He kicked her chair out from under her.
Irena slammed into the floor on her back, knocking the goblet over and splashing blood across the tiles. She curled up on the floor, shaking.
He got up and came around the table. “Get up.”
She reached for the spillage of blood instead.
“No. I said get up. Control.”
She did so, but hesitantly. She watched him from under the tangle of her hair with her wounded trust.
“You don’t know how to fight,” he said. “Not in the real world, anyway. Our world. Follow me.”
He walked down the hallway and into the dojo. He wasn’t certain she would actually follow, but she did. He moved aside so she could see the training equipment, the fall mats, the training bags, and the various weapons on the walls. She took it all in with silent wonder.
“If you want to learn I’ll teach you,” he said. “But I won’t coddle you.”
Her eyes darkened. “I don’t need coddling.” After a moment more of silent observation, she walked to the far wall to study the weapons more closely. He watched her. She was a dhampir and she was powerful and moved like a hunter. It wouldn’t take much training to get her where she needed to be. She was a survivor. She looked up. In over three hundred years Amadeus had collected every conceivable weapon in existence. Eastern. Western. Middle Eastern. Here there were broadswords, katanas, iron fans, knives of various lengths and uses, scythes, manrikisa, Chinese stars, bo staffs, nunchaku, shirasayas, maces, bos and arrows, quarterstaffs, and every conceivable spear in existence. She looked at them all as if she knew what they were. “These are all yours?”
“Yes.”
“And you can use all of them?”
“Most of them.”
She turned around and hugged herself like she was cold. On someone else the gesture would have made the person seem small. Not Irena. There was something about her, about them both. Humans were small, vampires were tiny, but the dhampiri were titans, like something that should never have existed at all.
“Think about it,” he said.
Leaving her in the dojo, he went to the library to be apart from her and let her think. To let himself think. I can’t do this, he thought. I should not. I’m not a crusader anymore. But he had already involved himself in Irena’s life. What else could he do? He had left himself no more choice than he had where Michael and Dante were concerned.
Another dilemma that needed closure.
But he did not want to think about that, either. He absently ran his hands over the lines of books until he found the one he had bought in a drugstore a long time ago. Some ghost-love story J. Stephan Paul had written early on in his career when he had not yet become a bit of marketing on Wall Street. Alek turned to the back where a portly young man was sitting on some rocks by the Jersey Shore with his hand resting on the head of an Irish setter. The dog looked content and so did the man.
“What are you thinking?” Debra asked from the mirror on the wall.
He looked up, running his hand up the spine of the book. “Just… people.”
“Which people?” She put her hands on the glass.
“The ones that have everything and want more. What kind of hunger it creates in them.”
“Are you going to warn that man?” she asked him, looking at the book in his hands.
“You would tell me it’s none of my business. That dhampiri have better things to do with their time.”
But for a change she only looked sad. So sad and wan and more like an old moving portrait than anything real.
“I’m not real, Alek,” she said as she began to fade. “I’m dead, remember?”
And he sat down on the divan and watched the empty glass and felt he could weep.
13
The business with Dante and Michael began with hunger and with wanting more than was permissible. In that time, 1973, there had been trouble, but not trouble as Alek and the rest of the Coven had ever know it before. Capital T Trouble, as Booker called it. Book was twenty-five at the time and had been apprenticed to Robot for seven years. Alek was two years younger and had been apprenticed to the Covenmaster Amadeus two years longer. Booker talked to him. They were brothers. The others avoided him. Booker said it was the green-eyed monster. And for years afterward Alek would watch that monster grow and become steadily more ugly. But in 1973 it was still just a curiosity.
The twins were from Europe. They were vampires who had made within the circle of the Coven an illustrious joint-career for themselves at Cambridge as hematologists working for Rome. So the fact that they had recently left their secret underground facility—something they had not done in over a hundred years—and suddenly appeared in New York City indicated to Alek that something very important was going on. They had been summoned here. There was Capital T Trouble afoot.
He felt it further when Amadeus called him into the library of the Covenhouse the evening of the day before the twins arrived. Amadeus seated himself in the antique rocker he favored. Alek remained standing. Somehow or other, the tension in the room wouldn’t allow him to rest. He went to the shelf and fingered a book at random.
“Michael and Dante have requested you, mein Sohn,” Amadeus whispered.
“Should I be impressed?” The words were spoken harsher than Alek intended. But he did not like people requesting him. He was the Father’s apprentice, and he was getting sick of the steady procession of slayers that came though the Covenhouse looking him up and down like a pet for sale. He knew there was a distinct possibility that he would be called out to another Covenhouse somewhere else in the country—or indeed the world—but he had no intention of going. New York was his city, and if he had to lie to the Vatican herself to retain tenure here, then he was willing to do just that. So far, though, the Father had intervened on his part when necessary and that had not happened.
And now, like the other times, the master slayer of the New York City Coven seemed to understand his misgivings. “It is not a permanent position,” he said. “They need you to guide them whilst here.”
Alek turned to face his master. He had never heard of more than two slayers on any one case. Despite the fact that there was some relief in the fact that it was a temporary apprenticeship, he still felt uneasy about the whole deal. “Sounds like a big problem.”
Amadeus looked on him with fear and pain and love. Alek read the emotion as if he were reading one of the books in this vast library. “It is a housecleaning. The Abyssus.”
Omigod, thought Alek. Please don’t say Akisha is marked! He didn’t know what he would do in that case. What he would say. How do you hunt the woman who was your second sensei and one of your best friends in all the world? Alek was almost too paralyzed to ask. “Who’s… the target?”
“Carfax.”
Alek let out a mental sigh of relief.
Now Carfax he could live without. They all could. The half-sane metallurgist had been causing a stir since the early 1950s. For a short time following World War II he had worked with Dante and Michael, then done work for a private government-run facility, experimenting with metals, recombining the molecular structure of elements in America’s never-ending race to create the perfect Cold War weapon. They said he had pioneered a certain kind of compressed titanium that was capable of remaining in a liquid state like mercury. But though his experiments were sometimes successful, they had also proven too unstable to continue.
When he refused to desist from his bizarre experimentations, the Coven cut him off financially. But a Medieval alchemist by trade, Carfax had not stopped there. Instead he had chosen to hide in the inner city and continue his experiments. Now, instead of pioneering new metals, he had turned to genetics. It was his unwavering belief that he could generate the perfect vampire, one that would rival even the dhampiri in power and invulnerability. He began with experiments on animals but quickly moved to humans and vampires. The Vatican did not care about the vampires he murdered in the process. They did care about the humans th
at had begun to disappear.
Rome was remarkably tolerant through it all, but even she had her limits. One night one of Carfax’s “creations” managed to get loose. It wasn’t much more than a ghoul—a human tainted by vampire blood—but constant exposure to radiation, genetic therapy and vampire blood had turned it monstrous to behold. It destroyed a line of stores on Eight Avenue
and mutilated seven onlookers before it was brought down with a massive hail of bullets by New York’s Finest. In the weeks of investigation that followed, the carcass of the beast and the police records both managed to disappear. The five victims who had survived the initial ordeal suffered the same fate. The media gurus never did publish anything that resembled the truth, and the one stubborn reporter who refused to nose off the case suffered an unfortunate coronary due to snakebite. Witnesses were unavailable for comment, even the officers who had witnessed the destruction and shot the beast point-blank in the face. A few months following the incident, most of them disappeared as well. The cleanup turned out to be massive and costly, both in work and time as well as human lives.
But the Church took care of its own. If the humans discovered the existence of vampires among them, their world would be disrupted, Rome accused, and the whole world thrown into chaos.
Now Amadeus, in enunciating that one little word “Carfax”, was telling him that Rome had finally had enough. Carfax had revealed the Vampire’s presence to the outside world. Humans had witnessed the vampire power at work and running amok through their streets. The cost had been greater than if Carfax and his hive had begun outwardly preying on the human population. Carfax had wanted too much and gone too far, and now he was marked. His whole hive was marked, in fact—or whoever stood with him when the Coven arrived to pass judgment.
Alek poured himself a drink, a brandy. He did that rather a lot when he was uneasy, and it that was probably not a good thing, but he couldn’t help himself. His control was not perfect. He took the drink with him to the divan and finally sat down. “That’s why they’ve brought in Michael and Dante.”
Amadeus nodded.
Alek took a long sip of the drink. “Why do they want me?”
“You know the Abyssus. They do not. They though it a good gambit to have you with them.”
Alek took another, longer sip. “You mean they can’t handle the Abyssus. So why didn’t they come to me personally with this request?”
“They asked me to come to you,” Amadeus replied.
“Because they know I could refuse you nothing.” Alek put the glass down with a clink. “So it was never a question at all.”
“You don’t care for them.”
“I think,” he said, “that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease.” He stood up and paced to the door, his coat swinging. He was halfway to the door when he stopped and peered into the gilded oval mirror on the wall. The man inside it was still a boy—a long-legged colt with long coal-black hair and haunted eyes. The leather longcoat looked all wrong on him, but he knew he would grow into it in time. It was as much a part of him as was the Double Serpent Katana. As much as the blood of the Coven was. Yet he felt an odd sort of pity for the boy grown so fast in the mirror. The warrior. “Father… I don’t want to declare war on the Abyssus.”
“They knew that,” Amadeus answered judiciously. “That is why they would not come to you.”
14
Erebus looked at him oddly when he asked to see Nadine. Jesus Christ, he’s going to kill me. That was the first thought that went through Brett’s mind. But Erebus did not kill him. Instead, Erebus, loyal guardian of the Underworld, snorted and leaned back against the wall of the banker’s office, his massive gorilla arms crossed and his eyes at half masts. A big bald black-skinned vampire with muscles on his muscles, Erebus looked as if he could bust the seams of his T-shirt and the black suit jacket he wore overtop it by breathing alone. He was like a professional wrestler off duty or something. At least, that was the impression Brett always got from him. That was the impression he liked to give.
Especially at times like these, when a patron wanted into the club on a day he wasn’t expected or welcome.
Erebus said after a moment—or rather, grunted, “I’d have to pass it by JP.”
Brett felt his desperation edge up a notch. Getting it past Jean Paul was probably a good idea, but at the same time, he didn’t want to involve Jean Paul at all. The back of his shirt and suit coat, already soaked through with sweat, seemed to dampen further. He wanted to tear the clinging wet clothes off his body. “Look… I only want to talk to her. That’s it.”
Erebus smiled, amused. “Are you sure it’s only talk you want?”
“Yes, damnit!”
“You humans,” Erebus said. And there was a palatable anger about Erebus like a crimson halo. Brett was certain in that moment that had he not been a paying patron Erebus would have done him serious harm. He seemed to be contemplating it anyway, and that made Brett take a step back.
Erebus disappeared into the office.
Brett waited, his eyes drifting down the corridor that led to the main floor of Club Bauhaus. A live band was playing something feedback-riddled and incomprehensible. Patrons were chanting like a church. The smell of smoke, sex and blood blanketed the whole building like a rank mist, giving Brett some bad wood despite the dire circumstances of his plight. It was odd to be in the club on a night when he wasn’t usually here. It was stupid, maybe, but it was easy to believe a club like this existed for you and you alone. The idea that it had its own life apart from Brett’s never really occurred to him.
Erebus returned. “JP says no.”
“What?”
“N-O,” Erebus repeated, enunciating each letter like a parent communicating with a retarded child.
“He can’t do this!” Brett shouted overtop the music. “I have to see Nadine!”
“Nadine isn’t working tonight,” Erebus growled. “And she doesn’t want to see you.”
Since when did Jean Paul’s own thralls tell him when and if they would see their clients or not? His clients? Brett wondered with bewilderment what kind of establishment Jean Paul ran when the hivemaster could not even control one of his own people. It wasn’t as if they had their own will. They belonged to Jean Paul. They were his property. His whores. They did as Jean Paul commanded. It wasn’t even as if they were people, for chrissakes…
Brett opened his mouth to say something to that effect, but one dire look from Erebus made him change his mind. He put his shades on instead and lit a smoke. “You vampires,” he said in retaliation.
“What about us?” Erebus asked with some interest.
“Bunch of motherfucking, bloodsucking cunts.”
“Sue us.” Erebus said and returned to the office, slamming the door behind him.
That’s it, Brett thought savagely. You’ve fucking lost a client, Jean Paul! He’d go north to the hive in Bethlehem. True, it was smaller and stuck in the center of a redneck town, but at least he wouldn’t have to put up with this bullshit. Seething, he kicked the door, making the glass rattle in the pane. Erebus looked up from his desk. Brett spat at the glass and stormed out the exit door. The heavy pneumatic door closed with a soft thomp behind him, hitting him on the ass and knocking the cigarette from his mouth and leaving him standing in the filth-encrusted alley behind the dive, despondent. He lit a new smoke and daydreamed of the different kinds of harm that he might rain down on Jean Paul and his whole lot of whores. But it was an ineffectual wish, and in the end Brett only returned to the Porsche and slipped down into the driver’s seat.
Well, what next?
Brett smoked and thought. Originally he had planned on getting information about the Slayer out of Nadine—what she knew of him, if anything. What the guy wanted. What his weaknesses were. But now Brett thought better of the idea. What would Nadine be able to tell him? She was Brett’s only real contact to the Underworld, but in the end she probably knew very little more about the Slayer than Brett did himself.
She probably had never even met him. No, there had to be a better way. He was smart. He knew what to do underneath it all. He smoked some more and thought about everything and nothing at all.
Finally, for reasons only his subconscious could know, he started thinking about Jay and Baron Blood. There was that book, Baron Blood, Vampire Detective, where Blood is stuck in a frame job for a London Jack-the-Ripper-type murder spree. It was typical erotic inanity at its best, but Jay had managed to write in some real detective techniques, wonder of wonders.
Without further ado, Brett put the Porsche in gear and pulled out into traffic, taking River Drive
down to the warehouse district. He reached the gravel path that led to the warehouse where all this had begun and rolled to the very edge of the first building. It looked abandoned as before. Nothing moved but shadows on the grates and behind the overflowing Dumpsters where the vermin crawled. Brett got out of the car. In the darkness he found the broken basement window more by touch than anything else. He crouched down but there was nothing to see but more darkness.
He used a brick and his suit coat to break out the window, then picked out the last teethy bits of glass before sliding on his belly through the narrow opening and dropping down onto the dank concrete five feet below. His leather pumps made a breezy echo that drifted down the empty basement and rebounded off the walls and machine mounts like the whisper of a malevolent spirit. There were no sounds or movements, save his own. Flicking his lighter, the weak splinter of light illuminated the space a foot ahead of him, no more. More machines. Water-stained concrete walls. The wires of the electrical system dragged along the floor from the open ceiling like entrails. And the floor was a filth-encrusted mess that made Brett wince to crunch it under his six hundred dollar deck shoes. Scooting low, he shone the light across the floor in particular. Yet more filth in more explicit detail.
But in time he found the part of the floor that looked more damp than usual. The place where the little blonde slayer had bought it. Here the floor was blackened and rough and stank of ammonia, as if some form of weak acid had been allowed to soak through the cement. Brett touched the floor and found it curiously warm. His hand came away with streaks of purplish rust that made his skin tingle. Weird. He continued to shine the lighter, not sure of what he thought he would find until he saw something crumpled in a corner off to the side, white against the darkness. Brett used a silk handkerchief to pick it up. Luckily, there was no acid on it. The paper had been spared, and good thing too because it was a fragile cocktail napkin and it wouldn’t have survived whatever odd substance the dead slayer had poured out onto the concrete.
Slayer: Black Miracles Page 21