Stanza fired more rounds into the vampire's chest, flinging her back and bouncing her off the pavement. "I've got three words for you," she said, waving the machine gun. "Black ironwood points."
The vampire howled in pain and clutched at the seeping red blossom over her heart. She suddenly lunged forward, clawing with one taloned hand at Stanza...but another burst from the machine gun threw her back again.
Stanza looked at Jonah and brushed a lock of black hair behind her ear. "Ammo tipped with hardwood," she said. "Very effective. It's like stabbing them in the heart with dozens of little stakes moving thousands of feet per second."
Jonah gaped at the writhing, bloody blonde on the alley floor. "That'd kill anybody."
"But not everything that kills anybody is enough to kill someone like her." Stanza turned and fired more rounds.
The blonde lay still for a moment, then began to jerk and twitch spontaneously. Stanza placed a hand on Jonah's chest and eased him back a step.
"Don't get too close," she said. "Here's where it gets ugly."
You mean it hasn't already?
As Jonah watched, the blonde spasmed repeatedly, then stopped. For a long moment, nothing moved or made a sound in the alley except the air conditioning unit in the back window of Halcyon.
Then, suddenly, the hacked-up flesh of the vampire's chest began to squirm. Shreds of skin and bone flexed up from the place where her heart should have been. Something was pushing its way through from underneath.
At first, as the thing emerged, Jonah thought it looked like a baby's head, bloody and covered with dark, downy hair.
Then, it unfurled.
The gruesome mass bloomed like a flower, poking through the chest wound and popping open. Its true form lay revealed, pulsing and glistening on the blonde's upper body.
Twelve tentacles swayed and twined around a central bulb the size of a fist. The bulb's slimy pink flesh rippled with eyes and jagged-toothed mouths that snapped and gnashed and oozed.
The tentacles were lined with suckers and fluttering cilia strung with slime. Oily black fur streaked the outer skin, barely concealing clusters of blisters and running sores.
"They say you never forget your first look at a feratu," said Stanza.
Jonah was transfixed. The creature Stanza had called a feratu was like something out of a horror movie.
"Now you know." Stanza replaced the ammo clip in her machine gun. "That's why it takes a stake through the heart to kill a vampire. Because that's where the feratu sits."
As Jonah watched, the feratu flipped itself over and crawled across the blonde on its hairy tentacles. It left a trail of bloody slime in its wake.
Stanza followed it with the barrel of her machine gun. "A vampire doesn't have a heart," she said. "The feratu eats it and takes its place. Pumps the blood, everything. Perfect setup for a creature that thrives on drinking blood."
The feratu hopped off the blonde's head and scuttled toward Jonah. He backed away and glanced behind him, sizing up his escape route.
"Two ways it can make you a vampire," said Stanza. "One, it infects your bloodstream with its babies through the bite of a host. Two..."
Suddenly, the feratu scrambled forward with a burst of speed. Adrenaline surged through Jonah's body, and he started to run.
That was when Stanza fired the machine gun. The feratu danced in a hail of ironwood-tipped bullets, exploding in a flash of flesh and fangs and fur and blood.
When the thing had been blown to sufficiently tiny bits, Stanza released the trigger. "Two, it jumps on you, burrows in through your urinary tract, and eats its way to your heart."
"Geez." Jonah was shaking. He tried to stop looking at the gruesome mess on the alley floor. "Ever hear the expression 'too much information?'"
"More on the way, Jonah." Stanza gazed up at the rooftops on either side of the alley. "They're hunting you. In force. They need you."
Jonah stared at her. "That's what the vampire said. 'We need you.'"
"Sure you're not up for some travel?" said Stanza.
"What makes you think I'll be any safer traveling than staying put?" said Jonah.
"They know where to find you now." Stanza kicked at the shredded remains of the feratu. "Wouldn't a moving target be harder to hit?"
Jonah frowned. "You're leaving when?"
"Right now," said Stanza. "Trust me, they're already closing in on you."
Jonah shook his head. "Mom and Dad's funeral is tomorrow."
"Would they rather have you alive or undead? What do you think?" Stanza marched over and lifted the dead vampire's head by her bloody blonde hair. The head tore away, and the rest of the corpse slumped to the pavement. "This isn't a joke, Jonah. Want to end up like her?"
Jonah shifted his weight from one foot to the other. What he really wanted to do was run, all right...run away from Stanza and the blonde and the feratu and the funeral and everything. Just start over without all the noise.
"I need to think about it," said Jonah.
"There's no time." Stanza tossed the head aside and stomped over to stare him in the eye. "We've got to leave now."
"And go where?" said Jonah. "What's the first stop?"
"Church, of course." Stanza smiled. "Where did you think?"
*****
Chapter 4
"And so the hunt begins." James watched from his perch on the rooftop ledge as Stanza and Jonah ran from the alley far below. "'Neath a moon so full and low it fairly reeks of mortal sins." James looked over his shoulder. "How's that?"
His companion nodded from within the hood of his cloak. "Very pretty, James. You may yet find that poetic immortality you seek."
James, who as a vampire was older than the ten-year-old boy he appeared to be, bowed to the man in the hood. "I am nothing without you, master."
The hooded man patted James' shoulder. "And I am fortunate to have found a friend and apprentice like you in this dark and sour life."
This life of madness.
Somewhere, deep in his soul, the hooded man felt a pang of longing for the life he had lost. That ancient life that felt at least twice as many centuries ago as it actually was.
That glorious life, all sawdust and sunburn, of which this moment on the rooftop was but a pale imitation. A sad facsimile tasting of ashes and heartbreak.
If I but had a heart instead of a monster in its place.
The hooded man placed a hand upon his left breast. Instead of the rhythmic beat he'd known long ago, he felt the constant grinding of the creature's teeth, gnashing in ceaseless hunger.
This is not a song. They call it so, but it is not.
Only mindless and meaningless, it is, lacking both reason and rhyme. Bringing but suffering and desperation in the guise of a miracle.
If only I had the will to tear it from my chest, still squirming and screaming, and with my last breath cast it to its death on the street below. Indeed, I have seen a man do that exact thing once, long ago, in the days before my change.
But if I have proved one thing throughout the years, it is that I am not such a man.
Just then, James tapped him on the arm. "Here they come," he whispered. "Our new allies."
"Of convenience, perhaps," said the hooded man. "And for the moment. Even so, you'd do well to remember that they shall ever be our enemies most foul."
The hooded man turned to look where his charge was pointing. He saw the wicked man glide toward them, all red feathers and razor-sharp talons silhouetted against the full moon.
He would pluck it from me if I asked, and gulp it down and belch out a gobbet of fur and claws.
He may yet pluck it from me if I don't ask.
"You know him, don't you?" James was still whispering.
"I have met him." The hooded man nodded. "But knowing him is quite another story."
How many other vampires were able to take the form of something other than a wolf or batlike creature? How many others soared through night skies in the guise of a blood-red hawk?
>
Genghis Khan alone. The one and only scourge of the Asian steppes, now scourge of the 21st century night. Endowed with vampiric immortality and no less a terror for all his antiquity.
Here then was the face of the enemy, the leader of the other side that the hooded man's faction had long fought. Destiny's darkest suitor, wound from endless skeins of coal-black thread, inflicting disaster with naught but his passing shadow.
The power of a vampire fused with the ferocity of the infamous Mongol warlord he once was.
And now he is my ally. The truce has made it so.
As Genghis circled overhead, the hooded man turned to his apprentice. "Trust nothing he says. Look always for the dirk concealed in his sleeve and the poison on his lip."
"Master," said James. "What's a dirk?"
"Later." The hooded man shushed him and watched the blood-red hawk settle onto the rooftop. "Say nothing now, hear? No good can come of pressing out an ill-considered word."
James nodded.
The giant hawk shuddered and screeched, fixing the hooded man in the alien gaze of its fathomless eye. The hooded man subdued a shiver and refused to look away.
This memory is baked deep in the bread of us. The raptor's eye peering through primeval mists, unblinking.
Diamond-sharp beaks the size and shape of hatchets, swinging. Streaked with blood.
The hawk ruffled its wings and folded them close around its body. As the hooded man and James looked on, the great bird began to change.
Feathers melted into flesh as russet brown as the last good potato before famine. The scarlet hood, a deeper red than all the rest, became the gleaming black of char flaking from a burned body and twisting away on the breeze.
The down-curved beak flowed into rows of teeth, bone-white as the stranger's smile rising over your shoulder in the bedroom mirror.
Leave the door open at midnight and this is what wanders in. Set a trap with corpse-meat and he shall lick it clean, then dig you out between your ribs.
And when he has finished, not even a spot of grease shall stain your bedclothes. You never existed.
"To the truce." Genghis raised his empty hand in a mock toast. "Without it, I would have killed and devoured you already."
"As always, you excel at setting the tone," said the hooded man. "At least our alliance has not dimmed your gift for uplifting all around you."
"Just my luck." Genghis beamed at James. "I don't suppose he's a peace offering?"
"Look elsewhere for your food," said the hooded man.
Genghis snorted. "Soon enough, I'll have who and what I want, and when I want it."
At least we'll leave no room for misunderstanding. Our feelings and intentions are clear.
We hate each other no less, and we shall show each other not one drop more of mercy when this ends.
With a laugh, Genghis strode between them. Naked, he leaned over the rooftop ledge and gazed down into the alley.
"You have a good reason, I suppose?" said Genghis. "For not following our quarry?"
"Hounds aplenty run that trail," said the hooded man. "They shall drive the quarry onward, and we shall catch up soon enough."
Genghis sneered at him. "No wonder you people are a joke. Hard to believe we're part of the same society."
"Cruentus Estus has long thrived on rivalry," said the hooded man, "though lately, that coalition has been sorely tested." He spoke of the secret organization whose name was Latin for "Bloody Tide," a worldwide church of vampires that lately had been split apart by internal strife. Cruentus Estus had sent out both the hooded man and Genghis this day, leaders of two competing factions bound by truce to work together this one time for the common good.
"You people have never 'sorely tested' anything in your life," said Genghis. "I could murder the lot of you myself if it wasn't for the truce."
"Who's to say how long the truce shall last?" The hooded man stepped closer to Genghis. "Perhaps I'll lay hands on you sooner than you think."
"Now there's an interesting road." Genghis' eyes began to glow with reddish light. "But we've been down it before, haven't we, you and I?'
He is wrong.
He thinks, by raising the ghost of our last meeting, that he can diminish me. Remind me of the beating I took, and so inflict it once again in ways not bound by the truce.
But all he's done is refortify my will. Add block to the wall and ball to the cannons.
"I treasure the memory," said the hooded man. "I've written another act to follow it, and I shall stage it as your reward upon completion of our task."
Genghis grinned with all the malice of a murderer who has just thrown away the key to his victim's handcuffs. "All the more reason to race our venture forward."
The hooded man raised a finger. "But we must not be reckless, else the quarry sense the snare."
"We'll drive him forward fast enough that he won't have time to think," said Genghis. "He'll lead us to the prize, and then we'll snatch it away."
"We shall regain what is rightfully ours," said the hooded man. "Standing together, we shall have what our two lines divided could not muster."
"Just one question," said Genghis. "Who gets Jonah's blood when we're done with him?"
The hooded man ignored the question. "And what of the troops you've promised? I've seen no sign of them—or do you fancy yourself an army entire now?"
Genghis smiled and scrubbed the cap of black hair atop his head. "My troops stand ready," he said, "though I do indeed consider myself an army in one body."
"By all means, dispatch them," said the hooded man. "Send them along on the trail to join my own force."
"As you say." Genghis plunged two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
A second later, someone new joined the three figures on the rooftop. He leaped up from below and landed on the ledge as nimbly as a cat.
James inhaled sharply.
The hooded man betrayed no surprise, because he felt the eyes of Genghis upon him...but he was surprised, too. He had known this one was out there somewhere, adrift and in play, but he had not expected to see him on this night in this place in this way.
The figure on the ledge appeared to be a ten-year-old boy with short blond hair.
"Say hello, Thomas," said Genghis.
"Hello, dipshits," said Thomas.
James stared at Thomas without a word, but the hooded man knew what he was thinking.
He looks just like me.
In fact, Thomas and James looked so much alike, it would have been hard to tell them apart if they were standing side-by-side wearing the same clothes. And if Thomas wasn't covered head-to-toe in tattoos.
They were twins. It was impossible to think otherwise.
More games.
That was exactly why Genghis had brought him, of course. To gain an advantage over his erstwhile ally, an edge in morale if not physical strength. To prepare for the moment, at journey's end, when each side double-crossed the other as they'd known all along they would in a final grab for the glorious prize.
Thomas is a pawn intended to neutralize my own pawn, James...or perhaps he has a greater role to play.
Either way, I pledge he'll come to naught.
"Master?" said James, gaze still stuck upon the tattooed boy on the ledge.
"Ma-a-a-sterr?" Thomas said it mockingly, in an exaggerated baby-talk falsetto.
"Look to your work now, James." The hooded man placed a hand on James' shoulder and steered him away from Thomas. "We must all of us play our appointed parts if the prize is to be ours."
"Pla-a-ay your part, Jay-yay-mes," said Thomas. This time, the baby talk was more effeminate, complete with an English accent and mincing flicks of his hands.
He mocks me. I am his master's equal in influence, yet he mocks me just the same.
Careful, now.
Such impunity could not remain unanswered, but therein lay a deadly ground. Genghis watched and waited; Thomas was protected and knew it too well.
But the land bet
ween protected and invincible can be vast.
Suddenly, the hooded man's hand lashed out and clamped around Thomas' ankle. Before Thomas could do more than yelp, the hooded man had upended him and hung him over the ledge.
It was no threat at all to a vampire boy, of course. Even if Thomas had not had the power to shape-shift, a fall from such a height could not have killed him.
But unnerve him, it did.
He writhed in the hooded man's grip, yipping and swinging. He twisted and bent and grabbed for the hooded man's hand but couldn't quite reach it.
"How do you think I became lord of my line, boy?" said the hooded man. "By being a laughingstock for whelps like you?"
"Screw you," said Thomas.
The hooded man slammed him against the side of the building, then wrenched him away again before he could grab hold of anything.
"Do not mistake my poetry for weakness," said the hooded man. "Pull aside the curtain on this stage, and I vow you'll find a much different play than you suppose."
Suddenly, Thomas' body began to curdle and change, sprouting leathery wings and stiff gray fur. The hooded man refused to let go as the boy became a flapping, screeching bat-thing.
"I have brought more horror into this world than you can imagine," said the hooded man. "More pain and terror than words can express or nullify. Think twice before adding your name to the cast of my next great tragedy."
Thomas wailed and thrashed, but the hooded man did not loosen his grip or even flinch. Instead, just as Thomas gained some altitude, he swung him overhead and hurled him across the rooftop.
Thomas crashed into a chimney stack so hard he brought it down around him.
"Finally." Genghis grinned and shifted his fingers into talons. "I was starting to think that truce would never end."
The hooded man pressed his palm against Genghis' chest. "It still lives, I assure you. Doling out a friendly lesson to a novice must not end this nascent union ere we take our prize."
The moment of truth is upon us. Will he forego his violent pleasures for the greater good?
Genghis thrust one hand's talons forth...and stopped when the tips rested against the hooded man's belly. "I have dreamed of gutting you," he said. "Feasting on the entrails of history's most overrated playwright and poet."
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