Of Masques and Martyrs Read online

  Erika wanted Hannibal dead. Without question, the coven led by Peter Octavian needed Hannibal dead. But she wondered, as they flew, hawk eyes focused on fleeing bat wings, if Rolf realized how suicidal this mission really was.

  They were going to die. If Erika had to bet, it would not be in their favor. Shadows, vampires. Whatever they called themselves and each other, they were very hard to kill. Through some combination of humanity, divinity, and demonic influence Erika had never completely understood, the race of shadows had achieved a kind of cellular consciousness and control. They were shapeshifters, really, and could become anything.

  Or, at least, that was the potential. But long centuries earlier, the Roman church had handicapped the shadows by implanting certain psychic controls. Myths. The sun burns. The cross terrifies. Silver poisons. Running water. Native soil.

  Bullshit. But psychically altered to believe in such things, the shadows’ cellular consciousness would react. A psychosomatic reaction of the most destructive and fundamental kind. It made them easier to kill. At least until the Venice Jihad six years ago, which revealed the truth, uncovered the conspiracy. The world’s shadows had begun to shake off the church’s brainwashing, but individual success had varied. Some were still susceptible to the old flaws. And Hannibal’s insistence that his followers pay heed to ancient tradition, to hunt only by night, to limit their transformations to creatures of darkness . . . made it more difficult for them to liberate themselves from the myths, thus making them more vulnerable.

  So, Erika thought with amusement, the shadows had that going for them. Not much, considering the vastly greater number of the vampires, of Hannibal’s coven. But something was always better than nothing.

  Not that it would help.

  A siren wailed in the distance. Televisions blared from within apartments locked up tight. Cab drivers ferried home unfortunate souls who’d had to work late; the taxis’ windshields were festooned with garlic and crucifixes, in hopes that they would have some kind of effect. Erika wondered how much such kamikaze cabbies could charge for a ride home through the murderous night.

  She felt the muscles in her hawk’s wings ripple as she and Rolf soared between and above the buildings of the Bronx. Erika allowed the city to distract her, to turn her thoughts away from the coming confrontation. But when the Bronx disappeared behind them, and they began to enter the more suburban area of Westchester County, she realized that they must be getting close. It wouldn’t be logical for Hannibal to be much farther away from Manhattan.

  Her thoughts turned again to losing. To dying.

  There were all kinds of tricks they could use to try to infiltrate Hannibal’s headquarters, wherever it was. But to kill him, and then escape with their lives? Erika just didn’t believe it was possible. So be it, then, she thought. If tonight was the night, she would die by Rolf’s side, with the blood of her family’s greatest enemy on her lips.

  The Tappan Zee Bridge appeared on the horizon, and for a moment Erika thought the vampires might be heading for Tarrytown, or Sleepy Hollow, which she thought might have suited Hannibal’s taste for the perverse. Less than a decade earlier, before running away to become a capricious and clever little goth girl on the streets of Atlanta, Erika had lived in Tarrytown. She wondered if her too-straight parents still lived there, still mourned her; and suddenly she was revolted by the thought that Hannibal might have tainted the peaceful little town.

  But no, the vampires flew on. What had once been an automobile manufacturing plant passed by below, and now Erika was insanely curious. This would have made an ideal headquarters.

  Where then? What better place could he have? . . .

  Then she saw it, in the distance, stark and cold against the trees, with the railroad tracks running alongside. A mountain of ugly gray stone and glittering silver wire, hard and silent. The Hudson River flowed past to the west, complement and counterpoint, showing the mountain what it could never have, could never be.

  Up the river. The phrase came unbidden to Erika’s mind. In gangster movies it meant being sent to prison. This prison.

  Sing-Sing.

  Of course, she thought, letting Rolf see into her mind, hear her words.

  The vampire bats dipped on the night air, gliding down toward the prison walls. Rolf swooped low to follow, but Erika held back a moment.

  What’s the plan, Rolf? she asked. How do you want to go in?

  She sensed his confusion, and realized that, so driven was he by his obsession, he had nearly forgotten she was there at all. It hurt. Erika knew that, fond of her as Rolf may be, he’d never really loved her. There had never been room in his heart for her. not with all the hatred there.

  We’re in this together, damn you, she thought, and directed her mind at him.

  I know, he finally replied. I’m sorry. Part of me wants to just fly right in and wait for Hannibal to come to us.

  Erika flew into the branches of a massive oak tree across the street from the prison, and Rolf circled to join her there a moment later.

  He might not come to us at all, she reasoned. They might just kill us.

  He’ll come, Rolf argued. But we’ll exercise a little caution. We’ll wait until morning to go in. Then all we’ll have to do is slaughter his human servants—

  It isn’t that simple, Erika thought.

  Yes, Rolf replied. Yes it is.

  At dawn they dropped from the oak tree and landed next to one another on the paved sidewalk of a nice suburban town called Ossining, New York. A nice prison town. They were themselves again, Rolf Sechs and Erika Hunter. Lovers. Shadows. Briefly, they embraced, then turned to walk toward the prison hand in hand, as if they were tourists.

  At the front gates of the prison, four men stood guard. It should have seemed odd to the townspeople, having four men in front of an empty prison. Erika figured over time they’d grown so used to seeing armed personnel there that it never occurred to anyone to question it. And Hannibal’s coven didn’t kill the people of Ossining. Or even nearby. That was a tenet of the old covens: you don’t hunt at home.

  Erika’s long, tattered jacket flapped behind her in the breeze off the Hudson. Rolf’s broad shoulders were straight as he marched determinedly toward the gate, toward the guards. Somewhere far away, a child screamed with pleasure, already awake with the risen sun.

  Every muscle tensed, Erika brought her hands up inside her jacket, reaching for the twin nine-millimeter semiauto pistols that Will Cody had given her as a gift for her birthday several months earlier. She felt the hardness of the pistol butts beneath her touch. Her lip curled in disdain as the guards suddenly noticed her and Rolf approaching. They snapped to attention, whispering between themselves like amateurs.

  Traitors to their own race; Erika hated them.

  No. Rolf’s stern voice entered her mind, and he tapped her on the shoulder.

  Erika looked at him and saw his eyes flicker toward her chest, hands . . . toward her guns.

  Damn Cody and his fondness for Hong Kong action movies, Rolf thought to her. You go for the guns when you need them not for recreation.

  Erika took her hands away from inside her coat and shot a hard look at Rolf. Who the hell are you, my father? she thought.

  But Rolf wasn’t looking at her; he was smiling and waving at the guards. No, he mentally replied, just a guy who wants to live through the next five minutes. Kill them quietly.

  “Sorry, folks, they stopped giving tours about two months ago,” a guard with a natural orange buzzcut announced.

  Next to him, a goateed, bald musclehead raised his weapon in alarm.

  “What the hell are you doing here this early in the morning?” Baldy asked.

  “You want fucking quietly . . .” Erika growled.

  It was all one motion, a split second of death. Her arms flashed forward, fingers digging into Baldy’s face, his eyes pulping under the pressure of her grip. Erika pulled him forward, and even as she twisted his head, shattering his spine at the neck, she used his
weight for leverage and kicked out at a slender black man who’d only just begun to move. Her foot crushed his ribcage to powder and slammed him against the prison wall. When he fell to the ground, he left behind bits of hair and bone and blood at the spot where his head had struck.

  That quiet enough for you? she thought as she turned to Rolf.

  Perfect, Rolf replied, even as he gently lowered the twisted corpse of the orange-haired jarhead to the pavement. The other guard, an uncharacteristically chubby Asian, lay there already, face and nose ruptured, probably killed by bone shrapnel exploding into his brain.

  Quiet.

  Without exchanging a word, Erika and Rolf each knelt by one of their victims and drank of their cooling blood. No use passing up a free meal, Erika thought. But that thought she kept to herself. The thirst was a frequent topic of conversation among Peter Octavian’s coven—and their greatest curse, the ultimate obstacle standing between what they were and what they so desired to be.

  They pushed through the gates together, tensed in preparation for the appearance of more guards. More human slaves to Hannibal’s slavering clan. A fine line separated these human collaborators from those who worked with Peter, who volunteered their aid and often their blood. Both breeds of human were clearly fascinated by the immortal shadows, but some thrived on fear and horror, others on hope and kindness.

  Where are they all? I don’t like this at all, Rolf thought.

  Too late for that now, Erika replied. “We’re in the lion’s den.”

  Rolf reached behind his back to withdraw his own weapon, which had been hidden beneath his sweatshirt at the base of his spine. A gun, similar to Erika’s weapons, and loaded with silverpoint bullets, just as hers were.

  Erika smiled at him.

  “So now it’s okay?” she asked with sarcasm and withdrew her weapons from their armpit holsters.

  Rolf nodded grimly, not the response she’d hoped for. But she should have known better. They were close now. It was time. The moment they’d been waiting a year for. The silver bullets would not kill Hannibal; but they had discussed it, and Rolf seemed to think it might at least steal Hannibal’s focus, trapping him in his corporeal form for a few vital seconds. If that failed, and they could at least get him out under the sun, they might be able to disturb his concentration enough to kill him.

  But that might take a while. And there were sure to be dozens of other vampires with him. There was no way. . . .

  No. Erika pushed the thought away. It was time to act. To hell with the consequences.

  “Where do you think—” she began.

  The cells, Rolf replied. He’d enjoy that.

  Even without having to search offices, cafeterias, laundry, and other areas, their search took time. Despite the obvious size of the prison, Erika was astonished at the vastness of the cell blocks. Nearly half an hour after they’d entered the prison, their footsteps echoing through the cement and steel of cell block seven, they came upon their first sleeping vampire.

  I don’t like it, Erika thought, staring down at the still form of an androgynous undead killer, blood still on its lips.

  I know, Rolf replied. No way would they all sleep tight in here with only four amateur tough guys at the gate. But . . . there’s no way he could have known we were coming. How could he know?

  The vampire on the floor opened its eyes, mouth stretching into a grotesque smile.

  “Shit!” Erika snapped.

  “Hap-py Birthday!” the vampire cried and leaped to its feet to caper wildly from one side of the cell block to the other, not even trying to attack them.

  “I love that cartoon!” it shouted in a voice that gave no greater definition to its possible gender. “Don’t you remember Frosty the Snowman?”

  Shut him up, Rolf thought.

  Erika was already moving, and she grunted in pain as her fingers elongated and sharpened into silver points. Slow poison for her, but she wouldn’t need them very long. And Hannibal’s coven would never break the rules and shift into anything silver.

  “I like Rudolph, actually,” she whispered.

  Blood spurted from the vampire’s mouth as she speared its heart with her silver-tipped fingers. She glanced around at the dark cells as the dead creature slid to the ground.

  “I don’t get it,” she said softly. “He didn’t even fight back.”

  Then, from the darkness at the end of the row of cells, a familiar, mocking voice drifted with insinuation.

  “She, actually,” Hannibal said. “Never been quite right since her transformation. Putting her in your way was considered merciful.”

  Rolf growled a mutilated sound that might have been his attempt at saying the name of their despised adversary.

  “Hannibal,” Erika sneered.

  “Kill the mute,” Hannibal commanded, scowling.

  Vampires rose from the shadows in the cells and drifted as mist from the ceiling. It was a swarm, moving on Erika and Rolf too quickly for even the inhuman eye to follow.

  “Fuck!” Erika roared as she dove on her belly on the concrete, nine-millimeter twin sidearms erupting in a shower of silver, even as Rolf began firing his own weapon.

  She was thrilled to be greeted by shrieks of pain and horror. One nearby vamp girl actually burst into flame, and Erika smiled to herself. Ignorant bitch, she thought, but not too dismissively. Ignorance was a weapon they could use.

  “We’re compromised,” she shouted back to Rolf. “Let’s get out of here!”

  She’d already begun to withdraw, firing in front and behind her simultaneously, keeping the vampires off and backing up through the hole her silver barrage was opening. When Erika ran out of ammunition, she tossed one of the guns and shifted her left hand into a huge bear claw. Partial transformations required concentration. They were going to lose. They were going to die. The smart thing to do would be just to mist on out of there, retreat, and live to fight another day.

  “Rolf!” she shouted. “Did you hear me—”

  Erika was interrupted by a roar. She whipped her eyes left and saw, to her horror, that Rolf was charging ahead through an ocean of vampiric flesh, tearing undead warriors from his path with a ferocity that split skulls and ripped limbs from their sockets. At the end of the corridor, Hannibal stood unmoved by his enemy’s determination, laughing softly as his eyes burned in the darkness.

  He wasn’t going to make it. There were too many of them, and already they were beginning to drag him down.

  Claws raked her back and ass, and Erika screamed in pain. Without even really glancing back, she fired two silver bullets into the face of her attacker.

  Rolf, no! she shouted into his head.

  He didn’t even flinch. Didn’t turn. It was a kind of insanity now, she sensed. Her only choice was to stand by him, or save herself.

  It was Erika’s turn to roar, as she moved in after Rolf, firing her remaining nine-millimeter into the crowd.

  A sharp pinprick of pain in her neck. Erika slapped a hand to the spot, almost expecting to crush a bee or wasp beneath her fingers. What she found there instead was a dart.

  “What the . . .” she asked, and then the vampires swarmed over her, dragging her down.

  As she fell beneath them, she saw a pair of darts fired into Rolf’s back. She turned to see the wielder of the dart gun. A white-haired vampire, his hair whiter even than Hannibal’s; he’d allowed himself to remain old despite his shapeshifting abilities. She recognized him.

  “Yano?” she asked weakly.

  “Sorry, Erika,” Sebastiano replied grimly. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  Overwhelmed, with no hope of helping Rolf or herself, Erika realized her only hope was escape. She concentrated on turning her body to mist, a form the other vampires couldn’t hope to attack or even follow for very long.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing.

  Erika concentrated again on changing. Into anything. Still, nothing happened. She was frozen in her original human body, unable to shift
into any other form. No way, then, to escape. No way, even, to . . . to heal.

  “Oh my God,” she said softly.

  Somehow, Hannibal had found a way to change them. Erika didn’t know if it was science or magic, but it hardly mattered. He’d made them vulnerable. Killable.

  Rolf wailed in fury and surged up against the dozen vampire bodies that held him down. Several more jumped on the pile to hold him down. He was an elder shadow, with strength considered prodigious even among his kind. He stared up into the burning eyes of his enemy, unable to shout his hatred for the bastard to the metal rafters of the prison, and now somehow unable to change, to shift.

  He didn’t care. He’d killed with his bare hands for centuries, and he’d kill Hannibal the same way. If he could just . . . get . . . up.

  “Pitiful sight, really,” Hannibal chuckled. “But don’t worry, you won’t have to suffer this indignity very long.”

  Rolf could hear Erika screaming from behind him and hoped that she, at least, would be able to escape. He felt the grip of his gun wrested from his hand. Stared up as Hannibal aimed at his forehead. Impossible as it was, Rolf thought he could see the glint of silver inside the barrel.

  No changing. No healing. However Hannibal had done it, Rolf knew that Peter and the others would be unsuspecting. Another major advantage the vampires would have over the shadow coven. They had to figure out how it was done. Someone had to warn them.

  As Erika shouted in fury, Hannibal emptied the clip of silver bullets into Rolf’s face.

  1

  You better come on in my kitchen, baby, it’s goin’ to be rainin’ outdoors.

  —ROBERT JOHNSON, “Come On in My Kitchen”

  AT THE CENTER OF NEW ORLEANS’S FRENCH Quarter, Bourbon Street was all flash; garish face paint obscuring the true identity of the most fascinating city in America. At least, that was the way Nikki Wydra felt about the Big Easy. She’d only been there five days, but already she was in love with the place. New Orleans, to her, was like a seductively dangerous man, whose charisma would never allow casual observers to witness his true nature.