Of Masques and Martyrs (24 page)

“If I’d been able to determine your location, yes, I would have given it to the coven, my allies,”
he admitted
. “You should leave New Orleans. I have no wish to kill my own sister. I know that Peter hurt you once, very badly. If you wished to face him in honorable combat, I would not oppose it. But, Tsumi, what you do now with Hannibal is not honorable. In truth, it would seem only to make Peter’s reasons for spurning your love nothing less than prophetic.”

Tsumi felt her face contort with fury, and she imagined her mind, her thoughts, a dagger as she thrust them at her brother.

“It’s not only him I hate, Kuromaku. I hate you, as well,”
she sneered, exhilarated by this admission.
“I am a vampire, brother. For centuries, I have crushed every emotion that rose in my heart, trying to become the monster you made me. Now it’s all that I know. Hannibal is a hero, my brother. If what I’ve become horrifies you, remind yourself that it was your doing!”

She felt Kuromaku reel from her words, and Tsumi rejoiced in it.

“You begged for eternal life, Tsumi. Or have you forgotten your pleas to me not to leave you behind to die?”
he roared in her mind.

“I didn’t understand what I was asking!”
she cried in return
. “You knew! I would have hated you then, but you should have let me die hating you rather than making me live like this.”

Their mental rapport crackled with angry silence.

“I loved my little sister,
” Kuromaku thought, his mind whispering it with a heartfelt pain that only made Tsumi scowl.

Tsumi felt her brother sigh.

“The truth is that we have free will, just like the humans,
” Kuromaku thought.
“Hannibal chooses evil but will kill anyone to retain his ignorance of that fact. If you embrace the myth, the monstrous evil of vampires, you believe you cannot be held responsible for your perversions and predations.

“In the end, it just makes you all an army of craven
cowards
,” he thought, his mind cold to her now.

“Tonight,”
Tsumi snapped in return,
“the streets of New
Orleans will be painted with human blood and strewn with
the flesh of the undead. If we meet, we will see who is a coward, Kuromaku. For you may shirk at the task, but I will not hesitate to take your head. ”

 

“So be it!” Kuromaku said aloud, opening his eyes, the connection to his sister now broken.

His outburst had drawn quite a bit of attention. A young couple hand in hand turned to stare at him, but Kuromaku ignored them, ignored all those who had focused their attention on him for that moment. He rose from the bench and hurried along the path through Jackson Square.

When Bethany appeared beside him, Kuromaku was startled.

“You’re good for your age,” he said. “Sneaking up on me like that.”

“Well, you were a bit distracted,” she said. “That was quite a performance back there, by the way. Who were you ‘speaking’ with?”

Kuromaku froze, spun, and stared down at the shadow woman, lips set in a grim line.

“You’re not unattractive, girl, and you seem kind in your way,” he said menacingly. “But I don’t think you’ve come upon me now by chance, nor do I think it was your own curiosity which set you after me. Someone in your coven has asked you to keep an eye on me. I won’t object.

“But if you ever question my loyalty to this cause or to Peter Octavian, I will tear your eyes out by their roots and fill the ragged holes with silver!”

Bethany’s face fell apart; fear, horror, disgust all played across her features as her jaw dropped and she blinked away red tears that began to well up in her eyes.

“I’m not . . . I’m . . . sorry, I . . . ” she stammered.

Kuromaku blinked, then looked away, the rage draining from him.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “It’s only that this is not the time to question my loyalty. You see, I’m planning to murder my sister tonight.”

 

The chapel was full this time. Or it had been half an hour earlier. Perhaps a dozen people had left the room since that time. George Marcopoulos stood in the rear of the chapel and fought the horror and sorrow that threatened to wash over him.

Multicolored light poured through stained glass, cascaded across the faces and bowed heads of those sitting and kneeling at the pews. Some prayed, some merely waited. Some had desperately wanted to be there, others had made the choice out of loyalty, or love, or some ancient and nearly extinct nobility. Several people had even gotten up and walked out, having changed their minds at the last moment.

George couldn’t blame them. He would not have joined them for the world.

“George,” a voice whispered at his side. He turned to see that Bethany Hart had entered the chapel. Many of those gathered glanced up, and most of them looked quickly away. Two or three lingered, watching her. Finally, all but one of them dropped their heads.

“Denny’s been waiting for you,” George said quietly. “He says you promised it would be you.”

Bethany smiled, but George could see the sadness in her eyes. Perhaps, though she was no longer human, she felt a little of what George was feeling. It occurred to him, in a horrible way, that it was a bit like Jonestown. But he pushed the idea away. It was nothing like Jonestown. These people all knew exactly what they were getting themselves into. It had all been explained at great length, every question answered. All but one. All but George’s question.

Was it even possible for them to know what they were getting themselves into, no matter how many questions they asked, without dying first? Would they regret it when they awoke? He was certain some of them would. The thought of their regret sickened him.

“I’m sorry,” Bethany replied, “I had an . . . errand to run.”

Their eyes met again, pain shared, and she nodded and put a hand on his stooped shoulder.

“Denny’s a special guy,” she said. “I’ll make it as easy on him as I can.”

George thought he saw a twinkle in her eye, and assumed that Bethany was talking about sex. That she would make love to Denny while she killed him. In truth, such an act might make it easier for a young, virile man like Denny to accept what he’d decided to do. But George just thought it rather ghoulish.

He turned and nodded to Denny, who was still staring at Bethany. The big Cajun stood and walked proudly toward them, trained from childhood not to show his fear. But he was afraid, George was certain of it. It was in his eyes.

“Beth,” he said and dipped his head in greeting.

“Hi, Denny,” she replied. “Sorry if I kept you waiting. You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“We all know de score,
chérie,
” he explained. “Our family loses dis battle, dere may not be any others. Denny ain’t gonna do anybody any good wit’ just muscle. Not dis time.”

Bethany took Denny’s hand and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, then softly on the lips.

“You’re a good man, Denny Gautreau,” she said and led him from the room.

Before George could even turn away, Caleb came into the chapel. His face was flush and he looked a bit sleepy, but he nodded at George to indicate that he was ready for another.

“Shawnelle?” George asked.

“She’s okay,” Caleb replied. “In the dining room with the others.”

That’s where all the corpses were being laid, at least until they ran out of room. Then they’d start using some of the other rooms. The mass production of new vampires . . . George shook his head at the idea even as he cursed himself for calling them that. Shadows, vampires, there truly was a difference.

But at times like this it was difficult to draw that line. Even Hannibal had never done anything like this. But Hannibal had never been this desperate.

George looked at Caleb, then back at the expectant faces in the chapel.

“Elliot,” he said, drawing the attention of a fiftyish man with a large pot belly. “You’re next.”

The man glanced at George, then at Caleb, and rose from the pew. When he marched in silence past George’s spot at the chapel door, Elliot didn’t lift his head.

George Marcopoulos prayed, then, to a God in whose existence he had every faith, but about whose benevolence he had never been quite certain.

 

It was half past ten, and Commander Jimenez sat in the small tent that had been set up for him. It was a crash pad, mental retreat, and mission control all rolled into one. He’d spent the last few hours listening to reports about Operation Moses, and now he was just tired. It’d be at least two to three days before his command was in any shape to pull a similar operation, and the city hadn’t even been chosen yet.

He was voting for New York. It had the highest kill ratio and lowest percentage of remaining population of any infested area. But it wasn’t his decision alone.

Roberto sighed and tried to stop the rapid flow of thought and analysis in his mind. He hadn’t slept in more than thirty-six hours, and he needed at least a few before he could even think straight again.

Outside the tent, his troops were still hustling. They were working in shifts now, one shift helping the recently arrived National Guard troops do a sweep of the city for human survivors or vampire leftovers while the other shift catnapped. Roberto didn’t want to sleep, but trying to deny exhaustion was both foolish and dangerous, to himself and to the men and women in his command.

Tanks and jeeps and Humvees rolled along outside the tent. Officers shouted orders and the mess tent fairly roared with the clatter of trays and the chatter of soldiers. Roberto had been a soldier his whole life. This was his lullaby.

He lay on his side, right hand under his flimsy pillow, and let his mind drift away, finally, so that sleep might claim him. He felt his awareness slipping away, his mind retreating into a world where it might continue to think and work and thrive without distracting his consciousness . . . and then he sensed something. Some sound, so insignificant, perhaps, that his conscious mind wouldn’t even have registered it. But his subconscious, his sleeping mind, alerted him to something, somehow out of place.

A whisper. A presence.

Roberto rolled onto his back on the cot, hand flashing to his sidearm, drawing it up, and aiming it all in a single motion. Four of them, and he could tell just from the way they stood, the way they stared at him, that they were vampires.

His finger began to draw back the trigger, but the gun simply disappeared from his hand. Roberto blinked, saw the dark-haired girl holding his weapon, and despaired.

“Careful where you wave that thing,” said a familiar voice in back. “I don’t reckon any of us wants to let your troops know you’ve got company. And it wouldn’t do you much good even if we were here to kill you. Which we’re not.”

Roberto rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his sleep-starved brain. The man in front of him looked older—if that was possible for a vampire—but he knew without a doubt that it was Will Cody.

“Will,” he said, and his eyes scanned the other three. It took him a moment to realize the blond was Allison. And not merely because she’d changed her hair.

“Allison?” he muttered. “I thought you didn’t . . . ”

Then he stopped, midsentence. Her eyes had flared with a certain rage that told him the subject was not open to discussion. So they sat there in silence a few seconds. Just long enough for Roberto to feel a sudden and inexplicable guilt for the act of genocide he had so recently perpetrated. It was ridiculous, but he could not shake it. Though he knew these vampires, Cody and Allison at least, to be noble and decent, they were still vampires. He ought to kill them where they stood. That was his mandate, after all.

But he’d known for months where Peter Octavian’s coven made their home, and he’d done nothing about it. So what did that say?

“You’ve picked an odd time for a social call,” he said, and his eyes narrowed as he watched Cody’s face. “Frankly, I’m surprised you even got in here. My people are pretty good at spotting your—at spotting vampires.”

“The sun’s up,” Allison said simply. “They’re used to dealing with vampires, not shadows.”

The tone in her voice bothered Roberto. The loss of her humanity had changed her drastically; he could see that right off. And however it had happened, he didn’t think she was happy about it.

“Rolf’s dead,” Cody said suddenly.

Roberto blinked, frowned.

“That’s a damn shame,” he replied after a moment. “He was a good man. A fine soldier.”

“He was more than that,” Cody corrected him, but didn’t elaborate.

But Commander Jimenez wasn’t listening. It had occurred to him suddenly that Rolf Sechs would have been an extremely difficult vampire to kill. And maybe, just maybe, that had something to do with why he’d never told his superiors where Octavian’s coven was. There was one way in which the shadows and the vampires were very different. At least one.

Shadows were much more difficult to kill.

“How did he—”

“That’s why we’re here,” Allison interrupted. “If we’re right, and you move fast enough, it’s just possible that we can help each other. Hannibal murdered Rolf with a—”

“Wait!” the white-haired vampire behind Cody snapped.

He stepped forward, and Roberto studied him. Cody looked older, maybe fifty, but this stocky bloodsucker was the first vampire Roberto had ever seen who actually looked
old
. It was odd.

“How do we know we can trust him?” the old vampire asked, staring at the commander.