by Tal Bauer
Alain flew back from Cristoph. He and Cristoph twisted, staring wide-eyed at Lotario. He’d sat up on the couch and was rubbing one hand over his face
“How long have you been awake?” Alain pushed himself to his feet, dusting off his pants.
“Long enough.” Lotario eyeballed Alain before dropping his gaze to Cristoph.
Cristoph stared between the two men. Alain wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I can help,” Cristoph said, standing. “I can help you both.”
“Cristoph, no—” Alain said, at the same moment Lotario spoke. “Sounds like a great idea!”
Alain leveled a flat glare Lotario’s way.
Lotario grinned back, all yellowed teeth and gums. “I’ll lend you a shirt, Alain. Yours is fucked.”
* * *
Alain buttoned up the black shirt Lotario loaned him, carefully skirting the burns on his chest while watching Lotario explain the banishment circle to Cristoph. The two men were kneeling down, Lotario pointing out sigils and signs and explaining the magical weights, the calculations he’d performed to balance the energies just right.
“Where did the demon go?” Cristoph traced a chalk sigil with his finger.
“Destroyed. I built this circle to trap and exterminate demonic energies. The power generated,” Lotario gestured to both circles, “was enough to obliterate its energies.”
Cristoph looked at Alain silently.
“Did you get the flash drive from Angelo, Lotario?” Alain shook off Cristoph’s stare as he tucked in his borrowed shirt.
“Yeah, before he left. I don’t have a computer though. Let’s get back to your office at the garrison.”
Alain nodded, and they filed out of Lotario’s apartment one by one, Alain carefully avoiding Cristoph’s gaze. Lotario steered Cristoph ahead, agreeing they could swing by the bar from the night before to pick up the duffel he’d left there when the incubus had pushed him out the back with a promise of a quickie. Alain closed his eyes against the sound of Cristoph’s voice, hesitating on the stairs, but he started up again when Lotario barked up at him. He followed down to the street and slid into the backseat of the Bug, not meeting Cristoph’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
Lotario called him out when they stopped at Moondust, after Cristoph hopped out to check on his duffel.
“Alain—”
“Don’t, Lotario. Just don’t.”
“You’re still pushing him away? After all this?”
“Why are you encouraging him?” Alain snapped. “You know I won’t let anything happen. You know how much it would kill me if someone I—” He looked away. “If someone I cared about was hurt. Again.”
“Your fear is paralyzing you. Are you really ready to throw this away? When you know how he feels about you?”
“And how does he feel about me?” Alain glared at Lotario through the rearview mirror.
“Enough that an incubus dressed as you in order to seduce him. His deepest desire.” Lotario puffed on his cigarette, angrily blowing the smoke out the window.
Alain looked away.
“And don’t think I didn’t notice the incubus flicker to him once you were close enough to be caught in its thrall. That is not what I thought would happen if you were ever trapped with an incubus, but it just proves—”
Alain’s eyes slid closed. His stomach tried to turn inside out. “Lotario?”
“Yeah?” Lotario flicked ash over the window, onto the street.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Lotario chuckled, and then the passenger door creaked open as Cristoph folded himself back inside the Bug, carrying his lost duffel. He grinned over his shoulder at Alain, his eyes seeming to search for some sign or signal. All Alain could manage in return was a weak smile.
He stared out the window as they puttered back to the Vatican.
When they arrived, news trucks blocked St. Anne’s Gate, and there were ten extra Swiss Guards on duty at the entrance to the Vatican, harried and frantic and trying to direct Vatican traffic in and keep news vans, reporters, and oglers out.
Alain leaned over Lotario’s shoulder at the gate, sticking his head almost out the window, and waved the nearest guard over.
It was Zeigler. Go figure. Alain schooled his expression to neutrality and ignored the harsh inhale from Cristoph, the whispered curse directed Zeigler’s way.
“Halberdier,” Alain addressed him as Zeigler approached.
Zeigler’s eyes went wide as he took in the battered Bug, Lotario chain smoking, and Cristoph, looking exhausted with deep dark circles beneath his eyes.
“Sergeant.” Zeigler straightened. He looked down his long nose at Alain.
“What’s going on, Halberdier? What happened?”
“You haven’t heard?” Zeigler’s eyes flashed back to the street and a crowd of reporters trying to heckle a comment out of a group of nuns walking into the Vatican.
“What happened?”
“The secretary of state has died,” Zeigler said. “Cardinal Carlo Nuzzi. The Vatican claims it was from natural causes and he died in his sleep, but someone leaked a photo of blood on the walls in the Apostolic Palace—”
“Drive! Now!” Alain pounded the back of Lotario’s seat.
Lotario slammed the Bug into gear and floored the accelerator, gunning the choking engine and launching into the Vatican. They screamed through the Swiss Guard courtyard, slipped around the barracks, and drove up the hill toward the Vatican Bank. Lotario swerved, parking the car outside the back steps to the Apostolic Palace.
Alain dove out of the car, clambering out at the same time as Lotario. Cristoph followed, jogging behind as they took the entrance steps three at a time, bypassing the shocked Swiss Guards on post and running through the halls before anyone tried to stop them.
The Royal Staircase loomed ahead, and they jumped the gleaming steps two and three at a time, passing marble statues of angels staring downward, hands outstretched as if to smite the wicked. Archangels stretched skyward, blowing their trumpets in exultant glory, robes fluttering wildly in still stone. Nymphs frolicked, their sightless eyes still trying to flirt, with breasts and smooth thighs spilling from falling robes.
A long corridor led them to the turnoff to Cardinal Nuzzi’s apartments. Along one wall, a gigantic fresco loomed, a pitched naval battle warring forever on tumultuous seas. Death, a sightless skeleton robed in swirling black, watched over the battle. Death’s empty eyes seemed to follow their every step.
When they arrived at Cardinal Nuzzi’s apartments, Commandant Best stood with Cardinal Santino Acossio, the Vatican undersecretary of state. They turned to the trio.
“Alain,” Best said, his voice weary. “Halberdier Hasse. Father Nicosia.”
Panting, Alain propped his hands on his hips and tried to look somewhat dignified. Lotario sagged beside him, doubled over with his hands on his knees. Cristoph stood to the side, trying not to fidget.
Cardinal Acossio watched with a single raised eyebrow and a slowly curling lip.
“We just heard,” Alain breathed. “We were waylaid. There was a… situation in Rome last night. We’ve just returned.”
Best nodded. “What have you heard?”
“The secretary of state. Cardinal Nuzzi.” Alain shook his head. “He’s dead.”
Commandant Best turned to Cardinal Acossio. “Thank you, Cardinal Secretary. I will brief His Holiness and yourself as soon as I am through with my men.”
The new cardinal secretary of the Vatican nodded once, turned on his heel, and left.
Best waited until Acossio had walked away. He turned to Alain, stepping close to the trio. “We’ve put out that Cardinal Nuzzi died of natural causes in his sleep. But a picture has leaked out.”
“We heard. A blood stain?”
“A bloody geyser. It’s terrible.” Best shook his head. “Nuzzi was murdered.”
“How?”
Best held his stare. “A vampire killed him.”
* * *
Cardin
al Nuzzi’s body was mangled almost beyond recognition.
Alain stood at the doorway to the cardinal’s apartment, his shoes just out of reach of the pool of blood. Commandant Best stayed with him, questioning Alain on the state of their investigation, and what they knew—or didn’t know—so far.
Best didn’t say as much, but the tightness in his eyes, the pale blanch of his face, the thin spread to his lips, made Alain’s palms itch.
Alain’s gaze lingered on Cristoph, crouched next to Lotario beside Nuzzi’s bloodied head and neck. Cristoph looked so out of place in his faded jeans and his white T-shirt, dirty from the floor of Lotario’s apartment and the exorcism. He didn’t belong here. He’d wanted to send Cristoph away. Cristoph had lingered too long. He was supposed to head back to his dorm and rest. Recover his strength. The lingering drain of the banishment spell hung heavy on Alain’s bones, and he knew it had to drag on Cristoph, too.
He chewed on the inside of his lip as Lotario pointed out the defining features of a vampire murder to Cristoph, gesturing to Nuzzi’s body.
Nuzzi lay on his back on his French provincial coffee table, arms flung wide, as if his death were a parody of a crucifixion. The body was misshapen, broken in so many places. His spine was cracked in half, and the lower body twisted one hundred and eighty degrees from his upper body. Bruises dotted the old man’s frail skin, deep purple and black eddies. Slashes and tears tore through his chest and his abdomen. His guts had spilled out, tumbling on either side of the table and pooling on the blood-soaked floor.
His throat had been slashed with talons and fangs. Shredded to ribbons, white bone protruding through the mess of muscles and fat and bloody skin. His face was practically ripped off, destroyed, beaten and torn almost beyond recognition. Parts of his skull shone the carnage where patches of his hair and skin had been ripped from his head.
Lotario’s gruff voice pointed it all out to Cristoph. He asked questions, too, questions Alain remembered from twelve years ago. “Tell me what you taste in the air. What do you smell?”
Cristoph closed his eyes. His nostrils flared.
Alain’s teeth scraped together.
“Blood. Copper. And… fog. Something wet. Like dirt.”
“That’s the grave dirt. Vampires keep grave dirt with them in their nests and when they’re moving in the world.”
“Also…” Cristoph frowned. “It’s like lightning. The air after a storm. And something else.” He shook his head. “Makes me think of snakes.”
“Good.” Lotario squeezed Cristoph’s shoulder. “You’re smelling ozone. Clings to vamps. Makes you feel like lightning is arcing in the back of your throat when you’re close to one. And I get the snake smell, too. Sometimes you might think you’re smelling sand, of dust.”
Cristoph managed a smile for Lotario, even over the murderous tableau spread before them. He glanced over his shoulder, toward Alain, his eyebrows raised.
Alain looked away.
Best spoke, drawing his attention back. “Alain, I have to report to His Holiness in ten minutes. He’s quite upset, as you might be able to guess. What can I tell him?”
Only days ago, it had just been a freak ghoul scavenging in the city. Then a vampire murdering a prostitute. But she was a prostitute who had been sleeping with the cardinal secretary of state and spying on him for a nest of vampires.
Vampires who wielded Demon Fire.
But now was a lone, possibly crazed vampire running through the city as well, stirring up the etheric and the supernatural. A lone, possibly crazed vampire who had killed the girl.
And now, Cardinal Nuzzi was dead, too.
Why? How did it all add up? Why kill the girl? Why kill Cardinal Nuzzi? Why kill the spy and the target?
Why had an incubus appeared in the Campo? Why had Cristoph, of all people, been targeted?
Alain dragged his palm down his face. “Commandant…” He swallowed. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
He repeated what he’d told Best before, about the nest of vampires under Rome, then added in Lotario’s find of the abandoned solitary vampire’s nest. The research they’d found, the signs that pointed to a crazed lone vampire wreaking havoc on the city. Angelo’s call and the discovery that Madelena had seduced Cardinal Nuzzi and had spied on him.
“For who?” Best frowned. “Who was she working for?”
She was one of ours. “The vampire nest. The alpha knew her. Claimed her.”
Best paled, and his lips drew tight, a thin line pressed against his teeth. “And now Cardinal Nuzzi is dead.” He exhaled softly. “The pact is surely forfeit now. But why? What information did she steal? What have the vampires learned?”
“We just got the flash drive this morning. We still need to search through it. We spoke to the cardinal yesterday evening. He said he only had his laptop at her apartment three days ago. That would have been the only chance she had to rip the files.”
“And she died…”
“Yesterday. That’s not a large window to get the information to the vampires.” Alain thought back to the vampire’s bone cathedral, their nest beneath Rome. He shook his head. “They weren’t gloating, though, when they captured me. They were shocked we were there. In fact, they were asking me questions, trying to get information out of me.”
“What kind of information?”
“They didn’t know what I was, for one. Or who. They thought I was a priest. They wanted to know about the hunters in Rome.” He picked at his dark suit jacket, rumpled and covered in salt grime and dust. “Guess the outfit works for something.”
Best pursed his lips. “Could that be connected to what the girl was stealing?”
“It’s possible. But a full rip of the cardinal secretary of state’s laptop would have given anyone mountains of data on the Vatican, on all sorts of secret dealings. Vampires have known of hunters for centuries. We’re nothing new. And that nest should definitely know us.”
“But you said it was a new alpha.”
Alain nodded.
A heavy sigh as Best shook his head. “I don’t like any of this. It’s not adding up right. If they did get the information they needed from her in a single day, the nest could have been the ones to kill her. She’d be useless to them. But then why leave the drive in her possession? It’s sloppy. I certainly don’t think they have laptops down there in their nest, but still. Leaving evidence behind is careless. And vampires are anything but careless and sloppy.”
“They weren’t the ones to kill her. The alpha didn’t know she was dead.”
“Suppose the nest didn’t get the information she stole, then. Someone killed her before she could pass it on, and made it look like the nest was responsible.”
“The lone vampire’s blood was there. We think he killed her.” Alain frowned. “Which means he’s working against the nest. Against the alpha, and against their own spy. Why?”
“And now, Cardinal Nuzzi is dead as well.” Best sighed. “There are too many unknowns. Find out what is on that drive, Alain. Find out what the vampires are willing to rise and kill for.” Best nodded to Cardinal Nuzzi’s corpse. “Find the cardinal’s killer.” His eyes softened, just slightly. “I am also glad to see you are training Halberdier Hasse.”
“I’m not—”
“Keep him close,” Best interrupted. “I don’t like that the vampires are asking such questions about the hunters. We’ve kept a cloak of secrecy over our identities for hundreds of years. We all need to be careful now.” He nodded toward Cristoph. “Everyone.”
Alain gritted his teeth. “Yes, Commandant. I’ll brief you on what we find from the drive.”
Best nodded, clapped Alain on the shoulder, and headed out, slipping from the cardinal’s apartment and shutting the door behind him.
Alain turned back to Lotario and Cristoph. For getting off on the wrong foot, the two seemed to be getting along as thick as thieves, now. Cristoph had taken to soaking up Lotario’s gruff teachings and pearls of bloody wisdom. Despite hi
mself, a smile curled the corners of Alain’s lips, watching Cristoph crouched next to Lotario.
“What else do you see? Look at the whole scene.” Lotario waved his hand over Nuzzi’s corpse and the cardinal’s sitting room. “What stands out?”
Cristoph peered around the bloody apartment. “The door wasn’t forced. The vampire didn’t come in that way.”
Lotario smirked. His chin jutted toward the window and the lightly twitching curtain.
Cristoph sidestepped Nuzzi’s corpse and the shattered glass and scattered silver, stepping between blood stains across the apartment to the windows overlooking the tiny San Damaso courtyard that sat in middle of the Apostolic and the Medieval Palaces.
“Window’s busted,” he said, pulling back the curtain.
Lotario nodded. “What else?”
Cristoph’s eyes slitted as he took in the apartment, sweeping left and right slowly.
Alain’s eyes burned, and he was suddenly standing in a similar room, over a corpse sliced to ribbons by another vampire, watching his fellow knight learn the ins and outs of a supernatural murder, twelve years ago. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, to not blink away the moment, to hold on to it for another second.
No. It’s the past. It’s all in the past. And it won’t happen again. I swear to God, the bastard, that it won’t happen again.
“The vampire crossed the room unnoticed. He got around the sofa. Then there was a struggle.” Cristoph pointed to the toppled stained-glass lamp and the overturned silver serving tray bracketing the end of the couch. “Nuzzi was sitting. Drinking.” A crystal goblet lay on the floor, dark wine mixing with the spilled blood. “He jumped up. The vampire attacked. Shoved him backward onto the table.” Cristoph moved as he spoke, walking through the scene. “He was alive for a while. While all of this—” His hand swept over the disfigured corpse. “—was happening.”
Lotario stood, his knees cracking. He tossed a wry look Alain’s way. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Alain nodded. He smiled thinly when Cristoph met his gaze. “No, not bad at all.”
The warm look Cristoph gave Alain almost melted his bones. His breath shorted, and he coughed as he leaned against the doorway.
