Hunter of the Dead

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “That,” Price said, cheerfully manhandling the renfield out of the way with just a little pressure on her shoulder.

  Together they entered the sancta sanctorum of the most powerful immortal alive. The room was a conference room, rather than a private office, and seated at the far end was a blond man with one cold eye, one missing eye, and skin as pale as ivory. Behind him a wall of video monitors showed everything that was going on in the casino, if not the city.

  “The legendary Inquisitor Carter Price,” the man said, his words like ice water.

  “The legendary douchebag Cicatrice.”

  Nico had to stifle a laugh, but it still came out as a snort. He instantly regretted it, as Cicatrice turned his icy glare on him.

  “And you must be the famous shift manager, Nico Salazar.”

  Nico’s eyes nearly boggled out of his head. How did Cicatrice know who he was? Then, his face reddened as he remembered he was still wearing his nametag.

  “Yeah. Kid’s my boss.”

  Cicatrice laughed, deliberately, mirthlessly, as though he were unable to find things amusing any more but wished to make a show of his disrespect.

  “Seems appropriate, you taking orders from a fifteen-year-old.”

  “I’m twenty.” Nico suddenly realized how childish that sounded. He wouldn’t be welcome at the big boy’s table sounding like an elementary school student. “And…and I’m his apprentice.”

  “Oh, so you’ve taken an apprentice, Price? Tell me, boy, has he taught you anything you couldn’t have learned from the back of a cereal box?”

  The roof of Nico’s mouth tasted like sandpaper as he attempted to come up with an answer.

  “He…we practiced staking a dummy.”

  Cicatrice leaned back in his chair, tenting his fingers together. He didn’t smile, or laugh again, but his shit-eating pleasure was clear nonetheless.

  “Staking practice,” Cicatrice repeated. “As long as you’re infantilizing the boy, you may as well take him to Circus Circus, Price. I could probably get you a free pass. I know you can’t afford it.”

  “Fuck you, Scar. It’s his second night on the job and he already took out one of your elite renfield guards.”

  Cicatrice turned and made the “come hither” gesture to Nico.

  “Come here, boy.”

  Nico felt Price’s fist clamp down on his shoulder.

  “Don’t,” Price whispered.

  Cicatrice shook his head and rose from his chair.

  “So mistrustful, Price. All I wanted was to get a better look at the boy.”

  Nico felt another hand drop down over top of Price’s. He turned to look and saw that Cicatrice was already behind him. He had crossed the long conference room in the blink of an eye – less than that really.

  The blood flooded Nico’s head and he felt the ground tumble away from his feet. When he managed to reorient himself, he realized that he was standing, such as it was, on the ceiling, with his feet pressed against the tile. Cicatrice was pressing; lightly it appeared, on his shoulder, keeping him in place in defiance of gravity. The immortal’s own feet seemed to stand upside-down by their own volition.

  And Price dangled from Cicatrice’s other hand. With only his pinky and thumb, Cicatrice was grasping Price’s Achilles tendon, and, despite Price’s wild flailings, didn’t seem to have any trouble holding him steady.

  Cicatrice peered deeply into Nico’s eyes. Somehow his functional eye was even scarier than his red, ruined one. The sensation was uncanny, as though worms were crawling through his bloodstream. But Price had said vampires didn’t have any special mental powers. The man’s will was simply haunting.

  “Is your family paying him to ‘train’ you? Has he told you what you’re worth to him? Freeze-dried noodles and bottom shelf gin?”

  “Bourbon actually,” Price grunted, his face turning pink with exertion.

  “I…I just met this guy,” Nico said lamely.

  Cicatrice leaned in until their noses were touching.

  “You should ask him how his other apprentices are doing.”

  Nico felt a sickening sensation as Cicatrice released his shoulder and the floor rushed up to meet him.

  Seven

  The Red Scare…

  Topan sat silently in the absolute darkness. Even the neon light which Valais had found to be barely there was too bright for Topan’s tastes. He was a creature of darkness.

  Anyone without his senses would have heard nothing. As it was, he only just barely heard the sound of his patriarch dropping to the ground behind him. Cicatrice gripped his shoulder.

  “I took a terrible risk trusting your judgment. The hearing has just concluded.”

  Topan reached upwards and placed his own hand atop his sire’s. He turned his face upward and smiled wanly.

  “You’ve always indulged me, Father Cicatrice. How many mistakes have I made?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “You always keep count.”

  “Yes, I do. Too many to bring up without embarrassing you. And myself.”

  Topan hung his head.

  “I’m sorry. I was certain it would work.”

  Cicatrice sat down opposite his get.

  “You didn’t let me finish. The hearing just concluded. Valais said not a word. Nothing about immortals. Nothing about the Inquisition. McCarthy and his junkyard dogs tried every line of questioning. He played dumb about the whole thing.”

  Topan pressed two of his fingers to his temple and his thumb to his cheek.

  “That’s good. That’s…that’s one thing.”

  “My network of spiders has begun reporting in as well. What you did to Valais is spreading far and wide. Word is out: House Cicatrice is off-limits to Inquisitors. They’ve already begun shifting resources and rearranging their strategies to focus on the remaining twelve Houses.”

  Topan leaned forward and dug his fingers so hard into the stainless steel table he left imprints.

  “Do you think it’ll keep?”

  “Topan, I’ve long told you about the power of legend. There’s power in a good story to dictate generations of behavior. It seems I finally got through to you. You’ve created your own legend. And with that, I think it’s time to present you with a gift.”

  Cicatrice raised his hand and gestured at the two-way mirror. A light inside the observation room turned on. Lee, the trusted head of Cicatrice’s circle stood there. Her neck and arms were criss-crossed with razor blade scars. Cicatrice had been draining life force since before Topan had ever met him, but Topan had often made use of the disciples for their blood. He had often remarked, half-jokingly, that Lee’s blood was his favorite flavor of them all. Each scar had been from one of his feedings.

  Topan rose to his feet.

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  Cicatrice put his arm around his get’s shoulders.

  “An old tradition states that the night a get starts his own circle, his mentorship ends. Here’s your first disciple, Topan. I hope she serves you as well as she’s served me.”

  Topan’s long-dead tear ducts screamed at him as though they wanted to pour forth their salty fruit. But the time for that was long past.

  “A hundred years…” Topan whispered.

  “A long mentorship, yes. With many good times and bad. But now you’re your own man, your own immortal. And my true heir.”

  ***

  A blue and white car rolled up next to Idi Han and puttered along at about her walking pace. She tried not to look over, keeping her head locked on the sidewalk, but the window rolled down.

  “Excuse me, miss.”

  She turned and flashed a smile at the police official.

  “Yes, officer? Good evening.”

  “Good evening. Would you mind stopping please?”

  Idi Han came to a halt and turned to face the car. She kept her hands conspicuously apparent. The officer stepped out of his car. He had a baton and a gun on his belt. She had rarely had run-ins with the a
uthorities back home and could only guess what they were like in America. She wondered briefly if she had enough money on her to bribe the man if that became necessary. Cicatrice had only given her a little.

  The policeman looked her up and down.

  “Ma’am, are you from around here?”

  She smiled. Perhaps there was an opening.

  “I am from China,” she said, perhaps more deliberately than was necessary.

  The policeman pushed his cap back on his head and tucked his thumbs into his belt loops instead of keeping one hand on his weapon as he had before. Obviously he considered her no threat.

  “Oh, China. Welcome to the U.S. of A. How are you liking it?”

  “Thank you. I like it here very much.”

  “Are you aware there is a curfew in effect for this city?”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped.

  “Oh, no! No, I was not aware. I will go to my hotel immediately.”

  She turned to hurry down the road, hoping that would be the end of it, but in a split-second the police officer had drawn his pistol and leveled it at her.

  “Stop! Stop right there!”

  Idi Han turned to face the officer. He was shaking like he had seen a ghost.

  Am I so mortifying?

  Slowly she raised her hands, wondering how long she should play this game, whether she would feel bad about ripping his throat out, whether this was one of the men on Cicatrice’s payroll and just dropping her patriarch’s name would be enough. She opened her mouth to speak but the cop was already shouting.

  “Get down on the ground!”

  He shoved her to the concrete but then he immediately became like a balloon caught in an updraft. The police officer flew through the air like he weighed nothing, and came down on the sidewalk across the street, all of his bones shattering, blood leaking from his face. There was no way he could have survived.

  “Good evening, miss,” a cruel, heavy voice said.

  She realized that the police officer had been pointing his weapon not at her but at someone behind her.

  Stupid. Amateur. They got the drop on you.

  She turned and looked up at her new adversaries. A man who looked like Scav but stood about thirty centimeters taller and broader in the shoulders loomed over her, a sledgehammer in his hands.

  “You must be Scav’s friends.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” the big man said. “He is my worthless brother, though. Benito Scavatelli. You must be Idi Han.”

  She didn’t take his proferred hand but deliberately rose under her own power. Neither Benito nor any of the thugs he had brought with him moved to stop her. Either they were sizing her up or…

  They think I’m no threat at all. But what about my legendary “smell?”

  Suddenly she remembered the garland of garlic Cicatrice had insisted upon her wearing. Thoughtlessly, her hand went to it. A smile split Benito’s face in two.

  “There are only two reasons an immortal wears garlic. Either they’re particularly weak and they want to hide it…”

  “Or they’re particularly strong and they want to hide it?” she filled in the blank.

  Benito tapped his nose. He had five thugs with him, and they had fanned out around her, all staying just out of her arms’ length. The one man who was bigger than Benito, with black hair that reached down past his shoulders, was carrying a rather excessive length of chain. The other four carried clubs, axe handles, and bricks. All bludgeoning weapons. Nothing that would kill an immortal.

  The big man held the chain as though he meant to use it like a whip or a medieval flail, but the point was clear: they meant to subdue her, not kill her. She decided Mr. Chains was the second-in-command.

  “I suppose now you’re going to make me an offer to come with you quietly and things will go easily?” she asked.

  Benito smiled.

  “Actually…”

  The sledgehammer sliced an arc through the air. Had it connected, it would’ve collapsed the side of her head.

  Well aimed.

  She reached up and with her thumb and index finger snatched the hammerhead out of the air, arresting the blow so suddenly that it took Benito off his feet. With a flick of her wrist she swung the handle back around her, sending Benito flying into one of his thugs, and knocking the feet out from under the other three with the hammer.

  That left Mr. Chains. Even with her nose full of the garlic she was wearing, she had easily pegged him as the most dangerous of the entire gang, on sight. Unperturbed by his gaggle of friends being taken off their feet, he swung a loop of chain at her, shattering her left shoulder. The follow-up blow cracked her hip.

  “Sven!” Benito cried out, “Don’t kill her!”

  Mr. Chains – or Sven as it seemed his real name was – reached back and cracked a length of chain into her face, pulverizing her eye.

  Easy enough.

  As Sven tried to pull the chain back, she reached out and grabbed it, allowing him to fling her back over his shoulder along with the length of chain.

  “Huh?” the giant grunted, suddenly losing sight of the target which had just been in front of him.

  Idi Han caught his left shoulder with her feet, and threw herself forward, wrapping the chain around his neck twice as she passed and dropped to the ground in front of him. Her eye and the side of her skull were still healing, but she already felt her hip popping back into place and her shoulder seemed fully mended.

  She turned and saw that Benito and the others were back on their feet.

  “I noticed you all brought chains and clubs. Non-lethal weapons.”

  “The plan was to bring you back alive,” Benito growled.

  “I don’t think you understand who I am.”

  Idi Han yanked on the length of chain she still held in her hand. The loops of heavy chain around Sven’s neck tightened and to the evident shock of the rest of the gang, his head popped off like an overripe pimple.

  She reached up and pulled the garland of garlic from her neck, tossing it into the pile that had become of Sven’s corpse. The alarm in the faces of the gangsters turned to panic. For the first time they could smell her power – and, more importantly, for the first time she could feel it herself.

  “Boys with toys. No idea how to deal with a real woman.”

  “Hold…hold on!” Benito said, holding out his hand and slowly lowering his sledgehammer to the ground. “Listen, we were wrong to attack you and I’m sorry for that. And I never apologize. Just ask anyone.”

  Benito gestured around at his other goons who began nodding copiously. Suddenly, the smallest one, a particularly ugly beak-nosed little man with terrible skin, broke and ran.

  “Hofstra!” Benito shouted angrily.

  Idi Han took the length of heavy chain, newly freed from Sven’s body, and slung it forward with a vicious crack. It came down on the soft spot of Hofstra’s head and didn’t stop until it passed through his crotch, severing the man in two down the middle. The two halves fell to opposite sides of the macadam. Grotesquely, both halves of the split man tried to pull themselves across the asphalt back towards each other, presumably to begin healing.

  “Carson,” Benito grunted brusquely while snapping his fingers, “put him out of his misery.” He looked up, suddenly noticing the look in Idi Han’s face. “Is it all right?”

  She nodded. They watched as the other gangster, Carson walked over to Hofstra’s body. Both of Hofstra’s arms reached towards his erstwhile comrade in supplication, the two halves of his tongue trying to say something pleading. Carson glanced back, ostensibly at Benito, who nodded, but his gaze lingered on Idi Han, who hoped her face was remaining implacable.

  He bent over and fished Hofstra’s heart out of one of the halves of his bifurcated body. He broke a splinter off his axe handle and impaled Hofstra’s heart on it. Hofstra instantly stopped moving. He glanced back. At that moment, Carson was farther away than any of the gang members. If there was a time for him to run, it was now.
<
br />   Reluctantly, he returned to his place in the semi-circle that had become of the diminished gang.

  “Listen, Miss Han,” Benito said, “We’ll walk. You’ll never see us again. I’ll give you…whatever you want. Let’s just not…split any more heads.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Benito reluctantly pointed at her dress.

  “There’s a transponder on you. It’ll feel like just a tiny…”

  Before he finished his sentence she had fished the miniscule microchip out of her right shoulder and crushed it between her fingers.

  “Who sent you?”

  Benito’s mouth opened, he paused, and then finally admitted, “Otto Signari.”

  “Otto Signari cares whether I live or die?”

  Benito exchanged a sidelong glance with the remaining members of his gang.

  “Topan said not to touch you, but…”

  “But you got it in your heads that I’d make a valuable hostage.”

  Benito nodded.

  “So there probably aren’t others coming after me?”

  “No.”

  “But they’ll be coming after Father Cicatrice?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “All right,” she said, “You’ve told me what I want to know.”

  Benito pointed tentatively off into the distance.

  “We can go, then?”

  “Oh, no. You’re all going to die. I’m just tired of talking to you.”

  She cut through the rest of them like butter.

  Eight

  Nico’s jaws clapped together, pinching the tip of his tongue and drawing blood. His heart was clattering like a locomotive speeding off the tracks. It took a moment for the signals to reach his brain that his legs had not been shattered in the fall. Price sat on the ground, clutching at his shin, but otherwise seemingly unharmed.

  Cicatrice was already on the other side of the room, his hands folded behind him, his back towards them. His voice wafted over his shoulder towards them.

  “You’ve had your fun, Price. You can tell your drinking buddies you saw me face-to-face and lived to tell about it. Now get out.”

  Nico held out a hand to help Price up. Surprisingly, he took it and pulled himself to his feet.