2)

'Salli,' he said, remembering He had been altered by warpstone, but he had never truly been the Trapdoor Daemon. That was just a theatre superst.i.tion. Where it counted, he'd always been Bruno Malvoisin.

He had changed as much as he was going to in his lifetime.

And the Animus wasn't going to change him more.

The Animus didn't even regret its failure as it died. It was a tool that had been broken. That was all.

Malvoisin slumped, the fire burning inside him.

A white tunnel opened in the dark, and a figure appeared. It was Salli Spaak, not old and bent as she'd been when she died, but young again, ripe and beckoning.

'Bruno,' she purred, 'it was always you I loved, always you'

The white tunnel grew and grew until it was all he saw.

Genevieve left Detlef and crawled over to Malvoisin. He was shaking, but he was dead. The thing had gone, forever.

Something about him was changed. The bulk of his body was still the sea creature he had become, but his head was shrunken, whiter. Where the mask-thing had touched was a face. It must have been his original face. It was in repose.

The mask was like Dr. Zhiekhill's potion. It brought out what was inside people, buried in their deeps. In Eva and Reinhardt, it had brought out cruelty, viciousness, evil. In Bruno Malvoisin, none of those things had mattered, and it had only brought out the goodness and beauty he'd left behind.

'Is it dead?' Detlef asked.

'Yes,' she said. 'He is.'

'Blessings of Sigmar,' he breathed, not understanding.

She knew now what she must do. It was the only thing that could save the both of them. Crawling over to him, she made sure he was comfortable and in no immediate danger.

'What was it?'

'A man. Malvoisin.'

'I thought so.'

She stroked the burned stubble of his scalp.

'I suppose we'll have to take the play off for a while.'

She tried to find the strength.

'Detlef,' she said. 'I'm leaving'

He knew at once what she meant, but still had to prod her. 'Leaving? Leaving me?'

She nodded. 'And this city.'

He was quiet, eyes alive in his blackened face.

'We're no good to each other. When we're together, this is what happens'

'Gene, I love you.'

'And I love you,' she said, a thick tear brus.h.i.+ng the corner of her mouth. 'But I can't be with you.'

She licked away her tear, relis.h.i.+ng the salt tang of her own blood.

'We're like Drachenfels' thing, or Dr. Zhiekhill's potion, bringing out the worst in each other. Without me, you won't be obsessed with morbid things. Maybe you'll be a better writer, without me to anchor you in darkness.'

She was nearly sobbing. Usually, she only felt this way when a lover died, old and decrepit while she remained unaged, their youth flown in a mayfly moment, leaving her behind.

'We always knew it couldn't last.'

'Gene'

'I'm sorry if it hurts, Detlef.'

She kissed him, and left the chamber. There must be a way out of this sewer.

XXIII.

In the dark with his hurts and a dead thing that had been a man, Detlef overcame his urge to cry.

He was a genius, not a poltroon. His love would not die. Nothing he could do would stifle that. He would end up expending millions of words on it, and still never be able to snuff it out. His sonnet cycle, To My Unchanging Lady, was not complete, and this parting would inspire the third group of poems. It would spur him perhaps to his greatest work.

The smell was terrible. It was the smell of death. The familiar smell of death. Detlef felt a kins.h.i.+p with the dead playwright.

'Bruno,' he said, 'I'll revive all your plays. You've earned that much of me. Your name will live again. I swear it.'

The dead thing didn't answer, but he'd not expected him to.

'Of course, I might make some revisions, bring your work up to date just a little'

Genevieve was gone, and she would never come back. The loss was worse than any wound he'd sustained.

He tried to think of somethinganythingthat would make the hurt go away, would make it better.

Finally, he spoke again, 'Bruno, I'm reminded of something Poppa Fritz told me. It's a story about a young actor visiting Tarradasch himself, when he was producing his own plays in Altdorf, running the old Beloved of Ulric theatre across the road, although I've also heard it about a young minstrel visiting the great Orfeo'

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