She raised the head and showed where she had jammed the brain back into the toothless mouth, filling it up, as though the assassin had been gagging on his own thought organ.
“I just always wanted to see what someone without any backbone looked like. I guess I could’ve just waited a few minutes until you came in.”
“Please, God,” Hedrox was muttering.
She knelt down behind her, wrapped her arm around her neck, and jabbed the splinter of wood into her ear.
“No, no, no,” she said, “None of your asinine, empty praying. Cicatrice has been your only god up until now. And now I am. And I am a vengeful goddess. You’re going to suffer far worse than either of these two clowns. I didn’t even care about them. They were just marionettes, dancing on strings. You were the puppeteer. And frankly, an attempt on my own life, that only makes me so mad. Not exactly not mad, but I expect that sort of thing. You, though, you killed a man more important than a father to me. So you’re going to suffer in ways you’ve never dreamt were possible. But first things, first. You’re still my loyal servant, for the next however long I let you live. You’re going to clean up this whole mess. Starting with that pile of sick you just vomited up. Then we’ll move on to the rest. You always wanted to know what it was like to be an immortal. And I told you you’d never be better than a ghoul. So time to find out.”
She shoved Hedrox’s face to the floor into the pile of putrid, still-warm throwup.
Eight
Nico stepped through the door and very nearly retched. Reaching into his pocket he grabbed a handkerchief and held it over his face. He looked around the room. Every surface was coated in gore. Body parts hung in places both expected and bizarre, like a child casting laundry on every surface. And in the center of the tempest of grue, Idi Han sat in a broken chair at the end of a long table, looking blank.
“Idi Han!”
He jumped forward, slipped on a puddle of blood, and skittered to regain his footing. With a little more care he hurried over to the other side of the table.
She was wearing a dress a little bit different from the one she normally wore. For one thing it was red, a dark red. He touched the fabric and realized with a sinking feeling that it was still wet. The dress wasn’t red; it was soaked in blood.
He grabbed her hand and pressed it.
“Idi Han! Idi Han!”
Slowly, as though it were a creaky old puppet in a midnight ‘50s horror movie, her head turned toward him. She blinked, but the blank look did not abate.
“Are you all right? Are you okay?”
A thin smile cracked her lips.
“Of course, Nico. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He gestured at the nightmarescape all around.
“This place looks like a war zone.”
“Does it? I thought it looked like a slaughterhouse.”
Nico pressed his hand to her cheek and her forehead. Both felt cold as ice and he suddenly felt foolish for checking. Something was wrong with her, though.
“Well, either, way,” he said, patting her hand, “What happened here?”
“There were some mortals who made some unwise decisions.”
Nico sank to his knees. He felt as though someone had just punched him in the gut.
“You did this?”
She nodded.
“It looks like you…tortured them.”
“I did.”
He took his hands off of hers. She didn’t respond. He rose to his feet and stumbled backwards. He nearly tripped over a chair, but grabbed it to steady himself.
“How could you? This is a horror scene. Don’t you have any remorse? Don’t you have any feelings left?”
Idi Han puckered her lips and dismissed his concerns with a wave.
“Oh, come on, Nico, they were only mortals.”
“I’m a mortal,” he whispered.
“You know what I meant.”
“What am I, special to you? Like a pet? A concentration camp commandant’s favorite Jew?”
“How perfectly banal. How beautifully bourgeois of you. You eat meat, Nico, I’ve seen it.”
“These aren’t animals. Animals don’t feel. Animals don’t think.”
“We’re all animals, Nico.”
She rose from her seat. He backed away from her, until his spine struck the door. In an eyeblink she was on top of him, her hand against his cheek.
“I want to be with you, Nico. Don’t you want to be with me? Don’t lie. What’s the point in lying?”
His throat was so parched he had trouble speaking.
“Of course I want to be with you. But you’d have to change. Swear off this kind of…evil.”
She turned her head, like a cat examining a mouse before delivering the coup de grace. She took his hand and pressed it to her heart.
“I think you’re wrong about who has to change. You feel that?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Exactly. The pain and the suffering of the world slip away when you’re like me. All the weakness of guilt and fear, all those useless feelings, worrying about other people…they just get numb. And then they go away. I could grant you this gift. I’m already strong enough to do it.”
She began to drain just a drop of the energy away from his hands to prove her point. He snatched them away.
“I can’t,” he said.
“It’s glorious, Nico. You have no idea.”
“You talk about guilt and fear fading. What about love and passion? What makes you think those will stand the test of time? What you’re feeling for me right now, how do I know it’s not a vestigial piece of your real self. The real you. What was your name before?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not who I am anymore. That girl died and I don’t care if I never hear about her again. I’m Idi Han now. Queen of the Night. And you could be my king.”
“I’d rather die a person than live forever as a thing.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“A thing? You think I’m nothing but a thing?”
He had no words, but gestured at the depravity of the blood-speckled room.
“Get out now. For what we had together, I’ll allow you to leave.”
Nico scrabbled at the doorknob, not taking his eyes off of her. After a moment, he realized how silly he was being, and just turned his back to her to open it. If she meant to do him harm, it didn’t matter whether he could see her or not. Before leaving, he turned back one last time.
“You know; I would’ve been your mirror.”
Nine
“There was a time,” a syrupy, cruel voice intoned, “when our kind was not relegated to the shadows.”
“And there will be again,” she whispered under her breath.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Startled, she looked up, nearly jumping to her feet. Cicatrice stood before her, his hands folded customarily in front of him.
“I thought you were a memory.”
“If I am, then I’m here to remind you of something.”
He pointed at her chest. She clutched the golden key she wore there. She drew it out and stared at it.
“This is a dream.”
“Our kind do not dream.”
She waved the key towards him.
“You always have quite a lot to say about our kind, don’t you? What we should do, how we should we act, what we should feel, what we are.”
“It is the code.”
“The code you wrote, isn’t that right? The code you came up with. To protect us from The Hunter of the Dead. And now he’s here anyway.”
“You’re wasting time. You must feed The Damned, Idi Han. If you don’t…”
She cast the key away with such force that it smashed through the two-way mirror which looked out over the casino. The key sailed through the air and landed behind a bank of slot machines up against the wall. One day one of the janitors would have a very lucky pay day if he did his job well.
“You’re supposed to be a ghost,
then? A shade? An echo?”
Cicatrice looked at the floor.
“No, don’t look away, look at me!” she shouted. “I have something to tell you. I’m glad you’re here. You and Topan and Signari and everyone always talk about how powerful I am, how strong I am. I never felt strong, even standing toe-to-toe with another immortal. But, now, for the first time, I understand what you all mean.
“It’s not that I’m strong. It’s that you were weak. For seven hundred years you lived in fear. You pretend to be a mighty man and others quaked in your shadow. But the truth is you’ve been a scared little boy, terrified ever since that day you first saw The Hunter of the Dead. And this, all of this, your code, your Houses, your patriarchs and your elders, and your endless apprenticeships, and your carefully chosen gets and all of it…it’s all a ruse. Whistling past the graveyard. Keeping our numbers low so that you never have to face the terrifying Hunter again. Isn’t that right?”
He looked at her, but said nothing.
“You were weak. Too weak to let The Damned roam free. Too terrified of the consequences. Terrified The Hunter would return, terrified the mortals would learn of our existence. And now I know why you all call me strong. Because I’m not scared of any of those things. And I’m happy to watch everything burn.”
She turned to look out at the casino. It was far from peaceful, buzzing as it was with humanity, blinking lights, smoke, the whirring of machines, the cadence calls of dealers, and all manner of hustle and bustle. But it was ordinary. It was normal. Pedestrian. After tomorrow she would never be able to see this scene again.
“Aren’t you proud of me, Father…?”
She turned to look at him, but there was no one there. Grimly, she pressed a button on her telephone.
“Yes, Matriarch?”
“Bring me two pots of makeup. One white, one black. Contact Otto Signari by whatever means we have at our disposal. Tell him I want to talk. That I’m ready to negotiate the surrender of House Cicatrice.”
Ten
With a burlap sack over one shoulder and a shovel over the other, Price strode into the cemetery. A ghoul clambered up on top of one of the headstones, silhouetted in eerie light against the moon. Eyes gleaming yellow, it stared at Price. Price threw the sack to the ground.
“Guess I haven’t been keeping up with my regular extermination work with all that’s been going on the past few days.”
The ghoul hissed, its eyes darting back and forth. It went both ways with feral ghouls sometimes. Sometimes they ran, sometimes they attacked. This one attacked. Price waited until the ghoul was in perfect range and swung the shovel in a perfect arc through the air. It connected with the ghoul’s chin and severed the top of his head from the rest of him. The cap of his head tumbled to the ground. Its yellow eyes blinked, roved, and fell still.
Price raised both arms to the air and made the imitation of a hissing audience.
“And the crowd goes wild! Yeah! Carter! Carter! Carter!”
Price paused and scrunched his face. His little baseball charade had reminded him of Nico. He sighed and tossed the burlap sack over his shoulder then struggled to grab the ghoul and drag it by its heel while simultaneously kicking the top of its head like a puck across the blacktop. He came to a rest with his burdens at a grave marked AOIFE PRICE.
“Hey, ma,” he whispered, running his finger along the engraved name.
He sloughed the sack atop the grave, and kicked the ghoul’s body and head top until it was in the same spot. He jammed the head of the spade rigidly into the earth and slouched down against the burlap sack. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out his flask, unscrewed the top, and took a sip.
“Slainté,” he muttered
He tippled a few drops onto his fingers and ran it across his mother’s name. As he tipped his head back to take another sip, out of the corner of his eye he spotted a white-clad figure busying itself at a nearby grave. Price leapt to his feet; hand on the shotgun on his side.
“Relax,” a dark, heavy voice intoned.
Cicatrice rose from the grave, a handful of white orchids in his hand. He walked up and proffered them forth. Price reached out and slowly grasped the handle of stems.
“For your mother.”
“Did you just steal these?”
“Well, Price, I would’ve called and had my florist send some around but considering I’m dead and in that sack right there, my options are limited.”
Price thought about it, shrugged, and placed the flowers at the base of his mother’s stone. He lay back down against Cicatrice’s body. Cicatrice walked around to the other side of the grave and lay down opposite him.
“Are you real?”
“What is reality? What is a dream?”
Price grunted.
“That’s very poetic but it’s hardly an answer.”
“I wonder what kind of an answer someone like me could give. ‘Yes, I am real’ or ‘No, I’m not.’ Either way seems somehow disingenuous.”
“Are you a ghost?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“A hallucination, then?”
“Probably. I suppose that’s what science would say. But then science would also say there’s no such thing as vampires.”
“And the real Cicatrice wouldn’t call himself a vampire.”
“And a hallucination couldn’t pick up a bouquet. So. Here we are.”
Price took another drink. He looked upward. The stars were bright and he felt like he could see them all. The moon practically eclipsed the rest of the sky. It had been so damn long since he had just sat and looked at them. It made him wistful for another time. Back when he had been Nico’s age, maybe. Although who knew if a kid like Nico even looked at the stars anymore. Kids never seemed to look up from their smart phones. Nico was a good kid, though. A good boss, come to think of it.
“How’s your leg?”
Price nodded.
“Interesting that you ask. I’m…on quite a lot of morphine. But once they got all of the wood out and made a little, you know, Tinker Toy log cabin out of it, basically the damage was all nominal. Not like I was going to walk around with a cord of lumber in my leg, but basically I’m all patched up.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Do you really give a shit?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Oh, I’d say the most likely explanation is that I’m here to convince you to give my body back to Idi Han for proper burial.”
Price laughed and shook his head.
“I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
“Knew what? That there’s still a dignity and an honor in death that even the voices in your head would like you to acknowledge?”
“No,” Price said, elongating the short word, “not that. I knew even in death you’d try to get out of this. You’re like a weed that can’t be pulled out, even by the root. I’m not stupid, you know. I know that staking or beheading isn’t the end. It just incapacitates you. A night in your native soil and you’d be back on your feet.”
“Ah,” Cicatrice said, “then you think I’m trying to trick you. So be it. Bury my body in some fake grave you’ve bought just for the chance. While you’re at it, why not jumble up my parts with some dead feral ghoul’s? That’s the dignity befitting the end of the greatest immortal of his age.”
“It’s not fake.”
Price ran his hands through the soil of his mother’s plot, which had overgrown with grass. He pulled out a chunk and let it sift through his hands, disposing of the clod of grass.
“Well, I know your mother’s not buried here. Not really. She was one of our kind at the end.”
“I know.”
He rose. Feeling the shift in the sack that contained his mortal remains, the shade (or whatever) of Cicatrice rose as well. With the spade, Price scratched a small trench around the gravesite.
“She’s ash now. I burned her right here on this very spot. I know this is just a m
onument to her memory. I know she wasn’t herself at the end. I don’t know what it is about your kind. Idi Han’s not the Idi Han she was before she died. I doubt you’re the same as you were either.”
“I’m not. That’s why Cicatrices choose an immortal name.”
“What was your mortal name?”
“If I am a hallucination, then that’s something I couldn’t possibly know.”
“And if you’re not?”
“If I’m not then it’s something I would never tell.”
Price tapped the spade over and over again into the groove he had just dug. It was an affectation more than anything else.
“My mother – my real mother, I mean, not the thing your kind turned her into – would be proud that I ended your legacy in her name.”
Price flicked his Zippo open and on with a single move.
“Don’t,” Cicatrice said.
Price tossed the lighter onto the burlap sack and watched as the remains of the greatest vampire of his age and some anonymous degenerate ghoul burned up together. He turned to say something witty, but the shade of Cicatrice was gone.
Night Four
One
Deep in the bowels of the Earth, The Executioner’s eyes fluttered.
Food.
She waited. Her gut twisted; an unfamiliar feeling.
Caretaker. I hunger.
She wrapped her head back in her hands and waited. A bony hand, chilly as a frozen lake, wrapped around her shoulder.
Executioner.
She opened her eyes. A deranged creature stood before her, his jaw missing, his skin sallow and nearly sloughing off the bone. He looked like a horror out of time, but there was something familiar about his features, the low cut of his brow, the way his nose turned to the left. Her mind raced across five centuries of slumber, trying to recall the creature’s name. He had once been a bloody jaguar warrior of Tenochtitlan, but his name had fled her entirely.
The Seer is gone.
The Warrior pointed across the way to the Seer’s spot. She was indeed missing. How irritating. How noisome. She was tired. All she wanted to do was slumber, slumber for a thousand years. But now she was hungry, her guts ached, and The Seer was missing.
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