“There she is,” the driver mumbled, almost incoherently.
Kuromaku glanced through the windshield, and the lights of downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter lifted his spirits a bit. Even at nearly four in the morning, the city was still alive. He’d been here decades earlier at a particular Mardi Gras when the world’s shadows had migrated to the Big Easy along with human volunteers who’d known what they were and given up their blood, and often their lives, freely.
The Venice Jihad had changed all of that. The church had nearly been destroyed forever, and the shadows themselves freed from two thousand years of psychological conditioning. Free to live. But free to kill as well, without much fear of reprisal. Peter’s great effort may have unintentionally begun a process that would destroy the human race.
In the silence of the early morning, the taxi turned slowly down Decatur Street. A short time later the driver turned left, and soon Kuromaku saw the facade of the Omni Royal Orleans hotel just ahead. He couldn’t very well search the streets at dawn. And if he needed a place to stay, why not the best hotel in the French Quarter?
Kuromaku smiled to himself. He’d softened a bit in the twentieth century. He knew that. He’d cut his long hair short and begun to favor business suits; though he told himself they were the costume of the twenty-first-century warrior, they never felt quite right. He’d grown tired of battle, and more and more fond of pretty things, exotic foods, and outrageous lovers. New Orleans was the city for him, then, he thought.
Suddenly he became angry with himself. He was thinking like a fool, soft and content. He’d come here for war, and the warrior he’d once been anticipated it with something akin to lust. He would slough off the softness of his wealth like dead flesh.
Kuromaku was taken aback to realize he was staring into the rearview mirror at the driver’s eyes.
“Sir?” the man asked, obviously afraid he was responsible for Kuromaku’s sudden change in demeanor.
Kuromaku might have said something to reassure him. He did not. The man was a boorish skunk, who risked his own life and the lives of any human passengers by drinking while on duty. To hell with him.
The taxi stopped in front of the Omni, and Kuromaku opened the door. The driver also got out and went round to the back of the vehicle to pop the trunk and remove his passenger’s bags.
“New Orleans is quite a city,” the driver said. “I hope you enjoy it, sir.”
Bucking for a tip, Kuromaku thought. But then another thought entered his mind.
“You are from this city, then?” he asked.
“No, sir, but I’ve driven a cab here for goin’ on twenty years,” the man replied. “It’s home to me now.”
Kuromaku smiled at him, and the cabbie seemed to brighten a bit.
“Tell me, sir,” the vampire warrior said, “do you believe in vampires?”
The driver looked taken aback. He actually moved back a step, tilted his head, and studied Kuromaku more closely.
“Well, I’d have to, I guess,” the man said. “Kind of a part of life these days, aren’t they? I wouldn’t want to live in New York or Atlanta, I’ll tell you that. And L.A., I don’t know there’s any real people left out there. ’Course, that town was always full of bloodsuckers.”
The driver chuckled at his own humor. He handed Kuromaku’s bags to the bellman, then beamed with pleasure as the vampire gave him his fare with a spectacular tip.
“So, there aren’t any in New Orleans?” Kuromaku asked, smiling.
“Well, sure we got our share,” the man said. “But we don’t have many attacks, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“No,” Kuromaku said. “That was not my concern at all. In fact, since you know this city so well, I had hoped you might be able to tell me where one might go if one wished to . . . meet a vampire.”
Immediately the taxi driver’s face underwent a drastic change. His upper lip curled and his nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed, and he snorted derisively as he pocketed his money.
“One of those, huh?” the driver said, and it was more comment than question. “More of you freaks every damn day in this town.”
The driver opened the taxi’s door and slid his stinking mass of flesh onto the fake leather seat. He snorted and spat on the pavement before slamming the door.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Kuromaku said menacingly and stepped to the open window of the taxi. “I wouldn’t want to get the impression that people in New Orleans were ill-mannered brutes.”
“No,” the driver said, sneering. “No, that would suck, wouldn’t it? Listen, you want to find blood freaks and vamp wannabes, check out the Harvest Moon on the corner of Toulouse and Burgundy. ‘Course, they don’t open ’til after dark.”
“Thank you,” Kuromaku said politely. “You have been very helpful.”
As the driver pulled away, Kuromaku could hear him mumbling. “Hope you get bit, freak,” the driver said under his breath.
“Not for a long time, my aromatic friend,” Kuromaku said to himself.
He smiled and smoothed the lapels of his suit, then turned to the waiting bellhop and indicated that the man should lead the way. Soon he was safely ensconced in his hotel room, and he settled down to sleep as much of the day away as his anxiety would allow.
When Allison regained consciousness, the first thing she was aware of was pain. In her forehead and behind her eyes, a kind of headache that doesn’t come naturally. She let her eyes flutter open, then squeezed them shut against the pain. What little she’d seen told her she was alone, in darkness. It was impossible to know if it was day or night.
All she knew was that pain in her head. She tried to sit up, felt the cold concrete beneath her, a small sticky patch under her fingers. Once more, she opened her eyes and pain lanced through her skull. Allison reached up to search her forehead and scalp for injury, and found what she was looking for. She hissed as her fingers grazed a ragged patch of torn skin two inches above her left eye, where the pressure of a contusion added to the pain of the wound.
Blood on the cold floor, and it was hers.
She breathed deeply several times, desperately trying to orient herself, to move beyond the pain. She was almost certain she had a concussion, at the least. Finally she felt a bit more clearheaded. Once more, she peered into the darkness.
Allison knew she was a captive, but she was shocked to find herself in an actual prison cell. Gray walls and bars. Dim light somewhere down the corridor beyond the bars. And silence.
She felt the urge to call out, to see if there was anyone who might help her. Then she groaned, because a smile would have pained her. How foolish of her, she thought, and chalked it up to head trauma. Erika was working with Hannibal, that much was obvious. She didn’t know for how long, or how willingly, but enough so that the little goth girl who had once been their ally was willing to attack Cody and abduct her. Erika and Vlad, the hugely muscled, bald vampire who’d been with her at the airport, had thrown Allison into the cell with such force that her head had struck the wall, then the floor, and had knocked her unconscious.
She might have broken her neck and died at that moment. That she hadn’t was sheer luck. Those were not the actions of a friend, nor even an ally. No, calling out for help would only be humiliating.
Sitting on the concrete, the cold seeping through the seat of her jeans, Allison cradled her head in her hands and thought of Will. She was a woman of strength and independence, but she was also not an idiot. She needed him now, more than ever. There was no question in her mind that his retreat at the airport had been the only way to save her life. The fact that she was breathing at all was surely due to her value as bait.
So, how to stay alive until Cody could come and break her out? That was the billion-dollar question, no doubt about it.
“Comfy?”
Allison started, and her skull was spiked with pain again. She stared through the bars into the dimly lit corridor. Vlad stood there, his huge mass etching a
dark silhouette across the front of the cell. He leered at her. Behind him were two other vampires, neither of whom she had seen before. One, however, was a curiosity. He was old. His hair was white and his face sagged with age. When she searched his eyes, he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“You smell nice,” Vlad said and smiled, showing off his fangs quite self-consciously. “The blood, I mean. Sweet, maybe a bit tangy, nice bouquet.”
He inhaled deeply and, despite herself, Allison shivered.
“Want to play, little girl?” he sneered. “I know you’ve got a thing for vampires. Does Cody bite you when you fuck?”
Allison swallowed.
“Tell you what, you dickless poseur,” she said, hating the way her voice, unused for hours, cracked when she spoke, “why don’t you just come in here and rip my throat out? Rape me, I dare you.”
Vlad’s eyes went wide. Allison smiled. Hannibal wanted her alive, at least for the moment, and his lackey wasn’t about to defy the master.
“Fucking coward,” she sneered. “Run along now, Vlad. Come back when you’ve grown a set of balls.”
The bald vampire’s jaw dropped, mouth gaping open, as he stared at her in horror. Then his eyes darkened to a profound crimson, and his face pushed out into a wet snout. Fur spurted from his flesh and the growl that erupted from his throat almost made Allison lose control of her too-full bladder.
She’d gone too far.
The old, white-haired vampire grabbed Vlad around the throat with one huge, meaty hand and drove him across the corridor, pinning him with a clang to the bars of the opposite cell.
“Don’t be an idiot,” the old vamp said softly. “He’d kill you.”
“But Yano,” Vlad whimpered, already returning to his human form, “she . . . she . . .”
“Oh, shut up, you pussy.”
Both vampires looked left, down the corridor. Allison didn’t have to look; she recognized the voice.
Erika.
“Yano just saved your life, Vlad,” the little brunette told him. “Allison would have been fortunate to have you kill her. Time spent with Hannibal will be infinitely worse.”
Vlad began to smile. He strolled over to Erika, kissed her on the forehead, and then glanced over at Allison.
“Maybe he’ll give you to me as table scraps,” Vlad said. “But I’ll get a taste of you, one way or another.”
When he’d gone, Erika approached Allison’s cell. Yano stood behind her a moment, but she motioned for him to leave as well and, with a guarded look, he did so. After she seemed satisfied they were alone, Erika returned her attention to Allison.
“Nasty head wound, there, Alli,” she said.
“Fuck you,” Allison said bluntly, but Erika didn’t even flinch.
“You know why you’re here?” Erika asked her.
“I’m not stupid,” Allison said. “Maybe I should ask you why you’re here.”
“I want to live,” Erika replied. “The whole New Orleans coven is going to be destroyed. Another couple days, at most, and they’ll all be dead. If somebody doesn’t fuck it up for Hannibal.”
Allison tilted her head to one side, and received a painful reminder of her wound. She stared at Erika.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Erika smiled. “I hope you live long enough to find out,” she said.
Somebody hissed farther down in the corridor, and Erika glanced up worriedly, then quickly turned to mist and drifted back into the darkened cells behind her. Ventilation ducts would allow her to go anywhere she liked. For the first time, Allison wished that she were one of the shadows. She wouldn’t be stuck in this hellhole.
The harsh clack of boot heels echoed down the corridor to her cell. Allison stared out into the hall, waiting for this latest in her parade of visitors. But she knew who it was. The only person Erika would have run away from.
“Hello, Hannibal,” she said, and tried to force herself not to cringe.
Like the vampire Erika had called Yano, Hannibal’s long hair was white. But unlike Yano, Hannibal did not look old. In fact, he was every inch the vampire lord he had made of himself. Tall and slender, with eyes a compelling, frosted blue, and a mane of flowing white hair, Hannibal looked, quite simply, cruel.
For just a moment, the world went away. Allison flashed back to the first time she’d met Hannibal. A party, at his house in Venice, for shadows and volunteers—humans who offered themselves up by choice. She had been a reporter then, working undercover to investigate a vast network of disappearances and what she thought was a murderous cult. She’d been knocked unconscious. And when she woke . . . God, those sounds . . . Hannibal had been defiling the wounds of another woman’s corpse, fucking her in the abdomen, only a few feet from where Allison lay.
“Allison,” Hannibal said, and his smile widened.
She recoiled as if he’d slapped her, then raged against her lack of self-control. Not that it wasn’t understandable. After all, she’d seen the depths of Hannibal’s depravity. She knew what she faced.
“He’ll kill you, you know,” she said as matter-of-factly as she was able.
“Yes, I know,” Hannibal replied. “If he can. So really, it doesn’t matter what I do to you, as long as you’re whole enough to lure him here.”
He misted, then, and passed through the bars in an instant, re-forming inside, only a few feet from Allison. Against her will, she found herself scrambling backward to get away from him. She remembered thinking just moments before about how strong a woman she was.
But courage only went so far.
“Please,” she said, “just leave me alone.”
“Oh,” Hannibal replied, smiling, “I really don’t think so.”
It was his smugness that did it. Allison, steeling herself against his inevitable reprisal, turned on Hannibal. Her hatred and fear boiled over together, pouring out of her in waves. Bile rose in her throat, and she spat it, hot and thick, in Hannibal’s face.
“Do your worst, you bastard,” she said quietly. “Every time you hurt me, every tear and every scream, I’ll think about what’s going to happen to you when Cody finally catches up to you.”
“Please do shut up now,” he replied.
Hannibal wiped the back of his hand across his face, then licked her phlegmy spit off his hand. As if it were the same motion, he backhanded her. Allison’s cheekbone cracked and her nose broke, blood spurting from her left nostril. She flew across the cell and slammed her right shoulder against the cement wall. She could hear something else crack on impact, and the pain screamed up into her whole body. When she landed on the cement, she was close to passing out again.
“No,” Hannibal said wearily. “Not for a while yet.”
He tore her from the ground by her blood-spattered blond hair, scalp ripping from the speed and power. That woke her up. Allison screamed, and the tears she’d known would come finally arrived.
“Don’t feel as though you can’t beg,” Hannibal teased. “It won’t make a damn bit of difference one way or the other.”
His right hand closed on her good shoulder, and with his left, he broke her arm.
Again, she began to pass out. But then the horror brought her back around. The pain and humiliation as Hannibal literally tore her clothes from her body. In seconds Allison lay naked and bleeding, cracked and broken on the cement floor. She couldn’t feel the cold of the concrete anymore.
Hannibal leaned over her and covered her mouth and nostrils with his right hand. Allison’s eyes bulged in panic. She couldn’t breathe, and for a moment, the pain was set aside. Death was imminent. Black spots appeared before her eyes, and she began to calm down. Death had its attractions. Already, the pain was fading.
The hand went away. Allison sucked air greedily into her lungs. The pain was unimportant in that instant. She wanted to live, no matter what.
“You’re a tough one,” Hannibal said appreciatively. “That’s nice. I want you to be able to appreciate this.”
Then he
began to scar her.
In the year since the catastrophic battle that nearly leveled Salzburg, Austria, Roberto Jimenez had changed very little. His hair was a bit grayer. He was one year older, of course, forty-five now. He smiled less. Even spoke less often. And, for the first time in his life, he considered himself a failure.
Until Salzburg, Roberto had been commander-general of the United Nations Security Force. Afterwards, his job had changed. His orders were simple. Kill the vampires. No matter what it took, or how much it cost, or who he pissed off doing it.
That was the idea, anyway. But for three full seasons, he’d been caught in a tug of war between Bill Galin, the president of the United States, and Rafael Nieto, the secretary-general of the U.N. Nieto was a pain in the ass, and Galin . . . Galin was just insane. Truly, completely insane. Willing to threaten nuclear strikes to get his way, happy to have the Secret Service and CIA commit assassinations whenever the need arose.
While his old job went to someone else, Berto watched and waited, anxious to get started. And while he waited, Hannibal spread his influence over the face of the Earth, a virus with an agenda. In the days before the world knew that vampires were real, they were kept in check by a rogue faction of the Roman Catholic Church.
But the church was gone, its American splinter all that remained.
Even though some of the vampires seemed to be free of the vulnerabilities and restraints that mythology claimed for them, Hannibal’s legions of followers were not. Compared to the less violent of the vampires—and unlike both Nieto and Galin, Roberto knew there was a difference—Hannibal’s crew were far easier to kill.
Unfortunately, he’d been relegated to culling vampires in certain areas of certain cities, to hunting down specific bloodsuckers, most of which he never found. Pursuing Galin’s vendettas had cost valuable time and led nowhere. Hannibal’s followers seemed to choose major cities at random, spread all over the globe, but concentrated in America. At random, at least, until you looked at the map and realized how evenly dispersed they were. Portland, Oregon. Los Angeles. Denver. Dallas. Minneapolis. Detroit. Of course, New York and Atlanta were the worst. Hell, those cities might as well just be surrendered to Hannibal, Roberto had often thought.
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