Of Masques and Martyrs

by Christopher Golden

  Which reminded him again of Will. And Rolf. And Allison.

  “Any word from Cody?” he asked, looking to Nikki for an answer.

  She shook her head.

  “How are you?” Nikki asked.

  “I feel . . . good,” Peter replied, oddly delighted with his own answer. “I feel alive.”

  “You are alive,” Kuromaku said grimly.

  Peter laughed again. “Don’t sound so happy about it, old friend,” he said.

  Then he saw the fear and anxiety on Nikki’s face and realized he was being unkind. He reached out, touched her hand. She returned his smile, at last, and twined her fingers into his.

  “I know I’m alive, of course,” he said, looking from Nikki’s face to Kuromaku’s. “I haven’t lost my ‘magic touch,’ but everything else is . . . well, it’s gone.”

  “But how?” Kuromaku asked. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. Never.”

  Peter frowned now. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wish I could say I did it on purpose. And I’ve never heard of anything like it either, not even from the Stranger himself. But then, I don’t think a shadow has ever lived through the things I have. The magic I learned, during my time in Hell . . . my age . . . I don’t know.

  “What I do know is this: the cocoon was natural, but the magic was there too. I’ve explained to you, Kuromaku, in the correspondence we’ve exchanged, that shadows are of a triple nature. Divine. Demonic. Human. Obviously the end result of this hibernation state was a splitting of those three.”

  “Then the wraith we saw . . . ” Nikki began.

  “There were two, weren’t there?” Peter asked.

  “Yes, but one was beautiful and the other horrible,” she replied.

  “There!” Peter said. “You see. Divine. Demonic. Shades of my true self. Which, with the exception of a bit of sorcery, leaves me . . . ”

  He trailed off again. For in the cocoon, he’d been in a kind of dream state. Aware, but not truly conscious. Now, the reality of what had happened began to hit him.

  “Human,” Kuromaku finished. “Completely human.”

  “Looks that way,” Peter replied, his brow furrowed.

  “Do you feel . . . odd?” Nikki asked.

  He had to think about it for a moment. As he contemplated her question, he noticed that Kuromaku wore two swords. One was his katana. The other, Peter recognized instantly.

  “Maku?” he asked.

  “Ah, yes, sorry,” Kuromaku replied. “When you feel up to it, I’ll tell you of the dreams that brought me here. Odd dreams, but one thing in them was perfectly clear. You’re meant to have this back.”

  Kuromaku handed him the long sword, and something seemed to sweep over Peter. It was the past. But not as history, as memory. The sights and smells and sounds of one night, nearly five and a half centuries earlier. The night Constantinople fell to the Turks.

  The night Nicephorus Dragases became a vampire.

  “Thank you,” he said uncertainly.

  Nikki looked at him strangely. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “But I feel like my life as a shadow is a distant memory, as if from childhood. And my life before—my life in Byzantium—is as fresh as yesterday. Even my name sounds odd to me. My real name is Nicephorus. That’s who I am.”

  Kuromaku only looked at him curiously, but Nikki seemed actually alarmed. Even hurt. It took him a moment to understand her reaction.

  “Oh, I haven’t disappeared into the past,” he said hurriedly. “I’m still Peter Octavian. My heart is still here . . . with the coven. My family is here. But I guess I just feel . . .”

  “You feel human again,” Nikki suggested.

  Peter smiled at that.

  “Oh, yes,” he said.

  But then his smile dissolved, as he noticed someone was missing.

  “Where’s George?” he asked.

  Nikki looked away, and it was Kuromaku who answered.

  “Your friend is ill. I’m afraid.”

  13

  I’m living for the night we steal away.

  I need you at the dimming of the day.

  —BONNIE RAITT, “Dimming of the Day”

  U.N. SOLDIERS HAD VACATED A SMALL TENT and given it over to their unlikely guests so they might rest while preparations were made for the move on New Orleans. Sebastiano was with Jimenez, trying to work with chemists at the relocated Center for Disease Control, whose main labs had been moved long before the fire.

  Cody hoped the CDC scientists could duplicate and mass produce the serum in time. They would know soon, however. And if it turned out they couldn’t do it, then he and Allison and probably Yano would head off to New Orleans on their own, try to do what they could in what he deemed an unwinnable war.

  Behind him, Allison lay on a cot, wide awake. She made no attempt to get comfortable; she just lay there waiting for the action to begin. Waiting for her shot at Hannibal. Cody didn’t know what to say to her. Didn’t even know how to begin. Rather than try, he picked up the cellular phone Jimenez had loaned them and dialed the number at the convent. It was the middle of the day, and he was greatly surprised when, at the sixth ring, the answering machine beeped into his ear.

  “Uh, hello?” he said. “George? Peter? It’s Will. Listen, I’ll try you again soon if I can. I know the shit’s gonna be hitting the fan tonight. Alli . . . Alli and I are working on something that might give us an edge. We’re in Atlanta now, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  He flipped the cell phone closed and dropped it on his cot. With a sigh, Cody sat on the cot and steepled his fingers under his bearded chin. His eyes focused, at length, on Allison. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t closed her eyes, nor turned at all to comment on his phone call or to acknowledge the silence between them.

  All his life, he’d been a rogue. As a shadow, after freeing himself from the expectations of Karl Von Reinman’s coven, he had become a rogue once again. For more than one hundred and fifty years, he had seen the world clearly, turned a problem over in his mind, and then acted upon his instincts. For better or worse, he had lived and died and lived as a man of action.

  But at that moment, Will Cody had no idea what to do or say. He felt, for all the world, like a child.

  “I love you,” he said at last, for no other words would come.

  Allison said nothing. Didn’t even look up. Her lack of response drew him off the cot and across the tent, where he kneeled by her and gingerly stroked her hair. But Allison turned away, eyes still open and staring at the tent wall.

  “This is the first time we’ve been alone since . . .” he began, but faltered. “Allison, please speak to me. I know it’s . . . I’ve heard all the corny love songs on the radio, even paid attention to a few when you weren’t watching me, and I know how it sounds, but I need you. I truly do. You’re all I live for.”

  Allison was silent. She made no sound, no sob or whimper, but he knew she was crying. He could smell the blood.

  “Alli?” he prodded, disgusted with the pleading in his voice, despite the honesty of his feelings.

  “I’m not me,” she said, her voice cracking. “You needed her. I’m not her anymore.”

  That stopped him. Will stared at her still form; her ribs did not rise and fall with her breathing because she no longer needed to breathe. His heart felt frozen as he reached out to touch her gently on the shoulder.

  “Alli,” he said again.

  Finally, she rolled over to look at him, vulnerable, offering herself to him as if in defeat. Offering her body. Offering her throat. Surrendering.

  “Please,” he said, and simply did not know how to continue.

  “What are you asking for?” she whispered. “I’ve got nothing to give you, Will. I’m all gone.”

  “Then I’m going to get you back, bring you back,” he insisted, his voice rising. “If you want to just give up, I can’t stop you, but I’m not going to give up, Allison.”

  “I’
m not her,” she said again and averted her eyes.

  “Don’t you look away from me!” he growled. “Damn you, don’t you look away! You think I don’t know you’re different? You think I don’t know that you’ve changed?

  “Goddamn you, I’m what you’ve become!” he roared, standing and striding away from her, arms flailing. “I’m the thing you hate so much, the horror that your life has turned into!”

  In an instant, he was at her side again.

  “So don’t tell me you’re not her!” he snarled. “I know what you are. There are parts of you that you’ve lost forever. I know it. I’ve been there. I can’t even begin to imagine the agony and horror of what Hannibal did to you, and yes, I chose the shadows because I was too much of a coward to ‘go gently into that good night.’ I didn’t want to die! You didn’t have a choice.

  “I know it’s not the same thing,” he said, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper.

  Then he buried his face in her hair, smelling the blood of his own tears now.

  “But don’t tell me you’re not her. Your name is Allison Vigeant. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or cared for anything in my life. I know you, darlin’. You want to hide away from what’s happened to you, I understand that. But don’t hide from me!” he whispered.

  Her eyes were still closed as she reached up to embrace him. Her arms, though filled with an unnatural strength, felt weak around him. Will held her close.

  “I hated Erika for what she did. For what she let happen to me, and for betraying us all,” Allison whispered. “But to kill her like that. . . . I wanted to do it, to make myself believe it didn’t matter. To be cold and hard and dead. I’m dead, Will. I can make myself look beautiful, but in my mind I’ll always have the wounds and scars that Hannibal gave me. It’s horrible, and I thought I could take all of that and just be a warrior.

  “Just kill.

  “But she haunts me already, and I hated her. Peter and the others, they’re going to need all the help they can get. In a way, I guess it’s good that this happened to me. . . .”

  She laughed then, a little wildly, and Will held her even more tightly.

  “Careful,” she said, and he backed off, met her eyes, saw the small smile on her lips. “Don’t want to break me.”

  Then her face crumpled, and the sobs began, and he could feel the strength in her arms finally as she pulled him tightly to her.

  “I know it hurts,” he whispered. “But as long as we’re together, it’ll be all right, Alli. And if you’re not ready for what’s coming tonight, you don’t have to . . . ”

  She shushed him.

  “I’ll—I’ll do what I have to,” she sniffled. “And I will see Hannibal dead. But after that . . . after that, we’re done, okay?”

  Will brushed her hair away from her face. Kissed her forehead gently, the bristles of his beard brushing against her skin. Then, very lightly, their lips met.

  “After this one’s over, we’re done,” he promised. “Maybe a cabin by a lake. Wind in the trees.”

  “Mmmm,” she said. “Sounds wonderful.”

  “It will be,” Will replied. “It will be.”

  Then he kissed her again, tentatively, not wanting to spook her after what Hannibal had done. But as disconnected as she obviously felt from her human life, he sensed that she needed this. That Allison needed him to remind her who she really was. What she was.

  His mouth moved from her lips to her neck, the soft underside of her chin, and then down to the hard ridge of her breastbone. His fingers moved over the buttons of her shirt, slowly, prepared to stop the moment he sensed any hesitation.

  But Allison did not hesitate. She nuzzled the top of his head even as her hands reached for the heavy steel buckle on his belt. He kissed her breasts slowly, and breathed in by reflex when her fingers snaked into his jeans. Gently, she raked her nails across him, then lifted herself from the cot so he could slide her pants off.

  They made love quietly. Slowly. Several times, she began to cry and Will lapped the blood from her cheeks, brushed her hair from her face so that they could watch each other’s eyes.

  And after, as they lay together waiting for someone to come and tell them it was time to go, they whispered to one another. Allison felt a little bit more herself now. But she wasn’t better. Not by a long shot. It would take a great deal of time before she would truly be healed of the wounds Hannibal had inflicted upon her.

  But it was a beginning.

  On the second floor of Hannibal’s elegant new Garden District home was an enormous library with vaulted ceilings. Many of the volumes in the room were nearly as old as the home itself, presumably passed along from one owner to the next, or perhaps even collected by old Mrs. Collins herself.

  Hannibal had discovered the room at dawn and fallen in love with it. His anticipation of the coming night was so intense that he could not close his eyes for more than a moment. The only succor for his impatience, for the thoughts racing through his mind, were the books in this room.

  The library, to his great pleasure, was also the darkest room in the mansion. Its three windows, along the front of the house, were short and high on the wall. The sunlight they allowed into the room sprayed across the books on upper shelves, and slid across the library in an arc as the hours passed. But it was a simple matter for Hannibal to avoid the light as he read.

  Simple enough, and yet hypocritical in many ways. For even this exposure to diffuse sunlight was something he would have discouraged in his followers. He truly believed that to make them the predators, the bloodthirsty hunters that he knew vampires were meant to be, they must return to the dark. Creatures of darkness, lurking in shadow and hunting by night.

  It had surprised him how easily they, and even he, had slipped back into that old modus operandi. Though he denied it to his flock, he knew that most of the myths he now perpetrated had been introduced almost as shackles to his race by the Vatican. But what were once weapons to be used against them were now tools they might bring to bear in their quest for dominance.

  For the vampires of myth which he forced his clan to emulate were far more terrifying to the human mind than any cooperative “shadow” might be. Indeed, the Americans—who had been his first and greatest target—already cowered in fear, hiding behind their shuttered windows in those cities his clan had infiltrated.

  “Hmmm?” Hannibal grunted and looked down at the spot where his elbow was propped on the arm of the leather library chair. The sunlight had finally reached him, falling across the sleeve of his white cotton shirt.

  It burned him. Hannibal stared in fascination as smoke began to rise from the cotton. The flesh beneath cracked and blistered. Finally he pulled it away not because of the pain, but because he feared he would actually be set aflame, ruining a perfectly good shirt.

  As his flesh healed, Hannibal pondered what this meant. Even subconsciously, his philosophy had begun to take effect. It had been his doing, his plan all along, to convince vampires once more of the ancient myths—trusting their cellular consciousness to obey even destructive commands. But obviously there were drawbacks to his plan. After all, he knew the truth, and yet had become so enamored of the myth that it was affecting him. That it could do so even slightly was amazing to him.

  But it couldn’t be helped. And since so few humans truly understood the nature of vampirism, even such handicaps would not prevent his quest for dominance over humanity from coming to fruition.

  Hannibal rose and moved his chair. Once more, he bent his head to pore through the pages of a nineteenth-century translation of The Arabian Nights. After that, he thought he would amuse himself with a work of fiction masquerading as history, a book with the longest title he’d ever seen. A History of the World, with All Its Great Sensations, Together with Its Decisive Battles and the Rise and Fall of Its Nations from the Earliest Times to the Present Day: Volume One had been compiled by one “Nugent Robinson.” Of course, “present day” to Mr. Robinson had been 1887, the
time of the book’s publication. It was certain to be filled with all manner of rubbish Hannibal might have corrected Robinson on, if only he’d been asked.

  It did have lovely, delicate fold-out maps, however. Hannibal enjoyed maps, particularly historical ones. They revealed the true history of conquest, and that was what interested him most.

  He settled in to finish The Arabian Nights with a last, appreciative glance at the gold filigreed lettering on the cover of the history book. A few moments later, something moved in his home.

  Hannibal looked up from his book with a frown. He listened intently and allowed his senses to expand, his mind searching for any unwelcome presence in the mansion. Nothing human, at least, had entered the house. He would have been able to smell the blood.

  And yet . . . something.

  In his peripheral vision, a shadow moved. With a snarl, Hannibal leaped up and back, fangs bared, claws protruding. What he saw astonished him. A thin ebony creature, whose fangs and claws were its only distinguishing features, a thing simply made to kill. Its black eyes watched him.

  “How?” was all he said.

  The question filled his mind. Not only how the thing had managed to come upon him without him sensing its approach, but how it had come to be there at all. It was one of the demon-wraiths that Mulkerrin had called up during the final battle in Austria last year. One of the true vampires, according to Octavian’s coven. A thing not of this Earth, or even, if any sorceror could be believed, of this reality.

  “Speak quickly, before I take your head,” Hannibal demanded in his most imperious tone. “What do you want here? How did you find this place?”

  The wraith moved forward slightly, deeper into the shadows of the room and away from the sun streaming through the high windows. Its voice, when it spoke, was horrible.