Of Masques and Martyrs (14 page)

—HARRY CHAPIN, “Taxi”

 

 

 

 

THE MAN BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE TAXI stank of sweat and whiskey. He never looked in the rearview mirror, never spoke, just kept his eyes on Pontchartrain Expressway as it unfolded in front of the vehicle and was swallowed beneath it.

In the back of the taxi, Kuromaku sat in silence. His body hummed with nervous energy, and he urged the car on with his every thought. The dream, or vision, still lingered with him. Of him fighting by Peter’s side, and of Peter bleeding, perhaps dying. In the dream, they had been in this city, the city of New Orleans. But where, exactly, he was uncertain.

Kuromaku had amassed considerable wealth over the centuries. He traded in antiquities, when he conducted any business at all. It had been a simple thing to have his own pilot fly him from Bordeaux to New Orleans. Even better, it had been dark already, and as they were flying west, it was still night when they landed. Six years ago, Kuromaku had learned about the Venice Jihad the same way the rest of the world had—from CNN. It was there that he first saw video of shadows, of his own kind, standing in the sunlight and surviving.

Two full years passed before he had the courage to try it himself. Though he now came and went as he pleased, Kuromaku was still far more comfortable sleeping during the day and conducting the rest of his life at night. However, in the past year, with the world on a vampire hunt, that had become more difficult. He’d had to take extra efforts to hide his true nature, far more than he had ever done.

So he had been pleased to arrive in the Crescent City just after three o’clock. The airport was quiet in the early morning hours. As he was a dealer in antiquities, the weapons posed only a small problem getting through American customs. But even those few minutes had seemed precious to him. For Kuromaku had no idea where to begin searching for Peter Octavian. None at all.

“There she is,” the driver mumbled, almost incoherently.

Kuromaku glanced through the windshield, and the lights of downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter lifted his spirits a bit. Even at nearly four in the morning, the city was still alive. He’d been here decades earlier at a particular Mardi Gras when the world’s shadows had migrated to the Big Easy along with human volunteers who’d known what they were and given up their blood, and often their lives, freely.

The Venice Jihad had changed all of that. The church had nearly been destroyed forever, and the shadows themselves freed from two thousand years of psychological conditioning. Free to live. But free to kill as well, without much fear of reprisal. Peter’s great effort may have unintentionally begun a process that would destroy the human race.

In the silence of the early morning, the taxi turned slowly down Decatur Street. A short time later the driver turned left, and soon Kuromaku saw the facade of the Omni Royal Orleans hotel just ahead. He couldn’t very well search the streets at dawn. And if he needed a place to stay, why not the best hotel in the French Quarter?

Kuromaku smiled to himself. He’d softened a bit in the twentieth century. He knew that. He’d cut his long hair short and begun to favor business suits; though he told himself they were the costume of the twenty-first-century warrior, they never felt quite right. He’d grown tired of battle, and more and more fond of pretty things, exotic foods, and outrageous lovers. New Orleans was the city for him, then, he thought.

Suddenly he became angry with himself. He was thinking like a fool, soft and content. He’d come here for war, and the warrior he’d once been anticipated it with something akin to lust. He would slough off the softness of his wealth like dead flesh.

Kuromaku was taken aback to realize he was staring into the rearview mirror at the driver’s eyes.

“Sir?” the man asked, obviously afraid he was responsible for Kuromaku’s sudden change in demeanor.

Kuromaku might have said something to reassure him. He did not. The man was a boorish skunk, who risked his own life and the lives of any human passengers by drinking while on duty. To hell with him.

The taxi stopped in front of the Omni, and Kuromaku opened the door. The driver also got out and went round to the back of the vehicle to pop the trunk and remove his passenger’s bags.

“New Orleans is quite a city,” the driver said. “I hope you enjoy it, sir.”

Bucking for a tip, Kuromaku thought. But then another thought entered his mind.

“You are from this city, then?” he asked.

“No, sir, but I’ve driven a cab here for goin’ on twenty years,” the man replied. “It’s home to me now.”

Kuromaku smiled at him, and the cabbie seemed to brighten a bit.

“Tell me, sir,” the vampire warrior said, “do you believe in vampires?”

The driver looked taken aback. He actually moved back a step, tilted his head, and studied Kuromaku more closely.

“Well, I’d have to, I guess,” the man said. “Kind of a part of life these days, aren’t they? I wouldn’t want to live in New York or Atlanta, I’ll tell you that. And L.A., I don’t know there’s any real people left out there. ’Course, that town was always full of bloodsuckers.”

The driver chuckled at his own humor. He handed Kuromaku’s bags to the bellman, then beamed with pleasure as the vampire gave him his fare with a spectacular tip.

“So, there aren’t any in New Orleans?” Kuromaku asked, smiling.

“Well, sure we got our share,” the man said. “But we don’t have many attacks, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“No,” Kuromaku said. “That was not my concern at all. In fact, since you know this city so well, I had hoped you might be able to tell me where one might go if one wished to . . . meet a vampire.”

Immediately the taxi driver’s face underwent a drastic change. His upper lip curled and his nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed, and he snorted derisively as he pocketed his money.

“One of those, huh?” the driver said, and it was more comment than question. “More of you freaks every damn day in this town.”

The driver opened the taxi’s door and slid his stinking mass of flesh onto the fake leather seat. He snorted and spat on the pavement before slamming the door.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Kuromaku said menacingly and stepped to the open window of the taxi. “I wouldn’t want to get the impression that people in New Orleans were ill-mannered brutes.”

“No,” the driver said, sneering. “No, that would suck, wouldn’t it? Listen, you want to find blood freaks and vamp wannabes, check out the Harvest Moon on the corner of Toulouse and Burgundy. ‘Course, they don’t open ’til after dark.”

“Thank you,” Kuromaku said politely. “You have been very helpful.”

As the driver pulled away, Kuromaku could hear him mumbling. “Hope you get bit, freak,” the driver said under his breath.

“Not for a long time, my aromatic friend,” Kuromaku said to himself.

He smiled and smoothed the lapels of his suit, then turned to the waiting bellhop and indicated that the man should lead the way. Soon he was safely ensconced in his hotel room, and he settled down to sleep as much of the day away as his anxiety would allow.

 

When Allison regained consciousness, the first thing she was aware of was pain. In her forehead and behind her eyes, a kind of headache that doesn’t come naturally. She let her eyes flutter open, then squeezed them shut against the pain. What little she’d seen told her she was alone, in darkness. It was impossible to know if it was day or night.

All she knew was that pain in her head. She tried to sit up, felt the cold concrete beneath her, a small sticky patch under her fingers. Once more, she opened her eyes and pain lanced through her skull. Allison reached up to search her forehead and scalp for injury, and found what she was looking for. She hissed as her fingers grazed a ragged patch of torn skin two inches above her left eye, where the pressure of a contusion added to the pain of the wound.

Blood on the cold floor, and it was hers.

She breathed deeply several times, desperately trying to orient herself, to move beyond the pain. She was almost certain she had a concussion, at the least. Finally she felt a bit more clearheaded. Once more, she peered into the darkness.

Allison knew she was a captive, but she was shocked to find herself in an actual prison cell. Gray walls and bars. Dim light somewhere down the corridor beyond the bars. And silence.

She felt the urge to call out, to see if there was anyone who might help her. Then she groaned, because a smile would have pained her. How foolish of her, she thought, and chalked it up to head trauma. Erika was working with Hannibal, that much was obvious. She didn’t know for how long, or how willingly, but enough so that the little goth girl who had once been their ally was willing to attack Cody and abduct her. Erika and Vlad, the hugely muscled, bald vampire who’d been with her at the airport, had thrown Allison into the cell with such force that her head had struck the wall, then the floor, and had knocked her unconscious.

She might have broken her neck and died at that moment. That she hadn’t was sheer luck. Those were not the actions of a friend, nor even an ally. No, calling out for help would only be humiliating.

Sitting on the concrete, the cold seeping through the seat of her jeans, Allison cradled her head in her hands and thought of Will. She was a woman of strength and independence, but she was also not an idiot. She needed him now, more than ever. There was no question in her mind that his retreat at the airport had been the only way to save her life. The fact that she was breathing at all was surely due to her value as bait.

So, how to stay alive until Cody could come and break her out? That was the billion-dollar question, no doubt about it.

“Comfy?”

Allison started, and her skull was spiked with pain again. She stared through the bars into the dimly lit corridor. Vlad stood there, his huge mass etching a dark silhouette across the front of the cell. He leered at her. Behind him were two other vampires, neither of whom she had seen before. One, however, was a curiosity. He was old. His hair was white and his face sagged with age. When she searched his eyes, he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“You smell nice,” Vlad said and smiled, showing off his fangs quite self-consciously. “The blood, I mean. Sweet, maybe a bit tangy, nice bouquet.”

He inhaled deeply and, despite herself, Allison shivered.

“Want to play, little girl?” he sneered. “I know you’ve got a thing for vampires. Does Cody bite you when you fuck?”

Allison swallowed.

“Tell you what, you dickless poseur,” she said, hating the way her voice, unused for hours, cracked when she spoke, “why don’t you just come in here and rip my throat out? Rape me, I dare you.”

Vlad’s eyes went wide. Allison smiled. Hannibal wanted her alive, at least for the moment, and his lackey wasn’t about to defy the master.

“Fucking coward,” she sneered. “Run along now, Vlad. Come back when you’ve grown a set of balls.”

The bald vampire’s jaw dropped, mouth gaping open, as he stared at her in horror. Then his eyes darkened to a profound crimson, and his face pushed out into a wet snout. Fur spurted from his flesh and the growl that erupted from his throat almost made Allison lose control of her too-full bladder.

She’d gone too far.

The old, white-haired vampire grabbed Vlad around the throat with one huge, meaty hand and drove him across the corridor, pinning him with a clang to the bars of the opposite cell.

“Don’t be an idiot,” the old vamp said softly. “He’d kill you.”

“But Yano,” Vlad whimpered, already returning to his human form, “she . . . she . . .”

“Oh, shut up, you pussy.”

Both vampires looked left, down the corridor. Allison didn’t have to look; she recognized the voice.

Erika.

“Yano just saved your life, Vlad,” the little brunette told him. “Allison would have been fortunate to have you kill her. Time spent with Hannibal will be infinitely worse.”

Vlad began to smile. He strolled over to Erika, kissed her on the forehead, and then glanced over at Allison.

“Maybe he’ll give you to me as table scraps,” Vlad said. “But I’ll get a taste of you, one way or another.”

When he’d gone, Erika approached Allison’s cell. Yano stood behind her a moment, but she motioned for him to leave as well and, with a guarded look, he did so. After she seemed satisfied they were alone, Erika returned her attention to Allison.

“Nasty head wound, there, Alli,” she said.

“Fuck you,” Allison said bluntly, but Erika didn’t even flinch.

“You know why you’re here?” Erika asked her.

“I’m not stupid,” Allison said. “Maybe I should ask you why
you’re
here.”

“I want to live,” Erika replied. “The whole New Orleans coven is going to be destroyed. Another couple days, at most, and they’ll all be dead. If somebody doesn’t fuck it up for Hannibal.”

Allison tilted her head to one side, and received a painful reminder of her wound. She stared at Erika.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Erika smiled. “I hope you live long enough to find out,” she said.

Somebody hissed farther down in the corridor, and Erika glanced up worriedly, then quickly turned to mist and drifted back into the darkened cells behind her. Ventilation ducts would allow her to go anywhere she liked. For the first time, Allison wished that she were one of the shadows. She wouldn’t be stuck in this hellhole.

The harsh clack of boot heels echoed down the corridor to her cell. Allison stared out into the hall, waiting for this latest in her parade of visitors. But she knew who it was. The only person Erika would have run away from.

“Hello, Hannibal,” she said, and tried to force herself not to cringe.