Blue is the color of a heart so cold
By Angel

The dead child lay screaming on the bier.  The rigor mortis had passed three
days ago, and the corpse looked bloated under the communion suit from the
gaseous build up.  The eyes were filmed and utterly mad.  The cries were no longer
those of a human being.

The man who knelt before the bier finished praying.  He stood and kissed the boy’s
forehead gently.  In Middle French, he said “You have served me well, little one. 
Go back to Heaven now.  Tell Jeanne I love her.  She will keep you by her side.
I will not call you back from it again.” 

The filmed eyes stared up with something like relief as a grapefruit spoon descended
on them and ended the torment of the infant soul.

***
The little corpses are the hardest.

The boy was six.  Dark hair, no eyes.  Dr. Andrews autopsied him
with her usual cool professionalism.  Frank Black and Peter Watts listened
as her voice, well suited to a Voodoo priestess, catalogued the damage.  She
handled the child’s body carefully, depositing his organs on scales as if they
were relics and not slabs of cold meat.

“Death caused by strangulation approximately twenty-one days ago.  Secondary
injuries and semen residue indicate body was post-humously sodomized by adult
male.  Spermotazoa,” she looked into the microscope, “dead.  Cells deteriorating.” 
She looked up at the men.  “This isn’t three weeks old, but it looks as if it came
out of a dead man.”    She continued.  “Eyes removed.  Damage to eyelids
indicates approximately a week after death.”

She stitched the boy back up and covered him with the sheet.  “I don’t envy you
gentlemen.  This one is a real nutjob.”

The men left.

“That’s the second one this year, Frank.  Same MO.  Let’s find him before he
makes it three.  What did you get?”

Another man would have shuddered at the memory of the flashes he’d sustained
upon touching the boy’s hand.  Frank Black merely answered with infinite weariness.
 “We’re looking for a white male, mid to late thirties.  Bearded.  He’s Catholic, and
will be buying either a confirmation suit or dress for his next victim shortly.  He’s
sending them to God.”

“What’s with the eyes?”

“All I’m seeing is windows.  I don’t know yet.”

***

“Where am I?”  The rainy street was nowhere near LA.  It was too cold for one thing.

“Seattle, Ezekiel, not far from a very cheap flophouse.”

“Seattle, huh?  One of them is here?”

Morningstar’s laugh was brittle ice in his ear.  “Ezekiel, you must stop asking silly
questions.  Even I don’t vacation in a place like this.  Now, get yourself a room.”

“You always complain about me aping the living, as you put it.”

The hand in the small of his back sprouted talons he could feel through the layers he
wore.  “I could take you against the wall, but I think you’d enjoy it more in a bed.”

Ah, the other side of his endless servitude.  Ezekiel got the room, a dingy flop that
hadn’t been properly scrubbed since that slang term was fashionable.

Zeke flung himself on the bed, telling his stomach it couldn’t possibly be upset from
the teleport since he was dead.  His employer/tormentor stood smirking near the door.

“Ezekiel, Ezekiel, Ezekiel.”  He shook his head in mock amusement, his cheekbones
casting odd shadows in the grimy glare of the naked bulb.

With a sigh, Zeke stripped, shivering as he always did on Earth.  He wondered if he’d
always be cold after he got his life back.  He turned to put his clothing down and felt
 irresistible warmth against his back.

“Come to bed, my lovely one.”  The Prince of Lies was most persuasive and Zeke was
warmer under the covers with the Devil at his back.

The heat as he was penetrated gave him a false sense of well-being, of near normalcy. 
He no longer noticed the pains of entry, and the humiliation had faded long before he’d
been sent back to Earth.  The only thing he wanted was the warmth that radiated off
his tormentor.  

“Among some magic traditions, this is considered enough to raise the dead, Ezekiel.” 
The hellishly hot hand closed around his cock.  “I see they may be right.”

The orgasm was dry and joyless for Ezekiel, but the delicious warmth filling him was
replaced by a deep-seated burn as Morningstar hit his own peak.  Here, even that was
tempered.  In Hell, he had filled Zeke’s guts with boiling lead on a regular?–endless?-- basis.

Zeke lay in bed, warm for the first time in days, and the Devil paused at the door.  “Stay
away from a man called Frank Black.  He’ll see you for what you are.  He works for the
Other Side and will send you back to me.  It would be so tiresome to have to find someone
else to finish your job.”

He hesitated a moment longer as if debating, “I know this will send you straight to the phone
book to find Black.  When you do, this is a present for his daughter.”  A small book appeared
on Zeke’s bed.  “Happy hunting, Ezekiel.  Do it quickly and I’ll warm you again.”  He was gone.

Zeke picked up the book.  A copy of Bluebeard, with the Arthur Rackham illustrations.  He
slept.  Morning would be time enough to visit the library and look for weird stuff.

It turned out Seattle was a weirdness magnet, with more than its share of serial killers and psychotics. 
Zeke spent the morning in the library, and every story was another arrow pointing in the direction of
Frank Black.  Finally disregarding the devil’s warning, he went to the local precinct.  

“Ezekiel Stone, special agent from New York.  I’m here about the case.”

“Bob Bletcher.  Call me Bletch.  We called in a consultant on the case.  It’s got us stumped.”  Bletch
filled in the details.  “You’ll want to talk to Frank Black.  He knows the most of what’s going on.”

***

Frank Black opened the door of the yellow house and found a dead man ringing his bell.  

Frank didn’t shake hands or invite him in.  “What do you want?”

“Ezekiel Stone, NYPD.  I’m here about your serial killer.  I’ve been tracking him for a while.”  It wasn’t
exactly a lie.  As of today, he’d been hunting the damned for a year and seven months.

“Catherine doesn’t like me bringing work home.  Let’s go for a walk.”  Frank locked the door behind
him and they walked the sodden block under the grey skies and dripping yellow leaves that still clung
to autumn branches.

Zeke explained he was on a special assignment.

“And you think my killer is one of your files.  Not impossible, given the forensic findings.”  Frank filled
him in on the autopsy evidence.

“But why?”

“It’s a religious thing with him. I haven’t figured that part out.”

“The missing eyes.  He believes in destroying the eyes to send the souls on their way.”

“We have a week to find out.  Based on the pattern, he’ll be taking another child three days before
the full moon.”

They parted at the foot of the steps.  Zeke reached in his pocket.  “For your daughter.  From someone
I know.”

“Bluebeard.  That’s a very gruesome story for a six year old.”

“It wasn’t my idea, Black.”  Zeke walked off.

Frank thought hard on what he’d heard.  He looked at the book.  He didn’t like the heat that clung to
it or the smell of brimstone he got from it.  Bluebeard.  Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc’s lieutenant with a
taste for sorcery and children...he hastened to the computer.

Franked handed the lists to the two men in the Police Station the next morning.  “Bletch, Stone, these
are possible aliases our killer is using.  He may be patterning himself off Gilles de Rais, a 15th century
French noble with an interest in the occult.  Between 1429 and his death in 1440, he murdered dozens
of children, mostly boys.  He was strangled for a heretic, and his body removed from the pyre before
it was burned.”

“I’ll get on a look-up.”  Bletch started his work.  

Ezekiel mumbled to himself,  “I don’t think he’s only patterning himself on Gilles de Rais.”

The next two days they spent tracking dead ends through the greater Seattle metroplex.  Ray was
a very common surname.  Adding Laval and its variants had only intensified the search.  All shops
selling confirmation clothing were asked to be warned of a man buying clothing for a child when
there were no confirmations planned at any church.

Frank ran searches of his own.  Ezekiel Stone had indeed worked for the NYPD.  He died in 1983,
gunned down in a shootout.  The picture fit the man on his doorstep.  Clean record, buried with honors. 
Widow lived in LA.  The copy of Bluebeard stayed by the computer.

A call came from a shop in the poor part of town.  The shopkeeper’s English was halting and thickly
accented with Spanish.  “Man came.  Bought suit.  No confirmations at Cristo Rey this month.”  

Frank went with Bletch.  As they questioned the clerk, Frank ran his hands over the counter.  There
were flashes.  A dead child’s face, speaking, its eyes pools of horror.  A small body in communion
clothes, laid out on a bier covered in white silk with gold tassles, with candles burning at head and foot.

He was unsurprised when Ezekiel Stone turned up on his porch that evening.  Jordan had been full of
news from Kindergarten that day.  Joshua left the playground during recess, while the teachers weren’t
looking.  The teachers didn’t notice until afternoon roll call.  Jordan had moved unconcernedly from her
dinner to the cookies afterward, talking about a new song they’d learned in music.  Frank kept his face
calm, not letting Catherine know what he feared.

“He’s taken a boy,” Frank informed Zeke as they walked under the October stars..

“Bletch sent me over to let you know we had five locations.  I think this one is the most likely.”  He
handed Frank a list and tapped the circled one.  “Giles Ray Laval.”

“You.”

“What?”

“You know where he is.  You know who he is.  Ezekiel Stone has been dead for fifteen years.”

“Believe what you want, Black.  But check out the address.”

“Don’t walk away from me, Stone.  Stone!”  

Zeke turned.  “I am Ezekiel Stone.  You already know I’m dead.  Now help me send a monster back
to Hell where he belongs before some other mother gets a gruesome Halloween gift.”

Frank opened the door of the Jeep. “I don’t believe you.  But I will find the boy.”

They drove.  The house was an old Victorian one, on a disused cul-de-sac.  The others were abandoned
to wrack and ruin, melting in the Seattle rain.  Light shone in the front room, and dimly from the back of
the house.

Stone rubbed a spot on his side.  It burned as the tattoos always did in the proximity of the damned.  “He’s
the right one.  I’ll go in through the front.  You take the back.”

“We should call for backup.”

“It’s just him.  If you get a chance to get the kid and get out, do it.  I’ll take Laval.”:

As Frank headed to the back, where candles gleamed in the windows, he heard Stone kick in the front door. 
He slipped in the unlocked back door, and found the kitchen had been turned into a chapel.  A white silken
bier, with candles, and bouquets of fresh lilies, dominated the room.  It stank of flowers, wax and blood. 
A small dark haired boy in a white communion suit sat tied to a chair, his mouth taped shut.

“Joshua,” Frank said softly.  “I’m Jordan’s daddy.  I’m here to take you back home.”  Joshua looked
 over, his big eyes full of fear.  He relaxed when he recognized Frank, who often picked Jordan up from
school.  Frank slit the ropes with his pocket knife and hustled the boy out to the Jeep.  “Sit here in Jordan’s
seat, and I’ll be right back.  Buckle up.”  The utterly normal words seemed to calm the boy even farther.

Frank went in the front door.  A voice, accented with a French not spoken for five hundred years, was pleading.

“You don’t understand.  They were my pure angels, my messengers to my Maid.  I sent them to God with
words for Jeanne, then on the third day drew them back with her response.  When they had told me, I returned
 them to God on the third day after their resurrection.  Jeanne, she is in Heaven.  I could never go.  Too much
blood and guilt sent me to Hell.  But I adore her and she entreats God for me.  I will see Heaven.”

“God doesn’t hear you anymore, Gilles.  And the Devil wants you back.”  Ezekiel’s voice was cold, and Frank
arrived in time to see him shoot out their quarry’s eyes.  An unholy shriek filled the room, followed pyrotechnics
as the body dissolved.

“Gilles de Rais.  Back to Hell.”  Stone lifted his shirt and watched as the tattooed name disappear from his side. 
Frank stared.  “Good-bye, Frank.  Keep fighting the good fight.”  Ezekiel walked out, and vanished at the end
of the dead-end street.

Frank walked back out to the Jeep.  Joshua was watching him carefully.  “Let’s take you to the police station,
son, and your mom and dad can take you home.”

That night, Frank climbed the stairs to watch Jordan sleep for a long time.  He hadn’t told Stone that there
was a girl’s communion dress hanging in the chapel, or that when he had brushed it, he’d seen Jordan lying
on the bier.  She was safe.

He threw the copy of Bluebeard in the trash and emptied it to the curb container.