A Dozen Black Roses (25 page)
"A riot—now, of all times? This must be Sinjon's doing!"
"I don't think so, sir," the Pointer said. "I mean—they're going after everyone—it don't make no difference! Some of 'em even go after each other!"
"You idiot! This is jyhad! The lives of humans mean nothing, no matter what their allegiance!"
"But what do we do?"
"Do? What does any army do in wartime? Break out the heavy munitions! Arm your men to the teeth and tell them to kill everything and everyone in their path! Is that clear?"
"Y-yes, milord!"
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"Go do it, then!" Esher snapped. He motioned to the vampires holding the gangbanger to escort him out.
"See that he leaves the building. I don't want him stepping into a wormhole and disappearing." As the trio left, Esher turned his back on his audience to glower at the stained-glass window, massaging his lower jaw as he thought. Without warning, there was a sharp pain in his chest, as if an unseen hand had driven a knife into his heart. He staggered a couple of steps, then dropped heavily into his chair, his limbs feeling as wooden and lifeless as a puppet's. He'd only experienced such abject emptiness once before, long years ago—when Bakil was destroyed. Kindred who sire numerous progeny eventually grow immune to the loss—much like sows that spawn vast litters yet routinely crush and smother their offspring by rolling atop them. But Esher was far from profligate. He had only one childe, and the bond between them was tight and keenly felt.
"M-milord?" one of the recruits whispered anxiously. "Milord, is something wrong?"
Esher's lips pulled into a grimace so frightful the assembled vampires instinctively cringed. "The Lady Decima is dead! Avenge her, my brothers! Bring me the head of the stranger! Hunt her down and find her, before she escapes!"
Without hesitation, the fifty vampires hurried from the audience chamber, their voices raised in an ululating cry, like a pack of baying hounds in pursuit of a fox.
***
The stranger was halfway across the main vault when a voice from behind cried out: "There she is!" She turned to see a pasty-faced vampire, his eyes gleaming like those of a rabid rat, standing at the foot of the central stairs that led to the subbasement, pointing in her direction. Behind him were crowded dozens of equally pasty, hungry faces. "Get her!"
"Fuck!" she groaned as she wheeled back around and resumed running toward the nearest exit. She tried to boost herself into overdrive, but it felt as if her insides were being taken apart. Still, at least she could see the ghostwalkers attacking her. Like the asshole that had zipped past her and was now positioned in the mouth of the tunnel she was headed for. He was tall and pale, with lank hair that hung in his gaunt face, a tight-fitting pair of leather pants, and a black net T-shirt. He grinned at her, exposing his dripping fangs.
"Outta my way, deadboy!" she snarled, driving her switchblade into his throat.
The vampire seemed surprised—perhaps even frightened—as he clutched his throat, but she pushed him aside without a second glance. As the stranger rushed down the narrow, unlit tunnel, the dying vampire cried out in agony, his death-scream echoing like the wail of a banshee. His fellow Kindred crowded the tunnel, snapping and slashing at one another with their fangs and talons in their eagerness to pursue their quarry.
She had to escape. She had to get away. It felt as if her gut was full of broken glass, and every step drove a barbed spike deeper and deeper into her back. Her arms felt like pieces of cold meat hanging from her shoulders and the numbness was spreading to her legs. Her right lung was full of blood and the left was swimming with bone splinters. She was lucky that most of Esher's recruits were so raw they were ignorant of how to ghostwalk, but luck always runs out sometime.
She only realized she was out of the tunnel because she could see something resembling a night sky above her. The exposed cellar was strewn with garbage, but the staircase had long since collapsed. The stranger flung herself at the wall, scrabbling at it with the frenetic tenacity of a cornered rat. Her pursuers boiled out of the tunnel like blowflies from a corpse, shrieking for her blood. As she reached the lip of the cellar a shadow loomed over her. The stranger froze as the figure raised its arm, revealing a Luger.
"Fuck you!" Janice screamed down at the pit of vampires. "Fuck all of you!" The gun she'd lifted from the gangbanger was loaded with phosphorus bullets. She opened fire, laughing as the white-faced monsters collided with one another, trying to dodge the lethal projectiles.
"Help me," the stranger rasped, plucking at the girl's pants leg. She was painfully thin, with hair that hadn't been washed in weeks, outfitted in threadbare bell-bottom jeans, a tank top emblazoned with a faded glitter-decal of a kitten staring at a butterfly, and busted-out high-tops. Her inner arms were
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) pockmarked with needle tracks, some badly infected, but she seemed to be human. "Please—give me a hand up."
Janice glanced down in the direction of the voice at her feet, then raised the Luger and pointed it directly at the stranger's head. "Fuck you too, bitch," she said, her voice sounding almost dreamy. She pulled the trigger, and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. The stranger blinked, surprised to find her head still attached to her shoulders, then grabbed Janice's gun hand and pulled, sending the junkie tumbling headfirst into the open cellar. The vampires yowled in delight as they pounced on the human that had landed in their midst.
She dragged herself out of the pit and staggered to her feet. The morsel tossed to her pursuers would distract them for a minute or two—but no longer. As she loped through the blighted no-man's-land of razed buildings that ringed Esher's stronghold, she could finally see for herself the madness the Other had unleashed on Deadtown.
Several tenements were on fire, blazing away like dry Christmas trees. Although she could hear screams and gunfire, the wailing of ambulance and firetruck sirens was eerily absent. After all, this was Deadtown—and whatever hell raged on its streets went unseen and unattended. The buildings would burn until they collapsed into their basements, the blaze spreading to the surrounding structures, without a single hand lifted to halt the fiery holocaust. Those injured had the choice of either dying on the streets or dragging themselves off to some safe place to lick their wounds.
As she leaned against an alley wall, struggling to catch her breath, she glimpsed a couple of Five Points gang members stumbling down the sidewalk. They had the look of young wildebeests that somehow had managed to elude a pride of lions, their eyes bugging from their heads as they moved as fast as their damaged limbs could carry them. So this was the Other's handiwork. It had awakened the predator inside the prey. For once she didn't feel guilty for her demonic counterpart's actions.
Taking a final gulp of air to steady herself, she rounded the corner and promptly stumbled over a body, landing hard on her wounded side. The pain was so overwhelming there was nothing for her to do but to lie there and ride it out. As she waited for the wave of agony to recede, she found herself staring at the corpse that had tripped her. It had recently been a man in his late forties, with the haggard features of a street crazy. He was dressed in a Marine Corps dress uniform, complete with decorations and white gloves. The brass nameplate on his breast read KOPECK. Someone had dropped a cinderblock on his head from one of the nearby buildings, crushing his skull. He still clutched an Ml6 rifle in one hand, but the action was jammed, rendering it useless. However, there was the bandolier of grenades to take into consideration. Biting her lower lip to banish the pain, the stranger hurriedly removed the weapon's harness from the body and looped it over her shoulders. Weighing a pound apiece, the grenades pressed against her leather jacket like deadly fruit, rattling against one another as she staggered to her feet.
She could hear the wordless howling of Esher's hounds closing in on her. She resumed her jog, although her right knee no longer seemed to want to bend the way it was supposed to. She ducked into a nearby doorway and yanked one of the spherical grenades free, holding the safety lever tightly with her left hand.
She leaned forward and peeped around the doorway in time to see Esher's recruits emerge from the alley onto the street. The vampire in the lead had its head tossed back, scenting the air, while the rest pushed and shoved and snapped at one another, looking like a mix between a pack of hunting dogs and the Keystone Kops. If it wasn't her head they were after, she would have been tempted to chuckle.
The lead tracker pointed in the direction she'd taken and the group surged forward eagerly. The stranger darted from her hiding place and lobbed the grenade, praying its previous owner hadn't been carting around a bandoleer full of duds. The grenade sailed through the air and landed in the midst of the mob, exploding on contact. Two vampires were thrown into the gutter, their legs below the knees reduced to jelly, while a third discovered his intestines and stomach dangling about his calves. While the wounded shrieked in agony, their brethren darted for cover. Kindred could not die from such wounds, but none of them particularly relished being blown apart, and the weaker could even be sent into torpor.
The stranger grimaced as something inside her—her spleen?—ruptured, and blood frothed her lips when she coughed. She was trying to run while keeping an eye on the pack following her. The tracker was in the lead, waving his more timid brethren onward.
"Hurry, you curs! She's getting away! In the name of Lord Esher—get her!"
The stranger lobbed a second grenade, this time aiming directly at the leader of the pack. "Heads up, asshole!"
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) The tracker instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes and shifted into overdrive, his silhouette blurring like a chalk painting caught in the rain, just as the grenade exploded. Seconds later the tracker reappeared several yards from where he first stood, only now he was missing his head. So much for the
"faster-than-a-speeding-bullet" crap.
The stranger staggered out into the middle of the street, holding aloft another grenade.
"You want me so bad, you bloodless motherfuckers? Okay, come and get me! I'll take you all to Hell!
The remaining vampires exchanged glances, then turned and ran back the way they came. The stranger lobbed the third grenade after them, although her dimming sight and weakened arm sent it flying wild, exploding relatively harmlessly.
"Buncha wusses," she muttered under her breath as she watched them flee. She took an unsteady step backward, nearly collapsing as her right knee disintegrated. The vision in her left eye was fuzzy and her right flickered like an aging cathode tube. Every breath she took sent bloody froth out her nostrils and mouth. She winced and frowned at the rib poking through her shirt and rubbing against the inside of her jacket. Damn it, she'd just had that lining replaced, too. She only hoped she could hold out until she got to where she was headed.
She managed to get halfway up the steps before she collapsed. She lay there on her back, staring up at the gray shadows that crowded what was left of her vision. She knew she had to keep moving—that she had to hide before Esher's minions regathered their courage and came back—but her body simply refused to respond. She couldn't feel her legs anymore, nor could she move her arms. She couldn't feel anything except the pain, which started at the roots of her hair and extended to her toenails.
One of the gray shadows moved forward, coming close enough so that she could see it was a man. A human. His face was wrinkled and careworn, his jaw unshaven, and he wore a priest's collar that was the same color as his graying hair. He stared down at her with a mixture of fear, fascination and repugnance, as if she were a rare but exceptionally repellent insect.
Focusing what little strength she had left, the stranger lifted her right hand in supplication. The priest flinched, but did not move away, as her fingers brushed against the silver rosary draped about his neck.
She tried to speak, but all that came out was a pained gasp. The priest leaned forward and she clutched the front of his cassock, pulling him closer so he might hear.
"Sanctuary."
11
When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she was aware of was not sight, but smell. The odor of damp earth overpowered her. Her vision was still blurred, but she could make out the rough-hewn stone walls surrounding her. She was back in Esher's dungeon! A spark of fear surged through her battered body, prompting her to sit up.
"Don't try to move. You're safe," Father Eamon whispered, pressing his hand firmly against her shoulder.
The stranger squinted, trying to bring the priest's face into focus. He looked to be in his early sixties, with longish gray hair that hung to just below his clerical collar. He wore a cassock, the sleeves of which were badly frayed. He had a strong nose and chin, with gin blossoms giving his cheeks a mottled rosiness underneath the grime. But what caught her attention were his eyes—they were so blue it was like looking into a clear sky, making him seem younger than his years. She lay back down, biting her lower lip as her body cried out.
"Where am I? And who are you?"
"I'm Father Eamon. And you're in the vault beneath St. Everhild."