Of Masques and Martyrs

by Christopher Golden

  “It’s going to seem like making love after what happens next. You . . . fucking . . .”

  Hannibal moved wrong. He hadn’t been vulnerable in so very long, centuries at least, that he’d forgotten how to protect himself. Somewhere in that place into which Allison’s mind had fled, she felt it. Sensed it.

  And she acted, rebelling against her nausea and terror, against her pain, against her memory. She acted. Allison used every ounce of superhuman strength left in her limbs to strike out at the undead man Hannibal had suddenly become. Her knee slammed into his crotch. she felt his testicles give way to the hard kneecap, and she threw him off of her.

  The once-lord of vampires roared in pain as he fell to the pavement, all his weight for a moment on his shattered knee. Allison smiled to see him trying to decide which part of his body to cup gingerly with his hands, but in the end they covered his balls and he growled in pain and a lust for vengeance.

  Yet by the time Allison had risen to her feet, Hannibal had already begun to struggle to raise himself up, in spite of the agony he must have been feeling. Allison felt the panic begin to grow within her again, but this time she crushed it fast, before it could take root.

  She would kill him. For herself, and for Will, and for all the rest who had suffered and died or lost their loves because of Hannibal. She would break his neck with her bare hands. She would—

  Hannibal laughed.

  Allison turned.

  Three of his vampires swarmed toward her from behind. Despite all the gas and the gunfire, these three, at least, seemed to have their horrific abilities intact.

  So close, she thought.

  And then Allison Vigeant waited to die.

  When Peter Octavian emerged from the convent, it was into a maelstrom of death and a quick-changing landscape of sound and fury. Not war so much as it was mass murder.

  He had been an angel of mercy at first, when he’d found Kevin’s gore-encrusted body on the pavement. But the young, noble shadow still lived, and Peter had brought him into the convent where he might convalesce.

  Now he walked like the spectre of death across what remained of the battlefield. His entire body crackled with green energy, as did his sword. Bullets did not harm him, but he no longer need be concerned with that. He had seen Roberto Jimenez a minute or two ago. As soon as Jimenez recognized him, the soldiers stopped firing at Peter. The commander must have ordered them to do so, because otherwise, they were vicious warriors, taking no chances.

  He walked around the convent, stepping over what remained of those corpses that hadn’t burst into flames or exploded into a cloud of ash. Most of them were very decayed, as though they’d been dug up and dragged here from St. Louis Cemetery. There was a short burst of gunfire every ten or fifteen seconds, but the space between them was getting longer. Peter wished he could have communicated with whatever members of his own coven were left. If he could have just told them not to attack the soldiers, they might have survived. But after the soldiers’ initial assault, they obviously believed the human warriors meant to kill them all, and so they attacked, believing they might save their own lives.

  All but Kuromaku, and Peter thanked God for that. He found his old friend surrounded by more than a dozen U.N. soldiers, all with their weapons aimed at him. Kuromaku held what was left of his sister in his arms, and stared off into nothing, his eyes focused on something beyond the world, or perhaps into a time that had long since passed out of the world.

  When Peter rested a hand on Kuromaku’s shoulder, his old friend finally began to cry. Peter knelt at his side and whispered, asking him to go inside and watch over Nikki until morning. Kuromaku did as he was told, and as he rose, Peter stretched out his magickal protection so that the soldiers could not harm him if any of them panicked and decided to fire.

  None of them did. In fact, most of them looked decidedly uncomfortable, unsure of their zeal in light of Kuromaku’s tears. Peter was glad. It was a lesson they needed.

  He moved on, and a short time later, he had come to believe that Kuromaku was the last of the shadows. That only he and Nikki and Peter himself had survived the battle. Unless, of course, some of his coven or Hannibal’s clan had fled during the battle. But he doubted it. With first the police and then the U.N. forces there, and the battle raging all around, how far might they have gotten?

  As long as Hannibal hadn’t escaped.

  It disturbed Peter to think he might never know.

  Still, he continued his walk. The soldiers kept a respectful distance. Jimenez didn’t even try to talk to him. Peter was glad of it. It would have been hypocritical of the man to pretend some kind of camaraderie after such wholesale slaughter. It had occurred to Peter that this had been the meaning of Will and Allison’s message. He didn’t know how it had come about, what magick or technology they had used to make the vampires’ bodies vulnerable again. But it was not the kind of help or rescue that Peter would have prayed for.

  Even if Hannibal were dead, this was no victory for Peter or his coven.

  Though perhaps it was a kind of victory. A victory for the world. For humanity. He had admitted as much to Nikki that George had been right. That shadows . . . that vampires were too dangerous for humanity to risk allowing them to survive.

  But the truth did nothing to warm the ice in his heart.

  At the comer of Governor Nicholls Street, he turned south. The gunfire had ceased completely now. But there came another sound. A howl of agony, rising at the end to signal fury at whatever pain had been inflicted. It came from behind him, farther up the street, away from the carnage.

  Peter turned swiftly, but already soldiers were rushing up the street toward the intersection of Governor Nicholls and Royal Streets. He could see Jimenez at the front of the pack. The human warriors held their weapons at the ready, still prepared to kill.

  After all, the killing wasn’t done yet, was it?

  “Stop!” Peter shouted.

  They didn’t even slow down.

  He swept himself forward on a wave of magick, rushed past them, and dropped to the ground in front of Roberto Jimenez. Face to face for the first time in a year, the two men regarded one another. Protected inside the green energy that crackled around him, Peter raised his sword and held it in front of him. Several of the soldiers moved to fire but Jimenez held up his hand.

  “You may follow,” Octavian said. “But if you do, then follow. I will be the one to determine how events proceed from here. It isn’t your place anymore.”

  Jimenez nodded once, and Peter turned and sped off down the street.

  Immediately, he saw them. Three vampires about to descend upon a blond woman whose face was in shadow. Peter’s heart leaped with hope as he fell upon the vampires, his sword flashing, his magick killing, destroying the vampires in seconds.

  Then he turned and saw her. Allison. He felt the smile stretch across his face and he glanced around for Will Cody. But when he looked back at her he recognized a pain there that he had missed at first. Wordlessly, she pointed to the corpse of a huge animal not far away. It was a bear.

  Dead.

  And Peter knew.

  “Die!”

  Hannibal roared the word as he fell upon Allison, all his weight on his single working leg. The two tumbled together and Hannibal throttled her by the neck, trying his best to tear off her head. And he had the strength to do it if Peter allowed it.

  He did not.

  Peter flung Hannibal off of Allison and threw him to the pavement. He lifted his burning green blade above the one-eyed tyrant.

  “Peter, stop.”

  And he did. Allison had asked it of him. He turned, one eyebrow raised, wondering why she would stop him from destroying the savage beast who had precipitated all of this death.

  Then he saw the weapon in her hand. She had lifted it from the cold grip of a dead soldier. An assault rifle, firing countless rounds a minute.

  “Step back,” she told him.

  It wasn’t a request. Still, he
could have stopped her. He didn’t.

  Hannibal screamed as the bullets tore into his legs. She shot at his lower half until there was little but shattered bone and pulp left. Then Allison dropped the gun and left Hannibal there to die as she went to weep over the twisted corpse of the man she loved.

  After a minute or so, Peter took her hand and together they walked back to their home. The soldiers opened a path for them to pass, and remained silent until long after they were gone.

  Epilogue

  Once more we’re cheating on the reaper,

  With all the gypsy still in our souls.

  —GREGG ALLMAN, “Ocean Awash the Gunwale”

  IT WAS OVER.

  That was the one refrain that kept running through Peter Octavian’s mind as he watched the unnaturally large casket being lowered into the earth. The path he had traveled from Boston, when he had been both prisoner of his true nature and yet free of it in a way he had never been since.

  Until now.

  A light, yet chilly breeze blew through the tall trees surrounding the cemetery. The wind carried the scent of the ocean, something inescapable here, on a little bit of paradise called Prince Edward Island, off the east coast of Canada.

  The minister said his last words over the warped corpse of Will Cody, but Peter wasn’t really listening. Instead, he was remembering as best he could. Ever since he had destroyed the wraith that had been born from within him, the vampire he’d once been, his memories had been clouded. But he remembered his feelings well enough.

  Will Cody had been the closest thing that Peter Octavian—ever the bastard child—had ever had to a brother. Even more so than Kuromaku, who had returned to France to bury his sister on his estate there. Kuromaku lived by a code of honor created millennia earlier, and he was an honorable warrior.

  Will Cody had created his own code of honor, even before he had met Peter, and yet it had aligned with Peter’s almost precisely. They were allies, at first, but quickly became friends. But it was more than a code of honor that made them brothers.

  They had faith in humanity. In the soul. In the human heart. They believed without question that people were basically good, and thus that the shadows were also basically good. More than believed, they expected people to behave in a certain way, to function based on a certain logic. And for the most part, they were not disappointed.

  Human beings could choose to be angels or devils, or they could be forged into one or the other. And shadows were the same. But once forged, both men learned to their everlasting regret, it was nearly impossible to unmake such creatures.

  Were the shadows monsters? Not all. Yet once branded a monster, once become a monster, how to escape that definition?

  It was what they’d fought for, all along.

  In that, they had lost.

  Perhaps. Yet they had proven their humanity to themselves, if not the world, and wasn’t that, in itself, a victory? Will Cody had died heroically, valiantly. Though he wore the body of a beast, he had died a man’s death. And Will Cody’s second death had not been in vain, for Hannibal, and all his venomous spawn, had been destroyed.

  Or they would be, very soon. Around the world, there were sure to be small covens growing even now from the remains of his clan, tribes of Hannibal’s allies and children, dedicated to his purpose. But with the weapon Hannibal himself had created, Commander Jimenez’s grim determination would see them exterminated before the year was out. Even now, Allison Vigeant planned to help Jimenez. As the only vampire officially sanctioned by the U.N., she was to play bloodhound for the commander. He wondered if she would convince Kevin, the only other shadow to survive in New Orleans, to aid her.

  Peter glanced across the open grave to where Allison stood, weeping tears of blood. Jimenez and several other soldiers stood nearby, heads bowed with a respect that Peter profoundly appreciated. Allison and Jimenez were an odd pair of comrades, he thought. But between his dedication and her hate, the world’s remaining vampires didn’t stand a chance. In two or three years, there would be only a small handful of vampires or shadows left on Earth, and those would likely be in hibernation, waiting for the world to forget about them.

  Perhaps then it would all start again.

  The minister fell silent, then closed his Bible. He turned to walk back to his car, and was quickly followed by the small group of people who had turned out for Cody’s funeral. Some of them, Peter had learned, were distant relatives of Will’s. Though the official word still said that he was not who he claimed to be, there were members of Colonel William F. Cody’s descended family who believed otherwise, and turned out to mourn his death.

  Peter had taken the time to tell them how it had come about. They had stood, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as he explained it to them, but he knew they were pleased by the heroism of their famous ancestor. Still, they glanced at Allison awkwardly as they were led away. A vampire was a rare sight, these days, and would be growing rarer still. This first time would likely also be the last time they would ever see one.

  “We should go,” Nikki whispered to him, and her fingers twined in his own.

  Peter turned; his eyes searched hers. He touched her hair, brushed it away from her face. She smiled slightly, and he found what he’d been looking for.

  He leaned forward and kissed her tenderly. Then he left her behind, and walked around the grave to where Allison stood alone. They stared at one another for a moment, the gulf between them made even greater by the weight of what he’d once been and what she now was and had never wanted to be.

  They came together then. Wordlessly, they embraced. After a moment, Allison put a palm on his chest and pushed him gently away. Peter turned and walked back to Nikki. Together they made their way across the rolling green of the cemetery lawn, the sea-salt stinging the air, the sound of gulls crying above them.

  Inside the rental car, he slid the keys into the ignition and then paused a moment.

  Nikki looked at him, brow creased with concern. “What is it?”

  Peter smiled, shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just not sure where to go from here. I mean, what do I do now?”

  Nikki slid over in the seat, stroked his face, pulled him to her and kissed him deeply. She rested her forehead against his and whispered to him.

  “Do what George told you to do,” she said.

  “Live.”

  Peter nodded slowly, then kissed Nikki again. He nuzzled against her neck. When his eyes opened, he could see the green lawn of the cemetery and, across it, the tall headstone erected in memory of his friend. His brother. He recalled the words inscribed there.

  Colonel William F. Cody, it said simply. He yet lives.

  Peter smiled. He believed the sentiment completely. For all Will had done, he would live on.

  Heroes always do.

  Look for all the Peter Octavian novels from Ace Books

  OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS

  ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS

  OF MASQUES AND MARTYRS

  THE GATHERING DARK

  (February 2011)

  WAKING NIGHTMARES

  (April 2011)