He tried the knob and found it unlocked, despite the early hour. The proprietor of the Museum of Shadows must have been either a very trusting soul or an early riser. Octavian had thought to surprise him, both because Herr Buchleitner liked surprises and because he knew that the stooped, spindly old man might rightly suspect his visit to be something other than a social call and did not want to give him cause to do anything rash.
A bell rang above the door as Octavian entered. The floorboards creaked beneath his bootheels. In blue jeans and a faded brown leather jacket, he hoped that he looked like any other tourist, though he had been inside the Museum of Shadows many times, had even been responsible for donating many of the items on display inside its glass cases.
Herr Buchleitner had been one of the people Meaghan had saved in Residence Square that day, more than a dozen years ago. She had thrown the old man over her shoulder and carried him to the safety of a side street and he had wandered away — half-blind because he'd dropped his glasses — and collapsed right in front of this shop, which had been for lease at the time. In the years since, he had turned it into a museum for artifacts from the terrible war that had been fought in this city, a way to honor those Shadows who had fought and given their lives for its people. Many had mocked him and some had been furious, but Herr Buchleitner insisted upon educating them about the Shadows, trying to make people understand that they could be angels or devils, as they so chose. Much like ordinary human beings.
The Museum of Shadows had not won the kind old gentleman any friends.
Neither did his cigars, Octavian thought.
But as the thought occurred to him, he realized that he could smell only the faintest aroma of the stinking things.
Footsteps came from the rear of the little museum. Octavian glanced up as the tall, painfully thin man emerged from the gloomy back room, putting on a pair of round spectacles. But as the man stepped into the light, Octavian saw the unruly brown hair and the bright eyes behind the glasses. There were wrinkles on his face, but far too few. The features were familiar, particularly the beak of a nose, but thirty years too young.
"Ja?" the man asked.
"I'm looking for Herr Buchleitner."
The man narrowed his eyes, studied Octavian for a moment, and then glanced over at a display case. Octavian recognized one of the items inside — an antique pistol that had once belonged to Will Cody. There were photographs there as well.
"I know you," the man said in English. "Peter Octavian."
"I don't know you," Octavian replied. "I'm looking for —"
"Herr Buchleitner," the man interrupted. "So you've said. And I'm sorry to report that I am the only Herr Buchleitner you will find within these walls. I am Lukas Buchleitner. Julian — the man you knew — was my uncle."
"Was," Octavian echoed.
"Heart attack," Lukas replied. "In April of this year. On his birthday, believe it or not. Nobody should die on his birthday."
Octavian exhaled heavily and glanced away. He swore under his breath and ran a hand over his stubbled chin, studying the objects in the cases around the room, the daggers and ledgers and crucifixes. In a small frame on the wall was a black eye patch that he realized must have belonged to Sister Mary Magdalene, one of the members of Liam Mulkerrin's sect of Vatican sorcerers. Suddenly the whole place seemed ghoulish. Somehow Julian Buchleitner's genuine academic curiosity had made it all more palatable.
"You were friends," Lukas prompted.
"Perhaps," Octavian allowed, turning toward the man, who so looked the part of museum curator. "Though that might be overstating it. He was a man of courtesy and intellectual honesty, and I admired that. He also brewed excellent tea."
Lukas smiled. "That, at least, I believe I've inherited. I could make you a cup."
"Thank you, but no. I don't want to give you the impression that my reaction to the news of his death is simple grief. I am quite sorry to hear it, but it's also one in a series of recent losses. It feels very much like the world is moving on —"
"You're talking about the vanishing," Lukas interrupted. "What the new church is calling 'the Excommunication.'"
Octavian frowned. Now that Buchleitner had said it, he thought perhaps he had heard that the restored Roman church had begun to trumpet the expulsion of vampires and demons from the world as an excommunication, taking credit for something Gaea had done.
"Yeah," Octavian admitted. He smiled, surprised as his willingness to share. "I guess I feel left behind."
"I can only imagine," Lukas said. "Are you sure I can't interest you in tea? Or coffee? I do an excellent mocha. I get the chocolate from Gerstner's and melt it down myself."
Over the long weeks since Nikki's murder by the vampire Cortez and the demon incursions that led to Gaea's radical solution, Octavian had retreated to a dark place within himself. He had neither sought human kindness nor shown it to others, and so the gentle sympathy Lukas offered took him by surprise. Something released in his chest, a coiled intensity that he had been relying on to get him through each day.
"I'm grateful," he said. "But I lost a lot of friends during the so-called Excommunication and I mean to get them back. To sit and have tea and talk of Salzburg . . . the guilt would be too much for me, Lukas." The darkness began to seize him again. "My friends are in Hell, you see."
Herr Buchleitner crossed his arms, hugged himself as if he felt a chill. "I'm sorry. Obviously there's much I don't know about the fate of the vampires."
"Shadows," Octavian corrected.
"Of course," Lukas said, nodding. "How can I help you?"
Octavian pointed to a shadowy corner behind the antique desk where the old man had always sat and watched visitors over the tops of his glasses, hoping to be asked a question so that he could share his knowledge and passion.
"There used to be a case over there in the corner with two large pieces of silver, broad and flat like hardened puddles."
Lukas nodded quickly, expression troubled. "Yes, of course. I should have known right away. I was just startled by your visit. You see, I had thought you must also have been taken from the world that day and to have you walk through the door . . . well, you can imagine."
Octavian stared at him. "You said you 'should have known.' Should have known what?"
The younger Buchleitner, now and forevermore the curator to le Musée des Ombres, rushed over toward the desk.
"The case is gone, my friend," he said. "Destroyed on the same day that your friends were taken away. I came into the shop the next morning and found it dismantled, simply shattered. Not merely the case, either, but the floor beneath it. You can see where it's been repaired."
Indeed, Octavian could see where the damaged floor boards had been cut away and newer, younger wood had been fitted into place. In his mind's eye, he saw the portals that had opened up beneath Allison and the others during their battle against Cortez and the huge, living roots that had dragged them down into the Earth — feeding them through those portals into another dimension . . . into Hell.
"And the silver?" he asked, hope dimming.
"Gone, I'm sorry to say. Vanished."
"Not vanished," Octavian replied. "Taken."
The silver had been his last real hope. For all intents and purposes it was real silver, but it had once been the flesh of vampires and contained the blood of demons. He had thought that he might be able to use sorcery to force it back to its original form, to make it flesh and blood again, and that Gaea would have to create a portal to expunge it from the world. If it had worked and he had been standing there waiting, he had hoped to slip through.
Lukas put a hand on his shoulder. Octavian blinked in surprise but did not pull away.
"Tea has remarkable healing properties," the curator said, smiling. "It's good for the memory, and for the soul. Surely your friends wouldn't begrudge you a single cup . . . not when it's so good."
Octavian couldn't help himself; he chuckled. "Do you make it with the same honey your uncle used to ha
ve?"
"From the old nun who keeps the bees at Nonnberg Abbey," Lukas confirmed. "Of course. When she dies at last, there'll be no point in ever drinking tea again."
Octavian glanced at the space where the silver had once lain in its case and then at the door, but the street outside did not beckon because he had not yet figured out his next step.
"Well, then," he said, "it would be foolish to refuse."
Lukas smiled. "Excellent."
A short time later, they sat in the little office in the back of the museum, where a nineteenth century Biedermeier sofa with an oak sleigh-back sat amidst stacks of books and musty boxes. A hand-knitted blanket had been wadded up on one end to make a bed for an aging brown Pinscher. The dog had given Octavian a single, damp-eyed glance and then proceeded to ignore him.
While they waited for the tea to brew, the two men spoke of Lukas's late uncle and Octavian noticed that the young curator had changed very little in the small office. The clutter had become more orderly and one bookshelf had been given over to digests devoted to international affairs, but Herr Buchleitner's antique turntable and racks of vinyl albums were still there. The old man had enjoyed classical music as well as ragtime from the early days of the twentieth century and Octavian was pleased to see a dust-free record still on the turntable, as if Lukas had recently played it.
"That was his favorite Scott Joplin," Lukas said, noticing what had caught Octavian's attention.
"Maple Leaf Rag?"
Lukas smiled as carried a tea tray over to the desk and placed it between them. "That's the one."
Octavian smiled. "With all the music I've heard in my life, somehow I still manage to remember that one. Probably thanks to your uncle."
Lukas added honey to the tea and slid a cup toward Octavian, who took it, stirring the honey in with his spoon. He sipped it, not waiting for it to cool, and found it just as wonderful as he remembered. Amidst all of the grief and horror of the past weeks, he had almost forgotten that one could find a moment's peace in such a simple pleasure.
"Would it be prying," Lukas asked, "if I asked how it happened?"
Octavian cocked his head, teacup in hand. "It being . . . ?
"The so-called Excommunication. The world was in danger, Mr. Octavian, perhaps facing human extinction if the invading demons couldn't be pushed back —"
"Worse than that," Octavian interrupted. "They weren't just invading. Understand, Lukas . . . there are infinite dimensions. The barriers between them are invisible but tangible. You could call them walls but they're softer than that and more malleable, a kind of metaphysical fabric. I've heard mystics call the barrier a veil, and maybe that's not so far off. The walls that separate our reality from, well, let's call it Hell —"
"It's not Hell?"
"It's one Hell. A dimension full of what we'd call demons, including the ones we're most familiar with from our religious history. Since humanity first learned to reason, we've had contact with them. Either they've managed to slip through, to influence and corrupt, or we've found these places where the barriers were weak or torn. Belief has an effect on it as well, because the idea that some souls are dragged into this Hell after physical death, are punished for some period of time . . . that's true."
Lukas stared at him. Octavian thought the man had stopped breathing. His narrow features pinched even further and he had turned pale.
"That's not funny."
"I'm sorry to say I'm not trying to be funny," Octavian told him, and sipped at his tea. "You were curious. Maybe you'd rather I say no more?"
The slender, bespectacled man frowned, but then picked up his own tea and gestured with the cup.
"Go on."
"There are no hard and fast rules," Octavian said. "If you expect Hell, then it's easy for them to draw your spirit there. The one thing I can tell you is that most souls manage to escape that suffering fairly quickly. It doesn't take long before they believe that they've been punished enough."
Lukas studied the ripples in his teacup, the result of a trembling hand.
"And this is where your friends have been sent?" he asked.
Octavian sat back in his chair and glanced out the window. "It's a long story. You know of the Gospel of Shadows?"
"Of course," Lukas replied.
Octavian nodded. The man had inherited the Museum of Shadows. He would have to know the story of the Gospel of Shadows. For two thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church had battled demons and other supernatural forces and mostly kept them at bay. Vatican sorcerers had used the magic passed down over the ages, compiled in the Gospel of Shadows, to keep the world safe. Only the Shadows — the vampires, whom they called the Defiant Ones — had been able to resist them. But the sorcerers had become sadists and madmen and attempted to exterminate all of the world's Shadows at once, no matter the cost. Octavian had led his people's resistance, been victorious, but ended up in Hell. When Lazarus and Alexandra Nueva and Meaghan Gallagher had gone in search of him, they had brought the Gospel of Shadows with them and promptly lost possession of it. By then he had acquired enough magic that he sensed it and drew it to him and studied it over the course of months. When they at last managed to set him free, Lazarus had been left behind . . . and so had the Gospel.
"Without the Vatican sorcerers and the spells from that book, the barriers between our world and various Hells kept getting thinner. A vampire called Cortez tried to blow them all wide open. It wasn't just a flood of demons into our world; left unchecked it would have meant almost a merging of the two dimensions. Literally Hell on Earth. We fought back, tried to keep the planet from being overrun, and we were doing all right, but we would have lost in the end if not for Gaea."
Lukas paused with his teacup halfway to his lips and arched an eyebrow. "And by Gaea you mean . . . ?"
"The goddess of the Earth. The spirit of the world," Octavian explained. "Yes, she does exist. It's fascinating that you can believe in demons like Beelzebub, that you can have seen the things you've seen, and you find it so hard to believe that your planet has a soul."
"It's difficult to wrap my mind around," Lukas admitted.
"Nevertheless, she sealed us off from other dimensions. Her vitality's been restored thanks in part to a connection with my friend Keomany Shaw. It turned out that Cortez was just taking orders from someone he called the King of Hell, and the go between was . . . well, that's another story. It's enough to say that the go-between is dead, but I believe Cortez survived, dragged through into Hell along with Kuromaku, Allison, and too many others."
Lukas nodded. "And you're trying to find a way through to them? A way to bring them back?"
Octavian frowned as he studied his tea. After a moment, he looked up.
"I haven't talked much about this since it happened," he confessed, gauging the curator's inquisitive eyes. "Most of the people I could confide in are gone."
Lukas took a small sip of tea, then set his cup down with a clink as he leaned forward in his chair.
"I'm not writing a book, Mr. Octavian."
"Peter."
"Peter, then. I'm not a journalist and have no interest in research, nor do I have my uncle's fascination with Shadows and sorcerers and you in particular. I loved his passion because it was his passion, but I have no interest in learning magic. I appreciate that you were always kind and courteous to a little old man who thought the world should understand that not all Shadows were sinister creatures."
Octavian glanced over at the late Herr Buchleitner's record collection again.
"He was a gentle soul. This world has too few like him," he said, letting his gaze linger on the unmoving turntable before he turned back to Lukas. "I am trying to find a way to reach them, yes. It was never a simple matter to go into Hell. Its geography shifts like the coastline after a storm, so going in to find them . . . Still, I have to try. I'd thought the silver from the death of Beelzebub might provide a key to breaking through Gaea's barriers. Now I'll have to think of something else. "
; "It's just so extraordinary," Lucas said. "Knowing what you're capable of, the extent of magic, is one thing, but to know that you've been to other dimensions . . . it's just extraordinary."
"I agree," Octavian said. "Sometimes I lose sight of that."
They fell silent for several moments, neither reaching for his tea. Octavian felt as if they had reached the natural conclusion of the conversation and knew he ought to make his departure. The silence lingered a bit too long, growing awkward as each of them contemplated the conversation.
"Well," Octavian said as he slid back his chair and started to rise.
"Isn't there a back door?" Lukas asked.
Octavian sat back down, resting on the edge of the chair. "What do you mean?"
"Gaea blocked entry to these Hell dimensions, but isn't there some less direct way to enter them? Something unorthodox? You've said there are infinite dimensions. Could you get into one of those and then circle back from there?"
Octavian stared at him, turning the idea over in his head.
"It's risky," he said. "Trying to navigate something like that . . . I'd probably end up lost between worlds. I'm not like . . ."
He faltered.
"Like who?" Lukas asked.
Octavian glanced over at the turntable again — at the racks of old vinyl records — and a grin spread across his face.
"Son of a bitch," he whispered.
Lukas cocked his head worriedly. "What's wrong?"
Octavian stood and extended a hand for him to shake. Lukas took it, rising along with him.
"You've sparked a crazy idea, Herr Buchleitner," Octavian said. "I thank you for it."
"Well, I hope you'll come back and tell me about it," Lukas said, walking with him out of the office and back through the shop toward the front door.
The bells rang overhead as Octavian opened the door and stepped out of the shop. Somewhere not far away, music drifted out of an upper story window — Mozart's Piano Fantasie in D Minor. The smell of something baking floated on the air. Nearly vibrating with possibility, he managed to tamp down his excitement enough to pause and focus on the young curator.
King of Hell (The Shadow Saga) Page 3
