Blood & Bone

by S. H. Roddey

  Blood & Bone

  A Shadow Council Archives Novella

  S.H. Roddey

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Falstaff Books

  Chapter 1

  Your services are required.

  The simple message, no signature, scribed in impeccable handwriting, sent an immediate shock of anxiety coursing down my spine. The brittle paper crumpled as my fist tightened. Not again.

  It cannot be happening again, I thought, throwing the message across the room toward the wastebasket. The ball of paper skipped across the rim of the container and bounced away to rest in the corner.

  It had been a decade at least since the vampire and I last occupied the same space, and longer since either of us discovered a need to do so. I didn’t much care for people, which meant I didn’t much care for social visits. Luke seemed happy to oblige.

  Since my decision to live away from the shadows of my past and act as a protector of humanity, our joint ventures grew fewer and much further between. He attended to his own affairs and I to mine. That he contacted me now meant only one thing: the Brotherhood of Blood had resurfaced.

  I spent fifty years tracking them to the ends of the Earth, interrupting their sinister plans and destroying the devilish abomination, sect by sect. The quest for immortality was one with which I was familiar, but such a gift came at great cost…one these zealots could not understand and would very likely not want to pay.

  Their activities fell quiet in the last three years as I hunted and exterminated. Perhaps they’d found better ways to avoid my watchful eye, or perhaps I’d grown complacent in my life. Either way, until tonight, I thought they were done.

  I placed a coin in the messenger’s hand. The boy—no more than ten by the look of him—bit into the coin to test its authenticity, then nodded and scurried away. I slammed the door behind him, pacing across the room to the window.

  The sun disappeared behind the horizon; the last, desperate rays of daylight streaked across the sky where they reflected off the placid surface of the Rhine. The world below me moved in a drowsy haze, unaware of the truth. The danger. The hurt.

  Humans are such foolish creatures, I thought as I turned my attention back to the note in my hand. Smoothing the wrinkles from the paper, I read the remaining words, now smudged by my angry treatment.

  Domkloster 4. Midnight.

  He stood in the doorway of the Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus, his skin glowing pale blue-gray in the moonlight. Dracula, Count de Ville—creature of nightmares and drinker of blood—waited for me with his gaze cast upward on the religious icons adorning the half-completed structure. A vampire in a church...how amusing.

  Scaffolding stood tall on either side of him, and tools lay strewn about, forgotten by their owners as the promise of a hot meal and a warm bed called to them. A half-carved gargoyle sat atop a rolling cart, the artist’s chisels lying about its uncarved feet. The beast regarded me with its deep-set, empty eyes.

  “We have a problem,” Luke said as we stepped side-by-side into the narthex and the heavy door fell closed. We were alone, both visitors and construction workers long gone. His voice, though soft, echoed around us in the emptiness of the sanctuary.

  “Obviously,” I replied. “Your calls are never social.”

  This statement brought a wry smile to Luke’s mouth. “Were it a different time, I would gladly visit with you, Adam.”

  “What is this problem?” I asked as we moved down the center aisle toward the altar.

  “The Brotherhood.”

  I expected his answer, but bile rose in my throat all the same.

  “Are they not yet defunct?” I asked. “There has been no activity in years.”

  “None obvious to us.”

  “So, what of them?”

  Luke hesitated. “They are on the move.” He paced back and forth along the length of the altar, his eyes occasionally drifting upward toward the organ loft and the bright white marble statues flanking it. He was nervous.

  Luke was never nervous.

  “Paris,” he said after several minutes of anxious silence. “They are in possession of a woman with the power to call forth demons.”

  “If this is such a problem, why have you not solved it?”

  “It is complicated.”

  “You obviously know where they are and what they are doing. Why come to me?” I asked, though I knew the answer even as the words left my mouth. After the events in Ingolstadt, Luke bequeathed to me the quest to destroy the Brotherhood of Blood. Vile monsters the lot of them, hell-bent obtaining immortality. I shook my head to dismiss the question. “What are they going to do with a demon?”

  “Make a deal, of course.” His flippant response angered me. I wanted to know more. How. When. Why.

  “What sort of deal? For immortality? Or something more?”

  “Immortality to start,” he said, “then power. People are rarely happy with immortality alone.” He turned his attention to the large crucifix hanging to the right of the altar. The vampire looked up into the suffering face of Christ, and I recognized the emotion reflected in my friend’s features.

  “Luke, I need more to go on,” I urged when it became clear he was not going to speak again.

  “There is not much more to tell,” he replied, still evasive, and turned away from the relic. I had never known him to act as such. The vampire began to pace again, another unusual trait.

  “Do not lie to me,” I said. Luke remained silent. “Might I remind you, you are in a church.”

  He nodded.

  “Under the gaze of your beloved Jesus Christ.”

  He nodded again.

  “Should we perhaps leave so you can lie to me with a clear conscience?”

  A scowl passed across his face. “I have no intention of lying,” Luke replied with no small amount of indignation, “but the fresh air would be nice. The building smells of brick dust and wet mortar. I will visit again when they complete it. The rumors would have me believe it will be quite the spectacle.”

  I let him tell the lies without complaint and followed him out into the cold night. Luke said little as we moved away from the church and the river behind it. He fell deep into his own thoughts while I pondered what exactly it was that brought him from his castle in Romania to drag me through the darkened streets of one of Germany’s oldest cities.

  “Tell me what I need to know,” I said into the quiet.

  “She summons demons.”

  “You said that.”

  “The Brotherhood holds her in Paris.”

  “You said that as well.” I waited for more. “Luke, what are you not telling me?”

  He continued to say nothing. I spoke to him four times more, hoping he would share additional thoughts with me, for any fool could see the weight of that knowledge etched into the lines of his face. He remained silent.

  Luke had danced this dance before, just never with me. After four blocks, I gave up trying. I walked alongside him in silence. The city slept around us, damp from a recent shower. The air held the moldy odor of wet stone, and the moon peeked out from behind the passing clouds. We turned a corner and walked along the river. We passed a clock shop, the sound of ticking cogs cutting through the quiet. We paused long enough for Luke to peruse the shops’ window offerings, then continued on.

  He led me away from the river, away fr
om the shops and businesses. The sky clouded over, obscuring what little watery moonlight we had. I wanted to question him again, to grab him and shake until the information fell from him, but I knew it would be of no use. Luke would tell me what he wanted me to know, and he would do at in his own pace.

  Just as I made the decision to walk away, he stopped and looked up at the moon where it peeked through the clouds.

  “I often wonder how much simpler life would be if I gave up the crusade to save humanity from itself,” he said finally.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Were I to shuffle off the mantle of caring, to give up my role of protector, how much easier would my existence be?”

  “Not much,” I replied. “Giving up the thing you love most would inevitably destroy you. What I know of you leads me to believe that you would go mad if not for your crusade.”

  A sardonic smile twisted one side of his lips. “Perhaps.”

  I took hold of his arm and pulled him to a stop.

  “What is this really about?” I moved to stand in front of him, forcing him to face me. “Tell me what I need to know, Luke. I cannot help you if you do not help me.”

  Luke lifted his head to look at me. His mouth opened, but his response was lost as half a dozen assailants in dark clothes surrounded us.

  “You should have stayed dead,” the leader said, drawing a long knife from beneath his coat. “Both of you. Curse you and your immortality!” He spat the last word as if it carried a bad taste.

  “I wasn’t given much say in the matter,” I replied with a laugh as he lunged for me. The others followed suit, all diving at once, all of them trained on me. Luke was fast as he swept the first off his feet, but neither of us was able to stop the unseen seventh man as he leapt from an upstairs window. He, with the element of surprise, landed on my back.

  His fingers dug into my shoulders, and his legs wrapped around my waist. I reached back to grab him, but a blade came across my throat, splitting my skin wide with a searing line of pain. One other blade sank into my side, but the pain was only the tiniest burst of discomfort compared to the severed strings of flesh across my throat. Blood leaked from the wound as I caught the bastard on my back around the neck. He clung to me while my strength waned in the face of such pain. I knocked the blade from his hand and jerked him over my shoulder, wrenching him free of my body. I closed my hand tightly around his throat, feeling the crunch of his windpipe as it collapsed, and threw him against the wall. He hit face first with a loud, hollow crunch and fell lifeless to the ground. I turned to grab another and end his life, but the rest were already dead, having been torn limb from limb. Blood trickled down Luke’s chin.

  “Hungry?” I asked, but the word came out as a rough, wet gurgle. I tasted my own blood in my mouth.

  My hand rose to the stinging wound on my throat, and I pressed the ragged flaps of skin back over the hole. Pain lashed through my neck when I swallowed. The bastard nearly severed my vocal chords and had, in fact, punctured my windpipe.

  “You look bad,” Luke said. I nodded. As much as bleeding to death in this dirty street would please me, the wound was not deep enough. My head was still attached, and the damage would heal in a day or two.

  The glint of metal in the street from the gas lamps overhead caught my attention. I knelt and pulled a coin from the bloody mire beside the leader’s body. The edges were worn smooth, and a symbol graced one side. A serpent around a sword, which protruded from a human heart. Luke’s gaze darkened when I laid it in his hand.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he confirmed. “It was a symbol of membership in the Brotherhood when it was new. They were from…Egypt, I believe.” He turned it over, his thumb gliding over the smooth edge. “I have an acquaintance who knows more about it. One day you should meet Judas. You would like him.”

  “Judas?” I croaked. It hurt to speak.

  “Iscariot,” he said, “as in, the betrayer of Jesus Christ. He and his partner are much like you and I—immortal and on the quest for peace.”

  I nodded again. What a foolish idea, yet…I existed.

  “Will he suddenly appear and assist me in this cause?” The words came out tattered, but they came.

  “To be honest, I never know when he may appear. His existence isn’t exactly…linear.”

  Interesting turn of events, and quite the distraction from the task at hand. It made no sense and served to confuse me. I made a mental note to ask him about this later. This deception was by design, I believed, because the vampire still had not told me what, exactly, I was to do in France.

  “Luke?” I asked. My throat felt a bit less raw on the inside, even if many of the tendons continued to flap loosely against my skin. “Why Paris?”

  “To stop that portal from opening. They tried in New Orleans and failed. They will try again.” He handed back the coin. I slipped it into my pocket.

  “Then I suppose I’m going to Paris.”

  Chapter 2

  I reached Paris under cover of darkness. The sprawling city sparkled with densely-grouped gaslights along its main thoroughfares, laying out a haphazard grid as I made my descent into the tightly-laid streets. The river snaking through the center of the city provided easy access as I crept in, my large frame scarcely fitting inside the shadows. The majority of the residents slept, save those in attendance for the raucous hubbub of the Café des Ambassadeurs Cabaret on the Champs-Élysées north of the river. I envied their blissful ignorance.

  To be human again…I would gladly exist without the knowledge of truth. To do so would, at the very least, allow me some shred of misguided happiness. Happiness: the thing I had been denied for far too long. Since Lisette’s betrayal, I’d shuttered away my emotions. I did not allow friends or lovers behind my personal barriers. I allowed only anger to drive me now.

  Anger that was now directed at my only friend—a term used loosely where the vampire was involved. I could not shake the feeling that Luke lied to me. A lie of omission, perhaps, but a lie nonetheless. The zealots knew where to find us in Köln, and they wanted me dead. Me. They did not attack him. They descended on me, cut my throat. I had no doubt they knew of my arrival in Paris, and because of that, I anticipated another ambush. The creature I called a friend knew full well the danger he led me into, yet he would not give me the information necessary to defend myself. It almost felt like another betrayal. A much closer, more immediate betrayal. The word soured in my mind, spreading as infection spreads its noxious tentacles, contaminating every thought.

  The knowledge of my own ignorance plagued me as I crossed the bridge on to the Isle de Cite. The island, too, remained still and silent, the buffer of the river and surrounding buildings masking the sounds issuing from the northern district. The twin spires of Notre-Dame Cathedral rose as a beacon above the houses, calling to weary travelers and lost souls alike. A single light burned in the belfry, weak against the cloudy, black sky. That light called to me as a safe haven. As sanctuary for the monster in me. I was a lost soul, after all. And I hadn’t the faintest idea for what I searched.

  The clouds obscured the moon, removing what little natural light remained in these closely-packed, manmade alleyways. The gaslights hissed threateningly, an angry sizzle of noise in the otherwise still silence. A single bell rang out eleven perfect, lonely chimes. The reverberation echoed through the night, small comfort against my creeping unease. A thread of tension unwound as I thought of sanctuary.

  As the last echo of the final peal died away, a new noise filled the air.

  A scream, two streets over. A woman. Afraid.

  I turned the corner and, abandoning the shadows, ran toward the sound of her struggle, turning the corner half a block from the alley, into which a man in a heavy, black cloak attempted to drag the screaming woman. The hood over his face painted a familiar picture, and the maniac grin beneath the fabric chilled me.

  Brotherhood.

  I charged without hesitation, knocking the knife from the attacker’s hand and
pulling the woman free from his grasp. She flew from my grip and tumbled to the street, screeching in a mixture of fear and pain. As long as she screamed, she was alive, so I turned my full attention to her assailant. He swung on me, and I deflected the blow, then brought my elbow across the cloaked man’s nose. The cartilage snapped easily under the impact. His knee flew backward just as easily as my foot connected with it. He collapsed in a screaming heap. I led the woman away from his pained wails.

  She was provocatively clad, her ruffled petticoats ending well above her knees to reveal garter clasps. The ripped neck of her dress hung limp, one narrow strap dangling over her corset where her breast threatened to spill forth. She plucked at the fabric with one scraped hand as she looked up into my face. Tears streamed from her eyes. She spoke in desperate, broken French, the smooth sound of the language marred by her scratchy native tongue to the point where I only understood one word, repeated again and again.

  “Merci.”

  Placing her on her feet, I turned her face this way and that to check for any long-term damage. She offered a hesitant, albeit frightened, smile. Seeing she was no worse for wear, I nodded and turned away when she tugged her ruined sleeve up and scurried down the street. Her attacker lay in the alley, groaning. He wore their cloak, and he’d attacked a woman. Surely he knew something of use.

  As I neared, he recoiled, trying to drag himself down the alley away from me. He sobbed and begged, which only further fueled my desire to destroy him. I wanted to hurt something, to hurt him, and I hated a crier.

  His victim was not innocent by any means, but no woman deserved whatever judgment he intended to pass down. She might have been a whore, but at least she was honest in her profession. No one could fault her for that, least of all creatures of the night such as he and I.