Hunter of the Dead (11 page)

“So word slips out that more nightcrawlers are getting killed than the average. They all keep tallies, their little Houses. They always know how many there are, how many there are supposed to be.”

“No nightcrawler is supposed to shit out another nightcrawler without his House patriarch’s consent,” Price added.

Bonaparte nodded.

“So now there’s the legend of a serial killer. First thought is: an Inquisitor. They shook us down. They shook us down bad. But the truth is for all our tricks, for all our training, we’re just not taking out enough of them to really make a difference to their numbers.”

“Then why bother?” Nico asked, instantly regretting it.

“Because every one counts,” Bonaparte and Price replied in near unison before exchanging a glance and then looking away in embarrassment.

“Anyway,” the woman continued, “The next guess would be an oldblood. An ancient, powerful vampire, gone off the reservation for some reason. It’s as good a guess as any. But they can’t find him. And their damn records are too good. No babies without permission, remember? The power differential is right, but it’s highly unlikely there’s an oldblood missing without anyone knowing.”

“One of The Damned would be strong enough,” Price said, “But from what you saw tonight, kid, do you see one of those monstrosities hanging back in the shadows and picking off nightcrawlers now and again?”

Nico shook his head. Bonaparte rose and began to strut down the aisle. Price and Nico followed her until they came to the altar at the head of the chapel.

“So you can see why we’re so confused,” Bonaparte said, “Nothing this powerful should be this patient. Nothing this patient should be this powerful. So we mostly chalked it up to a funny little mystery in the vampire community. Maybe one day it’ll turn out there’s an STD or something weird. No point obsessing over it the way they do, right? We’ve had people looking into it but not exactly clocking any overtime. That is, until today.”

Bonaparte opened the tabernacle which sat on the altar. She reached in and drew out a tiny chunk of something black and globby, sealed in a Ziploc bag. Nico crossed himself.

“Those don’t like any communion wafers I’ve ever seen.”

“Jesus Christ,” Price whispered, about as irreverently as those words could be spoken.

He held out a hand.

“May I?”

Without saying a word, Bonaparte let him take the baggie from her and examined it from all angles. Nico wasn’t looking as closely as Price was, but from what he could tell it looked like a shard of metal coated with some kind of black, oily substance.

“This can’t be possible,” Price breathed, “It’s a children’s story. A fairy tale nightcrawlers tell their kids to keep them in line.”

“As someone who’s witnessed about five different kinds of fairy tales crawl out of the Grimm Brothers volume and try to eat me tonight,” Nico said, “may I be the first to suggest that we dispense with all the ‘gee whiz’ bullshit and you just tell me what that is?”

“I really like him,” Bonaparte repeated.

“That, kid,” Price said, shaking the baggie as if by giving it a good shake it would cease to be and the world would begin to make sense again, “Would be the first proof (that I’m aware of) of the existence of The Hunter of the Dead.”

Seven

The Dark Ages…

Brother Pablo swallowed the gasp which threatened to spring from his throat as they ripped the blindfold from his face. The woman who stood before him was entirely missing a solid quarter of her face. A line, more or less, drawn from the bottom of her right ear to the corner of her nose and everything below it was sheared down to the bone.

A ghastly smile began to take shape on the half of her mouth which retained lips. Pablo struggled to coax words from his suddenly desert-dry mouth in his finest liturgical Latin.

“In…in the name of His Holiness, I bring you a message from Rome, Lady Lilith.”

She spoke, surprising him by falling into the vernacular of his Iberian home. “I am no lady. Not in any peerage which you and yours would recognize.”

The two brutish men who stood on her right and left, but a few steps below her on the dais, began to chuckle. Pablo felt worms tighten around his belly and worried he might soil his travelling cloak. The half-faced woman was staring at him expectantly.

“How…how shall I address you, then?”

Her glacial mask softened and he knew that he had chosen the right words. For now at least.

“I am no more and no less than the mother of my household,” she said, and placed a hand atop of the heads of each of her two factotums, “and all who dwell within.”

A chain jangled off to Pablo’s right side, and as hard as he tried to keep his eyes locked forward on her, he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse out of the corner of his vision of the horrors of her throne room. The perimeter was littered with trophies from her favorite victims, in display cases like a museum’s or a library’s.

There was the lute of a famous minstrel, with his hands still attached, locked in place by rigor mortis. The walls were hung with the hides of men. Some were carved with ancient and arcane spells. Others had been inked and colored to form surprisingly complex tapestries. The centerpiece was the member of a famous lothario. She had ordered it dipped in wax while still engorged, then severed, so that it would remain erect for all time.

Chained at regular intervals between the displays were men and damsels – slaves, Pablo realized – kneeling, naked, and shivering.

“Mother Lilith, then,” Pablo said, trying to keep his voice from faltering.

“Lilith sounds so formal. Stiff. My children call me Lily…like the lily of the fields.”

Pablo pressed his lips together. The pope had warned him that the Luchesi woman was capricious – some said mad – and ran cold like Alpine snow one moment and hot like Vesuvius the next. There were rumors that the girl was Urban’s own bastard daughter – but Pablo thought that madness. The pontiff had not spent nearly enough time in Rome for such dalliances. Then again, only a few moments would really have been required of him…

“Will…will you hear my message?”

Lily folded her arms. She stood upon the dais adorned in apparel unlike any he had ever seen before. Something about it screamed royalty, and yet it was impossible to deny the dark reversal of a papal gown as well. In all flowing crimson and violet, she seemed like far more than a mere human.

“Otto,” she said, letting her hand fall on the brow of the man on her left, “My shield-bearer and protector. What say you?”

The man she had named Otto – Otto Signari, if the papal factotums had appraised him correctly – stepped forward, his blood-daubed ceremonial armor clanking as he stepped. He was a beast of a man, and his reputation both north and south of the Alps was such that Pablo found himself reciting the Ave Maria over and over in his head.

As though he were an animal tracking prey, Signari approached and sniffed at Pablo. It seemed as though Signari’s lower right jaw, like that of his matriarch’s, was missing, but when he spoke it became obvious that his face had merely been painted with cosmetics to appear that way.

“There can be no peace with men. Drain the life from his husk. Send his skull back to Rome. Let him serve the role of messenger that way.”

As though with a will of their own, Pablo’s hands reached up to fondle the crucifix around his neck. He took no other action, but merely closed his eyes waiting for the blow to fall. Instead, boots and gauntlets clanking, Signari returned to his spot on the dais beneath his matriarch. Lily’s face was inscrutable. She gestured at the man on her right.

“Cicatrice, my most trusted and beloved counselor. What are your thoughts?”

Cicatrice was as famous for his guile as his counterpart Signari was for his swordarm. It was rumored that he had been responsible for the rise and fall of three Burgundian dukes before leaving France for greater opportunities.

His body was tightly wrapped in a linen shroud, with only minor modifications made for the fact that he moved, unlike the corpse such a garment was intended for. On his hip a handbell tinkled as he stepped down from the dais. It was a noise Pablo recognized well, for he had heard it many times. It was the type of bell used to call for Last Rites.

“May I?” Cicatrice asked, pointing at Pablo’s chest.

Pablo found himself utterly unable to respond, transfixed by the other man’s face. Like Signari, his jaw was painted like a skeleton’s. But he also seemed to have a real deformity. His left eye was solidly red, and a vertical scar jutted from it, up into his forehead and down to the side of his nose.

Without waiting for a response, Cicatrice took hold of Pablo’s crucifix and lifted it off his chest.

“Take hold of it, will you, Brother Pablo?”

“I…forgive me?”

Cicatrice tapped at the cross.

“Place your hand on your cross.”

His hand shaking like a spastic’s, Pablo slowly reached up and took hold of the bottom of his crucifix, while Cicatrice held the top. Instantly, the other man hissed in pain, and smoke began to billow from his fingers. With the ease of a child plucking a bloom of honeysuckle, Cicatrice snatched the crucifix from Pablo’s neck, breaking the thick cord which held it there. As soon as Pablo’s hand was off the icon, the smoke ceased.

Cicatrice held the icon aloft, as it seemed to pain him no more.

“There, you see. A man of true faith. His essence will be as foul to us as plague water.”

“Cut off his head then,” Signari growled. “We don’t need to feed off of him.”

“Quiet, my pet,” Lily said, running her hand through Signari’s hair. “You’ve had your chance. Let Cicatrice have his.”

Signari scowled but said nothing. Grinning grotesquely, Cicatrice turned and tossed the crucifix back into Pablo’s fumbling hands as though it were nothing.

“Do you have any idea how many men I’ve met who’ve tried to hurt me with that? Held it aloft like a totem? A good luck piece? And I ripped out each of their throats. Without the true faith in you that is poison to us, that is no more than two sticks of wood.”

“I grow impatient, Cicatrice.”

“My apologies, Matriarch,” the charnel-clad man said, clasping his hands before him, “it’s just that I feel a man of true faith is so rare in this world, that we could do better than to decapitate him.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“A witness to...no, more than that. The instrument of your ascendancy.”

Lily’s eyes opened wide.

“My investor…” she whispered.

Cicatrice’s head bobbed.

“Ever my font of wisdom,” she marveled. “Go and fetch it.”

“Matriarch,” Cicatrice said, bowing and shuffling off.

Resplendent in her charnel gowns, Lily descended from the dais. Signari, Pablo noted, remained behind, a stormcloud brewing over him. She approached and placed an ice-cold hand on Pablo’s cheek. He found himself unable to look away from her exposed mandible, where the workings of her very muscle and sinew were on display as she spoke.

“Oh, simple man of faith. Did you ever dream that you were born to such a destiny? To witness such events?”

“Begging your pardon, L…Mother Lily, but what of my message?”

A roar erupted as Signari strode across the room in what seemed like no more than three steps and drove his boot into the unprotected crotch of one of the naked slave boys. The slave collapsed like a dropped cloak.

“Idiot!” the savage warrior roared. “Imbecile! Do you think we don’t know what you’re here to tell us? That there’s an army of Crusaders at our gates?”

Signari pointed to a wall, which Pablo noted for the first time had no window. It made sense that these creatures who eschew sunlight, who built their stronghold deep in the heart of a mountain, would have no use for windows, but it was still a most unusual sight.

Signari unbuckled his gauntlet and let it drop unceremoniously to the floor. With his ungloved hand he reached down and lifted the slave off the ground by the neck. Barely flexing his muscles, he yanked the iron chain straight out of the wall, ignoring the slave’s obvious discomfort.

“Do you know what we’ll do when your mighty defenders of Christendom cross our border? This.”

The slave began to twitch and kick in Signari’s grip, though the warrior neither tightened his grip nor moved at all. Pablo watched on in horror as the young boy aged a year, a decade, a whole lifetime in the space of a few heartbeats. His body began to shrivel and dry up, his skin furrowing, his hair turning gray. It was as though with the mere touch of his naked hand upon the slave’s neck Signari was sucking the very life out of him.

After a moment the slave’s body turned to brittle bones and dust, collapsing into a pile on the floor.

“How very histrionic, Otto,” Cicatrice said, re-entering the room, “but for what it’s worth, he speaks the truth. Your Crusader army bears us no threat.”

Cicatrice carried with him a black velvet pillow. Upon the pillow sat a crown, though no ordinary crown. The bottom had been fashioned from the skull of a tall man, possibly a giant, with the mandible removed.

The craftsmanship was elegant, and simple. Each point of the crown was carved from bone: sturdy stuff, femurs perhaps. Quite how it all held together Pablo couldn’t tell, but no doubt many mortal men like he had died to provide the raw material for many attempts to produce this perfect one. Part papal miter and part royal corona, probably one that would be used only once: at a coronation ceremony.