He paused and looked away. “There’s just one catch.”
“Sure,” I said, “there’s always a catch. What is it?”
“Free will.”
I just looked at him.
He looked back.
“Of course,” I said. “You have to have free will or there is no guilt. If we’re the puppets of some higher power then there is no real responsibility. Ergo, no sin.”
“Very good, Grasshopper,” he said, inclining his head. “And since God allows us our own agency, forgiveness is very tricky.”
“Ah,” I said, “at last: the hook. You’ve been tossing that F-word around like it was totally free.”
“God’s love is free, my brother. It fills our every day like warm, life-giving sunlight.” He frowned. “Hmmm. Perhaps that’s not the best analogy for you. Certainly not for most of my congregants. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is forgiveness is a gift. That’s what makes it tricky.”
“Beware of gods bearing gifts?”
“Poor Christopher—can’t decide whether to wield his sarcasm like a sword or like a shield. Try again.”
The thought finally crystallized: “You’re saying the unforgivable sin is rejecting the gift of forgiveness.”
He nodded. “It sounds like a catch-22 but it’s really quite simple: forgiveness is a gift. And while a gift is bestowed freely, you have the power to accept or reject it. If you reject it, you choose your own damnation and God cannot interfere with that choice without making you His puppet.
“That’s what’s wrong with people always wanting God to destroy evil. To eliminate evil, He would have to prevent wrong choices.”
I nodded slowly. “No wrong choices, no free will.”
“Which would be worse?” Pat mused. “Apes of a cold god or puppets of a warm one?”
I stared off at the sunset reflected in the brackish waters of Bayou Gris. “It might not be so bad,” I murmured after awhile: “if Shari Lewis was God.”
Father Pat nodded. “And Buffalo Bob her prophet.”
* * *
I went to Father Pat’s macabre matins that night. Not as a supplicant or believer but more along the lines of a skeptic on vacation. It was an intellectual cheat to judge something I hadn’t fully examined.
But how do you examine God? Hold up theological hoops and see if He (or She or It) jumps through them on command?
I was still thinking this whole swamp front mission was nothing more than a theological circle-jerk when Father Pat began the midnight sermon.
“Those of you who were here a month back,” he said, standing in a ring of fire that would have impressed Johnny Cash, “will remember a series of readings I offered from the Qur’an, holy to Islam. For the past month we have opened the Old Testament of the Hebrews and the New Testament of the Christians. Tonight I’d like to begin with The Four Noble Truths of Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha, the ‘Enlightened One’.”
I was sitting up in the nosebleed section—the ground-level edge of the great pit—and so the late arrivals jostled me. I moved down the log bench to make room for some vampires as Father Pat continued.
“All life is suffering. That is the first Noble Truth. Any questions?”
The vamp next to me gave me a nudge. “The question is,” he whispered, leaning toward me, “are you a sufferer or a sufferee?” His laughter was more like a spasmed wheeze.
“Noble Truth number two: Suffering originates in desire. Ah, I see some brow-ridges going up on that one. “
The rest of the congregation had joined my bench mate in muttering. I wondered if they had fed just before coming to the service. I could smell the blood on my companion’s breath even half turned away from him. “When the desire hits me,” he murmured, “you can be sure somebody’s gonna suffer.” Phew! If his breath were any stronger I’d be able to type and cross match his last meal.
“Well, we’ll come back to that point in a moment,” Pat said as another pair of late arrivals crowded me on the other side of the bench. “The third Noble Truth of Buddhism is: Suffering can be escaped only by complete suppression of desire.”
The undertone of muttering became an undertow of growls and I wondered how savvy our Preacher Pat really was. Whatever faith or denomination, tell ‘em God loves you no matter what and that feel-good vibe makes true believers of us all. Start in on personal responsibility and the pews start to empty.
If we were lucky they’d start to empty before it got ugly.
“So,” continued the voice to my right, “does this creepy creed practice baptism for the dead?” Another wheezy chuckle.
“I think the Mormons have the corner on that franchise,” said a new voice to my left. “Hey,” I got nudged, “have you noticed how this scooped-out depression makes a great amphitheatre?”
I nodded, trying not to breathe: The vamp on my left had a worse case of hemotosis than the one on my right.
“Well, it makes an even better trap.”
“Mmm,” I answered, wondering where this was going and whether now might not be a good time for me to be going, as well.
“Now bear with me,” Pat was saying.
“One man with a flamethrower could destroy half of this gathering before they could turn around,” my new seatmate explained. “Only a handful would have any chance of getting out, at all.”
“So imagine what four men with flamethrowers, spaced equally around the perimeter could do,” added the vamp on my right.
I started to stand but powerful hands grasped my arms and pulled me back down. Another pair of hands settled on my shoulders from behind and held me in a grip of lead and iron.
“Desire,” Father Pat said, “can only be overcome by following the Noble Eight-Fold Path of right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.”
“I think you boys are missing the point of the sermon,” I said quietly.
His response was just as quiet but it echoed in my head like a shout: “The countess wants to see you.”
I told them what the countess could do instead and it wasn’t something I would normally say or anyone would normally do in church. Guess I wasn’t not a total convert, yet.
“If you won’t do it for her,” said a new voice behind my ear, a familiar voice, “then do it for me.”
I turned and studied the play of distant firelight across the features of Terry-call-me-T’s face. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
From Jesus to Judas, my Sunday school lesson was just about complete.
Chapter Twenty
I didn’t do it for her or the countess.
I did it because it would be just like Erzsébet Báthory to kill a hundred over the obstinacy of one. As I walked toward the bayou, surrounded by a phalanx of fanged bodyguards, a large hulking shape rose up out of the shadows.
It was the hunchbacked giant, Brother Michael.
“Do you wish to leave?” he whispered. The whisper rumbled like distant thunder and I fancied I saw a dim flash of lightning as he twisted a great gnarled branch in his huge white hands.
This gentle giant suddenly seemed more dangerous and powerful than any unbent human I could imagine. But whatever his hidden strengths, I knew he was no match for a half-dozen vampires. And even if there had been any possibility of taking Báthory’s minions there was still the implicit threat of four additional operatives with flamethrowers back at the pit. I had to defuse this confrontation before it escalated.
“Yeah, Mikey,” I answered, “I’ve got some unfinished business.”
The big guardian gazed down at me as if the others were of no consequence, staring as if I were a small child telling an obvious fib.
“Are you leaving of your own free will?”
Ah, that free will thing again. As if any of us truly have free will, choices without price tags . . .
The vamps around me were tensing, preparing to engage the hunchback if he offered any further resistance
. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Gotta go, big guy; I’m late,” I said, moving toward him and forcing him to give ground. “Gotta see a man about a hearse, gotta make like a banana and split, make like a tree and leave, make like a mule train and haul ass . . .”
Brother Michael stepped aside and allowed us to pass but his face was stony with disapproval. My expression was more pleasant to look at but hurt a lot more. We walked down to the water’s edge with his eyes burning into my back like twin laser-sights.
The next part was interesting.
Vampires do not like water.
Which makes hygiene problematical for some of them: Deirdre’s excursion in my shower was one of those little triumphs of mind over nature. But the H2O factor isn’t generally too much of a problem unless there’s a lot of it and it’s headed in some direction: vampires, as a rule, don’t cross running water.
One of the charms of a bayou, however, is that it isn’t going anywhere. Oh, technically there is a current, but not so’s you’d notice: toss a cork in the water on a windless day and that sucker will be floating close to the same spot twenty-four hours later.
So maybe it wasn’t such a feat to get half-dozen vampires into a boat and send them to fetch me. But given Countess Báthory’s methods and reputation, she’d probably have coerced them to shoot the rapids and go over a waterfall if necessary. We waded into the cold black water with a lot of hissing and feral grunting. We were almost up to our waists when we reached the boat that was anchored about twenty feet from the shore.
As we turned about and paddled away I wondered what would happen if I jumped back into the water.
“Before you make any attempt to escape,” growled a familiar voice, “now or in the future, you should remember that we know where your friends are. Your cooperation is a guarantee of their safety.”
“Sandor,” I said with fake enthusiasm, “you old bowling ball, you! Still jealous that I have a neck and you don’t?”
He growled but said nothing more. A moment later the outboard motor coughed to life and we trolled toward the deeper, central channel of Bayou Gris.
“What’s that?” Terry-call-me-T asked, pointing off of our starboard side.
I caught a glimpse of a head with long emerald tresses before it submerged. “T . . .”
“Call me Theresa.”
I looked at her. “Theresa?”
“It’s my name.”
“It’s . . . Okay, what happened?”
She looked at me with those big, luminous eyes, eyes that weren’t so innocent now. “Isn’t it obvious? Nobody had to explain it to me.”
“I’ve been distracted.”
“The bullet that punched through your body and then mine caused me to bleed out. I died.”
“That much I had pretty well figured out at the time,” I said dryly.
“Our blood commingled through our wounds before I died,” she continued. “It actually infected me faster than if you had opened a vein and allowed me to drink. I died and was reborn in a matter of minutes.”
“So,” I mused, “I am your Sire.” All I lacked for now was the nomination for Deadbeat Undead Dad of the Year. I cleared my throat. “I’m a little surprised at your lack of loyalty, my dear. You know it’s considered bad form to betray your Sire to his enemies.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it works, my dear Professor Haim—or should I say Cséjthe? It is the countess who rules our clan: all allegiance is due her first, undivided by petty alliances over who made whom. You may be my Sire but she is our mother and my Dam.”
“Damn,” I said.
Sandor cuffed me. “You will show proper respect. The countess is the embodiment of a great and royal bloodline. Your blood, if related at all, is diluted by generations of common, mongrel stock.”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Jeez, Sandy! If you’ve got such a jones for the aristocracy, how come you’re not in Dracula’s entourage?”
“My brothers and I are sworn to the Gutkeled Clan. Our fidelity is to the countess and her issue.” He cuffed me again and constellations appeared even though the night skies remained overcast.
“Well, that might include me then, big guy. So stop popping me in the head.”
“Even the children of royalty must be disciplined. Especially when their mother commands it.”
“Too bad you’re not a mother, Sandy,” I said. “Oh wait, maybe you really are.”
He reached out to pop me again and I caught his wrist. I yanked, overbalancing him, and the whole boat rocked. I braced myself, disallowing his recovery as the boat tilted the opposite direction and then yanked again. We both stumbled against the gunwales and I released his wrist to give him a little boost. The boat didn’t capsize—a result too good to be hoped for—but Sandor made a most satisfactory splash as he tumbled into the bayou.
The other vamps weren’t prepared for such a contingency. They scrambled to the side, coming a lot closer to rolling us over than I had. Thrusting their hands in the water they groped in vain: Sandor had sunk like a stone and wouldn’t be coming up again on his own. A weighted rope would have a one-in-a-hundred chance of falling within his flailing grasp and we didn’t have one of those on board. The only good their efforts accomplished was to enable me to kick two more over the side before the rest swarmed me.
They were sufficiently pissed and frightened that I only had to endure a dozen or so kicks and punches before the blessed curtain of unconsciousness postponed the pain until the next day.
* * *
My jailors brought me word this morning that Erzsi Majorova has been caught and beheaded. There will be no more trials, no more witch-hunts. I, alone, remain; walled up high in my tower, surrounded by crucifixes and selected pages from the Christian Bible that have been nailed to the walls between their binding symbols.
Katarina visits me some nights when the moon is new and the guards are more restful. Just last week she came to my window and told me that my time would not be long, now.
I wonder where she sleeps?
The townspeople all believe her to have quit Cachtice after the first trial. But she is watchful lest I break my promise.
She is restless for my death, I think. She wants to travel but dares not leave me lest I grow bold in her absence.
She wants to go to . . . him.
As if he would consort with a Beneczky when Báthory-Nádasdy was not good enough for his patrician ways.
Still, her power grows.
Though my dungeons have long stood empty and she must feed secretly and carefully now, her power continues to increase.
If she lives long enough—two, maybe three, lifetimes—she might equal him in strength, power, and cunning.
Should that day come not even the old dragon could withstand her.
And then the world may well burn . . .
* * *
Maybe the concept of an afterlife was overrated.
At least the idea of waking up was proving to have less and less appeal. You can only wake up to pain so many times before the phrase “eternal rest” begins to take on a very literal attraction. Never mind Hell—Heaven in all of its various descriptions must involve some form of participatory involvement and, anymore, I just wanted to sleep the Sleep of Oblivion.
Alas, I had a bladder that wasn’t suited for eternity. I rolled over and cracked an eyelid.
My prosthetic fangs sat in a glass on the nightstand just a foot-and-a-half away. They looked all sparkly-clean: maybe someone had dropped in an Efferdent tablet.
A couple of feet beyond, ensconced in a large, stuffed chair was my former student turned undead understudy, Theresa-call-me . . . uh, Theresa. The dark circles under her eyes appeared to be the real thing—no Goth makeup need apply here.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“You’re anemic,” I replied.
“Yeah. Well. That’s your fault.”
I sighed. “That’s not surprising. Lately everything seems to be my fau
lt.”
“I don’t have fangs,” she pouted. “Your blood isn’t pure.”
“Perhaps,” I said, pushing back the covers, “but everyone seems to want it.” I was naked beneath the covers. “So, you’re infected with only half of the combinant virus.” I pulled the covers up to my chin. “Where are my clothes?”
She got out of the chair like a reluctant child. “I’m not a real vampire,” she whined. “I don’t know what I am.”
“You’re not dead and starting to rot in some cold grave,” I said. “You’re not a full-fledged monster.”
She crossed the room and opened the closet. “I can’t bite people. I can’t suck their blood. Not without using a knife or something.”
“I stand corrected. You probably are a monster.” I disconnected from that line of thought and wondered what the dean had said when informed that I hadn’t shown up for my night classes this past week.
“So,” she asked, her voice partially muffled by the depths of the closet, “what clan are you?”
“Clan?”
“It’s pretty obvious that you’re not Nosferatu, and I’ve had enough conversations with you to know you’re not Malkavian. You don’t dress like a Ventrue.”
“That’s good to know.”
“You don’t act like a Toreador . . .”
“Olé.”
“That leaves Tremere, Brujah, or Gangrel.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Clans. The Camarilla. The Masquerade.”
“I don’t go to parties,” I said. I certainly shouldn’t have gone to that one at BioWeb.
“Our Lady has promised to complete my transformation . . .” Hangers rattled. “ . . . if I take care of you properly.” She emerged with my clothing. Not what I had worn last but clothes from my closet back home. I looked around the room. It was furnished and appointed like a luxury suite at one of the finest hotels. I definitely was not home.
“Welcome to the Hotel California,” I muttered.
“What?”
“We are all just prisoners here of our own device,” I quoted.
She looked at me as if I were speaking an alien tongue. I suppose I was.
“And how am I to be taken care of?” I asked rhetorically.
Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II Page 32
