The Living Night (Book 2) (33 page)

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*
    
*

Breath
steaming, Jean-Pierre approached the Dark
Lord’s mountain, his every step faster than the one before. The lights of the
Castle nearly blinded him, but he welcomed them.

As he neared the base of the sharp mount, he
swore. He’d hoped to scale the cliffs and make his way into the Castle within
an hour or so, but he quickly realized that he was still too weak for such an
attempt. If he was lucky, he might climb halfway up only to find the strength
sapped from his limbs from exertion. From there, he’d fall back into the
ravine, more wounded than before.

Without warning, he stumbled upon a scene of
sheer beauty and horror. The sight took his breath away.

Before him, layers and layers of human bones and
body parts lay in great piles, all but the most recent trapped in prisms of
ice. It was a gruesome display, and by its random nature he assumed that it had
not been man-made. Rather, it was an accident. Perhaps, though, it was a
fortunate one.

Looking upward at the Castle, he smiled.

“The Blood and Stone,” he murmured.

He’d dined there many times, of course, and
often had he thrown an errant finger or such off the balcony. He remembered
wondering where those pieces ended up, and now he had his answer. Even as he
watched, a dismembered and partially-eaten arm fell from one of the many
balconies and buried itself in the snow not ten feet from where he now stood. Sophia
had taught him to respect life, and so he would. But this he could not pass up.

He scrambled over to the arm and sank his teeth
into what flesh remained. Though just a table-scrap, it strengthened him. When
he was done, he craned his head up at the balconies and wondered if a second
meal would be forthcoming.

He didn’t like being reduced to a scavenger, but
if he was to see Kharker and Sophia again, he needed all the strength he could
get. Though he doubted that such scraps would make him strong enough to scale
the sheer face of the mountain, he knew he could always circle around and climb
it from its more gentle side. It would take more time, but time was the one
thing he did not fear.

*
    
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*

When
Ruegger woke up, he found Roche Sarnova perched a few feet away on an upturned
box. Instantly, he bolted up, alert, but there was no one present except for
the Dark Lord.

“Did I scare you?”

“How long have you been sitting there?” Ruegger
said.

“A few minutes.
To tell you the truth,
I was dozing a little. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.”

“I can imagine.”

They stared at each other, sizing each other up.
To Ruegger, it was strange that this silence was such a comfortable one. And it
was true what the Dark Lord said; he did look weary. The man was clean-shaven
and flushed from a recent kill, but his eyes were sad and opaque. Still, Ruegger
was impressed at the energy Sarnova radiated, and it wasn’t hard to imagine why
his subjects valued him as much as they did.

“You look like you could use a cup of coffee,”
said the Dark Lord.

“I wouldn’t refuse a cigarette, either.”

Sarnova smiled, withdrew a pack from a pocket
and offered the Darkling a smoke and a light, both of which were accepted.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.
Now, if you’d like that
coffee, I suggest we relocate to my den. Would that present a problem?”

Ten minutes later and Ruegger was sitting
opposite Roche Sarnova in an enormously comfortable armchair, working on his
second cup of coffee. Along the nearest wall ran a window that peered out
across neighboring mountains. A barrage of snow pelted the glass, seeking out
its weak points. Not far away, in a fireplace taller than a man, an inferno
raged so hotly that neither Ruegger nor Sarnova would sit close to it for fear
of igniting their clothes.

“Feel better now?”

“Much.” What Ruegger really needed was to feed,
but he knew better than to ask Sarnova if he would permit this; no matter how
friendly the Dark Lord might appear at the moment, he would still want Ruegger
to be in a weakened state. Just in case.

“You’re probably curious what this is all
about,” Roche Sarnova said.

“Probably.”

Sarnova scanned the room until he saw what he
was looking for, then used his powers to summon a bottle of liqueur into his
hand, from which he added a little spice to his coffee. He swished it around
his mouth, than added another dose.

“Want some?”

“Not right now.” Ruegger needed to stay alert.
Whatever Blackie wanted of him, he was about to find out.

“Ruegger,” Sarnova said, careful to keep his
voice even. “Do you really think I killed Ludwig, or had him killed? Please,
take your time. This is very important.”

“I don’t need any time. The truth is I don’t know.
You certainly had motive. With him dead, your Undead Jerusalem would be a lot
easier to bring to life.”

“But his wife—’

“You couldn’t anticipate her reaction.”

“Someone did.”

“You think Ludwig’s murder was just a means by
which to get Maleasoel to attack you?”

“Perhaps,” Sarnova said.

“By that theory, the plot against Ludwig was
really a plot against you.”

“Indeed.”

Ruegger took a sip of his coffee, which was very
good, and stared out the window. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. Who do you
think’s
behind all this?”

“I wish I knew. Obviously, someone who wanted my
forces crippled. It could’ve been Subaire.”

“It wasn’t her.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t, but I trust my source.”

“I see.” Sarnova sat his cup down and did not
touch it again. “To be honest, I don’t know who killed Ludwig, only that I did
not. You must believe that.”

“I’m tired of the preamble, Sarnova. What’s your
game?”

“Okay, Ruegger. Here it is. I need your help.”

“I’m listening.”

“The
Sangro Sankts
—yes, Kharker told me
that you know of them now—assigned me to choose a successor in the event that
I’m murdered, which doesn’t give me much confidence in them, needless to say.
Their purpose, other than to protect the acting Dark Lord, is to keep immortals
from human knowledge, and their frame of mind is that humans are inferior to
us; what I’m trying to do, the changes I’m trying to bring about, goes against
what they stand for. They don’t want humans aware of us, and they certainly
don’t want us to have our own country, which would bring us down to the level
of mortals. Or, at least, such is their opinion. I disagree.”

“You think they might try to kill you.”

“More likely, they’ll just allow someone else to
do the wet work for them.”

“Why not go into hiding?”

Sarnova almost laughed. “If I were the man I
used to be, I’d kill you just for suggesting it.”

“Really, though. Why not? You’ve obviously
failed here. From what I’ve heard, Subaire is winning and your own troops are
turning against you. Not only that, but Maleasoel has decimated your defense
and might have enough nuclear devices to level the whole castle. What’ve you
got to stick around for?”

Sarnova sobered. “I can’t run, Ruegger. It’s not
in my nature. Besides, I think I have an even chance of coming out of this
thing alive.”

Ruegger refrained from commenting.

“You’re probably wondering where you come in,”
Sarnova said.

“I don’t want to be your successor. That what
you’re getting at?”

“Not directly. Tradition has it that a ruler can
directly chose a successor if he or she is in imminent danger, but for me to do
this would be to admit to my people that I’m going to fail them, which I’m
determined not to do. Instead, I’m holding these contests to determine my heir—which
is the way a ruler does it in times of peace.”

“Why would a ruler need a successor in a time of
peace?”

“To build dynasties, to
marry your heir off in order to have greater influence in other lands.
I’ve done it before.
But once you marry a successor off, he or she is no longer your successor,
although he or she does retain some of their original power. So now I must find
another, and at the same time not lose face. Unfortunately, a lunatic named
Kiernevar has entered the competition.”

“I’m acquainted with him.”

“At first, I thought little of this turn of
events, but his abilities have been very surprising ... very unfortunate ... and
he’s become something of a problem. Just a short while ago, he defeated his
opponent in the second round of chess that will determine my heir. He has only
one more game to go, tomorrow night. However, his victories have been so
decisive that he’s expected to win again tomorrow.”

“You don’t want him to win.”

“Of course not.
He would be a poor
king.”

“And
an
embarrassment.”

“You’re a cynic, Ruegger. You’re right, he would
be an embarrassment, but as hard is it may be for you to believe, I actually
want what’s best for my kingdom, and Kiernevar is not that.”

“You are.”

“History will be the judge of that. At any rate,
I’m a better king than Kiernevar could ever be, but if he wins the next game,
he’s in. To prevent this, I have only one option: to choose someone to test his
strengths, to go up against him in battle. And, since the battle is chess, I
come to you, a chess-player of some renown.”

“You want me to beat him for you.”

“If you can.”

“I haven’t seen him play.”

“He’s good,” Sarnova said. “But if anyone can do
it, it’s you.”

“You seem very confident.”

“I have to be. You’re my only hope.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Freedom, of course.
If you agree to go up
against Kiernevar, I’ll liberate you, which is more than you deserve. In all
fairness, I should execute you just for good measure, but you have quite a
reputation and are well liked by many in an outlaw sort of way. It would be better
public relations to let you go—what’s more, to give you a chance to be king.”

“I don’t want to be king.”

“Good.
Because
I
am the king and have no intention of
stepping down.
Just so we got that straight. Anyway, you’ll have your
freedom. In fact, if Kiernevar loses the next fight, you won’t even have to
fight him.”

“What’s the catch?”

Sarnova eyed his coffee longingly. “Well, there
is a penalty if you lose the game.”

“Which is?”

“To ensure that no one entered the competition
lightly, the penalty for losing is death. So it was in the Arena; so it is on
the chessboard.” He let a beat go by,
then
smiled. “So
what do you say?”

Chapter 17

“Hell
no!” said Danielle, pacing up and down the room furiously. “That’s what you
should have said.”

Ruegger watched her stride, knowing from the
scowl on her face that he should stay silent. Instead he said, “If I’d done
that, baby, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Goddamnit, Ruegger!”

Tear-stricken, she flung herself against his
chest. He wrapped his arms about her back. As he ran a hand through her hair,
he whispered, “Baby, it was the only way.”

For a long time, they stood like that, Danielle
sobbing, crushed against him, and Ruegger trying to comfort her. He didn’t like
it that she was so worked up about this; that meant she had some reason to be.
Despite the fact that Ruegger rated a high place among even the most
myth-shrouded figures in chess history, she was scared—from which Ruegger
deduced that she had a high opinion of his opponent, Kiernevar, or at least his
chess skills. Though Ruegger wasn’t one to brag about his abilities, he didn’t
doubt his mastery over his favorite board game, so why did Danielle?

“What is it, baby?” he said, once her sobbing
had died down. “Why so afraid for me?”

“Ruegger, damnit, you’re the fucking poet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Come on now,
we’re on the same side here.” He put his hands to each side of her face and
lifted it up so that she was forced to look right at him. “I’m the poet,” he
repeated. “What’s that mean?”

Without opening her eyes, she said, “You think
about the curse in poetic terms. We must sin to live, that’s how you explained
it to me. Not we must drink blood to survive, not that we must sleep during the
day. We must sin, that’s what you said. And you said that the more we sinned,
the stronger we’d become, which makes since in a poetic sort of way, but I
realize that that’s how you think. I didn’t take you at your literal word, and
you didn’t expect me to.

“Also,” she added, “your mind is split. On one
hand, you think in poetry, but when it comes to action, you think coldly,
logically, analytically.
Almost to a fault.
You see
what I mean?”

“Is this a riddle?”

“I’m
suggesting
that you use your poetic side to find the fallacy involved in a logical man
fighting Kiernevar. Just take a
second,
you’ll see
what I mean.”

“Chaos versus reason, you mean?
Chaos being the stronger.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry, back in
the day, I could’ve shown Kiernevar a thing or two.”

“I don’t like to think of you that way.”

I never should have told
her about my past
.
“I’m not that person anymore.”

“I know. But there’s a part of you that’s closed
to me.
A dark part.
I’m afraid of what you could do if
you let your guard down.”

“Don’t be.”

Suddenly, her voice became a whisper, and an
urgent one. “Ruegger, baby, I don’t care about all that, that’s not what we
should be thinking about. The fact is that you’re going up against Kiernevar
tomorrow night, if he lasts that long—but he’s going to. For some reason, I
don’t know, I can’t explain it ... It’s like he’s an elemental of some kind.
He’s the Godzilla of lunatics, and he’s unstoppable. He was one of
Jean-Pierre’s
flock
, one of a horde of the most
wretched and demented human beings alive. Out of all of them, he was the one,
the most far-gone, the only one so completely removed he couldn’t follow the
albino’s psychic demands. You see what I mean?”

“He’s the cream of the terrible crop, the
essence of madness. That’s what you’re getting at.”

“Right.
You’re the other side
of the coin ... You might’ve been pretty far-gone yourself once, but now you’re
the most analytic and logical person I know. The
most
sane
.
You are to logic what Kiernevar is to its opposite, or close enough.”

“In other words,” he elaborated, “I don’t have a
chance.”

“Exactly.
So let’s get the fuck
out here before Kiernevar beats you, they sentence you to execution, and you
have to revert back to the way you were before ... evil, savage ... in order to
free yourself—because at that point it’ll be the only thing that can save you.”

He nodded. “So that’s what you’re afraid of.
That I’ll lose and be forced to run amok.”

Without hesitation, she said, “That’s it, baby. I
know you’re powerful and could cause a lot of damage if you wanted to.”

He stared into her eyes, trying to detect the
reason why she said this. After all, it was only recently that he’d begun to
hone his preternatural skills to a sharpness he’d never acquired before. Not
only were his skills becoming quicker and stronger, they were gaining in
magnitude. He’d tried to keep his experiments to himself until he could
determine his new range, but from what she’d said he realized that mere silence
on his part hadn’t been enough to prevent her from discovering his secret.

“I’ll be good,” he promised.

“That’s just it, though. If it comes to that—if
Sarnova sentences you to death—then I don’t want you to hold back. Ruegger, you
mean more to me than anyone or anything else ever has, and I’ll be damned if
I’m going to see you killed over a fucking chess game. You see? If it happens
that way, I’ll
want
you to be as brutal as you’ve got to be to escape.
But it doesn’t have to go that far. It doesn’t. We should escape ... and do it
as soon as possible.”

“No. We’ll stay here, I’ll beat Kiernevar, and
Sarnova will let us both go free Logic has got to be stronger than disorder,
and I’m willing to put my life on the line to prove it.” He paused. “The way
you’re looking at it—well, it’s
too
poetic. Life isn’t that way. Come to think of it, that’s why I stopped writing
in the first place.
Because chaos doesn’t have to win.”

“But it always does, baby.”

“Not this time. After I defeat him and we’re
released, we can start all over, reevaluate the whole situation.”

“Rueg ...”

“I’m not a coward,
Dani
.
I won’t back out. This is the only way.”

For a long time, she was silent, then: “Okay. I
know you think I’m being stupid, but I want you to know, if you change your
mind—for instance, if you come across Kiernevar between now and then and you
see what I mean—then you can come back to me and change your mind without losing
face.”

He took her hand and led her over to the bed.
She resisted for just an instant,
then
gave in. The
truth was she seemed relieved that what Ruegger wanted now was to relax and get
to know her again. As he watched, she let the tension drain from her, as he
allowed his own to leave him. Soon after reclining on the bed they were talking
warmly to each other, sometimes holding hands and kissing, and sometimes in
various states of undress.

When he began to help her get her jeans off,
though, she stiffened.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked away.

“Junger and Jagoda,” he said.

She hissed out a breath.
“Yeah.”

He backed off. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to.
If they’d done that to me, I would need some time, too.”

“No,” she said, and he was surprised by her
ferocity. “No! If I can’t make love to you, then they’ve won. I’ve been through
this before, but this time I’m prepared. As far as I’m concerned, Junger and
Jagoda can go to hell.”

She pulled him close and kissed him. They took
full advantage of having their own room, which was a luxury they hadn’t been
afforded since they’d been together at the Lodge. After Ruegger had agreed to
go up against Kiernevar, Sarnova had granted him a few perks. Not only was the
room beautiful and comfortable, it also boasted a hot-tub—a large, bubbling
cauldron fashioned from granite. It was there that Ruegger fell in love with
Danielle all over again.

“I love you,” he told her an hour after their
conversation about madness, staring up into her big black eyes.

They were just playing around now, relaxing in
their new comforts. His member inside her, she straddled him, rocking back and
forth and up and down, trying to see if she could get him fully hard again.

“I love you, too,” she said.

Her eyes were wet, but it might’ve been from the
sweat that ran down her forehead and collected in her slyly-curved eyebrows. He
wasn’t sure, but he knew that the moisture in his own eyes came from tears, not
sweat. It was then that he realized part of him had never expected to see her
again.

“What’s this?” she asked.

She touched her lips against his cheeks, tasting
his tears. As his eyes closed, he felt himself grow hard again. Just then,
someone knocked on the door.

*
    
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*

After
feeding off the scraps that were thrown down to him, Jean-Pierre realized he
needed to move on. He couldn’t go up the side of the precipice, he knew.
Slowly, he picked his way around the mountain and started upwards.

It was slow, tiring work, and he quickly
exhausted himself. Before long, he sank to knees and curled up against a large
rock.
I need rest
. The wounds that the
Libertarians had inflicted on him were still causing him some discomfort, but
the holes had healed, even if they did leave scars in their wakes. The blood
froze against his flesh.

After the wave of weariness had passed, he rose
to his feet and staggered up the mountain.
Next
time the wave will be longer. Then longer still. Then it won’t pass at all
.
He’d better hurry.

*
    
*
    
*

When
Danielle opened the door, Roche Sarnova appeared in the doorway, guards to
either side. He nodded to Danielle,
then
settled on
the Darkling, sitting in a chair with a bathrobe hastily thrown around him to
hide his erection.

“Ruegger,” Sarnova said, “there’s one more thing
we must attend to.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s just say you’ll need your jeans and jacket.
Get moving and I’ll meet you downstairs in the Old Courtyard in ten minutes.”

Before the Dark Lord could leave, Danielle said,
“Not so fast, Blackie.”

“How may I help you?”

“Has Kiernevar played his second game tonight? I
saw the first, but not the second.”

Sarnova paused, and there was a touch of sadness
in his face. Then, as if only coming to terms with it himself, the Dark Lord
said, “Kiernevar won. He has only one more to go. After that, it’s your turn,
Darkling.” To Danielle, he said, “Is there anything else?”

“Tell Kharker he can kiss my ass.”

He left, and she shut the door none too gently
after him.

“You have a way with people,” Ruegger said.

“Sarnova can kiss my ass, too. I think the only
reason he’s letting you fight Kiernevar is because he thinks you’ll lose and he
can kill you without your admirers protesting too much.”

“Then he’s going to be disappointed.”

“The way he was talking, you’re going outside.
That’s where the Old Courtyard leads to, right?”

“That’s right. Mostly it’s called the Main Foyer
nowadays because the courtyard isn’t really used anymore. There’s a drawbridge,
the whole works. Before the invention of helicopters, it was the only way to
enter the castle that was open to the general public.”

“Jesus, he’s keeping a tight schedule.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dawn’s only about two hours away. This must be
the one clear spot in his calendar. Here, Rueg, let’s get you dressed. The
sooner you’re out of here, the sooner you’ll come back.”