Hunter of the Dead (14 page)

Eight

Keys seemed to be a constant issue to Carter Price. He stood in front of his apartment door, purring and stroking the doorknob, trying to get it to accept his advances as though it were a woman or a particularly treacherous cat. Nico, for his part, couldn’t take his eyes off the exposed pipe in the hallway of Price’s building that was dripping water at a disturbingly steady clip. It had turned the floor below it into a mold civilization that threatened to collapse at any moment.

“There it is,” Price cooed, as the door opened, revealing all its secrets.

The inside of his apartment was, somehow, even less impressive than the outside. Without even turning his head, Nico could see all there was to see in the studio. A naked mattress (thankfully stain-free, at least) was jammed in one corner. Price appeared to own precisely two chairs, which did not match and appeared to have been rescued from the curb. Kicking off his muddy shoes in whichever direction they cared to land, Price stomped into the closet-sized partition containing a stove and a fridge which could out of kindness be called a kitchen.

“You want something to drink?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds great,” Nico said, slowly closing the door. He hadn’t realized how parched he was until Price asked.

“Well, I’ve got coffee and bourbon.”

“Er…coffee, then.”

The sounds of water splashing and a cheap coffeemaker percolating filled the apartment.

“How do you take it?”

“However you take yours is fine.”

“I take mine with bourbon.”

“Oh.”

As good as that sounded after the night he’d had, he wasn’t sure alcohol would put his senses in the best shape for vampire-hunting. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn’t helping Price any, but clearly he had not seen the things Price had, either.

“Lots of cream, lots of sugar, then.”

Price ruffled through some cabinets and opened the fridge.

“I’ve got…black.”

“I’ll take black then.”

Price emerged from the kitchen nook a moment later, steaming mugs in either hand. One had a crack and read “World’s Worst Lover” and the other one had obviously been bought at the airport and depicted the iconic Las Vegas sign. Sinking into his camp chair, Price clinked glasses, and then, true to his word, filled out his half-empty mug from his flask. He sighed loudly.

“You can take the bed. I almost never make it over there, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Nico replied, eyeing the mattress warily.

“I know I’m not going to convince you to go home at this point, kid, but is there someone you want to call? Let them know you’re okay?”

Nico shrugged.

“There is no one. Not really.”

“Oh,” Price said, taking a sip of his upper/downer mélange, “not even back in…where is it, again?”

“Puerto Rico.”

“Ah,” Price said, closing his eyes, “
La Borinqueña
.”

That was surprising.

“You’ve been?”

Price nodded.

“Beautiful island. Knew a girl there once. Got hired for a couple jobs down there. Didn’t pan out.”

“Vampire hunting jobs?”

“Yeah. Believe it or not.”

Nico leaned back in his folding chair as best he could.

“I guess I had the opposite problem. Couldn’t find a job. Thought I’d make my fortune here and ended up at the Fill-Up instead. Beats the army, I guess.”

“Joined the marines myself.”

Only one decoration adorned Price’s walls. It didn’t look like something the military gave out. Nico halfway rose to get a better look at it, but realized how drowsy he was despite the coffee and sank back down.

“What’s that?”

Price opened a single eye and glanced at the wall.

“That’s my stake, you know.”

He raised his right arm to display his Inquisition tattoo. Nico squinted to take a closer look at the stake on the wall. It was beautifully carved and engraved with Price’s name. The end was hollowed out, as though it had been woven together from pieces of wicker, but really it had all been carved from a single piece of wood.

“So they give you a stake when you join the Inquisition?”

“Yeah. It’s like the symbol of your completion of your…what do you call it?”

“Apprenticeship?”

“Yeah, that. It’s not like I’ve used a wooden stake since my master handed me that one.”

“No? Why not? Can’t you kill a vampire with one?”

Price giggled, a distinctly un-Price-like noise that signaled how deep he was into his cups.

“Just to be clear, kid: there are only two ways to ‘kill’ a vampire: fire and sunlight. Oh and we don’t say ‘kill.’ We say ‘put down.’”

“Like a dog?”

“Yeah. Exactly like a dog. But since there’s nothing more dangerous than strapping a flamethrower to your back, and you can’t exactly command the sun to rise, your only real hope as an Inquisitor is to incapacitate him. And that means severing the head or staking the heart.”

Despite his obvious drunkenness he rose from his chair and crossed the studio apartment to open a closet. He dragged out a dummy with comical facepaint meant to resemble Bela Lugosi. As the dummy came loose, a small canister rolled out of the closet and came to a rest at Nico’s feet. He picked it up.

“What’s this?”

Price grunted.

“Diffused garlic. Nightcrawlers rely on their…they call it their sense of smell but I’ve never been sure if that’s a metaphor or not. A canister of garlic gas won’t do anything to harm them, but it’ll confuse them. Blind them, essentially.”

Nico nodded and tucked the canister into his pocket. Price plucked a stake from his bandolier and tossed it to Nico, who fumbled before securing it. Then Price tossed the dummy at him and clicked the button on a stopwatch.

“Stake that nightcrawler!”

Startled, Nico flipped the dummy onto the ground and rose from the chair. Fatigue was pulling on all his muscles and his eyelids.

“What?”

“Go on, stake the son of a bitch!”

With a sigh, Nico got down and straddled the dummy. He raised the stake over his head and brought it down hard on the dummy’s heart area, which was helpfully marked in red.

“There,” Nico said, “Satisfied?”

“Are you kidding me?” Price said, “That thing’s nothing but a sandbag and you’ve barely punctured the fabric.”

Price tapped the stake lightly with his foot and it went clattering away.

“You didn’t even pierce the ribcage, let alone the heart.”

Nico rose, clapping the imaginary dust from his hands.

“All right, I get it, Carter. Leave off.”

In a sudden explosion of emotion Price tossed his “World’s Worst Lover” mug against the wall so violently that it shattered. He waved the stopwatch, still running, in Nico’s face.

“Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? You expect to fight vampires…you expect me to teach you how to fight vampires…and this is your level of dedication? You can’t even push a piece of wood through a burlap dummy?”

Nico opened his mouth to respond, but instead bit down on his tongue to stop himself. The old man was right. He grabbed Bela Lugosi and dragged him over to where the stake had fallen. He grabbed the stake and drove it repeatedly into the heart area, but no matter how hard he pressed it, it seemed not to want to penetrate down to where the heart would’ve been in a person.

He held it in place and pounded on it with his fist, finding his hand soon bloodied.

“I need like…I need a hammer or something.”

Nico looked around the room wildly. Price clicked the stopwatch loudly and held out his hand. Nico didn’t take it, but rose. After a moment’s thought, he handed the stake back to Price.

“Sorry, kid, but you’re long dead. I figure you have maybe five seconds, tops, to put a stake through an unsuspecting vampire’s heart. It’s already been almost thirty. And the dummy wasn’t fighting back.”

Price sank back into his chair.

“So stakes work but…they don’t work? Basically?”

“Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. I’ve never seen it done successfully. An ordinary person doesn’t really have the strength to put a piece of wood through a ribcage. As you noticed, you’d need a mallet. And hopefully while you’re pounding on a stake with a mallet, you don’t break the tip, or else you’ll be trying to put a dull board through somebody. And all this is assuming your target isn’t wearing a chestplate. And I’ve never met a vampire who didn’t.”

“Why do you carry them, then?”

Price reached up and rolled one of the stakes in his bandolier backward and forward.

“They’re a bit like gang colors. I guess we’re all prima donnas, us and the nightcrawlers both. The Signaris wear these white stripes down their faces when they’re on the job and the Druids go naked and we…we wear these. To show off who we are. In the old days they used to say you could deputize somebody into the Inquisition by handing him a stake. In fact…”

Price handed the stake back to Nico. The sun was rising. Price leaned back in his chair.

“Better get some sleep. It’s going to be a long night tomorrow.”

Nico glanced down at the naked mattress. In his sleepdrunk state, it looked unnaturally appealing, and he flung himself into it without even putting away his drink or brushing his teeth. Price was already snoring loudly in his chair when Nico’s eyes closed.

Night Two

One

The Eighties…

Scav wanted to weep but the tears wouldn’t come to his eyes. He was drained, dead, empty. Neither blood nor bowel nor tear duct moved within him. He glanced over at the mittens that had been made of his hands, the molten steel still cooling. They didn’t hurt – not in the way anything had hurt before Benito had turned him – but they were unpleasant. As the steel cooled he felt what little give there was fade until he could barely even flex his fingers.

Benito was kneeling next to him, similarly saddled with a still-cooling yoke and hands gloved in steel. Benito was still struggling against his bonds, unlike Scav, who had given up almost instantly. If these…he still hesitated to use the word “vampires” but it seemed increasingly impossible to call them anything else…wanted him bound, then bound he would stay. Surely they knew their business by now.

The vampire whose face and body had been deformed by a terribly case of leprosy in life kicked Benito. It was a half-hearted kick, as the woman seemed to have difficulty lifting her legs.

“Stop squirming.”

“You think you can hold me, Damiana? I’m not beaten yet.”

Benito’s back and shoulders strained against the yoke, and for a second, Scav almost believed he would break it. The lepress – Damiana – knelt down with some difficulty and grabbed Benito by the chin. Her hands and face were pocked with pustules and marks, such that her eyes were barely visible and her mouth would barely open. As a result, her voice was a low rasp.

“If I want you to stay put, you’ll stay put. I’ve dealt with hundreds of little shits like you for Father Otto, and I know your limitations.” She reached up and placed one deformed hand on Benito’s yoke. “This yoke is too much for any immortal short of an oldblood to break, even at full strength. And when was the last time you fed? Now be silent until Father Otto is ready for you.”

A bell tinkled and the entire assembled crowd rose to their feet. Scav struggled, wondering whether he should attempt to rise, but a moment later he felt the pinch of the lepress’s bloated hands grasp his spine through his shirt and yank him to his feet. She had done the same with Benito with her other hand.

Otto Signari came clattering down a spiral staircase into the makeshift courtroom. He wore a full suit of armor, though it seemed not to burden him at all, and a white stripe divided his head and neck, and continued down his suit of steel.

“Sorry, sorry, everybody. I didn’t mean to be late. Just got off the horn with my ‘old buddy’ Cicatrice and you know how cranky talking to him makes me…holy fuck. Who did this?”

Scav glanced back at the lepress. It was hard to tell, but her face seemed to be distended in a grin. Scav turned back to the front of the room. A woman – young, firm, nubile – lay strapped to a gurney. From her head to her toes, she was lined with candles, tiny birthday candles. There had to be hundreds, and for each a tiny hole had been drilled in her skin or bone, and the candle placed inside. Either she was deeply, deeply drugged, or so deep in shock that she didn’t seem to be railing against the pain anymore.

“Is this for real? Wait a minute…what year is this?”

“After Common Era nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, patriarch,” Damiana answered as loudly as she could.

Signari glanced up. A broad smile crossed his face. He waggled his gauntleted hand at the lepress.

“Damiana, you old trickster. The eight hundredth anniversary of Mother Lily granting me the Long Gift. I had completely forgotten. Are there really eight hundred candles?”

The wax that was dripping from dozens seared the young woman’s skin, to no visible effect. Scav would’ve believed there were, indeed, nearly a thousand candles.

“It took some preparation, Father Otto. But this is as big a day for the House as it is for yourself.”

“Come down here. Get down here, Damiana, you old monster.”

Signari gestured for Damiana to join him and the lepress descended from the docket and allowed herself to be embraced in a glorious hug by her House patriarch. She never attempted to take the liberty of hugging back. Signari rubbed his hands together.

“Well, let’s have a taste, shall we?”

Signari pressed his forehead to the top of the girl’s head, the only part of her that wasn’t buzzing with sizzling wax. Signari rose a moment later, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.

“My God, Damiana, she must be one in a million! What a flavor! Everybody, share, share, everybody have a taste. Even the blood-drinkers, yeah, you guys just go last. Be kind to the fellow after you: just a taste. Come on, everyone in good standing.”