Death's Bloodicorn

'What the hell is that?'

I'd followed Alex into the barn but now stood dead still, staring at...

'Blacky,' came the reply, full of pleasure. Alex stepped up to the stall, reaching to stroke the occupant's muzzle.

'Alex, I don't think...' The rest cut off in a squawk of panic as the jaw clamped around Alex's hand.

'Affectionate today, hey old boy?' Alex commented with a laugh.

My mouth dropped open when I saw that he retained both hands and didn't appear to be bleeding or in pain. 'What...' I drew in a breath. 'Is that...' Nope, still couldn't get my brain to work. Apart from spouting, 'it's a corpse.'

'Come on, Luca, of course he is. I can't have living unicorns pull the hearse.'

Of all the weird shit I'd had to deal with over the last month, this had to be right at the top of the list.

The creature standing in the stall, nudging Alex with its bony jaw, was a unicorn. Or at least it had a jet black horn rising from its forehead to a deadly point. But that's where what I knew of unicorns stopped. This thing really was a corpse. Its head was more bone than skin and flesh, while exposed tendons were seemingly the only thing holding the jaw to the rest of the skull. Though the eyes were hollow sockets, when the beast turned my way I was pretty sure it did see me.

The massive head lowered so the horn pointed at my heart, and I wanted to scarper. I'd reached my limit of weird. No, no, my limit of gross! Strands of white hair matted over the beast's poll and flicked out all sides since no ears remained to contain it. More strands entwined through the neck bones, probably holding the thing together, clumping around pieces of muscle and skin. Pinking at the ends like someone had tried to wash out a blood stain and had only been partly successful.

Fortunately, the stall door prevented me seeing the body.

The fact that unicorns didn't really exist was the least of the problem.

'Blacky leads the team,' Alex was saying. 'Come and make friends, Luca.'

No bloody way, I thought. When he'd told me I was going to be his driver I thought it'd be pretty cool, but not if I had to be staring at this all the time. God, Alex had said there were thirteen-- shit, were the others this bad? And this wasn't even a horse!

'He won't bite,' Alex said.

'He bit you.'

'That was nothing, he was just playing.'

Yeah, right.

'Come on, Luca, Blacky needs to get to know you. And he's the one you need to be able to command most.'

'Tell me what it is first,' I demanded. 'Tell me I'm not dreaming.'

'You're not dreaming,' he responded, then looked curious. 'Do you still dream? I didn't realise the dead could do that.'

'The normal dead probably don't,' I told him through clenched teeth.

Alex inclined his head. 'Got a point there,' and smiled again. Actually, he put all his charm into it.

As if that would gloss over my question! I folded my arms.

'Man, you're no fun today,' said Death.

Death. AKA Alex Vodane, a tall, lithe young man with a penchant for black. Not surprising really; the clothing colour choice matched his jet hair and dark eyes. My partner, would you believe, when I was alive, and still now even though I was dead. I really didn't get it at all, but I wasn't bothered, not even over the circumstances of my death. All that paled with the notion that I'd agreed to drive Death's hearse sight unseen. How stupid was that?

'Alright, alright.' Alex leaned a shoulder against the stall - the middle one of the thirteen - apparently unbothered by the skull hanging near his face. 'I should've given you a head's up. But, please Luca, don't wig out now. This job is why you get to stay with me.'

'You're just lucky I want to stay,' I muttered. 'Now, spill!'

'Blacky is a full blooded bloodicorn.'

I strained my ears. 'Pardon? A what?'

'Bloodicorn,' Alex repeated like it was so very normal. 'A corpse, like you said, of a unicorn.'

'Unicorns aren't real,' I felt compelled to point out.

'All creatures come from fact, Luca,' he said. 'But you're part right; there aren't any on earth now.'

I chose to hold my silence over that. Here I was talking with Death; what did I know about other things? 'Was it a unicorn before it became a blo--'

'Bloodicorn?' Alex supplied when I couldn't quite spit it out.

'Yeah.'

'No,' he said, pushing the bony jaw back when it snapped his way.

And he wanted me to get close?

'Bloodicorns are a breed all of their own,' Alex said. 'Quite rare, and hard to get hold of.' He sounded smug that he had one.

'I've never heard of them.'

'Because you don't read dark fantasy, Luca,' he quipped.

Didn't need to! I was living it... or dying it...

'So how did you get it... him?'

Alex grinned. 'I'm Death.'

Of course.

'Bloodicorns sense death, Luca,' Alex said. 'Hence Blacky.'

He finally moved out of the beast's range, and I took an involuntary backward step when the bones creaked out to their limit as the open mouth reached after him.

'Don't tell me the others are bloodicorns too,' I pleaded. No way I could handle thirteen of them.

'They're not. I've got just the one,' Alex said. 'They fight with their own kind until they cut each other to pieces. Useless to me in that state.'

I pulled a face, wondering how a "cut to pieces" state was different from what I was seeing.

Alex dug an apple from his pocket. 'Here, go give him this.'

I stared at it like it was something else I'd never come across. 'How...' I swallowed. The beast was sinew and tendons and bone; how was it going to eat? Would the apple fall through the jaw as soon as it got between the thing's teeth?

Alex shoved the apple into my hand. 'Go on, you'll get on his good side.'

I didn't want to be on any side, and especially not since the animal seemed focused on me. Its head jerked like it was sniffing the air, and then its maw opened and a sound like nails down a chalk board ripped through the barn.

I'd have died of fright if I wasn't already dead.

'You gotta be kidding, Alex.' I back-stepped and that encouraged growling. Not Alex, but the animal. I drew in a half breath.
Alex held his silence beside me and I wondered if this was some sort of test. Then he squeezed my hand - the one that held the apple - and when I turned to scowl he blinded me with one of his full-on mouth-and-eyes smiles. The kind that made me want to do anything for him.

I still grumbled, 'The things we do for love,' but started slowly forward. Come on, Luca, a tiny voice sounded in my head, you're dead, what're you afraid of?

Plenty!

The bloodicorn's neck remained extended and it held its head to one side, which only made it more horrible since the jaw tilted askew. I'd been taught, as a kid, to offer an apple from a flat palm so a horse could take the apple and miss the fingers. As much as I wanted to throw the fruit into the stall, I forced my palm flat, stretched my arm out. I came from the side since horses had a blind spot directly in front, and presumed that anything remotely horse-like did too, even if it was dead. And, anyway, that kept the horn from angling at me.

As I sidled closer, I refreshed my lungs because I'd been holding my breath, and nearly gagged. Not because I got a lungful of rotting flesh and blood but because I got nothing like that at all. This thing was a corpse but there was no smell to it other than something faintly horsey. I nearly turned to seek comment from Alex but the mouth was coming toward me and I froze instead.
Cold, hard bone tapped at my hand, jiggled the apple, and when the mouth opened one of the sinews popped and dangled onto my wrist. I couldn't screech because I half swallowed my tongue, and I couldn't move because I was fixated on the apple. It broke up amongst the teeth that remained in the jaw, and part of it seemed to travel back through the skull as the beast lifted its head.

The dangling sinew flicked up with the movement and wrapped around the nose bone. I wrapped a hand over my mouth, yet somehow stayed where I was. This thing was like a train crash, I just couldn't look away. In fact I stepped closer, eyes widening. The bloodicorn's head and upper neck were mostly bone with bits of hair but the body resembled the reality of a rotting corpse perfectly. Taut leathery skin with decent patches of black hair (=Blacky?) clothed part of the animal's chest and legs. Grey, dry muscle displayed itself over the near shoulder and rump, some of it protruding from holes in the veneer of skin like stuffing falling out of a chair. The lower curve of the rib cage was all too visible, intact but threaded with muscle and dangling skin and possibly organs, looking a bit like gnawed BBQ ribs.

As I was staring at this travesty of an animal a piece of apple slipped out between some ribs and plopped on the ground. No, it had slipped from a gash in a slimey grey-pink tube.

Oh god... was that the intestine?

More importantly, why was I still looking?

Because this creature was simply too horribly fascinating to look away from. And I'd missed something in my earlier inspection; the neck bones were sharp, almost spiked, and the sharpness mirrored through the entire spine. Some were peaks beneath dry, taut skin while others jutted out where the fabric had split and peeled back. And near the end of the spine, the bones all stood free, like a bizarre row of shark teeth.

Not an animal one could ride.

Actually, how was I supposed to even harness this bloodicorn? Wouldn't the traces just fall through bone? And without ears, how would a bridle stay in place?

My mouth began to open to shoot questions at Alex about this issue when a dark shadow lurched toward me. I yelled out in shock, jerking sideways before realising it was the animal from the next stall. Except when I turned to face it, it wasn't there.
But as I glanced Alex's way (he didn't seem at all concerned I was about to become fodder) I saw the head again. A horse - a normal horse, dark grey, with all its flesh and skin in place. Teeth too. He stretched them toward me, I half turned back as if to somehow ward him off and he was gone again. 'What... Alex.'

'He's there, Luca,' Alex said, 'but only visible in your peripheral vision.'

'Let me guess, his name is Shadow.'

Alex grinned. 'King Luther, actually.'

Figured.

It felt weird only seeing the horse out the corner of my eye; almost more unpleasant than the bloodicorn. Oh crap, that was behind me and I'd forgotten.

Just as I started to swing back to put the beast in my line of sight, the shadow horse gave a more determined lunge at me. I stumbled back, crying out as the bloodicorn thrust his head between me and the other animal. There was a snap of jaws, and then a squeal rent the air and I saw blood run from the beast's jaw. My eyes went wide. Bloodicorns could bleed? Which was a stupid question, really, given their name.

But then I shifted a little, caught sight of the grey head flinging sideways, blood spattering in an arc, before the shadow horse disappeared into the back of its stall.

Alex murmured, 'that'll teach you, Luther,' and I glanced his way. He flashed back a grin. 'You have a new friend, Luca.'

I turned, now standing dead centre of the animal's stall with his desiccated bulk between me and the other one. His eye was on me and I was sure something flickered in it. Though maybe it was only a bit of sinew catching the light. This side of the bloodicorn's face wasn't so visibly bony, it even had a stretch of skin from the eye socket to the bottom of the jaw. My fingers crept up to do a faint scratch there, hoping I wouldn't peel off skin. His head inclined a little onto my fingers as if he enjoyed the scratch, so I continued. Even when the sinew wiggled out of the eye socket to reveal itself as a worm.

I did promise to have myself the hottest, soapiest bath later.

Alex stepped up beside me, rubbed a finger along the animal's nose. 'Bloodicorns have unswerving loyalty, Luca.'

'To those that feed them?' I asked.

He gave a wry smile. 'Partly,' he agreed. 'But usually only to one or two masters over their lifetime.'

'And that's how long?'

'A thousand years, give or take,' Alex said with a shrug, managed to make it sound so normal.

So normal that I shrugged myself.

'Blacky senses you and me,' Alex continued. 'Our connection to each other, but he's never had to deal with anyone other than me.'

'What does that mean, exactly?'

'He's the lead, Luca, so he needs to respond to you as much as to me.' Alex tapped his nails on the edge of the stall. 'He's never had to work with anyone else.'

'I get the feeling you shoved me in the deep end.'

'He wouldn't have bitten you,' Alex said stoutly, 'but he wouldn't have defended you either, if he hadn't accepted you.'

I cocked my head as if the tilt could somehow help me make sense of all this. And then I looked at the bloodicorn still poking its head out between us and the other stall as if on guard. For all that the other horse was shadow I had no doubt the teeth had a real bite, and I'd been saved from that by this corpse. This corpse that I was apparently now friends with.

'You have Blacky's loyalty, Luca,' Alex said, casting his smile between me and his hearse-puller, looking totally satisfied with events. 'You'll have no trouble with him now.'

My smile probably had more in common with a grimace. 'Next time give me some warning, alright?' I asked. 'In fact, tell me about the others. I presume they are horses?' I jerked as the bloodicorn wiped his face down my shoulder, winced as he left a bit of skin behind. It made me wonder if they started out as 'normal' and then rotted through the years. If so, then this one had a ways to go and I better get used to the fact that this freaky beast and I were in for the long haul.

Alex didn't answer my question, so I wiped my sleeve against him. That only made him release a chuckle.

The bloodicorn turned away, apparently losing interest, and I saw that the tail was several scraps of white hair gingerly attached to the tail bone. Severe mange! The ringing sound as the beast moved drew me to look over the stall door again. Just like the perfect horn, the bloodicorn's four hooves were in pristine condition - black as night and ringing like stone upon stone.

'One day,' Alex said with a sigh, 'they're all that will be left of Blacky - hooves and horn. Indestructible.'

'They're beautiful,' I said without meaning to.

Alex raised a brow my way. 'I think you've come full circle, Luca. Bet if I gave you another apple, you'd get right in there with him.'

'Of course,' I said, 'because I can't refuse Death.' I bumped his shoulder.

'Too right,' he murmured, bumping me back.

The bloodicorn's head swung round and I drew breath. 'Not sure he liked that joke.'

'Wasn't your joke,' Alex said, grabbing my hand and pulling me away from the stall. 'He's just PDA-shy.'

'What?' I choked out.

Alex cackled, and tugged me out of the barn.



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Written for "Poison Apple Theater" 
April Round: Bloodicorns
Word Count: 2746