Brother Joshua:
It pains me to be the harbinger of news that things do not go well. It seems that for every loose thread we cut, two more appear to take its place. Last night I discovered one such loose thread is a vampire of Genevan descent by the name of Father Paris, a priest of the Order of the Sacred Heart. I do not know how he escaped our most excellent detection, but he absurdly poses as one of us, and he has apparently been living under this guise since the first Inquisition.
What's more, the brothers have discovered certain documents missing from the vaults. Among them, most disturbingly, the Ninth Chronicle.
Understandably, this discovery has caused us more than a little concern. Our investigation of the theft has left us to believe Paris has a number of agents and human familiars at work at undermining our work both in Rome as well as in the States.
At this juncture, knowing that the Final Purge is rapidly drawing near, I have decided to take drastic measures to protect our interests. Paris and his agents must be eliminated, the Chronicle returned to us immediately. Through my sources I have determined that Paris has in fact sent the Chronicle on to New York and will be meeting with an agent of his circle by the name of Byron. I formerly ask that you set your Covenmaster to the task of rendezvousing with this human heretic and his hellspawn master, since I can think of no better agent than your "white angel" to accomplish the near impossible. The Council had issued you a line of credit for your convenience and shall hold a seat in abeyance for your most austere presence at the conclusion of this mission. As in any war, casualties are expected and expendable.
Time is of the essence. Our duty must be carried out in the name of God at any costs. I will remain here and dispatch any and all remaining agents, as well as any others who might have been made to believe the information contained within the Chronicle without the book as proof. Though there are always unforeseen difficulties, I am confident the book will be in my hands and Paris's head upon the slayers' altar within the week. Should any other complications arise, I will notify you at once.
Yours in Christ,
Henri
3
New York City, Present Day
In the end it was a typical Braxton show, big and gaudy, Manhattan fare for the socially overfed, but dull, uninspired. Passionless. Sexless. Twenty-five pieces filled the gallery, every one of them a toothache. And the guests no better, there not to see but to be seen. What had he expected? It was no longer 1957 and in the world of painters there were no more explosions of passion. Chagall and Picasso had taken it all. Bauhaus was dead, Impressionism commercialized.
Awash in an ocean of rosy mortals he moved, sipping from a sauterne, nodding at the witty comments and praises, the theoretical center of attraction. He saw crones garroted by Bette Davis boas, men in penguin suits. The diamonds hurt his eyes. He had thought of canceling the show, but, Jesus, you just didn't cancel a show with Braxton, a show you'd had scheduled for over two years, not unless you were ready to admit your life was over.
Hot in here. Someone murmured the damning word Bosch on looking into his only favorite and it was enough. It was over. He went out into the night.
Cold, but he liked it, breathed it in deeply. Snow tonight, maybe tomorrow. It would make the city look almost clean. He walked, enjoying his great escape. He let his coat fall open, undid his hair to float behind him in his wake like a veil. Better. Mmm. The air was almost sweet. Who would notice the void he'd made?
He was in sight of the East Village now. It stretched away beneath him, the last bit of purple evening clinging to the street and the sloping roofs of the shops. He heard the rush of battlerap in passing, the hydroplaning of too many expensive cars piloted by uptown hoods. Italian and Middle Eastern cooking vied for independence over the street. He passed Oriental and Armenian green grocers closing up shops, and most or all looked up at him, offered him a customary Village nod or an Evenin' Meesta' Knight if he'd shopped recently. He nodded in return and moved on, his tall narrow fame reflected in distortions in the shop windows.
Crossing Madison to his studio, he glanced up the hill at Sam's Place where it teetered on the Upper Westside and was almost a cafe, thought of stopping in for a nightcap, then moved on. Not tonight. It was that time of the month again and he needed to make a pilgrimage to Amadeus House, unburden himself, and it wouldn't do for him to have his mind all muddied up by a wallbanger that had no immediate intention of letting him go.
He let himself into the studio, shed his greatcoat, and let it fall to the hardwood floor in a heap. Next came the black Nehru jacket and the blood-drop brooch at the throat of his shirt. Vincent greeted him in the dark with his green jewel-glowing eyes. He scooped the cat up and carried it with him to the ass-wide galley kitchen at the back of the renovated space. Vincent meowed, his one orphan ear twitching toward the fridge like a signal. He poured the cat a platter of milk. A glass for himself. Touch of Vermouth. He took one sip and sent the rest down the drain. No. Not tonight, damnit, he reminded himself. He sighed. Do it.
The studio lights still out and only a weak filtering of peachy phosphorescence from the sodium lights on the street to cast Vincent's shadow as big as a tiger on the wall, he stepped up to his bedroom on the undivided upper level and pulled open the closet door. He spent a moment picking at the newest bloodstain on the battered and creased greatcoat, then slid it off the hanger and shrugged into the creaking ten-pound mass of leather. From the space below the floorboards he exhumed the leaden gunny sack and affixed it to his belt. He pulled forth the katana last, pausing briefly to stroke the intricacies of the pommel's engravings.
He frowned. Something wrong somewhere...
He knelt down on the floor, the sword between his knees, the tip grooving yet another hole in the naked oaken floorboards. He balanced his mind, sharpening it. The wood was warm and solid under him, the sweat cold on his brow, the silence heady and unbroken. Acrylics and lead-kohl and the presence of those many who had lived and worked and died here clung like phantomlike incense to the walls. He shrugged off the ghosts and the silence, the studio, everything.
He felt his mind drift like a nightbird with its two black absorbing eyes. He felt it pierce the distance. He felt it see. He rose up and up like a spire, and then he was high above the city and floating, flying, bodiless, a thrill cold like death in his heart and throat.
It was going on a little after midnight and the lights of the Chrysler Building and its old adversary the Empire State had already been turned off, but the rest of New York City glowed like a rare collection of jewels. He saw dark, star-shot towers corkscrewed to sword-points; he saw cabs, cars and limousines moving up and down the glittering canyons of the streets and avenues; he saw, beneath those streets, subways rolling and rumbling like a whole subterranean city; he saw clubs, restaurants, cafes and hotels open and cramped wet and warm with life; he saw people strolling along sidewalks or staggering drunkenly or drugged; he saw fencers and hustlers and prostitutes plying their trades; a voyeur like all of his kind, he saw behind the curtained windows of a million apartments, and there he saw people staring bovinely at the gospel of their flickering television sets, he saw them read and fight and mate and despair in what they perceived as their safe and private hostels; he saw that, in the duration of a minute, someone died, someone was born, and someone else murdered; he saw and was witness to the whole of this filthy, beautiful, unkempt city throbbing with human life laid so open and naked to his special vision. But though he saw so much so completely as if with a minor god's limited omnipotence, he found with time that his attention was inescapably drawn to a triviality--a new snowfall gathering like sapphire on the backs of carriage horses and on the battered tarpaulin of the children's carousel in the center of Central Park.
He lingered a moment there, but only that. Addictions came in all forms. With a last long look at the almost full, dirty red moon hanging low in the sky over Queens, his mind dipped, settling like a pigeon that knows its roost well. He opened his eye
s. He was warm and calm now and all the knots were loose. He stretched, letting that stretch take him to his feet.
Slipping the katana into the lining of his coat, he moved to the web-frosted window which looked east out over the clogged arteries of the city. In it was blue February and the filth and the evening and the cold beauty of a modern city built on ancient bedrock. The misty tops of skyscrapers jabbed like a collection of glittering weapons into the soft underbelly of a stormy night sky. The snow fell ceaselessly as it was wont to do now, with a ferocity that made one wonder if some deity were not trying to grout out all the filthy alleys and byways of the city by night.
Vincent jumped to the windowsill, startling him. Silly animal. He set the cat down and slid the window open. Then he himself leapt catlike to the narrow ledge outside, not teetering, balancing himself expertly between the empty, frozen flowerpots. He crouched low, the snow slashing his face like swords, numb to the cold, his mind and eye as sharp as a bird of prey. Glancing sidelong, he saw Vincent looking out at him with bitter insult as if to say, You are not cat, why can you do what I can?.
He shook himself, breathed in the white cold and the spicy fumes of the city and the filth and the blood and the life and the death of the night. Then he, Alek Knight, artist and slayer, creator and destroyer, dropped--primly, silently--to the alley floor forty feet below his window.
4
The Covenhouse: It was a lovely grande dame of a Colonial house erected by the Plymouth Colony in circa 1624. Painted peach with neat black shuttering and black scrolled trim on the porch and cornices and cupolas, Alek could easily imagine it glowing with romantic yellow candlelight to ward off the chill of the Atlantic, its warmth folded as secure as hands around the Separatists' children, huddled together in their handsewn burnoose and cassocks as they formed an attentive horseshoe around the priest's bench. It was gilded with frost now, adding to its gingerbread charms.
Alek dusted the snow off his coat and went inside. The house seemed momentarily silent, with only the stone-faced walls and timber buttresses and rugged, heavy furniture to greet him. Home, he thought as he did every time. I've come home once more. He let out his breath. The rooms were artfully Spartan with a many-room Colonial compacture that made them cozy even for all the lack of bric-a-brac. Bookshelves bore books. Mantels supported simple amber-glassed Tiffany lamps. Nothing here not worth its weight in use. On the foyer desk was the mail which still occasionally came for him here. He passed a brief eye over it as he worked open the buttons of his coat. Stupid. He had not lived under the Amadeus roof for more than twenty years, not since he was a boy and a ward of the Father's. Stupid also. He imagined how a thought like that could make Father Amadeus cross. One of the Father's favorite idioms, after all, was that a ward of Amadeus was forever. No matter where he traveled in this world of mortals he need never stop learning, need never cease to be a disciple of ancient wisdoms far and wide.
He was hanging his coat on the hat tree by the door when he realized his mistake about the house's apparent vacancy. From the tea parlor came the static sounds of a TV with no volume and voices pitched low, squabbling whispers, the tapping noise of wood on wood. Company. A meeting of some sort. Running a hand through his hair to smooth it, he wondered who else was hanging in tonight, and why. To his utmost surprise he found practically the entire Coven assembled in the Father's drawing room. He stopped in the threshold. For some reason, the sight of so many slayers there, standing or sitting on the chaise lounge and sofa and matching chairs, talking, smoking, and playing dominoes or watching TV did nothing to waylay the curiously ascending feeling of dread he was experiencing tonight.
Five of the seven acolytes, including himself, who comprised the New York City enclave of slayers and made their homes in the city were present The overall impression was of a relaxed, even casual, gathering. At least until Alek stepped through the door and encountered their hooded, fixed expressions.
There was Aristotle, the tech-obsessed young one who, when duty to the Coven wasn't calling, hid away in his home all day making things out of plastic, scrap-metal and electronic circuitry. He glanced up from the game of Mahjongg he was playing alone on the desk by the door and gave Alek a look. Over on the chaise lounge, Takara, the magnificent Oriental warrior dressed in a dark, subdued suitdress like the mild-mannered magazine editor she usually was, lowered the backissue of Cosmo she was perusing. Strapping, mute Robot with his piercing black eyes was next, turning fully away from the Maxfield Parrish-inspired painting over the fireplace mantel he was studying. After him came the slow, thorough scrutiny of Kansas October, their resident duster-wearing cowboy, perched on a window seat and trick-chambering rounds in his vintage .45 Colts. And finally--Eustace, the Father's newest and youngest ward, seated on the floor in front of the silent TV with his history book open in front of him. The Waltons were on and the boy seemed more interested in the adventures of the mountain clan than in his homework. And not really at all interested in the newcomer, apparently, for spare moments after Alek entered the drawing room, the boy was once more completely absorbed in John Boy's current dilemma.
Not so with the others. For a long moment Alek felt torn between either slipping wordlessly past them or holding his ground and shouting the word What?! into the face of their collective scrutiny. He opted for the latter in the end, though without the emotional expletive; eventually, someone would let him in on the secret, though it was never a comfortable task, waiting and facing down the others. Held together by the aims of the Coven but having little else in common, they were not a particularly close bunch of souls, nor prone to loyalty to one another, or to him. Diverse, distinct, and divided by age, race, and religion, the only thing holding them together was their tainted blood and the aims of the Coven. And the Father. Yet, over the years and decades of his indenture to the Coven, Alek had found certain responsibilities falling upon him, a few arbitrary muscles flexed now and again, as if the Father were trying to instigate him as some new axis power present in their midst. But if that was what the Father had in mind, he was probably wasting his time. Slayers cared little for each others' company and even less for his own.
He never discovered the source of their communable dislike for him. Tonight though, feeling a certain doom flutter at the outer edges of his awareness, he felt their revulsion in particular and found it disconcerting, as if he were peeking in on a private moment he had no business being witness to.
Takara, her almond eyes peering out of the flawlessly cold and smooth planes of her face, said, "You were called, whelp. Damned took you long enough to catch on, though." Alek inclined his head, feeling, as always, like a little boy under Takara's scrutiny. Perhaps because in fact she was just old enough to be his grandmother. Yet she had never taken him as a young boy on her knee for a story or given him a jelly foldover like grandmothers were reputed to do. She did give him a broken arm once from an excellently-executed chickenwing when he was fourteen years old, though.
"I'm sorry. I was distracted tonight."
"Dumb as shit," Takara said, going back to Cosmo. Aristotle, who studied Alek's every move with blatant jealously and worship like a boy enthralled by a screen hero or musical superstar, opened his mouth as if to pave over what Takara had uttered, then closed it dutifully, blushed, and went back to his game of tiles. He might worship Alek as his model, but Takara was like a surrogate mother to him. A cold, Kali-inspired mother, to be sure, but a mother nonetheless.
The other immortals did little better than she. Kansas pulled his silver-skinned Colts out of his armpit holsters in a blurring series of quick-draws. Robot went to peruse the Father's vast bookshelves. Eustace, after a moment or two of silence, turned up the volume and started to repeat the dialogue on the TV.
Alek shrugged it off. So he was being called, after all. His ill-feelings were neither a premonition nor malcontent. It was simply the Father pressuring their mental link. Now he knew for certain that he would like nothing better than to escape the house. But the Fathe
r was calling him and it was time to face the music, so to speak. He turned away from them and headed down the long sparsely-lit greathall that led to the butler's pantry and the innocuous-looking if key-card-locked basement door and slid his access pass down the cradle.
Querulous frowns, unspoken whispers. He could hear them even here, or imagined he could. It never ceased to amaze him how much slayer society mimicked that of the greater vampire hives, the conceited clichés and ever-scheming circles. He knew a scarce moment after he left the room tongues had begun to wag without restraint.
Poor Eustace, Alek thought, breathing in the dry hallowed smells of the cellar tunnel stairwell leading down into the lower mysteries of the house. It wasn't like when he was a kid and your wardmate was your brother, your blood. Things had changed somewhere along the long line of years and decades. Brotherhood, family, coven--these things seemed to mean less to the newcomers to their little enclave. Little passion remained in the heart of the average slayer; mostly the work was treated with a surgeon's careful yet ultimately impersonal attention. Probably poor Eustace would grow up disillusioned by the whole mess and ask for a desk job before he was thirty years steeped in his craft. The thought made Alek sad. Between the two of them, himself and his chosen brother Booker, they'd been legendary terrors even among their peers.
The flagstone steps, cut giant-wide into the New York bedrock by unrecorded Puritanical chisel and hammer, led down around into the loins of the house. And as if he were still a child, or perhaps only because he was in his child's mind at the moment, Alek counted them to their end. Forty-five. A step for every year of his life. He put out his hands on the last step and felt the warm, ancient wood in the dark beneath his fingers. The heavy double doors which opened on the Great Abbey groaned cantankerously as he pressed against them. But then, Father Amadeus always spoke of them as if they had more character than most individuals. Board planking from off the stern of the Mayflower, or so the stories went. He opened them with deference on the Great Abbey.
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