“Works for me. Let’s go pray and see if we can get the angels on our side.” I already had my shotgun and the second of Ninon’s straw purses filled with ammunition. The trench spike was in my boot, but I added a crowbar to my burden. I had a feeling we might want to open things that were shut.
“Bon. Yes, let’s go kill for Christ, since this seems to be what God wants,” Ninon said, closing the back of the Jeep.
The slight blasphemy surprised me. It said so much about the depths of anger and loathing she had been hiding from me and perhaps from herself.
Her words were defiant, but I wasn’t surprised when Ninon paused outside the church, showing a rare moment of hesitation. I didn’t blame her. Even I, as irreligious as I am, felt reluctant to go on. This had been holy ground, a place of worship, a house of God. Its wall were imbued with faith. You didn’t have to be a devout Catholic to think twice about committing the worst of all sins right there in God’s living room.
“This is stupid. I’m a living fossil,” she said quietly. “I’m a creature of another era. I wear twenty-first century rationalist trappings of science and logic, but in my heart I still believe in God and the Devil and see this as an omen.”
The adobe crackled, and a small chunk of plaster fell at our feet. Perhaps it was protesting the relentless violation of the sun that attacked it day after day. Or maybe it really was warning us away.
“Miguel, I am older than this church, more than four centuries old, and today I feel the weight of every one of those four hundred years. I would give anything to be able to walk away from this confrontation. But I can’t. I keep thinking maybe this is how I am supposed to atone for what I did all those years ago in taking the Dark Man’s gift. Or maybe it is just like that old proverb—Who must do the difficult thing? He who can.
I nodded. “And we can.”
“Yes.”
“Saint Germain may be banking on this.”
“I know.”
“I never used to believe in God,” I confessed. “And I didn’t believe in Evil—not the kind with a capital E. I’d always kind of thought that a certain amount of general badness was spread like cosmic dust at the time of the Big Bang. It was random and rare.”
“And now what do you believe?”
“I don’t know if I believe in the Devil per se. But I do think that there is evil—intelligent evil. It might have been the case once that wickedness was rare, but it’s plain that distribution of evil is no longer random and widespread. I’m seeing patterns down here—and, not to brag, I am never wrong about patterns.” I tried to explain. “It looks to me like there are some people and places that are vacuums with special filters, and they eventually manage to accumulate enough small evil that they evolve into something else. Call it karma or the wrath of God. Maybe it’s just bad luck or an anomaly or too many of the wrong subatomic particles. Whatever. These last couple of days I’ve been asking myself, in this brave new world, where we really fit on the food chain.”
“Have you decided?” she asked. She seemed less curious than simply waiting for judgment to be passed. She didn’t question my beliefs or what I thought I was seeing, didn’t insist that this was God and Satan fighting it out on earth with their chosen warriors.
“They used to tell us in school that when all other life was gone from the planet, there would still be cockroaches. I’m thinking now that the roaches have been replaced by something more persistent. The last things that will be moving on this earth are zombies and S.M.’s vampires.”
“And us. Maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, whatever the case—God’s chosen or the victims of bad ions—we have to go on.”
I didn’t want to agree—if this were bad ions and not God’s plan, then we had no moral obligation to make a suicidal stand—but Ninon straightened her spine and started for the church. I wasn’t about to let her go in there alone. I don’t know precisely what she was thinking as she marched to the door, but I could hear my grammar school teacher quoting one of her favorite sayings: The coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one.
“Let’s do this,” she said under her breath. “I’m sick to death of Mexico. Miguel, if we don’t die today, I want to go someplace that doesn’t reek of zombies and where the sun is more kind.”
“Amen, amen, amen,” I murmured. I could have said something else—“Hell, yes,” came to mind—but I figured it didn’t hurt to be a bit pious—just in case Ninon was right about us being God’s lieutenants.
The interior of the iglesia smelled damp and ancient and more than a bit bitter. I wasn’t enthused about sucking down into my lungs the many kinds of mold and mildew brewing in the rotten plaster, though let’s face it, airborne contaminants were the least of our problems. Neither was the cat enthused about the smell. He took a short sniff and then elected to remain outside. Smart beast. He would probably outlive Ninon and I. He would have been a good early-warning device, a canary down the coal mine, but Ninon petted him once at the door and then walked away without a word of reproach.
I thought that if I ever reincarnated, I’d like to come back as Ninon’s cat.
We scanned the church quickly. It had been swept clean of altars, religious art, and pews. The only sign that we were not the first visitors was the small army of footprints in the thin coat of reddish silt that covered the floor. The tracks went back and forth from the front of the church to an iron gate that guarded a set of damp stone stairs heading down toward what I assumed were the burial vaults. Some prints were barefooted, and some wearing only one shoe—not a standard way for tourists to dress but quite common for zombies. The church was older than the rest of the town, and the monks who had founded it had practiced crypt burials. Zombies would feel right at home, and the good brothers’ remains would make for a nice snack if zombies or any ghouls started feeling peckish.
We listened to the sound of dripping water echoing up from the dark. It wasn’t relaxing. Water meant the possibility of vampires or even S.M. himself. I envied the people who had to choose only between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Our menu of the awful was so much more extensive.
There was also a kind of mist in the air, full of particles too fine for the nose to filter, so fine that it could slip beneath your eyelids even if they were closed, and it got inside the body and irritated the mind. I think it may have been a physical manifestation of some of that less-than-random evil I’d been telling Ninon about.
“I’d feel better if we checked out the hotel before going down there,” I said softly. “There’s just the one way in and out, and I’d like to know that we didn’t have anyone creeping up on us from the rear.”
Ninon nodded and began backing toward the door.
It was a relief to be back outside. It was a bit like whistling past a graveyard, but I began humming “Hotel California” as we crossed the plaza. It just seemed appropriate in a place where you might check out but you’d probably never leave.
Ninon shook her head at me and refused to smile at my morbid humor.
“You really need to learn how to have more fun,” I told her.
“Don’t tempt Fate,” Ninon warned. “I’ve known her a long time and she’s horrible.”
Like I needed reminding.
The hotel was equally unappealing once we were inside. As expected, the lower floors were bare except for the registration desk, which had been nailed down. It was a massive affair of wood and stone that could have doubled as an Aztec sacrificial altar. In fact, I suspected it might have been just that, and thought maybe that was what had drawn S.M.
Because you stepped down into the lobby, a small body of water was trapped there in an eight-inch-deep pool. Filled with silt, mosquito larvae, and growing slime, it made slurping noises as we waded across. I tried not to think about leeches, but failed. We should have been happy at any sign of life, but I couldn’t work up enthusiasm for things that wiggled in water.
That floor was taken up with the lobby, a ro
om probably used for dining, and lastly a small kitchen, long and narrow with a giant cast-iron stove and a hand pump in a stone sink. There were also microwave ovens. It was raging paranoia that made me open the old oven and look inside. No severed heads. No ghouls or zombies. Nobody had been cute with the microwaves either.
We found three staircases on the ground floor. Two went up and one went down. The main stairs for the guests were wide, hung with decorative wrought-iron lanterns and had shallow-front steps in hand-painted tiles that could be easily negotiated by an elderly person or a lady in high heels. The others were for the staff, who apparently didn’t need space for their elbows or lanterns to light their way. Perhaps I misjudged the builders, but I sensed an attitude that said if the dark stairs broke the peons’ necks, so what. Labor was ubiquitous and cheap.
It wasn’t pretentiousness that made us take the guest stairs up to the second floor; we just liked having room to stand two abreast and shoot things without there being any danger of us catching one another in a cross fire. The puddles of sunlight that came at regular intervals were also welcome.
The windows of the upstairs hall were small transoms over the bedroom doors. They let in small amounts of light but no air. The heat was beginning to build, turning the hotel into an oasthouse. A wise zombie would opt for a shady and cool basement, but since wisdom wasn’t their main trait, I remained alert as we investigated.
We forced open the first door we came to—numbered 301 for some odd reason, though it was on the second floor. The weight of the water-swollen wood had made it sag on its hinges, and the bottom of the door scraped over the floor, making more noise than I liked. The room beyond must have once been beautiful. It had a now badly faded tapestry spread on the bed, and a steamer trunk made of mahogany. I opened that with gun poised, not caring if Ninon thought me nervous. But nothing was there except a pair of kid gloves that had shriveled into mummy hands. The chewed interior had once been a haven for spiders and rodents. Nothing but dust lived there now.
We tried a couple of other doors but found the rooms to be all the same. After a while we gave up searching. If anyone were hiding up there, we’d hear the opening of a swollen door.
“Ready to go up?”
I nodded. There was a third floor, attic rooms for the same peasants who didn’t need lights on the stairs. The heat would be brutal and the air a miasma of bad smells, but this wasn’t an occasion for careless speed. We went quickly but cautiously, and again found nothing but filthy cobwebs and rodent droppings—and one old rocking chair beside a small table with a glass jar filled with dried, faded flowers. We were back in the lobby in less than ten minutes. I know because I have one of those watches that can take a licking and keep on ticking.
That left the basement, which we never did explore. Like the lobby, it had been made of stone and lined in adobe. We could see that the whole downstairs was the world’s filthiest swimming pool where bottles of wine and rafts of rotting wood floated. There might be zombies down there in the water. They didn’t need air, or so Ninon said—a thought I found horrible and which would supply me with new food for nightmares—and the odds of our being hurt by them were too high to risk exploration. Our eyes were good in the dark, but not in sludge. Anyway, any zombie dumb enough to stay down there wouldn’t be a problem in a fight. They would have spent the last several months turning into stew.
That left us with the church crypt, the place where we had always known we would have to explore. The walk across the plaza was too short, and the church as dark and unpleasant as ever.
We stood outside the iron gate that guarded the crypts. I had my crowbar, but I made no effort to force the ancient lock.
“Okay, I have a new plan,” I said to Ninon.
“I’m all ears.”
“We go down slowly. Very, very slowly. We look for Saint Germain’s laboratory and the man himself, but at the first sign of trouble, we hightail it back up here, slam the gate, pour gasoline down the stairs, and make like it’s an arsonist Fourth of July.” I know torching historic landmarks was a real no-no, but that day I simply didn’t care. If it meant avoiding a pack of ghouls and seeing the real Saint Germain, I’d have arranged a weenie roast as I burned down the Louvre.
“I like it. Except for one thing. We have to be sure that Saint Germain is actually down there. The real one, not just a clone. We have to kill him, Miguel. We have to. Otherwise he’ll just go on chasing us, making more ghouls, and generally doing evil. Until he’s dead, this isn’t over.”
I nodded. There wouldn’t be any peace accord with this guy, and he didn’t believe in live and let live.
“I hear you. But in spite of that supposed clue, there is no guarantee that he is down there, you know. If I were him, I’d make like a general and lead my troops from far, far away.”
Ninon frowned. “He’s very arrogant. I’d think he’d want to be here to see me die.”
“Maybe, but only if he’s more stupid than conceited.”
She sighed. “He isn’t stupid. Just…crazy.”
“Okay then.”
“All right, let’s go get the gasoline and lighters. If we have ghouls chewing on us when we come up those stairs, I don’t want to be fumbling with the car keys.”
“Damn straight.”
Fetching gas and two flashlights took another five minutes, but then the delays were exhausted and it was time to face the horrible task.
The subterranean crypt was about what we’d expected, cold, dark, still, and damp. The stair was narrow and the wall and treads covered in black gunk that we did our best to avoid. The monks must have been pressed for burial space, because we encountered our first slime-covered skeleton standing at attention halfway down the stairs. I didn’t examine how this feat of erection had been managed. The wool of its cassock had all but rotted away, leaving the browned rotted bones to protrude at will. Somehow, the wooden cross around its neck had ended up jammed in its teeth. I didn’t care for its amused grin as it bit into the black wood, or the way the hollow sockets seemed to follow us as we passed.
Recuiscat In Pace, Hermano. And please stay dead.
I was bothered that there was no sign of a generator or power lines. It seemed unlikely that Saint Germain would want to work in the dark. If this were his base, there should be some sign of human—or whatever—occupation.
Things looked more hopeful at the base of the stairs. We shone our lights around slowly, taking it in. There were at least two rooms down there. In the first one, the stacks of skeletons had been pushed aside to make space for three folding tables, the type used by traveling massage therapists. And mad necromancers. There were also power cables leading away from some sort of an electrical device. Ninon inhaled slowly and began to follow them. I went the other way.
One table had a nice collection of glass beakers containing assorted fluids that had disgusting clots floating in them. Behind it there was a tank full of reddish liquid plenty large enough to float a body. I went forward cautiously, sniffing the air. The chemicals burned my nostrils like a snort of ammonia, though it wasn’t anything I had ever smelled before. I wasn’t up on cloning, but this looked a lot like the Frankenstein labs where Boris Karloff used to hang out.
“Could this be one of the Dark Man’s labs?” I asked.
“Miguel.” Ninon’s voice was urgent but not panicked. I followed her light around a wall of stacked skulls and saw her looking down at a body—a skeleton, really, though it looked fragile, almost powdery. A skeleton wasn’t so unusual, but this one wasn’t covered in slime, so it had been brought down there recently. It also had a couple of other odd things wrong with it. The head had been severed with a clean cut and there was a wooden stake driven through the thing’s chest.
“Can you tell if it was a vampire?” Ninon asked, bending down and inhaling slowly. She coughed and recoiled. I hate that our sense of smell is so keen. It’s a useful tool but everything about our travels seemed to smell terrible.
“No, but I’d
say it has all the general outlines of a vampire slaying.” It looked too tall to be Mamita, or that’s what I told myself.
“Then S.M. has probably been here to see Saint Germain.”
“And gotten a really negative answer to his plan for taking on a new apprentice.” I thought about it. “Maybe that’s when S.M. sent a vampire to find us and tell us about Lara Vieja.”
“To tell you. That thing wanted to kill me.” Ninon added, “And I doubt it was S.M. I think it more likely that it was your mother.”
Mamita. That made some sense. S.M. probably wanted me dead more than he wanted anything. I looked back at the skeleton. Odds really were against it being her. I refused to let myself think about her being dead. There was bound to be some emotion, and I had to stay focused.
“So, that leaves us just ghouls and zombies to worry about,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. It was impossible in that space. Words simply fell dead in the moldering air.
“And maybe Saint Germain.”
We both looked over at a heavy door set into a wall—a real one made of stone. It was clad in copper and carved with all sorts of saints being tormented. It didn’t say Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, but then, it didn’t need to.
“Do you hear anything?” I asked, straining my ears.
“No.”
“Smell anything?”
“No.” She waited a beat and then added what I least wanted to hear. “But they’re here. I can feel it. And we have to open that door. The fire won’t get through otherwise.”
“Let’s go get one of the gas cans now,” I suggested.
“You go. I think it would be unwise to leave this door unguarded. If I can feel them, it may be that they can feel me.” Ninon eased the carbine off her shoulder and tucked it under her arm. “At least now they’re contained. We can get them all.”
Divine Madness Page 26
