Of Masques and Martyrs Read online

  Behind her, someone screamed and, despite her horror at what he was, she silently prayed it wasn’t Peter. She glanced ahead, the way to the door clear. There was another scream, and then the fear that had paralyzed the people in the club edged up a notch . . . and the spell was shattered. As one, they rose and began to crowd toward the front door.

  “Out of the way, bitch,” a salt-and-pepper-haired little man barked as he shoved her aside.

  Nikki was jostled and shoved, but the tide of fear carried her along toward the door, and she gave in to it.

  “Fire!” a woman shouted, and pointed over toward the bar.

  Nikki turned to look, and there it was. Crackling hungrily behind the bar, was a small but quickly spreading fire. Her mind flashed with a picture of Sidney smashing into a rack of liquor bottles. A detail that hadn’t seemed important before now rushed into focus. Sidney had been smoking.

  The cries grew and the press toward the door surged more urgently forward. Someone pushed her from behind, and Nikki began to fall. She reached for the leather jacket of the man in front of her, but he shook her loose as he jockeyed for position at the exit. She fell.

  When the first foot slammed down on her right arm, Nikki screamed in pain and frenzied panic, praying that her arm wasn’t broken.

  Then suddenly there was space around her, and a strong hand grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up. The crowd had somehow spread out, moving away from her, and she was relieved to be away from their crushing weight.

  She was spun violently around, and a hand laced in her hair and pulled. Pain shot through her already torn and bleeding scalp. Nikki stared into the black eyes of the vampire girl, Tsumi. She saw the hate there, wanted to whine, to plead, to tell Tsumi that she was nobody special, that she wasn’t worth killing. But she couldn’t say even that, for Tsumi gripped her by the throat and, despite her short stature, held Nikki by the neck and hair several inches above the floor.

  “Octavian, not another move,” Tsumi ordered.

  The vampire girl moved slightly, and finally Nikki could see the center of the club, empty now of humanity. Only monsters there. Fire licked across the bar and leaped up to begin consuming the ceiling above it. It was spreading fast. The long-haired Latino and a lanky, bearded white male stood just behind Peter, ready to attack again, but the other two were dead. The third male vampire was impaled on his back on a steel microphone stand. He was drenched with something—beer, Nikki guessed—and he twitched and sparked with electricity running through him. The female’s body lay inches from the flames.

  Octavian held her head, dangling from its hair, in his right hand.

  “You brought nothing but amateurs with you, Tsumi,” Peter said, eyes not even glancing at Nikki. “I’m a little disappointed, to be honest. You come into my town, risk running into my people—you know we’ve outdistanced your own clans in the development of our abilities—and you bring pups. Children, really. You’re a fool, Tsumi, and a savage bitch at that. And you wonder why I left you there, in Hong Kong.”

  Peter took a step toward the spot near the entryway where Tsumi held Nikki. Barely able to draw breath, Nikki jumped in alarm. What was he doing? she thought. He was a vampire, certainly. Some kind of monster. But he’d seemed different. He cared about human lives, that much was obvious. He wouldn’t just throw her life away.

  He couldn’t.

  “Another step and I’ll rip her head off,” Tsumi snarled. “Surrender now, allow yourself to be captured, and perhaps Hannibal will kill you quickly.”

  “Tsumi,” Peter said, as if to a petulant child. “Hannibal couldn’t kill me any more than you could. And if you want a head . . .”

  He threw the female vampire’s head gently onto the floor, where it slid and skittered and finally rolled to a stop just a few feet from where Nikki still sucked air greedily into her raw and constricted throat.

  “Bastard,” Tsumi sneered. “Now I will kill her.”

  “Suit yourself,” Peter replied. “But if it helps at all, I surrender.”

  Immediately, Nikki felt Tsumi begin to relax. Then, the next instant, a sudden whistling began behind her, like the sound inside a conch shell but so much louder. Despite the fire, she was suddenly cold. Colder, perhaps, than she had ever been. Coldest of all, though, were Tsumi’s fingers on her throat.

  Shivering and numb, teeth chattering, Nikki looked at Tsumi’s face. Cheeks blue and white, splotched with red, the vampire girl was frozen in place. Nikki struggled to escape her icy grip, and Tsumi’s claws dug into her throat.

  Octavian spun toward the lanky, bearded vampire and his hands came up quickly, sending out a wave of green light. As though he’d been struck by a bulldozer, the vampire was swept back by the green light and, so quickly he could not even think to change his form, he was crushed to a pulp against the club’s far wall and fell in a gory mess into the leaping flames.

  “Hijo de . . . ” the Latino began. Then he stood tall, chin up, and stared Peter in the eyes. “Sorcerer. You’re nothing without your magick, sir. And when Hannibal is through with you, you will be nothing indeed.”

  Tsumi’s frozen thumb snapped off and Nikki crumpled to the floor, bleeding from the head and throat, cradling her injured arm as she shivered from frostbite and began to slide into shock. Still, she watched, waiting for Peter to kill the long-haired vampire with whatever incredible magick he had at his control.

  Instead, Octavian drew himself up as haughtily as the Latino had done.

  “Nothing, boy?” Peter said, his disgust obvious. “I was born Nicephorus Dragases, the bastard child of the last emperor of Byzantium. I gave my soul to kill the Turks who tore my empire down. I drank the blood of armies. I brought to their knees the churchmen who would have herded us like cattle, and, for my trouble, I spent one thousand years in Hell.”

  He paused here, and watched the weight of his words sink in. Nikki saw the fear beginning to show on the previously pompous Latino’s face. The club was empty but for the three of them now, and silent but for the crackling of the spreading fire. Nikki knew she should get up and run. Escape. From the dead men trying to kill one another, and from the blaze eating the club that had become her livelihood.

  But she couldn’t move. Somewhere in the back of her head a little voice told her she was in shock. She barely heard it.

  “I’m not a braggart, boy, and I’m not a murderer,” Peter said, softer now. “I just want you to know what you face, so you’ll feel less the coward if you decide to make a run for it.”

  “You’ll . . . just let me leave?” the Latino asked, incredulous.

  “I didn’t say that,” Peter replied. “But I promise you this. I won’t use any magick to kill you. And I won’t use silver, which your kind still abhor. And I won’t use fire, or any other form Hannibal has forbidden you to take on. Just shadow to shadow, fang and claw. Does that make you happy? Is that fair, do you think, you little brat?”

  In the haze of shock, losing blood fast, Nikki’s vision began to blur. Or perhaps it was smoke inhalation from the fire, or blood dripping into her eyes from her scalp. It didn’t matter, for what she saw before her now was a nightmare scene out of Hell itself. Two men bursting the seams of humanity, monsters erupting from their flesh, wolf-things that were so much more than animals.

  They rushed at one another, claws flashing and jaws gnashing. Blood flew and howls pierced the air. Mind smothering, Nikki watched as Peter tore the other vampire to shreds. It took seconds. In the end, he lifted the long-haired Latino, now unable to hold on to his wolf-shape, and hurled him into the raging fire.

  Blackness swept over Nikki, and she slid sideways, sprawling on the floor. She began to cough and couldn’t stop. The smoke had filled her lungs. She smiled a bit, happy that she was too numb to feel the pain in her injured arm, or her torn and bleeding throat.

  In a final flash of consciousness, she saw Peter above her, leaning over, genuine warmth and concern on his features. His hands were burning green, a
nd she felt the warmth of that green fire as it swept over her. She didn’t hurt so much anymore.

  Kind eyes, that’s what she thought. As her eyes closed and she fell away into nothing, she thought, insanely, that she could hear him singing “The Sky Is Crying,” an old Elmore James song that had always made her mother pour herself another drink.

  She might have felt his arms around her.

  Then nothing.

  2

  My head is full of voices,

  and my house is full of lies.

  This is home.

  —SHERYL CROW, “Home”

  ON A FORGOTTEN DIRT PATH, OFF A DUSTY narrow road that led across the plains from a little-used highway, Will Cody and Allison Vigeant sat on the hood of their battered red Jeep Grand Cherokee. They leaned against the windshield, sipping powerful Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee poured from a thermos, and watched the dawn approach in silence. Will drank with his left hand, so he could hold Allison’s hand in his right.

  They were just outside North Platte, Nebraska, a place Will had called home for forty-four years and where his life had left quite an impression. There were streets and schools named after him, among many other things. His old homestead, Scout’s Rest Ranch, was still there, a tourist attraction now. The people who took care of his celebrity, or the memory of it, were trying desperately to convince America and the world that the vampire who’d been calling himself Will Cody was nothing but a charlatan.

  In his heart, Will hoped they would succeed. The last thing he would ever want would be for the actions of Hannibal and his followers to forever taint the glory of what Will had built while alive. But then, “alive” had been a long time ago. Perhaps it wasn’t as important as all that.

  But if it wasn’t important, why was he doing this? Why had he dragged poor Allison across North America on a tour of all the places that had meant something to him while he was alive?

  They’d started on Prince Edward Island, where he’d stood over the graves of Codys and Feehans, and met a bearded man with kind eyes who’d come to do the same thing. Will had given his name as Frederick Cody there, and he and the man had established that they were cousins or, at least, that their ancestors were. It was a part of his family history that Will had never explored, and he lamented now that he couldn’t go meet all those people, cousins from far and wide.

  After that moment he had determined it was best to be the pride of these people, not their shame.

  From Prince Edward Island they’d gone to Lookout Mountain in Colorado, where his bones were supposed to be buried. And Cedar Mountain, which looked down on a Wyoming town named after him. The two towns had fought over his remains, and Will was glad they’d never dug him up. It would have caused his family too much heartache to know that his body wasn’t where they thought it was.

  Still, he took some small amusement from the knowledge that neither of the places which had sparred over his supposed corpse ended up being his resting place. He didn’t know where he wanted to be buried now. There’d been so much life since his death. But he suspected that, in the end, he’d like to be laid to rest somewhere around North Platte. Or even better, on Prince Edward Island, which he and Allison had felt was a little bit of paradise. Somewhere quiet, in any case.

  In the end.

  When was that going to be? He’d thought about it a lot, of late. His life had been filled with such joy that he’d jumped at the chance to prolong it, no matter the cost. But the life of a shadow was filled with violence and grief, and Will honestly didn’t know how much longer he could go on with it. If it weren’t for Allison . . .

  He squeezed her hand in his and looked over at her hazel eyes, at the tiny crinkles around them that told him she was growing older, at the blond hair she had adopted as a small attempt at disguise. Will had offered her the “Gift.” Immortality. She had turned him down, a response he hadn’t really understood at the time. Now he wouldn’t dream of offering it again. He envied her, in a way. In fact, he’d allowed himself to grow a little older as well. For her, and because he didn’t want to be recognized as they traveled. He looked nearly fifty now, but still trim and fit, with neatly trimmed hair and beard.

  He’d been truly old when Karl Von Reinman had made him a vampire, but his shapeshifting abilities had combined with his vanity to regress him. His love for Allison had changed all that. They would age together now. Will liked the idea of growing old with her. The subject of her actually dying, however, was one he refused even to consider. That day would be the death of him as well, without question.

  “So,” the petite woman said, her voice husky with the morning, “you feel like Buffalo Bill today? Now that you’re home?”

  Will looked at her and offered a weak smile. He glanced up at the sky; it was changing colors magnificently as the sun came over the horizon, stretched across the plains toward them.

  “I never felt like Buffalo Bill,” he said quietly. “Not here, or anywhere else. Jim Hickok never called me anything but Will, nor did Louisa.”

  Allison was staring at him.

  “Hey,” she said, bringing his fingers up to brush them against her own cheek. He looked at her, smiled again, and breathed deeply of the Nebraska air.

  “If I’d known you were going to get all sad on me, I never would have agreed to come out here with you,” she said. “I know that was just a name for you, like an actor on a stage, but it’s still a part of your life.”

  “Not anymore it’s not,” he said without rancor. “Buffalo Bill never really existed, but this place was where Will Cody lived. There were moments out here, in this little town, with so many people who loved me and so many of nature’s gifts to man, moments that were so close to perfect that if one more little girl with a ribbon in her hair had smiled at me, or one more young man had told me his little boy wanted to be a great scout . . . well, God would’ve had to bring me home to heaven right then, because nobody deserves to be that happy on Earth.”

  When he looked at her again, Allison was biting her lip and her smile was gone, replaced by a frown of sadness and sympathy. She pulled him to her with one hand, and, in unison, they held their coffee cups out to either side to keep them from spilling.

  Her chin on his shoulder, she whispered to him, “Every time I think I understand you, you surprise me a little more. Crass as can be one minute, the soul of eloquence the next. They don’t make men like you anymore, Colonel. They truly don’t.”

  Will smiled to himself. “I love you, Allison,” he said.

  They kissed then, and when she returned his profession of love, her words were muffled by the joining of their lips. When they looked up again, the sun had almost cleared the horizon, and the temperature had risen several degrees.

  As Will sipped his coffee again, Allison said, “This is harder for you than you expected, isn’t it? We can go anytime you want, you know.”

  “Yes, much harder,” he answered. “And we’ll go soon. Let’s just sit a spell, while I try to decide whether I really want to go see the ranch, or even go into North Platte.”

  A few minutes later, Will poured Allison the last of the coffee. He’d already decided to drive the Jeep into town, at least to try to get a decent breakfast.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” she said. “Really it is. I understand why you loved it so much when . . . before.”

  “There are so many memories out here for me. So much I can’t remember, too,” he replied. “Fort McPherson used to be not far from here. It was a different world when I first saw it, when I was stationed there. A different world entirely. No cars, no planes, no television. No fax machines or cell phones or nukes. For better and for worse, it was a much simpler life. Just people, trying to get by day to day, with only one another for company.

  “The first time I set foot here was in May of 1869. I was guide then to the Fifth Cavalry, and we were on the trail of Tall Bull, a vicious Indian warrior—but no more so than the rest of us. I wasn’t fool enough to want the Indians dead because th
ey were Indians, or because they didn’t pray to God. The finest, most generous, most trustworthy friends I ever had were of Indian blood, and I employed as many as I could, hoping to keep them from wallowing in the sorrow of their lost tribes. But back when I was a scout . . . well, they were the enemy then, and that was all that mattered.

  “Still, it was a fine time, when the Fifth rolled into Fort McPherson. I fell in love with it straightaway. My friend Lew had a saloon in town. Bartender there was Texas Jack Omohundro, who’d trailed three thousand head of Longhorn up from El Paso. I think a lot of that McMurtry fella’s writing is influenced by Texas Jack’s exploits as a young man.”

  Will laughed then, and smiled widely and warmly for the first time.

  “We went to the circus that first stay, too. Dan Costello’s Circus, I recall. Stole a lot of ideas from Dan when I started the Wild West Show. But, then, hell, I stole from them all.”

  Allison looked at Will and sipped the last of her coffee. She was worried about him. As hard as she tried to keep her concern from showing, she couldn’t help it. He loved her, she knew that, and because of it she didn’t expect him to do anything rash. But the events of the past few years had taken a horrible toll on him.

  When he was still human, Allison knew, Will had been adored by millions around the world. Controversial though his reputation might have been, his charisma was never at issue. After his first death, when he became one of the shadows, he lived in secret even as his celebrity continued to grow. Reluctantly, he joined Karl Von Reinman’s coven and tried to hunt only the worst of humanity. Eventually, he couldn’t do even that, instead taking blood only from willing donors.

  After the Venice Jihad, when the world learned that the shadows were real, Cody reveled in his second round of fame and adoration. He tried to re-create at least a part of his great celebrity. Then Hannibal had declared a savage war on humanity, and on any of the immortals who opposed him.