“Hmm?” Her mom had already turned to another page. “Oh, too bad we don’t have any walnuts. This sounds really good.”
Her mom was nervous. This was the kind of puttering she did when she couldn’t keep her mind on anything. Buffy mentally pulled back and kind of watched over her as she struggled to find a calm place.
Then her mother turned to her and said, “Buffy, after the funeral, make baked Alaska, all right? Serve it to everyone you’ve ever met.”
Before her eyes, her mother died. She simply ceased to be. Her face went gray, her eyes blank.
And then she started on fire, a column of fire that reached straight up to heaven.
Buffy cried out and sat up. For a few minutes, she fought to get her breath. She held herself, forcing away the threat of tears. It was only a dream, she insisted.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Then she heard the fwap of the morning paper on the porch and, more to distract herself than anything else, went down to get it.
“Three Missing, Graves Found Disturbed. Gangs Suspected,” read the headlines of the Sunnydale Gazette.
Buffy frowned and scanned the articles as she carried the paper back into the house. Three live people were missing, and four graves had been robbed.
This is so weird, she thought, then almost laughed. In Sunnydale, when was it not?
Venice, 1872
Angela Martignetti had a secret, and it wasn’t simply that she was a Slayer: she was violently in love with her Watcher.
What sane woman wouldn’t be? Peter Toscano was incredibly virile, exquisitely handsome, and, to add to his irresistibility, extremely wealthy and well educated. He spoke not only Italian but English, French, and German. No matter where they traveled, he had been there before. No matter what the demon or monster, he had researched its origins and weaknesses . . . in the native tongue of the Watcher whose journals and diaries divulged the necessary information.
This great love was a dangerous and precarious situation for both of them. For Peter returned Angela’s love. When the Watchers’ Council learned of it — as they almost certainly would eventually — they would likely discipline Peter severely. At the least, the council would force them apart, assigning Angela a new Watcher. A band of pasty-faced Englishmen . . . what did they know of passion, of desire?
At first, they had made every effort to keep their secret to themselves. Of late, however, it had become increasingly difficult to continue that pretense. Within their household, they still tried to be circumspect, loving every night under pretext of study and discussion, with Peter retiring discreetly to his own room before the chambermaid entered in the morning to pull open the curtains and bring him a cup of coffee. But Angela knew they were doing a poor job of it, and yet she was so submerged within the affair that she found it difficult even to be concerned.
They had been tracking the notorious female vampire Veronique for almost a year. To be sure, Angela had slain many demons and vampires in that year. But it was Veronique who obsessed them both. She had not only killed Angela’s cousin Lucia but now inhabited her body. Angela had sworn to put an end to this desecration of a beloved family member. That was in the early days of their war against Veronique, before they had realized what a threat she was. Not merely a vampire who was essentially unkillable but the minion of a great evil known as the Triumvirate. If she succeeded in bringing this unholy trinity into the world, there would no longer be a world in which to dwell.
Now, as they sat in their opera box and watched Verdi’s La Traviata, Peter scanned the audience with his opera glasses, while Angela carefully took inventory of her lovely velvet reticule, the small bag in which she carried a few Slayer’s weapons — holy water, wafers, and a mirror. Peter had a theory that vampires could be subdued by shining a mirror in their faces, although they had yet to test his theory on an actual fiend.
Murmurs went through the opera house as twin flutes of champagne were brought to the box, along with a sprig of orchids for Signorina. It was widely suspected that the mysterious couple were lovers. That in itself was not enough to cause gossip. But the fact that they were both so incredible to look at, well mannered, and rather mysterious caused a sensation throughout Venezia.
“There,” Angela murmured, placing a hand on Peter’s arm. She gestured, and he looked.
Amid the flickering candles, he caught sight of the exquisite nape of the neck of the dead Lucia, now inhabited by Veronique. What Peter would never reveal to Angela was that he had loved Lucia beyond all reason. For Lucia, he had felt incredible joy in the presence of such gentleness and innocence. Angela was not his first great love. She had not won him by her beauty and wit. She was the coda to his grand passion. The means to vengeance, if truth be admitted. Angela had flaws, including a terrible temper, an addiction to absinthe, and a tendency toward the voluptuous. She was more likely to be a man’s mistress than his Madonna-like wife, at least when compared to the lost Lucia.
When he caught sight of Veronique, who had the unmitigated gall to wear the dead woman’s exquisite jet-black gown, he whispered to Angela, “Tonight. It ends here.”
She nodded. He could feel her tension, her excitement. He took her hand and kissed it. Perhaps, in time, he could feel the love for her that she deserved.
Outside Peter Toscano’s elegant villa, a young gentleman named Gaetano DeMoliano stood within the gates. He wore a cloak and a mask, and he was terrified.
In his arms, he carried a very ancient and very sacred family heirloom: the handwritten diary of his many-times-great-grand-uncle, Jacques de Molay. Like most in his family, Gaetano believed in the innocence of his ancestor, the leader of the Knights Templar, who had been tortured into making ridiculous confessions about worshiping the Devil. Jacques had been burned long ago in Paris, and slowly, where they killed everybody, didn’t they?
But now there was a new order, called in English Freemasonry, and books such as this were sacred in the extreme. The men who joined this order did so for fraternal reasons and to spread good throughout society. They did not truly believe that everything Jacques had written was true:
And there is within the city of Paris, a fiend called Veronique. She is a vampire, and she seeks to bring to this world an unholy Trinity of Evil. . . . We seek day and night to bring her to ruin. We Templars pray constantly for her final and true death.
Many had thought Jacques’s work to be a perfect example of the superstitious and florid writing of the time, but Gaetano had cause to believe it: he had loved a beautiful woman named Lucia, and she had been changed by that very fiend into a vampire.
The lover of Lucia (and such a lover was she! incredible!), he had been in her bedchamber when the monster had approached through her casement window, attacking his beloved while he watched, mute, from the curtained darkness. The monster had murmured, “They shall come for me soon.”
His beloved lay still and dead after the creature escaped back out the window. Gaetano had sat beside her, weeping and in shock. And then, within three hours, his dead darling had risen, and seen him, and laughed, and told him her name: Veronique.
He had already known the name.
He knew what she was.
Through keen observation and study — and the bribing of many spies and informants — he had at last learned that Peter Toscano and his mistress, Angela Martignetti, were vampire hunters. And thus he planned to leave the journals of his ancestor with them, under cover of night. He dare not approach them openly, for he suspected that Lucia, in turn, had him watched.
And so, he snuck into the villa, aided by a confederate, one of Toscano’s servants, and placed the book reverently and hopefully on the great man’s writing desk.
In England, the old men gathered around a table of polished ebony. Sacred symbols and runes were carved in the surface, and the place was painted with signs and sigils to ward off the damned.
“It is confirmed,” Lord Chestleborough announced. “The Slayer and the Watcher are . .
. intimates.”
Sir Adrian looked peeved. It was he who had stood for Peter Toscano’s character when the man had asked to be assigned to the current Slayer. Now he had been made to play a fool.
Lord Covington’s face was red with fury. “By God, we’ll start a fire.”
Across the table, Lady Anne, the only female member of the Watchers Council, rapped her knuckles on the table. “If the Slayer perishes . . . the penalties are great for the needless waste of a good Slayer.”
“Watchers come twelve to the tuppence,” Sir Adrian remarked. “And I suppose we’re proof of that, eh, gentlemen?”
Veronique smiled to herself as the burgundy velvet curtain descended for the last time. She adjusted her long black gloves over her upper arms and flicked open her beaded fan. The opera was over.
The Slayer and her Watcher were sure to make their move.
She made a grand display of gathering her things — her spray of dark red roses, her black velvet reticule. Her black beaded shawl hung loosely and coquettishly around her waist. She knew that more than one man had stared at her with desire that night.
Of course, she had an escort — no lady would be seen in public without one — one of the vampires she had made, named Marcello. He was very stupid, and she was sorry she had bothered turning him, save for the fact that he was very handsome in his formal evening clothes.
“Amore mio,” she murmured. “The Slayer is here. With her guard dog.”
“Ah, no,” he whispered back, agitated. “Do not fear, cara. I shall protect you.”
“Yes, of course you will, my heart.” She smiled adoringly at him. “When we go outside to the carriage, ensure my safety, my handsome one. Will you?”
He put his hand over his heart. “Though it cause my death.”
Oh, it will, she thought, amused.
They went with the crush outside. The night was warm, redolent of exotic perfumes and nosegays. Elegant men and their astonishing mistresses sauntered toward carriages. Wives, exquisitely dressed, clung protectively to the arms of their captive husbands, who stared longingly at the courtesans belonging to other men. Young girls and their swains exchanged glances under the watchful glares of chaperones — maiden aunts, trusted married sisters, even brothers. Everyone would be off to grand suppers or midnight trysts. Veronique herself had a dozen invitations in her reticule. But tonight, she had more important business to conduct. Once she threw Marcello to the wolves, she would bring her masters into the world.
As soon as she saw the Slayer and her Watcher, she murmured to Marcello, “Where is our carriage?”
Marcello, with his mane of dark hair and his moustache, snapped his gloved fingers and shouted, “Di Rimini!” That being their absurd, invented surname.
The footman snapped to, and the carriage rolled toward them. At the same instant, Slayer and Watcher brought out their crosses.
With a snarl, Veronique pushed the hapless Marcello toward them, shielding herself, leaped into the carriage, and ordered it to be off.
Angela darted toward the vampire, but Peter held her back. “Don’t make a scene,” he murmured. “We’re surrounded by onlookers, and he’s not important.”
She sighed angrily and nodded.
They went to the villa in their private carriage, loving and caressing each other the three miles to the gates. All that time, Peter thought of the lost Lucia, and his lust for revenge translated into lust of a more sensuous nature.
When they reached the villa, Peter escorted Angela inside. He poured brandies. She was clearly very frustrated. He, too.
Then he spied something on his writing desk. Crossing to it, he angled the candelabrum toward it and gasped: Jacques de Molay: Mon Histoire sur des Vampires.
“What is it?” Angela asked.
Peter said nothing to her. In truth, he forgot she was there. He did nothing for the rest of the night but read the story of Jacques de Molay and the vampire Veronique.
I have read such a work, he wrote later that night in his Watcher’s Journal, as would stand a man’s hair on end. It concerns the vampire Veronique, who is a true Immortal.
In the poorest section of Venice, there stood a crumbling palazzo overhanging the canal, which had once been the home of a wealthy duke. But battles had waxed and waned, his house had fallen, and the palazzo was nothing but a ruin. The duke’s name was less than a memory.
In the grand boudoir of the edifice, among Corinthian columns whose gilt was peeling, and on white-and-black marble floors black with age and filth, cracked mirrors surrounded by gilt, and rotted chairs of brocade, Veronique leaned over the writhing form of her chosen vessel and urged the Three-Who-Are-One to come forth. After so many centuries attempting to bring the Triumvirate to Earth in their true form, she had finally discovered the secret. They must be separated, born into the world, and then reunited on the other side. At long last, her masters’ will would be fulfilled, and they would reward her greatly. They had given her the gift of true immortality, but if she continued to displease the Triumvirate, they could easily take that gift away. Now, at last, she had found a way.
Veronique’s forehead was beaded with sweat. She was exhausted and furious.
The naked male vampire, who writhed on the floor in a delirium of agony, chanted with her in the old tongue. But nothing happened. The Triumvirate did not come.
What are we doing wrong? she fumed silently, frustrated beyond speech.
Then the door to the palazzo burst open, and the Slayer stood facing Veronique and her followers, quite alone.
At that moment, the mouth of the vessel sealed shut. His back arched. His abdomen began to protrude. It was time!
Without hesitation, the Slayer slammed Veronique out of the way. A bearded vampire attacked the Slayer, but she kicked and punched him out of her way. Then another, and another.
She skidded to a halt within the sacred rune pentacle and staked the vessel in the heart.
The Three-Who-Are-One shrieked in mid-birth, as the vampire exploded.
“No!” Veronique screamed. Signaling her minions, she raced after the Slayer.
Angela had hired a gondolier, a man she and Peter had used many times as their agent. Thus, when the Slayer had prevented Veronique from completing the horror she was perpetrating, she ran and leaped over the balcony of the grand boudoir and landed in the gondola, and the gondolier had them moving instantly. They slipped rapidly into the blackness of the night, barely a ripple in the canal.
Veronique gave chase, but by the time she reached the water’s edge, she knew it was too late. She balled her fists. Nothing would keep her from murdering this Slayer.
Angela reached Peter Toscano’s villa an hour later, and it was engulfed in flames. The huge blasts of flame soared into the warm, starlit night, blazing with the force of the Devil’s breath. Animals and servants screamed; dark forms darted in silhouette across the brilliant colors.
Without hesitation, she forced her way inside, racing to Peter’s room. He was surrounded by fire, and when he saw her, he shook his head.
“Don’t,” he ordered. Then he reached for the heavy book, which was ablaze, and his smaller diary and hefted them at her. “Save my work. Stop her.”
“Peter.” Tears streamed down her face. “Peter, no.”
“I beg of you.” He hesitated. “I loved her, Angela. I loved Lucia. Veronique destroyed her, destroyed it all. It is a vendetta now.”
Her heart broke, in many places, in many ways, as the blaze forced her away.
The villa burned all night. By its ghoulish glow, Angela read the charred journal of Jacques de Molay and that of her unfaithful lover, Peter Toscano. She learned the secret of Veronique’s immortality.
And she formulated a plan.
In a fury, Veronique paced in the crumbling palazzo, her skirts trailing through the ashes of the one who was to have been the vessel for the Three-Who-Are-One. The stars were perfect, the rituals performed. That damned Slayer had ruined everything.
S
he traveled the city on horseback to challenge her at Villa Toscano. As the flames played over her face, she prayed to the ancient gods that the Slayer was still here.
I will be the death of you, she promised Angela Martignetti. You will suffer as no Slayer has suffered before.
She had been so close. Her demon lords had pushed against the membrane of the reality of this world. Soon they would have punctured it and come forth in all their glory, giving to her dominion over the mortal creatures, the expendable races. She would have been the queen of death, and the Triumvirate would have reveled in a feast of souls.
I would have drunk the blood of the last living man on Earth, she thought in a fury.
And then she turned and saw the Slayer, standing in traveling clothes on top of a carriage. She beckoned to Veronique; then she cupped her hands and bellowed over the consternation: “Follow me if you dare.” Then the Slayer hopped into the driver’s seat and snapped the reins of a four-in-hand.
This is far too easy, Veronique thought as she gave chase. The head of a Slayer will adorn the Traitor’s Gates of Hell tonight. My name will be a refrain in the chants of the demon heroes of the ages.
But the victory will be so quickly won.
Veronique smoothed the ruches of lace on her ebony dress and pulled up her gloves. Then she whipped the horse and cantered after the Slayer’s carriage.
Chapter Ten
In the basement of the condemned police station, Konstantin scanned the stockpiled dead for the most rotten among them and did not inhale. While vampires did not breathe, precisely, there was an instinctive in-and-out exchange of gases that allowed for speaking, the sense of smell, and smoking, if one was so inclined. Thankfully, it was a simple matter to cease that function completely.
The dead stank. And the one they wanted was the one that was the most repugnant.
“What about this?” Catherine asked.
Konstantin turned to look. She stood not far from the line of corpses they had brought back the night before. But beyond them were an older pair, one of which was relatively far gone into putrefaction. It wasn’t as ripe as some of the dead they had fed to the demon hatchlings in the first couple of days, but it would have to do.
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