Hunter of the Dead

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  The lepress reached down and strained the metal, as Benito did the same. Suddenly the yoke shattered. It would be some time before Benito would be able to weasel his way out of the rest of his bonds, but he was free to do so at his leisure now.

  “Now, as for you, my boy. First of all, I like the hair. I’d like it better dyed white.”

  “Of course. Any…anything you say, F…F…”

  “All right, all right. Now, officially you’re an immortal without a House. That means you’re nothing. You have no standing. Within a House, only a patriarch can order a death sentence, and then only as a last resort. Yeah, I see you looking down at Quentin’s head. He hasn’t had a decent get since I turned him five hundred years ago. He’s been a complete and utter failure to me. If it wasn’t your idiot brother, it would’ve been some other screw-up.

  “But you? No House? Anybody can kill you. Cicatrice. Temuchin. Teslan. Druid. I don’t care. Nobody cares. Now I do have the authority to grant you an adoption. Normally I wouldn’t but men of faith are hard to turn. And therefore valuable. But you’re also a goddamned abomination. An immediate blood relation of a houseling in poor standing.”

  Signari seemed to ruminate for a minute.

  “Tell you what: we’ll let fate decide. If there’s someone in this room that’s willing to adopt you, we’ll go that way. If not, we’ll go the other way.”

  Signari gestured at Quentin’s head on the ground. Then he looked up at the audience.

  “How about it? Any takers for a new get?”

  The silence blared in Scav’s ears for a moment. He nodded, accepting the judgment of the fates, and waited for the hammer to fall. Then, to his surprise, a Scottish brogue cut through the quiet.

  “I’ll take the boy. Just because I know it’ll piss off Benito Scavatelli.”

  ***

  Father Otto tugged the heavy metal gauntlet off his hand and flexed his fingers. He leaned back in the chair at the head of Damiana’s table. The chair was “his.” Even as senior elder (and, it was assumed, Father Otto’s expected heir) Damiana could not sit at the head of her own table without explicit instructions from Father Otto to do so and to make a proclamation in his stead.

  Father Otto reached out and put his thumb to the forehead of the ginger young woman before him. She was snuffling (as they all did at this point) though her tears had long since gone dry and she was unable to make herself understood through the heavily-articulated harness gag she wore. Some Signaris preferred their meals screaming, or even kicking, but Damiana was a bit toned down and preferred to eat in relative silence, or at least in conversation with other immortals, not over the incoherent shrieks of their meals.

  “How is she, Father Otto?”

  Father Otto removed his thumb from the ginger’s forehead and sucked it, making a sour face and shaking his head.

  “Too bitter.”

  “Do you prefer a virgin meal, Father?”

  Father Otto shrugged.

  “Not necessarily. That one though…I think she had a rough life. I need a little less stress.”

  Damiana nodded and pressed the button down at the foot of the table where she was sitting. The table was actually rather ingeniously designed. The center held still but the outside was a conveyor belt of sorts. At each “setting” of the table was a small, seamless, locked box, which contained a kneeling mortal, restrained and gagged as Damiana preferred them. By pressing the button the conveyor belt activated and the settings moved down a place. Damiana activated the device three more times until a towheaded, ten-or-possibly-twelve (who really cared when it came to mortals?) year old boy hung before Father Otto, petrified and no longer even trying to scream in fear.

  “Not much stress in a schoolchild’s life. And a virgin, though you said that’s not a necessity.”

  Father Otto shrugged and reached out to put his thumb against the child’s cheek. He seemed to consider for a moment, then, like a connoisseur selecting a bottle of wine, nodded. Damiana leaned forward and prepared to devour the meal before her, a rather crusty old man who was giving her the stinkeye. Normally Damiana got the choice of meals, but, of course, when hosting her patriarch, the choice was his.

  “Excuse me.”

  Father Otto and Damiana both looked up. Topan was glaring at them. It was hard for Damiana to get used to the idea of dining with a Cicatrice. Both she and Father Otto had long made it a policy not to do so, and the Cicatrice sitting there, red noose around his neck proclaiming his loyalty, was like having a splinter in her eye.

  “Yes, Topan?” Father Otto asked, affecting an innocence in his voice that many recognized as false, though only a lieutenant as long-standing as Damiana recognized as hiding, deep, deep fury.

  “If this is not good enough for Otto Signari, why is it good enough for me?”

  He gestured at the ginger mortal, which in the process of Father Otto selecting his meal, had looped around to Topan’s seat. Damiana rose before Father Otto could respond. In all things she deferred to her patriarch, but as host, this matter was hers to rectify. She walked to Topan’s seat. The other immortals seated around the table were buzzing, whispering in one another’s ears. Some were Signari, a few were from the other Houses, but none, as was customary, were of House Cicatrice save his heir alone.

  “This mortal is not to your liking, Elder Topan?”

  Topan folded his arms.

  “That’s not the point.”

  Damiana looked to Father Otto for some sign of what to do, but her patriarch was inscrutable, watching with a twisted smile on his face.

  “Forgive me, elder, I miss the point entirely then.”

  Topan fixed her with a glare as though he were chastising a schoolchild or a mortal, not an elder of House Signari.

  “The point, lepress, is the insult.”

  Damiana’s face turned stony. She knew other immortals called her that. She wasn’t so ignorant to think that others didn’t make fun of her condition behind her back. But it had been a long time, long before she had become an elder of her House, even, since someone had called her a lepress to her face.

  Topan continued.

  “If it’s not good enough for the patriarch of House Signari, what makes you think it should be good enough for the patriarch of House Cicatrice?”

  Father Otto howled in laughter, pounding his thankfully ungauntleted fist on the table, but otherwise offered no hope and in fact waved off her pleading look as though to say, “No, no, don’t let me interrupt you.” Damiana was very old, and had long since learned the values of patience and abstinence. She didn’t let any emotion cross her face.

  “It is customary that the elder of this manse has her selection of the meat. Or, when he’s present, the House Patriarch. Everyone else is fed randomly.”

  “Randomly?” Topan repeated, attempting to copy Damiana’s inflections, “This is how seriously you take your hosting duties, Damiana? Just tossing random pieces of meat at people and hoping they’re not offended, is that your methodology?”

  “These are all top-tier specimens, carefully culled from my farm and the wild…”

  “Push the button, you deformed freak, and let me have a finer cut.”

  In the silence that followed, a pair of flies fucking would’ve been a cacophony. After a moment, Damiana nodded.

  “You don’t care for this meal?”

  “I do not care for anyone’s sloppy seconds. If I am to be patriarch of the most powerful of the Great Houses, I demand the best.”

  Damiana reached out and grabbed the shrieking ginger around her throat. With a pinch she severed her spinal column and the girl fell dead.

  “You don’t want my hospitality, Cicatrice? Then starve.”

  Topan’s chair flew out from behind him as he leapt to his feet. His hands were not clenched in fists, but curved into claws, his preferred fighting style. Damiana struggled to open her mouth and bare her teeth. Suddenly Damiana felt a great gauntleted hand drop down on her shoulder, rubbing bone against bone.
Father Otto’s other, ungloved hand, came down on Topan’s shoulder.

  “Come now, children, none of this,” Father Otto said, “Are we all satisfied with our posturing? Everybody feel they’ve proven who’s toughest?” Father Otto glanced from one face to the other. “‘If that big meanie Otto Signari hadn’t intervened, I would’ve taken him lickety split,’ right?”

  Topan cast his gaze down and while Damiana tried to keep Father Otto’s eyes, she couldn’t either. Father Otto clapped his hands down on both of their shoulders again, this time a paternal pat.

  “Good. Topan, grab your seat. Literally. Damiana, you take yours. By that I mean just sit down.”

  Topan skulked off to retrieve his chair from where it had slammed to a halt against the wall. Spitefully, allowing it to screech across the floor like fingernails on a chalkboard, he dragged it back every centimeter.

  Father Otto followed Damiana back to her position at the foot of the table and hovered over her as she sat. Once both of them had seated themselves, Father Otto reached out and pressed the red button. He pressed it again and again, inexpertly, until his own meal of towheaded waif was before Topan.

  Then he walked behind Topan and dropped his hands down on the Cicatrice’s shoulders, massaging his neck and upper back

  “Topan is right. I mean, he’s being a little bit of a jerk about it, but he’s right. Soon he’ll be patriarch of House Cicatrice. I forget sometimes; I’m used to all the deference, all the best things in life. Topan’s been a black sheep for a little too long. Manners go the way of the dodo when you’re out in the cold, I think. But let’s not forget, any of us, that it was Cicatrice who put Topan out in the cold, Cicatrice who stole his get, Cicatrice who arranged a separate peace with the Inquisitors for his House. Cicatrice has taken every effort to stick his finger in each of our eyes. He has nothing but contempt for the other Great Houses, and he reserves the greatest contempt for mine especially, and for me personally. That’s how Topan was raised: to be contemptuous. It’s no surprise he at some point was going to turn his contempt on the wrong person. And that person was my very own heir, senior Elder Damiana here.”

  Father Otto ruffled Topan’s hair. He gestured at the little boy.

  “Go on, son. Finest cut of meat. It’s all yours. I don’t even want it. I want to eat like you today. You can eat like me.”

  Tentative, Topan reached out and pressed both hands to the sides of the boy’s face. With a dreadful slowness that betrayed his relative youth and inexpertise, he slowly began to drain the boy’s life essence. Father Otto returned to his position at the head of the table without sitting down.

  “Eat, eat, please. Don’t wait for me.”

  The others began to enjoy their meals. Sephera, the Teslan elder, had been left with the croaked ginger. She surreptitiously called to one of Damiana’s mortal disciples to bring her something else, rather than make a scene as Topan had. Damiana admired her composure.

  As if proving a point about his seniority, Father Otto reached out and barely brushed the tip of his index finger against the meal he had been provided. At the mere touch of his hand, the twentysomething man’s hair turned grey, his skin sank into his bones, and his flesh turned to dust. All the other diners stopped eating to look at Father Otto. Father Otto was sucking his fingers.

  “Deeeee-lish! You do put on a hell of a banquet, Damiana.”

  “Father Otto…” Damiana started to say.

  But he held up his hand to silence his senior lieutenant. With that, Damiana realized Father Otto was posturing, but he wasn’t going to be building to a reckoning. He was just making a point to Topan, in case he had missed it, about who the real superior was here. Topan seemed to sour on his meal and lowered his hands.

  “I’ve got to say, this is a celebration I’ve long dreamt of. I was the cockroach under Cicatrice’s heel before any of you were glimmers in your sires’ eyes. But now, finally, after almost seventy years of him acting with complete impunity – by which I mean complete lack of respect – you’ve all come around to my way of thinking about him. He has bullied the other Houses. He has made light of us. Thrown us to the Inquisitors and never offered a hand when he’s the damn reason why we have to suffer the brunt of their piffling wrath. And now, breaking the code, stealing Topan’s get, he’s finally gone too far. The man is not above the law, not above the law he himself espouses.

  “For a long time now I’ve considered declaring war on House Cicatrice. But I refused out of respect. I refused to go it alone. I thought to myself, ‘Otto, you need to go along to get along.’ But the truth is now all of you see. He has nothing but contempt for our code, contempt for our ways. He told us not earlier today, Sephera and I, that his will trumps the code.

  “Well! Very well then! We’ll put his will to the test. And now that even his own heir is against him and with us, all of us, a united front, I think the next incarnation of House Cicatrice is going to be much more cooperative. Much more beneficial, I should say, as a partner in the immortal community.”

  Father Otto tossed himself back into his chair. He rubbed his hands together vigorously, his gauntleted hand making a total scabrous mess of his unclad hand, but it instantly healed.

  “Now then! To brass tacks. Damiana, will you show the fixers in?”

  Damiana nodded, rose, and went to open the door. She avoided wrinkling her nose as the most odious filth of the immortal world filed into her dining hall. Dozens and dozens of fixers poured in. Most were Signaris, proudly displaying their stripes, but the other Houses were represented as well, including a few Teslans with shiny replacement parts and naked Druids. She’d have to remember to set the cultists loose with a few scrub brushes in here after the midden ghouls had dealt with the remains of their meals.

  “Benito, my boy!” Father Otto said, rising and embracing one of the fixers with a look of near-unhinged glee on his face. Damiana was chagrined to recognize Benito Scavatelli. “How’s my favorite fixer?”

  “Always pleased to be in your service,” Benito replied, bowing his head, but he could hardly hide his own smile.

  “You haven’t seen your brother lately, have you?”

  Benito was a little too quick to shake his head.

  “Oh, no, Father Otto. Not since you put us straight.”

  Father Otto seemed to consider for a moment.

  “Well if you do happen to come across him, let me know. He was supposed to check in with Damiana about a matter. Haven’t heard a peep from him, though.”

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything, Father Otto, but I try to walk the straight and narrow these days. You told me to leave the boy alone so I have.”

  Father Otto gave Benito a Roman kiss and then slapped him hard a few times on the cheek fraternally. He walked around the room, shaking hands and clasping shoulders with the scum-of-all-Houses fixers.

  “Hi. How you doing? Good to meet you. We met in Paris, didn’t we? No? I’m almost sure of it. I never forget a face. How are you?”

  After finishing his circuit Father Otto didn’t return to his seat, but instead draped his hands over the back of it. He gestured for Damiana and whispered in her ear.

  “Is this all that came? I thought you put the word out weeks ago.”

  “There are many more, Father Otto. Almost five hundred, all told. These are just the ringleaders. It’s all I can fit.”

  Father Otto nodded.

  “Welcome, ladies, gentleman, children of all ages. I want one thing from you. Name your price.”

  The fixers exchanged glances. Silence reigned supreme for a moment.

  “Our price for what?” one of the Teslans asked.

  “Excellent question,” Father Otto repled, affixing the asker with an imaginary beam from his finger. “What is your price for the sort of job that a House patriarch asks you to name any price for?”

  Instead of silence, this time, it was as though a muted rumbling swept through the room. The fixers, many of whom were with partners, were debating back and
forth what Father Otto was asking and what he might be getting at, or be up to, depending on how much they trusted him. Benito Scavatelli was the first to affix his balls to his crotch and step forward.

  “I want to be patriarch of my own House.”

  “You don’t lack for ambition, Benito,” Father Otto replied with a contagious laugh. Even Benito laughed at the Patriarch’s pleasure in his brassiness. Then, to Damiana’s utter surprise he cut through the giggling din with a, “Done.”

  In that instant she could’ve heard a pin drop.

  “I’m sorry…?” Benito murmured.

  “I said ‘done,’ boy-o. Don’t you know not to keep asking once you get the answer you were looking for? Any manjack here who delivers will be made my senior elder and heir apparent. Signed, sealed, delivered, in a contract carved in stone. When I die, House Signari is yours. Hell, I may even retire in my dotage, you never know.”

  Almost without even realizing it, Damiana was on her feet, her chair scraping the floor behind her. All eyes in the room turned on her.

  “Father Otto…”

  “No reflection on you, Damiana. You’ve served me loyally all these years. But the bounty’s been set. You’re welcome to claim it yourself, of course.”

  That started the fixers into such riotous laughing that Damiana would’ve probably blushed had she still had blood flowing through her veins. Damiana was an excellent bureaucrat, Father Otto’s trusted confidante and consiglieri, a majordomo par excellence, but a street fighter and bounty hunter she was not. Like all Signaris, she loved a good scrap, but her preferred martial arts were fencing and falconry – dignified sports. No one would’ve ever mistaken her for a fixer. With what she could recover of her dignity, she seated himself.

  “So what do you say, boy-os? Want a taste of la dolce vita? A shot at being boss of bosses? Then bring me back my mark, tout suite.”

  “And who is your mark, Father Otto?” one of the fixers, a Teslan with a bionic eye, asked.

  “Ah, yes, therein lies the rub. You don’t get to be patriarch unless you bring down a patriarch. One of you fine young immortals in this room today is going to bring me the head of Cicatrice.” Father Otto allowed the fixers to mutter to one another for just a second before continuing, “Oh, don’t act silly. You’re looking for sanctions, you’re looking for proof above and beyond the fact I’m offering you a big fat plum as a reward? Elder Sephera?”