Half Past Hell

by Jaye Roycraft

  Nestor screeched and thrashed like an animal caught in a trap. “Viktor! Viktor!”

  Oh, shit. It was as Vall had feared. Nestor wasn’t alone. The brute rushed in, like a fresh wrestler in a tag-team match, eager to pound his tired opponent. Viktor was half a head taller than either Vall or Cade and outweighed each of them by a good fifty pounds. But Viktor wasn’t nearly as old as either of them, and physical attributes gained as a human didn’t always equate to vampiric strength. Viktor grabbed Duvall by the scruff of his neck and heaved him across the room. Vall landed hard on the floor, without a helpful table to break his fall. Then again, sometimes strength was strength.

  He’d left the knife stuck in Nestor’s chest, buried to the quillon. But Vall could only enjoy the pleasant thought for a few seconds before Viktor’s weight came down on his chest in a body splash. All the wind was forced out of him, and Vall couldn’t breathe. His damaged throat didn’t help, and the more he tried to suck in air, the more he felt as if he was drowning in his own blood.

  “Get . . . off . . . me!” But all he could do was to mouth the silent words, and all compelling power was lost in the silence. Viktor’s hands tightened around his neck, the thick fingers gouging into his wound. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, and all he could see was blackness. Then, suddenly, out of the void came a sweet voice. Here’s one. He still lives. Let me have this one, Father. Fear not, brave soldier. We are here to ease your pain and suffering. He felt her sweet lips, cool on his fevered mouth, and suddenly he no longer wanted to fight. She was here, and she wanted him to join her.

  He no longer felt Viktor’s weight or Viktor’s hands, only those of Dorothea.

  “Wulf! Wulf! Damn your bloody hide! Get up!”

  The words broke through his dream, and he found himself breathing again, but it was no pristine forest air. It wasn’t even the club’s stale, recycled air. It was the hot, smoky air he knew only too well. He roused himself to his knees, opened his eyes, and took in the scene in front of him.

  Fuck me. It was as though the Tirgoviste mural had come alive. Golden, twisting flames ran up the drapes and across the ceiling, and smoke coiled and twirled in their wake like gray shadows. How had the fire started? Nestor knew better than to have lit candles around when he knew a battle was coming.

  Cade appeared at his side and pulled him to his feet. Viktor was nowhere to be seen.

  Nestor stood, mouth agape, like one of the hapless beggars in the mural, trying to pull the knife out with his palms, but what was left of his hands was too slippery with blood to get a good grip. “Damn you, Cade!”

  “Come on, we have to get out of here, now,” shouted Vall, and with his trachea healing, sound finally made the words understandable.

  “No,” said Cade. “This one dies, and he dies before our eyes.”

  Drapes that had been consumed wafted to the floor in graceful spirals of ash. The stacked tables and chairs glowed and burned like so many camp fires. And Nestor, as inflamed as the room, didn’t seem to know what to do. With his mouth still open and fangs gleaming in the light, he snarled at the flames and ran straight at the two of them.

  Both Cade and Vall caught him in their grasp. Cade put a full nelson on Nestor, locking Nestor’s arms behind his back, allowing Vall to do his work. He grabbed the Bowie bone handle. He wanted his knife back. He wanted it, but not before he finished what he’d started.

  “And this is for Valentin DeMora.”

  He yanked the knife out only to get a better grip on it and plunge it back into Nestor’s chest. Screams, as thick and foul as the smoke, filled the air as Vall carved out Nestor’s heart.

  “Damn you both! Burn in hell!” shrieked Nestor.

  Duvall extracted his knife in one hand and the cold organ in his other, and Nestor, the sound and life having fled from his voice, could only stare straight ahead. It was the moment of final certainty when one knows without a doubt that Death has come for him. Duvall had seen it more times than he could count, in the faces of soldiers, sucklings, friends, and enemies. It was usually a look of acceptance and peace, a release from earthly cares, but by the look of wide-eyed horror on Nestor’s face, it was no white light he was seeing.

  “No, it’s your hell—you burn in it,” said Vall, and he threw the heart into the fire. Like meat on a spit, it sizzled and flared as the flames consumed it. Both Vall and Cade pushed Nestor’s body into a wall booth once covered in velvet. Orange flames upholstered it now, and they reached up to embrace their new guest. Nestor’s long braid caught first, followed quickly by his clothes, and in seconds, his body was fully engulfed.

  The body jerked upright one last time, waving fiery limbs, then collapsed to the floor, but the carpet, too, was on fire, and only hastened the consumption of the body.

  Vall looked away, not wanting to see. It brought back the Chicago Fire and the deaths of Doro and Nathusius, and he wanted to avert his gaze from the memory. But Cade grabbed his head and forced him to look. “Watch it, all of it. I don’t want you ever to forget.”

  As if I would.

  When the flames came too close, they ran for the entrance. Cade had left the door propped open, but it didn’t matter. The wails of sirens and cold air poured in. The cavalry had arrived.

  Thirty-two

  KILPATRICK RAN UP to him, and Vall swore that if not for the blood and soot, the meatball would have hugged him.

  “Mayhem and destruction. I shoulda known you’d be here,” Kilpatrick said with a grin. “Anybody else in there we need to worry about?”

  “Not in the basement. I don’t know about upstairs.” Vall personally didn’t care if Nestor’s whole building burned to the ground, but the Chi-No Fire Department was already firing streams of water on the structure.

  Kilpatrick was eyeing Cade like he was some slug that needed arresting, and Cade was staring down Kilpatrick with that trademark one-brow lift of his. It had always been Cade’s expression of inconsequence. Vall decided a quick introduction was in order. “Cade, this is Detective John Kilpatrick, my partner. Kilpatrick, Kincade . . . my brother.”

  Cade turned and looked at him. The brow had lowered, but Cade’s face still displayed that damned inscrutable Indian look. Then Cade’s gaze dropped, and he laughed softly, his teeth white against his dark skin. Vall glanced down. The front of his bloody shirt had been ripped open, and the crescent gorget winked like a bright moon under the street lamps.

  Vall looked up to see Kilpatrick’s brows and one side of his mouth lifted in befuddlement, but Vall didn’t hold it against him. Only Vall and Cade knew the significance of the gorget.

  When Vall didn’t explain, Kilpatrick stuck his hand out toward Cade. “Uh, well, if you’re a friend of Duvall’s, I’m happy to meet you. Duvall needs all the friends he can get.”

  Vall held his breath. Cade had never seemed to hold mortals in any kind of regard, except as food or pleasure. But Cade smiled and grasped Kilpatrick’s hand.

  “If you’ve had any part lately in helping to keep my reckless brother alive—and I suspect you have—my thanks.”

  Kilpatrick cleared his throat, as if he either had something momentous to say or didn’t have a clue what to say. Most likely the latter.

  “Uh, you’re welcome. Duvall saved my skin once or twice, too, so we’re even.”

  Even. Had a small equality between mortal and vampire been born from the violence of the past days? Vall wasn’t sure. But perhaps Cade’s peace had a chance of working after all.

  “He’s always had a tendency to do that,” said Cade, “and I’ve never been able to break him of the habit.”

  THEY’D BEEN CLEANED up, interviewed, thanked more times than Vall could count, and finally released. Not much was left of the night, but Vall was determined to have his own answers by dawn.

  They stood on the lakeshore and watched the waves roll
in. Yesterday’s snowstorm had moved east, and moonlight glittered on the dark water. The lake had been Cade’s idea. Vall would have preferred the warmth of his house, but Cade had always seemed most comfortable when he could look out over Lake Michigan.

  Vall shivered. He’d changed into a spare pair of jeans and a trench he always carried in the trunk of the Lincoln, but he was already missing his gray leather coat, left behind in the fire. “How did you know to show up at Lacustre tonight?”

  Cade glanced at him, then resumed his perusal of the night sky. “I followed you here from Chicago. I was probably only a half hour behind you. As soon as you called me wanting to know if I was behind Veronica Main’s abduction, I packed a bag and left the club. The shit was obviously headed for the fan, and I wanted to be here when it hit.” He walked toward the water and hopped onto the jumble of huge rocks that lined the shore, as surefooted as a mountain lion. “I was hurt, though, to hear you ask if I was the driving force behind the abduction. You really thought I’d betrayed you after all we’ve been through?”

  Vall wondered if he should admit to just how long he’d doubted Cade. He made the decision quickly. This was a time for truth, and it may not come again. “I don’t think I’ve ever really trusted you. Did you know that?”

  Cade stood on the highest rock he could find, and Vall wanted to laugh. Even now, when it was all over, it was still Cade’s habit to want to be on top of the world.

  “You trusted me,” said Cade.

  Vall smiled at the conceit and shook his head. He looked south and remembered when they’d first met, when the land was nothing but a mosquito infested swamp. “Remember Fort Dearborn? I hated you.”

  This time Cade laughed, his voice as soft as the waves. “But you wore the gorget tonight. “Why?”

  Vall wasn’t sure how to answer, any more than he’d known what to say when he had left the phone message for Cade. The message Cade never got. His feelings regarding Cade had always been hard to understand. He asked a question of his own instead. “How did the fire start in Lacustre?”

  Cade pulled a lighter out of his jeans pocket and flicked it. A tiny flame wavered, its light almost lost against the sparkle of moonlight on the waves. “You have to learn to fight fire with fire, Wulf. But you’re avoiding my question. Why did you wear the gorget I gave you?”

  Vall sighed. “After Doro and le père died, you were all I had left. I wanted to be a part of your world.” He stared out over the water. “What master didn’t? The great Cade—powerful, beautiful, all-knowing—you had it all. I wanted to be a part of that.”

  “You were.”

  Vall shook his head. “I wanted more. I wanted to be close to you, to understand your thoughts, your feelings. But you never talked to me. After Hell started, you seemed to take no interest in the underground, the sucklings, any of it. Even when Boston died, you didn’t seem to care. All that mattered to you was your damned pleasure. I think Boston was the last straw for me. I couldn’t bear your indifference after that. So I left. And you never even tried to stop me. I think that’s what hurt most of all.”

  Cade was gazing at the stars. “If I had tried to hold you by force, you would have rebelled all the more. I loved all the Nathusius, but especially you, Wulf. I saw things in you I saw in few men, and even fewer vampires. That which we are not supposed to have—heart. But I couldn’t confide in you. I couldn’t let you or anyone know my weakness.”

  “Your weakness?” Cade had never been weak. Arrogant, yes. Brutal, certainly. But not weak.

  Cade jumped down from the rocks, his body as agile as ever, but his silence held an uncomfortable weight, as though his trademark liquid silver tongue had hardened to a lump of metal. He paced the sand and stared at his feet, perhaps wishing for some of their grace to loosen his tongue. Vall waited.

  Cade, too, had changed clothes following the fire, and he wore black jeans and a long black denim duster, a departure from his typically colorful garb. The breeze blew his long hair across his face.

  He stopped his pacing. “When the Great Fire burned so much of the city, I realized how little control I really had. Chicago had grown too fast—three hundred thousand in just forty years—and the vampire population had multiplied just as much. There weren’t enough masters to teach the sucklings. I did what I could, but . . .” Cade looked up at him. “I’m not the great leader you and everyone else think me to be.” His head fell again, as if he didn’t want Vall to gaze long at the admission of failure on his face. “When you joined me, and the city was rebuilt, I had hope. But the city kept exploding. A million people by 1890, and double that by 1910. I knew if there was another disaster, the undead were in trouble. When Hell started, I knew there was nothing I could do to save us. Your underground, your attempts to save the sucklings—noble, but doomed. You think I didn’t care? I feared for you and the others every damn night.”

  Vall didn’t know what to say. “But you did nothing. You could have aided our efforts . . .”

  “I did what I could. As one of the undead I did what I never did as a mortal—I made concessions in the name of peace. I saw no other way to save my city or my people.”

  “But you didn’t come forward on your own. You had Nestor do it.”

  Cade nodded. “I didn’t want to be exposed to the mortal world. I couldn’t control three hundred thousand sucklings or even twenty thousand masters, but I could control one vampire, one doyen. I knew I was stronger than Nestor, so I forced him to speak out for peace. I told him if he didn’t do as I wanted I’d cut the flesh from his bones and barbecue him, then cut out his heart and leave it to burn in the sun.”

  Vall wondered what Nestor had ever done to Cade to spawn so much hatred. “Then what Nestor told me was true. You ended up with the sweet end of the deal. Chicago was rebuilt, your sucklings ended up in Chi-No where you no longer had to worry about them, and you could go back to doing what you love best—pleasing Cade.”

  Cade nodded again. “Not a very pretty picture, is it? You understand now why I could never tell you all this.”

  Vall wondered what had been harder for Cade—keeping his secret for two hundred years, or finally admitting the truth now. “You could have trusted me, Cade.”

  “I know that. But it wasn’t just a matter of trust.” He glanced up at the sky, then dropped his gaze to the black swells rolling to crash against the rocks. “I cared for someone once badly enough to drop all my guards.” He opened his mouth, as if he could catch the taste of the surf on his tongue. “Let’s just say that after that I kept my distance with everyone. Including you.”

  Vall wondered if the reference was to the woman he was rumored to have been in love with. If true, it had to have been a hell of an affair to have influenced Cade’s behavior for more than a century. And she had to have been one hell of a woman. He’d love to have seen her. Would Cade ever tell him about it? That was another story Vall doubted he would ever hear. But that had been the past. “When I visited Chicago with Kilpatrick, I begged you for information. Surely you realized what was at stake. Why didn’t you tell me then what you had done?”

  Cade’s black brows disappeared up into his bangs. “I did. I told you to look in your own backyard. You’re a detective, Wulf. I thought you’d figure it out.”

  Vall smiled, showing Cade his fangs, then laughed. “You damned bloodsucker.”

  Cade smiled, too, showing his perfect white teeth. “Come back to Chicago with me. I promise you a place at my side. We will walk together, not like before, but like true brothers.”

  Vall felt his smile fade. He wanted to, and he would. He had much more to learn from Cade, and a few things he wanted to teach him.

  But not tomorrow.

  He’d made a tentative peace with Cade, but there was a bigger peace still to be won. He thought about Kilpatrick. “Someday, brother. Right now I have a partner who still needs some wo
rk. And this peace of yours needs a whole lotta work. It’s only half past Hell, my friend, only half past.”

  The End