Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (25 page)

The streets became narrower as we approached the old town center.  Bernard slowed up for a few blocks and then came to a stop.

“Need to be careful from this point,” he said.

Glad he reminded me because I was thinking we were on our way to a pajama party.

I nodded and hoped he couldn’t see how much I fought the blood lust.  People everywhere.  In apartments above the shops and the restaurants.  They lived in ancient buildings converted into multi-million-Euro flats.  So many packed in so small an area.  I reached out for each of them, tried to distinguish individuals among the multitudes. 

Sometimes I could tell age and estimate height and weight based on the volume of blood and the strength of hearts.  But as we neared the original marketplace sheer numbers made distinguishing impossible.  Everyone blended together into one sweet song. An orchestra of life…and I fell in love with every member of the band, each voice in the choir. Not in the way a man falls in love with a woman or Bernard with his reflection, but in a way a junkie falls in love with the needle.

Either Soyla or her masters did their homework.  If mercenaries waited in ambush to do me in once I completed the chore, then I would not be able to pick them out through the noise of a thousand beating hearts.  We rounded the final corner. 

The Aachen Cathedral sat cold and lonely ahead.  Not an overly inviting building in the dark.  And they’d definitely not left the light on for me.  Engraved invitation or not, I had an appointment with some dry bones.

Chapter 33

Bernard used hand signals.  Kind of odd, given the likelihood everyone with evil intent already knew we’d arrived.  They’d likely followed us, or even more probably watched us leave my flat and radioed ahead for the rest of the guys to hold up on the sauerkraut refills if they wanted enough time to get to the strudel.  The patsy would soon arrive.

They’d also know I brought a friend.  That would keep the lines chattering for a while, and I smiled as I wondered what the American National Security Agency would think of those intercepted conversations. 

“Teutoberg and the pygmy are rolling.”

“Copy all, two vampires on the way.”

“Wait a minute, command post.  They appear to be holding hands.”

“Confirm last transmission.”

“The cannibal and the idiot are holding hands.  Advise.”

There’d be a pause while the ambushers passed that bit of INTEL to their handlers and waited for instructions.

“Roger that, holding hands. Opinion?” 

“Affirmative, command post.  Looks like muskrat love.”

Why did the Captain and Tennille keep running through my mind?

My temporary lack of focus caused consternation in Bernard.  He kept repeating the same hand signal, getting more and more demonstrative.  Why didn’t he just talk to me?  He started with pointing a finger at the cathedral and progressed all the way to jabbing his arm in that direction and adding quick forehead nods to boot.  I considered giving him the palms up, “I don’t understand” signal but I thought he might rip my head off.

I nodded the “OK. OK. I get it.” I started across the wide, deserted marketplace and didn’t complete one step when Bernard tugged me back.  He pointed to each of the buildings around the square and then to the cathedral.

For the sake of team unity I’d humor him and dash from the cover of one building to the next.  It wouldn’t trick the people we wanted to fool, but for some reason it would make Bernard feel better. So yes, I did it his way.  Each building in turn. Stop. Look. Listen. Nothing.  I was embarrassed in front of myself.  Did Bernard think the bad guys’ gales of laughter at my needless tomfoolery would give away their positions?  Hardly.  But I did the dance and arrived at the same back door the baggers and I used earlier that day.

We’d discussed the entry point and Bernard thought going in near the demon portal made sense.  Well, maybe it did for demons.  I wanted to avoid the portal area until I’d retrieved Chucky.  Push all potential confrontations to the end.  One final big bet.  But Bernard said no and I gave in.

I expected to need my vampire strength to force open the old iron door mechanism that did little more these days than keep the occasional worshipper outside the cathedral.  It turned easily in my hand and I nearly snapped my wrist when I applied the anticipated force.  I paused before pushing the door.

Blood lust begged me to get moving.  I’d need to hold it back as best I could while at the same time bringing my full vampire forward. Hard to get one without the other.  Think inviting the Captain to your party but not Tennille.  I’d need to accept both power and blood lust to get either. 

I’m making it sound like I could turn my condition off and on as needed.  Not true.  Both vampire strength and blood lust always exist. No special ring or can of spinach required.  I spend most of my concentration riding shotgun on those urges, trying to keep the sharp edges blunted. 

Imagine a little fish in a big ocean.  If the fish ever relaxes he’ll end up chewed and swallowed by something larger.  Now think of my control as the fish and my condition as the ocean.  My condition won’t swallow my sanity but the things it harbors can.

Sometimes I do tap that power.  Supercharge it.  My teeth extended during my frog-hop from building to building.  Good.  I thought of my friends in the painting and felt heat from the anger join the blood in my veins.  Good.  I thought of No Face and his poor table manners while he chewed on pieces of me.  Good.  I thought of my hands around Sparky’s neck.  Kind of good. I thought of new Soyla sexts waiting on my phone.  OK, I’d thought enough.

I sent the blood lust ahead of me through the door.  Nothing.  No humans inside.  I still detected those living in the flats surrounding the marketplace to the degree I had to fight the urge to jump in among them and feed.  I don’t remember banging my head against the cold stone wall but I did feel the pain.  I’d just need to live from one moment to the next. 

Of all the bad guys I’d face that night I knew the blood lust would be the most potent.  It could care less about Chucky’s dry bones.  I’d met the enemy and it was me. If I lost to the blood lust then the mission failed and all my friends died.  But that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to them.  Not by any stretch. 

They could spend an eternity in hell.  I make the blood lust sound like an external thing, but that’s just letting myself off the hook.  If it overcame me then I would bear the responsibility. I pushed in the door and prayed that wouldn’t happen.  The building was a handy place for prayers.  It was a church, after all.

Chapter 34

I entered the Aachen Cathedral with no expectations.  I’d find what waited on me there soon enough and worrying wouldn’t change it. My first scan, visual and blood, turned up nothing. Not a living soul in the place except me.  You might think I’d find the cold medieval architecture with the dark vaulted ceilings and chilly stone floors eerie.  I didn’t.  I was the thing that haunt people’s nightmares so what did I have to fear?

Minor details interrupted my earlier trip with the bagger gang.  Little things like maybe a detour into an alternate dimension for me and a live modeling engagement for my pals.  It’s a long way of saying I didn’t get the lay of the real Aachen Cathedral and thus had no idea where to find Chucky’s mortal remains.

My eyesight adjusted to the additional darkness with that infra-red kind of thing they did. The better to see you with, my dear, and I didn’t move for a few seconds.  The construction motif of No Face’s dimension turned out true to the real thing.  Worker platforms stood against most of the walls and temporary plywood enclosures hid building materials and equipment from view.  Perhaps the German workers did their thing on both sides of the veil.

I saw the wall that No Face had decorated with the painting of my tortured friends and jogged over to it.  No reason for stealth because if alarms existed, I’d already set them off. Something told me I didn’t need to worry about that, though.  If someone could unlock the door for me then they could also disarm the security system.  It didn’t make sense they’d invest the kind of effort I’d seen thus far only to get me arrested on a trespassing charge.

And stealth wouldn’t fool the bad guys.  If Bernard was right, then both of the red teams knew I’d entered the cathedral.  I reached the other side and confirmed I still operated in my own world.  No painting.  If No Face drew me into his place, it would come later.  No time to worry about all of that because I’d found Charlemagne’s gold and silver casket.

And a casket rather than a painting meant I’d still need to visit with No Face if things deteriorated to the point requiring a jailbreak for my friends. 
Deteriorated
?  When you break into a cathedral to steal a dead person in order to ransom your buddies from an alternate dimension controlled by demons, you’re already past deteriorated.

The casket sat behind glass on a raised platform, and thick metal fencing cordoned off the area.  I needed to break through that first, and I couldn’t assume my treacherous benefactors did me the same favor with the alarms they’d performed at the door.

Had I been the one controlling the patsy, it’s how I’d have set it up.  Too many things could go wrong at the door, best to get the mark inside quietly as possible.  Change at the casket.  Apply some pressure on the thief to keep him moving.  A smash and grab—just like Bernard and I planned—followed by the mind-numbing stress of a screaming alarm. 

Ensuing confusion would drive the thief to retrieve the bones and retreat in haste.  Just the sort of situation for a mindless blunder through the door followed by a few hundred hollow-point rounds.  Various points of the thief’s body would interrupt the bullets’ flight.  I’d have a couple of people nearby assigned to pick up the bones and egress the scene.  Getting away from the Polizei would be a preplanned cake walk.  It’s how I’d do the mission were I the bad guys.  That is,
if
I had a pygmy available for the brainwork.

Something more than mere willpower held me back from initiating the smash and kicking off the alarm that surely waited.  Something, to the point I lost track of why I stood where I was. The sweet aroma of blood outside.  Would a man dying of thirst remain in the desert when a cool lake waited within easy reach?

I dropped the bag intended for Chucky’s dry bones and took a couple of steps toward the door.  So what if they riddled me with bullets.  I could still get my hands on one of them.  And when I did…

“Where are you going?”

Was she talking to me?
  Maybe I didn’t need to wait for my meal.  But where was the blood?  Not here.  Outside.  I resumed.

“Stop,” she said.  “Turn around.”

I recognized the voice.

“Be right back,” I said.  “Need to do something.”

I needed to do something all right.  I needed to rip the blood from the first body I encountered.  I needed to put my lips to spurting veins and drink.  I needed communion, and from the first time until right there in the Aachen Cathedral, it meant someone needed to die.

A hand slipped into mine.  But not just a hand, a lifetime experience. My arm exploded in pleasure.  Not the blood and guts kind of explosion but the butterflies-and-bumblebees-on-a sunny-hillside thing. The blood lust fled, though I could still sense it hiding in a dark area of my brain.  Peaking around the corner, waiting for the all-clear signal.

“Stop,” she said again.

I turned to the voice.  Sarah Arias stood behind me.  Her hand over mine.

“Vampire,” she said, “You are a warrior.” 

This time she didn’t spit the word vampire, but spoke it with a trace of reverence.

I’ll be whatever you want me to be.

“A warrior,” Sarah Arias repeated, “and a pig.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“What are you doing here?” I said.  “Better, how’d you get here?”

My questions chased the smile from her face. And here I’d thought the date was going well. 

“Alternate dimension,” I said.

Sarah Arias didn’t respond so I pulled at the thread.

“You and No Face live in the same neighborhood?”

Sarah Arias reacted like I’d insulted her.  She dropped my hand and I saw both hurt and anger in her eyes.  Her sexy, sea-green bedroom eyes, I might add.

“Is that what you think, vampire?”

Hero to zero in three sentences.  I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut.  Maybe just let my fingers do the talking.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I do know there’s a demon portal over by that door I came in.”

Sarah Arias looked to where I pointed.

“There is,” she said.  “And yes, I used Mestephos’s doorway.”

I wanted to shout “AHA!”  But what would be the use?  And what did I think Sarah Arias owed me?  It’s not like guardian angels sign contracts that stipulate what they’d do and when. I had no right to expect any more out of her than I’d expect from Herr Doktor or his Frau. No right to expect more than I would out of a stranger.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said.

And, hey.  She wore anger just as well as disappointment.

“All the universe is open to us.”

The universe. Of course
.  Why did I get a female guardian?  I mean, I needed mine to look like Rambo and shoot like Buffalo Bill.  Instead, I get a moody Helen of Troy spouting the typical undecipherable gibberish.  On second thought, good thing she didn’t come with a gun.

“Sure it is,” I said.  And then I repeated, “What are you doing here, Sarah?  What’s your angle?”

Her attitude changed from anger back to concern.  That kind of mood swing scares me in the best of situations, but from an immortal female being with immeasurable power? 
Terrifying
.

“Do you remember what I said?”

“That I’m a pig?”

She smiled. 

“Not
that
,” she said.  “But you’d do good to cast those ways behind.”

I didn’t think this was a delaying tactic to give the Polizei time to catch their man. That kind of treachery would force me to reconsider asking her out for a third date.

“Do you remember what I said?” she repeated.

I did.

“That I shouldn’t give them what they wanted?”

Sarah Arias smiled, and I swear I could hear little blue birds outside chirping away while they made the perfect gown for a royal ball. I must have passed the test because Sarah Arias began walking toward to other side of the cathedral.

“Wait a second,” I said.

She stopped.

“What happens if I get killed?”

For the second time in less than five minutes my mouth wiped a sexy smile from her face.  I have that effect on most chicks.

“If that happens,” she said, “I get assigned a new client.”

My imagination or was
somebody’s
guardian angel coming across as a bit self-centered?

“Not you,” I said.  “I meant what happens to me?  What happens to my friends?  Our friends?”

Her expression blanked for a moment, and then she seemed to get the drift.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “Free will.”

So there it was again, the free will copout.

I had no more questions as she covered the distance to No Face’s portal.  I watched her walk—angel or not, she radiated in those faded jeans.  She’d chased away the blood lust for the moment, and at the same time summoned in me another sort of lust less dangerous, but ever present. I’d already known she’d not help with the dirty work. That did nothing to stop the disappointment welling inside my chest. Just before she disappeared she said one more thing.

“Vampire?”

“What?”

“Keep an eye on the doors and try not to get yourself killed.”

As if I needed a heavenly reminder.  Fine women do usually come with bossy mouths, though.  You need to take the good with the bad.  Of course I’d keep an eye on the door.  And not getting killed? A prime objective.

“OK.”

“And Vampire,” Sarah Arias said. “This obsession you have with my rear end?”

Uh oh.  I didn’t respond.

“Pig,” she said.

Are they really women or do they just come in the female form? If you created the universe and all things in it, would you want to surround yourself with that kind of headache?

Sarah Arias didn’t fade away like the movie ghosts who step into the light.  She blinked out in a microsecond.  I searched inside myself for the blood lust and found it still cowering in that vacant 90% of my brain.  OK, 96%.  Either it wanted to make sure Sarah Arias wouldn’t return or my guardian left me a booster shot of willpower to keep my monster at bay while I did the trick with Chucky. 

I needed to smash and grab before the blood lust returned to pull me away for a tiptoe through the virtual tulips on my way to a horror novel’s worth of blood and gore.  I needed to stay in the real world and I needed to get moving.

Perhaps I should have studied the problem at hand a bit longer but I don’t think I’d have come up with anything smoother than pulling the iron fence apart, breaking the bulletproof glass, and having a go at Chucky’s gold and silver casket. I did stand there and stare for second or two, but my mind saw Karl sitting in the kitchen, ears alert and head canted to one side while he tried to noodle out the mysteries of the dishwasher

Saying an alarm sounded when I yanked the gate from its foundation and tossed it aside would be like saying the nuclear explosion was noisy.  The eruption of screeching nearly made my eardrums explode and my heart vibrate out of my nether regions.  The Polizei in Berlin could have heard it.

The wailing stopped me dead in my tracks for a few seconds that felt like hours.  In addition to alerting the authorities and waking the dead, the engineers probably designed the alarm that way.  Disable with noise.  And in a country where honking your horn is illegal.

If I continued my statue routine the German army would find me rooted to the same spot when they showed up with the dive bombers and tanks. I got moving.

Chucky’s casket sat on a platform about head-height. I’d need to jump an additional five feet and land on top of the glass because the case filled the entire platform and left no room for a foothold.  No room? No problem. I flexed my legs and ended up on top of everything with no more effort than it takes to retrieve a newspaper from the porch.

I didn’t know how much force it would take to break the glass so I decided to use half strength.  All the din served my purposes quite well.  Where Sarah Arias’s arrival caused my vampire to retract, the alarm called it back in full potency.  I looked at the thick glass below me and snarled as I brought a fist down straight and hard.

The raw power would have shattered a normal guy’s hand and left the bulletproof glass unimpressed.  In case I’ve failed to mention it, I’m not a normal guy.  The glass didn’t crack.  It exploded in millions of tiny shards and I needed to do some quick footwork to land beside Chucky’s casket and not on top of it.  Hammer could have learned a thing or two.

I love the arts as much as any other guy.  That means I’ll stomach them to score points with a chick.  I didn’t stop to admire the thousands of hours dedicated to the casket by the long-dead goldsmiths and silversmiths.  I knew people like that back in the 1200’s when this box was made and I can tell you they all came with foibles. 

Yes, they could create objects of incredible beauty.  But what else did they have to do?  No football season.  No Super Bowl.  No baseball or World Series. No hot babes in beer commercials.  I’d almost forgotten how bored we all were back in the years between the fall of Rome and the invention of the hot dog.  And these artist guys?  Snakes.  And magicians too because they could make your date disappear by giving her some small trinket they’d made that day with some of the king’s spare gold.