You must go after Hannibal now, Rolf.
The voice in Rolfs head surprised him so much he nearly fell down. He was recovering relatively quickly from the terrible wounds he’d received, thanks mainly to Jared’s offering of blood, but for a moment he had to wonder whether he was hallucinating. The only blood-relatives he was aware of who still lived were Will Cody and perhaps Alexandra Nueva, wherever she was. But then . . .
You might consider me an ancestor, came the voice again and Rolf shook off Jared’s assistance, standing tall once again to scan the army brought by the creature who called himself Charlemagne.
Oh, but he is Charlemagne, said the voice.
Then who are you? Rolf thought, and he saw a figure separate itself from the crowd of soldiers blocking Mozartplatz. While the entire army seemed dressed from another time, with cloaks and tunics, and cloth straps wound up their legs from their shoes, this vampire wore blue jeans, brown bootlike shoes and a fashionable pullover jersey.
My name is John Courage, and Rolf knew he was looking right at the shadow who used that name, whose voice was in his head.
Then Rolf threw a glance at Jared, who gave him a small smile in return. Martha, Jared and Isaac had been sent by this man, and Cody had known of him . . . Cody. Rolf looked up at the fortress and could see from where he stood that many of the walls had crumbled, several parapets collapsing down the side of the hill.
Isaac, unfortunately, is dead, Courage told him.
Rolf began to walk forward, across the plaza, winding his way through the bodies of fallen soldiers, trying not to smell their blood as he realized that he was still in need of sustenance. The other five surviving members of his team—Sebastiano, Carlo, Annelise, young Erika and Jared—followed behind, and Jimenez motioned for all of his people to clear a path, to allow the six vampires to pass. By the time they emerged from the pack of humans, Rolf saw that there was a single female with them as well. She too was dressed in modern fashion.
And Rolf knew her.
“Rolf!” Allison Vigeant yelled, and with John Courage walking casually behind her, she rushed toward him, arms outstretched for a hug.
And he gave her one, happy as he was to see her alive. He wanted to balk at getting his blood all over her clothes, but she didn’t seem to care. She began to introduce him to Courage, but Rolf waved such niceties away. He already knew the man. In the meantime, she wanted to know what had happened to her lover, Will Cody, and Rolf was happy to have Courage there to relate his thoughts to her. Through him, Rolf explained what had happened with Hannibal, and why the human troops could not approach the fortress. Through him, Rolf was able to tell Allison that Will Cody had nearly died, but that as far as he knew, he had recovered and was even now fighting Mulkerrin at the fortress.
“Well, we’ve got to help him,” Allison declared, her matter-of-factness distracting Rolf from his obsession with Hannibal and the confrontation of only moments before with Roberto Jimenez.
“And we will,” Courage said, “though first we’ve got to deal with these humans . . . No offense, Allison.”
“None taken, John.”
Who are you, really? Rolf thought suddenly, and Courage’s eyes met his again. My ancestor, from how far back?
But this time, Courage didn’t answer with his mind.
“We’ll get to that, Rolf,” the man said, sounding as if he meant it. “First things first, though. You’ve got to go after Hannibal and his new coven. Stop him now or he may become even more dangerous to us in the future.”
Oh, I’m going all all right, Rolf thought, even if it takes me forever to find him. I mean either to save Elissa or avenge her.
“Vengeance is the work of the Lord,” Courage said, startling him. “Hannibal must be destroyed to protect our race. And it won’t take you forever to find him, for I suspect I know where he is headed.
“Jared,” Courage said and turned to the other shadow, “go with Rolf Help them track Hannibal, and destroy him. At any cost.”
“And fast, Jared,” Allison added, and Rolf felt her pain as a terrible memory clouded her eyes.
“Rolf,” she said, “I was Hannibal’s prisoner once. He did terrible things to me, but you freed me before the worst could happen. You’ve got to do the same for this woman. I know what Hannibal does to his female prey, and I’ve seen what he does when he’s through with them.
“Hurry.”
“And what of them?” Jared asked Courage, and they all turned to face the humans, who stood alert, vigilant in the morning sun. The wind carried the mutterings of Roberto Jimenez and the French commander, a woman named Surro, across the plaza, but he could not make out their words. The whole scene seemed like a Western showdown to him, but on a much larger scale, and for much higher stakes.
It was still fairly early in the morning, but already it was beginning to get unseasonably warm for June in Austria. Blood was beginning to dry, corpses to stink of death. Rolf had to wonder how long it had been since Charlemagne’s troops had eaten, and what it would take to push them over the edge. They had to be quick about things, no matter which way it went.
Then, without word or thought, Charlemagne came forward to join them, and he, Courage, Rolf and Allison began to walk toward the human army. Weapons were leveled at them, but they kept walking, stopping midway between the two forces. Jimenez had said he would accept Charlemagne’s assistance, but not that he would enjoy it.
“Please keep in mind,” Courage said loudly, “that the woman you see here is as human as any of you. Should you fire, we vampires would survive but she would most assuredly die!”
“What a comforting thought,” she mumbled to him, and Rolf couldn’t hold back a smile.
Moments later, Jimenez and Surro stepped out to meet them, accompanied by several other, junior officers. Introductions were cold, and Jimenez glared at Allison as though she were a traitor.
“The American President is dead, I understand,” Courage said, and Allison’s mouth dropped open. Rolf put a hand on her shoulder and nodded, though he was surprised by Courage’s knowledge of the fact.
“Assassinated by Hannibal’s agents,” Jimenez agreed.
“I’m glad you chose to phrase it that way,” Courage nodded. “Still, we are at war, are we not? Vampires and humans? As of that event, have we not become the prey of human armies around the world?”
Rolf had understood, somewhat, but now the implications of what Courage was saying truly sunk in. There would be no recovery for the shadows. There would be some people, certainly, who would stand up for the idea that just as there were good and bad people, the same was true of vampires, but most of the world would be too frightened to see it. Most of the world had been, in fact, waiting for such an ugly incident, for their fears to be confirmed, their secret nightmares to take a tangible form, so that they could strike out. The dream was over. Vampires would have to hide in shadows once again.
And now he needed to leave, to be off, after Hannibal. For vengeance, no matter what Courage said, but also for the future of his people. They might survive if they disappeared into the night for a decade or two, perhaps tried again in another era, but if Hannibal were allowed to live, none of that would be possible. Hannibal wanted war and death and destruction.
“You are savages,” Jimenez said bluntly, and Rolf could see that he was uncomfortable revealing these feelings. “You are predators born to kill, and humanity must protect itself. Look at Hannibal.”
“You fool!” Allison snapped at him. “Their race created Hannibal, yes, but ours created Liam Mulkerrin! I have been Hannibal’s prisoner, and I would rather be that again than be in Mulkerrin’s hands. Human beings are no less monsters than shadows are.”
She turned to Rolf
“Go, Rolf. Go now. Kill that bastard.”
“And you,” she turned back to Jimenez, “you can do whatever you want after today, hunt them if you must. But they are going to take care of their own monster, and it’s your responsibility to help us t
ake care of yours, to defend the human race against whatever Mulkerrin’s become.”
For a moment, nobody spoke a word, then Jimenez nodded. Charlemagne stepped forward then and said something in Spanish, which Rolf did not understand. From the look on his face, it seemed that Jimenez didn’t get it either but Allison apparently did, and she was looking at Charlemagne with eyebrows raised.
“Your silver,” Courage translated, though they all knew Jimenez spoke Spanish. “You have silver on you, most likely a weapon. We will likely have a better opportunity to use it than you will.”
Jimenez was obviously stunned, but so was Rolf. He had seen the dagger Roberto Jimenez carried; it had come from the ruins of the Venice Jihad, had been used by Mulkerrin’s troops there, but . . .
“How did you—” Commander Jimenez began, but Courage interrupted.
“We can smell it,” he said, even as he held out his hand.
Incredibly, Rolf watched. Jimenez reached inside his shirt, withdrew the knife and handed it over to John Courage. Even more incredibly, Courage did not even flinch, but rather lifted the dagger and admired it, sunlight glinting off its surface, then kissed its crucifix handle.
I don’t understand, Rolf thought.
You win, my son, Courage said in Rolf’s mind. When you return, all will be explained to you.
Then Jared was at Rolf’s side again, and he saw the four other survivors of his team standing ready.
“Let’s go,” Jared said. “John has shown me where we must seek out Hannibal. He must be destroyed.”
And moments later, they had left the plaza, the corpses and the armies behind and begun their hunt.
Allison was afraid, anxious and angry. Angry at humanity, anxious about the battle with Liam Mulkerrin, the second that she would witness in her life, and afraid of the outcome. Afraid for Will Cody, the man she loved. She thought of Will’s tenderness, the sensitivity within his showman’s exterior, the kindness of his heart and the way his words changed in the quiet moments they had shared over the past five years. He had, in many ways, become her life. Her professional life had become defined by his shadow race, and her private life had become one with his own.
They might as well have been husband and wife, though they’d been waiting for the world to change enough so they could be legally married. Now it looked as though that would never happen. It made no difference to Allison. In her mind and heart, Will Cody was her husband.
She didn’t know what she would do without him. And she vowed she would never have to discover that. From what she could gather, Cody and the other vampires seemed to be holding their own against Mulkerrin. But Charlemagne and his warriors were different—older, stronger, more confident and much more in control of their vampiric abilities. Their arrival would make the difference: it had to. They were devoted to God, did not fear silver, though it did have a debilitating effect on them, and believed in themselves, in their goodness, in a way that none of the shadows she had known ever had.
And that only reaffirmed what she had believed all along. She knew that the shadows were basically good, the way humans were, maybe even more so. But they could be twisted, made into something terrible, as Hannibal had been. Again, as the humans they once were.
And then there was Courage. He was the reason, she knew, that Charlemagne’s men, and the vampires she had met at the monastery, Lazarus’s family, were different. He was the reason—his leadership, his charisma, his words. She was not certain yet who he was, but she suspected . . . Oh, what she suspected! She might have guessed much of it earlier, but her mind wouldn’t let her conceive of it. The more he told her, the more she realized how different he was, what he could do. When he told her that he could communicate with Rolf, and why . . . she could barely stand to be near him without screaming at him to be truthful, to reveal everything to her.
She needed to talk to Will, to reason it out with him. Even though she knew he would laugh at her, tell her she was out of her mind, she needed to hear him say it. And then she would convince him, somehow, and in doing so convince herself.
For Allison Vigeant truly believed that John Courage was the first vampire. The very first.
Courage smiled at her then, as if reading her mind though she knew—was fairly sure—that he couldn’t. Charlemagne and Commander Jimenez were speaking Spanish so fast she could barely understand a word here and there and the more Jimenez apparently learned, the paler his face became.
Allison saw movement from the corner of her eye and turned back to see John holding both hands to his head bent ever so slightly. His face showed terrible pain.
“John,” she said and went to him, held his arm, “what is it?”
“Martha, Isaac, so many others gone . . .,” Courage sald quietly, almost to himself. Then he met her eyes, and was suddenly terrified for herself, for Will, for the future. She was only human, after all, and they were so much more.
Allison looked around wildly, her mind seeking some respite, perhaps somewhere to hide from the events unfolding around her. Charlemagne and Jimenez had stopped speaking, were staring at John Courage, and Courage stood up straight, the pain in his face turning to fierce determination.
“It’s over up there, gentlemen,” Courage said. “Mulkerrin’s won.”
“Is Will . . .” Allison was finally able to get the words out, but John shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Let’s move!” Jimenez said, and turned to signal his troops, but a gesture from John Courage stopped him.
“Don’t bother,” Courage said, almost cynically. “He’s coming to us.”
Hell.
One Hundred Sixty-Seven Days,
One Minute After Departure:
It seemed as if they had been chipping away at Peter Octavian’s crystal prison forever. Meaghan knew it hadn’t been forever, but it had been weeks. Just when they might have stopped, after more than three weeks had gone by and they were prepared to give up hope, Peter had opened his eyes, looked at them, recognized them, pleaded with them, all with those eyes. Meaghan wondered why he did not communicate through the mind-link they once shared, the natural rapport she had with him as her blood-father She told herself the only answer was that he could not. though she had no idea why.
And there was another reason she and Lazarus kept at the glass, kept working to free Peter Octavian, but one the two vampires refused to discuss: their other options. What other alternative did they have, wandering around Hell without the spells necessary to return to their own world? They had come to find Peter because the world needed him in its battle against Mulkerrin’s madness. But now they needed him as well, if they were ever to escape.
The other question that had haunted them was why they had been allowed to continue to hack away at Peter’s prison without any demonic interference. Meaghan and Lazarus had both been at Venice, been a part of the events for which the demon Beelzebub now punished Peter Octavian. Surely the demon-lord would enjoy their suffering as well. And yet, though the Suffering continued to wail in agony on the mountain above them, where they were burnt to cinders again and again, and though a new, bloody crystal prison would sprout every day from the glass beneath their feet, filled with damned souls, they never saw a demon-slave, much less a lord. Nothing.
They had first used their hands, formed into razor-sharp claws that were less easily burned by the heat of the glass, to shatter the edges of Peter’s prison. They pounded at it but it wouldn’t crack, and Meaghan and Lazarus realized that they would be forced to chip away at the thing until they reached its occupant. Meaghan had been astounded when Lazarus transformed his fingers into solid but completely functional steel. She had caused the same reaction among the shadows in Venice when she had shapeshifted into a hawk and then a tiger, but most of them had adapted quickly to those hidden abilities.
It had taken Meaghan a week of Lazarus’s explanations before she could duplicate the trick. And during their
times of rest, he helped her with other forms, like wood stone and water. It was all the same, he had insisted, and was right. But she was still surprised by that development.
After that, the work had gotten easier, and they had continued their efforts unmolested by the denizens of this Hellish world. As they worked, Meaghan had become convinced that the theory she had developed on their walk across the surface of Hell was correct—it was a planet—somewhere, somehow, perhaps not in any universe humans had ever imagined, but a planet nonetheless, dedicated to the suffering of all manner of sentient beings.
And Peter was one of them. Meaghan didn’t like to think of him suffering, but she could not turn away. She consoled herself with the knowledge that if she and Lazarus had not come, Peter would never have been freed. Of course, that was getting a bit ahead of herself, but she had a blind faith that they would escape from this world.
“We’re almost through,” Lazarus said, smiling through the exhausted expression on his face. Meaghan did not reply, her mind too busy with other things. She thought again about time. Gauged by their need for blood, which was only now beginning to become a real problem, she and Lazarus had decided that the months which they had spent in Hell—though “on” Hell might have been a more appropriate expression—had not been even a single day on their own world. They were confident that if they could return, they could make a real difference in the battle against Mulkerrin. After all, surely the battle could not have been decided so quickly.
But what of Peter? If the months they had spent here were less than a day on their own world, how long had Peter been suffering inside his glass prison? He’d crossed over into Hell five years before Meaghan and Lazarus, according to their own timetable. On Hell, that had to be . . . Meaghan paused a moment in her work, but Lazarus didn’t seem to notice. Peter had been the illegitimate son of the last Byzantine emperor. He’d become a predator, part of Karl Von Reinman’s coven, but had renounced that path on the last night of the nineteenth century. Then he’d lived a new life, helping humans in small ways, hiding in plain sight.
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