There was a loud metallic snap and the shackle sprang open. The sudden release caught Redlaw by surprise and he collapsed backwards.
The chain rattled loosely to the ground. Redlaw picked himself up and grasped one of the handles. He dragged the door open, heaving it against the knee-deep snowdrift that had accumulated in front, until he’d made a gap just wide enough to slip through. Drawing his Cindermaker and chambering a round, he went inside.
THE MOMENTS IT took his eyes to adjust to the gloom were the most dangerous. Anything could happen while he was temporarily blind.
At SHADE, image-intensification goggles were standard issue equipment. Now that he was “freelance,” Redlaw was having to learn to do without the things he had once taken for granted.
Dimly, the church interior took shape. Pews stood in haphazard rows, some overturned. The font had been removed—presumably a nice piece of marble masonry, worth reselling—leaving just a bare plinth. The pulpit was intact, and so was the life-size crucifix that stood in the apse behind the altar. On it hung a Christ depicted in that pose that so many ecclesiastical sculptors seemed to think appropriate: the Son of God wasn’t exhibiting any apparent pain. There was only profound sorrow written across His face, His anguish spiritual rather than physical.
The presence of the crucifix gave Redlaw pause. Perhaps he’d made a mistake. He had assumed the church would be bare inside, stripped of its holy regalia. How could there be vampires here with this large sacred symbol still dominating the place? To them it was as toxic as radioactive waste.
Then he caught the distinctive, meaty whiff of vampire scat. It smelled fresh.
And, above his head, he detected faint, furtive movement.
The rafters.
Vampires were up there. Watching him. He could sense pairs of crimson eyes staring down.
He walked further into the church, along an aisle over whose flagstones countless congregations must have passed, and many a bride; many a funeral procession, too. He tried to exude an air of calm and peaceability. He didn’t want to alarm anyone. The Cindermaker hung by his side, concealed discreetly in the folds of his overcoat.
As he reached the end of the nave, he sensed vampires descending behind him. It was instinctual as much as anything, a prickling of his nape hairs. They were putting themselves between him and the doorway, guarding his exit route. Some were coming down the church’s pillars as well, with near-perfect stealth, shadows shifting amid shadows. They weren’t going to challenge him openly. Not yet, and maybe not at all. They were waiting to see what he did. If he turned round and left, they would most likely let him, sinking back into the darkness as if they had never been there.
The vampires had nothing to gain by being aggressive, and nothing to lose by adopting a cautious stance.
Redlaw halted at the altar, a bare block of stone not unlike a raised tomb. Experience was telling him he was in the company of at least two dozen Sunless, perhaps as many as thirty. He could read the acoustics in the church much as a bat could map its environment by sonar. The tiny scraping clicks of talon on stone, which to most ears would have seemed just random background noise, to him spoke volumes.
His right shoulder gave a sudden involuntary spasm, reminding him of the last time he had been in a large building full of vampires. An industrial unit on the Isle of Dogs. A trap laid for him by one of the few people in the world in whom he had had complete, implicit trust.
The episode had left him with extensive scarring and an arm that was stiff every morning.
His faith in his fellow man had suffered greatly, too.
“I am here,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “only to talk. I mean you no harm whatsoever.”
His words were met with absolute hush. He pictured the vampires hanging from the walls and pillars, stock still, ears cocked, listening.
“You’re probably aware that I’m carrying a gun,” he went on. “You can smell the cordite and the ash-wood bullets. I promise it is only for self-defence. I have no intention of using it unless necessary, by which I mean unless I am provoked and in fear of my life. As a show of earnest, I’m putting it down here on the altar and stepping away.”
He did so, taking three paces backward.
“Now it’s out of easy reach. You have the advantage over me. Like I told you, I’m not out to harm. I really only want to talk.”
Whispers crisscrossed the gulfs of the church. Nervous chatter. He caught the gist of it. Who was this? Could he be believed?
“I can give you my name, though it may not count for much here. John Redlaw. Formerly my job was to police your kind. I’ve since assumed a more pastoral role.”
It occurred to him that many if not most of these Sunless were not native English speakers. He should simplify his language.
“You might call me a human shtriga.”
That set tongues wagging. The word shtriga carried weight. Non-vampires weren’t even supposed to know it.
“How interesting,” said someone to Redlaw’s left.
He spun.
A man appeared from the transept on that side, sauntering round the base of the pulpit. He was dressed like a priest, from dog collar to ankle-length black cassock, yet he didn’t move like one. His gait was delicate, feline, full of grace and sinew. He had a pronounced widow’s peak and a lean face that tapered to a very pointed chin.
He was no ’Less. His eyes were normal-looking, not bright vampiric crimson.
But he wasn’t just a man, either.
“You do yourself a disservice,” he continued. The accent was American, but bore a trace of east European. Russian, perhaps. The way the “r”s rolled and the intonation rose and fell. “You’re too modest by far. The reputation of John Redlaw has spread beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s global, but it’s undoubtedly international. Within a certain stratum of society, that is.”
“And you are...?”
The priest, if he was a priest, smiled. And all at once he was no longer standing in front of Redlaw, he was behind him, crouched on the altar with the Cindermaker in his hand.
“Faster than you,” he said, levelling the gun at Redlaw. “And ready to blow your head off if you make the slightest false move.”
CHAPTER
FOUR
Shtriga, thought Redlaw. Not a pretender like me. The real thing.
“Come, my children,” said the shtriga priest, beckoning to the unseen vampires all around. “It’s quite safe now. I have this under control. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Captain Redlaw knows full well that his fate rests in my hands. He could no more disarm, defeat or outrun me than he could fly to the moon. So come closer and see. See this man who has turned so many of your brothers and sisters to dust, and who now dares to invade our private sanctuary, carrying a weapon whose sole purpose is to make dust out of you, too.”
The vampires crawled down from their perches, dropping silently to the floor. They gathered round Redlaw in a shuffling, tightening circle. Red eyes blinked. Fangs parted to reveal wormy, purple-black tongues. The creatures were all sizes, representing a wide range of ages and ethnicities. What they had in common was an indifference about appearance—they were strangers to laundering and the use of a comb—and a hunched, stooping posture, part-way between that of a lion and a hyena.
Redlaw had been surrounded by vampires before, but every time he’d had a small arsenal of dedicated weaponry on him—stakes, garlic smoke bombs, aqua sancta grenades and the like. This time he was completely unarmed, and didn’t even have the consolation of knowing there was a team of shadies nearby to provide reinforcements.
“Two points,” he said to the shtriga, as coolly as he could. “One, it’s not ‘captain’ any more. It’s Mr Redlaw, or simply Redlaw. Two, I was telling the truth when I said I’m here to talk. If you know anything about me at all, you’ll know that I’m no liar. I mean what I say and I say what I mean.”
“And you claim to be shtriga?” The priest
dipped down and grabbed Redlaw’s jaw, none too gently. “Show me your teeth.”
Redlaw peeled back his lips.
“Human teeth,” said the priest. “And yet...” He subjected Redlaw to a lengthy appraisal with his nose, sniffing up and down his face, neck and shoulders. “There is shtriga scent on you. Minute traces. I can only just smell it, but it’s there. You’ve met one of us, not so long ago. Known him well. No, not him. Her. Yes. Her. She has left her mark on you. This was not some casual encounter. The two of you became close. Were you maybe even sexual partners?”
“That’s my business,” Redlaw said stiffly.
“Oh, I think you’ll find it’s my business, too. While I have this”—the priest brandished the Cindermaker—“everything about you is my business.”
“Yes, about that.” It was the third time in as many days that Redlaw had been held at gunpoint. With a Cindermaker, moreover. He was heartily sick of it. “Either get that thing out of my face or use it. One or the other. Just stop waving it around like it actually means something to you. You don’t need it. You can kill me with your bare hands, and we all know it. I wouldn’t stand a chance against you. The gun’s just a prop, so you can show these ‘children’ of yours how you’ve turned the tables on me, how completely at your mercy I am, the irony of threatening me with my own weapon. I’m sorry, but I find that sort of cheap melodrama a total waste of time.”
The priest studied him, and for a moment Redlaw wondered if he hadn’t just bravado’ed himself into an early grave.
Then another smile appeared on that gaunt face, and the priest flipped the Cindermaker round so that he was holding it by the barrel, the grip extended towards Redlaw.
“Go on. Take it,” he said. “You’re right. I have no need of it. Although, should you attempt to use it, I assure you it will be the last thing you do.”
“We seem to understand one another,” said Redlaw, uncocking the gun and pushing it down the back of his trousers. “Now then. I’m here for answers.”
“You are, are you? And you expect me to give them to you?”
“I’m hoping so.”
“Well... I suppose it all depends on the questions,” said the priest.
“There’s really only one question,” said Redlaw. “Who’s killing vampires?”
THE PRIEST HAD a name. It was Rudi Tchaikovsky. Yes, Tchaikovsky. Like the composer. They had been distant relatives, or so he had been led to believe. The famous Tchaikovsky had been a cousin of a cousin, something like that, with perhaps a “once removed” thrown in. Although that may just have been a tall tale, a desperate grasp at the coattails of fame by his family.
Where that other Tchaikovsky’s vocation had been music, this Tchaikovsky had been destined for just one calling since birth, namely the church—Russian Orthodox, of course. His father had been a priest, as had his father’s father, so young Rudi was never likely to do anything but follow in their footsteps.
Nor had he ever wanted to be anything else but a priest. During his boyhood, the mysteries of God had been as exciting to him as any book or toy. Growing up in a rural township outside Kostroma, some two hundred miles north-east of Moscow, he had discerned God’s influence everywhere around him, in every tree and blade of grass, in the sparkle of sunlight on snow and the lonely howl of the wolf on the taiga. God’s love interpenetrated Rudi’s world at an intimate, almost cellular level, and he could imagine nothing nobler than sharing that passion, that joy, that sense of divine omnipresence, with local churchgoers.
All of this Tchaikovsky told Redlaw as they descended a narrow spiral staircase down to the crypt. Half of Tchaikovsky’s vampire “flock” followed at a respectful distance, with the other half remaining behind in the nave of the church to keep watch. All night, vampires stood sentinel in the rafters, and all day too, at pains to avoid stray sunbeams. Vigilance was crucial, according to Tchaikovsky.
There were more Sunless in the crypt. The place was packed with them. They occupied the shelf-like alcoves where coffins had once lain. They stretched out on three-tier metal bunk beds, with scarcely any room between the top mattress and the low vaulted ceiling. Some slumbered. Others peered at Redlaw with wary wakeful eyes. So many unwashed undead in such close, airless confines generated an overwhelmingly repugnant stench. Redlaw thought he was pretty inured to such things, but even he had to shield his mouth and nose.
“You get used to it,” said Tchaikovsky, seeing his discomfort. “I myself hardly notice any more, and they of course aren’t troubled by it. To them, this musk is community, a cementing in scent.”
“You were a priest,” said Redlaw, staring sidelong at Tchaikovsky, “and now you’re a shtriga. How does that work?”
“Better than you’d think.”
“But aren’t the two mutually exclusive?”
“Who says so, Mr Redlaw? God? I believe in God’s plan. Nothing happens that He does not allow. It was His will that I became what I am, a century ago. It is His will that I now use the abilities I have been granted to help those who need help, to embrace the less fortunate and elevate them, to be a good shepherd. I did that as a priest back in Kostroma Oblast, before the Bolshevik Revolution came along and the persecution of the religious began, and I do that as a shtriga here, in modern-day New York, New York.”
“In a deconsecrated church.”
Tchaikovsky grinned, revealing for the first time his fangs, which were tidier, more discreet, and nowhere near as snaggled as the average vampire’s. “It has a nice... I was going to say irony, but you’ve shown yourself to be no fan of that, so let’s call it symmetry instead.”
“But with holy symbols everywhere. The windows. That crucifix.”
“Me they don’t affect in the least, and as for this lot...” He gestured at the huddled vampires. “They build up a tolerance. Repeated exposure seems to inoculate them. But also, bereft of meaning, of significance, what are those saints and angels in the windows? That Jesus on the Cross? Coloured glass and painted wood, that’s all. They derive their potency from the beholder, and there haven’t been beholders in this church for years, not of the devout kind. Faith infuses inanimate objects with power, charges them up like a battery pack. The objects in themselves are meaningless. You have something round your neck, yes? I see a chain. A crucifix, would be my guess.”
Redlaw nodded.
“Just a few ounces of moulded metal,” said Tchaikovsky. “The small piece of ore it originally was could have ended up as part of a car, or a piece of scaffolding, or the leg of a desk chair. It just happens to have been forged into an item of neck attire, an icon of a particular shape. What makes it in any way special is the person wearing it. When John Redlaw holds up that crucifix to ward off a vampire, it isn’t the crucifix itself that repels, it’s the faith of the man whose hand it sits in. You empower it, or the Lord through you. And that,” he concluded with a slight apologetic bow, “is my rather longwinded explanation for how a nest of vampires can survive in what was once holy ground but is now simply vacant urban real estate. Forgive me, the habit of sermonising is hard to break. You haven’t come to learn about any of that.”
“No.”
“We’re down in the crypt for demonstration purposes,” said Tchaikovsky. “Today, as you can see, you can’t swing a cat in here. A month ago you could have. Several cats. I had to buy these bunk beds—military surplus—and I’m cramming people in as tightly as possible, but we’re at capacity. I’ve even had to institute a rota system, like they did with the crew’s quarters in galleons of old, sailors sharing berths, sleeping in shifts, so that everyone gets somewhere to rest. And the reason for that is—”
“New arrivals. Fresh intake.”
“Precisely.”
“They’re coming in from elsewhere.”
“From all over New York state, New Jersey, even up in New England. Fleeing to the city. Drawing together. Seeking safety in numbers.”
“Because they’re scared. Because someone is busy killing vampires.
”
“Just so.”
“I heard reports.”
“This is the proof of it, Mr Redlaw,” said Tchaikovsky. “Right here. More and more of them turn up each night. They follow scent trails and word of mouth and find their way to my door, and I take them in, as is my rightful duty, and give them succour and shelter. Someone has begun targeting vampires in this country, systematically unearthing nests and eradicating them.”
“Who?”
“This we don’t know. It could be civilian vigilantes, like your Stokers.”
“They’re not ‘my’ Stokers,” Redlaw snapped.
“Figure of speech. But I must say it seems better organised than that. There’s a distinct pattern and consistency to the attacks. They began in New Jersey and have been progressing steadily northwards through that state, heading this way. That doesn’t seem like the actions of a civilian lynch mob. That, to me, smacks of planning and direction. It even, I daresay, looks a bit like herding.”
“Driving the vampires into a heavily populated area,” said Redlaw. “In which case, besides the ‘who’, there’s also the ‘why’. This isn’t just some spontaneous upsurge of anti-Sunless sentiment. There’s an ulterior motive.”
Tchaikovsky regarded him with something like respect. “You’re genuinely concerned, Mr Redlaw.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Precious few humans care for, let alone about, vampires. In fact, hardly any. Fear is the commonest response, with revulsion a close second. Both understandable in their way, if not pardonable. However, it’s almost unheard of to come across a man who actually, sincerely puts a premium on vampire welfare. And an ex-SHADE officer, no less. What could have brought about this Damascene conversion, I wonder?”
“Not so much Saul to St Paul as poacher turned gamekeeper. No, make that gamekeeper turned conservationist.”
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