by Ben Tripp
“What are you saying?” Emily asked, because she wasn’t required to be polite.
“There has been a change of plans,” Sax said. “The whole operation is off. Sorry, but no dice, we’re done, we fuck off out of it at first light tomorrow.”
There was a silence as enduring as Gibraltar.
“I apologize,” Sax amended, “for the unfortunate choice of words. I mean to say ‘pack up tomorrow and depart forthwith.’ ”
“What you mean depart?” Min said, her voice simmering low.
“S’en aller. Quit the premises. Abscond, skedaddle, bugger off, leave.” Sax felt a fine hysteria building up. He terribly disliked having things not go his way. Disappointing people was not his strength, despite long practice. He wished now to shrivel up and hide in the corner, but the business must be concluded. “I’ll see that those of you who entered into this project with expectations of compensation are remunerated appropriately, of course.”
“Bloody right,” Abingdon said, not meaning it.
“My price goes up after what happen,” Gheorghe said, meaning it.
“You are making a joke, yes?” Paolo said.
“I’m not joking,” Sax replied.
“We quit? Ci fermiamo al progetto?”
“If your Leaping Monks of the Righteous Order of Tooting Flamingoes want to assault the castle, be my guest. I told you what we saw. It pains me to admit I am defeated. But we were nearly killed. This is a consortium of monsters we’re up against, not one isolated crank stuck in the seventeenth century. She has a helicopter, for Christ’s sake.”
“We have helicopters,” Paolo said. He just wasn’t getting it.
Sax looked around the room, growing desperate. Emily was merely confused, but Sax saw Min, Gheorghe, and the other two monks were not well pleased. Now the scene looked rather more like Tintoretto’s agitated 1570 version of The Last Supper. Fra Giu stood up and placed his palms on the table, leaning across it toward Sax.
“You do not the decision make for stopping this job,” he said. “There are forces at your back. We need this creature to be destroyed. But we cannot do it with ourselves because of the political situation and the nature of the Church in modern Europe. We cannot, you understand me? But every day that passes, that monster is kill more and more of the people. That girl upstairs is a heathen, but her soul is worth more price than anything you can take from the world. How many more souls?”
“Don’t get biblical on me,” Sax said. This wasn’t going at all well.
“Uncle Sax, nobody got hurt, right?” Emily said. She had a proper direct way of thinking, bless her. Sound mind, sound body. The rest is décor.
“Other than hypothermia and a few bruises I’d say we all survived,” Sax said. “And we used up all the luck we’ll ever have. Listen, people. I’ll pay you, I’ll write a letter to His Holiness the Pope on my personal stationery. The whole bit. But one thing I will not do is go back to that castle, and none of you are going either. Not on my watch, anyway. You god-fearing celibates can organize your own picnic.”
There was a brief silence while this news soaked in. Rock ended it. “I’ll go pack up my gear,” he said, and turned to leave.
“Chickenshit,” Gheorghe said.
“Say what?” Rock turned about a quarter of the way around, like a partial eclipse, his expression bemused, eyes fixed almost dreamily on some distance that only he could see. Sax recognized the look. He was making an effort not to blow his stack, as the kids used to say.
“I say you are scared like baby,” Gheorghe elaborated. “The big baby jungle bunny.”
Sax pressed his fingertips into his eyelids, trying by force of will to make time speed up so that, in the next three seconds, it would be a week later and he could open his eyes in his place in New York City and go back to hating the Wolfgang Hoffmann coffee table, which was really all he was good for anymore.
“Gheorghe,” Sax said, when time failed to accelerate, “please don’t use racial epithets.”
“It’s okay,” Rock said. “I’m here in a professional capacity. If the mission is canceled, so be it. We’d need a platoon.”
Sax was grateful for Rock’s self-control. It must have angered him, however, because he stepped outside. A rill of cold, wet air made its way through the kitchen.
“I’ll walk you home,” Abingdon said, and followed Rock outside.
Although Rock outwardly showed no emotion, when he closed the door behind them, it shook the entire house.
“Min?” Sax said, because Min was visibly trembling, her fists clenching and unclenching.
“You make vampire go free?” she said, composing her thought with care.
“It’s not my favorite idea,” he said. “I mean for one thing, it knows who I am. You have the advantage of anonymity. But if you want to scale the battlements on your own, be my guest. I’ll give you a map.”
Min threw her head around at the entire crowd, furious. Her mouth worked on foreign words that wouldn’t come.
“Everybody can go fuck you!” she barked, and stomped outside after Rock, probably heading back up to her stronghold on the hilltop to pack her meager belongings. It was raining needles. She’d be half dead of the cold before she got there.
“I think you are making a mistake,” Paolo said.
“I didn’t ask you,” Sax observed.
“I know something about these things, even if you do not trust me.”
“Don’t trust you?” Sax was nonplussed. “Of course I trust you. I just can’t bear to see you killed.”
“You don’t bear to see him killed,” Gheorghe said, “because he is so pretty.”
“Yes,” Sax said. “He’s lovely.”
“But is okay me and Negro baby get the death. That is fine with you.”
“That,” Sax said, with exaggerated patience, “is why you are here.”
“Okay,” Gheorghe said. “Vechiul meu prieten, un poponar laş. Does he suck on your pee-pee also?”
Paolo lurched upright from his slouch against the fridge and stepped past Emily, suddenly angry. Sax had never seen him angry.
“You do not speak that way in front of a woman,” Paolo said.
Gheorghe smiled. “One woman, the rest girls,” he said, his hands at his sides, fingers outstretched with palms forward, in the pose that meant take a swing at me. Sax saw what was happening. Gheorghe was frustrated because the mission had failed, so now he was going to insult everybody until he got a big reaction. Then there would be a fight, and he could divert his frustration down that more familiar channel, and at least he would be satisfied.
“One woman, three castrati, and an old faggot, I think you meant,” Sax said. “Get out now, Gheorghe. Nobody here is going to fight you. Just leave.” Sax went to the door and placed his hand on the doorknob. Gheorghe detached himself from the wall and sauntered with consummate insolence across the room. He winked at Emily.
“Don’t you wink at me,” Emily said.
Paolo advanced halfway across the room, and Fra Giu stepped between them.
“Paolo, this is not seemly,” he said.
“This man is a disgrace,” Paolo said.
“You are lucky, boy,” Gheorghe said. “If you went to the castle, you make wet in your pants and cry.”
Paolo surprised Sax when he didn’t respond to Gheorghe, but instead pointed an accusatory finger at Sax.
“You have no right,” he said, “to keep me from what needs to be done. I’m not a Greek statue for you to look at, Sax. Do not think I haven’t noticed. I am a professional. This is my job. You insult me and you insult the order.”
“Oh, come off it, you ravishing Roman reprobate. I’m running this thing. You want to take your lads for a butcher’s holiday in Germany, that’s no longer my business. It’s not like you’ve suffered, have you? I’ve fed you well. You’ve
been making googly eyes at my niece ever since she arrived—”
“Uncle Sax!” Emily interjected.
“Oh, Emily, don’t be Edwardian,” Sax snapped. “You’re the one that showed up uninvited and threw Paolo off his game in the first place. You were never supposed to be here, that’s all, and you’ve made things more difficult altogether. I cannot thank you for it.”
Emily was stunned by this. Her mouth hung open but no sound emerged.
“Right,” Sax said, turning to the monks Giuseppe and Dinckel. “Anyone else want a go before we retire for the evening?” He knew he was behaving abominably—he’d taken the insult-slinging role from Gheorghe and done him one better, going after anybody the Romanian had missed. But they didn’t seem to understand. It wasn’t just because of cowardice on his part that he’d canceled the operation. Rock had said as much—it was clearly suicide to proceed. And now they were all looking at him as if he’d spoiled somebody’s birthday party, rather than kept them all from dying horrible, unnatural deaths.
Sax was angry and upset and he wanted everyone right there with him. That was all there was to it. To signal the end of his remarks, he wheeled around, stuck his finger in Gheorghe’s chest, then opened the door and pointed out into the yard. Gheorghe turned to leave but remained in the doorway, letting the wind and rain get in. It was getting wetter by the minute outside, and cold enough that it might turn to snow.
“Will you please go,” Sax said. Gheorghe continued staring into the weather, apparently having forgotten everyone.
“That clock of yours,” Gheorghe said at last. “Gold with a blue middle?”
“Forget the clock. What do you care about the clock?” Sax said.
Gheorghe pointed out the door.
“It is here.”
Everyone crowded in the doorway to see for themselves. Sax switched on the floodlights he had installed along the eaves of the house for summer parties. The courtyard glittered with the impact of the smoking rain.
There was the clock, a pompous little folly in gold and porcelain with a pompadour of stiff yellow curls above a white face, standing on its four slender legs in the middle of the frozen dirt and the rain and the cold night wind. Sax’s first reaction was to run outside and bring it in so it wouldn’t get soaked—the clock represented the single most overpriced object he had ever purchased. And besides, it was his, and it was back. He wouldn’t let it out of his sight again.
That phase of his response took all of a half second. It was followed by a tremendous sense of dread. If the clock was here, it had been delivered by his nemesis. Somehow Sax didn’t think the vampire had sent it by Deutsche Post. She was out there, or her servants were.
“I think I’d better close the door,” Sax said, and did so, crowding everyone back.
“Do not you want stupid clock?” Gheorghe said. He hadn’t yet realized what its presence meant.
“We have a problem,” Sax said, his voice unnaturally calm. He did not feel calm. “Let’s move away from the doors and windows. I think we need to think what we’re going to do.”
“Rock has so much weapons,” Gheorghe said. “He’s there. I get him.”
He reached for the doorknob and Sax caught his wrist.
“Gheorghe,” Sax said. “If that clock is here—”
Emily was moving toward the window to look out at the clock. “The vampire is nearby, isn’t it,” Emily said. She was shivering.
Sax motioned to Paolo. “Get her away from there,” he said. Paolo grabbed the back of Emily’s blouse and pulled her into the middle of the kitchen. “Can someone,” Sax continued, “please call Rock on his mobile phone? I’ll call Abingdon. Min hasn’t got a phone but she may already be dead, crossing that field.”
Sax let it ring. Abingdon didn’t answer. The vampire might have gotten him while he was walking over to his bread truck. Sax dared to get close to the window to look outside—he vividly remembered the Russian’s ragged fist coming through the window of the camper van, and expected another grab at any moment—and saw Abingdon’s truck standing by the barn looking perfectly normal. There were lamps lit in the cottage as well, the small windows spilling honeyed light through the slashing wind and rain. Rock might be in there, oblivious to the danger, or he might be dead.
Paolo was sensibly turning out the lights around the maison.
Sax got Abingdon’s automated message, waited for the beep, and said, “Don’t go outside, the vampire is here.” Then he ended the call. What a strange world, that with a piece of technology like the mobile phone he was leaving a message to warn a fellow forty feet away about a vampire.
Fra Giu had his own mobile out: “I called the order in Roma. Four hours away most soon, even in the swift helicopter. They are coming. When they can, here be they will.”
Sax was grateful. It was far past time to be sensible and let the professionals deal with the situation. He had never felt more amateur than he did now. Fra Giu suggested Fra Dinckel get Emily upstairs, and they went; Gheorghe stood beside the living room drapes, concealed by them, looking into the farmyard through the gap in the curtains.
The house was tragically insecure. At least they were inside a building, which was better than being inside, for example, an old bread truck; but the house was defenseless without its heavy shutters drawn shut. These were dogged back against the exterior walls, so that was that. Sax had a suspicion there were eyes watching him out there in the darkness beyond the panes.
“I gave to Emily a cooking knife,” Paolo said. He was standing in the darkness beside Sax, in the kitchen, where there was a view of the cottage.
“We might be safer if we can get over there,” Sax said. “It’s got hardly any windows and only two great heavy doors.”
“I think the vampire wants us to go out in the yard,” Paolo said. It had been less than four minutes since Gheorghe had first seen the clock. A blast of cold air suddenly rushed around the house.
“Gheorghe, don’t!” Sax shouted, but he was already speaking to an empty dining room doorway. Gheorghe had run out into the yard. With the house dark and the exterior floodlights burning, he was like a mime on a stage in a dark, wet theater. He had his head tucked down into his shoulders against the stinging lances of icy rain, but he moved with speed and grace. His course took him past the pathetic little clock, which did not appear to notice him. He ran to the SUV and threw himself inside. Nothing leapt from the darkness beyond the glistening farmyard wall. Nothing changed.
“What the hell is he up to?” Sax muttered.
Paolo slammed the French doors in the dining room shut. The floor was already wet. He jammed a chair up under the door handle. Outside in the SUV, Gheorghe was rummaging around for something. Sax saw him in silhouette behind the streaming glass of the vehicle’s windows. He found what he was looking for: the handgun he’d shot the vampire Yeretyik with.
“I give us ten minutes,” Sax said. “Unless she’s just toying with us.”
Paolo blew through his nostrils by way of response, a noise of disbelief.
“Maybe,” he said.
That was when Sax saw it.
First the green discs of the eyes, then the white, wet flesh looming out of the darkness beyond the wall of the yard. A hunding.
“Aieee,” Paolo said, under his breath. “Mio Dio.”
“You’re in for it now,” Sax said, deeply angry not at Paolo but at the huge, pale creature stepping into the light of the yard. “A piece of the action like you wanted.”
One by one, the others saw the creature. Emily made a sound in her throat like an antique telephone disconnecting. She was too frightened for words. Fra Giu muttered a prayer. The thing outside was maggot colored, covered in straps of thick muscle, its claws and fangs like something from a child’s drawing, huge and gleaming. The heavy bristles on its back looked like cactus spines. Its eyes never left the group inside the m
aison.
There was a crack and a flash of light and a black hole appeared in the monster’s chest. The creature recoiled and leapt back into the shadows and Gheorghe rolled his window up in the SUV. At least, Sax thought, he’d seen the thing in time. But the Romanian was now well and truly trapped.
“We need to do something,” Sax said. “Get more knives.”
Emily appeared at his side.
“For God’s sake, woman—” Sax began, and then stopped, and instead of speaking he threw a quaking arm around her, pulled her to him, and clutched her tight.
“Emily, I’m sorry about this,” he managed to say at last. He turned back to the kitchen window. Gheorghe had a second gun in his hands now. It must have been the one Rock had brought with him to Germany.
“I have the hammer you gave me,” Emily said.
“What?” Sax wheeled on her, his old eyes lit with energy.
“Simon. I brought it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was a ridiculous thing to do,” Emily hissed, angry and ashamed and afraid all at once. “It’s in my suitcase under the bed. Should I get it?”
“Foolish girl!” Sax hissed, frantic.
Fra Dinckel descended the stairs now, his eyes bulging almost out of his head, the massive Bible clutched to his chest.
“We heard a gunshot,” he said.
Paolo spoke to Fra Dinckel in rapid Italian and pointed at the ceiling. Emily’s room was above the kitchen. Fra Dinckel put his Bible on the kitchen table and ran up the stairs with his thin-soled Italian shoes slapping.
The hunding was there again, moving along behind the wall of the yard. The wound in its chest issued a red river of blood and the lashing rain diluted the blood and kept it flowing, its intensity of color shocking against the pale flesh. The creature slunk behind the cottage. Rock must have heard the shot from inside. He knew that sound well. He would be alert to danger, if he was still alive. Sax hoped so.
The hunding emerged on the other end of the cottage, by the entrance gate of the yard, and went down on all four legs. It kept low, the rear bulk of the SUV between itself and Gheorghe, who was in the front seats. Sax saw that Gheorghe was aware of the monster’s position. He was up on his knees on the passenger seat. The Romanian wasn’t wasting another shot. He kept the gun trained on the beast but did not fire, allowing the monster to come closer.
