A Dozen Black Roses (11 page)
***
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) housewives, shopping centers and fast food. His exodus would have to occur during the day, but still it could be done. All it took was the determination to leave St. Everhild behind.
Of course, that would never happen. He was tied to Deadtown as tightly as a mother to her unborn child.
He could no more walk away from his church than he could fly from the bell tower. He was bound by chains of guilt and sin just as Christ was nailed to the cross.
Still, there was a certain titillation to be had from fantasizing about leaving—
Father Eamon's attention was drawn to a shadow flickering across the street below. When he looked again he saw that the shadow was actually a creature of substance. He felt his skin crawl with the realization that he was watching one of the demons that wandered Deadtown after dark. Although he had seen several of the monsters during his years as St. Everhild's curate, he had yet to lose the sense of horror that came from spotting them on their unholy rounds. Some, like the thing below, took the shape of comely women, while others wore the flesh of handsome young boys—but Father Eamon knew them for what they truly were: the living dead.
The vampiress paused for a moment, the dim light reflecting off the mirrored sunglasses she wore, but it was long enough for Father Eamon to get a good look at her. At first he'd thought she was Esher's witch, but now he could see that that wasn't the case. As he watched, the female vampire ducked down the alley that led to the rear of the Black Lodge. Whoever the stranger was, she certainly wasn't one of Esher's minions.
***
"You're too kind," Sinjon replied, accepting the drink with a gracious nod. He sniffed the proffered liquid as a connoisseur would a fine wine, nodding his approval. "Ah! This one shows fine breeding! Xg, if I'm not mistaken? I'm suitably impressed!"
"I'm honored." Esher's smile never made it to his eyes.
Sinjon set aside the cordial glass, crossed his leg at the knee and placed his steepled hands in his lap.
"Now that we have observed the niceties, Tremere, let the talking begin. Why have you invited me here?"
"I would like to propose a truce."
Sinjon lifted an eyebrow but remained silent.
"Despite what you may believe, I have no desire to be the crown prince of Deadtown, nor do I wish to engage in a jyhad with you, Sinjon."
"You certainly have a strange way of showing it, then! I have it on good authority your progeny slew one of my Spoons at my very doorstep!"
"Decima? You must be mistaken! She would not do such a thing without my knowledge! As it is, rumor has it the death was a retaliation for the murder of one of my Pointers. I suspect this to be the handiwork of mortals, Sinjon. You know how foolish these boys can be."
"Yes," Sinjon murmured, glancing down at the Black Spoons standing in a clot on the floor below, glowering at the Pointers surrounding them. "I'm afraid I do. They're worse than the gypsies ever thought of being."
"You see, Sinjon—that is part of the problem I wish to solve! The bad feelings between your camp and mine arise from our mortal servitors. You and I are, at heart, businessmen. Our business is survival. Yet our mutual distrust and resentment of one another have led to constant clashing and skirmishing. I spend as much time and effort outfitting my men with weapons as I do selling them! That's bad for business. We spend too much of our time scheming and plotting against one another. And it is not necessary! I have no interest in moving in on your rackets, Sinjon! It is a shame that we have not come to an understanding until now."
"I'm not so certain we understand one another even now," Sinjon replied. "You are an ambitious man, Esher. Am I to believe that you have no interest in what is mine?"
"Yes. I am ambitious. But since when has that become a sin in the eyes of the Ventrue?"
"I have my position to consider, wizard. I was prince of Deadtown when you were still sperm swimming in your father's balls! Deadtown is my domain, and you have blatantly challenged my control of it! I cannot allow such an affront to go without reprimand. You know this as much as I."
"I am aware of this. That is why I propose a ritual appeasement that will prove my good will."
Sinjon's eyebrow crept up even further. "Appeasement? Of what sort?"
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) Esher smiled, spreading his hands in a magnanimous gesture. "I'll allow you to decide that."
Sinjon stroked his chin, looking pensive for a long moment. Then he smiled and pointed at Nikola, who was draped about the back of Esher's throne like a silk cape. "I'll take the girl."
Esher's face went rigid. "Not the girl! I'll grant you anything else!"
Seeing his rival's discomfort turned Sinjon's smile sharp as broken glass. "No. It's her I want! Give me the girl, or I'll know you're lying!"
"You call me a liar?"
"Let us say, wizard, I doubt you speak truthfully. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other matters to attend to this evening."
"But what of my offer?"
"I will consider it genuine only if you give to me that for which I have asked—your toy dancer. Until then, we have nothing to say to one another." Using his walking stick, Sinjon rose from his seat, bowing slightly at the waist and touching the brim of his tricorn. "Adieu, my upstart friend. You have been a most gracious host."
Esher watched his rival climb down the spiral staircase and, flanked by his bodyguards, stroll the length of Dance Macabre unharmed. He tried his best to conceal the rage inside him as Sinjon exited the club.
Physically attacking the old turtle would not be wise. There was a cracking sound and he glanced down to see that his clenched fingers had reduced the wooden armrests of his throne to kindling.
Decima left her place in the shadows and came forward, lowering her head so that her lips were next to his ears. "Why didn't you give him the girl?"
"The old bastard is canny—I'll give him that! You don't get to be his age and not know some tricks. He had no intention of agreeing to a truce—yet he had to make it look as if he was the affronted party, not I!
So he asked as a boon the one thing he knew I would not part with. He's a clever fox indeed! But it does not matter. The truce would have made it easier to arrange his demise without the messiness of an actual jyhad. That way he wouldn't be expecting trouble when the Borges Brothers moved against him. Now I have to step up my dealing with the cartel. Did you notify the authorities as to the location of the bodies?"
"Yes, milord. I have no doubt it'll make the morning news. Possibly even CNN."
"Did you send them Dario Borges' head?"
"I sent it overnight express. It should arrive in Miami by ten a.m." "You didn't pack it in dry ice, did you? I want them to get the full effect." Esher glanced up at Nikola, who was hovering at his elbow, looking confused. He took her pallid hand in his, caressing the outline of her veins with the tip of his tongue. "You needn't worry, my darling," he whispered. "I would never let you go. Not even to death eternal."
***
"D-did everything go okay, master?" stammered the boy.
"Swimmingly," Sinjon replied. Met with a blank stare, he took a deep breath and said, "Yes, everything went okay."
The boy smiled and nodded. "That's very good, master! Very good!"
Sinjon brushed past the Spoon with a disgusted sigh. He wasn't sure if it was drugs or the gene pool, but the quality of servitors nowadays was genuinely appalling. Granted, the gypsies had hardly been towers of intellect, but compared to what he had to use in this, the end of the twentieth century, they seemed proverbial Renaissance men. He shuddered to contemplate what the new millennium would bring in the way of humankind.
Then again, Americans had always possessed a wide streak of thickness. He should know—he'd watched the nation evolve from a conglomerate of ill-conceived commercial ventures into the sole remaining superpower. Indeed, he had been a participant in the birthing of the nation.
Before his resurrection, he'd been the third son of a minor nobleman. His elder brother claimed what wealth and title there was to be had, and the fool sank a great deal of the fortune into Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Island Colony—on the condition that one of his family go along in order to keep watch over the investment. The unlucky task fell to Sinjon—who had recently disgraced the family name. Truth be told, he was wanted for murder and his choices were either to leave England or end up in the Tower. So, in
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) 1587, a nineteen-year-old Sinjon set out for a new life in the New World.
The Roanoke Colony proved worse than hell. In the summer it was hot and fetid. In the winter it was bitterly cold and damp. In between those seasons it was assailed by fierce coastal storms that snapped the trees like kindling. Insects, poisonous snakes, alligators, and other bothersome fauna existed in abundance. Disease was constant, as was hunger—since few of the colonists knew the first thing about farming. After all—they were gentlemen.
Most of the colonists were ill-suited to the privations and rigors of such a primitive place. Indeed, those of the upper classes sat about and waited on those of the lower order, or the few surviving women, to do for them. However, Roanoke was not London, and the supply of social inferiors was finite. When the Englishmen attempted to make slaves of the local natives, the Croatoans, the savages had the bad manners to resist, adding warfare to the colony's tribulations.
Sinjon watched as the colony gradually shriveled up and died over the course of two years. Some colonists dropped dead of disease and malnutrition, while the women were invariably claimed by childbirth or peripatetic fever. Some wandered too far afield and disappeared into the surrounding swamps, no doubt the victims of alligators or snakes. And still others fell into the hands of the Croatoans; their wretched screams echoed through the forest for days on end. Sinjon prayed for the day Raleigh's ships would return with provisions and he could escape the green hell to which his brother had banished him. Anything—even the gallows—was better than the horrid place called America.
But it was not to be. One moonless night in 1589, a ship arrived at Roanoke Island, but it wasn't Sir Walter Raleigh come with fresh provisions.
That night Sinjon was awakened by screaming and the sound of people running about in a panic. His first thought was that the Croatoans had mounted another attack. He grabbed his sword and charged outside in his nightshirt, to find the village overrun with pirates!
The invaders seemed to be everywhere at once, dragging the few surviving colonists from their homes by their hair. Sinjon leapt forward, swinging his sword at one of the pirates, running him through the liver.
Instead of dropping to the ground dead, the bastard merely laughed—revealing fangs as white and sharp as a wolf's and eyes the color of fresh wine. Before Sinjon could react, the vampire gave him the back of his hand—which rendered him unconscious for some time.
When Sinjon awoke, it was to find himself in chains, along with the remaining colonists and a handful of captured Croatoans—about twenty in all—in a large metal cage lashed to the deck of a ship with black sails. He soon learned that the name of the ship was The Osiris, and that its crew was composed almost entirely of the undead. During the day a handful of human servants tended the ship, but come evening a host of Kindred declaring allegiance to Clans Lasombra, Ventrue and Brujah swarmed from the holds to take their places on deck and in the rigging.
The captured colonists' fate was indeed cruel. One by one, they were dragged from their prison and bled dry by the ravenous crew. Once they were drained, the bodies were turned over to the human servants, who either jerked them for their meat or fed them to the sharks that followed The Osiris like faithful hounds. Such would have been his fate—if he hadn't been lucky. His luck came in the form of Captain Blood, the fierce leader of Osiris' crew. Perhaps the pirate king looked into the frightened twenty-one-year-old's eyes and saw the murderer that lurked within, but in any case he took a fancy to Sinjon and decided to make him his new cabin boy.
Captain Blood, who claimed to have sailed alongside Odysseus in his day, dressed all in red and wore his dark hair in a single plait that hung down to the middle of his waist. Although he had at first been terrified, Sinjon soon learned to respond to the captain's cold caresses. It wasn't long before he was helping his master plot raids on the European colonies scattered about the New World.
In 1591 Captain Blood rewarded his loyal cabin boy with the gift of the Embrace. And when Sinjon arose, reborn, into the ranks of the Kindred, he was made first mate of The Osiris. And so it went for the next decade—until The Osiris finally met its match at the hands of a Papal man o'war crewed entirely by Inquisitors under direct orders from Innocent IX to eradicate the inhuman menace on the high seas. The warrior-priests were armed with a battery that fired cannonballs cast from blessed silver, and their cutlasses and musket shot were likewise blessed.