Of Masques and Martyrs (11 page)

“My father was the last emperor of Byzantium,” Peter said proudly. “Though he never acknowledged having sired me. The night before Constantinople fell to the Turks, I met a man, a shadow, who offered me a way to have vengeance upon the enemy. They wouldn’t be able to kill me, he promised. But I could kill hundreds, thousands of them.

“How could I say no?”

Peter held his hands up, a small, sad smile on his face, as if part of him regretted that decision of long ago.

“History was never my best subject. What year was that?” Nikki asked. When the answer came, she wasn’t prepared for it.

“1453.”

“Fourteen . . .” She put a hand to her forehead and let her hair fall in front of her eyes again. “I don’t think I can handle this after all.”

“Actually,” Peter said, “I think you’re doing remarkably well. I suppose when a person’s life is in danger, it becomes a lot easier to accept the incredible.”

“I’d like to know more,” Nikki said, surprised at her curiosity—and at her own candor. “About you. About all of you, but about your own personal history as well.”

“Anything you like,” Peter replied. “But it’s past nine o’clock, and you really haven’t eaten anything since last night. Why don’t we have dinner first? I know a little place just off Jackson Square with the greatest jambalaya in town, and they do these Creole boiled potatoes that are amazing.”

Nikki blinked several times. “Are you . . . ?” she began, but let the question go unfinished. “Never mind,” she said. “Just, uh, give me a few minutes, okay?”

“When you’re ready, I’ll be in the foyer,” he replied.

Peter had already turned to go, flashing her a smile, when Nikki called his name.

“Hmm?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “I mean, you saved my life, but that doesn’t make you responsible for me. There are a lot of people in this city who could use your help. So why . . . I guess, why me?”

Peter cocked his head slightly to one side. He stood with one hand on the door frame, about to leave. After a moment, he raised his eyebrows and looked over at her.

“I love your voice,” he said softly. “The way you sing, the way you talk. You have a kind of weary wisdom, a warmth and humor that somebody your age has no right to. It’s extremely . . . provocative. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

Nikki didn’t reply.

Peter shrugged a bit, his smile twisting further, a bit of irony there.

“You asked,” he said. Then he turned and left.

In the rush of confusion that filled her in his absence, Nikki was surprised to find herself blushing.

 

“We’re not going about this the right way,” Joe said suddenly.

He stood just outside the Café du Monde at the edge of Jackson Square. Kevin was there, and he reached out to rest his right hand on Joe’s shoulder then, trying to alleviate his lover’s frustration, or at least to share it. Joe offered a weak smile, but shook his head at the same time. He was at a loss.

They had searched all day, with a much larger group. After dark, they’d split up into teams of four, trying to scout the major tourist spots. It was only logical that Tsumi and any other of Hannibal’s clan who had arrived in New Orleans would hunt in the most highly populated areas.

“No, we’re using logic,” Stefan said. “It made sense that they’d hide out in the warehouse district during the day, and it makes sense to search for them in the Quarter now.”

Rachel shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she said.

Stefan glared at her. He didn’t like her at all, Joe knew that. She’d been a volunteer until a few weeks ago. She was the youngest shadow in the coven, and there were times when she did appear a bit too gung ho even for Joe. But she was smart, and fast, and reliable in a fight. Had been, even when she was still human. They needed more like Rachel, and Joe wasn’t about to let her overconfidence make him forget that.

“Go ahead, Rachel,” Joe prompted. “What do you think we’re missing?”

“Well,” she said, obviously enjoying the attention, “warehouses and the basements of abandoned buildings make a certain amount of sense. Even clubs, which are closed during the day, I can understand. But when you really think about it, with this obsession Hannibal has with the old myths, with the trappings of the legendary vampire, there’s one place we haven’t discussed. I suppose because it wouldn’t have occurred to any of
us.
”

They looked at one another. Joe frowned, not understanding right away. Rachel smiled, waiting for them to get it, and for once Joe agreed with Stefan. Her cockiness was a bit annoying.

It was Kevin who got her point first.

“Of course!” he snapped, scowling instead of pleased. “We should have thought of it today. It won’t help us much now until morning.”

“What?” Stefan asked grumpily.

“Why, cemeteries, of course!” Kevin replied excitedly. “They’re laying around in coffins or crypts or some silly bullshit like that!”

At first, Joe wanted to shake his head, to say that was only one possibility. But the more he thought about it, the more he examined internally what he knew of Hannibal’s philosophy, the more sense it made.

“All right, then, smart girl,” he said, smiling at Rachel. “Which cemetery?”

“Well, where would you want to be if you were hunting?” she asked.

“Close to the action,” Stefan replied.

“St. Louis number one,” Joe said aloud.

It had to be. Rachel was correct. Tsumi and her crew would want to be as near as possible to the highest concentration of humans. That would be the French Quarter, of course. And St. Louis Cemetery number one was at the far outer edge of the Quarter, on Basin Street.

“Let’s go,” Joe said. “Maybe some of them are still there. ”

“Right,” Kevin agreed. “Or they might bring a ‘date’ back there for a quick bite.”

Joe frowned and looked over at Kevin. He was relieved to see that, despite the play on words, his lover was merely being sarcastic, not actually finding humor in their situation. Their relationship was young enough that they were still finding out new things about each other every day. Yet with Kevin, he hadn’t been disappointed yet. It kind of scared him.

 

The four shadows were silent as they descended upon St. Louis Cemetery number one. They moved across the street in a dark wave, blending with the night, and each kept his or her own counsel. In the event that there were still members of Hannibal’s clan at the cemetery, they didn’t want the vampires to have any warning of their arrival.

Like all the local burial grounds, the corpses in St. Louis number one weren’t actually buried. Instead, the cemetery itself was like a miniature stone city, with row after row of granite and marble crypts, inside of which coffins would be laid on the ground or stacked on top of one another, depending upon how large the family had been.

Hundreds of crypts. And a long stone wall, with sealed “doors,” six high and an infinite number of corpses wide, where those who could not afford crypts would lay shoulder to shoulder until the apocalypse, or until the stone crumbled away untended. Whichever came first.

Somewhere, not far from the entrance if the guidebooks were to be believed, was the grave of Marie Laveau, the legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans. Having seen more than his share of real magick, Joe had a healthy wait-and-see attitude toward voodoo. But so far, the coven had had no contact with voodoo or its practitioners, and certainly not with the supposedly immortal queen of them all.

With Rachel and Kevin on his left and Stefan on his right, Joe stepped deeper into the cemetery. There was a long aisle in front of them that ran off deep into the darkness. It was the path obviously most traveled by tour guides and their charges during the day. It didn’t make sense that Tsumi and the others would have broken into a crypt where their vandalism could so easily be discovered.

“Kevin,” Joe whispered, breaking their silence.

The other three shadows gathered around him. Joe glanced around nervously, and had a strange flash of his childhood, when he and his friends would run in a neighborhood cemetery at night. Even though they knew that ghosts and ghouls and vampires didn’t really exist—and what an irony there—they couldn’t help but be a bit frightened anyway.

In a way, Joe realized, children’s fears were far more practical than their parents’ weary confidence that such things were merely fantasy. But then, the whole world had learned that lesson six years ago. The terrors of childhood would never again be so easily brushed aside.

Joe glanced around the cemetery again, but he sensed nothing, saw nothing, and he could tell that the others felt the same way.

“We’ll split up,” he whispered. “Rachel and I will take to the air. Stefan, you and Kev walk through. Try to determine which section of the cemetery is least traveled.”

Each of the others nodded in assent. Joe glanced at Rachel.

“Pigeons?” she asked.

“Right,” Joe agreed. “Nice and inconspicuous.”

With Rachel at his side, Joe began to change. His body warped and twisted painfully and, somehow, its mass disappeared into the air around them and he became a fat, dirty pigeon. Together, they took flight, soaring up and over the cemetery.

From above, Joe saw Stefan and Kevin begin to run soundlessly through the darkness, scouting the cemetery. It wasn’t long before Joe determined that the northwest corner of the cemetery seemed to be in the greatest disrepair, and therefore was probably the least visited. Other than their two fellow shadows, neither he nor Rachel saw anything moving on the ground.

After less than two minutes in the air, Joe banked to one side and flew toward that crumbling northwest corner of St. Louis number one. He changed before he even reached the ground, dropping the last several yards as a man. His boots thumped softly on the dead earth. Behind him, he heard Rachel groan a bit as she changed. She wasn’t used to the pain. Not yet.

Sure enough, less than twenty feet from where they landed, a crypt had been vandalized. Its door was unsealed, the top edge shattered, and was leaning against the interior of the doorway. A cursory examination might overlook it as just another example of deterioration, but this was definitely something more purposeful.

“Here,” he whispered to Rachel and moved toward the crypt.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” she hissed from behind him.

Joe shook his head. More than likely, Tsumi and the other vampires were hunting out in the city proper. Their best bet, the way he saw it, was to confirm that this was their lair, and then simply wait them out. After they’d all gone inside, and the sun had come out, that would be the time to take them. Hannibal’s warriors were legion but the superstitions he encouraged made them, generally speaking, easier prey. Particularly during the day.

Yes, Joe thought, it would be best if they watched, and waited, until morning. Their advantage would be substantial then, even over greater numbers. But first, he had to make completely certain this was indeed their hiding place.

Silent as the tombs that surrounded him, Joe moved up to the dark entrance to the vandalized vault. Where the door leaned against the inside of the frame, there was a gap through which he could see nothing but darkness. He edged closer, reached a hand out to run his fingers over the shattered upper edge of the door. He would have to move it aside to get a better look inside. But he knew he would need to do it quietly.

Behind him Rachel tapped a foot impatiently.

“Relax,” he whispered. “We’ll be out of here in a—”

The granite door fell back into the tomb and shattered across the top of a metal casket inside. For a moment, Joe was so stunned he simply stood, blinking, with his mouth open. He hadn’t disturbed the door enough for it to have fallen in.

There was another sound behind him. A wet, dripping sound.

As he began to turn, something flashed in front of his eyes. Pain ratcheted from his chest all through his body. Something horribly jagged and painful tore into his back, severing his spine, and Joe crumpled to the ground.

He tried to will himself to change to mist, or flame, or something with wings. He had to escape. He had to . . .

Joe Boudreau saw the long silver dagger protruding from his heart, and his eyes widened. From the darkened crypt stepped a heartbreakingly beautiful Asian woman who could only have been Tsumi, the vampire Peter had sent them to hunt for.

But it was they who were hunted.

Tsumi glanced at him, tsked, and looked past him. Joe did his best, as darkness swept over him, to crane his head around to see what she was looking at.

A huge, naked man, with long blond hair and beard like a Viking, stood on the damp cemetery ground covered in blood. At his feet, in a spray of hair, was Rachel’s head. Behind him her body lay on its side, and Joe thought he could see a large, dark hole in her chest.

The naked Viking was eating her heart.

“The new ones are always the tastiest,” the Viking grunted, blood and pulpy muscle on his chin and teeth.

Joe wanted to weep for Rachel, but could think only of himself. And of Kevin; of the incredible softness of his black skin. Kevin and Stefan were still out there in the cemetery. What was to become of them? He had to help them. Pushing the darkness away, he focused his mind, ignored the pain, and felt the change begin to come over him.

Fire. That’s what he would be. Burning flame that would scorch them all, razing them from the Earth.

Then Tsumi took a second silver knife and castrated him. Joe screamed, and in the raging red haze of pain, he saw a swarm of vampires appear from the darkness around the tombs. They descended on him, fangs and silver blades flashing.

—SEAL, “Crazy”