“Carter. Nico. Good to see you two again.”
“Bonaparte,” Price grunted.
She rolled her eyes.
“When will you drop that stupid nickname?”
“When you grow a couple feet. And stop telling everybody what to do.”
“Wait,” Nico said, “What do you prefer to be called?”
Bonaparte bristled.
“I’m an Inquisitor. My name doesn’t matter. Only the mission…”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Price moaned, “This is why I can’t stand your bullshit.”
“Well, you’re welcome to leave Las Vegas anytime, Carter.”
Price’s eyes narrowed.
“This is my city. Why don’t you and your jackbooted thugs…”
“Carter,” Nico whispered.
“Oh, right. I need your help.”
Bonaparte chuckled.
“Hardly surprising. You never come to see me for any other reason. Come on, let’s talk.”
They stepped around the corner and walked down the alleyway. A woman in a tiny little corset of a blue dress lay on the ground. Her head was on the other side of the alley. Price whistled.
“You really got old Blake Turner, huh? I’ve been wanting a piece of her for years. Looks pretty good for a hundred and fifty, doesn’t she, kid?”
Nico felt a bubble of bile burst in his throat. Against his better judgment (or all judgment, really, as his animal instincts kicked in) he puked all over the ground. The two Inquisitors jumped in opposite directions to avoid the splash, but neither’s shoe went unoffended.
“Jesus, kid. First body? Better get used to them.”
Nico glared at her angrily. He tapped the bat against the ground nervously. Price approached the corpse with almost a bounce in his step.
“This is some good work. Where are your partners in crime?”
Price glanced around the alleyway and up to the rooftops. Bonaparte nodded.
“Actually, I’m on my own tonight.”
Price’s eyebrows rose.
“Taking a page out of the Book of Price?”
Bonaparte and Nico both rolled their eyes.
“As it happens, the streets are fair crawling with our blood-drinking chums. We’re stretched to the breaking point so I ordered the newbies to move in pairs and sent the experienced Inquisitors out on their own.”
“I may have a bead on why that is.”
“Oh?”
Price and Bonaparte retreated to a corner of the alley to whisper in hushed tones about the army of fixers. Nico didn’t mind being left out of the conversation. Now that he had gotten over his initial revulsion, he found himself fixated on Blake Turner’s head. He crouched down. It looked just like a ball of hair. A Tribble from Star Trek, maybe.
He reached out and poked it. Satisfied that it did not move, he pressed it until her hair shifted and he saw where her severed neck was. Bonaparte had made a clean cut. He glanced back at the petite woman, who was still debating Price. She wore a katana blade on her belt, half as tall as she was.
He pressed on Turner’s head until the neck faced downward. Damn, that had been a clean cut. Clinical, almost. He turned the head as best he could using just two fingers, grabbing onto the hair and gently tugging it until the woman’s face was pointed towards him. Her eyes were closed, her skin pale. She had a tiny little button of a nose that reminded him of his own mother’s.
“Madre de dios,” he muttered, stifling the urge to cross himself.
Tentatively he reached out with one finger. Aside from Idi Han and Cicatrice (who weren’t exactly going to let him poke their faces) this was the closest he had yet been to a real vampire.
He lifted Turner’s lip, tentatively out of fear that her eyes would open and she would suddenly bite down. Of course, decapitation worked for everything that lived, even highlanders, so he saw no special reason to be scared. It was just an old hokey superstitious feeling in his gut.
He didn’t see the fang. He continued to pull on her lip. Still nothing. He checked the other side. Nothing there either. Forgetting his queasiness, he took both hands and opened the mouth as wide as he could, like the oral hygienist did to him at the dentist’s office.
Her teeth were totally normal.
A hand dropped down on his shoulder and he nearly leaped out of his skin.
“What the fuck are you doing, kid?”
Nico swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Can I ask a dumb question?”
“Do you know any other kind?”
“Hey, be nice, Carter,” Bonaparte said. “There are no stupid questions.”
“Oh, I have heard some stupid questions in my life…”
“Go ahead, Nico.”
Nico cleared his throat.
“Well…how come she doesn’t have any fangs?”
The two Inquisitors exchanged a worried glance.
“Knock it off, kid,” Price said gesturing towards the dumpster, “and toss the watermelon in with the rest of the garbage. When the sun comes up…”
He snapped his fingers, indicating disintegration, no doubt.
“No, no, I’m serious!” Nico said, fighting back the urge to either cry or vomit, he wasn’t sure which. Cromit.
“Show me,” Bonaparte said, making the itchy palm sign with her hand, “I’m sure you just missed them. I don’t kill people.”
Nico hastily attempted to grab the head, but was unable to get a good grip on it and seemed to fumble over and over.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Price said, snatching the head out of Nico’s grasp.
Standing in front of Nico, Price examined the head from side to side, looking in first one ear, then the other. He fiddled with her lips, which Nico saw were beginning to go rictus with rigor (if vampires even got rigor.)
“Oh, shit,” Price muttered.
Taking the head with both hands on opposite sides, one on the hair, one on the mandible, he prised Blake’s jaw open.
“Fuck me. Bonaparte, you fuckup. Take a look at this.”
“I swear she’s immortal! She’s on my list! I have pictures, a file…”
“But where are the fangs?” Price shouted, shaking the normal-toothed head in Bonaparte’s direction. “This is just some regular chick you just offed.”
Bonaparte seemed near tears.
“You bastard! I swear she had them when she attacked me! She had the strength of ten mortal men!”
“Or maybe you just have the strength of one tenth of a fucking ordinary woman!”
“Price, I swear, you take that back you blackguard, or…I’m sorry, I can’t…”
Bonaparte was really crying now, and Price couldn’t hold back the laughter any more. Both Inquisitors collapsed into paroxysms of hysterics.
“‘Blackguard?’” Price asked, putting his arm around his erstwhile rival as they sat on the asphalt, riddled with laughter, “Where did you dig that up?”
Nico stared on in amazement. His eyes must have been as wide as saucers. Price actually wiped away what must have been an ounce of snot from his nose and tossed it off away into the alley. He proffered Blake’s head back to Nico, who took it, and remained frozen, stock-still.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Bonaparte said, standing, “I didn’t mean to prank you, but my God you are green. Haven’t you even given him the textbook yet, Carter?”
“What the fuck is going on?” Nico shouted.
Bonaparte held her hand down and helped Price to his feet. Price shook his head.
“Vampires don’t have fangs, kid. You’ve been watching too many movies.”
“Then how do they eat?”
“How do you think they eat?”
“Like through…like…hollow straws in their…”
He pointed up at his own cheek where vampire teeth would have poked out if he had been wearing a novelty pair for Halloween.
“Ain’t an animal in the world that sucks blood through hollow teeth. Some snakes have hollow teeth so they can inject y
ou with venom. And if you didn’t have long fangs before you died, would you expect to just grow them out afterwards?”
“Where would they even hide them?” Bonaparte asked, “How would they blend in? Just never smile? Or do the tight-lipped thing like…who was that character?”
“Ruthven.”
Nico sagged. Blake Turner’s head suddenly felt like a 14-lb bowling ball.
“So how do they eat, then?”
“Same way as you, kid. At first, anyway. Then they develop a sense for how to draw energy from blood alone. A lot of renfields carry razor blades around their neck for their masters, and some nightcrawlers carry straight razors or knives for the same purpose. Then eventually they reach the point where they can just…”
Bonaparte snapped her fingers.
“Suck the strength right out of you. With a touch of the hand.”
“So there’s no way to tell if someone you killed is…”
“Here, let me learn you something. Look.”
He turned Blake’s head towards Nico. Where he expected to see red, the flesh was entirely white.
“She hasn’t had blood flowing through her veins in years. A hundred and fifty or so. That’s how you can tell she was a vamp when Bonaparte killed her.”
“Or I guess you could tell by, you know, checking the fangs,” Bonaparte said.
They both started laughing again.
Night Three
One
Earlier that night…
Cicatrice was already standing over her when she awakened.
“You’re awakening closer and closer to sundown. I’m impressed. Come quickly. There’s little time to waste.”
He held out a hand and helped her slough off the dirt of her bed. He removed a leather strap from his neck. On the strap was a massive golden key, marked with Aztec designs and faces. He held the key out towards Idi Han.
“One day this will be your burden. Your responsibility. When I’m gone.”
“That won’t be for some time, I’m sure, Father Cicatrice.”
“Some days I’m not so sure. Follow me.”
He led her down into the winding catacombs below the manse. The walls were thick with moss, and steps were carved out of the living rock down into the dank depths below. She followed, looking around in wonder.
“What do you think, seeing this?”
“It’s beyond description, Patriarch.”
“I agree. It’s hard to believe we’re still in Las Vegas. But this place existed long before the casinos did. It’s why I chose this spot for the Aztec.”
The catacombs became tighter the deeper they delved, and what had once seemed built by men gradually gave way to the natural wending caves of ancient, dried up waterways. Finally they reached a wall of solid rock which blocked their further descent.
“The end?” she asked.
“Look again. Look harder.”
Idi Han ran her fingers along the rockface. After a moment, she felt a barely perceptible seam. The rock could be moved, but only be an immensely strong immortal.
“I don’t think I can lift this catch, Father.”
“Idi Han, after eight hundred long years of life my power is limited only by the laws of physics. In you, I’ve seen someone achieve that in a matter of days. You are truly my heir. Lift.”
Gritting her teeth, she pressed the stone and surprised herself as she managed to lift a few tons of solid rock away.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Cicatrice intoned as he pushed the key into a now-revealed hole.
Turning and pushing, the door opened. Even with the key-only he or she could ever have opened the door, and maybe a handful of others like Otto Signari or the greatest remaining of their kind.
Stepping through the door she found herself on a small outcropping of rock. At the end of the outcropping was an altar, and at its foot was an Aztec headdress. The altar and the floor were slick with red effluvia, and the remains of an infant with its chest ripped open and its heart torn out remained atop the altar. She went to loop around the back of the altar and nearly stepped into a bottomless abyss. The room opened out before her, twinkling like a great sea of darkness, bereft of water.
“What is this place?”
“In the ancient days in my mother tongue they might have called this an oubliette: a place of forgetting. In the vernacular you might call it…a bottomless pit.”
“There’s no such thing,” she said, kicking a rock over the side.
She waited, straining, but even with her immensely-enhanced immortal hearing she never heard it hit bottom.
“Normally I would agree with you, but this is a place steeped with dark and mysterious energies. That is one place even I fear to tread. Perhaps it is not really bottomless, but I would not care to be swallowed up by whatever resides down there. Look, up there.”
Idi Han looked up and saw spread out in a ring thirteen outcroppings of rock from the ceiling of the cavern. On twelve of them hung a creature upside down, like a bat. They were gruesome, jawless creatures, looking more like lampreys than men. Thin, gaunt, almost skeletal, their skin was gray like a new-borne bruise. And they slept, a fitful, constantly fidgeting sleep, but their eyes were closed and they seemed locked in communion with dark gods.
“The Damned?” she whispered.
“Yes. And one is missing. As Price said.”
“How is that possible?”
“It shouldn’t be. I make them their daily sacrifice to keep them placated, as you can see.”
He gestured at the bloody altar. The dried intestines clinging to the side and the still-clotting baby on its face proved his point.
“Well, Father Cicatrice, shall we take a closer look?”
“What do you mean?”
Idi Han placed her foot on the wall. Taking a deep breath (though physiologically she had no need to) she placed her other foot next to it. She finally understood how to walk up the wall. Cicatrice was no sorcerer. It was a simple parlor trick. Her feet curved hard, clinging to the rock wall. She was simply so strong now that she could clench the wall with her feet.
She began walking upwards, gaining her confidence, until finally she stood on the ceiling as Cicatrice had during their first meal together. As always, he was a cipher, but either wishful thinking or her own immortal senses suggested to her the faintest glimmer of pride in his eyes. He eschewed climbing up the wall altogether, opting to leap so hard he “fell” end over end and hit the ceiling feetfirst.
“Try that next time.”
“Give me a few days, at least, Patriarch.”
“You are a precocious student. But clever. Lead the way, my most esteemed heir.”
Idi Han took a few steps with confidence, but when she found herself over the yawning chasm, began to worry, and almost to falter. Even Cicatrice feared that hole, and she could see why. It practically called to her, whispering in her ear, saying, “Fall, fall, drop into me, let me swallow you up.” It was far more powerful than any vertigo she had ever felt in mortal life. She wondered if there weren’t really dark powers at the bottom of the pit.
She felt Cicatrice place an arm on her shoulder, and she began to walk again with confidence, past the sleeping forms of the remaining twelve Damned. They reached what amounted to a treestump, carved or naturally occurring in the rock, or perhaps the result of a circumcised stalactite. She leaned down to examine it.
A few feet away, like a scar in the rock face, a great crack had appeared in the ceiling. She walked over and ran her hands along it. It was massive, easily fat enough for one of the lamprey-like creatures to burrow into and escape.
“He burrowed through solid rock,” she said. “It must be hundreds of meters to the surface.”
“Easily,” Cicatrice agreed. “It’s troubling. I’m not pleased that he has been destroyed, in fact I find it a great insult, and a great question. Who could defeat one of The Damned?”
“Do you think that the Inquisitor did it and hides his guilt from you?”
&nbs
p; “Carter Price is a child in all but age. He could do this the day Otto Signari kisses me on the lips and calls me his brother again.”
“Well, there is much to consider. But if you’ll forgive my weak stomach, Father Cicatrice, I am still only a few days old and being here makes me queasy.”
“I’m much older than that and I would still prefer the safety of that outcropping. Leave The Damned to this…strange nest.”
They made their exeunt far quicker than their entrance. Once back in the safe glow of the dismembered infant, a thought struck Idi Han.
“Is there anything unusual about that particular member of The Damned?”
Cicatrice put his hand to his chin and thought.
“She was called The Seer. She knew things before they happened, supposedly. Was very sensitive to changes in the weather or even in political winds.”
“Then she knew things before they happened. Like that The Hunter of the Dead is here?”
“I’m still not certain that would be enough to wake even The Seer. The only thing I can think of that would awaken her would be that if she sensed The Damned were about to be awakened.”
Cicatrice clutched the golden key around his chest.
“How could that happen?” she asked.
“Only if something happened to me and I wasn’t here to grant them their sacrifice each day.”
“Then there may be something to Signari’s threats?”
Cicatrice shook his head.
“It’s an idle exercise at best to attempt to predict the future. And it’s complete masturbation to attempt to stop it. Nevertheless, it’s a fool who doesn’t take precautions. Why don’t you take this?”
He pressed the golden key into her hand. She shook her head and shrunk back.
“No, Father Cicatrice, I am not ready for that responsibility.”
He patted her hand in a manner which could have been comforting in any other person.
“As I said, it’s not your responsibility. Just a precaution. If anything does happen to me, then The Damned will still not awaken.”
And what if something happens to me?
***
Tap-tap-tap.
Nico moaned lightly and rolled over. Price’s floor might not have been the most comfortable place on the planet, but he felt safer there than most places in the city.
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