“Who are those women?”
“They are not women,” sneered Grigor. “They are cows. If they are lucky, if God favors them, they will bear a Upierczi son.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then they are less than useless to us.”
He spat on the floor and turned to continue down the long corridor.
Vox lingered for a moment. One voice, a very young voice, suddenly screamed with the absolute and immediate horror of someone who was being brutally used and who knew, with absolute certainty, that no one would ever come to rescue her. It made Vox feel sick. He tried to tell himself that it was the chemo upsetting his stomach. If it accomplished nothing else, the lie at least kept him from vomiting.
He hurried to catch up to Grigor.
After another quarter mile, Vox stopped again, this time to peer at a piece of broken mosaic on a cracked wall. When Grigor saw him staring at it, the pale man said, “That is Darius the Great being crowned. It was placed there on the first anniversary of the Persian king’s death. This wall was made four hundred and eighty-five years before the birth of Jesus Christ.”
Vox turned and looked at the open mouths of tunnels and side corridors. “These tunnels are that old?”
“Some are,” agreed Grigor. “Some are older still; and we have tunnels like these in many cities.”
“You dug these holes?’
“The Upierczi did much of it, but your kind made many of them,” murmured Grigor, still caressing the stonework. His eyelids drifted shut. “Do you know how the Upierczi came to be the slaves of the Ordo Ruber?”
“I… know the version I was told by the Scriptor’s grandfather. About Sir Guy going looking for… your kind.”
Grigor leaned his cheek against the stone wall. “Father Nicodemus sent Sir Guy out to find Upierczi anywhere he could. In Turkey and Russia, England and Romania. Many places. There were rumors of us, of course, and most rumors were false. They said that we were the corpses of the dead risen from graves to haunt and prey upon the living.” He laughed and then shook his head. “We were not a race then. We were an aberration, an abomination. Freaks who were born to live in shadows, always hungry, always on the point of starvation, driven to mad acts of violence merely to survive. It is no different with any creature God has made-in the direst moment need overwhelms control.”
“That hasn’t changed,” said Vox.
Grigor nodded. “Your people feared us, and that is to be understood. The Church, however, denounced us as demons, as children of Satan. Knights and warrior priests and anyone who could raise a sword on behalf of the Church were empowered to kill us, to hunt us to extinction.” He sighed. “Think of that life. To be alone, and to believe that there is no one like you. No one who shares your nature, no one who understands your hungers. No one who loves you.”
“Love?” said Vox quietly. “They make a lot about that in movies. Dracula and Twilight and all that shit. I don’t suppose you get to the multiplex very often, but that’s a kind of a theme out there. They think you are all about eternal love and romance. But I heard those women in the cells. Didn’t sound like love songs to me.”
Grigor turned away and looked deep into the shadows, and Vox wondered how much the man could see that he could not. Without immediately commenting on Vox’s statement, Grigor continued his story.
“When Sir Guy died, his son and successor, along with Father Nicodemus, created the Red Knights. A new order of chivalry, of knights errant given authority by the Church to prosecute a campaign against faithlessness. But that was in name only. They called us knights, and we call ourselves knights, but that is not who and what we are.”
“Then what are you?”
“Assassins. We were created to be the Order’s answer to the Tariqa’s fida’i. We were chess pieces. We were a sword, a knife, a gun. No different. Tools of war.”
“You’re more than that,” said Vox.
“Yes,” said Grigor and it was the first word he’d spoken that had real passion. “We made true knights of ourselves. We became in fact what they said we were in name only. We became a true order of chivalry. We became a society. A people.”
“You still live in tunnels, Grigor.”
“Because we choose to. It is our world, within but apart from the world above. We have thousands of miles of tunnels. We come and go and no one knows we are here. Archaeologists and miners sometimes find the tunnels, but we collapse connecting tunnels, and we are experts at disguising our private tunnels. We are not found unless we choose to be found.”
“That’s pretty fucking impressive.”
Grigor gave a half smile. “It’s necessary. We know that we could never integrate into the world above. We can play dress up and ‘pass’ for one of you, but not on close inspection. And we are still hunted up there. The Inquisition was created by a papal bull to hunt us down. Us and other things that move in the dark, most of who are only fantasies concocted by fools. Father Nicodemus was able to use some aspects of the Inquisition so that he and the sitting Scriptor could find true Upierczi. Find and recruit us; but to the Church at large we were monsters and therefore evil; and they still hunt us. We do not fear any man in single combat, or any two or three men. But the Inquisitors did not come at us in small numbers. They sent armies against us. They sent special teams-the Sabbatarians, the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, and many others over the years. Some-most-of those groups are long gone. Died out or killed by us or disbanded by changes in Church policies. Only the Inquisitors remain, and after a long silence they’ve become active again.”
“Yeah,” said Vox, “I know about one of them. The Sabbatarians. The Seven Kings ran into them a couple of times. I even used them once in a while for some wetworks stuff, but I broke off my ties with them. Idealistic trash. They’re still around, though, and they’re formidable in numbers.”
“In the same way locusts are.”
“There are a lot of them,” said Vox, and Grigor nodded.
“Over the years we-with the help of Father Nicodemus-have managed to weaken their effectiveness by feeding them lies about who and what we are. About our strengths and weaknesses.”
“Disinformation,” Vox supplied. “Stakes, crosses, sunlight, that sort of shit?”
“Yes.”
“Nicodemus is a tricky bastard. What about garlic?”
Grigor did not answer.
Vox said, “I heard a rumor that some other group is gunning for you too. Arklight?”
Grigor hissed like a snake. “Whores and daughters of whores.”
“Maybe,” said Vox grudgingly. “Whores with high-powered sniper rifles, though.
With a black-nailed finger, Grigor pointed into the darkness in the direction of the wretched weeping. “They were our whores once. There is not one of them who has not screamed for us.”
“Charming,” murmured Vox. A wave of nausea swept through him and he stopped to steady himself on a wall. “When do we start the treatments? I’m losing a lot of ground here.”
The King of Thorns smiled.
“The treatment will make you scream,” he murmured.
“Then I’ll fucking scream,” snarled Vox.
The word “scream” echoed through the endless darkness.
A challenge. A promise.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Homa Hotel
51 Khodami Street, Vanak Square
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:06 a.m.
The sniper’s name was not Violin.
But it would do. For Joseph Ledger and for this crisis, it would do. The name meant something to her from a long time ago. Back when she meant something to herself. When she had a life instead of a mission.
Violin.
Even the sound of it in her mind was bittersweet. A memory of a girl who laughed freely and who thought that all the monsters in the world were in storybooks. Back before her eyes were opened.
Violin. She had liked the way Ledger had repeated it. He had truly tast
ed the name, the way a sensualist would. That intrigued her. She already knew that he was a passionate man, that was clear from the profiles Oracle had read to her. Ledger was a sensuous man, and a tragic one. He wore death and grief like garments.
And Violin understood that very well.
What she did not understand was why she had lingered to watch him, or worse yet, why she had called him. It felt correct while she was dialing, and yet in every way open to her analytical mind it was wrong. A tactical and strategic error and a clear break with Arklight protocol. Mother would be furious.
No, she corrected herself, Mother will be furious. The call was now part of her phone log, which meant that it was part of the mission file. Lilith would never overlook it.
“Oracle,” she said aloud.
The screen on her small computer lit up with its smiling Mona Lisa.
“Oracle welcomes you.”
“I want to enter a new code name.”
“Voice recognition is active. What code name would you like to enter?”
“Violin.”
“Is this for file or field use?”
“Field use. It will be my call sign for this mission. Enable.”
“May I inquire as to why you have changed your code name? Has your cover been compromised?”
“My cover is intact. The change is to… maintain high security standards.”
“Thank you. Call sign ‘Violin’ is enabled. All appropriate field teams will receive a coded memo. How may I help you, Violin?”
“I need to speak to my mother. Right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tehran, Iran
One Year Ago
Hugo Vox sat in his car and wept.
He had never felt pain like this before. Not during chemo or radiation. Not even the cancer hurt this bad. Upier 531 was a lot more than gene therapy. Vox knew about gene therapy and it didn’t hurt beyond the simple injections.
He felt like every cell in his body was tearing itself apart.
The car was soundproof, so his screams bounced off the windows and the leather seats and smashed into him like fists. He punched the steering wheel and dashboard.
Tears ran down his face.
“God!” he begged. “Please, God…”
But God had never once answered his prayers, even when Vox still believed.
Vox felt his mind fracture, felt pieces fall away. A fever burned through him and his skin was as hot as if he sat in a furnace. The sweat ran down so heavily that he felt like he was melting.
What had he done?
How could he have thought that this was going to save him, because now he was sure it was killing him.
Not only gene therapy.
Grigor’s pet mad scientist, Dr. Hasbrouck, had given him three injections of something else. Three syringes with long needles. Syringes filled with fluid the color of blood.
No, not just the color of blood.
Upier 531.
Blood of the damned. Blood of the monsters who tunneled like pale moles in the bowels of the earth.
Blood of vampires.
Hasbrouck had strapped Vox down for those injections. Bound his wrists and legs and chest. And then he had raised one gleaming syringe above him. A bead of blood gleamed on the needlepoint.
“This may hurt a little,” Hasbrouck had said with a sadistic chuckle. And then he had plunged the needle into his chest.
Into his heart.
Vox had screamed. Oh, how he had screamed.
The pain was so far beyond his understanding that he had no adjectives to describe it. He felt the alien blood as it entered him.
It shrieked its way into his heart, into his blood, throughout his body.
Vox did not pass out until the second needle. Hasbrouck, courteous man that he was, splashed cold water in Vox’s face before he gave him the third injection.
“You really should pay attention to this,” said the doctor. “It’s not every day that someone makes you immortal. Have a little respect.”
The third needle was the worst of all, because every inch of Vox’s skin tried to recoil from it. Like a torture victim who knows that his last inch of unburned flesh is next to feel the Inquisitor’s touch.
Vox passed out again.
And woke up behind the wheel in his own car.
The pain came and went. Discovering that he was still alive was little comfort. He put his face in his hands and sobbed.
A voice said, “Stop it. You embarrass me.”
Vox’s head shot up and he jerked sideways in his seat. A scream bubbled inside his throat, but it died on his tongue.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
Father Nicodemus smiled. “What does it matter?”
Vox stared in mingled horror, doubt, and fascination at the old priest. It had been years since he’d seen him, but the cleric had not changed at all. Not a line, not a day.
“No, I guess not. But damn you’re a spooky bastard. And, besides, I thought you said it was too dangerous for us to meet like this,” Vox said, turning to glance through the tinted windows.
“No,” said Nicodemus, “that isn’t what I told you. I said it was dangerous for us to meet.” He smiled. “Not at all the same thing.”
A wave of agony swept over Vox and he recoiled from it as from a blow, shutting his eyes, hissing through clenched teeth. Through the haze of agony he heard Nicodemus speaking.
“Do you feel it?”
“Yes, I feel it, goddamn it. It fucking hurts!”
“No. Don’t be a child, Hugo. Look through the pain. Look into its heart, see it for what it is.”
Vox was panting like a dog, each breath a labor.
“Deep inside the pain something wonderful is happening.”
“What?” gritted Vox.
The priest bent close and whispered to Vox, “You are becoming one of them.”
Them.
“Please…” he begged.
Part Two
By the Rivers Dark
All warfare is based on deception.
Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. — SUN TZU
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Warehouse-DMS Field Office
Baltimore, Maryland
June 15, 12:40 a.m. EST
The Department of Military Sciences maintained eleven active field offices within the continental United States. The Baltimore field office was the seventh office to be established, and it occupied a warehouse once used by a terrorist cell to prepare for the launch of a global pandemic. Mr. Church had repurposed it and outfitted it with the very latest in anti- and counterterrorism technologies. A staff of one hundred and sixty-three people worked at the Warehouse, including two full field teams, Alpha and Echo.
The TOC-Tactical Operations Center-was not as grand as the one at the main headquarters in the Hangar at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, but to Rudy Sanchez it was dazzling. The TOC was the heart of the Warehouse, a command center filled with computers and control consoles whose purpose Rudy could only guess at. He was a medical doctor and psychiatrist, but his knowledge of advanced tactical computer systems was nil. He was fine with that. Standing and watching as the technicians and officers worked gave him a chance to observe the staff under a variety of stressful conditions, and that was useful for him in his job as chief psychologist for the DMS.
At the moment, he stood with his finger hooked through the handle of a cup of coffee, watching as Circe O’Tree settled herself into the computer array that was restricted for her private use. The computers formed a three-quarter circle around a leather swivel chair, and there were plasma and holographic screens at various levels. Rudy appreciated the science fiction appearance because he knew two things about it. The first was that the presence of the most cutting-edge technology made Circe-and the other senior staff-feel powerful.
They had virtually limitless research materials at their fingertips, all of it backed by the MindReader computer system. It shotgunned confidence into people like Circe. And that was the second thing Rudy knew about it: Mr. Church always provided the most sophisticated and exclusive equipment for that very reason. It was not the only reason he did that, but it was definitely there. A trait of a man who manipulated everyone around him in order to coax from them the highest possible levels of confidence, personal power, and mission excellence.
Rudy sipped his coffee. The coffee was first rate too. Everything here was, and that was part of Church’s method. Treat everyone with the highest respect, provide them with things of quality, and demonstrably respect their opinions. The result was that the DMS staff tended to operate at a level of efficiency that was statistically freakish. Rudy felt it in himself, and he knew that Joe did too. Joe’s track record of amazing field work owed as much to Church as it did to Joe’s own exceptional nature.
He leaned a hip against the curved row of computers that surrounded Circe and watched her work. She logged on to the server and went through several levels of security in order to log into the MindReader network.
“I’m in,” she announced and then patted the chair next to hers. “Have a seat. This might take some time… but don’t touch anything.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Rudy with a smile as he slid into the companion chair. He cupped his hands around his mug-which had the olive-drab Echo Team logo on it-and watched as Circe filled the screens with lists of data.
“What is all that?” asked Rudy.
“The materials from Joe’s flash drive.” She peered at it for a while, frowning and occasionally shaking her head. “Lot of junk here.”
“Joe said that the agent swallowed it. Stomach acids and all that…”
But Circe said nothing. She chewed her lower lip as her eyes flicked over the information, and all the time her fingers were busy on the keys.
Weapons of mass destruction and the people who chose to use them were the core of her field of study, and that field had roots buried in history, religion, folklore, literature, psychology, and other fields. It was her particular genius that she could see connections between those disparate disciplines and then collate them into a cohesive profile. She worked in silence with an expression of ferocious interest on her lovely face.
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