Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  “You win. I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she whispered.

  “Where is Nikola?” Esher hissed.

  “She’s in the Black Lodge with Sinjon.”

  “And the drugs?”

  “That’s with him, too.”

  “What does he plan to do with Nikola?”

  “He’s going to Make her in his image. He said you’ll have to bring down the Black Lodge stone by stone if you want her back.”

  “Very well. He shall get his wish,” Esher said, his eyes narrowed to slits. He nodded to his lieutenant as he turned to leave the cell. “Do as you will with her. Just see that she’s Truly Dead when you’re finished.”

  “As you command, milord,” Decima replied with a slow, mean smile.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Marvin Kopeck sat huddled next to the tiny stove that heated his squat, a threadbare blanket draped over his shoulders. Someone was screaming on the street outside his window, but he did not dare look to see what was going on. He had served in Viet Nam, but nothing in those distant jungles could compare to what stalked the streets of Deadtown once the sun went down. It was as if the earth’s crust had cracked to its very core, allowing a little bit of Hell to bubble up to the surface. What were nightmares of burning hooches and shrieking, napalm-drenched babies compared to the living dead?

  Ilyana frowned as the screaming started up outside. Although she could remember a time when she did not live in Deadtown, she could not remember a time when there had not been screams in the night. She had survived both the Nazis and Stalin’s pogroms, only to find herself living in one of her grandmother’s folk stories. As if the vrykolka were not bad enough, the young men that served them were even worse. Hoodlums shackled to the devil, just like the Gypsies had once been in the old country, only worse. At least the Gypsies had never waited on her doorstep to demand a cut of her Social Security check.

  “Come away from the window,” Lonny whispered, his voice sounding far older than his thirty-three years. “You don’t want to see what’s going on out there.”

  “I can’t help it,” Janice said, hugging herself as she watched three Pointers kick an old man to death. “Whenever I hear someone yellin’ like that I just have to look to see if it’s someone I know. It’s instinctual, I guess.”

  “So is self-preservation,” he grunted, not looking up from the spoon he was cooking. “Come sit down. You don’t want to attract their attention.” He stuck the needle into the sodden cotton, drawing the brownish liquid into the syringe with one deft pull. “Besides, I got a nice shot waiting for you here.”

  Janice shook her head, flipping the lank, greasy strands out her face. “I dunno. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just tweakin’—but there’s somethin’ different about tonight. My skin’s all tight and tingly, like a big storm’s brewin’. Can’t you feel it?”

  Lonny gave a dry little laugh as he wrapped the length of rubber tubing around his forearm. “Baby, I gave up feel in’ shit a long time ago.”

  Father Eamon knelt before the altar, his rosary clutched in one hand, a bottle of Old Grandad in the other. In the uncertain light cast by the votive candles, the faces of the plaster saints looked more like lepers. He had been hearing something that sounded, at times, like a baby wailing on the steps to the church, which transformed into giddy, demonic laughter every time he drew near the front doors. He was uncertain if the noises were real or if he simply had the DTs again. He closed his eyes, but instead of prayer, he found himself reciting Shakespeare: “By the pricking of my thumbs …Something wicked this way comes …”

  There are several different ways of killing the undead. One is of them is fire, as well as exposure to sunlight. Decapitation works as handily on a vampire as anything else. But all these methods were relatively quick. And Decima wasn’t looking for quick. She wanted to take her time.

  One of the enduring myths about vampires is that because they are, technically, dead, they did not feel pain; which was not true at all. Granted, a vampire’s pain threshold was extremely high by human standards, but they were still perfectly capable of knowing agony. And Decima was determined to make her captive extremely intimate with every known form of suffering.

  “Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?” she jeered as she brought the length of rebar down on Sonja’s collarbone, snapping it like a green branch. “You thought you could make a fool of my sire!” She swung again, smashing the steel bar smashed into her captive’s left side, splintering her ribs and driving splinters of bone into her lung. “And you did make a fool of him! I saw the way he looked at you! It was bad enough he cast me aside for that pathetic stripper, he wanted you as well!” She swung the rebar again, this time rupturing Sonja’s spleen. “In a way I’m glad you got away with as much as you did! At least you rid him of that simpering cow he’s been mooning over! How could he prefer that bitch to me?” she exclaimed in disbelief as she brought the makeshift club came down on first Sonja’s left kneecap, then the right. “She had no right making him love her!”

  Wearying of the rebar, Decima delivered a punch to Sonja’s face, shattering her cheekbones and knocking her lower jaw askew. She then stepped back to regard her handiwork. As Sonja dangled by her wrists from the ceiling, she looked like a battered piñata. Blood poured from her nose and mouth, and her right eye was swollen so tightly it looked as if someone had slipped a goose egg under her eyelid.

  She spotted Sonja’s leather jacket lying on the floor, where it had been tossed earlier, and bent to retrieve it. She had been thinking about replacing her old one. Seeing how they seemed to be the same size, it could prove to be a useful trophy. She searched the jacket and felt something tucked inside the inner breast pocket. She reached in and retrieved an ornate switchblade. The handle was made of polished ebony and decorated by a gold-leaf oriental dragon. Curious, she pressed the tiny ruby set in the dragon’s eye, a six inches of silver blade, shaped like a frozen flame, jumped from its hiding place, nearly spearing her hand.

  Decima cried out in alarm and dropped the switchblade as if it was a rattlesnake. “Silver!” she hissed. She turned to stare at her captive, who dangled limply from her chains, watching her with one blood-filled eye. “What manner of vampire are you, that you would carry such a weapon?”

  Sonja did not answer, but instead simply smiled until it looked as if her lips would meet at the back of her head. Something that sounded like a cross between a lion’s growl and the grinding of metal gears emerged from her broken chest. With a start, Decima realized it was laughter.

  Sonja tossed back her head and the laughter twisted in on itself and became a roar unheard from any but the deepest pit as purple-black energy crackled into existence about her, like the halo of some dark saint. Decima raised a hand to shield her eyes as an arc of black light shot from her captive’s head and punched its way through the ceiling. The stink of ozone filled the room as a wind from nowhere found its way into the sealed room.

  The Other was free again. And there was going to be Hell on Earth to pay.

  Marvin Kopeck bent nearly double, his hands clamped over his ears to block out the screams. Tears streamed down his rigid face. Behind his eyes his best friend stepped on a mine and flew into bloody rags; a hysterical peasant woman clutched a roasted baby to her breast and wailed without end; a Viet Mihn officer stuck a rifle barrel up a terrified girl’s vagina and pulled the trigger until the screaming inside him blended with the screaming outside him, and Marvin Kopeck finally decided he’d had enough. After all these years, he was no longer afraid.

  He stood up, tossing aside the blanket, and walked over to the narrow cot that served as his bed. He pulled the footlocker out and opened the lid. Everything was still there, just as he’d left it in 1975.

  Janice stared at the loaded syringe, then back at Lonny. He was slumped on the mattress, already on the nod, a gout of vomit drying on his shirt. She picked up th
e needle, frowning at the crust of old blood. She closed her eyes and readied herself for the plunge, but something made her stop.

  “Fuck this!” she snarled, hurling the syringe against the wall.

  The sound of thunder stirred Ilyana to look out the window. The hoodlums on the street below had stopped kicking their hapless victim and were standing with their heads tilted back, like a wolf pack scenting a coming storm. Discarded newspapers and other bits of trash blew along the streets and gutters. The sky over Deadtown swirled like ink in an aquarium as clouds the color of a ripe bruise boiled forth, their bellies lit from within by flashes of purple-white light.

  From his perch the bell tower, Father Eamon pressed his rosary to his cracked lips, then took another swig from his bottle, as a tongue of purple-black lightning leapt upward from Esher’s stronghold, puncturing the ripe, overhanging clouds like a boil. Smaller fingers of dark electricity shot forth from the center, like the ribs of an umbrella, and zigzagged throughout the neighborhood.

  Judgment had come to Deadtown.

  There is a thin line between rage and madness. Every human has, at one time or another, experienced both emotions, in varying increments of strength. While gripped in rage’s white-hot hand, an otherwise sane man may commit acts he would never dream of in calmer moments. But most do not succumb to passion-born madness for fear of the repercussions such actions exact from the authorities. Fear, more than virtue, holds humanity rigid within its social orbits: fear of punishment, fear of the unknown; fear of changing things forever, and not for the better.

  But if the resentment and anger that lie boiling beneath the crust of an oppressed society are stoked high enough, the fear that keeps them lying prostrate while their enemy grinds his boot in their collective face will trigger their sense of self-preservation. When that happens, timidity is replaced by fury. And the more desperate the community, the less they have to lose. And the less they have to lose, the more likely they are to succumb to the madness that lurks in the heart of even the most righteous anger.

  Of course, it also helped that the denizens of Deadtown were all half-crazy to begin with.

  Jesse, Marcus and Antwan had found the old lush cowering near a dumpster. The bum had risked leaving whatever dank hidey-hole he called home to score a bottle, and now he was paying the price. Jesse liked kicking the drunk around, since he reminded him of his rat bastard old man. Judging from how the others were going after the lush, he must have reminded all of them of someone they hated. He stopped kicking the old man yellow and tilted his head back, frowning at the rapidly swelling thunderheads filling the sky.

  Marcus paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and spotted the scowl on Jesse’s face. “’Sup, cuz?”

  “Dunno. Somethin’ ain’t right,” Jesse replied. Suddenly the sky overhead was split by a freak lightning bolt that seemed to leap up from the ground, then splinter into a hundred smaller ones. “Jesus fuck! What was that?!?”

  The answer came in the form of a moan. At first Jesse thought it was the bum lying at his feet. Then he realized the sound was too loud to be coming from just one person. It was as if hundreds of voices were united as one, like when a stadium groans at the home team’s loss. It was as if the very buildings were wailing. Jesse, Marcus and Antwan exchanged wary glances. Weird shit went down in Deadtown nightly-but nothing like this had ever happened before.

  There was a collective bang as dozens of doors were abruptly thrown open and the denizens of Deadtown came pouring out of their tenements like ants from a burning tree. These were the nameless faces that usually cowered in doorways or hurried away when Jesse and his friends walked down the street. These were the ones who disappeared behind barricaded doors at the first sign of dusk. These were the old, the deranged, the dispossessed and disowned. They were the children of exile who, through fate or design, had found themselves with nowhere else to go but Deadtown.

  Jesse noticed with alarm that while most of those flooding the streets wielded nothing more than sticks, some of them carried more conventional weapons. He pulled his semiautomatic out of his waistband, trying to decide whether to stand his ground or flee. Marcus and Antwan looked equally uncertain.

  “Jesse! What do we do?” Antwan whispered, trying to keep his voice from turning into a frightened squeak.

  “Fuck, man! Spray their asses!” Marcus barked, firing a volley at the rapidly approaching mob.

  Ilyana could not tell if the young men firing at her were Nazis or Cossacks or Soviet Army Regulars. They seemed to flicker from one to the other and back again, as if glimpsed through the flames of a burning house. Then a bullet tore through her throat, dropping her to the pavement. She barely felt the others as they trampled her, but she could see her blood coating the soles of their feet. As she gasped out her last feeble breath, the ghosts of her slaughtered family crowded her fading vision, like moths about a candle.

  Jesse stared in numb disbelief at the horde surging toward him. He’d emptied at least two clips, but still they came, stepping over the bleeding bodies of their fellows as if they weren’t there. The ragged wail grew louder, angrier, closer.

  “Shit, man! This is just like Night of the Living Dead!” Antwan moaned as he slapped a fresh clip into the butt of his semiautomatic. “The fuckers won’t stop coming!”

  “Fuck makin’ a stand!” Marcus said, taking a step backward as the mob approached. “We gots to run for it!”

  “You want to be the one t’tell King Hell what’s going down, feel free!”

  Jesse retorted. “Me, I’d rather take my chances with these fuckers!”

  Marvin Kopeck stepped forward, dressed in the uniform in which he’d been sent home, his Purple Heart and Bronze Star rattling on his chest like Christmas ornaments. The gang member in front of him wavered, became a VC in black pajamas, then transformed into the laughing Viet Mihn officer waving his bloodied rifle barrel, before melting into his platoon leader, holding up a screaming baby by the ankle like it was a piglet. In the end it didn’t really matter. They were all The Enemy. He opened fire with his M16, five rounds stitching across Jesse’s torso, going from right hip to left shoulder, and throwing him into his companions like a ruptured sack of grain.

  “Fuck this shit!” Marcus wailed as he turned to flee. He took two steps before M16 fire caught him across the back, effectively slicing him in two.

  Antwan stared at the bloody remains of his companions for a second, then tossed his gun onto the ground and put his hands behind his head. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot, man! I give up!” he wailed, sounding every day of his fifteen years.

  The sea of angry faces surged forward, their outstretched hands tearing at their former tormentor’s flesh. Antwan began to scream. His cries for help were quickly muffled by the bodies of the mob as they pulled, tore, and kicked like a pack of wolves worrying a deer to death. When the screams finally stopped, the group moved on, leaving the ravaged carcass where it lay.

  As the crowd moved forward, Janice stopped long enough to remove the gun from Jesse’s dead hand. She turned the Luger over, wondering if it still had any ammunition left.

  “Janice!” Lonny was standing on the top stoop of their building, tottering uncertainly in the doorframe. He looked confused and blurry-eyed, like he’d just woken up from a long nap. “Janice-what are you doing out here? Come back inside where it’s safe!” He squinted at the Luger she was holding. “What you got there?” A sly, hungry look crossed his face as he licked his lips. “I know this guy who’ll give us some smack for it …”

  Janice pointed the Luger at Lonny and squeezed the trigger. He staggered, then fell headfirst down the front steps, landing in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

  Yeah, there were still some bullets in it.

  Decima shielded her eyes from the strange energy that enveloped her prisoner in a pulsing shroud, while the sourceless wind raging inside the interrogation room continued to
howl. Whatever the trouble-making bitch was, she certainly wasn’t a garden-variety vampire. Only Nobles had the power to control the elements on such a level.

  With a shriek of maniacal glee, The Other yanked herself free of her restraints, pulling her right shoulder out of its socket, and turned to grin at her tormentor Decima. And for the first time in decades Decima knew terror. Not merely the fear of punishment from her sire, but the genuine terror that comes from seeing your death in the eyes of another.

  The Other’s grin grew wider as it moved forward, her hair whipping in the maelstrom like angry black snakes, as Decima surged to greet her, swinging her makeshift club with both hand. The Other proved too quick for her, and easily batted the length of pipe out of her grip. Decima swore and jumped aside, snatching up her cocked and loaded crossbow, firing it into her opponent’s chest. The Other yowled like a scalded cat and toppled backward, clutching at the bolt jutting from her breast. Decima lost no time in pouncing on her, pinning her adversary to the floor. She pulled the switchblade she’d taken from Sonja’s jacket and hit the trigger release.

  The Other’s eyes widened at the sight of the silver blade. “No!” she shouted out, lifting her hands to her face, as if to blot out the sight of her approaching doom.

  “Die, bitch!” Decima screamed as she plunged the silver blade into her enemy’s heart.

  The Other cried out and then went still. The gale-force wind that had filled the room abruptly stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. The weird witchlight faded and fizzled as well, like firecrackers tossed in a puddle.

  “That’s what you get for fuckin’ with me, bitch,” Decima smirked as she admired her handiwork.

  Suddenly The Other’s eyes flew back open. “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” she grinned as she plucked the silver switchblade from her chest and plunged it into Decima’s right ear.