by Graham Brown
Billy Ray nodded. “Never,” he said. “And just so we’re clear, that’s as far as my pull goes. If we mess up again, we’re both flipping burgers.”
She looked Billy Ray straight in the eyes. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t let you down again. Tonight we end this case, one way or another.”
CHAPTER 45
AS THE hour of noon approached, Christian hid in the darkest shadows of the decaying hulk of an oil platform. Abandoned after Katrina, it sat and rusted, becoming a home for birds, corrosion, and mold.
He’d made his way there in a rented powerboat, coming under cover of darkness and hiding in the catacombs of the huge structure as day broke. When and how Drake would show himself, Christian didn’t know. He’d searched the rig from top to bottom. Neither Drake nor any of his drones were there. At least it wasn’t a trap.
Finally, he heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. He guessed it would be carrying Drake or some messenger.
Christian moved forward to the edge of the shadows. Even here, reflected sunlight began to weaken him and bring on a gnawing pain.
He watched the aircraft approach, moving across the brilliant blue sky. He found a stairwell and climbed until he stood half a deck below the helipad. The sound grew louder, and the old structure shuddered as the helicopter came in for landing.
Christian watched as it touched down and the blades began to slow. Soon enough, a door on the helicopter’s side opened. The pilot got out and then helped what appeared to be a frail old man climb down.
As the withered man set foot on the platform, Christian realized it was Drake. He was covered from head to toe in black garb. A cloak draped over his shoulders. He even wore a head scarf, as if he were a Bedouin in the desert. He stepped forward, walking with a cane.
Christian had never seen Drake in the daylight. He seemed crippled by it. The fearsome creature of the night was just a tired old man by day.
He tried to read Drake’s mind, but there was nothing there, nothing to hear.
Christian stepped forward, climbing the last few stairs. He gripped the railing and prepared to dive back into the shadows if anything happened. He felt the weight of the sunlight pressing upon him, felt his strength ebbing rapidly.
“Tell him to leave us!” he shouted, nodding toward the pilot.
It was odd, Christian thought. The roles were reversed: the titans of the Nosferatu race cowering in fear of an average human man. The pilot could have easily killed them both in their current states. No doubt he was under Drake’s control, but for Christian, that was all the more reason to send him away.
Drake waved a hand toward the helicopter, and the pilot got back inside and fired up the bird. As it lifted off and moved away, Christian stepped forward, keeping to the shade. In front of him, Drake’s hand shook as it gripped the cane that held him up. Seeing him this way, Christian felt sorry for him.
“Our enemies would not show us the compassion you feel for me now,” Drake said.
Christian ignored the comment. “Why have you asked me here?”
Drake unbuttoned his facial cloth; his skin looked weathered and aged. Christian’s own face was faring little better.
It had been said enough time in the sun would reveal the Nosferatu’s true age. Christian doubted that, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
“I’ve called you here to give you one last chance to rejoin us,” Drake said. “For where else can you go?”
Christian believed he had somewhere else to go, but until the right moment, he wanted to keep that from Drake. He did what he could to block his thoughts. The best way he’d found was to focus on something else. He focused on their first meeting, the night when Drake had turned him. Drake read it quickly.
“Still living in the past?”
“You deceived me,” Christian said. “Right from the start.”
“You were already separating from the world,” Drake said. “Running from the legion. Heading for the wild lands and the Goths. You murdered the prefect and the general, and you slew his guard to reach him. I watched as the guilt swelled within you. You only realized the foolishness of what you’d done afterward. And fearing you could not hold the power you’d grasped for, you ran.”
Only now did Christian understand why Drake had turned him and why, as Tiberius, he’d been so filled with fear that he’d allowed himself to be turned. He’d even begged for it.
But while Drake was right about much, he was wrong about the truth of that moment.
“You misjudged me,” Christian said. “I killed the prefect and the commander of our legion, that much is true, but the only guilt I felt was for the innocent guards I had to strike down to get at them. That’s my sin. If any form of hell awaits me, it’s for that reason and that reason alone.”
“You grasped for power,” Drake countered, “but realized you could not hold it.”
“No,” Christian said firmly. “I never wanted it, but Trajan was worse than a fool. He wasted the men on battles they could not win. Sent them to war with no objective beyond his own glory. While he basked in it, the men swam in blood—their own. I killed him to save them, not to rule them or write my name in history.”
Drake’s face showed a look of surprise that Christian had never seen before. He knew from searching Christian’s heart that the words Christian had spoken were true. He’d never sensed this before, perhaps because it was buried under the waves of guilt Christian felt for slaughtering the general’s guard.
“You wanted power,” Drake insisted. “I felt it!”
“Yes,” Christian admitted. “Power to stop the waste and mindless slaughter. After two years of carnage, I realized it would never end. Trajan could not be swayed, could not be convinced of any other form of action beyond what he desired.”
“You were a traitor!”
“To Trajan, yes. To the power of the politicians, yes. But to my men, to the honor of Rome, no!”
He had never said these truths before. Just speaking them seemed to give him strength. And strangely, they seemed to strike fear into Drake. For the first time ever, Christian sensed confusion in his old master’s eyes. Surprise and miscalculation had put him off-balance.
Drake put a hand to the railing, grasping it for balance.
“You are the master of deception,” Christian said. “It seems you have deceived even yourself.”
“No,” Drake said. “It is you who fails to see the truth.”
For the first time in seventeen centuries, Christian felt the balance of power turning. He stood on the brink of wielding a weapon that would destroy his old master, a weapon that would weaken him and wear him down worse than the sunlight was doing now. The path was finally clear, the end game of this journey finally in sight. Christian’s confidence swelled with the thought.
“You forget our history,” Drake warned, sensing Christian’s confidence and suddenly returning to his menacing form. “You live only because of my mercy. I thought that lesson I taught you on the White Cliffs of Dover would have made a deeper impression. If you couldn’t kill me filled with rage over your poor Elsa, you will never have the strength to do it.”
“I’ve found a weapon more powerful than rage,” Christian insisted.
Drake’s anger was bringing him strength. He stood taller. “There is no power that will bend my knees,” he insisted, “not the Church, not this so-called angel, and certainly not you!”
Drake had missed it. He thought Christian was referring to the angel, not the sword of God that would send Drake straight to hell.
“Your end is coming, Drakos,” he said. “It’s not going to be the Church, nor the angel that finishes you. It’s going to be me. Seventeen hundred years ago, I killed Trajan to end the slaughter of the legionnaires, and when the Midnight Sun fades, I’m going to kill you to end the carnage you’ve brought to the world.”
As the words came from Christian’s mouth, the wind picked up across the water. It whipped around them and tugged at t
he cloak, Drake wore. It brought the sound of the helicopter returning to Christian’s ears.
The two goliaths stared each other down.
“You will fail,” Drake said calmly.
“We shall see.”
With Drake still in the light, Christian backed into the shadows until he reached the stairs. He moved down two flights and then a third before disappearing into the unlighted catacombs of the huge rig.
He waited, but the only sound from up above was that of the helicopter landing. Neither Drake nor anyone else followed, and by the time Christian reached the bottom level of the platform, the black helicopter was lifting off high above and banking away to the north.
Any chance at reconciliation was forever gone now. There would be no more truces, no more talks. A small part of him wished things were different. The angel brought what Drake had begged for so long ago. But his old friend had been churning the bitterness in his heart for two thousand years. He would never turn back; he was too far gone, just like Hecht.
And just like Hecht, Christian would have no choice but to destroy him.
CHAPTER 46
SIMON LATHATCH knelt before a small altar in the tower room of the church on St. Bernard Avenue. His eyes were closed, his hands folded around a rosary, his chest rising and falling slowly. His lips moved in a silent prayer, one he repeated over and over again.
I hope to act righteously, Father. I hope my will has conformed to yours. If my path is true, please show me a sign, for my heart trembles at what I have proposed to do.
In front of him, held in clasps of the purest gold, was the sword into which the nails of the Crucifixion had been melted. The Ignis Purgata believed this sword carried the blood of Christ within it. They believed it held the power to end the curse of the Nosferatu.
All those who’d held Simon’s position had been entrusted with it. None had ever dared to use it in battle. And none of them would have even considered what he was about to do with it.
My heart trembles at what I have proposed.
Simon wondered if he had taken leave of his senses.
He opened his eyes. The sword glistened in all its brilliance, the metal polished to a mirror finish. It was beautiful. It was perfect.
Legend held that the nails from Golgotha had been recovered by one of the Roman soldiers as Joseph of Arimathea retrieved the body of Christ from the cross.
They remained in this soldier’s possession for seventy years, until he died at the age of ninety-one. They were passed down to his son and then to his grandson, each of whom kept them secret as the Romans tried to destroy the Christian movement. Ten generations later, after the establishment of the Church, a young man who’d become a priest offered them as a gift to the papal envoy.
The Church council met, prayed and sought a sign of their own. Shortly thereafter, the petition of Drakos reached the council. In response the leaders of the Church deemed the nails a divine gift, preordained to help them destroy the scourge of the Nosferatu.
They were hidden away for centuries afterward. Then, during the Dark Ages, with the Nosferatu running rampant in the plague filled world, a hunter named Ishera had a vision that the nails of the cross had become a sword of iron and steel. In his dream, this sword shone through the night like a beacon, and the hunters followed it, sweeping the Nosferatu from the earth.
The greatest sword makers of Europe were called. They forged many prototypes before one craftsman was selected and given charge to create from the nails and the strongest metals known, the sword that would end the curse of the Fallen.
Simon had pondered this often. He wondered what the Prince of Peace would think of their actions, of turning the nails that tortured him—as he allowed himself to be a sacrifice for all the world—into a weapon of destruction.
It was a conflict the Church had always struggled with, from the Crusades, to the actions of the Ignis Purgata. What place did warriors have among those charged with praying for their enemies? If the Church was the body of Christ, the instrument of peace, then why were they so often at war?
Simon caught sight of his own reflection in the gleaming blade. He saw himself wrestling with the decision, trying to come to his own conclusion. He closed his eyes again, trying to remove himself from the equation.
Not my will, but yours, Father. Not my desire, but yours. If my way is righteous, please show me a sign... Please show me a sign.... Please show me a sign…
The sound of the door opening ended his prayer.
Simon turned to see Henrick letting himself in. He made no request to enter, and offered no apologies.
Frustrated at the disturbance, Simon crossed himself before the altar and got up, his old knees hurting as he stood. Henrick said nothing. He just started past Simon, looking toward the sword.
“Why have you interrupted me?” Simon asked.
“One of the hunters wishes to speak with you,” Henrick said. “He reports a sign—a Nosferatu walking in daylight. He believes the demon has been turned back into human form.”
Simon’s heart swelled with hope. “Are you sure?”
Henrick seemed contrite. He nodded slowly, as if admitting that he might be wrong and that Simon might possibly be correct after all these years. “You should speak with him and decide for yourself.”
Henrick opened the door and stepped out. Simon followed, closing the door behind him and moving to the stairway. Henrick marched in lockstep at his side.
“If this is true,” Simon began, “then we must do all we can to protect the angel.”
Henrick nodded as they took to the stairs. “In which case, I ask you to think about the moment at hand. Even with the sword of God, your strength will be no match for Drakos. Your body is frail; your arm is withered, Simon.”
“Withered because I ripped you from the grasp of a demon that was trying to consume you.”
The incident was twenty years ago. Sometimes it seemed to be all that bonded the two men anymore.
Henrick nodded his appreciation. “All I ask is the chance to return the favor.”
Simon was unnerved by Henrick’s manner of speaking. The man was usually brash and arrogant. He demanded; he did not request, even as a subordinate.
“You’re full of tact all of a sudden.”
“I only desire what should rightfully be mine,” Henrick said. “The honor and danger of carrying the sword into battle. In return, I offer you the chance to reconsider the madness of your decision.”
“What madness are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” Henrick said.
The tact was gone, the edges of Henrick’s cool fraying as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “Either lie to me boldly or speak the truth,” Henrick demanded . “But hide your actions no longer. Tell me —here in the house of God—what are your plans for the sword?”
By now, they’d stepped out onto the floor of the church. Standing there, Simon noticed one of the hunters who was supposed to be out tracking the Nosferatu.
Two other hunters emerged from the back. While across the church, by the front door, three more appeared. They stepped from the shadows and moved down the aisle toward him.
There was no point in answering Henrick’s question. Clearly, he already knew of Simon’s plan.
As the men moved approached, Simon’s heart filled with sadness. Some of these men he’d trained, all of them he’d known for years as they progressed through the order. The look on their faces suggested confusion, anger, and betrayal.
Henrick had done his job well, but then Simon had made it easy for him.
“Nothing to say?” Henrick asked. “Then let your silence convict you.” He turned to one of the men. “Upstairs, in the tower room. Secure the sword so I might take it from this place.”
Simon could not protest. He could not fight or even attempt to explain. As the hunter ran off to get the Sword of God, Henrick and the men glared at him as if Simon had become a demon himself.
The other
hunters moved closer—five strong men, apparently more loyal to Henrick than to their oath or to Simon. Soon he was surrounded in the small space by the altar. The room became silent and the air awfully still.
“This is mutiny,” Simon pointed out. “Do you even fathom what you’re doing?”
“Do you?” Henrick replied sharply. “Perhaps this demon has cracked your mind. Perhaps you’re under his control.”
“I’m not!” Simon insisted. “My will is my own.”
“That only makes it worse.”
The lone hunter came back down the stairs with the sword in his hand. He delivered it to Henrick, who held it aloft. “The Sword of God will not be turned over to the enemy.”
The rest of the group nodded approvingly. Even if Simon tried to explain, he could not expect the mutineers to change their minds now. He held silent, and Henrick pointed the sword at him.
“Now,” Henrick said, beginning his reign, “we’re going to need some information concerning this new friend of yours.”
With that said, two of the hunters forced Simon to his knees. He said nothing, prompting Henrick to step forward and strike him in the face with a gauntlet covered fist.
Simon looked up, his nose broken, his lip bleeding. He gazed into Henrick’s eyes. Fear filled his soul. Not for himself, but for the world at large, for those who would suffer, and for the single Nosferatu who had dared visit the house of the Lord.
A second blow jarred him, snapping his head to the side and splattering his blood across the floorboards. Dazed but conscious, Simon eyed the crimson stain of his life’s blood. Slowly, a sense of peace came over him. By the time he turned back to his tormentors, a faint smile had found its way to his damaged face.
Henrick noticed quickly and grabbed him by the hair, tilting Simon’s head back. “You have nothing to grin about, old man.”
“I… have… understanding,” Simon managed.
Henrick released Simon’s hair with jerk. “Understanding of what?”
“I asked God for a sign,” Simon whispered. “A sign that my path was righteous. He sent me a betrayer, at the head of a mob, to take me away in chains. What greater sign could He possibly give me?”
