It doesn’t matter. I’ll wait him out until the sun rises, Antonio thought. Or . . .
He looked down.
Old Pierre was dead.
The vampire smiled.
“Know me,” he said. “Serve me. I will bring you into a joyous life, one free of the fear of sin and hell. And death. Really, Padre, I’m doing you a favor.”
“I would rather die.”
“Sorry. My sire gave me no choice, and I thank him every day for that. The choice I gave you expired along with the old man.”
Then he attacked.
THE MANSION ON THE BAYOU
TEAM SALAMANCA AND THE RESISTANCE
Eriko watched, bemused, as Marc placed bones, rocks, piles of crystals, dishes of water containing hen’s eggs, and candles on a long table covered with the black and purple fabric his grandmother had handed him. So many things. It was very different from Buddhism, which required one to detach from possessions. To detach from desire. It was wanting, craving, hungering that created the suffering of the world. Weren’t the vampires evidence of this? Their entire existence depended on satisfying their addiction to blood.
Devout Buddhists leaned to control even their breathing, the most necessary requirement of human life. Eriko had not started out as a devout Buddhist. She’d been a modern Japanese schoolgirl.
In the days of old Japan, the Sakamotos of Kyoto had been a proud, venerable samurai family, known for their fearlessness in battle. They hadn’t been afraid to die; they’d only been afraid to do less than their best. The Sakamotos of modern Japan were also about being the best, doing their best. Despite their Buddhist beliefs, they worshipped perfectionism.
When the vampires stepped out of the shadow of Mount Fuji, Eriko and her friends had been so excited. She was ten, and it was like all her best anime shows and comic books come to life. The war never came to Japanese shores, and her parents shielded her from it anyway.
By the time of the truce her life was fun. Fourteen was the best year of her life. After she got home from school, she changed out of her dull navy-blue uniform and into little shocking-pink plaid skirts, pink-and-orange polka-dotted kneesocks, and big hair with ponytails, and zoomed all over downtown Kyoto with her very best friends, Yuki and Mara. Shopping, drinking coffee, flirting with boys and businessmen. Earbuds drowning out the boring world, she doodled little vampires with big red eyes all over her school notebooks and went to Eigamura, the old movie lot and theme park (like the American Universal Studios!) on Sundays to watch all the themed pop bands—the Elvises, the goths—queue around the entrance to dance and sing. To her the vampires had a lot of style, wearing their hair long over their shoulders, or up in ponytails like samurai warriors. They were very polite to the emperor on TV, bowing deeply to him. How cool was that?
She, Mara, and Yuki started a vampire-boys fan club, creating a website filled with poetry and fan art. They called the Cursed Ones the Cute Ones and wrote and recorded a song about them on their website. Then they formed a band of their own and dressed like schoolgirl vampires, in starched short skirts with red ruffles, and knee socks decorated with little red hearts, with two tiny hearts on each of their necks, fangs’-width apart. They called themselves the Vampire Three.
The Vampire Three were a huge hit. They got fan e-mails from vampires, or boys pretending to be vampires. They were building up their nerve to meet up with one of them, a guy who called himself Shell Ghost Shogun. It was going to be on a Friday night, at a club called Missing Dreams, at ten.
They were supposed to meet at Mara’s at seven to get ready. But Yuki didn’t show. She didn’t call, didn’t text.
She was missing.
The police searched everywhere; no one had a clue where to find her, what had happened to her. She became a face on a poster. Eriko wrote a haiku on their website:
Fog rolls into sea
Sea rolls into universe
Universe shatters
Mara and Eriko spent hours searching for Yuki, then days, and weeks; both of them were failing school. Both of them got grounded, and Eriko was furious. Didn’t their parents want Yuki to be found?
She was fuming about it with Mara on Skype when Yuki showed up in Mara’s bedroom. Watching Mara chat away while Yuki stalked up behind her, eyes blazing, fangs glistening, Eriko screamed at Mara to run, get out of there, now, abunai, danger—
Next thing Yuki grabbed Mara from behind, around her neck, throwing her to the floor. Then the vampire that had once been Yuki bent over Mara, holding her down, and tore out her throat.
Eriko couldn’t stop screaming. Her face covered with blood, the vampire Yuki crawled to Mara’s screen and stared into it, straight into Eriko’s eyes, and grinned. Eyes to eyes. Her fangs looked like fingernails dipped in scarlet polish.
Then the screen went blank.
Eriko told her parents. She told anyone who would listen. But the Sakamotos soon learned that talking in public invited trouble. Eriko’s mother found her cat, Nekko, dead in the gutter behind their house. She had not died well. A bloody handprint on their front door came next.
The police did nothing.
Then they got a visit from Mara’s father, who was practically a ghost, a ghost of sorrow. He had discovered that among an elite group of samurai families, warriors called karyuudo had been trained for centuries, quietly battling the demonic kyuuketsuki—vampires—that took down emperors and peasants alike. When vampires had been a secret, so had the warriors—Hunters—who fought them.
Eriko had a brother named Kenji, and he halfheartedly volunteered to go to a training facility nearby. Eriko begged to go instead. Kenji looked relieved and told their parents that it was fine with him.
But their father refused. Kenji had to go. Kenji was his son.
And Eriko was just his daughter.
She didn’t know why she was so shocked. A gaijin, a foreigner, might think Japanese attitudes toward women had changed through the centuries, but men like her father weren’t that unusual. She tried to go anyway, but the sensei—the master of the Kyoto school—told her that she was there for the wrong reason. One did not become a vampire hunter to avenge the death of a single person.
Then she heard about the school in Spain. They took non-Spanish students. So she cut her hair in an act of mourning; in an act of defiance she went to Spain; and she trained harder than even Jamie O’Leary and studied more than Skye York and pushed and pushed and pushed, all the time remembering how Mara had struggled against her fate, and how Yuki had laughed; and if Eriko could kill every vampire in the world, it wouldn’t be enough.
Kenji became the Hunter of Kyoto six months before Eriko was chosen to become the Salamanca Hunter, and he staked Yuki three nights later. Eriko’s father e-mailed her in Spain and told her to come home. Her friend had been avenged. But Eriko was in too deep; she couldn’t back out now, and when she drank down the elixir, she assumed a place among the samurai of Japan, at least in her mind.
It was then that she embraced Buddhism, among the extreme statues and pageantry of the Catholic church. She gave away all her plaid skirts and her Hello Kitty messenger bag and all her notebooks with anime stickers on them, and wore only black.
But something was missing. She didn’t know how to explain it, and she didn’t try. Father Juan had made his choice, yet she had a sense that it had been a mistake. She didn’t feel like a true Hunter, like a samurai. She wondered if it was because Kenji had done what she wanted to do. She would never be able to stake Yuki through the heart.
“Our numbers have gone way down,” Marc said, jerking her back to the moment as he helped his grandmother prepare her voodoo altar. Night had fallen two hours ago, and Bernard and Jamie were patrolling the perimeter. “A year ago, for every death in action, we’d get two new recruits. But the people around here who hate the vampires have lost hope. They don’t think we can win. So they just walk the walk.”
He looked at Eriko as if he wanted something. He was holding the skull of an animal in his han
ds—very weird, she thought.
“Do you?” he asked her, setting the skull on the altar. “Think we can win?”
“That’s not how I think,” she replied. “Every day I wake up, I hope I can kill a vampire. That’s all I hope for.”
“Oh.”
She saw the intense grief behind his eyes, and felt it too. She had so many bonds with her team, but she felt that she was letting them down too, the way she had let down Mara. Maybe her father was right, and she wasn’t meant to do this.
I am, she thought. Then her calf muscles cramped, and she winced.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Why so many bones?” Skye asked Alice.
Marc turned and looked at Skye now—fascinated, a bit guarded. He was half in love with her. Or maybe he was just horny. Skye was oblivious; all her attention was trained on what Alice was doing. Eriko’s mouth twitched; Skye’s classical White-magick training had not included voodoo.
“I don’t know, honey,” Alice replied, scattering them on the table. “I just know I need them. My loa comes when I have everything proper.”
“Your loa,” Skye said, looking over her shoulder at Eriko. Eriko didn’t react. Skye pursed her lips and turned back around.
Sensing she was somehow not meeting Skye’s expectations, Eriko got back to business. She walked around the dimly lit room as if she were patrolling it. How had the vampires known to attack them in the tunnel? Were they outside the mansion, getting ready to attack them again?
What is our mission? she wondered. The Salamancans. What exactly are we doing?
Alice had picked up a long black feather and a glass filled with something that looked like colored sand. She dipped the tip of the feather in the sand and made sprinkling motions in the air. “My loa is like a god. The spirit that talks to me,” she finally answered Skye.
“How?” Skye persisted
“Through me.” Alice nodded at Marc, who walked past Eriko into the shadows, then returned with a large drum. Eriko jerked slightly; it reminded her of the drums of Obon, the festival of the dead they celebrated in Japan with dancing and cleaning the graves of their ancestors. “You will have to be my witnesses. I won’t know what I’m saying.”
Marc sat cross-legged on the floor to the side of the table. Alice said, “Help me, please,” and handed glasses of water with eggs inside them to Skye and Eriko. “Place them around Marc.”
Eriko did as instructed and then moved to the back of the room and watched as Marc began to play the drum in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Alice stood before her altar, picking up objects and putting them down as if she were looking for something. Skye moved in closely, scrutinizing her every move, as if memorizing it. Ever since her return from Aurora’s court, Skye had been very subdued. Team Salamanca had endured another surprise attack—or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Vampires knew how to look for prey.
“Loa are like our patron saints. My loa is Ma’man Brigit, patroness of cemeteries,” Alice said, swaying to the drum. “She’ll guard your grave . . . if there’s a cross on it.” She winked. “Sound familiar?”
“Really?” Skye asked, startled. “And if there’s not?”
“Then your enemy could turn you into a zombie,” Alice said, laying down the feather and putting a purple candle on the table. “She’s the wife of Baron Samedi.”
“And who is he?”
“The lord of the dead. Did you know that vampires worship different gods, same as people?” She nodded. “That’s right. Not a lot of Catholics among the vampires.”
“We have heard the same thing,” Skye said smoothly.
“That’s why they refer to their transformation as a conversion. Rising to a new way of life.”
“But if the vampires of New Orleans worship Baron Samedi—”
“Lot of human folks worship him too. And Ma’man Brigit is a sweet lady. Scary-looking, but sweet. She cures people, like I do.” Alice nodded. “Especially those who are close to death because of magick.”
“Really?” Skye said, eyes widening. “That’s brilliant. Might that include vampire attacks?”
“No.” Alice added two more purple candles, and then a black one. “She also exacts revenge, if she feels it’s warranted.”
“Sounds like a good loa to have on our side,” Skye said. “What do you think, Eriko?”
Though she stood in the darkness, Eriko felt as if a spotlight were being shone on her. “I’m a Buddhist,” she replied. “I don’t have a god, actually.”
“Then what do you put your faith in, child?” Alice asked.
“My people,” Eriko replied. But did she?
She ran down her team. Jamie and Antonio hated vampires as much as she did. Or at least they pretend to.
Jenn’s sister had been kidnapped by the vampires. If the girl Skye saw was even her sister. Skye never expressed hatred for the vampires, and with her goth clothes and her inability to use offensive magick, she could easily be hiding a heart that beat for vampires, or one in particular. Antonio? Someone back in England? She could be so secretive.
If I can become a hunter because I wanted to kill one, she could become a hunter because she wanted to save one. Father Juan has trained us all, taught us to kill vampires. Yet he harbors one, even feeds him when we aren’t watching.
And that left Holgar. The werewolf made the least sense to her. She had no idea what drove him, no idea why he wanted to be a hunter when most of his kind pledged allegiance to the Cursed Ones. Everyone liked him because he was funny, everyone except Jamie.
Maybe Jamie’s right not to trust him. We really know nothing about him.
Maybe I don’t have any faith, after all.
Alice watched her closely. “Faith can move mountains. It’s the worst kind of hell, not having anything to believe in.”
Marc continued to play the drums. Alice struck a match and lit the purple candles. As each candle flared with a yellow flame, the shadows shifted and moved around the room, almost as if they were taking shape. The atmosphere in the room shifted too, as if the ceiling had lowered five feet, and Eriko frowned, unsure that this ritual was a good idea. If something went wrong, well, they already had enough to contend with.
Still, she watched, unsure how much time passed. It seemed like hours. The rhythm of the drumbeat picked up, and Alice, positioning herself in front of the voodoo altar, began to move her hips seductively. Eriko was a little shocked; it was very sexual. Then Skye joined Alice, facing her, mimicking her movements. The two undulated like belly dancers. Skye let her head fall back, and Alice danced around her, rocking her pelvis and rolling her shoulders.
Marc’s eyes closed, and his lips parted, as if in ecstasy.
“Ah,” Skye gasped, in a voice that sounded like someone having sex. From her observation post Eriko ran her hand over her hair. “Oh, ahhhh.”
“Ma’man Brigit,” Alice murmured, thrusting her hips and running her hands down her sides. “Écoutez-moi. Listen to me.”
“Oh, oh,” Skye cried, raising her hands over her head.
Scowling, Eriko turned on her heel and went in search of Father Juan. The drums followed her down the hall as she strode into the makeshift sickroom, the walls covered with tatters of scrolled wallpaper, the floor swept clean, where Lucky lay on a mattress covered with sheets. There was another mattress on the other side of the room, and a pair of house slippers that looked to be Alice’s size.
Father Juan and Antonio knelt beside Lucky, whose face was ashen. Antonio was holding out what appeared to be a missal or a Bible of some sort so that Father Juan could read from it. The older man was wearing a black sash over his shoulders. A little dish of what appeared to be oil sat beside his knee, and a white candle. Oil glistened on Lucky’s forehead. So they were conducting a ritual as well. It all seemed a little crazy to her. More than a little crazy, actually.
Father Juan stopped speaking, and he and Antonio looked up at her. She could hear the drums and Alice moaning, and her face went hot
.
“Maybe the voodoo ceremony is an unusual idea,” she began.
The moaning grew louder.
Father Juan glanced from her to Antonio and back again. Obviously, they both could hear what was going on, but they were looking at her as if she needed to explain herself. Abashed, she stared down at the floor. She didn’t want to start something with Father Juan.
Finally, the priest said, “Voodoo is very unusual to us. But not to these people.”
“Ah so desuka, I see,” she murmured, keeping her eyes downward because in Japan that was very polite. At least that was what she told herself. Maybe it was so he couldn’t see her grinding her teeth.
For a moment no one spoke. Eriko kept staring at the same square of floor.
The drumming grew louder. The cries more intense.
She wanted to die.
Father Juan cleared his throat. “Eriko, could you stay here? I think we need to talk some strategy and tactics.”
Finally. Thank you, Eriko thought.
“Hai, hai, sensei,” she answered, bowing. Eriko sank down in the traditional Japanese seiza position, folding back her lower legs and resting her butt on her heels.
“I’m going to check on Jenn,” Antonio said; at Father Antonio’s nod, he got to his feet.
The drumming and the moans jerked Jenn awake from a terrible dream. She’d been crying in her sleep, something about Heather.
Dizzily, she sat up and slung her legs over the side of the settee. Someone had taken off her boots. She stepped into them and, without buckling them, got to her feet. She was starving. She wasn’t sure where the kitchen was, but if she followed all the drumming she’d be able to find someone who could tell her.
Antonio was in the hall; he looked surprised to see her up; then his smile faded, and she looked down at herself. Her jacket had been taken off, and her body armor as well, but her black sweater was stiff with blood.
“Jenn.” Antonio drew her to him and put his arms around her. She let herself rest against him for a moment, but the groaning embarrassed her—or was it her uncertainty about how he would react to all the blood?—and she pulled away.
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