Slayer

by Karen Koehler

  "He stole the Chronicle back."

  "You know the rest then," she said.

  He shook his head. "I know only--" He stopped, the words dying on his tongue, the terror so great a pressure it stopped his breathing, maybe his heart.

  "What Debra said?" she asked damningly.

  11

  In the dream he walked down a hallway constructed entirely of human skulls like the tunnels leading down and away into the arcane catacombs under some of the greater older cities of the world. Rome--maybe Paris. Something slithered over his feet and he looked down and recognized it as an adder. He kicked it away and walked on. And near the end, silhouetted by a sunburst of careening light so great he was forced to squint, he saw a tall, gaunt figure all in black, with reams of glistening silken hair and eyes like white pearls and a smile like a blade. In its right hand he gripped the hilt of a sword, long and terrible, and that sword dripped blood like rain upon the stones of the corridor.

  In its other, left hand, it held a trophy by the hank of its long, blood-encrusted hair, the unfortunate's face lost in deepest shadow.

  And it was then and only then that Amadeus realized he was having The Dream again, the visual dream. A dream of sights, of light and shadow and the bruised places in between.

  The figure shifted and the chaotic lights he had been half-blocking only a moment ago intensified, set Amadeus's tender eyes to bleeding with the sight of all that light in his life all at once. The deadly black figure laughed and held aloft his prize, letting that light reflect off the disembodied head's marble-white flesh and shimmering white hair and redness of death.

  Death.

  His death.

  His death unrepentant, unabsolved.

  Damned.

  Amadeus opened his mouth as he had each time upon witnessing the sight of his own destruction and cried out with the horror and the unfairness of it all. The years--centuries--he'd spent, saving his own soul, saving his most beloved's. And now this...

  But there the dream ended and he awakened trembling and sweating, his sword pointing up at the blinding shimmer of light baking his tender sun-shunned skin, pointing it at the breathy tall figure standing over his bed. And for a moment he almost thought it was Alek and Alek's vengeance and he had a terrible desire to lower his sword. But then, once more, he remembered the great betrayer's work to undo him, to undo all of the Coven, all his great work, and he realized Alek was not here, was too great a coward to face him yet, and he held the sword unflinchingly on his target.

  The figure's hands swept up in a defensive gesture as if to fend off an assault. The light grazed him and was gone. "Shit. Sorry, Father," the master slayer Booker whispered in his booming baritone voice, "I thought you were awake, is all. I didn't know..."

  His watch--it was only his damnable watch! It was only damnable Booker! Amadeus lowered his sword and sat up in bed. "What do you want?"

  "I...there's someone to see you. In the parlor."

  "Who? Alek?"

  "No." Booker hesitated. "A man, just a man. About sixty-five, seventy. Dressed like a whitebread banker. Rich bastard. He didn't say his name. But he knew you, he said."

  Amadeus ran the sweating palm of his hand over his face. A man. Only a man. But he knew who it was immediately--it could be Benedictine and none other at this junction--and the Cardinal was far more than a mere man. And far less. Rising naked from the bed, having slept that way, if sleep was indeed what one would call that upsetting interlude, Amadeus began to dress for the audience. Black slacks and black habit, the frogs on the habit buttoned so tight he felt like a soldier getting ready to go off to war. Black boots and the iron bootknife. Lastly, he slid the black cossacklike mantel onto his shoulders and clipped it closed with a chain. Regal, and larger for the cloak, able to match Benedictine's personal extravagance, he hoped, he made for the door of his cell.

  At the end of the brick hallway, at the bottom of the cellar steps leading up to the ground floor, lurked Alek's brother, indecisive, yes, trying to understand his master's unease. Trying to understand any of this madness, of course. Maybe even trying to protect his master.

  Then his pocket pager went off and Booker seemed immensely pleased for the interruption. "Oh Jesus, that's probably Dr. Sacco. Damn man never leaves me have any peace, even on my days off. I swear to God, if I--"

  "Go to your hospital," Amadeus commanded him, tying up his long hair with a hank of silk ribbon. "Care for your sick. I will need no retinue."

  Booker hovered a moment more. Wanting to help, wanting more to go, to sink beneath the surface of his human life and be just a doctor now, a man. At least for a while. Maybe until all of this was over. "Go," Amadeus whispered harshly. And so Booker did.

  "We must assume Knight is aware of our plans." Cardinal Benedictine said some five minutes later, after Amadeus had seen the man in the parlor to one of the wing chairs near the fireplace. The fury seethed like a nest of snakes in his whiskey-scoured voice and made him drum his fingers irritably against the wooden armrest of the chair.

  The two men had not seen each other for years, and yet the old man, once a priest out of St. Patrick's diocese not more than a stone's throw from the Covenhouse, had made no formal or informal greetings, had not even waited until his host's arrival before breaking open a bottle of Scotch and fetching a glass and starting up the fireplace. And for the last five minutes, as the room warmed around them, their words had been naught but filled with bitter explanation and the stern short syllabus of total debriefing. Of course they despised each other as two creatures must whom nature had put natural enmity between but whose ambitions and aims had wracked that relationship into something unnatural, but at least--for the moment--they bit back their true thoughts with steel-trap grimaces.

  The debriefing was finished. Now came the subjective part of their talk which Amadeus had always despised. He shifted in his seat, the fireplace sweating his flesh under the layers of clothing. He spoke softly, with no attempt to use his voice or mind to influence or otherwise sway Benedictine's mood. The man, in his present state of almost perfect sobriety, would have required too much work. And anyway, Benedictine knew him too well and understood Amadeus's race perhaps better than any other human being in the church--or indeed the world; he would sense the penetration, deduct it rightly as desperation on Amadeus's part, and then there would only be more questions, more trouble. "I still do not see how this little error could have happened, Cardinal," he said, shaking his head as if to throw off the remainder of the shock. "I made him my personal student. He knows nothing that I have not told him--"

  "Then someone--presumably Paris's whore--is giving him classified information. God help us all if he puts it all together. There will be a period of darkness the church has never known before, not even during the Crusades." Benedictine coughed harshly, seemed surprised by the rebellion of his aged body, as if he had forgotten how mortal and fragile it was growing all around him. He cleared his throat angrily.

  "I am truly sorry," Amadeus said without emotion.

  "I flew in from half a world away because of this `little error', as you call it. I had to leave important Council matters and lie to His Eminence himself just to be here, damnit it all to hell, and I won't have you treating this thing like some hangnail...!" Again the coughing fit seized him.

  Amadeus smiled. He knew the man well enough to know he was lying now. Benedictine had spoken to no one before coming here. No one ever questioned Benedictine's work or intentions. The man was powerful. In the last twenty years he had acquired his own private jet and his own retinue of bodyguards. The Papal Council already considered him heir to Peter's seat in Rome--a position that would have undoubtedly fallen to Benedictine's superior Cardinal Guiseppe had the man not died some five years earlier of snakebite. The circumstances were a little unusual, but Amadeus had enough knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church to know that certain men were possessed of almost preternatural luck and even greater influence. So he took Benedictine's angry ravings on
the chin, as always. As always, he played his loyal dog part, knowing that one day this man would be all that stood between his race and total annihilation.

  Benedictine tipped his glass back, the ice chinking against his false teeth. The liquor seemed to stop his cough, surprisingly. And curb his roiling anger. "But we've got to forget about the hows and whys for the moment and do something about the situation," he said, his voice falling soft against the walls of the Covenhouse as his sobriety began to slip. He closed his eyes, savoring the whiskey. "If you cannot contain it, Covenmaster, we in Rome shall."

  "I am doing my best, Cardinal."

  "Well, your best is not good enough, is it? Where is he? Why haven't you found him yet?" The bottom of his glass banged against the armrest like a judge's gavel. "I thought you were some great all-seeing oracle, some hellishly talented sibyl that saw to the ends of the earth, I thought--"

  "The city is large," Amadeus calmly explained, lied, "and even my power is limited. I see the future, Cardinal, not the present."

  "I thought he was bound to you, you fucking demon! What have you been doing with him all these years?"

  Amadeus closed his eyes. The darkness was the same either way, but sometimes, in times of great angst, like now, he almost felt he could control it, the dark. Draw it close like a cloak to hide a shame. The dark, after all, was where his breed originated. And where it would eventually return to, in time. Yes, it would be so easy to find and destroy the whelp. He need only confront Alek, draw his sword, and come home with the whelp's head at the end of it. So easy. And it would save his place in the Covenant, would probably save his own damnable life. But Benedictine couldn't understand the price. He couldn't understand the pain of watching your most beautiful and singular piece of art die at your own hands, your magnum opus, the one thing all your life led up to, simply crumble away like that. For Alek to die, all that power wasted, all that training vanished with one fell swoop. It was like Donatello taking a balsa hammer to his beloved David statue. It scarcely deserved imagining.

  He said, "I must have time. A week at least--"

  "There is no time! I told you, we must assume Knight knows about our plans, and that would mean he is trying to find the Chronicle even as we speak. Damn you, we can't wait even another day!"

  "I want to let him run."

  "What?"

  "I want him to run. To find the Chronicle. If he can."

  For a moment Benedictine was silent. For a moment he almost seemed prepared for another bitter outburst. And then reason and understanding set in, warming his ambition like the whiskey warming his belly. The ice cubes swirled around his glass as the man considered the implications of what Amadeus had just said.

  Amadeus smiled and halved his eyes. "Yes, Paris's whore knows things. And so does Debra's whore. Who knows where such things may take them together?" Amadeus paused to let all this thinking sink through the mortal's thick skull. And I am quite certain that Rome will greet you well as you return triumphant from your pilgrimage with their Chronicle under your arm. What do you think, Cardinal?

  Benedictine let out his breath. The man practically reeked of joy, suddenly. "A week, you say?"

  "I trained him to be my double, Cardinal. Please understand--I must have at least that." Amadeus stood up to indicate the audience was, at least to his thinking, over. Benedictine stood as well. Like most humans, the man, even with all his human power and influence, was still a man standing in the presence of that rarest of creatures--one of his few natural predators. He was trapped under the sway of a cobra that he perceived as a pet. "One week. And I will have your Chronicle in one hand and my wayward acolyte's head in the other. I swear it."

  A pause. And then Benedictine climbed to his feet. "Do what is necessary. I will do what I can here to keep the church from getting underfoot, getting in our way. I'll give you your week. But hear well, you nightcrawler, you make sure that when you have Knight, that you have him dead. Is that understood?"

  "Of course, Cardinal."

  "You sound unsure, Covenmaster."

  Amadeus shrugged. "He is my double, Cardinal."

  "He's not that good," Benedictine said, more a question than anything else.

  "Like me," Amadeus said, "he is a king among his kind."

  Benedictine considered this. Then the man let out his breath, coughed again, hissingly, the phlegmatic cough of the perpetually ill. Amadeus thought of serpents shimmering across the hardwood floor of the parlor. From him to the Cardinal's feet. Biting with raspy mouths full of ragged fangs. The Cardinal took a hesitant step back as if sensing this threat on some subconscious level. Yet the poison was already there, the reasoning planted like a fertile seed in the mortal's tender mind. Benedictine simply would not know it until much later, when everything came to pass. He said, low and intimate, "Do not fuck this up. The Purge is only a few years off, and none of us need a reprisal of 1962. That or...things may have to be done."

  "Of course, Your Eminence." And Amadeus tipped his head and clicked his heels in the manner of the Old World Style.

  Benedictine looked him up and down. Amadeus felt the man's eyes on him like chips of fire. "I want that Chronicle," Benedictine whispered. "And believe me, Father, you do not want to see me disappointed. I am not as forgiving as my predecessor."

  Amadeus smiled evenly and sent him an army of serpents to track his dreams for the next seven days. "I assure you, Your Eminence, failure is the farthest thing from my mind."

  He scarcely remembered getting up and rushing from the restaurant, his mind and body were in such a state of turmoil. He glanced around and suddenly found himself in Rockefeller Center, walking at a purposeless speed along the path lined with evergreens leading toward the ice skating rink from which he could already hear the needling strains of music. Above the rink stood the golden statue of Mercury in mid-flight. Behind him the giant Vermont fir was naked of lights and had been for over a month. February. No Christmas, no spring. Only cold white and an endless sea of time. Only that. Away from the restaurant, among familiar surroundings, their conversation of moment's before seemed less real, a thing of dreams, bad dreams, lies. He quickly regained his wits and watched the night skaters sweeping across the mirrored ice and felt his own self again.

  For the moment.

  "Do you want to skate?" Teresa asked from behind him.

  He didn't quite start. "They want me--he wants me--"

  "I'll bet you're an excellent skater," she said, coaxing him toward the kiosk. He let her kidnap him a second time. Apparently their date wasn't over. It seemed useless to resist. They rented skates from the vendor, tied them on, and set out on the ice. There were quite a few people in the rink and they waited their turn for a break in the pattern of traffic before coasting in and slowly building up their speed. Alek turned, half-expecting to find the little Italian nun lagging far behind, but instead she cut the turns even sharper than he did and moved up effortlessly beside him. Then she took him from the elbow and broke him free from the herd.

  And then it was as if they were flying, soaring side by side through the cold wintry air, a pair of identical spirits leaving the earth and all its petty problems far behind in favor of another place, a different world. It was a feeling that lasted only a few minutes, but when it was over and Teresa led him to the side of the rink, Alek was breathless with exhilaration. He could feel the summoned blood in his cheeks like roses, hot and blooming, and his pulse ran like a clock in his throat and wrists. So long, he thought, it's been so long since I felt this...

  "Where did you learn to skate like that?" he gasped.

  Her eyes darkened, reflected all the entwining lights of the rink. She watched a couple fumbling along, find their rhythm side by side on the ice. "The art is open. People learn so much faster. Evolution." She looked at him. "That's what Paris used to tell me."

  "He died--was killed," Alek said. "I remember the name."

  "He was murdered in 1962," she said, "by Aragon--Amadeus."

  Alek dige
sted that. "And you believe this?"

  She narrowed her ancient, holy eyes. "Yes, caro."

  He heard the lisp of her accent now, the pain in that other life. He stared into the ice like King Arthur awaiting an answer or a purpose. "Why me? Why choose me? Revenge?"

  She turned him around so his back was to the crowd, so he saw only her, and slid her narrow hands up his lapels. Very strange that touch, part priestess, part lover. He leaned into her instinctively. "You want to corrupt me," he guessed, "to hurt Amadeus--"

  "I want only the Chronicle. That is my revenge."

  "I don't have it. I don't know who does."

  "You know. You have only to remember."

  "I don't understand--" His head swam. "You're using me, seducing me."

  "Do you mind?"

  He kissed her mouth in response, drawn to the shine of her skin, the darkness in her eyes. He touched her hair, worshipped the waterfall of it through his fingers. His heart pounding in his ears, he kissed the curve of her cheek, the perfect line of her throat, her delicate wreath of collarbones. No spell now; only her, only this. He felt her swallow, gasp, heard her say:

  "I have watched you. I love you."

  He sighed, let her go. "You don't know me. You don't know what I've done--"

  But she was not listening now. Her gaze was turned away from him, out over the frozen water as if it were again the Pond where the Prince undoubtedly continued to turn his harrowing circles in a vain attempt to save his life. He heard it now too: Conflict. Human conflict from the street, the blare of a horn, several horns. A gunshot. Human voices. Human noises of pain and surprise and horror.

  "Wait for me." Her hand covered his heart as if she meant to spell him. He watched her as she skated to the edge of the rink and unlaced her skates and climbed the stairs back up to street level. I love you. Wait. But she no longer touched him and that made her sorcery weak, too weak for the sudden panic that she would leave him to suffer alone with these unwashable memories.