by Jack Conner
He drew a sharp breath, as if pained. "I don't know. It's hard for me to accept. All I can say for sure is that Sarnova has a lot of balls, and I can see why Subaire was so outraged. Really, I'm surprised Sarnova got as much support as he did." He drained his glass. "I think that he might be right, though. It's time for a change. Then again ..."
Kharker removed a shoe and massaged the sole of his foot with one hand, still holding his cigar with the other. "I didn't know what to make of it either, son," he said. "At first I was indignant. Revealing ourselves to mortals rather, well, puts us on their level, wouldn't you say? Knowledge is power; our knowledge of our own presence helped me think we were somehow superior. I got to thinking, What would happen if humans knew of us? Would I lose stature, self-confidence—something? And I found that I might, I just might. On the other hand, I might not.
“Another issue: say they decided to punish those of us who'd committed unforgivable sins—which most of us have, at one point or another—like they punished the Nazis of war crimes after the fact. What then? Well, we all know what then: I'd be executed. And you with me, Ruegger. Most of us would. But, and this is virtually the only positive thing I can think of, we wouldn't be hiding anymore, and that might make all the difference."
Slowly, he leaned forward. "Now," he said. "It's your turn."
* * *
Later, Gavin showed Ruegger and Danielle to a large guestroom. The bed on which their baggage waited was an enormous four-poster monstrosity with hand-sewn sheets and pillow casings somewhat concealed by a thick mosquito net. After Gavin had left, Danielle fingered the netting and raised an eyebrow at Ruegger.
"Why so thick?" she asked.
"Haven't you seen the mosquitoes here? They've been sucking Kharker's blood for decades."
"You mean immortal mosquitoes?"
"Yep. And Kharker's a shapeshifter, remember."
"Werewolf insects ... I can see a really bad movie come out of that one." Her voice changed into a rather poor imitation of Bela Lugosi: "I—am—Count—Bugula!" She laughed. When she grew serious again, she said, "It's strange the things you remember. I spent two years here and I don't remember the bugs at all."
Suddenly the heat and humidity seemed to overwhelm her and, pushing past the mosquito nettings, she sank to the bed and placed a hand to her forehead. "You really think he killed Ludwig?" she said.
"No. He's been friendly with Roche Sarnova for nearly a thousand years, though, so if Sarnova did kill Ludwig, I doubt Kharker’s going to rat him out. One thing's for certain; if Kharker didn't do it, he's convinced Sarnova did. Either Sarnova confessed to him, or someone made him believe that Sarnova was responsible. I think the former's pretty unlikely, because that means Sarnova then let Kharker take the blame, and I don't think the Dark Lord is that cowardly."
"No, but he has to know by now that Kharker did in fact take the blame, so why hasn't he stepped forward, or at least discouraged Kharker from posing as Ludwig's killer—unless he actually thinks Kharker did it?"
"Maybe Kharker refused to let him take the fall because if Maleasoel somehow found a way to kill Sarnova in order to avenge Ludwig, then there'd not even be a hope for a one-day Jerusalem of the Undead. I think that's a cause Kharker would die for. He seems to've taken to the idea." Ruegger sat beside Danielle. "Here's another thought. I think someone—a third party—convinced Kharker that Sarnova did it so that he'd be willing to take the fall. Then the third party gave him the soldiers as a bargaining piece."
"So he can fight off Malie if she decides to attack."
"Right. And I think that Sarnova hasn't stepped forward because he thinks Kharker might actually have done it."
"But if that's true ...”
"... then the soldiers themselves might be able to tell us who sent them to Kharker."
"Because whoever gave them to Kharker might just be Ludwig's killer himself, or herself. Wow. So he, she, or it had Junger and Jagoda kill Ludwig because the Balaklava are connected with Sarnova, then used Junger and Jagoda’s connection to Blackie to convince Kharker that Sarnova was the killer, so the Hunter would take the blame."
"Perhaps the killer really intended Kharker to be the target all along." He blinked and took a breath. The puzzle was finally beginning to take shape. Then why did he feel a growing sense of dread?
She smiled. "Jesus. If that's true, it's brilliant. Naturally, this is assuming Hauswell was wrong and that Vistrot isn't really Ludwig's killer. But that's another issue altogether."
"In other words, what we're looking for—although in a backward sort of way—is the Balaklava's second employer. Or, rather, the one that they refused."
“Maybe the one that hired Jarvick to kill us.”
The Caucasian guards did not prove very forthcoming. Ruegger and Danielle spent three worthless hours interviewing them with no real results—except for the conclusion that whoever hired the guards had enough sway to ensure their silence and the psychic power to enforce it.
"So what now?" said Danielle, bare feet falling quietly on the uneven jungle ground as she and Ruegger took a stroll.
"A hot bath, a cold beer and a good screw."
"No, seriously."
"Seriously."
Later, as they lay, swaddled, in the damp cream sheets of the large bed, passing a joint back and forth between them (a rare indulgence on Ruegger’s part), he said, "I like it here. It's …. relaxing."
She blew out a fragrant plume and nodded. Their sweaty hands brushed as she handed him the joint. "It scares me here,” she said. “To think of you and Kharker, how you were ...”
He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. "It scares me here, too," he told her, "thinking of you and Jean-Pierre ... maybe in this very bed."
She took one of his fingers and placed it to her lips, bit down on it gently, then sawed it playfully between her teeth. "Let's not do this, baby," she said. "We've both done things, you know, things separate from each other, that if we dwelt on, they'd kill us."
He blew on her neck, his warm breath enlivening the dried sweat there, making her stir. "Shouldn't we work through those things, though?"
He could feel her smiling against his hand. "I love you, Rueg," she said, “but you always think before you speak."
"Meaning?"
She placed her hand on his thigh, drew little circles on his firm pale skin. "Some things you should let lie.”
Knocking came from the door.
“Come in,” Ruegger said.
"Lord Kharker is preparing for tonight's Hunt," Gavin said, popping his head in. "He invites you to join him. If that’s satisfactory, he asks that you meet him in the Elephant Room in fifteen minutes." Without waiting for a response, he bowed his head and withdrew, shutting the door behind him.
"Jesus," said Danielle. "One moral dilemma after another."
"Shall we go?"
"If we do ... we won't kill them, okay?"
"Of course."
"But?" When he didn't answer, she nodded sadly. "Yeah, I know... He'll kill them anyway, won't he? Maybe not tonight, but they'll be Hunt-fodder eventually."
"Yes."
"That fucking bastard. That arrogant fucking bastard. He really thinks he's better than they are, doesn't he?"
“He thinks it’s the natural order of things.”
She rose from the bed, naked, lit a cigarette and started pacing the room, wrestling with herself. Ruegger hated putting her in this situation and knew that speaking his own mind would only exasperate her.
"Remember our pact? Remember the Marshals?" she asked. "To fight evil where we could ... and let's not get into that there's-no-such-thing-as-evil argument. But let's say this: if there is such a thing, Kharker embodies it. Would you agree?"
He closed his eyes. "We're not going to kill Kharker."
"But wouldn't that be the right thing to do? Kill him now and he'll never hurt anyone again."
"Morally speaking, I guess that's a gray area. But even if we wanted to ... to kill
him ... we wouldn't be able to. Kharker's too strong, and he's got Gavin and the rest of them."
"And you love him, don't you?"
"Dani ..."
"Don't Dani me, goddamnit! Not when you're protecting someone like him. There's no fucking gray area about that!"
He didn't know what to say, so he lit a Red and slipped on a pair of black jeans. She turned away from him, and he knew that she was crying, if only on the inside.
"Fine," he said. "I love you. I love him. You're probably the only two people alive I can say that about, except maybe Amelia, if Hauswell was telling the truth. Now I'm not going to see anyone I love get hurt, and I don't like it that you're using my feelings for you to get me to kill him."
"I'm not trying to manipulate you, Rueg," she told him, still turned away from him, her arms folded stiffly across her chest, the point of her cigarette sticking out from beyond a shoulder. "But he's a jackal, no matter how loveable he might be."
She stabbed her cigarette out and began to dress. There were no tears in her eyes, and Ruegger wondered sadly if maybe he was rubbing off on her. When she was dressed, she walked over to him and embraced him. He could feel her tremble a little against him and wondered if she could feel him doing the same.
"Let's not fight anymore, okay?" she said, her words muffled by his chest. "You're the only one I have in this world. When we fight it's like I'm losing something. To tell you the truth, Rueg, I just got a little seasick back there when I was yelling at you."
"Me, too.” He stroked her oily hair. Taking her face in his hands, he placed his hot forehead against hers, their noses barely touching, their eyes staring into each other's, unblinking. "I love you."
"I love you, too, damnit."
They found Kharker in front of the large, blazing fireplace of the Elephant Room, a wreath of cigar smoke over his head. He wore a fine dark bathrobe that had seen better days, and he was naked beneath it, ready for the Hunt. Smiling when he saw the odd flock, he took an expensive box down from the mantle over the fireplace and held it out to them.
"Please, take one," he said.
"Thanks," said Ruegger, lifting a brown tube from the box and tearing through the plastic.
"Yeah," said Danielle, smelling hers. Once she had it lit, she looked at Kharker and said, "Why do you do this?"
Around his cigar, he said, "Tastes good."
"No. The Hunt."
"Same reason, dear. Same reason. But don't worry your little dark head about it. I hate to see you scowl. When I learned you were coming, I ordered in some good old-fashioned murderers, especially for you—and Ruegger, of course, if those are still who he decides to feed from."
She took a step back as if to get a better look at Kharker, and Ruegger saw surprise on her face.
"No shit?" she said. "You did that for me?"
Kharker chuckled, stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Don't look so shocked, my dear. I pride myself on being a good host and I would never want any of my guests—you, least of all—to feel uncomfortable. Now come, both of you, and let's go meet our victims."
Danielle hesitated. "No," she said, a little unsure. "I'm glad you ... that you did this for me ... but still, I'd rather not meet them first. If that's okay with you."
He nodded kindly. "Of course it is. Ruegger?"
"Yes?"
Kharker cocked his head questioningly, ready to go meet his prey. It was a friendly gesture, and Ruegger felt somewhat torn. Like Kharker, he enjoyed meeting his victims, if for different reasons.
"No," the Darkling said. "I'll stay with Dani."
The Great White Hunter turned his eyes up to the heavens, as if to ask why. Ruegger knew he was trying to make light of it all, but he also knew there was some hurt in Kharker's old, rough face.
"How will we tell the difference," asked Danielle, "between your prey and ours, the murderers?"
"Collars," said Kharker. "The murderers will be wearing black collars around their necks." He bowed informally. "Well, have fun, you two. I'll meet you back here when you're done."
"Looking forward to it," said Ruegger, gratified by the Hunter's chuckle but unnerved by the glance that Danielle shot him.
When Kharker was gone, Danielle gave a little self-deprecating laugh. "He is something, isn't he?"
Ruegger nodded. Smoking, he lost himself in thought for a moment before she tugged his sleeve.
"Hmm?"
"Come on, baby," she said. "Let's go outside. I'm hungry."
* * *
The Hunt went well. The black-collared prey shot at Ruegger and Danielle, sliced them with knives and even bit them, but the murderers were brought down eventually, dying bloodily in the potent tangle of the jungle. Danielle glowed as she drained her meals, while Ruegger got more enjoyment out of watching her than from the meals themselves. Each vampire fed twice that night and after feeding spent the remaining time scaring the surviving prey, sending them deep into the forest to be recovered by Kharker's retrieval units.
When they finally returned to the main building, it was an hour before dawn. Experiencing the wild rush of the kill, Ruegger and Danielle showered together, making love with frenzied abandon as they washed themselves of their victims' bloods. They shouted and screamed, gorging themselves on each other until they were spent. Afterwards, they took turns drying each other off, gently toweling the other's tender skin. Smiling, holding hands, they threw on bathrobes, lit cigarettes and made their way into the Elephant Room.
Lord Kharker stared out of a window, his eyes turned to the windswept night beyond the glass. At the sound of the odd flock's entrance, he swiveled, and it was instantly apparent by his furrowed brow that something was wrong.
"What is it?" asked Ruegger.
"This morning, before you arrived," said the Hunter quietly, as if to himself. "I noticed some of the mosquitoes flare up at sunrise, like little matches going off all around me."
"You mean, they've been sucking the blood of vampires," Danielle said after a moment. "Or at least shades that couldn't stand the sun."
Kharker nodded absently, his hands clasped behind his back. "Something's out there," he said. "In the forest."
"It could be something else," Ruegger said. "A past guest, maybe. Something."
"No," said the Hunter. "Any bug that sucked on a past guest would have been vaporized by the sun long ago, if the guest wasn't a werewolf. But that's not all. One of the retrieval units I sent out tonight. They never came back." He returned to the window, stared through his own reflection out into what waited beyond. "Something's out there," he said.
Chapter 2
That day, safe behind blackout curtains and in the warm embrace of Ruegger's arms, Danielle dreamed of a night long ago, the night her foster brother Malcolm Verger and Jason Locke and the rest of them had raped and tortured her. She could feel their hands around her throat, squeezing and crushing as they thrust themselves inside her, their savage grindings eased by the oil of her blood. They beat her, smashing some of the bones in her face and her chest. Straight-razors flew. They were cutting her deeply, in too many places to name, when suddenly, emerging from the gutter, Junger and Jagoda appeared.
“It’s my turn, mon,” Junger said.
Gasping, Danielle awoke.
* * *
"What is it?" Ruegger said, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
"N-nothing," she said.
She wiped away a trickle of sweat from her forehead with a trembling hand, kicked all the sheets off herself and sat up, panting.
“Nothing?” he said.
His first instinct was to wrap his arms about her, but he saw by her expression that the last thing she wanted was to be touched. One strap of her silk slip had fallen off a shoulder, but he didn't dare move to right it. Sitting up carefully, he reached for a pack of cigarettes and offered it to her, but she waved it away, not looking at him. After watching her expectantly for a while, waiting to be able to help her in some way, he realized that she was completely obl
ivious to him. She stared straight ahead, her eyes clear but glassy, and she seemed to be looking at something within instead of without.
Unfortunately, it was not the first time he'd seen her like this in the days following their departure from Las Vegas. Being crucified and made helpless by Laslo had only seemed to reawaken her old nightmares about Malcolm Verger’s gang raping her when she was a young girl. To give her time to think it through, Ruegger used the head, washed his face, shaved and dressed. Danielle appeared a little more collected now, although she still sat motionless on the bed. He thought she might be on the verge of tears and found to his surprise that he hoped that she was. I don’t want to rub off on her too much.
She didn't cry, though.
At long last, she shook her head, whispered the word "Jesus" and climbed from bed. She slipped on a tight pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt that revealed her midriff. For the first time in a long while, Ruegger found the color black depressing. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was time for a change.
She hugged him, but he thought it more perfunctory than an honest display of affection.
"Baby," he said.
"Hmm?"
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
Normally, after their dusk rituals had been performed, they would talk for some time or enjoy a while of companionable silence, so he found it strange that the silence which followed her declaration was tense and uncomfortable. He wanted to speak of it but couldn't find an angle. Puzzled, he sat down on one corner of the bed and used the glowing butt of his day's first cigarette to light a second, which gave him something to do.
Meanwhile, Danielle went to the window, raised the blackout curtains and stared out at the young night and the boiling jungle that was a part of it.
Gavin entered. Bowing formally, he bid the odd flock good dusk and informed them that Kharker would be coming by in ten minutes to escort them to breakfast. After Ruegger thanked him, he left.
"Hungry?" Ruegger asked Danielle, when they were alone again. He knew it was a weak attempt at conversation but didn't know what else to say.
