Hunter of the Dead

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “I’ve caught bits and pieces of it, yes.”

  “In a time of interregnum – that is, after a patriarch’s death – sometimes there are power struggles. I won’t pretend we aren’t a fractious people. Sometimes no heir has been appointed, in which case the elders must make a decision about which of their number to elevate.”

  “I understand,” she said, “You’ve been chosen as the new House patriarch. It only makes sense. You’re the senior elder. I will bow to you in all your wishes.”

  The other end of the line was silent for a moment.

  “I don’t wish to be the cause of a power struggle. Our kind has suffered too great a loss already. There will be no recovering from the death of Cicatrice.

  “I think you misunderstand me, Idi Han. I have known Father Cicatrice…knew him, I should say…for many centuries and I have never known him to make an idle decision. Nor, with the exception of choosing Topan as his get, have I known him to make a false step. But now I think I understand even that mistake. Topan was brought across because one day he would bring you across. And you are our new matriarch.”

  “I can’t. I’m only a few days old. I can’t handle that responsibility. That’s madness.”

  “Father Cicatrice told us all much of you in just these past few days. He asserted with great certainty that you were to be his heir. He made no question of it, and he made me not question it, either. I have conferred with all of the other elders, and even a few of our stronger lesser members. All are in agreement. All are in harmony. You were heir, undispusted, and now you are matriarch, undisputed. House Cicatrice is now yours.”

  Six

  Price lit a cigarette and glanced over at Bonaparte, who was still discussing matters with the parents of the dead girl. Almost every Inquisitor had at least one leechified corpse in their family. Bonaparte was probably giving them her best recruiting speech. Probably identical to the one she had given him years ago. Probably identical to the one she had given that poor shmuck Patrick a few days ago. He was no lip reader but he watched her mouth flap, wondering if the words were the same.

  “I know you’re hurting. I know you’re not just hurting from the loss of someone close to you, you’re feeling like the entire world is burning down around you. Everything you thought you knew, everything you were so certain of, out the window. So you know the truth. Some people are of the opinion that knowing the truth, even if you do nothing about it, doesn’t change your life at all, just knowing is good enough.

  “I’m of a different outlook. I wish to god I had never slipped down the rabbithole. Wish I could go back to the way I was. They say ignorance is bliss and damned if that isn’t true. But now that I’m not ignorant anymore, I can’t go back to living with my head stuck in the sand. When I was a child I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I acted as a child…well, you know the rest.

  “So you have a choice. Plan A is to leave. Lie about what you saw, about what happened to your loved one. Don’t tell another soul because the people that don’t believe you will think you’re crazy and the people that do will want to hurt you for knowing. You pull up stakes, you move across the country, maybe to a different country, you try to start again. Hire a bunch of shrinks, try to get a good job to pay for them all. Try to forget what happened. Spend all your money on booze and pills and talk therapy and just try to make it all go away.

  “And it probably will. It’ll probably all go away and never brush up against your life again. It’s like getting struck by lightning, being exposed to a vampire. It rarely happens twice. Unless you run around with a foil hat on. And eventually you’ll convince yourselves that it wasn’t really a vampire, it was just a bad man, and you’ll finally at some point even stop having the bad dreams and just let it all slip through your fingers like sand through an hourglass.

  “Or there’s Plan B. You can fight. You can do good. You can avenge her. You saw what we did in there? We were too slow to help her. But you become a vampire hunter like us and you’ll be able to save other people’s loved ones from other vampires. You’ll slowly make a difference. Every time you kill one of those bloodsucking freaks, a little bit of your conscience will be alleviated. You won’t forget. You’ll remember. And you’ll make a difference. That’s Plan B. The choice is yours.”

  Yeah, maybe some of the specifics had changed, but it was the same general come-on. With a gung-ho kid like Nico, it would’ve worked in a heartbeat. With a middle-aged couple, though, there was always the illusion of starting again. Always the dream of another child, another city, rebuilding together. Sometimes couples came on board, but in a way both tended to tether the other to the temporal life. Widows and widowers were always an easier sell.

  They weren’t buying it. The man was trying to reason with Bonaparte and the mother was just shaking her head. Bonaparte nodded, handing them a fat wad of cash and warning them, presumably, not to tell the cops. It was an especially good warning in this town, where every cop, whether he knew it or not, was on the take. Everyone in Vegas either reported directly to Cicatrice or reported to someone who reported to…

  Damn. He’s gone.

  What was going to happen now? There’d be a power struggle. That was all but written. Idi Han was a smart girl, but with movers and shakers like Otto Signari and Cicatrice’s old heir on the scene, she wouldn’t stand a chance. If House Cicatrice existed tomorrow, it would either stand as a puppet to another house, a shadow of its former self, or it would be carved up by the other Houses and devoured piecemeal. Either way, there was going to be a power vacuum, and nature abhors a vaccum. Price worried if it would mean an expanded war, and what that would mean for the Inquisition.

  Bonaparte walked up to him.

  “You all right?”

  “I’m walking,” he said.

  He lifted the leg of his new pair of pants, wincing as he did so. His entire right leg was basically bandaged up like a mummy, but he could still flex it with more or less his regular control. The medics in Bonaparte’s band had cut his nice pants off.

  “How much morphine have they got you on?”

  “Enough.”

  “Got a present for you.”

  “A present? For me?”

  “Well…more of a burden, really.”

  “A chore, you mean?”

  “A chore, yeah.”

  “How did I know?”

  Bonaparte rubbed her hand up and down her opposite wrist.

  She’s nervous. That’s not good.

  “Listen, Carter. You’ve run the numbers same as I have. The Houses are at war. The Hunter’s around. I’ve got a feeling tonight’s going to be a late goddamned night. I can’t really spare any men. But we can’t just let this go undealt with, either.”

  Price nodded.

  “I wouldn’t let you take it anyway.”

  He leaned over and grabbed a burlap sack from the ground and tossed it over his shoulder.

  “Oh, one other thing.”

  Bonaparte reached into her pocket and held out something balled up in her fist. Price held out his palm and she let it drop. It was a ring, black, made of volcanic glass and inscribed with tiny, horrific images. He had seen Cicatrice wearing it.

  “The ring of a House patriarch. Don’t you want it as a souvenir?”

  Bonaparte scratched the back of her neck and shook her head.

  “No. Doesn’t seem right taking it somehow. Besides, maybe the Cicatrices will kill to get it back. In which case, better you than me.”

  Price rolled his eyes and dropped the ring into his pocket.

  “Thanks.”

  Seven

  A knock came at the conference room door. Idi Han looked up from her brooding, her head still nestled on her fist.

  “Enter.”

  Hedrox stepped inside. She was carrying a suit bag. In her other hand was a clipboard with a pen dangling from it. She hung the suit bag on the coat rack.

  “Elder Rahim advised me what happened. I…weep for your loss, Matriarch.”
>
  She looked up at the cultist, as though noticing her for the first time.

  “Isn’t it a loss for you as well, Hedrox?”

  She bowed deeply.

  “An immeasurable loss. Words cannot convey how I feel today.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Inquisitors, Matriarch.”

  “That’s a single word, Hedrox. I said tell me what happened.”

  She nodded.

  “Of course. My apologies. I didn’t know how…explicit you wanted me to get.”

  “As explicit as you are aware or capable of being.”

  Hedrox folded her hands, along with the clipboard behind her back.

  “Father Cicatrice left at approximately 01:05. He didn’t tell us where he was going, but that is his wont. Our network of cameras and spies revealed the rest. He arrived at Carter Price’s apartment at approximately 01:30.”

  The same time I was with Nico.

  “Price’s apartment? What was he doing there?”

  “I wasn’t privy to the patriarch’s…”

  “I mean take an educated guess, Hedrox.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I noticed he and the patriarch had been working together on some sort of project recently. I would assume it was to do with that. You would probably know more on the matter than I, Matriarch.”

  “What happened? Price killed him?”

  Hedrox laughed, caught herself, then stopped.

  “Oh. Um. No, Matriarch. A single Inquisitor fighting the patriarch would be like a…an ant attacking a full grown man.”

  “I see. But swarms of ants have been known to take down lions.”

  “Just so, Matriarch. You understand precisely.”

  “So Price and his goons turned on Cicatrice.”

  Idi Han brought her fist down so hard on the arm of her chair that it shattered.

  “Son of a bitch. To think I trusted him.”

  Damn you, Nico.

  “It’s best not to place your trust in Inquisitors, Matriarch.”

  “Cicatrice often warned me not to place my trust in mortals at all. What’s on that paper you’ve got?”

  Hedrox nodded and hurriedly placed the clipboard before her.

  “Ah, yes, well, the patriarch, that is to say, the former patriarch, he never anticipated his own death, I mean none of us did but…”

  “Stop. Jabbering.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Matriarch. He did ensure that we were prepared for any contingency. This is a list of his most important priorities. He did not explain the first entry on the list, but I believe it may make more sense to you.”

  She looked at the clipboard. Most of it was bureaucratic nonsense. Immortals requesting permission to bring across a favored mortal as a get, appointments to attend, bribes to make, and quite a bit of the usual business of running a casino and an entire town. Mostly he wrote in English. But the number one entry on the list was written in a few Cantonese characters, obviously for Idi Han’s benefit.

  “Virgin sacrifice. Daily. You must never forget or fail to do it.”

  The Damned.

  “Did you provide the patriarch with a child or an infant every day?”

  “Ah, yes. The patriarch said he preferred a virgin for his morning snack. He said he didn’t care the age, but, you know, the only way to be sure most times, especially in Las Vegas, was to chose someone too young to be otherwise.”

  She nodded.

  “Is that my new dress?”

  Her head bobbing, Hedrox hurried over and unzipped the garment bag. She drew out a magnificent cheongsam, pure white like the tangzhuang Cicatrice had worn, and with the same red hourglass embroidered on the back.

  “Pure spider silk,” she said, “Made to your exact measurements. Uh, they’ll never change now, now that you’re an immortal. I don’t know if you knew that.”

  Idi Han rose and held out her hand. Hedrox hurried it over to let her feel the fabric between her fingers.

  “This must have cost a fortune.”

  “Oh, very much so. Father Cicatrice ordered it made the moment you arrived. I had not hoped to give it to you so soon, however.”

  She smiled fondly as she ran her hand across it. A gift. A posthumous gift from her beloved mentor.

  “It’s magnificent,” she said, “There’s just one problem with it.”

  Hedrox blinked.

  “Problem? I checked it over myself, I had a dozen of the best tailors look at it.”

  Hedrox looked the dress up and down, trying to spot the hidden imperfection which had escaped her notice. Idi Han chuckled.

  “It’s not an imperfection with the tailoring, Hedrox. The problem is it’s white. House Cicatrice is the House of Death. All our symbols are of passing.”

  “Oh. Father Cicatrice told me that in China white is the symbol of death, not black like here. He wore one just like it.”

  She nodded.

  “I know I’m just a farm girl, Hedrox, but I’m not stupid. I know what color is the color of mourning both in America and back home. What I mean is I think I’d prefer it in red.”

  She swiped out at the cultist with a preternatural speed and sliced a gash on her nose. A splotch of red blood dropped onto the cheongsam, staining it terribly. Hedrox gasped, and tried to wipe the blood away.

  “Let me ask you a question. How stupid do you really think I am?”

  “I…I don’t, Matriarch. I’m sorry, I’ll have the dress taken back. Whatever color you like, I’ll have it for you within the hour.”

  “That’s really the problem, isn’t it, Hedrox? You think Cicatrice’s gifts are in any way your domain. You’ve despised me since the minute I arrived here. Isn’t that right? Tell the truth, damn it.”

  The cunicular look in Hedrox’s eyes disappeared as though it had never been there. She placed the dress and the garment bag down on the conference table. For the first time she had the look of a serious woman instead of a pawing sycophant.

  “Yes, I despised you. He granted you the Long Gift. Who the hell are you? Some shit farmer from halfway around the world? I’ve served him for twenty years. As head of his circle for ten. If anyone’s earned the Long Gift, it’s me. I don’t give two goddamns for all your immortal politics and posturing. I just care about what I was promised.”

  Idi Han felt a tickle at the back of her throat. She put her hand demurely to her lips to try to hide the giggle. It didn’t help. A moment later she was laughing, full-throated, wide-eyed, guffawing at the ridiculous woman before her. As though she had had a fit, it gradually passed.

  “You buffoon. Idiot. Have you ever seen a disciple granted the Long Gift? It doesn’t happen. You’re useful idiots. If you were of any value as an immortal, you’d’ve been made one. Immortals don’t bring others across because of years of servitude. They bring them across because of inherent power. An inherent power I possess. I can smell it, we all can. Yours is so weak, I don’t even think you’d survive the turning process. You’d be reduced to one of those kitchen midden ghouls.”

  Hedrox’s eyes narrowed.

  “Then it is true.”

  She nodded.

  “But you already knew it was true. You knew it was true when you had the Signaris jump me. And you damn sure knew it was true when you tipped off the Inquisition that Father Cicatrice would be alone in Price’s apartment.”

  She smiled.

  “Still think I’d be such a weak immortal now? I have the killer instinct. And I don’t suffer slights lightly.”

  Idi Han reached down and fingered a broken splinter from the chair. She ripped a chunk of wood out of it, a dangerous, jagged chunk. “Too bad you’ll never find out.”

  “Now!” Hedrox shouted. “Now!”

  Hedrox turned to look at the closet. Idi Han looked, too. They both waited patiently for a moment, but nothing happened. Idi Han walked over to the closet.

  “When you said, ‘now,’ was this door supposed to open?”

  She opened the door. The sickening vision of g
rue within made Hedrox immediately drop to her knees and vacate her stomach on the carpet.

  “Ohhh…well, now I’m going to have to make you lick that up. But I suppose when you shouted this door was supposed to open and these two assassins of yours were supposed to jump out?”

  Hedrox nodded, tears streaming down her face. Idi Han stepped into the closet and emerged with the industrial-strength paper shredder Cicatrice had kept in one corner of the room. The blades were still sticky with blood and chunks of intestine.

  “You see, this first one here, I fed him piece by piece into the paper shredder.”

  She shook the basket. It groaned wetly with a full bag. She popped the mechanism out of the top and kicked it over. A thick, bright red, porridgy sludge like ground beef that had been run through a food processor and pureed spilled out on the floor. Chunks of shattered bone sparkled throughout the mess of liquified assassin.

  “But then the mechanism jammed. I mean, it was a strong motor, but there’s only so much bone and ligament it can chew, you know? So the second one, well, he had to go slower. I guess that was more fun, anyway. I always wondered what would happen if you just pulled a man’s bones out, one at a time.”

  She reached into the closet and pulled out a floppy, almost shapeless semi-human form on a coat hanger. The boneless man had been heavily bound and gagged with packing tape. She laid him over her arm like a waiter with a serving napkin. She kicked a pile of what seemed to be a full human skeleton of bones out of the closet and scattered it amongst the flesh porridge.

  “Old Floppy here survived almost until I pulled out his skull. I could hardly believe it when I plucked out each of his vertebrae one by one.”

  She made a wet sucking noise as she replicated pulling out the man’s backbones on his sagging carcass.

  “And I really couldn’t believe it when I got each of his ribs out. I mean his heart and lungs are probably…down here now.”

  She gestured at the flaccid man’s boneless pelvis, which was fat with sagging organs.

  “It was the skull, though, nothing to be done. I tried a couple of different ways but there was no way to get it out without getting the brain out, too. But don’t worry, I put it back.”