Of Masques and Martyrs (19 page)

Finally the bartender arrived and, in the silence, Kuromaku asked for a double shot of single malt Scotch. It seemed to him as if the entire club exhaled at the sound of his voice. The bartender nodded gravely and moved along the bar to reach for a tall bottle of Talisker.

“My name is Lolly,” the girl said in a breathy voice, though whether from anxiety or some sad attempt at seduction, Kuromaku would not guess.

He smiled at her. “My pleasure, Lolly.” Then he told her his name.

“That’s very cool,” she said. “Japanese, right? What does it mean?”

Kuromaku narrowed his eyes. “It is an ancient word, taken from the world of Japanese theater. It means ‘black curtain,’ which is the final curtain in such plays. In simpler terms, lovely girl, it means ‘the end.’ ”

He touched her hair. Lolly’s upper lip quivered and her eyelids fluttered and she grabbed at the bar to keep her balance. Kuromaku grabbed her arms to hold her up, and after a moment her breathing returned to close to normal and she was able to stand on her own.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and began to flush a deep scarlet.

“Are you all right?” Kuromaku asked her.

“More than all right,” she said and stared at him with eyes filled with worship. Then a smile spread across her face. “I just came.”

Now it was Kuromaku’s turn to blink.

“Pardon me?”

“I just . . . I had an orgasm,” she said, still smiling, offering herself to him with every glance and gesture.

Kuromaku wanted to mock her, to laugh at her lust for death, at her infantile sexual obsessions. But he couldn’t. There was far too much charm and, yes, flattery, in the way she had so clearly made herself his slave.

“Tell me, Lolly,” he said amiably, “do any of your friends here know where to find vampires in New Orleans? Where do the shadows hide?”

Her eyes were shining stars. “I’m not sure. I wish I knew. Auriette might know. I . . .” She paused, glanced at the floor, then back up at him. “Kuromaku, do you want to taste me? You can, you know. Drink my blood if you like.”

He stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I just thought, if you were hungry . . .”

“I’m not hungry at the moment, Lolly, but thank you. Now, who is this Auriette?”

“What the fuck do you want her for?” Lolly snapped, becoming instantly enraged. “Please, I’m sorry, but could you just . . . I mean, I want you to.”

She stood on her toes and leaned in to him, her neck at an angle where he couldn’t help but look at the pulsing veins there. In truth, he was a bit hungry. But he had no time to indulge.

“Please just tell me where . . .”

Then the silence broke. Whatever invisible wall had been around him upon his entrance shattered as Lolly drew closer to him. Suddenly there was a crowd around him, zealots with desperate eyes. A burly man with a shaved head and black tattoos around his eyes pushed past the bulk of the crowd and got in close.

“Please, take me,” he whined submissively. “I’ll do whatever you want, just bite me, please. Anywhere you like, I just want your teeth in me.”

They all joined in his chant, his pleading, and began to touch him, to pull at his clothing, trying to get his attention, to curry favor. Kuromaku couldn’t stand the stifling of the crowd, the closeness and helplessness as they began to flow over him.

“Get away!” he shouted.

They didn’t respond, just kept begging for his mouth on them, his teeth in them.

“Away!” he roared, and pushed against them. An arm broke under the power of his shove, but a dozen hangerson were tossed aside. More swept in on him, begging, wheedling.

“Enough!” he screamed, and reached into the crowd to grab the shirtfront of the bald man with tattoos around his eyes. Kuromaku spun him around, knocking the rest of them away. The thirst had grown with his fury, and he dipped his mouth to the big man’s neck and tore into his pulsing throat. Blood pumped into Kuromaku’s mouth, hot and thick and with the coppery odor that always aroused him.

After a moment of bliss, he remembered the crowd.

“Is that what you want?” he roared.

He wrapped the fingers of his left hand around Black-eyes’s neck and snapped it with a quick flick of his wrist.

“Is that what you want?”

Silence again. Somewhere, a clock ticking. A cellular phone trilled in the back of the club. Then a whisper. “Oh, Jesus, me next . . .”

Kuromaku leaned his head back, massaged his temples. His eyes hurt. It was a simple thing he was asking. But these . . . these freaks were so completely obsessed that it was like dealing with small children or the severely retarded.

Then it hit him.

“All right,” he said magnanimously. “I’ll make you a deal. Whoever can tell me where the vampire clan of this city makes its home will be chosen as my next meal.”

They fell all over each other, even brutalized one another, to get to him. The general consensus was that Octavian’s coven made their home in an old convent in the French Quarter. Kuromaku smiled at the appropriateness of Peter’s choice. The woman who was the first to mention the Ursuline convent asked if he would sink his fangs into her breast, and he obliged, lingering a moment. She was quite beautiful.

Despite the chants to the contrary of those around him, Kuromaku left her alive.

 

Outside the gray walls of the convent, Kuromaku paused in the darkness. It was quiet within, particularly in comparison with the garish lights and roar of tourism from elsewhere in the Quarter. Quiet, yes, but there was life there. Kuromaku could sense it, could almost hear a whisper on the wind.

He held Peter’s sword in his right hand, its scabbard wrapped in green silk and tied with a thin black cord. Almost there, he thought. And somehow, he knew he was in time.

As mist, he slipped through the huge iron gate, reforming inside. There were lights on inside the convent, though very few. A small lantern hung not far from the main interior door, on the other side of the garden. It could only be reached by following a winding path through the flora.

Slipping through the shadows, silent among the flowers, Kuromaku moved toward the house. He’d barely gone half a dozen yards when the plants began to rustle around him. A snake, or rat, or dog . . . something. More than one something. And a small pool of mist, just at ground level, creeping across the garden.

With one swift motion, Kuromaku reached around under his long jacket, unsnapped the catch of its scabbard, and withdrew his
wakizashi,
which had hung there upside down. The short sword’s guard was nontraditionally flat, so it could hang there undetected.

Moon and lantern light glinted on the edge of the short sword as Kuromaku moved into a defensive posture. But the shadows took their time. They were confident in their greater numbers. At some signal he could not detect, they changed. One moment he was alone on the garden path, and the next, surrounded by five vampires.

Absurdly, he thought of the girl, Lolly, and the ecstasy she would feel if she could trade places with him.

Kuromaku smiled.

“So you’ve found us,” one of the shadows said. “I’m surprised one of Hannibal’s beasts had the balls to come onto sacred ground, but it won’t do you any good, spy. Hannibal will never hear from you again.”

The shadow who’d spoken, a slim black man, paused then, as if waiting for some response. None of the others, two women and two men, spoke at all.

Kuromaku decided to ignore them.

“I’m here to see Peter Octavian,” he explained. “If you would be kind enough to fetch him for me, I have something for him.”

The shadow’s eyes flicked to the silk-wrapped sword, then to Kuromaku’s
wakizashi
, and back to his face.

“I’m sure you do,” he said. “We’ll make sure he gets it.”

Kuromaku held the sword a bit closer to his body then and glared at the shadow. He would kill them all, no matter their allegiance, if they attempted to take Peter’s sword from him. There must have been something of his resolve in his eyes, for the hateful look he gave the shadow caused the man to frown, to hesitate.

“As you say,” Kuromaku pointed out, “we are on sacred ground. You have only your suspicion and paranoia to inform you. Why not let Octavian decide for himself? He is more than capable of protecting himself, in case you did not know.”

The standoff continued in silence as several more seconds ticked past.

“Kevin?” a voice came from behind them on the path, closer to the center of the garden and the convent’s main interior doors. “What is it?”

“Stay back, George!” the shadow called Kevin shouted. “We’ve got a spy.”

“If I were a spy, you’d be dead,” Kuromaku said impatiently.

“Who are you, friend?” the voice from the garden came again, and now Kuromaku could see an old man emerging from deeper within the garden.

“My name is Kuromaku, and I have come to see Peter Octavian, and to bring him a gift,” he explained. “Just bring me to Octavian, and he will vouch for me. I understand your paranoia, but I swear by the moon that I bear you no ill will, nor mean you any harm.”

The old man, George, was silent. Kevin turned and snapped at him. “George, you can’t even consider—”

“Come with me,” George said. “I’ve something to show you—”

“Kuromaku,” he offered.

“Yes, Kuromaku,” George said, “just a ways down the path here.”

He followed the old man to what appeared to be the center of the courtyard, where wrought iron benches sat on either side of a small circle. But one of the benches was barely visible, covered as it was by some kind of massive growth or fungus. It looked, for all the world, like the bud of a flower yet to bloom, or the chrysalis of a butterfly.

“There you are,” George said. “What do you make of that?”

He stared at Kuromaku’s face, obviously searching for some reaction. Other than revulsion, Kuromaku didn’t know how to react.

“What is it?” he said, finally.

“We’re not certain,” George replied, “but we think it’s Peter.”

Kuromaku blinked, felt his hand grip the silk-wrapped scabbard more tightly in his fingers. He stared at the shell that somehow held his comrade within.

“We had talked about trying to break it open—”

“No!” Kuromaku snapped, glaring at George. “You must not.”

“What?” George replied, obviously taken aback and confused. “Do you know what’s happened to him? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kuromaku whispered, staring at the chrysalis once more.

“Then how can you be so sure it’s not killing him, that we shouldn’t break it open?” the old man demanded.

Kuromaku didn’t turn to look at him again. Simply stared at the black, flaking outer skin of the cocoon.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “When a caterpillar builds a chrysalis, it does so in order to evolve. Something has happened to Peter. I don’t know what any more than you, but it only stands to reason that, inside that hideous sheath, he must be
changing
. ”

“Changing,” George repeated. “Of course, but . . . into what?”

Kuromaku smiled, his eyes flaring. He slid Peter’s silk-wrapped sword into his belt and turned to face the old human and the vampires who seemed more than willing to obey him.

“I don’t know,” Kuromaku said. “But I am eager to find out.”

They all stared at him.

“Anyone want to join me for some café au lait?” he asked.

—THE BEATLES, “Across the Universe”

 

 

 

 

ROBERTO’S HUMVEE SAT SIDEWAYS ACROSS the highway; the broken white line disappeared under the belly of the massive vehicle. There were two others, one on either side and, with the vehicles, more than a dozen soldiers spread out across the five eastbound and five westbound lanes. They all wore oxygen masks with rebreathers to keep from inhaling too much smoke.

But there was nothing they could do about the heat.

It was long after dark, near on midnight now, but night had still not fallen on Atlanta. The fires were too bright, flames leaping high and consuming entire city blocks with a savagery that rivaled any other animal in nature. And there was no doubt in Roberto’s mind that fire was a predator. From the moment the first thermite charge went up, he’d watched the beast rear back and tear into the city without any shred of mercy.

They’d fallen back to just under a quarter mile from the city and donned their masks. For the first time in years, Roberto Jimenez had cried. A part of him felt, as he watched the blaze spread, that by destroying such a testament to man’s greatness, they had already lost.

Now he stood just shy of fifty yards away from the Humvee, closer to the burning city than any of the others. The heat kept him sharp, angry, even cruel. He knew they’d killed people, that there would have been certain homeless people, and perhaps a few stubborn and stupid enough to hide from the soldiers as they came through, who had been left behind.

They’d killed those people.

Roberto prayed for himself, for his soldiers, and for those abandoned souls. But when the prayer was through, he didn’t think about them anymore. He thought about the job.

And now this was the job. Just standing guard, watching it all burn. Most of the vampires in Atlanta had probably been incinerated hours ago, or burned up while trying to escape. Some, he was sure, would have tried to get away by turning to mist. But the intense heat of the thermite would have vaporized any mist that it touched. Still, there would be some escapes.

Already, different posts around the city had radioed in the extermination of five vampires in total, who had escaped the flames. So, certainly, some had been intelligent enough and focused enough to realize they had to fly out.