Hunter of the Dead

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “Perhaps we should have revealed ourselves long ago.”

  “Madness,” Sephera said.

  “I agree the world is ours to inherit,” Damiana said, “but caution and prudence have served us for almost a thousand years.”

  Idi Han took a seat.

  “I feel like I’m being lectured. And I know that’s probably not what’s going on here. Because if we were trading lectures, I would probably say that the twelve Houses that turned against us upended seven hundred years of tradition and…what was it? Caution and prudence? All scrabbling for short-term gain. That you all tested the resolve of House Cicatrice and found it not wanting. That you all brought a plague down upon yourselves. So I know that we’re not going to lecture each other. I think we’re just going to come to a new way of moving forward.”

  Damiana raised Father Otto’s sword so that the blade was before her nose.

  “I swear by the Sword of Signari whatever hostilities, whatever mistrust once existed between our Houses…is at a conclusion.”

  They both looked to Sephera. She nodded.

  “The rest of the council will not pursue war without House Signari on our side.”

  “Then it seems we have peace…if you wish it.”

  “I do wish it. In exchange for one small indulgence.”

  “Topan?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would’ve been better off asking for something else. I have no love for that piece of shit. He’s hiding in his guest chambers. Down the hall, past Father Otto’s. You’ll recognize Father Otto’s.”

  Idi Han rose.

  “Good evening.”

  ***

  Idi Han twisted the door handle to the patriarch’s opulent visiting quarters, easily breaking the lock. She stepped inside and saw Topan was already crouching in the open windowframe.

  “Idi Han,” he whispered.

  “Were you planning to leave?”

  He glanced out the window at Las Vegas below. Damiana’s manse was actually the top three floors of the Hotel Citroën, billed as luxury suites booked for years in advance to the public.

  “I suppose if you’re here – unmolested, as it seems – my hostess has grown tired of me.”

  “You could put it that way.”

  He sighed.

  “Not a lot of places left for me to run, then, are there?”

  She held out her hand.

  “Come inside, Topan.”

  He glanced out the window again.

  “If you run, I’ll find a way to make it worse.”

  He looked at her.

  “I’m not so sure there’s anything worse than what you’re going to do to me.”

  “I’d find a way.”

  He stepped back in and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Where will it be?”

  “There’s a pit beneath the Aztec. I’ll probably drop you in there.”

  “Ah, yes. El Dorado. The Aztec temple. You know, he never let me see it. He said one day when I was ready it would be mine.”

  “But you were never ready.”

  He smashed his fist into his other hand.

  “Do you have any idea what that’s like? Pure mediocrity? To be held back by your own lack of potential? Nothing I could ever do would ever make me special like you. Not even finding you.”

  “There comes a time when you either excel or you don’t.”

  “I thought I had excelled once. I brokered the truce between us and the Inquisition. That led to half a century of House Cicatrice expanding without any meaningful opposition. You would think that would be enough for him to trust me. But then twenty years ago he called me back in said I was to go back to being his apprentice. Demoted. And then ten years ago he released me again and said he didn’t care what I did.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes shining with the look of a broken dog or a child that had never been praised. She sat down and put her hand in his hair, and gently lowered his head to her lap.

  “I know what you want, Topan. I know what you need. I understand the closure you’re looking for.”

  “You do?” he whispered.

  She nodded, though he couldn’t see that. She stroked his hair like a pet’s.

  “You want me to say that I understand all that you did. That in the end, I forgive you, even if Cicatrice never could. That he never forgave you for being mediocre, that he saw in you all of his own worst impulses and that that wasn’t fair and that that wasn’t you and that you deserve to be judged on your own merits. And that you understand the punishment you’re about to receive, but that this is the closure you need first.”

  He nodded. She patted his head one last time then wrapped her fingers around his throat. She crushed every vertebra in his neck with a single sharp snap and pressed his protesting face into her lap, like a deranged mother smothering her child.

  “Well I’m not going to give any of that to you. I grant you nothing. Not peace of mind. Not absolution. Not even forgiveness. You were a failure. You were judged a failure by a man who never showed you anything but leniency. And worse than that, you were a traitor.”

  Topan struggled, slapping at her as best he could with his arms, but she ignored the blows as though they were mosquito stings.

  “I don’t forgive you for what you did to me. You were not special for discovering me. You were like a conquistador, claiming a land of plenty for his own as though he had conjured it out of thin air. I was always there. I was always me. You? You aren’t special because of me.

  “And you are going to suffer the worst fate there is. I’m going to crucify you on a pair of I-beams and bronze you in liquid metal. And then I’m going to toss your still-living body into a bottomless pit to be forgotten and to suffer forever. And here above you’ll be erased from the history books. Your name will be scratched out of all records. All anyone will know is that Cicatrice was succeeded by Idi Han, and no one stood between them. All of that and you won’t even have the solace of being told I forgive you or that Cicatrice never stopped loving you. Because I don’t. And he did.”

  Finally she let him up. He looked into her face, his mind racing and fevered.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “You are sorry.”

  Six

  Price pushed open the door to Cicatrice’s conference room.

  “Idi Han,” he said in a sing-song voice, leading the way into the room with his shotgun instead of his face.

  He peeked around the door. The room was a nightmarescape of inside-out people but the one he was looking for was missing.

  “Damn,” he said, turning back, “We should decide whether we’re going to hunker down in here or…”

  Price stopped dead in his tracks. Nico was on his knees. Behind him, Kasprzak held two pistols, one leveled at Price and one jammed in the back of Nico’s head.

  “Your blade, Carter.”

  Price looked down at his machete. Briefly, he considered whether tossing it would manage to connect with the professor, but that was all theatrics and he’d never been any good at that sort of thing. He let it slip out of his fingers and clatter to the ground.

  “My blade but not my gun?”

  Kasprzak grunted out something akin to a laugh.

  “Use it if you want.”

  There was not much chance of Nico not getting caught in the blast. And anyway, Price suddenly had a nagging suspicion that the weapon wouldn’t do much good against his old friend anyway. He dropped it into his leg holster.

  “You’re one of them.”

  Kasprzak nodded. She reached up and opened her blouse to reveal a plate of armor lying flat across her breast. She lifted it to show her mark of Cicatrice.

  “Have been for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “A long time. You know Cicatrice liked to know things. And that was always the impossibility about you damned Inquisitors. Can’t be bribed, can’t be bought. So damned idealistic. You’re easy to play, though. And
now the whole house of cards is coming tumbling down.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She smiled wickedly.

  “I’ve got files back in my office on just about every Inquisitor in the country. It’s taken nearly a century. But for what it’s worth, you were right, Carter. If you’d stuck to the cell system, you would’ve been nearly impossible to hunt down. Bonaparte’s aggression made for a string I can pull until the whole sweater unfurls. Now that The Damned are loose, the Inquisition is the last thing standing between us and total global dominance. Time for us to step out of the shadows.”

  “I worked with you. I trusted you. I thought you were my friend.”

  Kasprzak shrugged.

  “Maybe you knew deep in your heart. But maybe you also knew what I knew when I was just a mortal scholar. In the end, the immortals win this war. So I want to be on the winning side. I’ll never die now. But you will. Why fight a futile battle, Carter?”

  “Because there are still things worth dying for.”

  Kasprzak tapped Nico’s head. “

  “Cute. The matriarch wants this one alive. Not sure if as a lover or a get. Maybe both. Come on, boy.”

  Nico rose in spite of the gun to his head. He turned and faced Kasprzak.

  “Fuck you. I’ll stand with Price. I’d rather die an Inquisitor.”

  “Well, the matriarch was pretty clear on this point.”

  Kasprzak cold-cocked Nico with the gun and as he passed out, she tossed him over her shoulder like he weighed nothing. She stared at Price.

  “Not going to protest?”

  “No,” he whispered, “I want the boy to live, too.”

  “Good enough. But as for you…The Damned would like a word.”

  From the infinite inky blackness behind Kasprzak, a hulking gray vampire with sagging, desiccated breasts emerged and gripped Kasprzak’s shoulder. In her wake, ten other creatures of similar appearance emerged. Kasprzak gripped her temples as though in the throes of a migraine. She turned to the female leader of The Damned.

  “Yes, mistress, this is the one.”

  Kasprzak was struck by another sudden headache, and belatedly Price realized they were communicating with her telepathically or something. She turned to Price.

  “I told them that you had something to do with the death of one of their own. It was rather important to them to settle this account personally.” She shrugged. “Good luck, Carter. I always did enjoy our conversations. You’re not bad for a mortal, but, sadly, that’s all you’ll ever be. My lords and ladies.”

  With a bow, Kasprzak disappeared. Price turned his attention to the encroaching monsters. There was no question of reaching for his fallen blade or even for the firearm rather more comfortably couched at his side. The fight was absolutely hopeless. He had faced a single Damned and barely been able to escape with his life, let alone defeat it. Eleven may as well have been an army.

  He set his teeth, balled his fists, and to his surprise, smiled.

  “I’d love to hear a little disco. But either way…let’s dance.”

  Price came out swinging but didn’t even land a blow. In a split-second, The Damned were on top of him, their snatching hands restraining his limbs and forcing him to the ground. Who knew what gruesome punishments they felt fitting recompense for the loss of one of their own?

  “I hope you choke on me, you bastards!”

  Seven

  Nico awoke with a start, heart racing arhythmically. He had been draped like a piece of laundry over a pair of metal trash cans in a dank alley. He glanced around, his eyes not yet accustomed to the darkness, but he didn’t like what he could hear.

  Voices, a million voices, were hissing in the darkness all around him. The world seemed to swirl in circles around him. Eyes glowed, red, yellow, and white as a mob of vampires pressed in towards him. He climbed up onto one of the trashcans and snatched the lid off the other to wield as a shield.

  Kasprzak emerged from the crowd, beating back at the newborn vampires with Nico’s baseball bat.

  “Out of the way! Out of the way! Back, you bastards!”

  She led a ghoul, glistening with what seemed like a fresh coat of slime and wearing the uniform of a police officer. She had wrapped the ghoul-cop’s belt around his neck to use as a leash.

  She gave Nico a toothy smile.

  “What’s going on?” Nico asked.

  “Vampirism is like a virus, Nico. It spreads and it spreads and it spreads. Up until now certain factors have kept us in check – natural immunity, you might say. But those days are over. Why don’t you come down from that silly spot and join me?”

  She held out her hand.

  “Go to Hell.”

  Kasprzak chuckled.

  “Oh, I don’t have to. It won’t be long now till Hell comes to Earth. Look how long it took to turn the whole city. Hours. In a month the world will be ours. I’ve been expecting this for years. I had just been waiting for Cicatrice to let loose The Damned. I admit I’m surprised it turned out to be that bitch get of his.”

  Nico nearly lunged off his perch, but the vampires all surged forward at the idea, and he retreated.

  “Ah! So you do care about her. I could let them rip you to shreds, Nico. But the matriarch doesn’t want that. She wants to spend eternity with you. You’ve been fast-tracked to be granted The Long Gift.”

  “By you?”

  Kasprzak chuckled. She reached down and stroked the ghoul-cop under its chin.

  “No, not by me. I’m still a bit too green to be much skilled at turning others. In all the chaos tonight I thought I may as well practice a bit, but unfortunately old Kolchak here was the best I could do. Mother Idi Han doesn’t want you to turn out like this. She’ll either do it herself or have one of her most trusted oldbloods do it. You’ll be fine, Nico.”

  “‘Fine.’ You call being a bloodsucking fiend ‘fine?’”

  Kasprzak’s expression darkened.

  “You’re as stubborn as I was at your age. But wait until you’re just a little bit older. Bit by bit death becomes a reality instead of a far-off nightmare. There’ll come a time when you won’t hesitate to sacrifice others to keep yourself alive. Even if it means sacrificing every other person in the world.”

  “Sounds like a real jolly philosophy. Look around you, prof. This isn’t sustainable. Slaughter everyone? How are you even going to feed yourselves?”

  “Oh, there are ways, Nico. The Necropolis had a booming system of agriculture. Humans can be farmed. And just think about the advances we’ll make. Just like industrial farming today. Chickens don’t need beaks. They just peck each other. Veal cows don’t need to stand. Imagine humanity downgraded from masters of the earth to livestock. What do you need arms or legs or a cock for? They’re just extremities siphoning off precious blood. That’s the future. But that doesn’t have to be your future, Nico. The matriarch wants you by her side. You won’t get another chance like this. Most people never do.”

  Nico pursed his lips.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  Nico took her hand, and like Baryshnikov she lifted him bodily and set him on the ground. Nico let the pin clatter to the ground and dropped the garlic grenade.

  “But I don’t want to live in that world.”

  As white smoke that smelled like an Italian bistro filled the alley, Nico pushed and shoved his way through the scrum. It seemed he had chosen his moment wisely. The newborns were particularly confused to suddenly be unable to “smell” their prey.

  “Idiots!” he heard Kasprzak shouting as he managed to shove his way out into the street, “It’s just garlic! Grab him! Don’t let him escape! The matriarch will have my ass.”

  The city was on fire. Gunfights raged in the distance, smoke rose from half the buildings. Screams and madness filled the air. Thinking fast, Nico wrenched a manhole up off the ground and slithered down into the sewer.

  Nico had spent the better part of the da
y before in the sewers and hoped that he might come across some landmarks to help him figure a way out of this scrape. He pounded down the corridor as fast as he could.

  Where should I go? They’ve probably cordoned off the city. If I can prove I’m still human, that might be the best way to find help.

  Kasprzak’s voice echoed through the underground.

  “Where are you going to run to, Nico? Give up now and make it easy on yourself. You could be one of the greats, you know! You know why we turn Inquisitors? Because they make the best vampires!”

  Nico felt his resolve harden. He spotted an overturned coffin he thought might have belonged to a gang of Druids.

  No. I’m not going to run. Price is back at the Aztec. He needs my help if he’s not already dead. And if he is, he may need it even more.

  He didn’t relish the thought of putting down his friend, but it was no doubt something that occurred to every Inquisitor at some point. Suddenly he hit a dead-end. A crosspipe with a crank faucet blocked the entire passageway. Nico turned around to go back the way he had come, but it was already too late.

  Shadows flickered in the depths. A host of vampires turned a corner, Kasprzak in the lead, with her pet ghoul Kolchak on a string. Nico was confronted with a wall of vampires in front of him and a wall of pipe behind him. Above his head, a faucet dripped, as though ticking off his last remaining seconds on this earth.

  Eight

  Price pinched his eyes shut and ground his teeth together.

  This is it. I won’t give them the satisfaction of screaming. At least I’ll go out like a man.

  A loud clomp suddenly cut through the hisses of The Damned. The claws clutching at him stilled. He ventured to open his eyes. To a one, each of The Damned had turned their heads 90 degrees towards the front of the conference room. Price turned, too, just as a second clomp cut through the stillness.

  Outside the entrance to the room, astride a massive charger with one foot raised to slap down a third time, sat The Hunter of the Dead. The breath caught in Price’s throat as he thought to himself that there was no way this could be a faker or a pretender. The man – the thing – was like an inkblot smudged on the surface of reality.