Devlin Waugh : A love like blood
Text : John Smith


I take Devlin's head between my hands and kiss his forehead. Lips pressed against his pale, fragrant skin, so smooth, so cold now he's dead. He stares up at me then, and there's something wild in his eyes. Pupils dilated; nostrils flared; face filled with fear and joy and longing. And in that moment, in that perfect frozen moment, I strike. Put my thumbs over his eyes.

Digits devling, diving for bone. Then I pull at the front of his skull.

I can do that. My mother taught me. She's in a psycho-cube now, but when she was sane, she was somebody.

After I've broken his ribs, I hammer a hawthorn stake through his heart and cut off his head. Then I am alone with the corpse. Slow and steady, pacing myself, taking my time.I keep him for a few days, then burn the body. Or maybe I cut out his heart and keep it. A memento in formaldehyde. I've been doing that more and more lately. If I had his heart every day would be Valentines day.

Today I tried something new. I kidnapped Devlin's latest friend outside the Kan-Kan Klub. A lifeguard called Guy. Young and blond and tanned, wearing red briefs. A guy called Guy. I spent most of the afternoon tearing him apart. I got the idea from a vid-programme about the Spanish Inquisition.

Maybe that's what I'll do when I finally make my move on Devlin. Forget the burnings and decapitations. Use the pliers. Drug him and tie him up and... Sleep with his soft body under white silk aheets, more naked than anyone should be.

All this, Devlin. The years of training and fortunes spent. The sleepless nights and fever dreams and tears shed in vain.

All this for you.

Devlin. My love. My heart. My soul.

All for you.




D evlin was in the bath when he heard about Guy's murder. Soaping his chest and arms, slow and languid, damp fingers running down his spine.

Then the phone rang and Cardinal Romero was on the line saying something terrible had happened, that Guy had been found murdered in his apartment. His two children had returned from school to find his body nailed to the kitchen floor. He'd been decapitated and skinned from the waist up. Worse than that, his hands and feet were missing. They turned up later in the fridge. Scene-of-crime Judges found them in the salad box, cut into pieces and wrapped in cling film. Stashed amongst the aubergines and wilted lettuce.

There was still no sign of the head.

Devlin felt something tighten in his chest, felt his insides heave and shudder with emotion, and struggled to hold back tears.

Aubergines.

He'd introduced Guy to them the first day they'd met. Devlin had seen him on the beach, under a full moon. They'd become friends under the pier, water round their knees, listening to the creak and groan of moored yachts. Then they'd gone to the restaurant in the Hotel de Paris and Guy had let Devlin order for him.

'Aubergines?' he'd said, looking up from the menu, his pale blue eyes meeting Devlin's. 'I ain't never ate an aubergine in my life.'

But that night he'd gorged himself on them. Then they'd gone back down to the harbour and sat and watched the stars, Devlin singing softly until the sun came up.

And now he was dead. Cut and mutilated. Lying in a cold locker in a cold Monaco morgue. Dead like all Devlin's other friends. Like Pedro and Sanchez and Joel. Like dear old Bunny Beaumont. Like all the others.

Who was doing this to him? Taking away those he's once loved? Was it Mr Bliss, perhaps, setting the groundwork for another of his sexily nefarious schemes? Had the Cult of the Purple Fist reared its ugly head again? Or was there some deeper, more personal motive behind it all?

'Mr Waugh,sir? Is everyright all right?'

Devlin gazed at the anxious face of his houseboy, Serge, and shook his head.

"No. I'm afraid everything is far from right. In fact, things have rarely been quite so intolerable.' He ruffled Serge's hair with one damp, spade-like hand. 'I need distracting, dear boy. I need something to take my mind off this whole beastly affair.'

Serge jumped to his feet, a grin on his face, a gleam in his eye. He really was a sweet child. 'I'll be waiting in the garden then, shall I, sir?'

'Yes. Yes, I think that's a thoroughly splendid suggestion.' Devlin smiled wearily, placing the back of one hand firmly against his forehead as a wave of languor suddenly threatened to overwhelm him. 'A bout of rigorous and torrid exertion is the one thing that might lift this vile depression.'

Serge bounded from the room, as nimble as a cat. Devlin watched him for a few moments through the open door, admiring Serge's grace, his poise. Then he climbed out of the bath and started to towel himself dry.




T here are lots of ways to kill someone. You'd be amazed how versatile you get after the first few times. I know from experience. The first one I did - Bunny Beaumont - was real quick. Quick and violent and messy, I guess because I was frightened. Bunny was one of Brit-Cit's most respected theatrical agents, and had been a friend of Devlin's - off and on - for the last twenty years, so he was the obvious first choice.

The second time, though, I made it last. That was Pedro, the retired bullfighter from Ciudad Espana. Arms covered with tattoos and more scars than a prize aggro-dome kickboxer. Devlin met him at the Cockatoo Lounge about a month back. That was a couple of days after I'd arrived in Monaco. I did Bunny on the Monday, caught the inter-Euro shuttle down here, and did some cancer that had been festering inside me. Which, in a way, I suppose I had. Jealousy is very much like a cancer. Eating away at your mind and body. Filling your thoughts as surely as it fills your flesh.

Killing you softly from the inside out.

I feel a lot closer, a lot more attached to Devlin than I ever did to spy of the others. Sometimes I feel like there's a telepathic link between us. That I can tune into his thoughts, wherever he is, even if it's on the other side of the world. Sometimes I feel like I created him. Like I invented him out of my desire. Out of my need to be loved. It was never like that with the others, even Dredd.

Looking back, that's where it all started. Following Dredd like every kid does. Boys and girls. I was a member of Stoneface and Lawdog 5, all the unofficial fan clubs. I even saved up enough credits to buy Scenes from the Real World, the illegal vid-slug shot by the Democrats with its brutal footage of Dredd in action.

I was obsessed.

I spent every waking hour thinking about him. Flicking from one vid-channel to another hoping to see his face, to hear his name mentioned. I'd sit daydreaming in biology lessons. Imaging riding pillion with him down busy night-time skedways. The Lawmaster throbbing between our legs. The wind screaming past and my arms around his chest. The taste of sweat and leather in my mouth.

That was when I was thirteen. About the same time my mother got me into self-defence and my father got me into guns. That was the only good thing my parents ever did for me. Showed me how to take care of myself.
Pop was a survivalist and a gun freak. He used to be citi-def leader in our block, Haile Selassie, till the creeping buboes killed him. He was unemployed all his life, but when it came to killing he knew his stuff. And he taught me everything he knew.

You can see how the two things - Dredd and force; love and violence - were linked in my mind even then. They were two sides of the same coin. Immutable and self-defining. One was the hand and the other was the glove, and they fit each other perfectly.

To be honest, I was never really that serious about Dredd. Not like I am about Devlin. With Dredd it more of a crush, a silly teenage infatuation. I spent six or seven months collecting posters, banging round outside the midtown Sector Houses waiting for a glimpse of him, then ditched him on my fourteenth birthday.

After that I took the obvious next step and jumped straight for Judge Death. Another one of those coming-of-age cliches - rebelling against my parents, my upbringing, authority - hut it felt right at the time. I even dressed the part.. white face and black gloves, mock-leather jacket and armbands. Full retro Goth get-up.

The thing with Judge Death last just over a year, then I moved on to Eddie Whyteman. A cult figure, a fringe celebrity, it was his obscurity that attracted me. The sense that I'd discovered him. An amateur psychic sleuth who worked amongst the outcasts and the possessed, Eddie had to keep a low profile. it was the only was he could pull off the stunts he did and still get away with it.

But all the time, at the back of my mind, was the snecking suspicion that this wasn't enough. That Eddie wasn't the person I was looking for. No more than Judge Dredd or Judge Death had been.

And then I saw Devlin.




I t was a little after two in the morning and Devlin and Serge were sparring in the garden. They had the wrestling mats out, quilted rubber sheets that lay on the damp grass like giant broken biscuits, and heaved and panted around each other. A camp-fire burned nearby, flinging long shadows across the lawn, making the sweat on Serge' chest gleam like gold leaf.

'Much, much too slow,' said Devlin as Serge kicked out at his midriff and missed. Devlin caught his foot in the palm of his hand, gripped the heel tightly, and twisted. Serge was slipped over onto his back and landed on the wrestling mat with a heavy thud. Devlin straddled his chest.

Serge gave that selfish grin again. 'I've had it,' he gasped.

Devlin leaned over him. 'So you have,' he said and climbed to his feet, The wind had risen while they'd been sparring, burdened with the smell of salt and citrus fruit. Cross-draughts snapped at Devlin's ankles like scissors. He pulled his moleskin trunks up more snugly, then lifted his lounging robe off the pool-side chair. After Serge had dried himself and put on his clean houseboy's uniform, he trotted inside to prepare Devlin's supper.

Gazing out across la Condamine, Devlin watched the vessels on the other side of the harbour, white flags pinned into a featureless black map. Sea and sky merged seamlessly together, making the world seem suddenly big and dark and empty. Devlin lit a menthol cigarette as a formless depression stole over him.

Sometimes, on nights like this, he remembered his own death. Remembered the water closing over him. Remembered the darkness and the taste of blood and snapshots of his life flitting through his head like shoals of brilliant fish. The sudden sense of isolation brought it all back.

Serge appeared a few minutes later, padding through the French windows with a tray in his hands. It was weighed down with plates and cutlery; tureens and decanters and Hizen china. devlin sniffed cautiously. Even other the salt-smell of the sea he could pick out the individual odours from the tray. Scallops and caiva. Fennel and shallots. The sharp dry bouuet of Vichy water.
Devlin gestured at the wrought-iron table beside him, 'Put it down there,' he said quietly. 'I'm afraid I have precious little appetite at the moment.'

Serge did as he was told, then went back into the house, leaving Devlin with his thoughts. He stared out across the sea, across the night, thinking about the grisliness that was unfolding around him. Thinking about those he'd lost. How they'd lived and died. How they'd been drugged and tortured and mutilated. It was the thought of their violation that Devlin found so disturbing. The thought that their bodies had been ruined by some monster's knife. Their heads were out there. Somewhere. Bagged in a freezer, perhaps, or lined up on a mantlepiece like trophies from some nightmare safari.

Just the thought of it made Devlin feel faint.

If only he could rouse himself from this lassitude he might have been able to do something. Dear God, his friends were being slaughtered like cattle and here he was, unable to lift a finger to help. A victim of his own hideously over-sensitive temperament.

The end was in sight. He knew that. The murders had been getting closer and closer together, nearer to home. It was as though some vast unstoppable beast had caught his scent and was remorselessly closing in. Devlin stared into the night and imagined it out there now. Blood on its muzzle, lying flat in the shadows, black anvil claws raking up dirt as it readied itself to leap. A breeze the breath of the beast, circling out there in the dark.

'What on earth am I doing'.' he muttered quietly. 'If I continue to persecute myself in this ghastly fashion, I shall go quite mad.'

He paused for a moment, glancing upwards, catching sight of a shooting star as it blazed across the sky. A single bone-white scratch. A flaw in the darkness.

Devlin shook his head. 'And that won't do at all.'

He was already beginning to see a way out of his dilemma. If he could only pull himself together he could conjure forth the forces of Fohat. Reach into the aetheric fundament and draw one of his dead friend's souls back from the grave. Use the murderer's own victims to find them...

Devlin checked his watch. Two forty-five.

He turned and shouted towards the house.

'Serge? Bring me the telephone, won't you? I have decided to haul my feeble body out from this maelstrom of inactivity.' Devlin sat back and rubbed his hands together. '1 shall put a,, end to this' horridness once and for all.'




I remember it with perfect clarity.


I was seventeen. I was sat in my hab having breakfast, pouring myself a cup of synthi-caff, and the next thing I knew there was his face on the vid. Devlin looking out with that coy smile of his, those soulful intelligent eyes, and it was as if he was looking right at me. Right through me.

At the time it was glimpsing Heaven.

This was just after the Penny Farthing Murders. He'd caught the angel who'd been terrorising the Indo City slums, there was a reporter asking him how he'd done it, and Devlin looked straight into the camera - straight into me - and said: 'I used my nose, dear boy. How else is one supposed to track down an angel?'

Seeing him then, just for those few brief seconds', filled me with joy. He seemed so real. So important. He touches something in me I'd never known was there before. I felt as it I could reach out and pull him right through the screen.

Then the news report was over and his face disappeared and some inane vid commercial came on in its place. And I just broke down and cried. I suddenly felt so lonely, like there was nothing inside me but this great big black hungry hole, and I kept on crying and crying until I cried myself to sleep.

I feel in love the instant I saw him.

It was like, Oh wow, who is this guy?

He was just so cool. So witty and laid-back and sophisticated.

Over the next few days I found out everything about him I could. Scoured the library comp:soles and vid-archives for hour after hour, piecing together his past. I bought every magazine that might have mentioned his name. Wrote to museums and vid-companles, even the Vatican, asking for information. Reconstructing his life in my head.

About two weeks after my father died, mom won the Chazal Cordon Bleu Cookery Trophy with her recipe for munce Thermidor. She split the prize money between us, and I used my share for a holiday in Europe. That year - 2113 - was one of Devlin's busiest years yet, and while the money lasted! followed him everywhere. Ankara, Warsaw, Samakand, leamington Spa... Wherever he went, I was there.
I must have taken over a thousand photographs during that pilgrimage. Some are pinned on my bedroom walls, along with my posters and souvenirs and magazine cuttings. The others I keep locked away in a jewellry box with the rest of my stuff. I look through them two or three times a week, poring over them, comparing the details from photograph to photograph. Little things like scars and what he's wearing and whether he'd got his hair this way or that way.

I've got one photograph of him actually in bed. It was taken by a friend of a friend at a hotel in Simba City, just before his dust-up with the Leopard Men of Mado Gashi. He's sat up in bed writing, his dressing gown open so you can see his chest, looking straight at the camera with those hungry eyes of his. Sometimes I touch the picture and try to take off his clothes, I kiss his lips and tough his hair. I imagine him and I...

Since he became a vampire, though, a lot of that's changed.

When I saw that on the news, after the whole Aquatraz thing, I just felt sick. Rumours had been circulating for days that he was infected but I refused to believe them. Then there was a press conference at the hospital, just before hi was flown back to the Vatican, and he told everywhere that the rumours were true.

'Yes. Regrettably, I too have been tainted by that hellish disease.'

I can remember the inflection of each word, the expression on his face, the way the camera lights flashed in his eyes. Every detail frozen in my head.

'Obviously it will mean making certain adjustments to my lifestyle, but I'm far from beaten. I shall look upon it as yet another cross to bear on my already horribly overburdened shoulders.'

Devlin my pale idol, my urbane god - was no longer Devlin. I felt as if he'd betrayed me. As if he'd wilfully turned his back on everything I held dear. Yet in that betrayal was my salvation. As the weeks passed I started to see Devlin's illness as proof of my love. As a test. To be thrown into such emotional turmoil and come through it in one piece meant our passion could survive anything.

As the months passed my obsession began to change. My love for Devlin grew stronger and more sure, but it grew crooked, too. Taking strange forms, leading me places I didn't always want to go. I now realise that that's what love is about, but it took me a long time to reach that stage.

We can't help the way we feel. We can't apologise for our emotions, our dreams, our darkest innermost fantasies. Our only hope is to embrace them willingly. To accept our every thought and feeling. If we don't, then we are nothing. Fakes. Hollow vessels filled with echoes. If you can't be honest to yourself, then life means nothing.

So I bent with the love. Went with it. Followed its twists and turns and cruel deviations, until I ended up here. In this crazy crooked place where all trains of thought converge. I realise now that the only way I'll ever own devlin is to kill him.

Murder is the ultimate act of ownership.

Murder is for keeps.




I t was only a short drive down to the morgue, but there'd been a rockslide on the rue des Feniers and navigating the debris seemed to take Devlin hours. He'd had Serge take his favourite car out of the garage - a souped-up 1934 Silver Ghost with stay-fast wheels and polarised windows - and he'd wondered at first if it had been a good idea.

Now, though, sat behind the wheel with the streetlights in his eyes and the dark at his back, he felt as if he was in control again. He had a plan now, a direction to go in. Things always seemed a little brighter when one had a reason for getting up in the morning.

Or, for that matter, in the evening.

What Devlin planned on doing was a notoriously tricky exercise. One didn't take the forces of Fohat lightly. Fohat was a terrifying power, the hissing spitting energy that lay at the heart of the life-stream. The energy that linked body and spirit, and injected mind into matter.

devlin intended to use that energy to animate on of the murders victim's Joel's body. Then hope there was enough of his spirit left to provide Devlin with some answers. The only doubt in his mind was whether he'd still be able to remember how to perform the ritual.

By the time he reached the hospital it was almost four o'clock. Less than three hours till sunrise. Devlin reached instinctively for the pendant round his neck - the Eye of Sekhmet - and felt it tingle against his fingers. The aetheric forces were already gathering. He was going to have to act quickly.




S ince Devlin became a vampire, my fantasies have grown more and more lurid. More sadistic in content, sharper in detail. Somehow I saw him as being tainted, and saw myself as his healer, his redeemer, using love and pain to scourge the sickness from his body. In most of these fantasies I'm naked. In the few I do wear clothes they're usually butchers' aprons and surgical gowns. Things like that.

In my head I put Devlin in all kinds of painful situations. Like sometimes he's shot and paralysed from the waist down. Sometimes I break his hands and make him play the piano. Sometimes he's cut and beaten, and I assault him with pieces of wood, stone, plastic - anything I can get my hands on.

In one of my wilder fantasies I imagine he has Jigsaw Disease. He's disappearing bit by bit, and I spend hours playing with the pieces, making way-out collages of meat. His head there, his pelvis beside it, his lips lying in the palm of my hand...

I've wanted to kill him for quite a while now. It was a joke at first, a warp-out, a whetstone on which I honed my fantasies to sharpness. But as the months have passed it's become stronger and stronger, a wild spiralling urge that's so powerful some days it frightens me. I used to think I was going mad. now I realise it's the anger. The frustration. After while it feels like you're going to explode. Like there's an earthquake in your head every time you see him and the ordy way of stopping it is to make your fantasy real.

Killing him is the only hope I've got now. The only way I can ever make him mine, He's so unapproachable, and I'm nobody, and this is my very last chance to make a mark. Killing him would join us together for all time. Cement us together in people's minds. The last great double-act.

Me and Devlin. Murderer and victim.

More blood in the history books.
I've got everything I need right in front of me. The weapons and the wherewithal. All my gear in a black nylon knapsack. A gutting lazerblade. A hammer and stake. Handcuffs, chains, laser scalpels. Twenty ampoules of industrial sedative and a hypodermic gun.

And the heads, carefully dried, packed in polypropylop and sawdust. Five heads in a black nylon bag.

I've been watching Devlin's house almost a month now. Cruising past when the sun's up. Slipping into the garden and through the undergrowth, keeping to the trees. Circling the house like a cat burglar or a sleazy tabloid photographer, a telephoto lens peering through every window. Now I've got the layout memorised perfectly, a snapshot in my head. My route through the house mapped with almost surgical precision.

Tonight, Devlin. Just as the sun's about to rise. Close the shutters, draw the curtains. Feel my breath on the back of your neck.

For three years you've filled my every thought. Burned a hole through my head like molten rock. You killed the real me and turned me into something altogether different. Something new and terrible and twisted.

Now it's my turn.




T he sky was already getting light when Devlin arrived home, screeching to a stop in the driveway, car wheels barking up the gravel. He was jumpy now, on edge, eager to get in and get things done. The Eye of Sekhmet had told him what he'd wanted to know, weaving its answers in cold blue fire over cold mortuary tiles. He'd looked full-on at the beast and all he felt now was relief.

It wasn't Mr Bliss. It Wasn't the Wrestling Tong or the Glory Boys or the Cult of The Purple Fist. His friend had been killed by someone of a different magnitude altogether.

The beast that had been harrying him for the last few months was a teenager. The information he'd been given was patchy, incomplete, a blur of abstractions. Fohat was notoriously unreliable when it came to hard facts like names and dates and places. Its real use lay in creating an impression; evoking a mood or a feeling; a sequence of thoughts. it painted in the user's head, the pictures devlin had seen were terrifying in their mundanity. Rotten with love and hate and jealousy.

The person who'd murdered his friends was nobody special. A crazy love-sick juve with a pale plain face and greasy eyes, a scar like a question mark on the side of their face. Devlin was being stalked by a groupie. A morbid fanatic tripped-out on their own obsessions.

He locked the car quickly then dashed up the front steps and into the house, calling for Serge as he went. The hall was cool and damp, still gloomy, and Devlin's voice echoed amongst the stuffed turtles and potted ferns, He went down the passageway and turned left, into the dining room.

The table was set for two. China soup bowls and silverware. Decanters of port and cut-glass goblets. The centrepiece was a row of five large covered platters, candle-light gleaming on silver hoods.

As he was crossing the room, Devlin caught a smell in the air. Antiseptic but woody, somehow. Coming from the hooded platters. He reached out towards them, fingers grazing the cold silver cover, and felt a sudden shocking sense of deja vu jolt through him, knowing what was underneath before he'd even lifted it.

A head. Shrivelled and desiccated, skin like chamois leather. An apple lodged in its mouth, gripped between lips like ring. Bunny's head lying on a bed of watercress and horse radish.

Devlin snatched the covers off the other platters, frantic now, revealing one head after another. Pedro, Joel, Sanchez, Guy. Guy fresher than the others, still with a flush of colour in his cheeks. five wizened heads with apples in their mouths. A sick, horribly sick joke. The product of a diseased mind.

Then, on the heels of that, a flash of realisation: The fiend is in the house! That beastly fiend is somewhere in this home

It was only then that Devlin thought of Serge. His devoted houseboy. His cook, cleaner and assistant. Imaging him going about his chores and stumbling into that poisonous little...

'Serge!' Devlin was shouting now, running down the length of the dining room, heading for the door to the kitchens. 'where are you? Answer me, Serge!'

He shouldered the door open and came to a sudden halt. Eyes fixed straight ahead, stopped by the sickly metal stench of blood; by the sight in front of him. Serge was hanging from the ceiling by his feet, arms dangling by his side. He looked like some ghastly side of meat. Skin a delicate blue, blood dripping into a green plastic bucket.

Devlin let out a grief-stricken roar and ripped the body down, arms around its waist, lowering it carefully to the floor. Tears stung his eyes, unreeling down his cheeks like fine thread. His chest was wracked by savage heaving sobs that tore into him like meathooks.

There was a sound just behind him. The snik of a safety catch being flicked off. Devlin spun round to see a pale scrawny girl standing in the kitchen doorway, knapsack over her shoulder, a hypodermic gun gripped tightly in both hands. It was aimed straight at Devlin's chest.

The girl moved before he had a chance to. She leaned forward, threw up, and fainted. Slumping unconscious in a puddle of thin green vomit. The whole thing happened in instants. It was as if the girl had just been switched off.

Devlin let out a shaky sigh, dabbing at his forehead with a monogrammed silk handkerchief. Another let-down; another woefully-inadequate conclusion to an otherwise stimulating day. This girl had been plaguing him for months, butchering his friends one by one. Now it was suddenly all over. No words or threats or violence. It was just over. Devlin sniffed disdainfully, wondering - not for the first time - why his life seemed to be one long unending anti- climax.

He went over to the telephone and rang for the Judges.

Then Devlin sat down to wait.


Originally published in "Judge Dredd Mega-Special 1993 No.6"

Another devlin text story... Body and soul.

Back to devlin main page..