Standing straight, Fabio ran fingers through his hair and gazed at the body in dumbstruck awe. When he published these photos on his website, the world would have no choice but to sit up and take note.
Some documents resided on a steel tray normally used to carry the instruments Luigi would need to conduct his autopsies. He’d told Fabio the papers would be there. He snapped a picture of the top sheet and then gathered it up. The single side paper gave details of the dead woman: Rosa Bertinelli, a forty-six year old teacher from Pianoro, a small town about ten kilometers south of Bologna. Putting a name to the corpse added a bizarre kind of life to an otherwise inanimate object.
He had never been bothered about a body on a slab before, but things seemed different now that he’d lost his job. Now he gazed upon a dead person: someone who’d had hopes and dreams, maybe a husband and children, a family—an existence. Twenty-four hours after that existence had been wiped out Rosa was displayed naked on a cold steel slab for him to gaze at her torment.
The most disturbing aspect was that the body before him wasn’t the first fatality and Fabio doubted it’d be the last.
Two more sheets of paper on the tray were faxes sent to Luigi from Venice. Fabio picked up the first page and read the hand-written scrawl across the top margin. He recognized Felipe’s handwriting, and a grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. Felipe had tried to contact him, to show him the body, but Fabio had changed his cell phone less than a day after leaving Mestre for good. Fabio guessed Luigi had called Felipe after the woman’s body surfaced and their Venice colleague faxed over the details and photographic evidence of his own autopsy just two days ago.
Fabio glanced through the photographs, their quality not as clear as he would have liked due to the fax machine. Why didn’t he email them, Fabio mused. The black and white images revealed a middle-aged man who’d been dragged from the lagoon. The man’s cadaver resembled the woman laid out before him; an emaciated, lonely figure. Giuseppe Santoro had been a fisherman from Burano; no connection with the woman from Pianoro. Glancing between the still images and the real thing on the dissection table, Fabio felt certain the same vampire was responsible. The revelation smacked him with a rush of adrenalin that flushed cold through his body.
It wasn’t the female he autopsied; he’d cut her insides out, and was certain her brain still resided in a jar of formalin in the hospital laboratory.
It had to be a new vampire, and it was migrating.
Venice first, then Pianoro just south of Bologna—with another flicker of excitement Fabio knew its destination.
Two victims, on consecutive nights, and Fabio guessed there’d be another slaying tonight; it unnerved him but made him more determined to let the world know.
The first opportunity that came his way, Fabio decided he’d upload the new information and pictures to his website. This would shock the world.
The sound of a closing door echoed in the hallway beyond the morgue and Fabio caught his breath. He heard no voices, nor the muffled footsteps of someone approaching. A faint sense of panic began to creep into his emotions. If the vampires managed to break into a hospital in Venice and steal a body, he guessed they’d have no qualms about entering this building in order to kill him.
Fabio folded the papers detailing the dead man from the Venetian lagoon and stuffed them into the back pocket of his jeans. He slipped his digital camera back into his jacket, and took one last, awestruck glance at the dead woman on the slab before moving to the mortuary’s double doors.
Pausing at the exit he listened but failed to pick out any foreign sounds beyond the door. Fabio swallowed hard, and pushed the swing door aside. He glanced into an empty hallway and then hurried down the corridor to the emergency exit Luigi had opened for him earlier.
Stopping at the exit, he checked the hallway behind him once more to make sure no one would see him leave.
“Grazie, Luigi,” he muttered. He would miss the old man, almost as much as he now missed Felipe. He guessed those feelings of hurt and loss would subside over time, but he doubted the sense of losing his wife would ever fade away.
Fabio pushed open the door, quickly surveyed the hospital grounds, but saw nothing in the darkness. He hurried to the rusted Fiat, slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Pulling away from the district Fabio urged a sense of calm to well in him; he had a long drive ahead and couldn’t make the journey wrapped in fear.
Gassing the car onto the A1 toll motorway, Fabio switched on the radio, and headed south.
* * *
Prima Porta
Northern outskirts of Rome
Italy
The distant horizon blazed with luminosity from the Roman metropolis, acting like a beacon calling him home. At that moment however, his weakened body couldn’t take him much further: Anton needed to feed.
He hunkered in the shadows watching the darkened streets, but saw no movement.
It had been almost twenty-four hours since blood had last passed his lips, and Anton felt the effects of his malnutrition. His flesh dried and formed wrinkles like the weathered skin of an old man; muscles beginning to lock down in their desiccated condition. He’d filled his stomach on the journey south with fruits and berries, but while that nourishment had proved adequate enough, nothing could replenish him to the extent that fresh blood would.
Almost twelve months had passed since he and Lucas were ambushed in Venice and he feared his body might not fully recover from that extended period of starvation. His system had shut itself down and gone into a state of hibernation in order to preserve his chances of survival. Hardly a memory of that time in the Venetian lagoon remained in his mind—he would have died eventually had he not gotten snared in the fisherman’s nets. That first meal tasted exquisite, an end to his famine that offered him a physical rebirth. He’d fed gluttonously on the elderly man until he’d been sated; had waited an hour or two in the boat while his body quickly exhausted the new supply of sustenance, before draining the man of his last drop of blood. The trek across country over the last forty-eight hours had become a blur; a part of his history he would completely forget once full health returned to his withered figure. Last night’s feed had walked into his arms, the woman hurrying home on her own from some kind of social gathering and almost tripping over him as he lay shivering on the street. Anton couldn’t remember how he’d come to be in the Roman suburbs tonight, but the journey south had exhausted him more than a century of conflict had ever done.
The heart of the coven lay within the spectacle of lights on the horizon: a place where he could get the correct form of nourishment to quickly overcome his ordeal and rejoin his calling to the Elders. Anton wondered if they’d given up on him. Had they found the shredded corpse of Lucas and assumed the same fate had befallen him? A touch of sadness gripped his undead heart at the memory of his slain friend. Anton didn’t know how far the war had progressed in his absence, but vowed to avenge the Eliminator’s demise to the fullest.
He would take revenge for Gabriella’s death as well; her loss hit him hardest of all.
A cough erupted from his lungs and Anton leaned forward, wheezing into his clenched fist like a diseased man. Blood became his priority—he couldn’t avenge anyone if his soul succumbed to an illness brought on by his wasted condition.
Fifty meters away and to his right, a door opened and a woman staggered onto the street. The building didn’t look like a bar or nightclub, but loud music blasted from within. The unsteady woman turned to face the building as a man stepped into the doorway. They exchanged heated words; the man naked from the waist up, the girl struggling to keep her balance while wearing stilettos. The man advanced on the woman but she stood her ground. He hit her, and she crumpled to the street. The man didn’t bother to check his surroundings to see if anyone had witnessed his assault, but turned his back on the whimpering female and slammed the door when he entered the building. The woman gathered up her strewn handbag and crawled to her feet. She shouted o
ne last obscenity at the house, and then staggered in Anton’s direction.
A prostitute, Anton decided; one who’d just argued with her pimp or client. Whatever, she’d come off worse. She heaved the strap of her bag over her shoulder and tried to walk with a straight back, but alcohol controlled her movements.
Anton stepped from the darkness, and noticed her mascara tracing dark lines down her cheeks as he approached. She saw him and her step faltered. He wasn’t sure how bad he looked; aged and withered he suspected, but felt strong enough to try his luck with the whore. He pulled one hundred and fifty Euros from his trouser pocket and waved it in her direction.
“Quanto?” he asked. Anton wasn’t sure what hookers charged these days, especially in the suburbs, twelve kilometers from the centre of Rome, but hoped he had enough cash to entice the woman.
Her eyes widened and she glanced back towards the house she’d vacated. “Non qui.” The words were an order, not a suggestion.
Anton stuffed the notes back into his pocket. She didn’t want her pimp catching her taking money without his knowledge, and Anton nodded, hoping to make her believe she was in charge long enough to get her off the street. He didn’t look his best but she didn’t seem to be too picky; probably in desperate need for her own money after just being kicked out on the streets.
She strode towards him with purpose and grabbed his dehydrated hand. The woman looked him up and down, maybe wondering what a man in his condition was doing out at such an hour soliciting prostitutes. The sour tang of booze invaded his nostrils, the hooker’s eyes glazed from the alcohol. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years of age, and despite her being half drunk Anton yearned to taste her blood. His stomach seemed to crunch into balls of pain inside his torso, anxious to be filled. Saliva coated his tongue and he had to swallow heavily so as not to drool in front of her.
With any luck, her blood would revitalize him enough that he could travel to the centre of Rome tonight.
The young girl led him to a secluded alleyway pressed between a quiet restaurant and a closed bakery. Shadows merged with night’s thickness to create a dense obscurity, but Anton’s nocturnal vision adjusted quickly to his surroundings. The girl stumbled, either because she couldn’t see well in the dark or because of the alcohol in her system. The stench of urine hung heavy in the alley.
She must have decided they were at a place where they wouldn’t be seen, because she stopped dragging him and pressed his back against the rough wall.
“Diami i soldi,” she demanded. Her hand disappeared into his trouser pocket, located the cash he’d stuffed there when they’d stood in the street, and she wedged the notes into her bra.
Anton leaned towards her, dry lips cracking as he opened his mouth, fangs extending from parched gums, his stomach twisting in knots of hunger as he longed to taste the girl’s blood.
She wasn’t looking directly at him, and palmed him back into the wall. “Nessun baciare.”
No kissing; but you’ll do other stuff, Anton mused. This country used to have pride.
His strength returned after every feed but it had been so long now since blood had passed his lips that an unnatural sense of weakness slowed his muscles.
She sank to her knees on the alleyway’s dirty concrete, the paleness of her legs seeming to glow in the darkness, her short skirt resembling a belt that barely covered her groin. She tugged down his zipper, reached into his trousers, and her cold fingers felt warm on his manhood. She pulled him through the open zipper and stared at it for a moment. The hooker released a fabricated sigh of pleasure and then took him into her mouth.
She sucked at his flaccid penis but Anton felt no sexual emotions. He reached down and grabbed her hand as she struggled to release his belt. He pulled her arm up, wanting to get the prostitute to her feet so he could sink his fangs into her neck. She reached up under his guidance, and her fingers entered his mouth. She mumbled for him to suck them, but all he could manage was to play his tongue across her digits. He tried to find the strength to lift the woman to her feet but couldn’t locate it.
She took his penis from her mouth and slapped her own face with it, trying to encourage excitement that would dispel its flaccidity. It didn’t work; Anton wouldn’t feel that heightened emotion ever again now Gabriella was dead.
He pried her fingers from his mouth and pulled her arm higher. The thin skin of her wrist brushed against his teeth, his tongue darting out to taste her flesh. Her pulse pumped against his taste buds; his fangs elongated in an instant, surging from the gums.
The hooker cried out as teeth ripped her skin.
She pushed his penis aside and stood uneasily, her shouts of anger reverberating off the alley’s uneven walls. Anton stepped forward and her words locked in her throat. His pupils dilated, irises thinning to an invisible line; his fangs reached their maximum length—his soul energized by a trickle of her blood onto his tongue.
The whore didn’t have a chance to flee.
Anton lunged with an ageless fluidity, one hand securing the woman around her back, the other pushing into her face and thrusting her head backwards in one smooth movement.
A whimper escaped on her exhaled breath as Anton drove his fangs into her throat, his body shaking as he injected an ounce of venom from each fang into her bloodstream. His teeth sliced open her neck and ruptured her artery, his esophagus widening to inhuman proportions in order to swallow her gushing blood as rapidly as possible.
Anton held the prostitute tight, and as he drank her revitalizing life-fluid his penis began to stiffen.
FOUR
Santi Quattro Coronati
Rome, Italy
Twenty hours later. . .
The metropolis, over two and a half thousand years in construction, spread before him in a maze of bright lights as if it had been assembled with gold; a sea of brilliant yellow hues scattered in all directions. A thin cover of stratocumulus clouds reflected the city’s radiance, making it appear the spectacle of Rome stretched all the way to Heaven. Vampiric eyes studied the view, and although no longer in awe of the imposing city he had seen countless times over long-forgotten centuries, Markus thought the sight nothing short of majestic.
He inhaled through his nose and the air brought the city to him: the choking pollution of exhaust fumes, an unclean atmosphere coated with smog—the shifting emotions of its inhabitants that came to him as a viable substance.
Mortal life, he mused, nothing but fleeting time; as insignificant as a grain of sand in an hour glass.
They had no idea what it meant to be alive, to truly exist.
In contrast, he’d existed for almost nine hundred years, and with God’s will would exist for nine hundred more. The lifetime of a mortal human did not compare to the experiences Markus had suffered through. He’d been embroiled in a brutal war filled with carnage and bloodshed for the better part of six centuries. He’d slaughtered lycanthropes and hybrid soldiers with a ruthless determination; had borne tragic witness to the massacre and torture of his brethren. He’d partaken in more bloodshed in his singular lifespan than that of a hundred-thousand mortal soldiers combined. He doubted it would cease. The miserable war progressed and modified with the years yet the conflict remained shrouded in darkness, concealed by modern man’s self-inflicted turmoil.
Sometimes his dreams relayed the memories of his past: the brutal conflicts he’d fought throughout the ages. The coven’s struggles to survive the bubonic plague that swept through Europe, close-hand combat with shield, sword, tooth and claw throughout the vulnerable Middle Ages, and battles fought between vampire, werewolf, and hybrid armies under the disguise of humankind’s two world wars. Throughout the twentieth century, and indeed into this, the twenty-first, the darkness in which they fought their battles seemed to be getting brighter under the advance of an all-encompassing modern technology, and yet the human race remained unaware.
Ignorance continued to be one of mankind’s biggest weaknesses.
They were
just as ignorant about this building too.
Proclaimed as a church, Santi Quattro Coronati had in fact housed the center of the vampire empire since its construction in the middle of the fourth century. Mortal historians claim the basilica is devoted to four anonymous saints and martyrs: soldiers who refused their sacrifice to the god of medicine and were subsequently killed. Markus often smiled at the misconception. The four saints were in fact his predecessors, four Elders who ruled the origins of an immortal brotherhood: the coven over which Markus himself now presided. Their bodies lay beneath him, entombed in four ancient sarcophagi in a sealed crypt meandering under the building’s primordial foundations. The fact one of them happened to be Gabriel, his venerated grandfather, filled Markus with pride.
He intended to honor the name of his grandfather, of all the original Elders, and defend his throne here in Italy, across Europe, and all over the world.
No one deserved their place in this mercurial city more than he.
The loud wrap of knuckles against ancient wood disturbed his thoughts, and Markus glanced away from the splendid vista beyond the window. “Enter!”
The door to his private chamber creaked upon opening, as if the sound were a strict requirement given the cold, stone walls and candlelit surroundings of a boudoir that could easily have come straight from the set of a Hollywood horror movie. Markus returned his gaze to the sprawling city before him—his domain, his territory; the place of his birth almost nine centuries ago. He listened as his personal guard ushered the visitor into the room, then quietly closed the door behind him. Markus stood motionless for a moment; listened to the buzz of modern life in a city he’d preferred better when the Sistine Chapel was a building still in its infancy. A humid, Roman breeze invigorated the room’s sixteenth century silk curtains.
Monsters and Mortals - Blood War Trilogy Book II Page 4