00.1 - Death's Cold Kiss Read Online Free Page B

it seemed, his destiny to clean up after Meyrink.
     
    Messner greeted the younger of the two with a tired smile and
held out a hand to be shaken.
    Metzger ignored it and didn’t return the smile. There was
something distinctly cold about the man, but given his line of work it was
perhaps unsurprising. The older man, Eberl Ziegler, nodded and followed Metzger
into the temple. He, at least, had the decency to bow low before the statue of
Sigmar Heldenhammer and make the sign of the hammer whereas the other just
walked down the aisle, toeing at the seats and tutting at the silver runes
worked into the window frames. His footsteps echoed coldly.
    Messner watched the man, fascinated by his confidence as he
examined every nook and cranny of the old temple. Metzger moved with authority.
He lifted a thin glass wedge from the front table, beside the incense burner,
and tilted it so that it caught and refracted the light into a rainbow on the
wall.
    “So tell me,” Metzger said, angling the light up the wall.
“How does this fit with your philosophy? I am curious. The taking of a human
life… it seems… alien to my understanding of your faith. Enlighten me.”
    Behind Messner, Meyrink coughed.
    “Sacrifice for the good of mankind, Herr Metzger. Sacrifice.”
    “Murder, you mean,” Metzger said bluntly. “Dressing the act
up in fancy words doesn’t change it. You want me to go down into the basement
and slay a daemon. I can do this. It is what I do. Unlike you I see no nobility
in the act. For me it is a case of survival, plain and simple. The creatures
would destroy me and mine, so I destroy theirs. So tell me again, why would you
have me drive a stake into the heart of an old man?”
    “He isn’t an old man anymore. Victor Guttman is long gone.
The thing down there is a shell, capable of ruthless cunning and vile acts of
degradation and slaughter. It is a beast. Forty-two young women of this parish
have suffered at the beast’s hands, witch hunter. Forty-two. I would have you
root out the canker by killing the beast so that I do not find the words
forty-three coming to my lips.”
    “Good. Then we understand each other.”
    “So we kill to stop more killing?” Brother Meyrink said,
unable to hold his silence. “That makes as much sense as going to war to end a
war.”
    “We love to hate,” the witch hunter said matter-of-factly.
“We love to defeat and destroy. We love to conquer. We love to kill. That is why
we love war so much we revere a killer and make him a god. In violence we find
ourselves. Through pain and anger and conflict we find a path that leads us to,
well, to what we don’t know but we are determined to walk the path. It has
forever been so.”
    “Sigmar help us all,” Meyrink said softly.
    “Indeed, and any other gods who feel benevolent enough to
shine their light on us. In the meantime, I tend to help myself. I find it is
better than waiting for miracles that will never happen.”
    “How do you intend to do it?” Meyrink asked.
    Messner paled at the question. Details were not something he
wanted.
    The witch hunter drew a long bladed knife from his boot.
“Silver-tipped,” he said, drawing blood from the pad of his thumb as he pricked
himself on the knife’s sharpness. “Surest way to do it. Cut his heart out of his
chest, then burn the corpse so there’s nothing left.”
    Messner shuddered at the thought. It was barbaric. “Whatever
it takes,” he said, unable to look the witch hunter in the eye.
    “Stay here, priest. I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate
sensibilities. Ziegler, come on, we’ve got work to do.”
     
    They descended in darkness, listening to the chittering of
rats and the moans of the old man, faint like the lament of ghosts long since
moved on. His cries were pitiful.
    The candles had died but tapers lay beside fresh ones.
Metzger lit two. They were enough. Death was a dark business. Too much light
sanitised it. His feet scuffed at the