The Damned took just a second too long to realize what was happening. If it was a vampire as Price had claimed – and at this point, Nico found the assertion difficulty to dispute – perhaps it came from a time when gas stations didn’t exist. All the same, it seemed to realize its danger and turned to flee, but not before the torch struck the ground and a conflagration erupted through the night.
Nico felt himself being shoved aside as Carter hopped into the car and slammed on the gas. The Caddie practically burned rubber as it peeled out, and Nico looked over his shoulder to see a literal mushroom cloud engulf the Fill-Up as the underground gas reservoirs caught fire.
“Oh, shit!” Nico cried out.
“What is it?” Price panted, throwing his head over his shoulder to see what Nico was oh-shitting about.
A flaming silhouette was soaring into the night sky over the devastated convenience store.
“V…vampires can fly, can’t they?” Nico whispered.
Price slammed on the brakes and as he nearly smashed his head into the dash Nico wished he had buckled up. The fiery figure traced a parabola through the night sky, in the opposite direction of where they were driving. It disappeared noiselessly, and Nico realized it had splashed into the nearby Cheyenne Peaking Basin. The lake was black and invisible in the night.
“No,” Price said, “But they can sure jump.”
Three
A few days before…
Rivulets of blood dripped from every corner of the violet-tinged world. Great cigarette burns appeared and disappeared all across her field of vision, blossoming and fading with the regularity of the tides, but in no discernible pattern.
And the soundtrack of the stereoscopic kaleidoscope from Hell was the beating of the awful drums. Louder and deeper and faster than even a jackhammer on the streets of Guangzhou, the sound seemed to emanate from between her ears.
Layered over it all was the incapacitating, overwhelming, gnawing hunger. She felt as though her stomach was trying to claw its way out of her torso. She was scarcely aware of her own body.
She was only vaguely aware of the voice and occasional face of Topan entering and leaving her vision, and pressing hard on her hand, and sometimes slapping her cheeks but doing little to rouse her from the deep reverie of agony.
Then one word, repeated over and over, gradually worming its way into her consciousness.
“Eat…eat…”
Topan’s visage filled the full field of her vision.
“Eat!”
Some thick lump of flesh was under her nose. Unthinking, she bit into it, crunching through gristle, bone, and sinew with ease. She greedily gobbled down the first mouthful of meat, barely stopping to chew, then took another bite, and another.
The throbbing subsided. The drums receded. The purplish tinge to the world around her began to fade. And she found herself sitting in a chair in her sitting room, holding a severed human forearm in her hand.
Startled, she dropped it. The mangled mess of an arm clattered to the table and rolled once before settling against the centerpiece. Before she had gnawed through it in her blood-drunk rage, it had belonged to the person whose sprawled out body was arranged on the table like a feast. Bound and subdued, he was now scarcely even breathing, as the life leaked out of him from the arteries of his severed arm.
Her father.
She only became aware of the pained moaning as the horrible drumming faded from her ears. Her father’s mouth was stuffed with cloth, tears flowing freely from his eyes.
Topan sat across the table from her, studying her with something in between fascination and disdain. She dabbed her bloodied lips with a napkin.
“Not shocked to find yourself a cannibal?”
She shook her head demurely. His right eyebrow crawled up his face.
“No? How can that be?”
“Because you wish me to be shocked.”
Laughing, Topan pounded the table.
“Cussedness! I admire it. I admire it more than almost anything else about you. And trust me, there’s a lot to admire.”
“I see you’ve lied to me. About a great deal.”
Her father’s breathing was becoming slower, strained. He was no longer conscious. She felt strangely disconnected from the whole scene, as though she were watching it from somewhere distant.
“Not so much as you might think. Most of what I said was true. I just held back the secret of what makes you so appealing.”
“And what’s that?”
“A potential beyond all reason. There is within you a potential to become the greatest of our kind, perhaps even to eclipse my own sire, Cicatrice. You’ll meet him in time. He’ll be very excited to meet you. And that’s no small thing. Cicatrice doesn’t let a whole lot of emotion cloud his day.”
He sniffed at the air.
“And now that I’ve turned you, I see that I was right all along.”
She felt her hands beginning to shake. The hunger which had abated was washing back in. The purple mist pushing in on the edges of her eyes told her that though her reason was regained, her hunger was far from sated. She saw herself devouring the old man by inches, from the toes up as he still breathed (even if just barely), and consuming every inch of his freshly flayed flesh before feeling full.
Unable to control herself she leaned forward and began to gobble away at the ragged flesh of her father’s ruined shoulder.
“Yes, eat, eat. This first day you’ll experience hunger like you’ve never known before.”
She blinked, regaining her composure.
“But aren’t you eating, Topan?”
“Not on fare such as this. Besides, this is all for you. Aren’t you famished?”
“I am but this food tastes…”
“Ashen?”
Yes. Bitter. Worse than turned. Burnt.
She leaned in and to her surprise her tongue darted out and touched a pool of congealing blood. It tasted…off, though. Topan was on his feet as she closed her eyes. She could almost smell something, something that seemed bright like a light in her nose. Her nostrils flared and she tried to follow the source of the light.
Her eyes opened and her lips were pressed to the severed arteries of her father’s missing arm. She felt Topan’s heavy hand on her shoulder.
“What is it? What do you sense?”
“A power…a source…a…”
She suckled at the blood still dribbling from the dying man’s arm. It tasted like warm maotai, and the warmth spread through her almost instantly. Her eyes closed and she entered a state entirely unlike dreaming.
It wasn’t until Topan began shaking her that her eyes fluttered open. She finally felt full, but she looked down and saw that aside from those first few bites through his elbow, the father who had been her first meal was largely unmolested.
“I’m sorry, Topan, I lost track of time and…”
“Never be sorry for who you are, little one. I would say that even if you were no one of particular import. But would you believe me if I told you that in all my years of life I’ve never seen an immortal discover the power in the blood in her first night?”
The young girl rose and stroked the hair of the man who had raised her and who had filled her up so. He seemed so pathetic now, like a crumpled rag.
“At first I wanted to just eat him up. Strip the flesh from his bones and gobble it all down. But then I felt something. Like a light behind my eyes but I could smell it like an odor.”
“It normally takes months, even a few years, for our kind to transition from feasting on flesh directly to drinking blood. You’ve nearly done so in a night.”
“You’ve made me eat my father,” she whispered.
He laughed.
“Would you have preferred your mother?”
He walked over to the broom closet and opened it, pulling her beloved mama, also tied up tightly and gagged. Mama dropped to her knees upon seeing Papa on the table, the tears flowing like the Zhu Jiang.
“I didn�
�t know who you loved more. Girls tend to love their father. Mother-daughter relationships are…more fraught.”
“Are you going to let her live?” she asked, the words already hollow before they left her mouth.
That shit-eating, snake charmer’s grin which she had fallen for so many times before crossed his mouth.
“Of course not,” he said, “I told you I would see to your parents. You can’t leave loose ends like this behind. The memory of you alone, that’s dangerous enough. But family? Searching for you? That’s something we can’t have. Besides, I haven’t feasted yet tonight either.”
Topan let his hand settle on Mama’s mop of brown hair like a spider. Unbidden, a gasp came to her lips. The world was like moving through molasses, and only in spare moments did clarity abide.
“You’re going to drink her blood?”
“Oh, no,” Topan replied, his eyes shining in the moonlight, “In a century or so, when you’re at the height of your power, that energy, that essence that you sensed in dear Papa here’s blood? You’ll be able to tap into it directly.”
Topan’s hand tightened on Mama’s scalp. Mama began to roar, such as she could, behind her gag. Topan laughed, and though it seemed like nothing was happening, Topan’s skin began to grow robust, his eyes began to glimmer, and he began to bear the look of satisfaction. Mama, conversely, began to lose her sheen, the laugh lines under her eyes deepening into sharp wrinkles, her hair turning gray before the young girl’s very eyes.
It was as though Topan was sucking the very life from her.
A moment later, reduced to a shriveled mummy, Mama’s body stopped giving up its vital essence. Topan let go of her head and she tumbled forward, crumbling to dust upon impact with the floor.
“Now let’s clean up this mess and get you home to America.”
***
“You can’t have her! You can’t have her! She’s mine, Cicatrice, mine, mine, mine, mine!”
“The giant of his own story,” Cicatrice whispered in her ear.
Topan stood in the doorway, his fists raised in fury. He made quite a contrast to Cicatrice in his red, Western-style suit. Around his neck he wore a noose like a necktie. His face was distended with rage and he had the look of a man who hadn’t slept in days. Cicatrice took a step forward, surreptitiously placing himself between Topan and Idi Han. He folded his hands behind his back.
“Hello, Topan,” Cicatrice said, his voice utterly deadpan, “so nice to have you home after all this time.”
Topan strode forward but stopped just short of laying hands on his patriarch.
“That’s my get. I sired her. She is my gift to the ages.”
“I am neither yours nor anyone’s property,” Idi Han said.
“Quiet, little one, or this will not go well for you after you’re back in my hands.”
“Do not call me that.”
She glowered at him. He wheeled back, taking another look at her.
“You think you’re someone special? Stop hiding behind your nursemaid’s coattails, then, little one.”
“I told you not to call me that anymore.”
“Yes, she’s chosen a name for herself,” Cicatrice said, “One you taught her, in fact, Topan.”
Topan’s eyes narrowed. Cicatrice put his hand on Idi Han’s shoulders and brought her around in front of him.
“Tell him,” he said, tapping her shoulder.
“My name,” she said, “is Idi Han.”
“Idi…” Recognition dawned on his face. “The giant? From the story? I think you misunderstood the point.”
“No. It’s you who missed the point, Topan.”
Topan looked from Cicatrice to Idi Han and back again. His anger either softened or he regretted threatening his sire. A voice which Idi Han did not recognize emerged from the smoke-filled doorway.
“Well, I’d say that’s about enough primping and preening. I’ve little interest in internecine House Cicatrice politics.”
Cicatrice, whom Idi Han had never seen so much as tremble, seemed to have developed a severe aneurysm at the sound of that voice. His grip tightened so much on her that he shattered both her shoulder blades. She gently tapped his hand and he relieved the pressure, her bones instantly knitting as he let go.
“Otto,” Cicatrice said.
A man entered the room. He wore a sort of stylized armor, bronze but painted white in places, with a number of nasty barbs and hooks. His face was painted from the nape of his neck to his forehead with a broad white stripe, which continued, in a sense, onto his head in the form of a bleached white Mohawk. A wolf’s pelt, complete with a wolfshead cowl, completed his rather eccentric ensemble.
By his side was a woman. She was clad in a labcoat and goggles and her face was speckled with oil, as though she had been pulled away from a workbench for this meeting. It took Idi Han a moment to realize that her hand was not flesh, but mechanical.
“Idi Han, this…person…is the patriarch of House Signari, Otto Signari.”
Signari approached bullishly and grabbed Idi Han’s hand. She almost wrenched away but he merely bowed and kissed the top of her hand delicately.
“Charmed,” he said, with a wicked smile.
“And Sephera, an elder of the Teslans.”
The woman nodded, adjusting the goggles on her head as though they were glasses and she was wearing them.
“Otto, Sephera, may I present my get, Idi Han?”
“Get?” Signari wore a contrived grin. “Well, now this is news.”
“She’s not yours!” Topan fairly shrieked.
Signari folded his arms.
“That’s what your firstborn here keeps saying, anyway. That this delightful young member of our special fraternity of the night is rightfully his get. And that you stole her from him.”
“I am no one’s for the stealing,” Idi Han said, taking a step forward.
Signari laughed, slapping his knee with the flat of his palm.
“I like her. She’s a good one. Doesn’t smell like much,” Signari sniffed the air, and Idi Han surreptitiously stuffed the wreath of garlic she was still wearing into her cheongsam, “but then I guess you know these matters better than I do.”
Topan sniffed the air, too, deliberately.
“Garlic. You’re hiding her power. You don’t want them to know how strong she really is.”
He spotted the corner of the string around her neck and stepped toward her to grab it. As he reached out for her, Idi Han snatched his hand, twisting his wrist backwards, shattering every bone in his arm, and dropping him to his knees.
“Let’s all keep our hands to ourselves,” Cicatrice said, gently patting Idi Han’s shoulder so that she released Topan and let him scuttle away as his wounds mended, “I must say, Otto, I’m used to Topan coming around, throwing tantrums, and usually demanding money. But what brings not only a House elder but a House patriarch to my doorstep on this of all nights?”
Topan’s finger shot out, pointing in Cicatrice’s direction.
“They’re here to tell you that you have to give her back, Scar. Or it’ll mean war.”
Cicatrice snorted derisively.
“There hasn’t been an open war between the Houses in three hundred years. You mean to tell me the Signaris would go to the mattresses over an internal House Cicatrice matter? I sincerely doubt that.”
Signari rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, tapping it with each finger in turn.
“Right is right, Cicatrice. And it won’t be just the Signaris.”
Cicatrice turned a baleful eye to the one-handed woman, Sephera.
“You mean to tell me the Junkers are against me in this matter, too?”
Sephera cleared her throat; a gesture which it occurred to Idi Han was entirely vestigial.
“Well, you see, Father Cicatrice, with all due respect…”
“Oh, I see,” Cicatrice said, cutting her off sharply but coldly, “It’s not just two Houses. All twelve of you are arrayed against me.”
<
br /> Sephera nodded, seemingly genuinely chagrined.
“Then the council convened without my presence to deliberate?”
“This is a matter of some urgency, Father Cicatrice,” Sephera said.
“Urgency? Decisions over siring and heirs in House Cicatrice? How could that possibly constitute an emergency?” Cicatrice eyed Topan. “What did he tell you?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Father Cicatrice, please,” Sephera mouthed, “It’s unbecoming.”
“This serial killer you’re all so worried about?”
“Serial killer?” Idi Han asked, “An immortal serial killer?”
“Possibly,” Sephera said.
“We don’t know that,” Signari stated flatly.
“More accurately I suppose I should say, a serial killer who preys upon immortals,” Cicatrice corrected himself.
“It’s no myth, Father Cicatrice. The data is as plain as the nose on my face.”
“I can count as well as anyone, Sephera. I know there are more lives lost than can be accounted for by Inquisition activity or accidents or even by cold war. Yes, there is something preying upon our kind, whether you wish to call it a serial killer or something else.”
“But what does that have to do with me?”
All eyes turned to Idi Han. Topan was the first to speak.
“You’re my tonic, little one. You’re my plan. My solution. The first rumors of the serial killer – or whatever you want to call it – started four years ago. I’ve been searching for someone worthy of siring for decades. Since the 1950s, wasn’t it, Father Cicatrice? When we parted ways?”
“I seem to recall having to take you back under my wing since then.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s only in the last ten years that I really began to scour the Earth, obsessed with a single thought: somewhere, out there, was a human with the potential to become the most powerful immortal who ever lived. And he…she, rather…would root out the serial killer like a rat. It would be my contribution to history.”
Cicatrice barked out a mirthless chuckle.
“And the council bought this load of horseshit? Without even seeking my presence to ask me if it were true?”
Hunter of the Dead Page 5