Yet many of them healed and returned to the fray. Still, he chopped them down. But no matter how many he overcame, more rose up in their places. There were simply too many.
“We’ve got to get to Hannibal,” he said finally. “This is a waste of time. If we can destroy him, his followers will crumble. The center cannot hold.”
“I haven’t seen him since this all started,” Peter replied. “But I’ll see if I can locate him.”
Green light grew from Peter’s left hand, the same verdant light that shimmered on the blade of his sword. Kuromaku danced around, keeping the vampires away from Peter as he searched. Peter mumbled something, and Kuromaku glanced up to see a stricken look on his face.
“What is it? Have you found him?” Kuromaku asked.
“No, I . . . I’m sorry, I have to go. . . .” Peter replied.
“Go?”
But Octavian was already moving, running across the street with a crackling ball of green energy around him. He could not attack the vampires and they could not hurt him. Kuromaku glanced up as Peter rose over the walls of the convent and wished that his friend had more control of his magick. It was a weapon they sorely needed at the moment.
A clawed hand gripped his hair and yanked his head back. Kuromaku had lost his focus. Vampires swarmed in at him. He reached behind him with his left hand and drove his wakizashi through the eye of the vampire on his back. The vampire wailed and reared back, fell off of him with the short sword still jutting from its face.
Kuromaku had regained his focus.
With only his katana, he waded into the small band of vampires who had made him their target, and slaughtered them; he hacked them to pieces. It was as if he had bathed in blood now, and the scent of it was insinuating itself into his brain, trying to overcome his reason, his calm at the center of this maelstrom.
He sensed movement behind him, turned, and faltered.
“Hello, brother.”
Tsumi stood no more than a dozen feet away.
“Sister,” Kuromaku said.
“My lord Hannibal has instructed me to remove you from this fight,” she said. “You yourself have asked me to withdraw. I’m going to offer you a choice, Kuromaku. Choose wisely. If you will withdraw from this battle, I will do the same. Together we will await the outcome. Otherwise, I will have to kill you.”
Kuromaku narrowed his eyes. The pain in his heart was great, but he hid his love for his sister behind a grim face and sheathed his katana momentarily. The fight went on around them, but somehow, Hannibal’s creatures knew to leave the two Japanese warriors, brother and sister, to themselves.
“I am sorry, my sister, but this coven needs my sword, and they shall have it,” Kuromaku said.
He bowed.
For a moment, he thought he saw sadness in his sister’s eyes. Then it was gone.
“They shall have it,” she agreed. “But not for long.”
Tsumi also bowed. She reached to her waist and, from nowhere—just as he had taught her—she drew her own katana.
They came together quickly, brother and sister, and sparks flew where the steel of their swords kissed.
Peter stepped quietly as he entered the convent. His sword at the ready, he crept down the hallway with his back to the wall, eyes glancing from windows to doors along the corridor. His stomach felt queasy, as though he’d eaten something that was a little off. And, he realized, he felt hungry. He needed some real food. It was a sensation he had completely and utterly forgotten until now.
He didn’t take the time to appreciate it.
The slight nausea, the light fever he knew he was running, both paled beside the odd sense of dislocation that had come over him outside. It had only grown worse as he entered the convent. Each step heightened the disorienting slide into duality. He was there, in the corridor. But in his peripheral vision, he saw stained glass. He smelled Nikki’s light vanilla scent, some kind of body spray she wore. He heard her shouting at him, but didn’t understand the words.
Down the corridor, where the door to the chapel was open just a bit, Nikki Wydra screamed.
And Peter was in the world again. Focused.
Enraged.
He ran the rest of the way down the corridor, heedless of any threat that might await him before the chapel itself. Sword blazing with magickal energy, he kicked the chapel door open. Though his strength was only human now, the heavy wooden door cracked loudly and seemed to sag forward from its top hinge.
Movement in the darkness. A struggle. He threw up his left hand and green light cast a sickly pallor over the chapel.
Peter!”
Nikki stood at the front of the chapel, wielding an ornate iron candelabra as if it were some kind of fighting staff. The thing that menaced her hissed at Peter, then returned its attention to Nikki. It slashed long ebony claws toward her, and she brought the four-foot length of wrought iron onto its hand with a satisfying crack.
The vampire roared its anger and lunged for her with its whole body. Nikki drove the candelabra through its chest and spun away, running across the altar. The wrong way. Away from the wraith, yes, but away from Peter as well.
“Nikki, no!” he shouted.
Too late. She stood beneath a stained glass window that depicted Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, tears of blood streaming down his face. Prismatic moonlight washed over her from behind, a soft rainbow silhouette.
That was the moment when Peter realized he loved her.
“We meet again,” the wraith hissed, and Peter turned his attention back to the impaled creature.
Impaled, yes, and in pain. But not suffering overmuch. Not suffering anywhere near enough, as far as he was concerned.
It moved forward, hunched over slightly, and, with each step, drew the candelabra several inches out of its chest. Black ichor seeped from the wound and pooled like mercury where it spilled to the floor. Peter stared at it in revulsion. He could destroy it. He should destroy it, of course. But he looked into its eyes, into his own eyes, and saw all that he was, or at least, all that he had been for so long a time.
“Come now, Octavian,” his shade sneered. “I promised Hannibal your heart to feast upon. If you will not kill me, I will surely destroy you, and the white-haired beast will taste the blood of your new life.”
“You want to die?” Peter asked.
“I want to kill you,” the thing whispered. “You have poisoned me with all that you are. I can never be what I might have been because I am tainted by your humanity, your faith and memory.
“But if I cannot kill you, I might as well die myself,” it declared with a snarl, thin ebony lips drawn back to expose the full length of its rows of razor teeth.
It grunted in pain as it removed the candelabra from its gut. The wrought iron stave clattered to the floor.
Peter stared at his shadow.
It leaped for him.
Peter spun and slashed, his sword burning bright, and cleaved the wraith in two. It fell dead at his feet in two pieces, both of which shattered into thousands of small shards of indigo glass. It sounded as though a chandelier had fallen to the floor.
“Peter?” Nikki ventured. “Oh God, Peter.”
He did not look up at her. He held up a hand to warn her off.
“Watch where you step,” he said with a rasp quite like hers. “It’s sharp.”
Peter Octavian looked down at the vile thing that had once been a part of him, and wondered idly where its opposite number, its divine brother, had gone on to. Not until he blinked, and his vision lost its focus, did he realize that he was crying.
“Peter?” Nikki said gently. “What’s wrong?”
He sheathed his sword, wiped the tears from his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
Carefully, he moved across the chapel to take her hand. The battle outside raged on, they could hear it. Yet somehow, it had changed for Peter. In an instant.
His memory of everything that occurred to him between his death
in 1453 and the start of his new life only hours earlier began to fade. Not to disappear, exactly. The emotions they incited were still there, but the details of his life in the shadows began to gray around the edges a little. He remembered events. Remembered those close to him and still loved them. Remembered his magick, or at least, some of it.
But it was as though, with his shadow destroyed, he had excised some major part of his life. Part of what made him who he was. A melancholy feeling began to sweep over him, a feeling of loss. But he wondered, very gravely, if that loss weren’t for the best.
He led Nikki down the corridor, their fingers intertwined.
“I was so scared,” she admitted. “For both of us.”
“Me too,” he whispered.
“Don’t go back out there,” she said, the pleading in her voice enough evidence that she knew just what she was asking of him. Betrayal. Yet she had asked just the same.
Peter was tempted. As the part of him that had been a shadow faded further from his mind, from his life, the conflict seemed to grow less vital to him. And yet, even if the shadows outside were not following his instructions, his example, he knew that the battle must be fought. For the lives of the world, if not for the race called vampires.
Humanity must be protected at all costs.
At all costs.
“Does giri mean nothing to you now?” Kuromaku asked Tsumi in a rage.
He held one hand to the gaping wound in his side, holding his guts in while his body tried to heal. Tsumi was leaning heavily on her right leg, waiting for the tendons in her left ankle to knit themselves back together. They had given each other these grievous wounds on their last pass, and neither had a chance to take advantage of them.
“Get away from us!” Tsumi roared suddenly, and Kuromaku turned to see a pack of slavering vampires stagger to a halt just before they could attack him.
They looked at Tsumi uncertainly, then at Kuromaku, and back at his sister. Then they moved on, dragging another shadow down nearby. The number of combatants on the street had thinned dramatically; the large mass was breaking up into pockets of bloody battle, leaving behind ash and cinder in some cases, corpses or barely enfleshed bones in others.
Kuromaku and Tsumi were alone now, on a far corner a short way from the convent. And she had not forgotten his insult.
“Giri?” Tsumi sniffed. “My honor and duty are to my family and my master. Once upon a time, these were human beings. But we are not Japanese anymore, my brother. We are vampires now. Our coven is our family, and Hannibal is our only master. What honor and duty I have belongs to him.”
Kuromaku’s heart sank.
“Then come, little sister,” he said softly, raising his katana once more. “It is time for your final lesson.”
Tsumi’s eyes narrowed, a storm raging within.
“You were my sensei once, Kuromaku,” she replied angrily, “but never my master.”
They lunged at one another then, vampiric strength and speed driving them forward. Tsumi raised her katana and brought it down at an angle meant to cut his chest open to the heart. With her strength, she might have done it. But Kuromaku had learned much since he had taught his sister how to fight. How to kill.
His sword clashed against her blade, sparks flying, but instead of parrying, instead of turning away, he moved in toward her. His blade slid down, holding hers back, until their guards met. Even then, Kuromaku was turning. He ducked and spun, controlling her blade with his own, turning to face her, but now slipping inside her sword arm.
Kuromaku tried to ignore the surprise on her face. The despair. Tried not to interpret those things as sorrow or as grief for anything but the loss of her life.
It had been one swift, fluid motion from the moment they clashed, and he completed that movement now as he brought his katana around and decapitated his sister with one thunderous blow. Her body hit the ground long before her head, and Kuromaku’s bloody tears fell to the pavement soon after.
“We’re losing!” Bethany shouted in Kevin’s ear. “Kev, what are we gonna do? There are just too many of them!”
Kevin raked silver claws through the chest of a beautiful female vampire, and she shrieked in pain and horror. He grabbed her by the throat and punched a hand into her chest, tore her black heart from her slender corpse.
When he turned to Bethany, he still held the cold, slick organ in his hand.
“Don’t even fucking say that,” he growled. “We will win because we have to win. Losing isn’t an option. You have any idea what’s at stake here?”
Bethany looked frightened, but she fought with admirable ferocity. Kevin turned back to the fight himself, dropping the vampire heart to the street where it was quickly trampled.
“Hey, Beth!” he heard Caleb call behind him. “Don’t worry about it. We’re evening the odds up pretty quick!”
Kevin winced at the other shadow’s words. Caleb was a good fighter, and loyal as hell, but he wasn’t the most intelligent of their coven. There was no denying the odds. No denying that things looked grim, and that without a miracle, their chances of surviving, of stopping Hannibal, were dismal.
The difference was, Kevin had faith. A vampire leaped for him and he turned his whole arm to fire, setting the savage thing ablaze. It fell to the ground, rolling, trying desperately to put out the flames. Bethany, having watched, repeated the same move to great effect.
She might be afraid, but no way in hell was she giving up. Kevin admired her for that. A moment later, and they were back to back again.
“Don’t worry, Bethany,” he said aloud. “These assholes are following the devil. But we’ve got God on our side. Right, Caleb?”
That last he shouted. But there was no answer. Bethany kept fighting; she hadn’t noticed.
“Caleb?” Kevin called.
With silver claws, he ripped out an enemy’s throat, then turned to search the battlefield for Caleb. Bethany noticed his concern and appeared at his side, also scanning.
A path opened up through the killing, and Kevin saw him. Hannibal stood more than six feet tall, huge for the era of his birth, and his long hair was unnaturally white. His grin was bloody, his teeth stained and covered with bits of viscera. At his feet was Caleb’s crumpled body.
In his left hand, Hannibal, lord of the vampires, held Caleb’s head by its blood-matted blond hair.
“God?” Hannibal roared, amused. “What makes you think there’s any such thing as God, boy?”
Rage and grief swept over Kevin, but he held it in check. Rushing in would only give Hannibal one more target. He was controlled enough to know that.
“I’m here to stop you,” Kevin replied through gritted teeth. “That’s evidence enough, far as I’m concerned.”
Hannibal shook his head, a bemused, mocking smile on his face. He tossed Caleb’s head and it rolled across the pavement and came to rest a few inches from Kevin’s right foot.
“You’re here to die,” Hannibal said. “All of you.”
“Oh, God, Caleb,” Bethany whispered at Kevin’s side.
Then she screamed, the most horrible scream Kevin had ever heard. Before he could reach for her, try to hold her back, Bethany went after Hannibal. That left Kevin with no choice. Together, they might have a chance. Him alone against Hannibal? He’d be slaughtered.
Hannibal seemed to flow like the darkness itself. Where Bethany reached for him was only shadow, and then he was right in front of her, gripping her by the hair and the front of her jacket, lifting her, putting her in Kevin’s way.. . .
Kevin raked silver claws across Beth’s face and breasts.
He mumbled something weakly, then stood and stared at his hands in shock and disgust. Only a second, but by the time he looked up, Hannibal was tearing Bethany in half.
“Nooooo!” he screamed.
Caleb’s body finally imploded in a pile of dust and cinders, and then Bethany’s did the same. They just didn’t have the control the elders had; the sun might not kill them, but some t
raumas were just too much even for a shadow schooled by Peter Octavian.
Kevin went after Hannibal, but he might as well have thrown his life away. The lord of vampires was simply too powerful. He had such experience, such confidence; no matter what ancient traditions he had handicapped himself with, Hannibal could not be beaten.
“If it’s a comfort, try to remind yourself that you never really had a chance,” Hannibal said, that leering smile still on his face. Mocking. Victorious.
Kevin wanted so badly to rip that smile from his face.
Hannibal’s fangs tore into Kevin’s throat. He felt his flesh tear. Mist! He could change to mist, just float away and return to the battle in another place! If he just could concentrate, he could . . . change.
But not to mist. There was a better way to change. Something Kuromaku had taught him earlier that day. If it worked.
Eyes fluttering as Hannibal feasted on him, Kevin reached to his hip.
“That’s right, don’t fight it,” Hannibal whispered. “You know it’s over.”
Suddenly the gun was there, in his hand, its grip rough against his palm, the holster snug around the metal. Kevin drew the weapon out, held it to Hannibal’s left eye, and pulled the trigger.
Hannibal screamed louder than the gun’s report and staggered back, holding the place where flames licked at his face. At the hole where his eye had been, where silver had burned a hole through his head.
Now change! Kevin told himself. Change!
But he couldn’t focus. Couldn’t will the change to happen. The gun fell from his hand to the street, and several vampires swept over him, tearing into the enemy who had the audacity to hurt their master.
And Hannibal had been hurt. Was even now screaming in pain. Kevin felt triumphant. They could still win, he knew. But without him. He was dimly aware of his arm being torn off.
Of Masques and Martyrs Page 26