A Dozen Black Roses (23 page)

"Yeah, you're a regular Oscar Wilde."

Decima moved to deliver another blow, but Esher stopped her with a small shake of his head. He pushed away from the door and stood inches from the stranger's battered face, looking into her unshielded eyes.

"You disappoint me, my dear. I thought you had better sense than to back a loser like Sinjon. But then, clan ties are strong. Your sire was Ventrue, was he not? I should have been suspicious from the start. I will admit that my enclave is a ragtag bunch of miscreants and loners. For such a specimen as yourself to wish to join was—unusual."

"I told you she was not to be trusted, even with your blood in her," Decima growled. "I smelled trouble from the very start."

"I am not unwilling to admit my mistakes," Esher said evenly. "I grant that Decima was far more

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) intuitive than I was in this concern. Perhaps I allowed myself to be swayed by a pretty face—or the fact that I desperately need followers of your caliber. It does not matter—you have betrayed my confidence and will pay the price. But first I want answers—are you going to cooperate?"

At such close physical proximity to Esher, she could feel his blood within her stir. Being so near to the vampire lord gave her a strange thrill—almost like a hit of smack or the touch of a lover. For a brief moment she experienced a panic attack, fearful that he would go away and she would be left aching for him, bereft and alone. She felt her resolve begin to weaken. It would be so easy to tell him the truth. To give him what he wanted. If she gave him what he wanted, he wouldn't send her away.

Something dark stirred in the back of her skull, like a great serpent awakening from a long hibernation.

The feeling had become a familiar one over the years—and always unwelcome. Until now.

What? Do I have to haul your ass out of trouble every fuckin' time? grumbled the Other. Its silent voice was deep and guttural, like that of a beast given speech. Now you know why he's got these idiots hopping like fleas on a hot rock. He's not just their connection: he's their damn fix! So you're afraid you'll spill the beans to Studly here, is that it? Is that why you let me out? What a pathetic wuss you really are, woman!

"I'll tell what you want to know."

"Where is Nikola?"

"At the Black Lodge."

"And the cocaine?"

"He has that, too."

"What does he plan to do with Nikola?"

"He's going to make her his. Forever. He said you'll have to bring down the Black Lodge stone by stone before you become Deadtown's prince."

"Sinjon said that, did he?" Esher's eyes narrowed. "Well, he shall get his wish!" He nodded to Decima as he turned to leave. "Do as you wish with her. Just see that she's dead when you're finished."

Decima's smile was slow and mean. "As you command, milord."

***

Marvin Kopeck sat huddled next to the tiny stove that heated his wreck of an apartment, a threadbare blanket draped over his shoulders. Someone was screaming on the street outside his window, but he did not look. He'd learned to ignore whatever happened after dark a long time ago. Kopeck served in Viet Nam twenty-seven years ago, but nothing in those distant jungles could compare to what stalked the streets of Deadtown once the sun went down. Still, the war had done its damage—driving him out of the familiar comforts of suburbia and into the inner city, until the day he found himself in Deadtown. 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 this?

***

Ilyana frowned as the screaming began outside. She could remember a time when she did not live in Deadtown—but she could not remember a time when there had not been screams in the night. She survived both the Nazis and the pogroms, only to find herself living in one of her grandmother's folk stories. As if the vrykolka were not bad enough, the boys that served them were even worse! Hoodlums shackled to the devil, just like the gypsies had once been in the old country. Only worse. The gypsies never waited on her doorstep to demand a cut of her Social Security check.

***

"Come away from the window," Tommy whispered, his voice sounding much 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 in the street. "Whenever I hear someone screaming like that—I have a need to look and see what's happening. To find out if it's someone I know. It's instinctual."

"So's self-preservation," Tommy 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 tweaking—but there's something different about tonight. My skin's all tight and tingly, like before a big storm. Can't you feel it?"

Tommy laughed dryly as he wrapped the length of rubber tubing around his forearm. "Baby, I gave up

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) feelin' shit a long time ago."

***

Father Eamon knelt before the altar, his rosary clutched in one hand, a bottle of yellow-label whiskey in the other. In the uncertain light cast by the votive candles, the faces of the plaster saints seemed leprous.

He had been hearing things since the sun went down—what at times sounded like a baby's wailing on the steps to the church then became giddy, demonic laughter—but he was uncertain whether they were real or the DTs. He closed his eyes, but instead of prayer, he found himself reciting aloud: "By the pricking of my thumbs…"

***

There are several different ways of killing the undead. One is fire. Another is exposure to sunlight.

Decapitation works as well on them as it does on anything else. But all these methods are relatively quick.

And Decima did not want that. She wanted her captive to suffer.

One of the enduring misconceptions about vampires is that because they are technically dead, they cannot feel pain. That is not true at all. Granted, their pain thresholds are extremely high by human standards, but they are perfectly capable of knowing pain. And Decima was determined that her captive become very intimate with every form of agony there was.

"Thought you were pretty smart, didn't you?" Decima jeered as she brought the length of pipe down onto the stranger's collarbone, snapping it like a green branch. "Thought you could fool our master! I knew from the beginning you weren't to be trusted!"

The makeshift club smashed into the stranger's left side, splintering her ribs and filling her lung with shrapnel.

"I saw the way he looked at you! Men are such fools! Even when they're dead! He saw you and wanted you. I could see it in his eyes!"

The pipe smashed against the stranger's spleen, rupturing it like a child's balloon.

"In a way I'm glad you got away with as much as you did! At least it got rid of that simpering cow he's been mooning over! How could he prefer her to me? After all this time—?! ?"

The club came down on first the stranger's left, then her right kneecap.

"He's mine! I belong to him! She had no right making him love her! He's supposed to love me, not her!"

Decima delivered a backhand blow to the stranger's face, shattering her cheekbones and knocking her lower jaw askew. She was not worried about beating her captive to death—after all, she could not die from such wounds. A vampire's body can repair itself indefinitely, as long as it's properly fed. She stepped back to regard her handiwork. The stranger hung from her chain, looking more like a piñata than anything living. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth, and her right eye was swollen so tightly it was impossible for her to open it.

Decima spotted the stranger's leather jacket lying on the floor and bent to retrieve it. She'd been thinking about replacing her old one—and since they seemed to be the same size, it could serve a purpose other than that of a trophy. She patted down the pockets and felt something inside the inner breast. Reaching in, she pulled out an ornate switchblade. The handle was decorated by a gold-leaf luck dragon with a tiny ruby set in its eye. Curious, she pressed the stud—and six inches of silver blade, shaped to resemble a frozen flame, jumped from its hiding place, nearly spearing her hand. Decima dropped it like a baby rattlesnake. Though not technically Tremere, she had been around Esher long enough.

"Enchantment!" She turned to stare in simultaneous fear and horror at the stranger, who dangled limply from her chains, watching her silently with one blood-filled eye. "What manner of Kindred are you, that you would carry such a blade on your person?"

The stranger smiled. And smiled. And kept on smiling, until it looked as if her lips would meet at the back of her head. A sound resembling a cross between a lion's growl and the grinding of metal gears burbled out of her broken chest. It took Decima several seconds to realize it was laughter. The stranger tossed back her head and the laughter twisted in on itself and became a roar unheard from any but the deepest pit.

Purple-black energy crackled about her, like the halo of some dark saint. Decima raised a hand to her eyes as an arc of black light shot out of the top of the stranger's head and punched through the ceiling.

The stink of ozone filled the room as a wind from nowhere began to blow.

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

***

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) Marvin Kopeck sat 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. The screaming inside him blended with the screaming outside him, and Marvin Kopeck finally decided he'd had enough. After twenty-five years, he was no longer afraid. In place of the fear was anger. 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 1970.

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

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

There was a loud crack of thunder. Against her better judgment, Ilyana got up to look out the window.

The hoodlums on the street below had stopped kicking their hapless victim and stood 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. Clouds the color of a ripe bruise boiled forth, their bellies lit from within by flashes of purple-white light. And the epicenter of the brewing tempest appeared to be Esher's stronghold.

From his perch high in St. Everhild's bell tower, Father Eamon pressed his rosary to his cracked lips, then took a swig from his bottle as a tongue of purple-black lightning leapt upward from Esher's house of evil, 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.

***

If ever there was a neighborhood ripe for riot, it was Deadtown. Although such places of despair and hopelessness were magnets for the undead, only the older, more powerful Kindred could manipulate and feed off the negative energies generated by unhallowed ground. But the Other was nothing if not precocious.

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 because they fear the repercussions such actions might hold. Fear, more than virtue, holds humanity rigid within its social orbits. Fear of censure, 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 dissolve, triggering their sense of self-preservation. 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. And the denizens of Deadtown were half-crazy to begin with.

***

Jesse stopped kicking the old man yellow and tilted his head back, frowning at the rapidly swelling thunderheads filling the sky. He and Tuff Enuff and B-Jo 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 outside Deadtown, and now he was paying the price. Jesse liked kicking the drunk around, since he reminded him of his rat bastard old man. Judging how the others were going after the lush, he must have reminded all of them of someone.

Tuff Enuff paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and spotted the scowl on Jesse's face. " 'Sup, cuz?"