Markus breathed deeply, and turned from the window.
His visitor had crouched low, head bowed in the customary position of greeting an Elder. The man’s full-length leather coat trailed over the floor as if it were the resting muscles of giant bat wings. His attire and dark hair almost camouflaged him amid the shadows.
Stepping down from the heightened window, Markus’s boots clicked on the concrete steps to his bedroom floor. He stopped three paces from his subject. “You may rise.”
The Eliminator stood slowly, waiting until the last moment before lifting his head. “Milord.”
Candlelight cast deep shadows across the immortal’s sunken features, the eyes appearing lost in their sockets. Predominant cheekbones jutted against the warrior’s flesh, the mouth a thin line of malnourishment. The vampire’s appearance startled Markus at first, but he checked himself and his shock didn’t show.
Instead, he smiled. “Anton; it’s so good to see you.”
Reaching out, Markus pulled the Eliminator to him and hugged him tightly. Anton’s body locked rigid, obvious surprise pushing breath from his lungs. Coven regulations usually forbade close physical contact with such a revered Elder.
Markus then held his warrior at arm’s length. Twenty hours had passed since Anton had staggered to the gates of this stone-clad fortress, and Markus ordered the Eliminator be given an unlimited supply of fresh blood in order to revive his health. Anton’s features resembled that of an under-nourished peasant, and Markus wondered just how close to death his comrade had been to need so much treatment. “You look a mess,” Markus joked, “but it’s still good to see you.”
Anton laughed. “You have no idea how good it is to see you too, Milord.”
“Come; we must have a drink to celebrate your return.”
An open fire wavered lazily to their right, yellow tongues of flame licking at the opening of a soot-coated chimney. A log shifted, collapsed into the hot embers, and sparks danced like fireflies. Markus paused at a silver trolley, perused the bottles on its surface, and settled on a fine cognac. He fetched two glasses from a drawer underneath and poured a generous shot into each one. The aroma from the alcohol stirred his senses; cognac his favorite beverage with the exception of blood.
“To your health,” Markus said, and held one glass out to Anton.
“Have you got any blood?”
The quip tickled him, and Markus couldn’t contain his laughter. “In this room? Only that which flows through my veins, but unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I need that.”
“Then the cognac will suffice.”
Anton took the glass, they raised a silent toast to each other, and Markus pleasured as the liquid warmth flooded through his body. “Let’s take a seat, shall we?”
Anton nodded, and as was custom, allowed Markus to choose the first chair. The hand-crafted baroque seat had been in Markus’s possession for a little more than four hundred years, and although he’d had a cushion fitted to the wooden seat to aid his comfort, the chair maintained all of its former glory. He’d lost count of the times he had sat in its regality and stared at the fire, pondering the many troubles and emotions that frequently plagued his mind. As a vampire warlord in the midst of a supernatural struggle, there was often much to think about. Taking care not to dishevel too much of his tailored Armani suit, Markus seated himself on his throne and motioned for Anton to take his place.
The Eliminator took the seat with its back to the fire, as if he gained enough heat from the summer night air wafting lethargically through the open window.
“The doctor tells me you’ll make a full recovery,” Markus began.
“I may not look it, Milord, but I feel much better already.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I’ll be able to rejoin the fight soon. I consider it my duty—my honor—to avenge the deaths of. . .” Anton paused, and a dark somberness clouded his eyes. “This is the first opportunity I’ve had to address you since those unfortunate events in Venice.”
Markus nodded, stomach contorting in grief for his slain daughter, the passage of twelve months too fleeting a time span to dampen the sense of loss.
The Eliminator looked up. “I’m sorry I failed you.”
Markus took a sip of his cognac; studied Anton’s demonic features for a moment and saw heartache the Eliminator failed to keep hidden.
“Every night I have mourned the loss of my daughter. Each morning I wake and enter her chamber in the hope that this will be some kind of cruel nightmare and my fairest child will be sleeping safely in her bed. Each day I am crushed by the immeasurable weight of my suffering.” Markus hoped to breathe forever, yet sometimes an eternity without Gabriella didn’t seem worth living. “For twelve long months I have wondered how our coven could possibly endure without the fortitude and courage of two of my most trusted and gallant soldiers. To this day I am disheartened that Lucas is no longer on the battlefield, fighting our cause.
“This suffocating, iron-like grip of sorrow that encases me is only eased by the knowledge that you, Anton, have survived and blessed us with your return.” Markus stared resolutely into the Eliminator’s face, and although he would give anything to have Gabriella back in his life, he meant what he said: “You have nothing to apologize for.”
A tear touched the corner of Anton’s right eye, but the soldier in him brushed it away before it could fall. “Thank you, Milord. I am eternally grateful for your kindness.”
“And I am eternally grateful for your loyalty.” Markus paused for a moment and drained his glass of cognac. He looked at Anton’s tumbler and saw it empty. “Would you be so kind as to join me in another drink?”
Anton stood and bowed. “Of course; but please, allow me.”
Markus handed him the glass and watched as Anton shuffled to the drinks cabinet. He had no idea what the warrior had been through, how he had possibly survived the deadly ambush that claimed Lucas’s life. If Anton had managed to survive such an assault, yet Lucas had not, then Markus had no doubts about the bravery and worthiness of the vampire before him. Markus had been an Enforcer once, fighting the endless war against lycanthropes; he’d been an Eliminator for a time too, dedicated to the extinction of those cursed hybrids. He knew what it took to be a warrior in the field of battle, and there was none better than Anton.
The vampire returned with the drinks and sat carefully on the seat. Anton had spent a year submerged within the waters of the Venetian lagoon, and as such Markus expected the question.
“What of the war, Milord?”
“It still rages, my dear friend. Some days I think we’re winning, other times I feel we’re fighting a lost cause.” He would never admit it, but the conflict had taken its toll on him. He’d sworn that oath, six hundred years ago, to wage unholy war on his werewolf cousins, and yet after all this time, with the conflict appearing no nearer its conclusion than it had six centuries past, Markus hoped for an era of peace. There were times, most notably during lulls in the conflict, when Markus could scarcely remember why they were fighting at all.
“What of the hybrids?”
Anton’s question churned a pit of hatred in Markus’s guts. That was a different conflict altogether, one he would not entertain cutting short; one he hoped would never end until every last stinking crossbreed had been slaughtered.
They’d killed his beloved daughter, and each and every one of them would pay with their blood.
“Thankfully the hybrids are losing ground. You were not to know this, Anton, but that day they ambushed you and Lucas in Venice was not the only such attack on our forces.”
Anton paused with the tumbler halfway to his mouth, the shadows in his sunken eye sockets unable to hide his surprise.
“The hybrid scum launched similar daylight raids on our defenses in Paris, Berlin and London. Even across the Atlantic in America; New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. According to reports they targeted werewolf strongholds too. It seems they were trying to emulate their
successes when they hauled their disgusting little asses into the war two centuries ago.”
The memory of that night still lingered in the back of his mind. Markus knew Anton remembered it too.
“I pray you’ll tell me they didn’t succeed,” Anton said.
Markus smiled. “They have been struggling to regain their numbers since that day; struggling to gain even the slightest foothold in this eternal war. Coming out in daylight the way they did was their biggest mistake yet—and they’re still paying for it.”
Anton raised his glass. “That calls for a toast.”
“Indeed.” Markus didn’t stop until his tumbler was emptied.
He sensed Anton wanted to remain in the chair and continue the conversation, but the vampire’s features had waned even in the short time he’d been present.
“I think you need a few more liters of blood,” Markus said.
Anton made to answer, but a tentative knock at the door cut him off.
“Excuse me, Anton. Enter!” Markus glanced over his shoulder and studied the darkened form of his guard, swathed in shadow.
“Forgive the intrusion, Milord,” the guard said, his voice grating from a throat that had been slashed open sixty years ago by the sharp talons of a bloodthirsty werewolf. “Dante requests a moment of your time for a brief counsel.”
The guard never entered, knew that he could not unless instructed so by the Elder himself. Markus nodded once. “Show him in.”
“Very good, Milord.”
The door clicked almost silently into the jam, and Markus glanced through the fractured luminescence of candlelight into Anton’s face. “Forgive me, Anton.”
“It’s quite all right, Milord. I’ll leave if my presence here is no longer convenient.”
Markus dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand, as if swatting at a stray fly. “Stay seated, my friend.”
A slight tap on the door, and Markus barked for the vampire to enter. Dante strode in, an imposing shadow whose form appeared grander than usual due to darkness thrown by the room’s fluctuating light. He nodded a greeting to Anton, who returned the gesture. Turning to face Markus, the Eliminator sank to his knees and bowed his head in greeting.
“You may rise,” Markus whispered. At times he considered the salutation gesture somewhat tiresome, but even he didn’t have the authority to dismiss a custom that had graced the coven for one thousand five hundred years.
“Milord,” Dante said, standing erect as he waited for Markus’s next response.
“What is it, Dante?”
“It’s the mortal; he’s staying at a hostel in this very city, checked in earlier tonight. My sources confirm his presence.”
Markus smiled as a wave of satisfaction washed through him. “Let’s end this tonight, shall we. Don’t let me down.”
The vampire warrior could barely control his enthusiasm. “Yes, Milord!”
Markus nodded once. Dante turned on his heels, coattails flapping as if preparing to take flight, and then he marched from the room. Shifting his gaze from the vampire’s departure to the grainy walls of his bedroom, Markus fixed his vision on a watercolor portrait of his deceased daughter, the fresco created by the skilled talent of Annibale Carracci himself. Shadows thrown by the candlelight shifted her expression, as if her immortalized countenance cast a smile of reassurance upon her father.
He sensed Anton shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and the Eliminator leaned forward. “If I may be so bold as to ask, Milord: what mortal?”
Markus breathed deep to quell his emotions, and closed his eyes. Within the darkness of his lids, blacker than an ocean’s deepest trench, swam the images of his once beautiful daughter: decimated and rent by a surgeon’s blade, gorgeous face distorted by forceps to display her fangs, torso opened to reveal her organs. An inner tide churned intense feelings of disgust and hatred towards the barbaric animal that had disfigured Gabriella’s beauty.
“There is something else of which you are unaware, Anton.” Markus opened his eyes slowly, stared into the stern face of his guest. “We were not able to recover Gabriella’s body immediately. Unfortunately the police removed her remains and an autopsy was performed on her precious body.”
Anton failed to hide his sickened expression and Markus sympathized with him, although the Eliminator’s shock and disgust could never match that of his own.
Without pause, Markus continued. “The medical examiner who performed the autopsy created a web site proclaiming our existence. He displayed pictures of the autopsy; photographs of my darling offspring cut open like a slab of meat.”
Markus sensed Anton willing anger to empower his body so that he could stride from the room and hunt down the cowardly mortal himself. In a way, he would have preferred Anton had the task of dispatching the man instead of Dante, but obvious circumstances prevented such an event. Markus trusted all of his soldiers however, and felt certain Dante would bring the heathen’s head to the castle before the night was through.
“And this monster is here: in Rome?”
Markus nodded. “He eluded our initial attempts to lure him out of hiding, but we’ve been tracking him since he left Bologna. It’ll be over tonight; my daughter will be avenged.”
“What of Gabriella’s body now?”
He smiled, although the pain of talking about his tragic loss sliced a deeper and more painful cut through his body than any werewolf’s claw had ever achieved. “She is home. We retrieved her body and she is buried in the castle gardens in Romania.”
His mind showed him her resting place; a tranquil setting in a secluded area of the grounds bordered by low hedges and surrounded by landscaped gardens that bloomed into splendid color during the summer months. The headstone displayed her countenance carved in gold, her effigy directed towards the rolling splendor of the Carpathian Mountains. She was sleeping peacefully in a location almost as beautiful as the body in which her soul used to occupy.
“Your wife—I trust she is coping.”
“Better than me. She is at home with Gabriella; tending her grave, taking care of matters in Central Europe. I have given her word of your blessed return, and she is happy and thankful. She sends her regards.”
“Thank you, Milord.” Something troubled the Eliminator, Markus could sense it in his shallow breaths, could see it in his darkened eyes. “I will not let you down again,” Anton said. “I will lay my life flat for the coven—for you—and I will not fall victim to those cursed hybrids again. I pray that Dante will complete his task tonight with swift and lethal precision, but should he be thwarted I offer my services and my energy for as long as it takes to hunt down this Godless mortal in Gabriella’s memory.”
“Thank you, Anton.” Markus sighed, and placed his empty glass on a small, twelfth century table to his right. “Now I think it is time you retreated to your quarters, and upon my orders summon the good doctor to give you all the blood you require.”
“Very good, Milord. Thank you for your generous hospitality.”
“It’s been my pleasure.”
Anton deposited his glass on the same table as Markus’s, nodded once, and then stood gingerly from the chair. His strength had diminished, but Markus hoped it wouldn’t be too long before the undead soldier had regained his full health.
We need warriors like Anton for the battles to come.
The solid wooden door clicked into the jam and then Markus sat alone in the company of a crackling fire, with broken memories, and troubled thoughts.
FIVE
Alessandro Downtown Hostel
Rome, Italy
Via Carlo Cattaneo stretches in a south-west direction away from Rome’s main rail terminal, the street lined by cars on both sides, its ancient buildings coated with the thinning gray light of an approaching dawn. Constructed from stone pigmented with yellow hues, the hostel’s exterior wall glowed as if the first rays of a breaking day already touched the building.
A figure stood motionless in a recessed entrance opposite t
he cheap hotel, a black trench coat wrapped tightly around his form to better conceal him in the gloom.
Dante strode confidently along the sidewalk, the rubber soles of his combat boots making virtually no sound on the weathered concrete. This area of the city had not seen any hostile werewolf activity in over a decade, and Dante did not feel the need to skulk through the shadows like a second-rate spy. Besides, at this time of the morning the majority of guests in the hostel were probably sleeping.
The man in the alcove noticed his approach and straightened his stance. “Ciao, Dante.”
Dante nodded. “Paolo; anything new to report.”
Paolo shook his head, eyes glancing towards the hostel’s third floor windows. “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
Dante recognized the line from the festive poem by Clement Moore and the corner of his mouth twitched in a wry smile. One hundred and thirty years ago he’d spent three Christmases in America, and needed to hear the poem every Christmas Eve. Even now he recited the opening two lines to himself when the clock struck midnight on the night before Christmas. Funny how certain memories stick with you, even through time as long as centuries.
He stepped into the recess alongside the younger vampire and looked at the dark hostel windows. “Which room?”
“That one: third floor, third window from the left.”
“Is he armed?” Not that it mattered; bullets couldn’t end Dante’s life. Unless the mortal carried a sword with which to decapitate him, Dante reasoned the encounter to come would be severely one-sided.
“Hard to say; he had a suitcase with him so there may have been something concealed in there.”
Dante nodded. This should be routine. “Thank you, Paolo; you can go now.”
“Do you not want backup?”
“My mission is to eliminate a mortal human; hardly a covert operation.” Dante looked down upon the smaller vampire. “You can take your leave. Get some rest.”
Monsters and Mortals - Blood War Trilogy Book II Page 5
