The Damned

by Nancy Holder; Debbie Viguié

  “Bienvenue,” he said. “I’m the leader of this cell.”

  “Hello,” Skye replied, shaking his hand. “I’m—”

  “No names,” he replied. “We’re glad to see you. Coffee? Tea?”

  “Tea would be lovely,” Skye said. “We’d both love it.”

  The others began to take their seats too. Holgar counted three women besides Skye and the girl who had led them in. Three guys: Mr. Danish Pastry, Holgar himself, and the guy who’d been unfolding the chairs. The stern fellow at the window had not joined them.

  “So,” Holgar said, “you know who we are, even if we aren’t saying our names. And why we’re here.”

  “Oui,” said Mr. Pastry as he poured two cups of tea and brought them to the Salamancans. “We have some information for you. Here in Toulouse there is a local Cursed One named Philippe Gaudet. His brother controls the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The French Quarter.”

  Skye nearly choked. “Blimey, I saw a little fanger get staked for saying that. By Aurora herself.”

  “Oh?” Pastry’s eyes widened.

  “We’re pretty sure Aurora killed Christian Gaudet,” Holgar confirmed.

  “Hmm.” Pastry processed that. “Well, Aurora and Philippe Gaudet met three nights ago. Here, in Toulouse. And she told him that Solomon ‘doesn’t matter anymore.’ Those were the words she used.”

  Holgar was shocked. Solomon was the worldwide leader of all the Cursed Ones. When he had announced their existence to the world, he had described his role as “like your president.” But he was more like a dictator—like Hitler, all smiles for the TV screen while ruthlessly taking over the human world.

  “Blimey,” Skye said again, her kohl-ringed eyes raccoon enormous. “If that were true, if they’ve killed Solomon, oh, that’d be brilliant.”

  “Solomon’s not dead,” Pastry said. “But we think Aurora and Gaudet are hatching their own scheme. Maybe they plan to assassinate him. We don’t know.”

  “How do you know any of this?” Holgar asked the pastry.

  “We have eyes and ears,” he replied neutrally.

  “Maybe Paul Leitner is acting as a spy for her. Maybe that’s why he’s in Solomon’s camp,” Skye ventured.

  “Who’s Paul Leitner?” the pastry asked. Holgar and Skye fell silent, and Pastry scowled. “Trust goes both ways, my friends.”

  “He’s a team member’s father. Only he’s on their team,” Skye said.

  “A collaborator.” Pastry clenched his jaw. “When the war is over, they’ll all be dead.”

  Holgar smiled at him. It was good to hear those words from another resistance fighter.

  “But not by our hand,” Skye said, looking anxious. “We’re not about killing our own people.”

  “If they’re with the Cursed Ones, they’re not ‘our own people,’” Pastry replied.

  Holgar held out his cup. “May I have some more tea, please?”

  “Of course,” Pastry replied. “Anything for one of our people.”

  Beside him, Skye fretted.

  VENICE, ITALY

  JAMIE AND ERIKO

  They were supposed to have parked their car at the entrance to Venice, but that lot was closed. So Eriko and Jamie had left the car two miles distant from their rendezvous spot with their Venetian contact, and hoofed it so that she wouldn’t assume they weren’t coming. But little Sofia, just ten years old, had faithfully waited.

  Jamie was shocked to see such a biteen as herself wandering about on such a dangerous errand. Even though Sofia looked nothing like Maeve, she set him in mind of his dead sister. Maeve was his darlin’ girl, ripped to pieces by a pack of Irish werewolves while the local Cursers looked on, doubled over in laughter. The anger burned deep and hot; it never went away. That was what he wanted; his rage kept him alive.

  He hated this war, hated worse the spineless people in authority who failed to take action. They left it to children, Japanese samurai girls, and crazy Irishmen to do the work that must be done.

  Ironically, many humans had fled to Venice when war broke out with the Cursed Ones. They had hoped, prayed, that the old stories about vampires being unable to cross water were true, and had sought refuge there because of all the canals.

  They’d been wrong.

  Cursed Ones had floated up and down the canals in their gondolas on La Notte del Terrore, the Night of Terror. The Venetian lagoon had sloshed with human blood. Sofia, who was only ten, told Jamie and Eriko all about it in a singsong, rehearsed voice, though she herself was too young to actually remember it.

  They walked for nearly two miles more, past churches and palazzi grand in their elegant decay. Jamie spared no time to gawk. When Sofia crossed a street without looking, he went into a bit of a panic, even though there were no cars.

  “Now we here,” Sofia said, slowing in front of an opulent private palazzo. Three stories of elaborate stonework and mosaics glittered in the blessed sun. But it had gotten very late, and that sun was sinking fast.

  Without hesitating, she crossed the threshold.

  “Hold on,” Jamie said, peering around her. Through the mosaic archway, everything was pitch-black. Though resistance cells took great care to disguise their rendezvous points, this place screamed ambush.

  “Come,” Sofia said, as she trundled on ahead.

  “I don’t like this,” he whispered to Eriko, who put a finger to her lips to silence him. She followed after Sofia, but he could tell she wasn’t happy either. But Father Juan had ordered them to meet up with Sofia and let her escort them to the meeting. Far be it from Eri to disobey the good father—even if it seemed that the man had not taken into account that a ten-year-old could not walk two miles as fast as two fighters could.

  They moved through the corridor without incident. Jamie did not heave a sigh of relief. There was something off about the crumbling mansion with its arched balcony windows. The glass panes had long ago been punched out, and a breeze carried the odor of fetid canal water to Jamie’s nose through the lacy frames. He couldn’t smell Cursers the way Antonio and Holgar could. Neither could Eriko.

  Sofia kept going. Shadows shifted over cracked white and black marble squares. A pile of rotting wood and velvet looked to have once been a settee. Beyond it, a harpsichord had long ago collapsed in on itself. Why meet here?

  “They behind, they wait, you,” Sofia said in broken English as she pointed toward another Moorish archway and the blackened expanse beyond.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Eriko asked. Sofia just stared at her. “You come?”

  Sofia shook her head, glancing behind her at the setting sun. “Night, she come.” Her smile was angelic, like Maeve’s.

  “Grazie, bella,” Jamie said, struggling to keep the sudden emotion out of his voice. “Go home. Be safe.” He swallowed hard, and cleared his throat. “Ciao.”

  She dimpled, giggling at his wretched accent, he supposed. He watched as she skipped out the front door, fading like a wraith into the twilight.

  He and Eriko glanced at each other. In unison they pulled stakes from quivers at their waists. With a nod he let her lead the way. Eriko had drunk Father Juan’s magick mojo juice, which endowed her with strength and speed he could not match. But Jamie often caught her rubbing her elbows and knees, and rolling her shoulders, like an old lady. Every time he asked her about it, she insisted she was fine. She was their Hunter, once their leader, and his loyalty lay with her rather than Jenn, who’d taken over the role of commandant. Bad choice, that, even if he, Jamie, had gone along with it at the time. That had been a mistake. And on top of it something was wrong with Eri.

  As if she could read his mind, Eriko waved her hand in front of her face, refusing to answer any questions he might ask, and they crept into the darkness. What was left of the light gleamed through more arched windows.

  They approached a flared stairway. It too was marble, but still quite opulent. From the looks of it no one had gone up or down for a long time, as dust and cobwebs coated the stair
s like a carpet. Jamie made out the banisters of a second-story balcony, and then more darkness.

  Candlelight flickered through an arch facing the staircase. The resistance cell must be inside. He nodded at Eriko, and she nodded back.

  Gliding like shadows, they reached the doorway. He followed her lead across the transom. Half a dozen people sat in a semicircle on ornate chairs with faded brocade upholstery. A guttering candle stuck in a mound of melted wax on a similar chair flickered weak light cast over their faces. Two were middle-aged; three looked to be about Jamie’s age; one was a withered old gal wearing a black sweater and a kerchief. The old gal had something white pinned to her sweater. Jamie squinted at it. What was it, a piece of paper?

  Eriko slowly approached the old bird and said, “Buon giorno?” She tapped the woman’s shoulder. “Hello?”

  Old gal was not talking.

  Not moving.

  Not living.

  “Bloody hell, Eri,” Jamie swore. “Trap!”

  He and Eriko flew out of the room of dead people. With perfect timing, a Cursed One plummeted from the balcony above the stairway just as Jamie and Eriko reached it. Jamie dove at the sucker as he landed, sending the vampire onto his back. Shouting, he shoved the stake into the C.O.’s heart.

  Something landed on top of Jamie as the vampire turned to dust beneath him. He heard Eriko’s battle cry as he twisted to try to stake the feckin’ vampire who’d jumped him. Eriko yanked the creature from Jamie’s back and ripped off its head in one smooth motion.

  Springing to his feet, Jamie raced beside her to the door, to sunlight and safety for as long as it lasted. Another bleeder leaped into their path, and Jamie dove at his feet, while Eriko got out a vial of holy water and threw it into his eyes. While the vampire screamed and clawed at his face, Jamie yanked another stake from his belt and killed him.

  Eriko grabbed Jamie’s hand, and together they made it to the front door and out into the waning sunlight. They began to sprint for all they were worth across the bridge back to the mainland, racing the sun.

  As Jamie charged along, he glanced at Eriko. If she kept pace with him, they weren’t going to make it to the car before nightfall.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  She frowned. “I won’t leave you behind.”

  “I’m not asking you to. Go get the car and pick me up!”

  She nodded and poured on the speed, bounding ahead. He made it to the other side. A few minutes later the car screeched around a corner as Eriko fought to keep control of it at the crazy speed she was driving. She slowed down; Jamie pulled open the door and barreled inside.

  “Hit it!” he bellowed.

  Eriko slammed the pedal to the floor, and they careened back toward the main road.

  “So much for the Venetian resistance cell,” Jamie muttered.

  “Jamie, it was a note,” she said, holding something out to him. The piece of paper that had been pinned to the old gal. “It’s from Aurora.”

  Jamie held it to the window. The blur of the streetlights strobed against elegant black lettering.

  Antonio, or all of you will end up like Heather.

  A.

  “Feckin’ hell,” he said.

  “Yes, I agree,” Eriko replied. Then, as Jamie moved to tear up the note, she held out her hand. “Master Juan will want to see it.”

  “Christ. That bloody Curser is nothing but trouble. Well, I know what we should do.” He stared out the window. “About this,” he added, in case she wasn’t catching his drift.

  Eriko was silent. Then her phone rang, and she dug it out of her pocket with one hand while taking a curve.

  “Master, something terrible,” she began, then interrupted herself. “What is it?” she asked. She listened.

  Jamie caught his breath and took stock of his weapons, just to be ready. Wished he had a bazooka. Thought about the lovely gun he was building, a sleek darlin’ that would shoot silver bullets. He’d been working on it for a while. He came from a long line of gunsmiths. A fella couldn’t let knowledge like that go to waste. Next up, one that shot wooden bullets.

  “We’re on our way back now,” Eriko said into the phone. “The resistance cell was dead when we got there. Aurora. She left a note. She wants Antonio, or she will convert us all.”

  Jamie counted the plastic vials of holy water in the pocket of his parachute pants. Six. Tested the sharpness of a stake on his thumb tip.

  She listened. “Hai. Hai.”

  “What’s going on?” Jamie asked after she had hung up.

  “Father Juan wants to see the note. And he is planning to send us to Moscow.”

  “Fine with me,” he said, “as long as we can get something done.” He tested another stake. “Kill something, I mean.”

  In the window he pictured Sofia’s sweet little face and then Maeve’s. What the hell, what did it matter where they went? No place was safe.

  As long as there were vampires and werewolves.

  BELFAST, SIX YEARS EARLIER

  JAMIE AND HIS GRANDFATHER

  The three coffins were plain and rough, like the man and the boy who respectfully tossed earth onto the lids, caps in hand. Standing beside his grandfather, Jamie, who was ten, knew that men didn’t cry.

  They got revenge.

  Through his unshed tears Jamie kept Father Patrick in his sights. He clenched his jaw so tightly that one of his molars cracked. The pain made him shudder from head to foot, but he was glad of it. He spat blood out on the turned earth, earning a smack on top of his head from his grandfather. Spitting on hallowed ground was not permitted. As if allowing werewolves and vampires to murder your family was.

  Maeve. His ma. His da. His family were dead, and he was just standing there. Jamie was so ashamed. And so angry.

  During the wake, while his grandfather got good and drunk, Jamie went down to the cellar where they kept the guns they ran for the Irish Republican Army. Various wooden boxes labeled POTATOES and O’LEARY GUNSMITHS were pushed up against the walls. Maybe it was too obvious that the O’Learys, makers of fine firearms for three generations, were the ones who stowed the illegal weapons of their local IRA cell. But they’d served the cause of freedom from English rule since Jamie’s grandfather had been a tot, and never a one been caught at it.

  Sure and the English had sworn to the peace in 1998, but never in their long and bloody history had the English given the Irish any reason to trust them. It was violence that had freed Northern Ireland—brawls, bombings, and shootings—and them that said any different were English sympathizers and cowards. Now there were vampires and werewolves to fight, and no decent weapons against them.

  Jamie took a crowbar to one of the large wooden boxes and opened it. The potatoes were still coated with earth; he gathered up an armful and dropped them onto the basement floor, wincing at the thudding sounds they made, so reminiscent of the dirt clods falling against the coffin lids of his ma and his little sister as the undertakers began their work.

  Jamie scowled at the first piece of the cache, a submachine gun. Too impersonal, and therefore not right for the job; he needed the proper handgun to deliver three shots, execution-style—two in the eyes, one in the forehead—and he needed a silencer. A bit more digging and he had his weapon—unlicensed military issue, could be used with a silencer.

  “That won’t serve, Jamie,” said a voice from behind him. It was his grandfather, eyes rimmed with red. His wispy gray hair was matted with sweat.

  “I’m killing him, Poppy,” Jamie insisted. “Father Patrick stood by and watched while they, they—”

  His grandfather approached, hand out for Jamie’s gun. “We’re Catholics, Jamie. We can’t kill priests. Much as we might want to,” he added sourly.

  “But . . .”

  “No buts, me boyo. There are certain things we don’t do. Especially at your age.”

  Jamie’s grandfather turned and gestured for Jamie to follow him to his workbench. He reached up and yanked on a thin chain, lighting a bare li
ghtbulb that hung above their heads. A vise held a gun barrel; there were drills and presses and bits of steel all around. No one made guns by hand anymore except as a hobby or for show, but all guns needed repair now and then.

  “We’re the O’Learys,” his grandfather said. “We’ve been making firearms for over a century. That’s what we do.” He caught his lip. “We’ll make a gun that shoots silver bullets, you and I.”

  Jamie nodded, hatred overflowing his soul and streaming down his face like tears. Ashamed, he tried to turn away, but not before his grandfather saw. He smacked him on the side of the head. Jamie’s ears rang.

  “I need you strong,” his grandfather ordered him. “Now close up the potato box.”

  Steeling himself not to cry again, Jamie did as he was told. He would be strong.

  As soon as it was light, he stumbled through the gray, miserable dawn to the churchyard. The sight of the fresh mounds of earth tore him open. Balling his hands against his mouth, he pushed all the grief back into his soul. He was a man now, and he had a man’s business to tend to.

  “Maeve. Ma. Da,” he said to the graves. “We’re going to pay em back. I was going to kill Father Pat for letting it happen. Poppy said no. I suppose I wouldn’t make it to heaven to see you if I did such a thing. But we’ll get the Cursers and the wolves. I swear it.”

  When he left, he felt better. He had a plan, a purpose. His hand was on the door to their flat when his aunt jerked it open. Her face was ashen, and she had on her nice coat, the one she wore to Sunday Mass.

  “Jamie, Jamie,” she said, grabbing his shoulders. “Father Patrick’s been gunned down. He was in the rectory garden, watering the plants. It’s said he might not live.” She crossed herself. “I’m going to the church to pray for him. Come with me, darlin’.”

  He was thunderstruck. For a moment he just stared at her.

  “I need me jacket,” he said, as upset as he sounded, and hurried inside.

  He raced down to the cellar to the crate of potatoes. He threw off the lid.

  The gun was missing.

  Father Patrick died that evening. Two days later Jamie’s grandfather insisted they attend the funeral, and they knelt together, heads bowed. The casket was closed, because whoever had killed Father Patrick had shot out his eyes. Jamie was glad the priest was dead, but he felt no relief. Nothing inside him had changed. He still hated the priest. And the vampires and werewolves, even more than the English, and that was saying something.