So his office was his first stop. He would stash this tape with the others before he even dared step foot into his house up in the Pocono Mountains where life was as normal and dull as Mom’s apple pie. He started the car and took River Drive
since it was the least likely to be clotted with evening traffic, unlike Madison or FDR. If he made good time he’d get to the office in just under half an hour, change clothes, dump the tape and camcorder and be up in the Poconos in less than three hours. Just in time to be greeted by the family St. Bernard and hear Wes and his sister coming to blows over something or other again. He sighed. The fights never amounted to much, but Brett didn’t like the idea of his son hitting his sister. He didn’t like the idea of any violence in his household unless it was much-needed discipline, such as in Laura’s case, when she got suspicious and spoke out of line with him.
He passed a row of abandoned warehouses crouching in the night. The wharf had been home to the fireboxes for more than two decades. How he would like to raze that piece of real estate to the ground and put up a project, or maybe some row houses of the kind he remembered from growing up in San Francisco. He could dig that, yeah. In fact, if he closed this big deal with J. Stephan Paul, his biggest stabled author to date, he was sure to be able to afford that sweet piece of land. After that… well, he’d sell out the company to the smaller lingering publishing houses too stupid to give up in an industry that was on its deathbed and get his ass into the real estate racket, where the big money was. It killed him to imagine how the drunks and dustheads were wrecking the wharf as he dreamed about what it could do for him.
He almost didn’t believe it and had to do a second take when he thought he saw a rain of sparks coming from the warehouse on the end, the big one that had once been a machine shop. It was by far the largest warehouse and would pull him down the most bank as a condo. He usually paid the most attention to it, which was why he noticed the sparks as he drove past it. What the hell were the refuse of society doing to his building? He told himself it was none of his goddamn business, but if it burned to the ground there might be a move for urban renewal, and then he could just as well kiss his dreams for Edelman Estates a fast goodbye.
He pulled over to the curb of the warehouse, squeezing the Porsche in between a Dumpster and the garbage spewn across the gutter, and killed the motor. He got out of the car, his head swimming a bit from the bloodletting and his own anger. Fuck. Probably a bunch of asshole kids trying to burn the place down.
There was a broad, unpaved driveway that ran around the warehouse to the back where the loading docks were located. The driveway was, to be frank, undrivable due to the garbage and debris scattered across it. A single sodium light stood sentient over the lot, broken a long time ago. But there was a pair of security lights mounted over the front entrance and juiced from one of the lines that ran down that side of the street. It was the only light in the whole goddamn place, creating a limited pool of luminescence that Brett avoided like the plague. The last thing he needed were a bunch of pissed off speedfreaks spotting him here. Instead he stuck to the shadows and moved alongside the wall of the building until he found a basement window that wasn’t boarded over. He knelt down and peered in through the dirty, cracked glass.
To his utmost surprise, two men were down there. One was small and blonde in a long leather coat. The other was very tall and slender with waist-length hair tied back in a long, shining blue-black braid. The big one looked like a Samurai warrior crossed with an 80’s-style rock musician: black leather greatcoat, stainless steel greaves and gauntlets, a chain laced through his left ear, a heavy silver cross in his right. This couldn’t be for real. Yet beyond a shadow of a doubt the most incredible thing about the two warriors was that both of them were going at it with swords.
As he watched, the big one got the blonde down on the floor and began twisting his ankle. The blonde sputtered and growled like an angry beast. Brett saw the flash of the blonde’s silvery-green eyes, saw his fanged eyeteeth scissoring his bottom lip in the throes of pain, and had no doubt in his mind what he was witnessing. Not a couple of punks. Not human, anyway. This was what he’d heard of only in rumor at the club. This was what happened when two vampires clashed. Or rather, when two slayers clashed. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes there was a conflict, and according to Jean Paul’s thralls, it was spectacular.
Brett watched, spellbound, as the blonde twisted unnaturally, a feat no human could possibly perform, not with bones in their bodies, anyway. The action was purely serpentine. The blonde snapped at the big slayer’s right arm, taking a savage bite out of it. The big slayer reflexively let go of the blonde slayer’s ankle, and almost immediately, the blonde was up, his sword drawn and trained on the wounded slayer. The big dark one retaliated by sweeping to his feet and meeting the blonde slayer’s blade head on.
The two swords clashed and kicked up a shock of new sparks. The sound of the two blades grating set Brett’s teeth on edge. Jesus, the swords even sounded sharp. Brett reached under his jacket and found the camcorder. He was getting a hard-on just watching it. He palmed the camera and simultaneously hit the Record button. Jesus, the things you saw in New York. And crouched there before the window, oblivious to all else, Brett aimed the camera at the basement of the warehouse.
5
Someone to see you, girlfriend.”
Irena turned away from her locker while simultaneously slipping her sweater over her head, making one smooth motion of it as she caught a glimpse of a little blonde figure dashing toward her across the room. She pulled the sweater down and dropped down to meet Lilly’s joyous assault.
“Reena… surprise!” Lilly locked her arms around Irena’s neck and gave her a squeeze.
“Hey, Tiger Lilly… what are you doing here?”
“Came to walk you home.”
Irena held the little girl at arm’s length and gave her an icy look. Lilly was four and a half, small for her age, small and bony despite how much Irena fed her, which was a lot, and Irena hated the idea of Lilly walking even the four blocks down to the club on her own. The little girl looked like the wind could blow her away. But it wasn’t the wind Irena was afraid of. This city ate kids. It ate everyone. “You know I told you never, never, never to leave the apartment.”
“I was bored.”
Irena played with Lilly’s hair, running her fingers through the fragile cornsilk, brushing wayward strands out of Lilly’s big periwinkle eyes. “I still don’t want you out. Bad people are out tonight. You’re making me mad.”
And she meant it. There was that maniac the police were calling the Ladykiller. Bess said she even knew one of the prostitutes the bastard had carved up, which meant the attacks were getting close to home. As much as she loved having Lilly accompany her home, she couldn’t risk her little Lilly being the Ladykiller’s next job.
Lilly nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry, Reena. Don’t be mad.”
“Just don’t do it again. Okay?”
“ ‘Kay.”
Irena stood up and took her bag out of the locker, then slammed the door.
“JP talk to you?” Bess asked from the doorway, her voice a conspiratorial rumble.
“News travels fast,” Irena said, slinging the strap of the bag over her shoulder.
Bess stopped her at the door, her hand on her shoulder. This was important. “What did he say?” she asked, keeping her voice steady so Lilly wouldn’t think it was something too important.
Irena shrugged and watched one of the dancers from the next shift skirt past them. “I believe his exact words were, ‘It is time you learned many things.’ ”
“He call you ‘ma cher’?”
“He always calls me that.”
“He’s setting you up, girl.”
Irena felt the heat rise in her face. “I don’t give a fuck. I’m quitting this gig anyway.”
Bess smiled. “Going to be a star?”
Lilly looked up wonderingly and took Irena’s hand. “You’re g
oing to be in the movies?”
“Yep.” She looked at Lilly, then smiled at Bess. “Of a sort.”
“You go girl! Just make certain Don-Fucking-Giovanni doesn’t put the moves on you, okay?”
He’s not going to fucking touch me, Irena thought. But instead of saying that she only nodded. Raising her voice would only make Lilly nervous. “Wish me luck?”
Bess grinned and crossed the fingers of both hands. “I already have.”
But Irena didn’t have the luck just yet, she soon realized. Outside it had begun to snow. Snow in September, she thought. How odd. She cuddled down into her leather jacket and held Lilly close as they crossed onto Broadway where the lights were the brightest. It wasn’t cold, but it felt weird. Like Halloween. She wondered why she would think such a thought, and then dismissed it as the distant prattle of her overworked body and her overtired brain. Just ahead, the rearing, neo-gothic complex they lived in slipped out from behind another, taller, office building.
“It’s cold,” Lilly complained.
She was wearing next to nothing, her denim jumpsuit and a blouse, that was all. Irena slipped her jacket off her shoulders and put it around Lilly. “That will teach you not to come to the club. JP doesn’t like it when you’re there, anyway.”
“JP is scary.”
I know, Irena thought.
They crossed the street and found themselves out of the lights of Broadway. It was colder and much darker here. The dark did not really frighten Irena, but she hated the idea of crossing it with Lilly. Their footsteps always sounded so lonely on the broken asphalt. And when there was leaves or snow on the ground, their footsteps still sounded lonely.
Except tonight they weren’t sounding lonely at all. Behind them, maybe at a hundred feet, Irena could hear someone following them. She could feel someone. When she was alone, she sometimes chose a number of back alleys as a shortcut home, climbing a fence or even a fire escape so she was up high and the drunks and freaks left her alone, but tonight she veered away from such dark niches, cutting across a big derelict rail yard instead. The moon was full, affording them some light, however lurid. She glanced up at it and saw that despite its filmy brilliance there was blood on the moon tonight. She hurried along. A pool of light greeted them ahead, making the snow-wet street just ahead shine like spilt gold. It was only a few blocks, after all. Horns blared as cars and cabbies rolled by just beyond the rail yard fence.
But the footsteps behind them persisted.
Pulling on Lilly’s arm, Irena quickened her steps until she emerged from the rail yard and onto the avenue. Maybe she ought to go back to the club, she thought, except she was halfway home already.
She wasn’t afraid. Not yet.
“Phoenix.”
Irena stopped at the curb and turned to look behind her, getting mad now. With the light spilling all over the two of them, no one in their right mind would think to try something.
It was the guy. The moviemaker. Chad Bellerophone.
“You fuck. Why are you following me?” she cried back, watching his form divide from the darkness.
He was smoking, looking casual. He put his silver cigarette lighter away and pulled out something else. Something small and unusual, yet she instantly recognized it. A taser.
“Oh my god… you’re him,” she blurted out before she had a moment to think. She felt her entire being clinch up, and she wanted nothing more than to wrap herself tight around Lilly and fly away, but right now she couldn’t take her eyes off of the man standing in front of her.
“Him?” said the man.
“The jerk cutting up women.”
“I don’t cut up women.” He threw his cigarette down. He was finished playing games.
“Everyone saw us together, goddamn you!” Irena said. She could easily outrun any man, but with Lilly there was an added concern. Lilly could not keep up. And she wasn’t about to abandon her, no way. So if Bellerophone tried anything she would fight and scratch at him the way she did in alleys and on the street and in the subway. She would fight him and win. She always won. “You don’t think you’ll get caught?”
“By whom?” He grinned, showing saber teeth. His eyes glimmered like diamonds in the dark. How had she mistaken him for Bellerophone? she wondered distantly. He looked nothing like the man. He—it—was tall and rangy, white-faced, dressed in a black leather jacket that smelled like musty copper and decay. Death. “Who will catch me? Your human police? Phoenix?”
This wasn’t real. He wasn’t human, she was certain of that. But what he was was unimaginable. What was he? She looked at his fanged eyeteeth, his night-shining eyes. A ghoul? Some kind of freaky cannibal? A vampire? No. Vampires were stories. Stupid myths. Movies. Vampires didn’t carry tasers.
The vampire sighed. “Everyone saw me in Jean Paul’s club.” One dark eyebrow lifted. “Well… everyone saw Chad Bellerophone, in any event.”
Irena shook her head. “What the fuck are you?”
“And after this the police will never find me. They will be looking for Bellerophone.”
He seemed to be talking to himself.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Irena turned around and sought a car, any car. To her astonishment, one pulled to the curb. She couldn’t imagine her luck. The window rolled down.
“Help me…?” she asked.
But only another pair of diamond eyes glittered up at her.
No!
The taser went into her back. Irena turned, scarcely able to believe the vampire had moved so quickly. The current raced through her blood like fire, numbing her lower half and making the rest of her spasm in unbelievable agony. Irena tried to scream but her voice caught as the pavement came up to smack her in the cheek. She felt her teeth break on the pavement. Voices. She was drifting. She could feel… what? She was being dragged into the car by the vampires. She was being kidnapped. She tried to move, she was conscious, damnit, but she couldn’t react. She was frozen. She tried to see, but her body would not respond. The last thing she wondered before blessed oblivion overcame her was where her Lilly had gone.
6
So they were both wounded now.
Dante had a badly broken ankle. Alek had a massive, bloody wound in his arm just above his right gauntlet where Dante had sank his carnivorous eyeteeth into the flesh and shredded it. For Alek, the wounds from the shurikens had begun to mend, but the bite wound would take hours to do heal. The anticolagents in Dante’s spit would make certain of that. The same was true of Dante. Almost any kind of wound with a steel weapon would have begun to heal on him by now, but a broken bone like that was not so quick to heal. The ankle was nearly snapped in half. Dante would have to feed heavily and quite soon if he had any prayer of mending it.
Dante leaned heavily against a machine mount as he fenced. His strokes were less sure, more erratic. It was difficult to fence with only one leg. Still, the same problem plagued Alek. His sword arm was stiff from Dante’s venomous bite and basically useless. He had switched to his left, but he wasn’t good with it. Their blades now clanked together with more power and less skill. Alek came in close and Dante reached for another shuriken. Alek retreated automatically and Dante lifted his hand off the plate.
“You are really starting to bugger me,” Dante growled.
“Yield and you walk away,” Alek answered, circling around the slayer.
“Fuck you.” Dante changed his mind and tossed the shuriken at him anyway.
This time Alek was prepared for it. Ducking under the flying shuriken, Alek rolled to the floor on his back and twisted around in mid-motion, bringing the katana up in one great thrust. The knife-edge of the blade entered Dante through the stomach and pinned him like a bug to the wall behind him.
Dante dropped his rapier. His eyes fell on Alek. Hate. Venom. Like an immortal disease, Dante’s mind and body were wracked with it. Yet he grinned.
“Well done, Slayer,” he whispered around his agony. “But you had better… finish me
off… ”
Alek pulled the sword loose from Dante’s body, dragging with it plaster dust from the wall but no blood—the sword always drank up the blood—and rolled to his feet.
Dante’s eyes flashed as his hand went to grasp the hole in his gut. He knew the stories. He knew the Slayer killed in defense. Never cold blood. Never that. He knew they would again have their time, and soon. A rematch of sorts.
It was only unfortunate the stories about the Slayer were so goddamn wrong.
Dante’s eyes registered surprise less than a split second before Alek butterflied his sword and with it cleaved Dante’s head from his shoulders.
7
Jesus Christ.
It wasn’t like in the movies. It wasn’t like that at all. The defeated slayer didn’t die some spectacular death, bursting into dust or fire or something. In fact, it was almost an anticlimax. The big slayer performed some deft motion with the katana that even Brett with all his concentration could not follow, and suddenly Brett found himself staring at the blonde slayer slumped against the machine mount, sans head. The blackened blood of the thing was everywhere, on the walls, on the floor, on the other slayer. It wasn’t neat and perfect, a good death. Quite the opposite. Blood still pumped and drizzled out of the stump of the dead slayer’s neck, sizzling when it touched the floor or some substance cooler than itself. And then, almost like an afterthought, the hands clenched and the body stiffened and the dead slayer crumpled to the floor, emptying out the remainder of his blood onto the thirsty, cracked concrete. And then the body lay still and Brett knew it was over.
Slayer: Black Miracles Page 17
