Bats cooed above. The sound afforded Alek some comfort, not much. He heard his own rough breathing in the musty silence, but that afforded him no comfort at all. Reaching for the tinderbox near the door, Alek lit the candelabra on the table and carried it with him down the long aisle limned on both sides by columns so large they were like something from a lost Grecian temple. The Coventable was gone, destroyed a long time ago by Amadeus in a fit of temper. All that remained were the tapestries and the arms on the stone walls, the brackets of unlit torches and the stained glass.
And the altar. That was still here.
As Alek approached the altar of skulls sitting there massive and old and full of dead energies, he felt a veritable concerto of fingers playing down his spine. Each grinning grey skull-unit was like a stone, but a stone so powerful, touching it would give him a deadly electrical shock. He had been down here to the Abbey only twice since he moved into the Covenhouse, once in the beginning to see what damage Amadeus had wrought here, and now today. But today would be different. The last time he had been here he had copiously avoided the altar, giving it a berth worthy of an active land mine. Now… well, now he planned to set that mine off.
“You’re crazy, old man,” he whispered. Yet he moved stealthily toward his destination. He had changed before coming down here, but it was not into his usual street gear and coat, and as he moved toward the altar he felt the edges of his floor-length habit lift and spin with his locomotion, felt the ruffled sleeves brush the tops of his hands and lift the hairs there. Why had he changed into a habit for this? Because he was a priest? Because he was crazy? He tried to answer that, but found he had no answers. It just seemed the proper thing to do, though he had not worn a habit since leaving the Coven over two years ago.
You are crazy, old man.
Crazy enough to do this. He ascended the dais and felt the shadow of the beast of bone fall over his face like a spillage of blood, of darkness. He craned his neck back, the size of the altar washing away the fear and replacing it with pure, nerve-numbing awe. Putting out his hands, he felt his psi ignite and the phantoms of the dead alight in his mind like memories on the edges of a fever dream. By moving his hands in any direction he saw faces, places, lost thoughts, regrets, salvation and damnation. The shattered remnants of a thousand lives bombarded him like punches to his mind. Some he recognized. Some he could only guess at. Many of these unfortunate souls he himself had slain. I loved animals, said one lost soul. I played violin. I was getting married in another week. I would have been the first in my family to go to college. I want my life back! Their outrage and hurt made the gorge rise in his throat and made his eyes smart with unshed tears. It was so easy to lose your way, to lose yourself in an immortal river of never-ending sorrow…
But he forced himself onto a path, searching for a familiar face, familiar surroundings. He passed it up, then backtracked when he recognized his error. Right… there. Yes, there it was. He saw the Abyssus, and fleeting images of Dante and Michael. He felt the fear Carfax had known in his last moment. Fear and a peculiar kind of relief, because it was all over and there were no more fights to fight…
Putting out both hands, he laid them with gentle reverence upon the skull-face of the vampire Carfax. For a moment nothing happened. Then a humming began in his head, followed soon after by a steady rush of air that seemed to come at him from every angle. Then he was in the dark and he was falling and he was terribly, terribly afraid—
19
—of being wrong. It was a matter of esteem, you see, that the hivemaster always remain in the right. It would not do to be uninformed or off-balanced. It was bad if an enemy found you thus; worse if it was one of your own. That was the thought centermost in Carfax’s mind on the evening when the slayers showed up at the Abyssus on their infernal crusade.
Akisha came into the office. “They are here, my lord.”
He wished he could ignore the almost taunting sound of her voice telling him about the arrival of the bloody headhunters, but he could not. Everything his Queen said to him was a mixture of worry and sadistic glee. Worry because she genuinely loved her people. Sadistic glee because she hated him as much as she loved them. Like all her cursed female-kind, she hated her dependence on him and enjoyed watching him squirm thus. “How many?” he asked as he set down his papers, all of them personal and very legal. Among them were his Last Will and Testament.
“Three. Two masters and a whelp.”
Carfax looked up into her white porcelain-perfect face. “Who are they?”
She hesitated. “Dante and Michael. And Alek is with them.”
“Alek? Isn’t that the little whelp you fancy?”
“Alek is my friend,” Akisha said neutrally. “And I would prefer it if you didn’t harm him.”
“Harm Alek?” Carfax asked. “Forgive me, my dear, but it is I who is under the blade, so to speak.”
Akisha crossed her arms and looked aside. “If you had been more careful things would not have come down to this.”
“You know,” Carfax said, rising from his seat, “I often have cause to wonder whether you botched that experiment on purpose, just to be rid of me. You do have that curious history of losing mates, my Akisha, my black widow.”
“You’re paranoid and delusional, as usual,” Akisha whispered.
Carfax hit her across the mouth. It was not a fierce blow, but it was enough to rock her back into the wall and make her slide down it to the floor in the slitted black leather gown she wore. All that grown-up clothes and makeup, and there she huddled like a broken little girl. Helpless. Hopeless. Both the pity and the revulsion rose up together in his throat. All the people to lose face to, to be weak before, but he would not show it to Akisha! He kicked her in the ribs and she doubled over on the floor, spitting blood. “I will die tonight, my dear. Have no doubts or worries over that. But then you must have cause to wonder: will your valiant and beautiful Alek come to your rescue? Will he bind you to him and take upon himself all your years of madness? Will he? I think he loves you. But, surely, he loves Amadeus more to be here in the company of those two butchers. Remember my words when I am gone, Queen Akisha. You love Alek, but what you love is spoiled. A vampire in love with a slayer… what a terrible, terrible joke.”
Leaving her on the floor of his office, Carfax stepped out into the club.
The two masters were there, just as Akisha had said, their blonde heads nearly touching as they sat hunched at the bar like a couple of golden vultures, waiting for the dead to fall for them. A little ways off stood Alek, leaning against the graffiti-sprayed wall in the shadows at the back of the club. Either he was there to serve sentence with the twins and was acting as backup, or he was there grudgingly and wanted nothing to do with this whole affair. Either way, he was as dead as the two slayers if he thought he would take the vampire Carfax without a fight.
Fixing his double-breasted suit coat and cravat, Carfax wound his way across the floor littered with half-intoxicated bodies. It was 1973 and Congress was debating the legalization of several different illegal substances, but the people here were not high on morphine, brown Mexican heroin or marijuana. Rather, the high was death… or near death. Blood loss to be exact—which, according to the patrons, was the sweetest high in the world. He didn’t know from experience. He wasn’t stupid enough to let someone bleed him. The paying customers, however, were another story.
Damn, but looking on it all reminded him of the poor sots lost in the opium dens of his native London. He took a deep breath and wondered if avoiding all that bloodletting was going to catch up to him someday. Maybe today.
The slayers eyed him with their usual combination of disgust, jealously and disinterest. The disgust was for what he did here. The jealously was because he dared do it at all. The disinterest was a put-on to keep the other emotions from bleeding through. But bleed through they did. Again he sought out the whelp at the back, but the only thing etched on Alek’s pretty face was uneasiness. Perhaps it was the club. Per
haps it was because he was in the company of these two… gentleman.
“Michael… Dante,” Carfax said magnanimously. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”
Dante smiled. Michael did not. Dante was an impetuous thorn in the side. But Michael was a dagger in the throat. They were complete opposites… and yet dangerously similar. Dante was the gunman, Michael the strategist. Or so the rumors went back in the Peninsula, when the two of them drove out Napoleon’s army as much with the rumors of their sadistic exploits on the surgery table as with their weapons. It was said they stole half-dead men off the battlefield, and that those men were never seen again. Or at least, not as they once were.
“Carfax,” Michael whispered in greeting.
“Hello, old boy!” Dante picked his teeth with a toothpick. “How is it hanging? Still bent and shriveled?”
“Still the comedian, eh, Dante?” Carfax asked.
“Comedy and tragedy,” Michael said evenly. “Which brings us to our purpose here.”
“Of course.”
“Seems you’re to be knocked up to the ol’ head block,” Dante said with a bleeding joy Carfax found infuriating. Even back in their war days, when they worked together, there was no peace between the three of them.
“Dante… ” Michael warned.
“Well it’s blimey true, ain’t it?” Dante laughed like a simpleton and spun around on the stool.
Michael stopped his brother’s spinning. He said to Carfax, “We’re here to serve notice.”
“I know. But why you two?”
“Excuse me?”
Carfax said, “Why did the Coven, that ruthless band of hypocrites, send you and Dante my way? Why not just send the whelp there?” He could have chosen his words better, but that no longer mattered. The truth was out and all hope demolished in it. They were here to kill him. Slay him for his God-given right to unlock the mysteries in the natural world. What did it matter if he pretended congenial now?
“I do not know why the Coven sent us in particular,” said Michael.
“That’s a bloody lie and you know it!” Carfax insisted. “You’re here for the Elixir. That’s the only reason you’ve come. You want to see if it works. If my Elixir works, so you can trout it back to your masters like the good little dogs you are!”
Dante stopped grinning like a fool and watched his brother’s next move.
Michael reached into his coat and pulled out the written order. He said, “We’re here to serve sentence, not to discuss Coven business with you. Had you wanted to be a part of our organization, you might have reconsidered leaving it.”
Carfax knocked the paper from Michael’s hand. “I was thrown out and you know it!” he said, his voice a low snarl. “Thrown out so I would finish the Elixir. The Coven has simply chosen this time to remove me so they can get at it.”
Michael looked away, then back again. “None of this is important. Only that the sentence is served out.”
Carfax felt his heart leap, and then calmed himself. He had one chance now and one chance only. Word and logic had failed on these two, something he once would never have believed could happen, and now he had only the loyalty of his own people to rely on. The power of the hive. “I understand,” he said.
“Are your affairs in order?” Michael asked. And there was kindness in his voice. Kindness but ice too.
“Yes… but, I am wondering… can I have a moment with the hive?”
Michael and Dante looked at each other. After a moment, Michael shrugged.
Carfax glanced at the back of the club. Alek had drawn his sword and was standing at attention—no doubt all the sudden shouting had pricked his fine dhampiri ears. Carfax had made provisions for all things but him. He had not expected the twins would come with an escort, but there was little to be done about Alek now. He could not alter his plans. Amadeus’s first acolyte was the one wild card in the room, and Carfax could only hope he was not as good as his master.
Checking over himself one last time, Carfax moved to the center of the room. The low psychedelic music stopped at once. Whatever the thralls and the human clients were engaged in stopped at once. All eyes turned on the hivemaster, because of what he was and his power over this place. This place was a part of him, and a subtle victim of all his emotions. He silently contacted every member of the hive in one deft, almost offhand, thought. He felt their collective nod. The exchange happened quickly, and the twins did not look alerted to anything odd at all. They simply sat together at the bar, watching him.
Now Alek Knight… Carfax felt the tension there in the shadows. Turning slightly, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Alek was moving unsurely toward his two companions, an aura of worry about him. He felt it, goddamn him. So that meant Carfax must move quickly.
“It comes to my attention, my people, that I am to be removed as your leader. It seems the Coven has passed sentence upon me. And as much as I regret leaving you all, there is nary a thing any of us can do about it. And so I reckon I shall take my new rightful place.” Dutifully he moved to the altar. This being an abandoned church, the altar still remained, with a stone cradle upon it, a device that was often used as entertainment. Tonight, however, the entertainment would be grim. Kneeling before the stone, Carfax motioned for the twin slayers to approach.
For a moment the two looked reluctant to pass sentence among so many. But after a moment the uncomfortable silence forced them from their seats. Michael hung back while Dante skipped ahead, that always-malicious glee on his pretty white face.
“I shall be what I must be, my people,” Carfax intoned. “You hivemaster no more. I shall be—” Alek reached the front and was about to take Michael by the arm when Carfax said: “YOUR GENERAL INSTEAD! TAKE THEM!”
The room broke into chaos, a chaos so great even Carfax with his vast power to read and control minds lost track of the errant emotions surrounding him and crackling the air like a dangerous electrical storm.
“TAKE THE SLAYERS!” he bellowed. “KILL THE SLAYERS!”
The room surged forward as one. The vampires were loyal to him, but the humans were confused, requiring he push them with as much mental power as he could manage in that moment. And push them he did. Kill a few he did with his explosive command. Maim many others he did also. Some lost their mind or their vision, some bled from every orifice. Yet they did not let that stop them. Tumbling chairs and tables, slamming each other aside, leaping past stone and through glass, human or vampire, they jumped on the three slayers in the club like hungry fleas on a bloodied animal, like flies on a corpse. For a moment the slayers were caught in Carfax’s vision—Alek grabbing Michael’s arm, Dante looking off curiously and with shock—then they were gone, blanketed by the inrushing, rabid-minded bodies. After that there was just the swarm, wood cracking, stone breaking, swords stabbing, blood pooling, jaws chomping with mechanized desire. Carfax smiled with grim satisfaction as the music of war roaring all about him. This was like the Peninsula. This was like Antietam. This was… glorious!
Something struck him in the shoulder, knocking him down beside the altar. It took him but a moment to twist around and recognize the face of the blonde longhaired slayer, the evil imp Dante. Somehow or other he had managed to escape the swarm, and even though his brother and the whelp slayer were still trapped under the mêlée, this one was stalking him like a little lion, jaws agape and foaming bloodily from the injuries he had sustained in the hive attack. And yet Dante’s eyes gleamed with his usual malevolence.
“Good show, old boy… but ‘tis the final curtain, wouldn’t you agree?” Dante asked as he drew his sword, a long thin rapier he was considered a legendary talent with.
Carfax was no swordsman. In fact, he did not enjoy violence unless it was much needed. And he seldom committed it himself. He withdrew the only weapon he carried on himself: a modest if extremely sharp scalpel. It was an antique he had picked up on one of his travels, used by the sawbones of the ancient Roman Empire. But it was not for sentimental or his
torical reasons that Carfax carried it. Rather, it was because the curious little tool had been forged from iron, the only one of its kind Carfax had ever come across. He brandished it now, a tiny iron scalpel against a stainless steel rapier. And even so, he saw Dante hesitate in his step, afraid of the iron that could kill him.
It was all the opening Carfax needed. He was not a warrior, but he was quick, as all his kind was. Quick, and quite a bit older than Dante. And he had seen enough battlefields and carried off enough bodies to know how to fight when he needed to, when survival was at risk. He feigned a thrust, and Dante, the impetuous fool that he was, naturally went for it. Carfax ducked under the blow and came around behind Dante, his free hand pinioning Dante’s arm to his back, Carfax’s knife hand snapping up under Dante’s chin. Dante stopped in mid-motion, the scalpel at his throat, and held perfect still.
The room fell silent around him. What once was all noise and violence was diffused as he commanded things to settle down. The vampires fell back, most or all dead from various sword wounds. Some lay perfect still. Some lay in pieces strewn here and about. Others gurgled off into dark corners where they had chosen to die. What remained were the two warriors, the two slayers, their swords drawn and bloodied from the impromptu massacre. Blood slathered them as much as it did their weapons—their hair, their black leather coats, their white virgin skin. On Michael it looked almost becoming because Carfax had seen it so many times. But on the other one it made him look a fright—all that whiteness and blackness tainted with red. He looked like some kind of ancient black-clad warrior sprung up from a Cornwall ditch somewhere, the Black Knight come to slay King Arthur.
Yet Alek the slayer was perfectly calm through it all. He had the perfect nature, Carfax realized, for a complete hunter. A complete murderer. Not so for Michael, who looked on Carfax and his captive brother with repressed terror and fury. And Michael never looked like this, never lost his calm and his reserve, except when Dante did something stupid to enrage him or endanger himself. In fact, Michael looked ready to charge ahead blindly at Carfax, and just might have, except Alek put his hand on Michael’s arm, halting his progress.
Slayer: Black Miracles Page 23
