“Boy, you don’t rattle easy, kid,” he whispered in Nico’s face.
Nico opened his mouth to reply, but all of his cool points leaked out with a mouthful of bloody saliva. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, hoping to staunch the bleeding.
“Trust me, Scar, I take no pleasure in being here. But you and I have a common interest.”
Cicatrice turned so that his profile was visible, but not to fully face them.
“And that would be?”
“Le chasseur du mort.”
Nico was surprised to hear the French words pour out of Price’s mouth like a fine vintage. For some reason (many reasons, in fact) Price struck him as the ugly American type.
“Ridiculous. The Hunter of the Dead hasn’t been seen since I last encountered him. Seven hundred years ago.”
Price shook his head and turned to leave.
“Fine, play your games, Cicatrice. Come on, kid.”
They stepped out the door, and Price grabbed Nico and put his finger to his lips, expectantly.
“Price. Wait.”
Price winked at his charge and together they walked back into the conference room, feigning reluctance.
“Are we going to talk?”
“I’ll talk. I promise nothing beyond that.”
Price nodded.
“All right, that’s something. If you’re willing to admit…”
Cicatrice held up a hand.
“Your catamite will have to wait outside.”
Price glanced at Nico.
“I guess he means you.”
***
Nico kicked the stainless steel wall and immediately regretted it.
I hope I didn’t chip a bone.
The pain didn’t make the anger go away. Price had sent him out of the room like a child. A child!
He glanced around. Unwholesome, dead-eyed stares greeted him in every direction. The renfields seemed to carry about their work unflaggingly, while still managing to stare at him.
“Fuck it,” he muttered under his breath, “I’m going to play some blackjack.”
Technically, he was too young to even be in the casino, but what the hell, he had already gotten past security. Price could come find him. Heaven knew Cicatrice had enough cameras to find him.
He passed by row upon row of creepy Birds-like renfields staring at him until he exited the mini-pyramid. He stopped mid-stride upon spotting a lone figure at the foot of the pyramid. Under ordinary circumstances he would have thought the girl was extremely attractive, but right now she looked like a drowned rat. Someone had ripped her clothes to shreds.
“Hello,” he said, stepping carefully down the pyramid one step at a time.
The girl looked up at him, betraying a look that combined fierce determination and infinite sadness.
“You’re an Inquisitor?”
Nico’s hand drifted to the bat hanging from his belt.
“You want to find out?”
“I wouldn’t try it,” she said quietly.
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s just a piece of advice.”
He looked her up and down.
“I take it that makes you a…”
He trailed off.
“Immortal,” she said.
“Immortal, sure.” He clambered down to take a seat next to her. “You look like a bomb went off.”
“Close,” the girl said, running her hand down what scraps remained of what he couldn’t tell whether had been a fine dress or a rag.
“So you, um, you work for this Cicatrice guy?”
“No, I don’t work for him,” she snapped. “I’m his…” she paused, seeming to consider her situation before finally deciding on a word, “friend.”
“You’re his friend. I didn’t know vampires had friends.”
“Goeng-si?”
“What?”
The girl suddenly rose to her feet and stumbled forward, nearly tripping. Nico jumped up to catch her, but she had only lost her footing for a second. She wandered off.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
He followed her as she hurried to the nearest row of slot machines. The young girl approached a bluehair dumping quarters into a slot machine.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the girl said, “do you have a mirror I could use? Just for a moment.”
Without taking her right hand off the lever, the old woman reached into her purse and handed the young girl her compact. Nico walked up behind her and glanced into the compact. He could see her face like normal. She spotted him over her shoulder in the glass and snapped it closed.
So much for that old canard.
“Thank you,” she said, returning the compact.
“Any time, sweetheart.”
Somewhat dazed she returned to the foot of the pyramid.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“You really think I’m a monster?” she asked, “A vampire?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know you.”
“My name is…” she looked up into his eyes, “I was about to lie to you.”
“Okay.”
“My name is Idi Han.”
“Nico. Salazar.”
He put out his hand. She took it, clasping his fingers tightly for a moment rather than shaking.
“Heh. I think I might practice Idi Han.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh. My…friend. The other Inquisitor. When we broke in here…I shouldn’t be telling you this, should I?”
She laughed.
“No, it’s fine. Go on, please.”
“Well, he said I was this great martial artist. Ho Tan Fow. Do you know what it means?”
She shrugged.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah, I thought not.”
“What’d you do?”
“Um…I hit a lady in the head with a baseball bat.”
Idi Han giggled, covering her hand.
“Not Hedrox?”
“Yes. That was her name. Something Something Hedrox. What does Idi Han mean?”
“Oh. That. That’s a long story.”
“Oh. Yeah. No time for long stories now, I guess.”
He glanced back up the steps of the pyramid, wondering how long the grown-ups would be, and then internally chastising himself for not counting himself among their number. Idi Han wrapped her arms around her legs and pulled her knees into her chest.
“I don’t want to tell you what my name means. It’s embarrassing. And I’ve had a bunch of people who keep telling me that I’m this special, magical savior treasure person. It’s very annoying.”
“You don’t want to be a special magic savior whatever?”
“No.”
“Well what do you want to be?”
She looked into his eyes for the first time. There was a spark of mischief there.
“You really want to know?” she asked.
He couldn’t help the grin that was tugging at the side of his face.
“Yeah, I do.”
She blushed.
“It’s silly.”
“We’re two people in extraordinarily silly positions. Who happened to come across each other. Trust me, I won’t judge.”
She thought for a moment.
“Well, all right. I want to be the person who proves them all wrong. Who proves there’s no such thing as destiny or even potential. That I don’t have to do anything. That the whole world can just burn for all I care. That’s the person I want to be.”
Nico opened his mouth to reply but a clatter from above signaled that the great détente between Cicatrice and Price was complete and their apprentices were desired once again.
Nine
The Wild West…
Topan hurried down into the mine, his spurs clinking as he ran. After a few months of traveling with his sire he had only just begun to grasp the importance of his new role. He was, if anything, perhaps too over-eager.
He nearl
y bowled over the Egyptian as he stumbled into the crosscut where the other Cicatrice houselings had gathered.
“Pardon me, Elder Rahim!”
Rahim nodded and patted Topan’s shoulder absently.
“The mortal disciples are all gathered outside, Father Cicatrice!” Topan announced loudly.
Cicatrice nodded and beckoned for Topan to join him at the head of the throng.
“Thank you, my boy. And thank you all for coming. Welcome to Virginia City. I know you’ve all come a long way and you may be wondering why you’re here at all, so I won’t waste any more of your time. Some of you older immortals will recall the legend of El Dorado. I’ve located it not far from here. And no, it is no empire of gold. Rather it is the last Aztec temple: resting placed of The Damned.”
In a rare moment of indulgence, Cicatrice allowed the elders and the upstanding immortals in the gathering chatter among themselves. He raised a small piece of coal on the toe of his boot and tossed it down the shaft. Topan never heard it strike bottom.
Cicatrice adjusted his Stetson and cleared his throat, regaining the crowd.
“I’ve decided to move my seat from Paris to El Dorado – what the locals call The Meadows. The only problem is there’s nothing there. It’s going to take some time and some doing before a decent-sized city takes root there. It would be interesting though, I think, to help build a city from the ground up. A city designed by immortals for immortals. A city of night.”
“A New Necropolis?” Topan ventured.
The mine became very, very quiet. Topan worried he had spoken out of turn.
“Some of you have not yet met my get, Topan. He will need to be built from the ground up as well.”
“Forgive me, Father Cicatrice,” a woman with her face tattooed as a skull said, “but the boy doesn’t exactly smell of impressive power. Certainly not like…”
She trailed off. Topan bit his lower lip. He was feeling picked upon, but didn’t want to betray weakness.
“No,” Cicatrice agreed, “He does not match the raw natural talent of…others I have chosen. For a long time I believed if I lived in this world long enough I would meet a perfect heir. Someone who, after being granted the Long Gift, would be worthy within a few days. But now I think it must be a slow burn. And as I build my new city, so too will I build my new heir. Until he is ready.”
Cicatrice paused, glancing down into the shaft which seemed to stretch blackly into infinity.
“That being said,” Cicatrice continued, “Disrespecting my get – and my decisionmaking – with a question like that…let’s just say if it happens a second time from any of you, being an elder in my House will not save you from my wrath. Which indeed brings us to our next order of business.”
Cicatrice gestured and Rahim quickly pushed a minecart up in front of Cicatrice like an altar. Topan felt like a child sneaking a peek inside a red birthday envelope. From within the minecart a woman stared up at him defiantly. She was wrapped in heavy lengths of chain that looked better suited to anchoring a naval vessel than restraining a person but was otherwise naked. A metal plate had been placed over her mouth and bolted into her jawbones to keep her quiet.
It was the first time Topan had seen a woman in the nude but he felt (perhaps appropriately) more pity than lust.
“Surely even chains such as those can’t subdue one of our kind?” Topan whispered breathlessly in Cicatrice’s ear.
“Normally not. But she has been starved. Remember what I told you? About the blood and the earth?”
“The blood is the power but the earth is the life.”
Cicatrice squeezed Topan’s shoulder. It had been one of their first lessons. Immortality was granted by the native soil they slept in each night. But their ferocious power was granted by draining the blood of others – and, someday, Cicatrice had promised, there was a still more perfect way of draining power without cutting a vein.
“Mercy is not a quality I am often accused of possessing,” Cicatrice said to a mild titter of laughter, “nevertheless it has always been my policy to grant great leeway to my elders. Your affairs are your own inasmuch as they don’t reflect poorly on me.”
Cicatrice glanced down at the chained immortal.
“Winter was my first and most trusted elder. That makes this difficult for me. Impossible, really. You eleven, step forward.”
Cicatrice tapped Topan on the back and gestured at a mattock leaning against one of the pylons. Topan went to fetch it as Rahim and the other elders emerged from the crowd, and the lesser immortals receded quietly.
“I’ve forgiven Winter and the rest of you many small trespasses. I’ve never considered it a patriarch’s place to enforce the code mindlessly, but rather judiciously. That being said, there are some things I can not forgive.”
“The telegrams,” Rahim said quietly.
Cicatrice nodded.
“Each of you received a message that I would be moving my seat. What you may not know is that each message indicated a different spot – Laredo, San Francisco, and so on. And then when you arrived you received a second message redirecting you here. But my spies in Salt Lake City spotted Otto Signari and a band of fixers arriving just ahead of my dear Winter here.”
“Treason!” Topan exclaimed, before clapping his hand over his mouth.
“Yes, my boy,” Cicatrice said, taking the pickax from his hand and twirling its handle with a single hand to test its balance, “Something I’d refused to believe for some time. Whether for love or money I don’t know, but the fact remains your fellow elder has betrayed our House. The undertaking of moving my seat to The Meadows is too important to withstand such treachery. I suppose I’ve thrown the Signaris off the scent for a while, but now I’m left with the odious task of meting out judgment to a loved one.”
“Kill her, Father Cicatrice, put her down,” Topan said.
Cicatrice shook his head.
“No, my boy, the punishment for treason is even greater than death.”
“What could be greater than death?”
“Life. Eternal life. I would not do this to an elder without you all being in agreement. Think carefully. For if Winter has fallen this low, then so could each and every one of you.”
Cicatrice tossed the mattock to the ground before the feet of the eleven remaining elders. The woman with the skull-face tattoo was the first to pick it up. She looked to Cicatrice.
“I know kings don’t kill kings,” she said, “but I will ever be loyal to you, Father Cicatrice.”
She raised the mattock over her head and swung it down into Winter’s heart. Winter grunted and moaned in pain. Rahim approached next and wheedled the mattock out of his former peer’s chest. He gestured at the tattooed woman.
“Well said.”
Rahim swung and delivered a blow as well. One by one, each of the elders approached. Only the last, a Russian noble by the looks of him, seemed hesitant, but after a moment he too delivered a damning blow. Cicatrice plucked the pickax from Winter’s chest.
“Then it is almost decided. Rahim, you are now my new senior elder. Topan, you are now my junior.”
He pointed the handle towards Topan. Astonished, Topan took it.
“When your training is complete you can take your seat at the table in Rome. Until then I intend not to trade with that reptile, Otto Signari. And your position within my House, should anything happen to me, is now official. And secure.”
“But not as your heir.”
“Not yet. Now you have a decision to make. For this punishment it must be unanimous.”
Unhesitating, Topan drove the mattock into Winter’s eye.
“Then it is accomplished. Topan, go fetch Winter’s circle. The rest of you leave. We’ll meet again tomorrow evening to discuss building up The Meadows.”
Topan flew ahead of the crowd out to where the mortals had set up camp on the downslope of the mountain. Most of the mortals were gathered around campfires, but a few armed men were watching over a sad and lonely group
of about twenty that had been lashed together and were shivering in the dark.
“Come,” Topan said, “Bring the equipment.”
Groaning in agony, the mortals rose to follow him. They were all burdened down like mules. When he returned to the crosscut he found it empty except for Cicatrice and Winter.
“Though you are mortal scum,” Cicatrice said, “You know our ways, and some of you have proven useful. Other uses could be found for you with other masters. The Long Gift might still be yours one day. But that depends upon your answer to a simple question. You have all been ever-loyal to this woman. Some for decades, some for only a few months. So I understand it may be with varying degrees of difficulty that you answer: who among you will renounce her?”
The mortals looked to each other for answers like beaten curs. The head of the circle was the first to fall to his knees, though, and the others all quickly joined in, cursing Winter’s name and begging for forgiveness. Winter screamed all but soundlessly in impotent rage.
“Enough,” Cicatrice said finally, “Enough. Set about your work. Dawn is almost upon us.”
Cicatrice retreated from the minecart and joined Topan at the entrance to the crosscut. Even in their frigid, exhausted state the mortals scrambled like beavers to carry out Cicatrice’s punishment. They assembled the smelting furnace and brought it to a roaring heat – foolhardy work for the interior of a mine indeed. They wrapped sticks of dynamite and barrels of black powder around the crossbeams that held the mine up.
As it became clear what they were doing, Topan said, “Seems a shame to lose all the wealth of the mine.”
“You’d think so. It’s owned by a Signari, though.”
Topan grinned. Finally the mortals came to the conclusion of their tasks. One emptied a sack full of charnel soil over Winter, who sputtered such as she could with her mouth nailed shut. Through her nose she continued to condemn her treacherous circle and Cicatrice and all the world for all Topan could tell.
“The blood is the power…” Cicatrice said.
“…But the earth is the life. She’ll live then?”
“For ever and ever. Trapped at the bottom of a mine in a prison of gold.”
The mortals finished liquefying a small fortune in gold ore. With some difficulty because of her struggles, they filled the minecart with the scalding metal, sealing Winter away under a bed of native soil. Her struggles and contortions played out for a few moments in the liquid, a hypnotizing dance that Topan couldn’t rip his eyes away from. Then the liquid finally cooled and froze Winter in one last pose. The mortals struggled to tip the cart into the long shaft.
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