by Tanya Huff
"Speaking of no actual evidence; how did you get the garbage train to blow?"
Vicki grinned. "Not that I'm admitting anything, detective-sergeant, but if I wanted to blow up a garbage train in a specific giant bloodsucking bug-infested place, I'd probably use a little accelerant and a timer, having first switched the rails and cleared the tunnels of all mammalian life forms."
"You closed down the entire system. Vicki."
"Giant bloodsucking bugs, Mike."
"I'm not saying you didn't have a good reason," he sighed, leaning against the counter. "But don't you think your solution was a little extreme?"
"Not really, no."
"What aren't you telling me?"
Moving into his arms, she bit him lightly on the chin. "I'm not telling you I blew up that garbage train."
"Good point."
"I'm not telling you what I really think of people who watch golf."
"Thank you."
She could feel his smile against the top of her head, his heart beating under her cheek, his life in her hands. Nor was she telling him that people like him, with type O blood, had been tagged so they'd be easier to find. Why bother with random biting when it was possible to go straight to the blood needed to create new queens? Even if they'd been harmless parasites, she'd have blown them up for that alone.
Mike Celluci was hers and she didn't share.
"Vicki, you going to tell me what you're snarling about?"
"Just thinking of something that really bugs me ..."
Sceleratus
*
"Man, this whole church thing just freaks me right out." Tony came out of the shadows where the streetlights stopped short of Holy Rosary Cathedral and fell into step beside the short, strawberry blond man who'd just come out of the building. "I mean, you're a member of the bloodsucking undead for Christ's sa... Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head. "What was that for?"
"I just came from confession. I'm in a mood."
"It's going to pass, right?" In the time it took him to maneuver around three elderly Chinese women, his companion had made it almost all the way to the parking lot and he had to run to catch up. "You know, we've been together what, almost two years, and you haven't been in church since last year around this time and..."
"Exactly this time."
"Okay. Is it like an anniversary or something?"
"Exactly like an anniversary." Henry Fitzroy, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, bastard son of Henry VIII, fished out the keys to his BMW and unlocked the door.
Tony studied Henry's face as he got into his own seat, as he buckled his seat belt, as Henry pulled out onto Richards Street. "You want to tell me about it?" he asked at last.
They'd turned onto Smithe Street before Henry answered....
*
Even after three weeks of torment, her body burned and broken, she was still beautiful to him. He cut the rope and caught her as she dropped, allowing her weight to take him to his knees. Holding her against his heart, rocking back and forth in a sticky pool, he waited for grief.
She had been dead only a few hours when he'd found her, following a blood scent so thick it left a trail even a mortal could have used. Her wrists had been tightly bound behind her back, a coarse rope threaded through the lashing and used to hoist her into the air. Heavy iron weights hung from burned ankles. The Inquisitors had begun with flogging and added more painful persuasions over time. Time had killed her; pain layered on pain until finally life had fled.
They'd had a year together, a year of nights since he'd followed her home from the Square of San Marco. He'd waited until the servants were asleep and then slipped unseen and unheard into her father's house, into her room. Her heartbeat had drawn him to the bed, and he'd gently pulled the covers back. Her name was Ginevra Treschi. Almost thirty, and three years a widow, she wasn't beautiful but she was so alive—even asleep—that he'd found himself staring. Only to find a few moments later that she was staring back at him.
"I don't want to hurry your decision," she'd said dryly, "but I'm getting chilled and I'd like to know if I should scream."
He'd intended to feed and then convince her that he was a dream but he found he couldn't.
For the first time in a hundred years, for the first time since he had willingly pressed his mouth to the bleeding wound in his immortal lover's breast, Henry Fitzroy allowed someone to see him as he was.
All he was.
Vampire. Prince. Man.
Allowed love.
Ginevra Treschi had brought light back into a life spent hiding from the sun.
Only one gray eye remained beneath a puckered lid and the Inquisitors had burned off what remained of the dark hair—the ebony curls first shorn in the convent that had been no protection from the Hounds of God. In Venice, in the year of our Lord 1637, the Hounds hunted as they pleased among the powerless. First, it had been the Jews, and then the Moors, and then those suspected of Protestantism until finally the Inquisition, backed by the gold flowing into Spain from the New World, began to cast its net where it chose. Ginevra had been an intelligent woman who dared to think for herself. In this time, that was enough.
Dead flesh compacted under his hands as his grip tightened. He wanted to rage and weep and mourn his loss, but he felt nothing. Her light, her love, had been extinguished and darkness had filled its place.
His heart as cold as hers, Henry kissed her forehead and laid the body gently down. When he stood, his hands were covered in her blood.
There would be blood enough to wash it away.
*
He found the priests in a small study, sitting at ease in a pair of cushioned chairs on either side of a marble hearth, slippered feet stretched out toward the fire, gold rings glittering on pale fingers. Cleaned and fed, they still stank of her death.
"... confessed to having relations with the devil, was forgiven, and gave her soul up to God. Very satisfactory all around. Shall we return the body to the sisters or to her family?"
The older Dominican shrugged. "I cannot see that it makes any difference, she... Who are you?"
Henry lifted his lip off his teeth in a parody of a smile. "I am vengeance," he said, closing and bolting the heavy oak door behind him. When he turned, he saw that the younger priest, secure in the power he wielded, blinded by that security, had moved toward him.
Their eyes met. The priest, who had stood calmly by while countless heretics found their way to redemption on paths of pain, visibly paled.
Henry stopped pretending to smile. "And I am the devil Ginevra Treschi had relations with."
He released the Hunger her blood had called.
They died begging for their lives as Ginevra had died.
It wasn't enough.
*
The Grand Inquisitor had sent five other Dominicans to serve on his Tribunal in Venice. Three died at prayer. One died in bed. One died as he dictated a letter to a novice who would remember nothing but darkness and blood.
*
The Doge, needing Spain's political and monetary support to retain power, had given the Inquisitors a wing of his palace. Had given them the room where the stone walls were damp and thick and the screams of those the Hounds brought down would not disturb his slumber.
Had killed Ginevra as surely as if he'd used the irons.
*
With a soft cry, Gracia la Valla sat bolt upright in the Doge's ornate bed clutching the covers in both hands. The canopy was open and a spill of moonlight pattered the room in shadows.
She heard a sound beside her and, thinking she'd woken her lover, murmured, as she reached out for him, "Such a dark dream I had."
Her screams brought the household guard.
*
He killed the Inquisition's holy torturer quickly, like the animal he was, and left him lying beside the filthy pallet that was his bed.
It still wasn't enough.
*
In the hour before dawn, Henry carried the body of Ginevra Treschi to the chapel
of the Benedictine Sisters who had tried to shelter her. He had washed her in the canal, wrapped her in linen, and laid her in front of their altar, her hands closed around the rosary she'd given him the night they'd parted.
Her lips when he kissed them were cold.
But so were his.
Although he had all but bathed in the blood of her murderers, it was her blood still staining his hands.
He met none of the sisters and, as much as he could feel anything, he was glad of it. Her miraculous return to the cloister would grant her burial in their consecrated ground—but not if death returned with her.
*
Henry woke the next night in one of the vaults under San Marco, the smell of her blood all around him. It would take still more blood to wash it away. For all their combined power of church and state, the Inquisition did not gather their victims randomly. Someone had borne witness against her.
Giuseppe Lemmo.
Marriage to him had been the alternative to the convent.
He had a large head, and a powdered gray wig, and no time for denial. After Henry had drunk his fill, head and wig and the body they were more or less attached to slid silently into the canal.
As Lemmo sank beneath the filthy water, the sound of two men approaching drove Henry into the shadows. His clothing stank of new death and old, but it was unlikely anyone could smell it over the stink of the city.
"No, no, I say the Dominicans died at the hand of the devil rising from hell to protect one of his own."
Henry fell silently into step behind the pair of merchants, the Hunger barely leashed.
"And I say," the second merchant snorted, "that the Holy Fathers called it on themselves. They spend so much time worrying about the devil in others, well, there's no smoke without fire. They enjoyed their work too much for my taste and you'll notice, if you look close, that most of their heretics had a hefty purse split between the Order and the Doge after their deaths."
"And more talk like that will give them your purse to split, you fool."
Actually, it had saved them both, but they would never know it.
"Give who my purse? The Hounds of God in Venice have gone to their just reward." He turned his head and spat into the dark waters of the canal. "And I wish Old Nick the joy of them."
His companion hurriedly crossed himself. "Do you think they're the only dogs in the kennel? The Dominicans are powerful; their tribunals stretch all the way back to Spain and up into the northlands. They won't let this go unanswered. I think you will find before very long that Venice will be overrun by the Hounds of God."
"You think? Fool, the One Hundred will be too busy fighting over a new Doge to tell His Holiness that some of his dogs have been put down."
Before they could draw near the lights and crowds around the Grand Canal, Henry slipped into the deeper darkness between two buildings. The Dominican's Tribunals stretched all the way back to Spain. He looked down at Ginevra's blood on his hands.
*
"Drink, signore?"
Without looking at either the bottle or the man who offered it, Henry shook his head and continued staring out over the moonlit water toward the lights of Sicily. Before him, although he could not tell which lights they were, were the buildings of the Inquisition's largest tribunal outside of Spain. They had their own courthouse, their own prison, their own chapel, their own apartments where half of every heretic's possessions ended up.
It was entirely possible they knew he was coming or that something was coming. Rumor could travel by day and night while he could move only in darkness.
Behind him stretched a long line of the dead. He had killed both Dominicans and the secular authorities who sat with them on the tribunals. He had killed the lawyers hired by the Inquisition. He had killed those who denounced their neighbors to the Inquisition and those who lent the Inquisition their support. He had killed those who thought to kill him.
He had never killed so often or been so strong. He could stand on a hill overlooking a village and know how many lives were scattered beneath him. He could stand in shadow outside a shuttered building and count the number of hearts beating within. He could stare into the eyes of the doomed and be almost deafened by the song of blood running through their veins. It was becoming hard to tell where he ended and the Hunger began.
The terrified whispers that followed him named him demon, so, when he fed, he hid the marks that would have shown what he truly was. There were too many who believed the old tales and he was far too vulnerable in the day.
"Too good to drink with me, signore?" Stinking of wine, he staggered along the rail until the motion of the waves threw him into Henry's side. Stumbling back, he raised the jug belligerently. "Too good to..."
Henry caught the man's gaze with his and held it. Held it through the realization, held it through the terror, held it as the heart began to race with panic, held it as bowels voided. When he finally released it, he caught the jug that dropped from nerveless fingers and watched the man crawl whimpering away, his mind already refusing to admit what he had seen.
It had been easy to find a ship willing to cross the narrow strait at night. Henry had merely attached himself to a party of students negotiating their return to the university after spending the day in the brothels of Reggio and the exotic arms of mainland whores. Although the sky was clear, the moon full, and the winds from the northwest, the captain of the schooner had accepted their combined coin so quickly he'd probably been looking for an excuse to make the trip. No doubt his hold held some of the steady stream of goods from France, Genoa, and Florence that moved illegally down the western coast to the Spanish- controlled kingdom of Naples and then to Sicily.
The smugglers would use the students as Henry intended, as a diversion over their arrival in Messina.
They passed the outer arm of the sickle-shaped harbor, close enough that the night no longer hid the individual buildings crouched on the skirts of Mount Etna. He could see the spire of the cathedral, the Abbey of Santa Maria della Valle, the monastery of San Giorgio, but nothing that told him where the Dominicans murdered in the name of God.
No matter.
It would be easy enough to find what he was looking for.
They could lock themselves away, but Henry would find them. They could beg or plead or pray, but they would die. And they would keep dying until enough blood had poured over his hands to wash the stain of Ginevra's blood away.
*
Messina was a port city and had been in continuous use since before the days of the Roman Empire. Beneath its piers and warehouses, beneath broad avenues and narrow streets, beneath the lemon trees and the olive groves, were the ruins of an earlier city. Beneath its necropolis were Roman catacombs.
As the students followed their hired torchbearer from the docks to the university, Henry followed the scent of death through the streets until he came at last to the end of the Via Annunziata to the heavy iron gates that closed off the Piazza del Dominico from the rest of the city. The pair of stakes rising out of the low stone dais in the center of the square had been used within the last three or four days. The stink of burning flesh almost overwhelmed the stink of fear.
Almost.
"Hey! You! What are you doing?"
The guard's sudden roar out of the shadows was intended to intimidate.
"Why the gates?" Henry asked without turning. The Hounds preferred an audience when they burned away heresy.
"You a stranger?"
"I am vengeance," Henry said quietly, touching the iron and rubbing the residue of greasy smoke between two fingers. As the guard reached for him, he turned and closed his hand about the burly wrist, tightening his grip until bones cracked and the man fell to his knees. "Why the gates?" he repeated.
"Friends. Oh, God, please..." It wasn't the pain that made him beg but the darkness in the stranger's eyes. "Some of the heretics got friends!"
"Good." He had fed in Reggio, so he snapped the guard's neck and let the body fall back into the
shadows. Without the guard, the gates were no barrier.
*
"You said he was ready to confess." Habit held up out of the filth, The Dominican stared disapprovingly at the body on the rack. "He is unconscious!"
The thin man in the leather apron shrugged. "Wasn't when I sent for you."
"Get him off that thing and back into the cell with the others." Sandals sticking to the floor, he stepped back beside the second monk and shook his head. "I am exhausted and his attorney has gone home. Let God's work take a break until morning, for pity's..."
The irons had not been in the fire, but they did what they'd been made to do. Even as the Hunger rose to answer the blood now turning the robe to black and white and red, Henry appreciated the irony of the monk's last word. A man who knew no pity had died with pity on his tongue. The second monk screamed and choked on a crimson flood as curved knives, taken from the table beside the rack, hooked in under his arms and met at his breastbone.
Henry killed the jailer as he'd killed the guard. Only those who gave the orders paid in blood.
Behind doors of solid oak, one large cell held half a dozen prisoners and two of the smaller cells held one prisoner each. Removing the bars, Henry opened the doors and stepped back out of sight. He had learned early that prisoners would rather remain to face the Inquisition than walk by him, but he always watched them leave, some small foolish part of his heart hoping he'd see Ginevra among them, free and alive.
The prisoner from one of the small cells surged out as the door was opened. Crouched low and ready for a fight, he squinted in the torchlight searching for an enemy. When he saw the bodies, he straightened and his generous mouth curved up into a smile. Hair as red-gold as Henry's had begun to gray, but in spite of approaching middle-age, his body was trim and well built. He was well-dressed and clearly used to being obeyed.
On his order, four men and two women shuffled out of the large cell, hands raised to block the light, bits of straw clinging to hair and clothing. On his order, they led the way out of the prison.
