She snatched the pillow away from his face and grabbed him bodily, surprising him with her strength. She shoved his head under the kitchen sink and turned the water on. He struggled to get away, but she held his head under.
“How are you this strong?” he groaned.
“I’ve wrestled snakes more impressive than you. Now are you going to wake up?”
“Yes, yes, I surrender!”
He held up his arms as best he could, sputtering under the water. She let him go. He looked up, blinking at her.
“Where is Nico Salazar?” she repeated. “Your apprentice.”
He shrugged.
“Hopefully on a plane back to Puerto Rico.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
Price slumped into his chair. He scrabbled at the ground, trying to find a bottle that might have some hair of the dog left in it, but they were all empty and his flask was in his jacket, half a world away on the other side of the room.
“He left me, Holly Ann. Probably the smartest thing the kid ever did. Hung around me much longer he would’ve died, just like my last apprentice. Tired of getting kids killed.”
“So you have no idea where he is?”
Price screwed up his eyes.
“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”
Kasprzak leaned against the kitchen counter.
“You know both you and the vampires come to me for information.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, the word on the street is that Nico Salazar alive is worth his weight in gold right now.”
“The kid? What the fuck for?”
“I was hoping you might tell me.”
Price scowled.
“If I had to guess…I’d think it has something to do with Cicatrice’s new…”
Price paused.
“What?”
“…Heir. He’s dead, Holly Ann.”
“Well, that’s the rumor, but…”
“It’s no rumor,” he stated flatly. “Which means she’s the matriarch now.”
Kasprzak looked as if she was about to lay an egg. But before she could say anything else, a breathless Nico came hurtling into the apartment. He very nearly tumbled into the hole, but Price jumped up and grabbed him.
“What happened to the door? What happened to the floor?”
Price shook him.
“Where you have been? Why’d you leave without telling me?”
Nico stared down at the floor and shuffled his feet.
“Remember how you told me not to be fooled? That vampires aren’t people no matter how much they look like us?”
“Ah,” Kasprzak said, “so the lad’s got a case of coffin fever.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Price slammed Nico in the stomach with the butt of his shotgun. He doubled over in pain and dropped a water bottle he had been carrying to the floor.
“That’s for not listening to me.”
He held out his hand and helped Nico to his feet.
“Jesus Christ,” Nico muttered when he got his wind back, “you could’ve just said, ‘Told you so.’ What’s the professor doing here?”
“She was worried about you, as it happens. Apparently you’re the new toast of the underworld. Jesus, I need a drink.”
Price grabbed the water bottle Nico had been carrying and unscrewed the cap. He put it to his lips.
“Don’t drink that!”
“Why not?”
“It’s holy water.”
“Holy water? What the hell would you get holy water for, kid?”
Price replaced the cap and tossed it back to Nico.
“For…for fighting. Don’t you two know what’s going on?”
Kasprzak and Price exchanged a glance.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…the city’s on fire. They need us, Carter. They need us now. This…this is what the Inquisition is here for, isn’t it?”
“If Cicatrice is dead, it would mean utter chaos in the vampire community,” Kasprzak said, “I would recommend we all head down to the Aztec, tout suite. If anyone can put this genie back in the bottle, it’ll be Cicatrice’s new heir. Who…if I’m following everything correctly…you have a rather good relationship with, Nico?”
“Uh…that day has kind of passed.”
“Well, sorry, kid, nobody likes talking to their ex, especially when they’re a goddamned vampire matriarch, but the world’s at stake, so you’d better swallow your pride.” He hissed as he took a few steps. His leg was still bothering him. “I’m in no mood to walk. We’ll take the Caddie.”
“Let’s just hope she hasn’t done something stupid,” Kasprzak said.
***
Price, Nico, and Kasprzak entered the Aztec. No guards stood to bar the way as they had before.
“What’s going on here?” Kasprzak asked.
“I thought the guards had standing orders not to let Inquisitors through.”
“Well, where the hell are they?” Price asked.
Price glanced at the booth where the guards normally stood. A telephone sat there, every single one of its dozen or so incoming call lights blinking an urgent red. He exchanged a glance with Nico.
“What? What is it?”
“I think your girlfriend did something stupid.”
“Oh my,” Kasprzak said, tugging on Price’s jacket, “‘stupid’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
The professor pointed at the cage in the center of the casino where chips and slips were turned into bills and coins. A hulking gray Damned vampire approached the cage.
“Shit!” Price said, pushing Kasprzak and Nico behind him as he drew his machete.
The coin-changing clerk had obviously been working in Vegas a long time. He took a glance at the strange gray monster and without batting an eye, said, “How many chips would you like, sir?”
The Damned reached between the bars of the cage and took hold of the clerk. He pulled him through, though his hips got caught where his head hadn’t, and in spite of his screaming, ripped the clerk in half. The Damned held the torso of the poor clerk, even as the end of his spinal cord dangled, and granted him the Long Gift. Like a dead frog kicking its legs while being electrified, the half-clerk twitched and jerked in The Damned’s embrace until finally the jagged bottom of his torso opened up like a floodgate and a wave of blood poured out. The Damned dropped the newly-minted half-vampire to the floor, where he pulled himself along furiously, afflicted by the hunger of all newly turned nightcrawlers.
“There’s not just one,” Kasprzak said, pointing.
Price glanced around the casino. No wonder all the guards had been called away. He counted no less than five Damned, stalking through the badly lit, loudly beeping place. The bings and pings of the hypnotizing machines and games which served in normal times to keep players focused on the games instead of the world outside were keeping them equally distracted from the encroaching carnage.
A tourist couple in Aloha shirts walked by the stunned Inquisitors.
“What’s going on here, Bertie?” the man asked loudly.
“Must be some kind of a floorshow.”
Price watched with terror as one of The Damned swooped down from the ceiling and snatched up the couple, one in each distended hand, and poured its dark power into them.
“We need to…we need to protect the people!” Nico cried out.
“The hell with that!” the professor exclaimed. “We need to protect ourselves. Let’s get out of here!”
“Both of you, relax,” Price said, trying to keep his breathing even.
The Damned were distracted by a smorgasbord of easy targets. Bluehairs lined up at the slot machines pulled away at levers, blissfully unaware of their disappearing neighbors as they traded their Social Security checks for paltry returns. They refused to even look up as their neighbors screamed their heads off. “There’s only one safe place in this city right now. And we’re only a few hundred feet from it.”
He poi
nted at the gaudy plastic pyramid in the center of the Aztec. The distance between them and it was slick with blood and littered with bodily excretions and other effluvia. Freshly-minted vampires and ghouls prowled the floor, the ghouls licking at the blood and gnawing the entrails, the vampires disinterested. All started to turn towards the three breathing heroes. It seemed they were surrounded.
“Only a football field,” Kasprzak muttered, “but what a football field.”
Nico swallowed a lump in his throat and hefted his bladed baseball bat.
“We have an advantage,” Price said, “They’re brand new which means they’re weak. The lust for warm flesh is still on them so they’ll lash out foolishly. We can make it.”
“In any case we have no choice,” Kasprzak said sourly.
Nico brandished his bat and pulled out the bottle of holy water and pressed it toward her.
“Do you need a weapon, Professor?”
“You may as well not even bother, son. Holy water is about the worst choice in vampire-fighting equipment.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“Kid,” Price said, “for a holy icon to work it has to be in contact with a person of faith. As soon as you toss that, it becomes nothing but regular water.”
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, stuffing the bottle back into his pocket.
“Not to worry. I didn’t come unprepared.”
She unfurled the satchel from her shoulder and placed it on the ground. She busied herself for a moment constructing something. A moment later she rose with a device that resembled a long wand, with three rotating buzzsaw blades arranged vertically along its length. The handle was designed for two-handed use, to keep it steady and horitzontal. Leave it to the curly-headed professor to be full of surprises.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “if this is to be my last stand, I am proud to be making it with you.”
“Likewise,” Price said, nodding at his friend and his apprentice.
“Jesus,” Nico shouted, “you two talk like we’re dead already. I’m way too young and beautiful to die.”
Price clapped Nico on the shoulder.
“Come on, pretty boy.”
The three heroes plunged boldly forward, swinging and slashing their weapons. Price picked off a few ghouls with his shotgun, which sent the others scattering. The vampire who had been Bertie jumped at Nico, emboldened with fleshlust, and managed to duck a devastating swing from his bat. Once she was within his guard, his feet betrayed him and he slipped on a pool of blood, tumbling to the ground, his bat rolling away from him.
The vampiric tourist ripped at him like a dog with its favorite toy. Price hissed in empathy as she ripped four long chunks out of his face with her scrabbling fingers. He kicked her hard in the ribs, but even a brand new vampire was not so susceptible to physical force. He hesitated to bring his machete down, worried that any swing that would take her head off would end up lodged in Nico’s chest.
Luckily, Kasprzak felt no such compunction. With clinical precision she brought her whirring blades down gently on Bertie’s neck and watched as the vampire’s throat pulverized below her. When the vampire stopped moving, she lifted the buzzsaw away. Nico shook off his burden like a dog shaking off the rain and rose to his feet, grabbing Price’s hand for help.
Nico turned and nearly instantly returned the favor, smashing his bat into the face of a ghoul loping towards Kasprzak’s back, arms outstretched like a mummy. The ghoul toppled to the ground, dead.
“Hey, these gray things are a bit easier than the regular vamps,” Nico said.
“No shortage of those either.”
The monsters began to scatter as they realized their easy meal was more porcupine than bunny. Nico nearly took the first step of the plastic pyramid on the chin, but Price grabbed him and helped to prop him up. The three humans stumbled up the steps and plunged inside. Cicatrice’s inner sanctum, which had been previously buzzing with activity, was eerily quiet. A few emergency lights glowed, and there were signs of struggle and leftover body parts hinting at the fate of his renfields, but the room was otherwise empty.
Nico ran his hand across his head, presumably to wipe away sweat, but it came away bloody.
“Wow, that was easy.”
“Fuck,” Price said, angrily throwing his machete to the ground with a clang.
“Fuck, indeed,” Kasprzak agreed, nodding.
“What? What am I missing? We made it. Didn’t we?”
“You’re missing the big picture, kid,” Price said. “We made it, yes. But those things are loose in the city now. The Damned are dangerous but if they’re turning people then now the city’s going to start getting clogged with newly-turned vampires and ghouls. And they’ll all be afflicted by the hunger.”
“Usually a vampire chooses his get – his offspring – with great care and watches over them carefully,” Kasprzak explicated, “but these vampires haven’t learned the code. They’ll go wild and feast on every person in sight. With The Damned loose we could be looking at the vampire population to approach near-epidemic levels. And with the newborns left unchecked the slaughter will be historic.”
“Then the city is…” Nico started.
“Fucked.”
Five
A thump came at Damiana’s door.
“Go away,” Sephera said loudly, “we’re not to be disturbed.”
The second thump smashed the massive doors to splinters, like an icicle shattering. Damiana rose from her seat at the head of the table, her hand tucked reflexively into her chest like a chicken wing. Sephera dropped to her knees behind the table, one of the ridiculous ray guns the Teslans always seemed to be working on in her hands and leveled at the intruder.
“It’s best that you see me now.”
As the smoke and debris cleared, a diminutive figure resolved in the doorway. Damiana didn’t recognize her, but had a suspicion whom she was.
“Dramatics like this aren’t necessary, Matriarch,” Damiana said.
“Funny,” Idi Han said as she stepped over the threshold, “It wasn’t more than a few days ago that your patriarch and that woman there pointing a weapon at me did much the same to intrude on my manse. Unbidden. Unwanted.”
“Sephera,” Damiana said quietly, “would you kindly lower whatever that thing is?”
Sighing, the Teslan rose from her defensive stance and lowered the ray gun, but didn’t toss it away.
“Mother Idi Han,” Damiana said, “I think you’ll find that I am not my old patriarch.”
The tiny woman stepped more ambitiously into the dining room. She ran her finger along the back of a chair and examined the mechanism for moving meals around the table. Finally she settled on lowering her hands in a clump at the small of her back.
“No, I guess you’re not. I assume you’re the one everyone calls ‘the lepress.’ May I ask your real name?”
“Damiana.”
“Is that your birth name or one you acquired after being brought across?”
“It is a false name. We Signaris can choose whether to keep our old names or not.”
“I was never given such a choice. But I think I understand now why.”
“Yes. It’s a tradition in your House. There is much to recommend tradition. And the code.”
Idi Han smiled. It was a cold, mirthless smile.
“I suppose you’re referring to the old canard ‘immortals do not kill immortals?’” Idi Han put her hands on the back of a chair and squeezed, splintering the wood into forms shaped like her hands. “You have nothing to fear on that front from me, Damiana.”
“I wish you would have extended that same courtesy to my patriarch.”
Damiana limped over to a shelf on the wall and retrieved Father Otto’s sword. She tossed it forcefully onto the table.
“Kings don’t kill kings, isn’t that right?” Idi Han said. “And yet your patriarch arranged to kill mine.”
“We can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the mortal Inqu
isitors,” Sephera grunted.
“Nevertheless, I consider it a score settled, not a dangling thread.”
“And what about the five hundred immortals from every House that Cicatrice ordered killed?” Sephera grumbled, “Are those a settled score as well?”
“I can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the mortal Inquisitors.”
“Cute. Very cute.”
“Enough, Sephera,” Damiana said. “What does bring you to my manse this evening, Mother Idi Han?”
“Well, Mother Damiana…” Idi Han waited to see if she would protest the title. Damiana simply raised her hand, where she had managed to jam the obsidian ring of stewardship onto her deformed thumb. “…as you’ve probably guessed my business is not exactly settled this evening.”
“The city is in flames,” Sephera said, “and the Damned are on the wing. There’ll be no cover-up this time. Not even Cicatrice at the height of his power could’ve covered this up. An entire mortal city destroyed. And you’re worried about what exactly? Settling old scores?”
“Topan,” Damiana said.
“Yes,” Idi Han agreed.
Damiana struggled into a seat and folded her arms as best she could.
“If we were still doing business in the old way I’d make a bunch of protestations about why you came to me looking for your old sire and what he’s worth to you and so on and so forth and we would probably dance about for the rest of the night. But I was never as partial to humiliating repartee as Father Otto was. The truth is we all know Topan is here, hiding, a lost princeling who thinks the Signaris are going to crown him as a puppet patriarch. So let’s say we dispense with all of that.”
“Fine with me,” Idi Han agreed.
“The question is, how do you go forward? As Sephera pointed out, the old way of doing things is over. We can’t hide in the shadows any more. You’ve seen to that, haven’t you?”
“Has it occurred to you that perhaps that’s for the best?”
Damiana reached out and placed her hand on the pommel of Father Otto’s sword.
“Father Otto and Cicatrice hated each other as no two men in history ever have. And yet they saw eye-to-eye on this: the code, the vast web of misdirection, secrecy, hiding. Now our whole way of life is endangered. People will be looking for us. Not just the Inquisition. Everyone now.”
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