“However you take yours is fine.”
“I take mine with bourbon.”
“Oh.”
As good as that sounded after the night he’d had, he wasn’t sure alcohol would put his senses in the best shape for vampire-hunting. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn’t helping Price any, but clearly he had not seen the things Price had, either.
“Lots of cream, lots of sugar, then.”
Price ruffled through some cabinets and opened the fridge.
“I’ve got…black.”
“I’ll take black then.”
Price emerged from the kitchen nook a moment later, steaming mugs in either hand. One had a crack and read “World’s Worst Lover” and the other one had obviously been bought at the airport and depicted the iconic Las Vegas sign. Sinking into his camp chair, Price clinked glasses, and then, true to his word, filled out his half-empty mug from his flask. He sighed loudly.
“You can take the bed. I almost never make it over there, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Nico replied, eyeing the mattress warily.
“I know I’m not going to convince you to go home at this point, kid, but is there someone you want to call? Let them know you’re okay?”
Nico shrugged.
“There is no one. Not really.”
“Oh,” Price said, taking a sip of his upper/downer mélange, “not even back in…where is it, again?”
“Puerto Rico.”
“Ah,” Price said, closing his eyes, “La Borinqueña.”
That was surprising.
“You’ve been?”
Price nodded.
“Beautiful island. Knew a girl there once. Got hired for a couple jobs down there. Didn’t pan out.”
“Vampire hunting jobs?”
“Yeah. Believe it or not.”
Nico leaned back in his folding chair as best he could.
“I guess I had the opposite problem. Couldn’t find a job. Thought I’d make my fortune here and ended up at the Fill-Up instead. Beats the army, I guess.”
“Joined the marines myself.”
Only one decoration adorned Price’s walls. It didn’t look like something the military gave out. Nico halfway rose to get a better look at it, but realized how drowsy he was despite the coffee and sank back down.
“What’s that?”
Price opened a single eye and glanced at the wall.
“That’s my stake, you know.”
He raised his right arm to display his Inquisition tattoo. Nico squinted to take a closer look at the stake on the wall. It was beautifully carved and engraved with Price’s name. The end was hollowed out, as though it had been woven together from pieces of wicker, but really it had all been carved from a single piece of wood.
“So they give you a stake when you join the Inquisition?”
“Yeah. It’s like the symbol of your completion of your…what do you call it?”
“Apprenticeship?”
“Yeah, that. It’s not like I’ve used a wooden stake since my master handed me that one.”
“No? Why not? Can’t you kill a vampire with one?”
Price giggled, a distinctly un-Price-like noise that signaled how deep he was into his cups.
“Just to be clear, kid: there are only two ways to ‘kill’ a vampire: fire and sunlight. Oh and we don’t say ‘kill.’ We say ‘put down.’”
“Like a dog?”
“Yeah. Exactly like a dog. But since there’s nothing more dangerous than strapping a flamethrower to your back, and you can’t exactly command the sun to rise, your only real hope as an Inquisitor is to incapacitate him. And that means severing the head or staking the heart.”
Despite his obvious drunkenness he rose from his chair and crossed the studio apartment to open a closet. He dragged out a dummy with comical facepaint meant to resemble Bela Lugosi. As the dummy came loose, a small canister rolled out of the closet and came to a rest at Nico’s feet. He picked it up.
“What’s this?”
Price grunted.
“Diffused garlic. Nightcrawlers rely on their…they call it their sense of smell but I’ve never been sure if that’s a metaphor or not. A canister of garlic gas won’t do anything to harm them, but it’ll confuse them. Blind them, essentially.”
Nico nodded and tucked the canister into his pocket. Price plucked a stake from his bandolier and tossed it to Nico, who fumbled before securing it. Then Price tossed the dummy at him and clicked the button on a stopwatch.
“Stake that nightcrawler!”
Startled, Nico flipped the dummy onto the ground and rose from the chair. Fatigue was pulling on all his muscles and his eyelids.
“What?”
“Go on, stake the son of a bitch!”
With a sigh, Nico got down and straddled the dummy. He raised the stake over his head and brought it down hard on the dummy’s heart area, which was helpfully marked in red.
“There,” Nico said, “Satisfied?”
“Are you kidding me?” Price said, “That thing’s nothing but a sandbag and you’ve barely punctured the fabric.”
Price tapped the stake lightly with his foot and it went clattering away.
“You didn’t even pierce the ribcage, let alone the heart.”
Nico rose, clapping the imaginary dust from his hands.
“All right, I get it, Carter. Leave off.”
In a sudden explosion of emotion Price tossed his “World’s Worst Lover” mug against the wall so violently that it shattered. He waved the stopwatch, still running, in Nico’s face.
“Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? You expect to fight vampires…you expect me to teach you how to fight vampires…and this is your level of dedication? You can’t even push a piece of wood through a burlap dummy?”
Nico opened his mouth to respond, but instead bit down on his tongue to stop himself. The old man was right. He grabbed Bela Lugosi and dragged him over to where the stake had fallen. He grabbed the stake and drove it repeatedly into the heart area, but no matter how hard he pressed it, it seemed not to want to penetrate down to where the heart would’ve been in a person.
He held it in place and pounded on it with his fist, finding his hand soon bloodied.
“I need like…I need a hammer or something.”
Nico looked around the room wildly. Price clicked the stopwatch loudly and held out his hand. Nico didn’t take it, but rose. After a moment’s thought, he handed the stake back to Price.
“Sorry, kid, but you’re long dead. I figure you have maybe five seconds, tops, to put a stake through an unsuspecting vampire’s heart. It’s already been almost thirty. And the dummy wasn’t fighting back.”
Price sank back into his chair.
“So stakes work but…they don’t work? Basically?”
“Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. I’ve never seen it done successfully. An ordinary person doesn’t really have the strength to put a piece of wood through a ribcage. As you noticed, you’d need a mallet. And hopefully while you’re pounding on a stake with a mallet, you don’t break the tip, or else you’ll be trying to put a dull board through somebody. And all this is assuming your target isn’t wearing a chestplate. And I’ve never met a vampire who didn’t.”
“Why do you carry them, then?”
Price reached up and rolled one of the stakes in his bandolier backward and forward.
“They’re a bit like gang colors. I guess we’re all prima donnas, us and the nightcrawlers both. The Signaris wear these white stripes down their faces when they’re on the job and the Druids go naked and we…we wear these. To show off who we are. In the old days they used to say you could deputize somebody into the Inquisition by handing him a stake. In fact…”
Price handed the stake back to Nico. The sun was rising. Price leaned back in his chair.
“Better get some sleep. It’s going to be a long night tomorrow.”
Nico glanced down at the naked mattress. In his sleepdrunk state, it look
ed unnaturally appealing, and he flung himself into it without even putting away his drink or brushing his teeth. Price was already snoring loudly in his chair when Nico’s eyes closed.
Night Two
One
The Eighties…
Scav wanted to weep but the tears wouldn’t come to his eyes. He was drained, dead, empty. Neither blood nor bowel nor tear duct moved within him. He glanced over at the mittens that had been made of his hands, the molten steel still cooling. They didn’t hurt – not in the way anything had hurt before Benito had turned him – but they were unpleasant. As the steel cooled he felt what little give there was fade until he could barely even flex his fingers.
Benito was kneeling next to him, similarly saddled with a still-cooling yoke and hands gloved in steel. Benito was still struggling against his bonds, unlike Scav, who had given up almost instantly. If these…he still hesitated to use the word “vampires” but it seemed increasingly impossible to call them anything else…wanted him bound, then bound he would stay. Surely they knew their business by now.
The vampire whose face and body had been deformed by a terribly case of leprosy in life kicked Benito. It was a half-hearted kick, as the woman seemed to have difficulty lifting her legs.
“Stop squirming.”
“You think you can hold me, Damiana? I’m not beaten yet.”
Benito’s back and shoulders strained against the yoke, and for a second, Scav almost believed he would break it. The lepress – Damiana – knelt down with some difficulty and grabbed Benito by the chin. Her hands and face were pocked with pustules and marks, such that her eyes were barely visible and her mouth would barely open. As a result, her voice was a low rasp.
“If I want you to stay put, you’ll stay put. I’ve dealt with hundreds of little shits like you for Father Otto, and I know your limitations.” She reached up and placed one deformed hand on Benito’s yoke. “This yoke is too much for any immortal short of an oldblood to break, even at full strength. And when was the last time you fed? Now be silent until Father Otto is ready for you.”
A bell tinkled and the entire assembled crowd rose to their feet. Scav struggled, wondering whether he should attempt to rise, but a moment later he felt the pinch of the lepress’s bloated hands grasp his spine through his shirt and yank him to his feet. She had done the same with Benito with her other hand.
Otto Signari came clattering down a spiral staircase into the makeshift courtroom. He wore a full suit of armor, though it seemed not to burden him at all, and a white stripe divided his head and neck, and continued down his suit of steel.
“Sorry, sorry, everybody. I didn’t mean to be late. Just got off the horn with my ‘old buddy’ Cicatrice and you know how cranky talking to him makes me…holy fuck. Who did this?”
Scav glanced back at the lepress. It was hard to tell, but her face seemed to be distended in a grin. Scav turned back to the front of the room. A woman – young, firm, nubile – lay strapped to a gurney. From her head to her toes, she was lined with candles, tiny birthday candles. There had to be hundreds, and for each a tiny hole had been drilled in her skin or bone, and the candle placed inside. Either she was deeply, deeply drugged, or so deep in shock that she didn’t seem to be railing against the pain anymore.
“Is this for real? Wait a minute…what year is this?”
“After Common Era nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, patriarch,” Damiana answered as loudly as she could.
Signari glanced up. A broad smile crossed his face. He waggled his gauntleted hand at the lepress.
“Damiana, you old trickster. The eight hundredth anniversary of Mother Lily granting me the Long Gift. I had completely forgotten. Are there really eight hundred candles?”
The wax that was dripping from dozens seared the young woman’s skin, to no visible effect. Scav would’ve believed there were, indeed, nearly a thousand candles.
“It took some preparation, Father Otto. But this is as big a day for the House as it is for yourself.”
“Come down here. Get down here, Damiana, you old monster.”
Signari gestured for Damiana to join him and the lepress descended from the docket and allowed herself to be embraced in a glorious hug by her House patriarch. She never attempted to take the liberty of hugging back. Signari rubbed his hands together.
“Well, let’s have a taste, shall we?”
Signari pressed his forehead to the top of the girl’s head, the only part of her that wasn’t buzzing with sizzling wax. Signari rose a moment later, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.
“My God, Damiana, she must be one in a million! What a flavor! Everybody, share, share, everybody have a taste. Even the blood-drinkers, yeah, you guys just go last. Be kind to the fellow after you: just a taste. Come on, everyone in good standing.”
As the crowd flooded in to have a bite of Signari’s “birthday cake” the patriarch himself walked Damiana back to the docket. He kept his arm around the lepress.
“You’ve always been my best elder, Dami. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s never unpleasant to hear, Father Otto.”
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I know it’s not exactly a pleasant duty, but the rewards are…well, you can probably guess what the reward is. Will you represent my interests in Las Vegas with that reptile Cicatrice?”
“Of course, Patriarch. I shall miss Rome.”
“Don’t miss it too much. You’ll be back here soon, if you know what I mean.”
Signari patted Damiana hard on the cheek. Suddenly he noticed the Scavatelli brothers.
“Benito Scavatelli. And you I don’t know.”
“Italo Scavatelli, Patriarch,” Damiana said.
“I see. How far back on the docket are they?”
“Fourth or fifth.”
“Let’s just deal with them now so you can get the first flight out of here. All right, everybody get a slice of cake? Okay, take your seats, take your seats.”
The crowd receded as one of Signari’s mortal disciples dragged the gurney out of the room. Now, in addition to being drilled full of holes, she was criss-crossed with the scars of the blood-drinkers’ razor blades. Signari didn’t sit, but stood behind a podium. He didn’t seem the type to get too comfortable with sitting.
Damiana grabbed Scav and his brother bodily and tossed them both to their knees at Signari’s feet.
“Benny, Benny, Benny. You are just barely out of diapers. How long have you been draining force without drinking blood?”
Benito grimaced.
“A few days.”
“What was that?”
“A few days, Father Otto.”
“And when did your sire release you from your apprenticeship?”
Benito scowled. The lepress struck him, hard enough to shatter his jaw.
“The same, Father Otto.”
Signari nodded knowingly.
“So Quentin, a longtime, well-trusted, well-known to me member of this House in excellent standing, did right by you. He trained you even to the point where you don’t even drink blood anymore. That’s dedication. That’s righteousness. That’s doing right by one’s get. And you immediately turn around and do what?”
“I broke the code.”
“Broke the code? You spat in Quentin’s face. I ought to call him up here and let him decided what to do with you. What do you think about that?”
“Father Otto, if you understood the love I feel for my only brother, you would understand…”
Signari rolled his eyes.
“Shut him up.”
Damiana smashed Benito’s face again, shattering his jaw in multiple places and causing him to sever his own tongue. Suddenly, Signari’s eyes alighted on Scav.
“You don’t look like he loved you very much.”
You’re goddamned right he didn’t.
“And you smell like…” Signari wrinkled his nose, “A churchyard. You still have faith, don’t you?”
Scav opened hi
s mouth, but no words would come.
“Oh, don’t be shy. Nothing you say or do is going to affect my verdict one way or the other. I’ve already decided what to do with the both of you. You may as well just get in the habit of answering your patriarch truthfully.”
“I have faith.”
“I knew it. You stink of it. I can’t imagine how your brother could bear to drain you, let alone sire you. It’s like getting a mouthful of poison. Well, your dumb ass is responsible for this, Benny, what do you think I should do with you?”
“Uh…let us go? Make my punishment to teach my little brother the code better than I learned it. Responsibility can go a long way toward stabilizing a person.”
“Yeah, no. You two don’t see each other anymore. Let’s talk about all the ways you broke the code. First, you sired a get without your patriarch’s permission. You think I let just any rabble into my House?”
“Well, I thought it was just a formality, Father Otto. A rubber stamp.”
“A rubber stamp? Because I usually say yes? I usually say yes because my houselings usually don’t come to me with half-cocked proposals. And I trust the people I sired to sire good people and so on, so that everybody in the House is more or less worthy of my trust. Now you go and you bring an immediate family member across? Oh, that’s strike two, by the way. You know, if you were House Temuchin, they’d’ve made you slaughter your entire family the moment you were brought across. The code’s strict about that, too. You leave your mortal kin behind along with all your mortal weaknesses. Clearly you haven’t.”
“I’m sorry, Father Otto.”
“You are sorry. You’re a sorry sack. And the worst thing you’ve done is to make your sire look like a fool. I had faith in him. Quentin was going to be an elder. Now?”
Signari gestured at someone behind Scav’s back. He turned to look, but it was too late. A head came tumbling down at the floor before them. Scav didn’t recognize the man, but gathered it was Quentin, Benito’s sire. Benito seemed stunned.
“You can’t…you can’t punish him because of what I did!”
Signari chuckled.
“It’s not wise to tell a House patriarch what he can and can’t do. Especially in his own manse. No, Quentin suffered for your stupidity. Now as for you, you can pay me back with twenty-five years of service as a fixer. Make it fifty. Damiana?”
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