The Living Night (Book 2) (10 page)

"He calls up a handful of kavasari that he
has brought over himself and who are loyal to him—as much out of fear of him as
anything else, most likely. And Bob, always having been a persuasive bastard,
gets these poor chaps to form a cult of protection around his Barbarella, so
that she'll always be safe. He calls this order the
Sangro Sankts
and
clouds their purpose in mystery and superstition, telling them that this girl
is a holy being or somesuch nonsense, destined to take over the world—which,
naturally, is what Bob intends for her to do—and which she does a pretty good
job of, actually. Anyway, the
Sangro Sankts
protect her,
under
one minor stipulation—
that they keep immortals from
the knowledge of humans at all costs.
This is the primary Commandant that
Bob gives them to follow.”

“Why?” interrupted Jean-Pierre. “Why keep us a
secret from mortals?”

“The obvious reason, of
course.
The same reason why the kavasari were afraid of the less
powerful immortals.
Because there are a lot more mortals than there are
shades. Humans could wipe us out at any time, if they only knew about us, and
if they acted against us before we acted against them. So Bob decides to take
up the burden of keeping immortals safe by creating his little cult. They would
kill anyone who tried to make humans aware of our presence.

“Anyway, to continue.
Eventually, Barbarella,
with the help of her secret protectors, seizes a pretty sizeable chunk of the
immortal population, and it turns out that she’s an able ruler. After a hundred
years or so, Bob gets bored and disappears back into the cesspool from whence
he came, never to
heard
from again. Later, it becomes
apparent to the few who are aware of all this that Bob just wanted a little
taste of power after his years of anonymity. Once he got his fill, he took off,
leaving Barbarella and the
Sangro Sankts
to manage the shadeworld on
their own.

“Eventually Barbarella gets killed by a rival.
The
Sangro Sankts
take revenge,
then
appoint an
heir to take their queen's place. This establishes the tradition that continues
until today; when one of their ‘masters' die or decides to relinquish his or
her power, the
Sangro Sankts
simply serve another, which has been
predetermined ahead of time. My good friend Roche Sarnova is the latest of this
line. That’s the end of the story."

Jean-Pierre clapped his hands and whistled. "Encore!
Encore!"

Kharker sighed.

"I’m not satisfied with the answer you gave
Jean-Pierre,” Ruegger said. “Why was it so important to, ah, Bob, that immortal
existence be kept a secret from humanity?"

"Because there are a hundred million times
more humans than there are shades, Ruegger. Isn't it obvious?"

"Sure, but why make this a central part of
the
Sangro Sankts
' mythology?"

"Because they are
the secret rulers of all immortals—the shadow rulers, which is what ‘
Sangro
Sankts
' loosely translates to.
If they don't look out for their flock, who
will? Does that answer your question?"

"I suppose."

Jean-Pierre coughed. "Khark ... do these kavasari
still rule?"

"No. Their order protects and guides Roche
Sarnova, thus their influence is limited only to his domain, which isn't what
it used to be. I don't blame Roche for that, of course; the population of
shades has exploded in the past few millennia, and spread out, and he now
commands a smaller percent of our numbers."

"But," Ruegger said, "the
Sangro
Sankts
must uphold that old stipulation, which quite goes against what
Roche Sarnova is doing now ...”

"True.”

"What do you mean?" asked Jean-Pierre.

Again, the Hunter sighed. "I should've told
you, my son. I guess now is the time. Remember after the safari, when we went
to visit Blackie and he made you leave the room?"

"You wouldn't tell me what you
discussed."

"I'll tell you now. He told me the reason
behind the War of the Dark Council."

"Which is?"

"Roche wants to announce our presence to
the human world. Not only that, but he wants us to have our own country."

"A Jerusalem
for the Undead," added Ruegger.

"It was this that tore the Dark Council in
half."

"Jesus," whispered Jean-Pierre

"Yes."

The albino ran a hand through his yellowish,
almost translucent hair and left it there, tangled in his roots. "Well, if
that isn’t something."

"Indeed," said Ruegger. "But it
doesn't jive with the priorities of the
Sangro Sankts
."

"No. It doesn't."

Kharker leaned back in his chair. "So,
Jean-Pierre, what do you think?"

Raising his eyebrows in bemusement, Jean-Pierre
said, "I think the man has balls of iron. I think it's an interesting
idea. Still ...”

"Yes," Ruegger agreed. "That was
my reaction, too." Slowly, he stood up and stretched his legs. "Well,
I know you two haven't seen each other in some time, so I'm going to leave you
alone for awhile. Besides, I need to feed."

Kharker nodded in mildly surprised approval.
"Thank you."

"Sure."

Ruegger departed, leaving the two werewolves in
silence.

"That was … generous of him," Jean-Pierre
said.

"Yes, maybe it was.”

"It's certainly much better to have him as
a friend than an enemy."

"Maybe ... maybe.
But never let him fool
you, my son."

"What do you mean?"

Kharker’s face grew tight. "He's the most
evil bastard I've ever met. I've said it before and I'll say it again: his is
the Evil of Old, and it is to be highly respected. The problem is that he's
under the misconception that, beneath all the darkness, he's really a good guy.
And that's what he wants to be. Right now, anyway. But if Danielle were ever
taken away from him—permanently, I mean—he would
revert
right back into the old Ruegger, the Ruegger that could kill a hundred
innocents without flinching. Back in his heyday, he would've given Junger and
Jagoda nightmares. So don't turn your back on him.
Ever."

"Come on, Khark. You're exaggerating. He
loves you, like I do. Maybe I'll even grow on him sooner or later. Hell, he's
already growing on me. But of course I'll keep that secret to my grave."

"Of course."
Kharker grabbed a
bottle of wine and refilled his studded iron goblet. "Seriously, Ruegger
is good at playing both ends against the middle, and even though he may love me
he considers me the opposite of what he stands for. And if
I'm
in danger from him ...”

"Then I don't stand a chance. What you're
forgetting, my
friend,
is that he'd be all too easy to
kill, if that were called for.
Which it won't be.
Ruegger is our ally."

"Of course."
After a moment, Kharker
said, "By the way, after you and the Darkling had thrashed it out, what
did you talk about?"

Jean-Pierre waved the question away.
"Oh, a number of things.
We talked of Danielle for
awhile, and he told me that he understood my fixation with her. I suppose it
was
his own
way of forgiving me, or at least I hope
so. At one point, he said that if we’d battled in a city, I would've been the
victor. In a city, I would've been able to use my power of psychic dominance.
Out here, though, I was at the mercy of Ruegger's
spoonbender
tricks."

The Hunter smiled. "Yes, you're both very
strong in your own ways. You control people. He controls things."

"We talked for a little while longer, but
that was about the extent of it, really."

Kharker rose from his seat, goblet in hand.

"
We going
somewhere, Khark?"

"Yes, my son. Follow me."

Together, they left the Elephant Room and made
their way down into the catacombs.

"So you've become disenchanted with love,
eh?" said Kharker.

"Perhaps everyone becomes disenchanted with
it at one point or another, but it's given me the shaft more than most, I'd
wager."

"It's a turning point for you."

"I'm working on becoming the man I was
before I'd ever even heard of Danielle. I was strong then.
Precise.
I need to be that way again."

"Why?"

"There are changes coming. I can feel
them."

Kharker nodded. "You always have had strange
powers of the mind. They've served you well, so far."

"So far.”

"What you need is a symbol of your change.”
They descended into the catacombs and threaded their way through the large
dusty tunnels. "You need to eradicate Danielle from your life, utterly and
completely."

"I've already done that: I let her go. It
took more strength on my part to do that than it would have done to kill
her."

"Perhaps, but you need a concrete symbol of
her destruction. You need to desecrate her image, to tear her limb from
limb."

They’d reached the area of the tunnels reserved
for the prisoners and had stopped before a certain door. With his mindthrust,
Lord Kharker flung it open and stepped aside.

"Danielle ...” whispered the albino, seeing
the occupant of the cell. "It's her, the one you gave me on your
birthday."

"Yes. The time is ripe for you to take
her."

"But Kharker ...”

"What?"

Jean-Pierre frowned. "Yes," he muttered.
"I suppose it is."

He stepped into the room and watched as the girl
retreated from him, backing into a dirty corner.

"Thank you," he whispered over his
shoulder.

"You're welcome, my son. Now I will leave
you. Please, take your time. Say and do what must be done. But remember—she is
the ghost of Danielle that haunts you. Only by obliterating her entirely will
you purge your system, once and for all, of Danielle."

"Yes," answered Jean-Pierre, a trace
of sadness in his voice.

The Hunter shut the door and walked away.
Ruegger had been right, he thought: he never had been a creature to let
something go to waste. Even before he rounded the corner, Kharker heard the
girl screaming behind him. Proudly, he smiled.

Chapter 6

"You
asked that an unarmed human be released into the woods, sir," Gavin said.
"It’s been done."

"Thank you," said Ruegger.

Leaving the manservant by the catacombs
entrance, he moved off into the jungle, as lush and sultry as ever. This time,
there seemed to be some malice to it, some tension that Ruegger couldn't
fathom. It breathed green venom.

Shaking it off, he pressed deeper, tracking his
mortal quarry. It had been a long night, and he had thoughts he needed to
process. Things were moving very fast.
Faster than he
would've liked.
He would appreciate some time to just sit down in peace
and think for awhile, without the distraction of Kharker or Jean-Pierre, the
Scouring or the War of the Dark Council, but that, he realized, wasn’t going to
happen.

Danielle, however, was a distraction he wouldn't
mind. In fact, she was the one thing at that moment that he really wanted, that
he desired with every bloody snapping fiber of his being. Still, he recognized
that he needed to give her time. She had her own demons to exorcise. Or kill.

Suddenly, blood filled the air and he heard a noise
up ahead, and he stepped towards it. The sound issued from behind a tangle of
bushes. Slowly, he parted them. There, somewhat below him, was the human—a
white man, he saw—that he’d been hunting. In his fervent desire to escape, the
man had tripped down a slope and fallen into a narrow ravine.

With care, Ruegger moved down the slope toward
him, even as the fellow's eyes widened with terror.

"Easy," the Darkling said. "I'm
not here to hurt you."

Within touching distance of the man, Ruegger
could tell that he had broken his leg, the blood from the wound clouding the
shallow water that flowed about him.

"Don't," said the mortal, trying to back
away, pushing with his hands against the muddy slope and sliding further up the
bank only to slip again.

"It's okay," Ruegger told him. "I
was only going to take a little blood from you, anyway, and now it looks like I
don't even have to use my teeth because you've done the work for me." He
smiled to show it was a joke, but the man's face screwed up in fear, and he let
out a miserable moan. Gingerly, Ruegger slid his hands beneath the mortal and
hauled him out of the wet murk, then staggered up the hill and set him down
again on level ground.

Before bending to feed from the wound, Ruegger
said, "I'm sorry about this, friend, but I was in a bit of a scrape
tonight and I really need the blood. Don't worry. I'll only take a little. Then
it's back to the mansion with you."

Bitterly, the man said, "Go ahead and kill
me, you bastard. I'm dead anyway, don't you know that? Whether it's you or one
of the others, I'll be dead in a week. Please don't get righteous on me."

Ruegger paused. "I could release you into
the woods."

"And be picked up by one of the retrieval
units? No thanks. I've been picked up by one of them already, and they beat the
shit out of me before hauling me back. Just do what you came here to do, you
goddamned monster. Remember, though, God is watching, and when you're in Hell
I'll be laughing down at you from my cloud, drinking wine and screwing
virgins."

Ruegger used his telekinetic abilities to
enliven the vines that had grown up the nearest tree. Under his power, the
vines wrapped themselves tightly around the human and held the poor man down
while Ruegger drank blood out of the wound on his broken leg. The human screamed,
but Ruegger did not relent until the mortal had passed out. The Darkling stood,
wiping the blood from his mouth, and dismissed the aid of the vines. His anger
faded, though he wasn’t sure whom the anger was reserved for.

True to his word, Ruegger hefted the mortal up
and began making his way back toward the Lodge.

Something moved overhead. He glanced up to see a
shape fluttering against the night sky, its outline obscured against the trees.

"Who are you?" he shouted.

No answer came.

Slowly, forms began to resolve into discernable
figures. There wasn't just one outline, but four, all human-shaped and flying
in circles above him, their dark and leathery wings beating a wind through his
hair. Jandrows, from the look of them, and something else, something they were
carrying that glinted metallically in the moonlight—guns.
Large
and bulbous, with wolfish barrels and glittering belts of ammunition.
Machine guns, weapons so heavy that they would normally be mounted.
The shades trained the weapons at him as the circle of jandrows descended towards
him.

"Who
are
you?" he called again.

"Don't worry about who we are,
Darkling," one of them shouted back. "Just freeze where you are.
We’ll take care of the rest."

"Like hell.”

He gestured, and the arms of the nearest trees
snaked out and clutched at the quartet of winged beings. They squealed as the
rough limbs seized them, but Ruegger knew that this was only a temporary
solution.

A fifth winged creature dropped from the sky
through the ring of imprisoned jandrows and flew straight at him. Ruegger noted
a long, massive jaw extending from a flat, sinister head. It was, of all
things, the head of crocodile, with the thick body and powerful tail to match.
Its enormous, bat-like wings billowed behind it as it drove at the Darkling.

Ruegger dove. He struck the ground and rolled
fast, feeling the creature's presence close above him. He threw himself to his
feet and swiveled.

The beast landed not ten feet away. As if about
to pounce, it crouched menacingly, lashing its heavy tail with force.
Though its body was very like that of a crocodile, its legs were
longer and seemingly more agile, although they were thick, meaty and covered
with scales.
It was a jandrow, he thought uncertainly, and must be one
of the few of their kind that could shapeshift. Not only this, but it appeared
relatively old and quite able to match or exceed him in strength.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked,
setting down the human that still slumbered in his arms. The man stirred and
opened his eyes.

"Captain Raulf D'Aguila," the creature
said through its enormous, smiling mouth, evil red eyes squinting at Ruegger in
what he thought of as an authoritative manner. "I have come to take you
in."

Retrieving the knife from its holster, Ruegger
spat. “Then come and get me."

The creature raised itself to its full height
and tucked its large wings carefully above its ridged back, all the while swiveling
its head about playfully on a thick neck that seemed too long for the crocodile
it otherwise resembled. In fact, Ruegger thought, it seemed very much like a
dragon at the moment—an obese dwarf of a dragon that had spent too much time in
the mud, bursting at the seams with puss and venom. It exuded an air of
corruption.

Overhead, the other jandrows freed themselves
from the wooden prisons Ruegger had created for them, but they made no move
against him. Perhaps they were enjoying the show.

Captain Raulf D'Aguila launched itself high into
the air, its great dark-green wings spreading out behind it. Its legs stood out
from its body in postures meant to ensnare Ruegger. The legs were swift and
powerful, the Darkling saw, almost like those of a frog. They ended in wicked
reptilian talons, the
foreclaws
almost hand-like,
while the
hindclaws
were meant for grasping and
rending.

Ruegger dodged aside.

With shocking swiftness, the beast struck the
earth and pivoted to face him, long mouth opening to reveal cruel teeth and an
eager tongue. Noticing movement to its side, D'Aguila craned its head. Perhaps
for the first time, it took note of the human that Ruegger had fed from. It
turned back to face the Darkling, a knowing leer across its gargantuan face.
The man, awake now and seeing the intentions of D'Aguila, tried to scramble out
of the way, but the wreckage of his ruined limb wouldn't allow him to get more
than a few feet.

"Leave him alone," Ruegger said.

The Captain pounced on the mortal, seizing the
man's body with its talons. The creature rolled over onto its ridged back, holding
up its squirming human prize high into the air for inspection.

"Let me go!" the man shouted,
thrashing.

"No," the Captain said. “I don't think
I will, not just yet."

Before Ruegger could stop it, the creature
raised its wings so that they overlapped each other and brought up its tail to
fill in the gap where the wings ended below. In effect, it concealed any sign
of its human prisoner, unless one happened to be looking into the lethal cocoon
from the direction of D'Aguila's head.

D'Aguila stuck its snout into the space between
its wings and chest, its mouth opening wide. Ruegger felt certain that Raulf
had performed this ritual countless times, that this was a sort of show he put
on for the soldiers that he captained for. Ruegger heard a gruesome popping
sound, then the noise of the human's blood spattering against the membranes of
Raulf's wings. The scent of death filled the air.

The Captain unfolded its wings and lowered its
tail, revealing the spectacle of the mortal's death to all present. Still held
in the creature's talons, the headless corpse shuddered violently once,
then
sagged. Blood
fountained
from
the open neck, subsiding gradually. The man's head, meanwhile, rested between
the jaws of Captain D’Aguila. The beast turned its mouth toward Ruegger so that
the vampire could get a clear glimpse of the terrified expression on the face
of the deceased.

D'Aguila crushed the man's face between its
molars a few times and swallowed the head whole. With a forceful kick, it propelled
the rest of the body into the underbrush twenty feet away, rolled onto its feet
and rose, its blood-spattered wings unfurled in triumph.

When D’Aguila burped—rather theatrically,
Ruegger thought—one of the flying soldiers convulsed with laughter.

"I always did like an appetizer before my
meal," commented Captain D’Aguila, and advanced on Ruegger.

Ruegger raised his knife so that it glinted in
the moonlight. "Let's get this over with."

Raulf closed the gap. Above him, the jandrows
trained their huge machine guns on Ruegger. He realized that even if he won,
which seemed doubtful, he would lose.

To hell with this.

Without another thought, Ruegger turned and ran.

*
    
*
    
*

Once
the door closed, the girl that looked like Danielle screamed and threw herself
backwards.

Jean-Pierre winced. How many mortals had he
heard issue that same cry?

But he would not kill her. What he and Ruegger
had talked about after their scuffle—the conversation Kharker seemed so
interested in—had to do with morality. Jean-Pierre spoke of the difficulties of
staying moral, and his commitment to doing so, while Ruegger had assured him
that commitment was the main part.

To be good, do
good
,
the vampire had said.

And Jean-Pierre had no intention of betraying Sophia.
Bad enough to have left her in order to do some
soul-searching, but to kill an innocent?
Never.

Never again.

What would Kharker think? Despite Jean-Pierre’s
new morality, this question bothered him. He didn’t want to lose the Hunter’s
friendship.

Wiping a hand across his forehead, he crouched
next to the girl. “Remember me?”

She opened her trembling mouth—

“Fucking Kharker!”

Jean-Pierre slammed his fist against the wall.
The Hunter had taken the girl’s tongue. Jean-Pierre breathed deep.

Looking into her eyes, he said, “I could make
you what I am, an immortal. The curse—that’s what we call it—often corrects
wounds and scars. A girl I know, she had scars all over her body from being
beaten and raped. When Ruegger changed her to a vampire, the scars disappeared.
So ... your tongue might grow back is what I’m saying.”

She stared into his green eyes for a minute,
then
shook her head.

Sadly, he nodded. “I think
I
under—”

BOOM!!!!

An explosion, from the
direction of the wine cellar.

Jean-Pierre jumped to his feet. Putting a finger
to his lips, he indicated for the girl to be quiet. She might not be able to
talk, but she could still scream. With wide eyes, she obeyed.

Carefully, he opened the door and stepped into
the hall.
Lots of noise and activity.
Something major
was going on.

Footsteps.

He retreated back into the cell until he was
sure the footsteps only came from two people. He waited for them to pass so he
could glimpse them through the tiny window. When he did, he realized they were shades—maybe
morbines or vampires.