The Fifth House of the Heart

by Ben Tripp

  They settled into Fra Paolo’s office on the ground floor. It was taller than it was wide, with two narrow windows set into shining pale pistachio-colored walls. There was a framed photograph of the Pope about eight feet up one wall, a bronze crucifix opposite that, and a calendar pinned up behind the desk. These articles, plus three identical wooden chairs and a wastepaper basket, made up the contents of the room.

  Fra Paolo offered Sax refreshments. Sax accepted a coffee, brought in by the lean yellow-haired man: a German, Sax learned. The coffee was ferocious. Apparently the order did not frown on all stimulants. Fra Paolo explained that little had changed since Sax’s last visit, thirty years before, except obviously the staff. The brothers who operated the place then had been, for the most part, long since promoted—or had died. The brotherhood’s work remained the same. Mostly they assisted German Catholics seeking the graves of their ancestors, arranged funerals for newly deceased dignitaries, and did administrative work.

  Now and then, they also slew vampires.

  “I am told by the monsignor in New York that you wish to assemble a team,” Fra Paolo said, after what he gauged to be a decorous interval of polite conversation.

  “Yes,” Sax said. “A sort of motley crew. I don’t know if you customarily do that sort of thing. I feel silly even asking.”

  Fra Paolo crooked his ermine brow and nodded gravely. “It is distressing, though,” he said. “We bring people together, they go out into the world, and we bring them back sometimes in small boxes. We come to feel responsible.”

  “You needn’t feel responsible. This is my junket entirely,” Sax said. “I wouldn’t trouble you to begin with, except for the bureaucratic aspect of things. And I do need some introductions, of course. What happens after that can hardly be your fault.”

  Fra Paolo opened a drawer in his desk and retrieved a daybook. He leafed through it. Nailed an entry down with his square fingertip.

  “Here,” he said. “Yes. You see, Mr. Saxon-Tang—let us speak to my superior. He will explain.”

  Five minutes later they were standing inside the cool, echoing nave of Santa Maria della Pietà, which looked remarkably fresh—it had been bombed during World War II, and restored more than once since then, so it lacked the usual patina. The newness of the finishes made the sculptural motifs of dancing skeletons attended by fat marble putti all the more bizarre. Very German. Nero’s bloody circus had stood in this same spot. The soil beneath the floor was soaked with the gore of early Christian martyrs. The Vatican’s phalanx of archaeologists had developed a theory that the wolves to which some of these victims were thrown may actually have been lycanthropes; that is, they were vampires in bestial form. Sax wouldn’t put it past a chap like Nero. Then again, it would have been something to attend those parties the late emperor threw.

  Fra Paolo introduced Sax to a very short, stout German prelate named Achenbach who wore a black zucchetto, or skullcap, and old-fashioned steel spectacles. There was an awkward moment in the introductions when Sax failed to do something that was expected—kiss his ring? Lick his shoe? Sax had no idea what it was. His heathen status now established, the conversation went straight to business.

  “You seek a demon,” Achenbach said.

  “For lack of a better word, yes.” Sax rapped his cane on the floor for emphasis and it made an unexpectedly loud report like a gunshot. He winced.

  “You do not know where presently it is.”

  “Yes,” Sax said. “That is to say, no.”

  “But you have on two occasions,” Achenbach said, his pale, folded features struggling to hold back an expression of disbelief, “these creatures found?”

  “One of them found me, strictly speaking. But yes. I was much younger then.”

  “You will be killed,” Achenbach said, and smiled in a compassionate manner. Fra Paolo stood by with his muscular hands clasped in front of his groin, head tipped back in an attitude of listening.

  “Yes yes yes,” Sax said. “I’ve thought of that myself, you know. I didn’t come all the way here just to be told I’m a bloody fool, Your Honor. I came here—”

  “Yes,” Achenbach interrupted. “I understand. It is curious. That is all. You are a peculiar individual.”

  Sax turned to Fra Paolo and wagged the cane at him.

  “Young man, we must have a linguistic barrier. In German or Italian, if you please, explain. I was hoping, you see, for some assistance. This gentleman can either help me or he cannot. I wish to know immediately. I can’t be wandering from church to church all day—I’ve got work to do.”

  Before Fra Paolo could respond besides turning deep red, Achenbach spoke.

  “I was told you were . . . iconoclastic was the word. I understand it now. You defy all emblems of power but your own free will. You fear authority figures. You dislike men who wear the mantle of office. You dislike Mother Church, which claims authority not just over this treacherous world, but the souls within us all. I accept that this is your way, and I pray for you that someday you will discover forgiveness for the world, and seek for your own self forgiveness. The Church here is always. When you renounce your sins and seek to be cleansed of spirit, the Church here is always. Her arms open to you are always.”

  This speech caught Sax off guard. He had thought this was going to be a straightforward case of some old reprobate with a fancy hat telling him he was a very naughty sinner and to remember to fill out the forms after he’d slain his vampire and hand over anything of interest (meaning value) to the Church, for which of course he would receive absolution for any violation of Christ’s law during the struggle to subdue the fiend incarnate, and a tax-deductible receipt. That’s what had happened the last time. Now they were handing out offers to join the team. It would be coupons for the Vatican gift shop next. Sax grunted, because words failed him. Achenbach was staring at him, his moist, faded eyes dim behind the spectacles.

  “It may surprise you to know, Mr. Saxon-Tang, that you do have friends here. It was to me a surprise to learn who they were. You go with great blessings. Mighty blessings.”

  Sax inclined his head by way of thanks. He couldn’t quite say thank you aloud, but he wasn’t immune to blessings, spurious as they might have been. As an inveterate name-dropper, Sax was very curious to know how high up in the hierarchy his surprising friends in the Church might be. Achenbach had bent his eyes in the direction of St. Peter’s when he mentioned it. It would goose the hell out of old Pillsbury if Sax turned out to be pals with the Pope himself. But he didn’t ask. Even Sax occasionally deferred to the gravity of a moment, if only for variety’s sake.

  “So go you with God,” Achenbach continued when Sax had been silent longer than usual.

  “Yes,” Sax said, realizing the interview had ended. “That’s all very well. But along with God, who else am I going with?”

  “Oh,” said Achenbach, and waved a small pink hand at Fra Paolo. “Him.”

  8

  * * *

  Rome

  After his interview with the prelate, Sax had gone straight back to his hotel for a nap. He was to meet Fra Paolo at six o’clock that evening, which gave him three hours. Sax slept heavily until the knock on his door signaled the young man’s arrival.

  “You keep waking me up,” he said, and ushered Fra Paolo into his room.

  Fra Paolo looked extraordinarily well in his priest’s clothing. He had been given dispensation to wear something more practical than the fitted, ankle-length cassock for the duration of this adventure, so he now wore black trousers and a short-sleeved shirt with a postage stamp of white collar at the throat. His arms, freed from the stovepipe sleeves of the cassock, were strong, veined, and richly furred. None of these garments were equipped with pockets, which Sax presumed was something to do with being a monk. Instead he carried the small black purse on a wrist strap favored by European men.

  Sax found himself fervently
desiring to be young again. He’d show this beautiful bit of Italianate ornament a thing or two. One thing, at least.

  Fra Paolo was chatting happily about inconsequential things: how strange it was to be wearing ordinary clothing, and how well the interview with Achenbach went, and what dry weather it was. After a few moments, when the sleep and prurient desire had been cleared from his brain, Sax erected a finger to signal he wished to speak; there was something important to say. Fra Paolo shut up immediately.

  “I am,” said Sax, “pleased to have you along.”

  “Thank you,” Paolo said. “The honor is mine. You are a famous man in our field.”

  “Now, hang on. I wasn’t done. You’d better sit down. Have an Orangina from the fridge. Here’s the thing. I am, as is obvious, a homosexual. That is the least of my disqualifications, but it does cause the narrow-minded some discomfort. But there’s more to me than just that. I am, in addition, an unscrupulous, greedy, spiteful coward—with the scruples of a jackal and the reliability of a Renault 9. I’ll betray anybody for a profit. Judas wouldn’t have stood a chance against me; I’d have been down at the Pharisees’ office with a copy of Christ Jesus’s driving license for thirty pieces of copper, no questions asked. Any stories you’ve heard about some dashing vampire killer are absolute rubbish. Look at me. I can scarcely get across a room without widdling myself, let alone bung a spike through some bloodthirsty monster. Every single bit of the hard work on this job will be done by others. I won’t do a bloody thing. And afterward, when everyone else is dead, injured, and infected with plague, I’ll shove everything worth having in a couple of suitcases and off I’ll go. Not a glance backward. That’s who I am.”

  “Yes,” said Paolo. “So I was told.”

  Sax was terribly offended. But at least he’d made his case. He’d gotten it all out there. Now Fra Paolo could bow out of any personal involvement, find Sax some proper assistants—meaning sociopathic mercenaries—and Sax could get on with the job.

  Sax found he was sweating. He fumbled out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “I see,” Sax said, when Fra Paolo failed to add just kidding.

  “I was told you are a bad man for this job. I was also told you are the only man for this job.”

  Apparently, Fra Paolo’s dispensation amounted to a free pass. His usual existence was constrained by Church regulations, and what he wore was the least of it. There were rules and obligations accreted around every imaginable aspect of the monastic existence, the result of fifteen hundred years of trying to outwit the devil or defeat human nature, depending on one’s point of view. The idea, hatched apparently in the Vatican itself, was for Fra Paolo to blend in, at least as far as a man dressed as a priest can do so. It would get more difficult the farther they got from the Vatican.

  When Sax suggested Fra Paolo take him around to some antique shops in the immediate area so he could see what worthless brummagems they were trying to pass off as sound articles, Sax got some insight into what a life of avoiding sin—as opposed to seeking it out, which had been his own approach—was like. It was misery, from Sax’s point of view. Fra Paolo was forever second-guessing himself, hesitating, and deciding he’d better not. And that didn’t just apply to the obvious things.

  In one of the shops there was, Sax had to admit, a very nice ebony crucifix with delicate ivory mountings. It was Victorian, distinguished because it was a common object crafted with uncommon skill. Worth relatively little. Fra Paolo picked it up, examined it, and then put it down with a little guilty jump as if he’d been caught shoplifting the thing down the front of his trousers. When Sax had asked him, in an entirely conversational way, if he liked the object, Fra Paolo had responded, “No, I couldn’t.”

  “You don’t, or you can’t?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I only asked if you liked it, not if you wanted it. Is that against the rules?” Sax genuinely wanted to know. He was fascinated by people who denied themselves, as they were so alien to him.

  “It is an object made by men. To worship the material, the craftsmanship—”

  “Yes, well that’s what you do already with that dangly thing round your neck, for that matter,” Sax said, indicating the small silver cross Fra Paolo wore on a long chain.

  “This? It’s a symbol only. I don’t think of it, only what it represents.”

  “So you’ve gotten used to it, in other words.”

  “Yes,” Fra Paolo said, and shrugged with great force.

  “In that case,” Sax said, picking up the ebony cross, “would you not get used to this nice bit of workmanship here? As you say, it’s just an object.”

  “But to become accustomed to an object of such beauty would be an act of pride.”

  “Pride? Because you had something nice on the wall?” Sax found himself pressing the tips of his fingers against his forehead, as if to keep it from falling off until they could reach a hospital.

  “Yes,” Fra Paolo said, shrugging with less force this time.

  “But,” Sax said, aware that he’d gone down a rabbit hole with no bottom, “you can see the dome of bloody Saint Peter’s out your office window!”

  “So?” Fra Paolo looked even more worried now, his big dark eyes wide with alarm.

  “Do you ever look at it?”

  “Yes,” Fra Paolo said, as though admitting he was addicted to cough medicine.

  “And you’ve never felt a little tickle of pride at that?”

  “No. Perhaps, Mr. Saxon-Tang, you do not realize Santa Maria della Pietà is not located within the margins of the Holy See. We are across the street. When I look out my window, I am looking from my humble outpost in the secular world at the very threshold of heaven. It is a kind of penance, to my way of thinking.” Fra Paolo shook his head mournfully and extracted the cross from Sax’s fingers. He placed it back on the little wire stand that held it upright, and they went out into the street.

  From that time forward, Sax no longer called the man Fra Paolo; he would now be only Paolo. To stick a title on the front of his name was only encouraging the poor fellow. And he had a little side project to occupy the empty hours when they weren’t after the vampire. Paolo was afraid of his own mortal weaknesses, it was clear. So all Sax had to do was to find which weakness Paolo had the least control over and exploit it. That would be jolly good fun. There were many ways to seduce a man.

  That night, Sax felt quite lively. Paolo was allowed to drink, apparently, and showed no special hesitation at doing so, which demonstrated that wasn’t his weakness. After an aperitif in the hotel bar they repaired to a small osteria with which Sax was familiar. Sax was gratified that Paolo had never heard of this place, less than a ten-minute walk from his office. Of course Paolo, being the austere type, probably ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  Sax was energized, he suspected, by the simple act of making something happen. Not everyone, after all, got the Vatican’s blessing to go out and loot a vampire’s hoard, and was given a piece of Italian beefcake to go along with it.

  9

  * * *

  Mumbai

  It had to be Yeretyik who was following Nilu.

  He was too big, his movements too drunken as he walked, to be anyone else. And he had wrapped himself from head to knees in tattered blankets so that only one long, pale hand was visible, clutching the fabric together; there was a slit where his eyes would be. People would mistake him for a leper. His wounds were still fresh and even if he’d drained fifty dogs and a few beggars of blood to stay alive after his escape from the hospital, he would be extremely weak and hampered by his injuries—vampires healed quickly and could regenerate any part of their bodies, but regeneration took months or years, not days.

  Min adopted a shuffling, hesitant gait and hunched her head over her chest, as if she were very old. The blanket-wrapped figure that had emerged from the darkness ah
ead of Min looked around furtively, saw her, but did not mark her as important. Just another shrunken peasant in the sweltering night, two blocks behind. Min didn’t even know if the Russian could see her at that distance. He only had one eye, and it wasn’t likely to be working as well as it had before Min blew his face off.

  Min kept herself hunched over but increased her stride, closing the distance between herself and the quarry. The vampire was intent upon Nilu. He was moving fast. Nilu’s steps slowed, and she stopped moving, as if in a trance—which she probably was. Yeretyik halted, and there was some kind of invisible communion between them. Nilu turned as if to run away, but she moved in slow motion. In her mind, she probably thought she was running—vampires could do that, make their victims lose all sense of the passage of time. Min was acutely aware of time. She had another few meters to go before she would be within attacking distance, the critical intersection of how long it took her to draw her weapons and how fast she could run.

  Her steps picked up speed. The vampire had not observed her, still fixated on his victim. Nilu had crossed the street and now she was leaning against a building, rocking her head back and forth as if to deny Yeretyik’s existence. He threw the blankets aside and seemed to grow in height, expanding at the scent of his prey so close.

  He was about to attack.

  Min bolted flat out, the scarf falling from her head, and she had her silver hammer and the shotgun in her hands. It would be five or six seconds before she could reach the vampire. She might be too late.