Of Masques and Martyrs

by Christopher Golden

  “Denny’s a special guy,” she said. “I’ll make it as easy on him as I can.”

  George thought he saw a twinkle in her eye, and assumed that Bethany was talking about sex. That she would make love to Denny while she killed him. In truth, such an act might make it easier for a young, virile man like Denny to accept what he’d decided to do. But George just thought it rather ghoulish.

  He turned and nodded to Denny, who was still staring at Bethany. The big Cajun stood and walked proudly toward them, trained from childhood not to show his fear. But he was afraid, George was certain of it. It was in his eyes.

  “Beth,” he said and dipped his head in greeting.

  “Hi, Denny,” she replied. “Sorry if I kept you waiting. You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

  “We all know de score, chérie,” he explained. “Our family loses dis battle, dere may not be any others. Denny ain’t gonna do anybody any good wit’ just muscle. Not dis time.”

  Bethany took Denny’s hand and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, then softly on the lips.

  “You’re a good man, Denny Gautreau,” she said and led him from the room.

  Before George could even turn away, Caleb came into the chapel. His face was flush and he looked a bit sleepy, but he nodded at George to indicate that he was ready for another.

  “Shawnelle?” George asked.

  “She’s okay,” Caleb replied. “In the dining room with the others.”

  That’s where all the corpses were being laid, at least until they ran out of room. Then they’d start using some of the other rooms. The mass production of new vampires . . . George shook his head at the idea even as he cursed himself for calling them that. Shadows, vampires, there truly was a difference.

  But at times like this it was difficult to draw that line. Even Hannibal had never done anything like this. But Hannibal had never been this desperate.

  George looked at Caleb, then back at the expectant faces in the chapel.

  “Elliot,” he said, drawing the attention of a fiftyish man with a large pot belly. “You’re next.”

  The man glanced at George, then at Caleb, and rose from the pew. When he marched in silence past George’s spot at the chapel door, Elliot didn’t lift his head.

  George Marcopoulos prayed, then, to a God in whose existence he had every faith, but about whose benevolence he had never been quite certain.

  It was half past ten, and Commander Jimenez sat in the small tent that had been set up for him. It was a crash pad, mental retreat, and mission control all rolled into one. He’d spent the last few hours listening to reports about Operation Moses, and now he was just tired. It’d be at least two to three days before his command was in any shape to pull a similar operation, and the city hadn’t even been chosen yet.

  He was voting for New York. It had the highest kill ratio and lowest percentage of remaining population of any infested area. But it wasn’t his decision alone.

  Roberto sighed and tried to stop the rapid flow of thought and analysis in his mind. He hadn’t slept in more than thirty-six hours, and he needed at least a few before he could even think straight again.

  Outside the tent, his troops were still hustling. They were working in shifts now, one shift helping the recently arrived National Guard troops do a sweep of the city for human survivors or vampire leftovers while the other shift catnapped. Roberto didn’t want to sleep, but trying to deny exhaustion was both foolish and dangerous, to himself and to the men and women in his command.

  Tanks and jeeps and Humvees rolled along outside the tent. Officers shouted orders and the mess tent fairly roared with the clatter of trays and the chatter of soldiers. Roberto had been a soldier his whole life. This was his lullaby.

  He lay on his side, right hand under his flimsy pillow, and let his mind drift away, finally, so that sleep might claim him. He felt his awareness slipping away, his mind retreating into a world where it might continue to think and work and thrive without distracting his consciousness . . . and then he sensed something. Some sound, so insignificant, perhaps, that his conscious mind wouldn’t even have registered it. But his subconscious, his sleeping mind, alerted him to something, somehow out of place.

  A whisper. A presence.

  Roberto rolled onto his back on the cot, hand flashing to his sidearm, drawing it up, and aiming it all in a single motion. Four of them, and he could tell just from the way they stood, the way they stared at him, that they were vampires.

  His finger began to draw back the trigger, but the gun simply disappeared from his hand. Roberto blinked, saw the dark-haired girl holding his weapon, and despaired.

  “Careful where you wave that thing,” said a familiar voice in back. “I don’t reckon any of us wants to let your troops know you’ve got company. And it wouldn’t do you much good even if we were here to kill you. Which we’re not.”

  Roberto rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his sleep-starved brain. The man in front of him looked older—if that was possible for a vampire—but he knew without a doubt that it was Will Cody.

  “Will,” he said, and his eyes scanned the other three. It took him a moment to realize the blond was Allison. And not merely because she’d changed her hair.

  “Allison?” he muttered. “I thought you didn’t . . . ”

  Then he stopped, midsentence. Her eyes had flared with a certain rage that told him the subject was not open to discussion. So they sat there in silence a few seconds. Just long enough for Roberto to feel a sudden and inexplicable guilt for the act of genocide he had so recently perpetrated. It was ridiculous, but he could not shake it. Though he knew these vampires, Cody and Allison at least, to be noble and decent, they were still vampires. He ought to kill them where they stood. That was his mandate, after all.

  But he’d known for months where Peter Octavian’s coven made their home, and he’d done nothing about it. So what did that say?

  “You’ve picked an odd time for a social call,” he said, and his eyes narrowed as he watched Cody’s face. “Frankly, I’m surprised you even got in here. My people are pretty good at spotting your—at spotting vampires.”

  “The sun’s up,” Allison said simply. “They’re used to dealing with vampires, not shadows.”

  The tone in her voice bothered Roberto. The loss of her humanity had changed her drastically; he could see that right off. And however it had happened, he didn’t think she was happy about it.

  “Rolf’s dead,” Cody said suddenly.

  Roberto blinked, frowned.

  “That’s a damn shame,” he replied after a moment. “He was a good man. A fine soldier.”

  “He was more than that,” Cody corrected him, but didn’t elaborate.

  But Commander Jimenez wasn’t listening. It had occurred to him suddenly that Rolf Sechs would have been an extremely difficult vampire to kill. And maybe, just maybe, that had something to do with why he’d never told his superiors where Octavian’s coven was. There was one way in which the shadows and the vampires were very different. At least one.

  Shadows were much more difficult to kill.

  “How did he—”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Allison interrupted. “If we’re right, and you move fast enough, it’s just possible that we can help each other. Hannibal murdered Rolf with a—”

  “Wait!” the white-haired vampire behind Cody snapped.

  He stepped forward, and Roberto studied him. Cody looked older, maybe fifty, but this stocky bloodsucker was the first vampire Roberto had ever seen who actually looked old. It was odd.

  “How do we know we can trust him?” the old vampire asked, staring at the commander.

  “How do you know you can . . .” Roberto repeated, sneering. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

  “Sebastiano Battaglia, Commander Roberto Jimenez,” Cody said quickly, then gestured toward the brunette fang-girl. “And this is Erika Hunter; she and Rolf were a couple. And now that the introductions are out of the way, Berto, let me a
sk you an important question.”

  Cody dragged the single chair inside the small tent over next to Roberto’s cot and sat astride it, leaned his elbows on the back of the chair, and fixed the commander with an intense stare.

  “It isn’t that I don’t trust you, understand,” Cody said bluntly. “If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have agreed to come here. But I know you think of us—Peter and me and the few others of us that you’ve actually met, that you actually know—as . . . oddities, I guess. Exceptions to your own rules about vampires.

  “My question is, if we gave you a weapon you could use to cripple vampires, making them easy to kill, how do we know that you’ll work with us to make sure our own loved ones aren’t targets?”

  Behind Cody, Sebastiano and Erika seemed to tense up, as if they were preparing to attack. Roberto forced himself to ignore them. It was clear they wouldn’t do anything without Cody’s or Allison’s say-so.

  So he focused instead upon Will Cody’s question. Turned it over in his mind. Was tempted to ask what this weapon was, but knew they wouldn’t answer him. Not yet. The hell with diplomacy, he decided.

  “Honestly?” he began. “You don’t know anything of the sort. Even if I promise you, you won’t know. But I’ll tell you this much: if this weapon can be mass produced, if it can be stored and used at our convenience, I’d be more than happy to coordinate any attack with you, Will. If your people act up later, we can always go after them then.”

  Cody glanced at Allison, then at the other two. None of them seemed to offer any commentary whatsoever, but Cody seemed pleased.

  “All right,” Cody said. “I think we can live with that.”

  “Our coven is headquartered in New Orleans,” Allison began.

  “Yes, I know,” Roberto replied.

  Allison raised an eyebrow. It was all the comment Roberto needed. She understood that he’d stayed away thus far. For what it was worth, it would certainly make them trust him more.

  “Hannibal is probably there already. He’s taken his entire New York clan, and maybe some from other cities, and has somehow found a hiding place in New Orleans. Tonight, at dusk, he’s going to try to wipe out our entire coven,” Allison explained. “He’s been planning this for a while, but your attack on Atlanta spurred him on.”

  Roberto frowned. “How do you know all of this?” he asked.

  “Long story,” Cody replied. “The point is, it’s tonight. You’ve only got hours to duplicate the serum we’ve brought, so let’s not waste any more time.”

  “Agreed,” Roberto replied. “So where is this serum? And what does it do?”

  The vampire girl who’d been introduced as Erika produced a small steel case Roberto hadn’t noticed before.

  “Here,” she said, stepping forward. “Let me show you.”

  She held the case in front of him and opened it, her back to the others. Roberto’s eyes widened as he looked inside.

  The case was empty.

  “What kind of game are you playing?” he said angrily, all thoughts of vengeance, of quickly wiping the vampires from the face of the Earth, dissipating in a single moment. “Stop wasting my time.”

  But then Commander Jimenez saw the effect his words had on the other shadows, saw the surprise on Will Cody’s face. He glanced at Erika and caught the smirk on her face.

  Then she was behind him, in an instant, the metal case clattering to the ground.

  Cody and Allison began to shout at her, but the white-haired vampire, Sebastiano they’d called him, merely stood and stared.

  “Shut up!” Erika screamed. “Both of you!”

  She had a long nail pressed to the flesh of his throat. It pinched a little, and he felt the warmth of blood streak his neck.

  “Erika!” Allison shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Commander Jimenez said nothing. If the girl was going to kill him, there was nothing he could do to stop her. He locked eyes with Cody a moment, then the old scout and hunter turned to look at Erika again.

  “I’m sorry,” Erika said, but Roberto didn’t think she meant it.

  “This was the plan all along,” she admitted, and then let loose a small chuckle, barely noticeable really, which told Berto something he really didn’t want to know.

  The girl was insane. Maybe not maniacally so, not jumping around like a lunatic. But mad, just the same.

  12

  I thought I had a piece of

  my soul left to sell. . . .

  But the angels won’t have it.

  —MELISSA ETHERIDGE, “The Angels”

  NIKKI STARED AT KEVIN, EYES NARROWED with an anger she found it difficult to express. They stood in the middle of a small study, which Nikki guessed had once been the office of the convent’s mother superior. The study had become the center of a flurry of activity since before dawn, when the plans Kevin, George, and Kuromaku had made began to take effect.

  Elsewhere in the convent were more than a hundred fresh corpses, waiting to rise into a new life in the shadows. Out in the city, every coven member who could be spared was searching for Hannibal’s daylight resting place. After all, there weren’t many places where one might hide hundreds of sleeping vampires. Warehouses, abandoned office structures, public buildings, and the like. A boarded-up pornography theater had seemed an ideal spot, but had turned out to be empty.

  In the neighborhood around the convent, word was being spread that something horrible was coming. That anyone interested in continuing to live should find somewhere else to spend the night. Bethany had begun contacting the owners of certain businesses nearby, many of whom Peter and Joe and Will had known well, before the events of the past week. A silent alarm was being sounded, but it was impossible to determine who might respond. If the owners of a bar or restaurant did not want to close up for the night, who could blame them?

  If pressed, Nikki would have to admit that she was surprised Kevin had been able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time, even with George and Kuromaku helping with the details. It was barely noon, after all.

  But now George had gone to his room to rest, exhausted from the long night’s events. He was growing old very quickly now, she thought. Seemed, in fact, to be aging before their eyes. Nikki hadn’t known the man long and, when it came right down to it, he wasn’t even really that old. Not in today’s terms. But he did not look well. Not at all.

  So here she was, stuck with Kevin. He was an admirable man. Loyal and committed, striving to live up to impossible standards, just praying that he could help keep his race alive until morning. And hoping, of course, to have revenge for his slaughtered lover.

  Nikki understood all those things, and gave Kevin the respect he deserved. And she understood, as well, the reason for his appalling lack of tact when it came to one particular topic of conversation. But she wasn’t going to stand for it.

  “For the last time,” she said through gritted teeth, “the answer is no. I don’t care what you say, or how many reasons you give me, I refuse.”

  “We need you, Nikki,” Kevin insisted. “Every last person counts, don’t you get it? And if you were with us, the others might feel that, in a way, maybe Peter was with us too.”

  Nikki snorted with laughter. “Oh, Jesus, that’s low. Not to mention that you’re really fucking reaching with that one, Kevin.”

  He glared at her.

  “No, really,” Nikki continued. “I mean, I barely know the guy. Sure, I was attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be? And it isn’t that I don’t care; I do. About Peter, and about the rest of you as well. I’m not some unfeeling bitch. But you don’t have any idea what you’re asking.”

  “Yes, I do,” Kevin said quietly, folding his arms in front of him.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head as she grew even angrier. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, and I admire what all your volunteers are doing today. But I’m not going to be one of them, do you understand? I have a life, goddamnit. One life. I’ve se
en too many people give theirs up, to drugs or suicide or even depression . . . fuck, even just laziness. I’ve seen lives wasted.

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste mine. One life is good enough for me, Kevin. I don’t want immortality, and I sure as hell don’t need a blood addiction after evading coke and heroin for so long.

  “I don’t blame you for asking, Kevin. But no means no, for Christ’s sake. No means no. You were dying when your time came, Kevin. You didn’t have a real choice, not a fair one. I’m sorry about that. But I do!

  “I choose life,” she said grimly and turned to stalk out of the study, silently daring him to speak.

  At the door, she glared at him again. “How dare you?” she spat.

  Striding from the room, she nearly walked right into Caleb. The look on his face and the speed with which he moved alarmed her instantly.

  “What is it?” Nikki whispered.

  Caleb looked at Kevin, glanced at Nikki, then back at Kevin again.

  “The cocoon,” Caleb said, his voice hoarse. “Something’s moving inside.”

  “Get George,” Kevin barked.

  Then he was up and running past Nikki down the hallway. Caleb looked at Nikki a moment longer, then turned to follow. Nikki couldn’t breathe. She wanted to follow, though she knew she’d never keep up, not if they weren’t making an effort to wait for her. But she couldn’t follow. She couldn’t do anything.

  She had begun to care for Peter, that much was true. But the thought of seeing what was going to emerge from that cocoon frightened and nauseated her all at the same time. None of them knew, that was the disturbing thing about it. None of them had any idea what to expect.

  Any more than she did.

  That was the thought which got her legs moving. None of them knew. But each of them, she was sure, had secretly thought of several possibilities. None of the ones Nikki had considered were very pleasant. And yet, curiosity was a great motivator. Curiosity and fear. Fear for Peter. She didn’t know if she loved him. Didn’t know if she could love one of—one of them.