Of Masques and Martyrs (33 page)

For just a moment, Hannibal frowned in concern. Octavian had outwitted him. He’d had the convent surrounded, but now his own warriors had been surrounded, and by vampires whose control over their powers was not handicapped by the ways of tradition, the way his own followers’ was.

But no! His followers were far superior to Octavian’s spawn, in every way. And it was clear from just the first glance that his clan outnumbered the blasphemers by far, perhaps as much as four to one.

It would be a bloody night, true. But, really, there was only one way for it to end.

 

Nikki stood in the darkened chapel, awash in muted color as moonlight streamed through the stained glass windows. The courtyard was empty. Sounds of battle came from beyond the walls. Where once there had been screams of terror, there were now roars of fury, cries of pain, the clash of metal on bone. And gunfire. A lot of gunfire.

Behind her, she heard something move with a whisper.

With a sharp intake of breath, she turned and peered into the darkness of the pews. Another soft sound, like a blade slicing the air, came from off to her right. She narrowed her eyes but still could see nothing. Nikki wanted to shout, to cry out for help or at least to ask who was there, in the dark. But she thought better of it. There was a war raging outside. No one to come to her rescue. And to ask who was there, stalking her in the blackness, would be the height of idiocy. If they wanted her to know who was there, they would not be hiding in shadows.

Only her eyes moved. Every muscle was frozen. Her lungs stopped sucking in air. She supposed even her heart had stopped beating. Something appeared in her peripheral vision. Nikki turned and saw it, illuminated by the soft hues of stained-glass moonlight. A demon of some kind, she was convinced. Flesh as sharp and glistening as black, shattered glass. Smile like some savage sea monster. The creature was unlike anything she had ever seen.

Yet somehow, it was familiar.

“Nikki . . . ” it said, its voice an intimate whisper.

Startled, she sucked air in again and began to back away from it, toward the chapel door.

“Don’t run away, sweetheart,” it said. “You know what I want. You want it too, don’t you? Don’t you want to be with me?”

The words froze her again. But not their implications. It was the tone, the voice, that chilled her soul. Made her look at the thing’s face. She knew what it was, then. Had seen it once before, though quickly. It spoke with the voice of a man she had come to love.

The vampiric shade of Peter Octavian had come to claim her, for whatever it remembered of its old life included Nikki Wydra.

It loved her too.

—ROBERT CRAY, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

 

 

 

 

KUROMAKU MOVED WITH A FLUID GRACE, HIS face stern but otherwise without emotion. His thoughts were sublimated to the haze of battle, to the elegant dance that killing had become for him long years ago.
Katana
and
wakizashi,
long and short swords, flashed in horrible symmetry, punctuated by a brief pause, a grunt of effort. The spray of lifeblood fell upon him like rain. He was the eye of the storm, the center of an internecine struggle waged all around him.

Centuries after they had first fought side by side, Kuromaku and Peter Octavian were brothers in arms once more. Peter was several feet away, and his own sword was singing. But there was no harmony to his swordsmanship. Its song was harsh and bitter as he hacked and stabbed and brutally slashed his enemies. The sword sizzled with magickal energies, and where it cut Hannibal’s kinsmen, they burst into green and orange flames and screamed as they died.

It was not pleasant for them. But Kuromaku knew Peter well enough that he would never have expected it to be.

They stood back to back, then. All around them, vampire killed vampire. Peter’s coven were more durable, more versatile, and their ability to take the form of birds of prey, bears, and a whole range of big cats gave them the physical advantage as well. But Hannibal’s clan were more savage and far more experienced. They had a vicious confidence and their numbers were so much greater. Yet the shadows fought on, for they had a nobler purpose, and that, Kuromaku knew, made all the difference.

Even those born into the shadows only hours earlier fought admirably. Some died instantly, but others adapted to their new lives and abilities swiftly, and were so fervent in their belief in Peter’s philosophy that they became bloody zealots, warriors terrible to behold.

But it wasn’t enough.

“We’re losing ground already,” Kuromaku told Peter. “Is there nothing you can do, with your magicks?”

“I am adept,” Peter replied through gritted teeth, as his sword fell yet again, “but magick must be used carefully. It’s a blade, not a bomb. And I won’t use it to call up demons the way Mulkerrin did. There are too many risks, and our own people would be in just as much danger as Hannibal’s.”

Peter grunted. Out of the corner of his eye, Kuromaku glanced over to see that a vampire had clawed him in the side. His dream came back to him, the dream that had guided him to bring Peter’s sword to New Orleans. And now it had come true. Peter was human, and where he was wounded, he bled like any other man. His shirt began to soak with crimson stain.

“You should heal that,” Kuromaku told him.

Peter looked up, frowned at the tone in his voice. But he nodded, and Kuromaku was satisfied. The wound might not have been deadly, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

All around them, the battle raged on. Blood flew and burning piles of ash blew in a light breeze whose calm belied the rage there in the streets. There were no costumes save masks of fury, but Kuromaku could not help but see a bloody Mardi Gras of violence and death, a celebration of killing.

He parried a blow with his short sword, then used all his vampiric strength to swing his
katana,
neatly beheading his attacker. Blood gouted from the severed neck as the body stumbled two steps and fell to the ground, crumbling to dust and cinders. Kuromaku’s sword alone did not kill, but if he could inflict wounds traumatic enough, Hannibal’s vampires would die. They believed it, and that made it true.

Yet many of them healed and returned to the fray. Still, he chopped them down. But no matter how many he overcame, more rose up in their places. There were simply too many.

“We’ve got to get to Hannibal,” he said finally. “This is a waste of time. If we can destroy him, his followers will crumble. The center cannot hold.”

“I haven’t seen him since this all started,” Peter replied. “But I’ll see if I can locate him.”

Green light grew from Peter’s left hand, the same verdant light that shimmered on the blade of his sword. Kuromaku danced around, keeping the vampires away from Peter as he searched. Peter mumbled something, and Kuromaku glanced up to see a stricken look on his face.

“What is it? Have you found him?” Kuromaku asked.

“No, I . . . I’m sorry, I have to go. . . .” Peter replied.

“Go?”

But Octavian was already moving, running across the street with a crackling ball of green energy around him. He could not attack the vampires and they could not hurt him. Kuromaku glanced up as Peter rose over the walls of the convent and wished that his friend had more control of his magick. It was a weapon they sorely needed at the moment.

A clawed hand gripped his hair and yanked his head back. Kuromaku had lost his focus. Vampires swarmed in at him. He reached behind him with his left hand and drove his
wakizashi
through the eye of the vampire on his back. The vampire wailed and reared back, fell off of him with the short sword still jutting from its face.

Kuromaku had regained his focus.

With only his
katana,
he waded into the small band of vampires who had made him their target, and slaughtered them; he hacked them to pieces. It was as if he had bathed in blood now, and the scent of it was insinuating itself into his brain, trying to overcome his reason, his calm at the center of this maelstrom.

He sensed movement behind him, turned, and faltered.

“Hello, brother.”

Tsumi stood no more than a dozen feet away.

“Sister,” Kuromaku said.

“My lord Hannibal has instructed me to remove you from this fight,” she said. “You yourself have asked me to withdraw. I’m going to offer you a choice, Kuromaku. Choose wisely. If you will withdraw from this battle, I will do the same. Together we will await the outcome. Otherwise, I will have to kill you.”

Kuromaku narrowed his eyes. The pain in his heart was great, but he hid his love for his sister behind a grim face and sheathed his
katana
momentarily. The fight went on around them, but somehow, Hannibal’s creatures knew to leave the two Japanese warriors, brother and sister, to themselves.

“I am sorry, my sister, but this coven needs my sword, and they shall have it,” Kuromaku said.

He bowed.

For a moment, he thought he saw sadness in his sister’s eyes. Then it was gone.

“They shall have it,” she agreed. “But not for long.”

Tsumi also bowed. She reached to her waist and, from nowhere—just as he had taught her—she drew her own
katana.

They came together quickly, brother and sister, and sparks flew where the steel of their swords kissed.

 

Peter stepped quietly as he entered the convent. His sword at the ready, he crept down the hallway with his back to the wall, eyes glancing from windows to doors along the corridor. His stomach felt queasy, as though he’d eaten something that was a little off. And, he realized, he felt hungry. He needed some real food. It was a sensation he had completely and utterly forgotten until now.

He didn’t take the time to appreciate it.

The slight nausea, the light fever he knew he was running, both paled beside the odd sense of dislocation that had come over him outside. It had only grown worse as he entered the convent. Each step heightened the disorienting slide into duality. He was there, in the corridor. But in his peripheral vision, he saw stained glass. He smelled Nikki’s light vanilla scent, some kind of body spray she wore. He heard her shouting at him, but didn’t understand the words.

Down the corridor, where the door to the chapel was open just a bit, Nikki Wydra screamed.

And Peter was in the world again. Focused.

Enraged.

He ran the rest of the way down the corridor, heedless of any threat that might await him before the chapel itself. Sword blazing with magickal energy, he kicked the chapel door open. Though his strength was only human now, the heavy wooden door cracked loudly and seemed to sag forward from its top hinge.

Movement in the darkness. A struggle. He threw up his left hand and green light cast a sickly pallor over the chapel.

Peter!”

Nikki stood at the front of the chapel, wielding an ornate iron candelabra as if it were some kind of fighting staff. The thing that menaced her hissed at Peter, then returned its attention to Nikki. It slashed long ebony claws toward her, and she brought the four-foot length of wrought iron onto its hand with a satisfying crack.

The vampire roared its anger and lunged for her with its whole body. Nikki drove the candelabra through its chest and spun away, running across the altar. The wrong way. Away from the wraith, yes, but away from Peter as well.

“Nikki, no!” he shouted.

Too late. She stood beneath a stained glass window that depicted Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, tears of blood streaming down his face. Prismatic moonlight washed over her from behind, a soft rainbow silhouette.

That was the moment when Peter realized he loved her.

“We meet again,” the wraith hissed, and Peter turned his attention back to the impaled creature.

Impaled, yes, and in pain. But not suffering overmuch. Not suffering anywhere near enough, as far as he was concerned.

It moved forward, hunched over slightly, and, with each step, drew the candelabra several inches out of its chest. Black ichor seeped from the wound and pooled like mercury where it spilled to the floor. Peter stared at it in revulsion. He could destroy it. He should destroy it, of course. But he looked into its eyes, into his own eyes, and saw all that he was, or at least, all that he had been for so long a time.

“Come now, Octavian,” his shade sneered. “I promised Hannibal your heart to feast upon. If you will not kill me, I will surely destroy you, and the white-haired beast will taste the blood of your new life.”

“You want to die?” Peter asked.

“I want to kill you,” the thing whispered. “You have poisoned me with all that you are. I can never be what I might have been because I am tainted by your humanity, your faith and memory.

“But if I cannot kill you, I might as well die myself,” it declared with a snarl, thin ebony lips drawn back to expose the full length of its rows of razor teeth.

It grunted in pain as it removed the candelabra from its gut. The wrought iron stave clattered to the floor.

Peter stared at his shadow.

It leaped for him.

Peter spun and slashed, his sword burning bright, and cleaved the wraith in two. It fell dead at his feet in two pieces, both of which shattered into thousands of small shards of indigo glass. It sounded as though a chandelier had fallen to the floor.

“Peter?” Nikki ventured. “Oh God, Peter.”

He did not look up at her. He held up a hand to warn her off.

“Watch where you step,” he said with a rasp quite like hers. “It’s sharp.”

Peter Octavian looked down at the vile thing that had once been a part of him, and wondered idly where its opposite number, its divine brother, had gone on to. Not until he blinked, and his vision lost its focus, did he realize that he was crying.