Thank you, she mouthed.
He said nothing. He carried her upstairs and put her to bed because she was quite incapable of walking on her own. She was so tired. So weak and used up. Cold. He removed his clothing and hers and lay down beside her, giving her his spare warmth, entangling her in his arms, his webwork of long hair, his words. He let her drink him as well, and showed her how to do it safely. She lapped at his skin, at the little wound she had made over his heart, cleaving to its warmth and strength.
His words sang to her. Much was in English, but oftentimes he used other languages. Languages she could not know, yet did. Their bond grew so that words were no longer needed. He told her things, about survival, about war, about history, and he spoke these things to her thoughts. He made her understand with the pictures in his mind. She fell asleep sometime in the early morning, her face pillowed on his hair and her mind full of the visions of the night and what it meant to someone like her born to her blood.
26
Phoenix awoke alone, which frightened her some. It must be late evening, she thought. The light leaking past the heavy drapes was a bleeding crimson.
But her Master was gone.
She pushed herself up, sliding against the black satin sheets. His side of the bed was still warm, so he must have just recently risen.
Then she heard the voices talking.
Getting out of bed, she slipped on his robe and went downstairs and followed the murmur of the voices out to the garden.
Master was there, dressed in a long black kimono, the sword at his side. He was talking to two men sitting at the top of the ten-foot-tall wall that surrounded the garden. Both men crouched atop the wall, seemingly more like animals than true men.
As Phoenix stepped into the garden, she understood why.
They were not human. She felt it.
Even the rabbits felt it, scrambling in their cages like terrified beings in a hailstorm.
The one, a vampire, was lithe and small and blonde, like a yellow fox. The other was an oddity. He was not a vampire, nor even a dhampir, but he clearly was not human, either. He was much larger and imposing yet no less graceful. This one was like a tiger. The little vampire turned his hungry attention immediately upon Phoenix. Yet it was the big one who fascinated her. He was so familiar, yet she did not recognize him at all.
“Is this your little whelp, Slayer?” the blonde asked. He had a thick British accent, like an actor in an old movie.
Master moved to block her from his view. “This doesn’t concern her, Michael.”
The big man grinned. “Hello, sweetness,” he said.
Phoenix collapsed to her knees, almost vomiting, such was the force of his voice. That voice…
Bellerophone. But it could not be him…
Alek looked from her to the big creature-man. “Who’s your friend, Michael?”
Michael indicated his associate. “This is Chimera. I’m surprised you two have not yet met. Chimera is a… field experiment of mine on this side of the pond.”
“Chimera,” Master said, standing over Phoenix so as to protect her. “What is he? One of those ghouls you and Carfax enjoyed creating so much?”
Chimera grinned, showing the mouthful of enormous catlike teeth he had used to take both her and Lilly’s life away with. The teeth, his stink—heavy cologne to hide the sweet odor of constant decay—they were both familiar. But this wasn’t the man from the street. This wasn’t even the man from the club. Again he had changed. How did he change?
But Master sensed her confusion, because he said to Michael, “You taught it Glamour.”
“A necessary evil, you realize,” Michael said. “You don’t really want to know what Chimera looks like under all that illusion. Trust me. He’s a fairly successful project overall, but his regenerative abilities aren’t quite as good as our own. And if I can just train him away from”—he slapped at Chimera’s hand when it went to his mouth and he started to gnaw on it—“certain habits, his model will be all the rage.”
Chimera grunted, his mouth full of his own blood.
Master’s voice was dead. “Why did you hurt Phoenix?” he demanded to know of the creature.
Chimera shrugged. “I was hungry. I thought she was human. Her little friend was, anyway… ” As he spoke he began to change, subtlety, like an odd optical illusion coming into focus. He grew smaller, blonde. Delicate. His face sweetened and his large corded hands grew tiny and white like little gloves.
Glamour, Phoenix thought. Master had taught her about Glamour. Glamour was an illusion. A dream. But looking on Lilly now, she never realized how unfair a dream could truly be. She never realized monsters lived under the dream.
The rage acted on it sown. Phoenix bolted forward as it tore loose inside of her like a hunting animal. The creature, the beast, Chimera… it had to die. She had to destroy it—
Master knocked her legs out from under her and she felt the pavement strike her on the cheek. “Control,” he said.
She picked herself up and slunk backward so she was hiding behind his legs, afraid, hating Chimera, hating herself…
Control.
“I like her,” said Chimera in Lilly’s little-girl voice. He licked his lips. “I want her, Michael.”
“So do I,” Michael agreed magnanimously. He eyed Master. “She’s a pretty little whelp. Can I have her? I will take her in exchange for Dante. Then we’ll be even. What do you say, old son?”
“Go to hell,” Master whispered.
Michael sighed and looked theatrically disappointed. “Then I guess it’s back to the old plan.”
“Stop shitting around. You want us to meet,” Master said. “Where?”
“The old Clairborne Institute. Midnight. Do you know where it is?”
“I’ll find it.”
There was a long breathy pause. Then Michael said: “I told you I would hunt you down and tear your heart out. Do you believe me?”
Then they were gone, both of them, creature and creator like predatory animals over the stone wall.
27
Alek returned to the bedroom and changed into his street clothes. He reached for his leather greatcoat and shrugged into it, watching Phoenix watch him from the doorway. “Get dressed,” he said, freeing his hair from the collar. “We have work to do.”
“I’m going with you?” She sounded surprised.
He nodded “I don’t suppose I could keep you from coming anyway, so it would be best if I at least know where you are.” He knotted his long mane of hair into a ponytail while he watched her expression. The pain was there in her face, the war lust, but there was fear there too. Terrible, childlike fear. It was one thing to plan for revenge, to train for it, to want it with all your being. Quite another to actually carry it out. Now that Phoenix was faced with its opportunity, she looked reluctant.
She sank down on the bed. “I can’t fight Chimera.”
“I taught you to fight.”
“I can’t fight him!” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m afraid.”
He went to her and knelt down. “Good,” he said.
She lowered her hands. “What?”
He ran his hands over her hair. “You learned to be afraid.”
“Another lesson?”
“Another lesson.”
He got up and went to the small jewelry case on the table beneath the large oval mirror. In it he kept several small precious items—letters bound with ribbon, sketches, the marbles he had played with as a child, an aging deck of Tarot cards, all the things he felt were powerful in their way. Beneath it all he found a simple gold ring. He turned it in his hands and watched the crimson light of evening playing over it. He looked up and Debra was there in the glass, nodding. He returned to where Phoenix was sitting patiently at the foot of his bed and knelt down and put it on her hand. She was so thin, he wound up putting it on her thumb.
“Were you married?” she asked, looking at the ring.
“It belonged to someone special to me,�
� he said. “She’ll look after you if you wear it.”
Phoenix bowed her head. “I can’t do this.”
“Let me do it for you.”
Phoenix nodded. “Are you afraid?”
He kissed her gently. “All the time.”
28
The Clairborne Institute. It was located on the South Side, almost on the river. Once a grande dame Victorian sanitarium, it just looked bleak and derelict now, fit only for river rats and crackheads. An old rambling house more shell than substance, like a giant carved-out cockroach. Alek knew the analogy was preposterous, but that’s what it made him think of. The windows were broken or boarded up, appendages of wood sticking out at random angles, the stone of the house shiny-damp with black moss, the wood warped and weak, and anything that was worth anything had been hocked or stolen a long time ago. Even parts of the wrought iron fence had been pulled from the ground and taken to some other filthy place in the city for only God knew what reason.
At the gate of the arcade, he stopped. It was open, hanging by one hinge, yet he could not pass. He stopped and took a deep breath, looking around. The fear of the place was like a stink. It made him want to see everywhere at once, as if at any moment he might be taken from behind. A vampire’s dwelling. He checked his true feelings—the physical ones that told him if a vampire was near—but found those still. So it was Michael’s protective barrier then. No different than what Michael himself had probably felt an hour ago sitting atop the stone wall of Alek’s dwelling, wanting to enter… but too afraid.
Something cracked behind him and he turned sharply, his sword fully extended.
Wind. Dry leaves.
Alek let out his breath, searching the night for enemies. Nothing. Again he checked his feelings. Nothing… yet. Frustrated by the manipulation, he made himself push through the squealing gate and into the arcade where once the sick had sat at tall windows—now broken—and gazed out on the world that no longer wanted their kind. Little was left of it. The tiled floors were broken and weedy, the walls blackened with age, glass and boards and the splinters of furniture scattered throughout. Beside one long window sat a lone wicker wheelchair, unoccupied. It gave Alek a chill to see.
But not nearly as much as the building itself. Yes, this was most definitely Michael’s haunt. And he had been occupying it for some time for the fear to be so strong in it. The place even stank of him—hospital oils and ammonia and old blood.
Alek walked soundlessly over the cracked tiles, keeping to the shadows where he could, though he knew it would do him little good against an enemy like Michael. No wonder he had chosen this place. It was more than a derelict building to house their confrontation; it was his stomping ground full of a smell, a cold and wicked smell, he knew would put Alek off his game plan. Michael did nothing without purpose.
Alek stopped, cocking his head to listen to the silence that seemed to close in around him like the darkness and the dank and putrid dungeon-odor of the place. Get out of here, he thought. Get out get out get out…
He closed his eyes, forcing the terror down his emotional reserve-hole.
Click.
He opened his eyes and focused on the darkness ahead where the sound had come from.
Clack.
Tile breaking underfoot?
He started to move forward, then stopped when the feeling he hated most in the world trickled down his back. Vampires. He turned, half expecting Michael to be there, behind him, pouncing, but the arcade was empty but for the checkerboard of shadows and streetlights shining in painfully thin banners through the tall windows. He shivered and reassured his hold on the sword.
Clack clack clack…
His ears pricked. Now he heard it quite clearly, but instead of footfalls, he was hearing… the squeal of wheels? He listened. Yes.
Something emerged briefly into the light, then was lost again as it rolled toward him, weaving its way across the arcade.
Alek backed up, his heart suddenly in his throat.
Something—a huddled figure in the wicker wheelchair—was moving toward him across the vast expanse of the chessboard floor, cracking tiles under the creaking wheels of its wheelchair. He saw it now. And at first he was certain it must be Michael playing some perverse game. Then he recognized the white, emaciated face of the being heading toward him, the hollow, long-dead look, and found he had no will to move.
The figure, an old man dressed in a double-breasted suit coat and cravat, stopped wheeling himself forward and looked up. His face was so skullish it looked feral even in its weariness. “You,” said Carfax. “Welcome to hell, whelp.”
Alek was speechless.
“Surprised to see me, are you? You bloody well should be!”
“You’re… dead,” Alek said.
Carfax grinned. His eyes still held their cool burn. “The dead are immortal. Haven’t you learned anything at all? All those books, and you don’t know even that!”
Alek stumbled back, almost knocking into a bench that had been overturned in the middle of the arcade. He caught himself against it and steadied himself as best he could. No… this was some kind of nightmare. Some kind of horrible walking nightmare.
“Slayer,” said Carfax, his skull-mouth forming the word like the worst possible profanity. “Look what they did to me, look!” Reaching up, Carfax grabbed a fistful of his dusty grey-blonde hair and peeled it away. But instead of merely hair or scalp coming off, the entire top of his skull was torn away, revealing an empty, brainless cavity.
Alek closed his eyes and swayed as the terror washed over him, the weight of it almost driving him to his knees. Only the bench kept him upright. No… this was not real… this was not real… this WAS NOT REAL…
The fear was like a dagger in his throat. He swallowed it as painful as it was and opened his eyes.
The wheelchair sat there, empty. No Carfax.
No. Of course not. Carfax had been dead for over thirty years.
It was Michael. It was the Chimera.
“Michael,” Alek whispered, knowing the vampire would hear him. In this place even the whispers echoed. “Is this how it’s going to be? You can’t even face me without your little friend playing games?” He kicked the wheelchair so it slammed into the far wall and shattered.
He waited.
Nothing.
Alek turned full circle. “Are you so afraid of me? Michael?” he said, his eyes tracing the flight of the shadows in the room, the flickering lights from outside.
“Of course I am,” came Michael’s voice, echoing everywhere and nowhere from around the room. Alek tried to track the sound, but it was impossible to pinpoint its exact location. “I can’t fight you, Slayer.”
“Then you should not have challenged me,” Alek answered.
Nothing.
Alek said, “You and me, Michael. Tell Chimera to crawl back into his little hole in the ground.”
Alek’s feeling flared.
A moment later, Michael dropped down from some unseen crevice in the ceiling, graceful, like a cat. Not even Michael’s boots stirred the dust at his feet. He stood up straight. He was dressed like someone prepared to attend the theatre or an expensive party aboard a yacht. Always the nancy boy of his once fearsome duo, he wore a pressed black suit and sandsilk shirt with an opera scarf swirled casually about his neck. Dante would have been dressed just the opposite, in the lowliest, most bizarre bondage-inspired street gear he could find and still be legal in. It was hard to believe the two of them were even related. Or had been. “Hello, old son,” he said, puffing on a long, thin cigarette.
Another feeling. Alek turned to face the way he had come.
Another Michael, dressed similarly, stepped out of the shadows, smoking. “Hello, old son,” said the second Michael. He smiled cheekily.
Alek looked back and forth between them, unable to determine or even feel which one was the vampire and which Chimera, the ghoul. They both felt alike to him.
“What a dilemma,” said the first Michael
. He smiled.
Alek slid into a defensive stance. He watched them both.
“He’s no idea which is which, does he?” the second Michael asked the first.
“None,” agreed the first Michael. He smiled.
Alek said, “Would it surprise you to learn I don’t care? You’re both walking dead.” He eyed them both. “As dead as Dante.”
The second Michael lost his smile.
Alek nodded knowingly. “You and me.”
Michael stepped backward and raised his hand in summoning. “I don’t have time for this. Chimera.”
Chimera threw himself at Alek.
Alek saw it out of the corner of his eyes and moved fractionally to avoid Chimera’s assault. Not far enough. Chimera, his human strength redoubled by the gallons of vampire blood he had drunk over the years of his life, slammed into Alek’s shoulder, driving him to the floor of the arcade on his hip in a crackle of shattering tile. Cold pain shot down his Alek’s leg, fueling his fear, heating it into something more familiar, something that tasted like war in his mouth. Chimera snarled and snapped at Alek. Alek twisted sideways to protect his throat from Chimera’s biting jaws and rammed the hilt of his sword into his foe’s face.
The crack resounded through the arcade.
Chimera reeled backward, roaring in his rage and pain and blood. Then, recovering remarkably fast, the blood still on his face, he launched a second assault, clawing at Alek’s throat like a wild animal.
The thing was like a machine, inhuman. Alek scrambled up onto one knee, turned his sword, and felt the blade sink deep into Chimera’s belly as he fell upon it, impaling himself. “Fucker,” he snarled. “How does it feel to be helpless? A fish on a hook?”
Chimera convulsed on the blade, flecking Alek with blood and spit, his voice a plaintive wail down the empty halls of the Institute, echoing perhaps the thousands of screams that had reverberated here over the last century. But surely none quite like this.
Alek smirked and withdrew his sword from the sucking cavity of Chimera’s body. He expected the ghoul to go down. But instead he just swayed there, the hole in his gut already mending itself. So he punched Chimera in the face.
Slayer: Black Miracles Page 27