The Fifth House of the Heart (16 page)

This speech caught Sax off guard. He had thought this was going to be a straightforward case of some old reprobate with a fancy hat telling him he was a very naughty sinner and to remember to fill out the forms after he'd slain his vampire and hand over anything of interest (meaning value) to the Church, for which of course he would receive absolution for any violation of Christ's law during the struggle to subdue the fiend incarnate, and a tax-deductible receipt. That's what had happened the last time. Now they were handing out offers to join the team. It would be coupons for the Vatican gift shop next. Sax grunted, because words failed him. Achenbach was staring at him, his moist, faded eyes dim behind the spectacles.

“It may surprise you to know, Mr. Saxon-Tang, that you do have friends here. It was to me a surprise to learn who they were. You go with great blessings. Mighty blessings.”

Sax inclined his head by way of thanks. He couldn't quite say
thank you
aloud, but he wasn't immune to blessings, spurious as they might have been. As an inveterate name-dropper, Sax was very curious to know how high up in the hierarchy his surprising friends in the Church might be. Achenbach had bent his eyes in the direction of St. Peter's when he mentioned it. It would goose the hell out of old Pillsbury if Sax turned out to be pals with the Pope himself. But he didn't ask. Even Sax occasionally deferred to the gravity of a moment, if only for variety's sake.

“So go you with God,” Achenbach continued when Sax had been silent longer than usual.

“Yes,” Sax said, realizing the interview had ended. “That's all very well. But along with God, who else am I going with?”

“Oh,” said Achenbach, and waved a small pink hand at Fra Paolo. “Him.”

8

Rome

After his interview with the prelate, Sax had gone straight back to his hotel for a nap. He was to meet Fra Paolo at six o'clock that evening, which gave him three hours. Sax slept heavily until the knock on his door signaled the young man's arrival.

“You keep waking me up,” he said, and ushered Fra Paolo into his room.

Fra Paolo looked extraordinarily well in his priest's clothing. He had been given dispensation to wear something more practical than the fitted, ankle-length cassock for the duration of this adventure, so he now wore black trousers and a short-sleeved shirt with a postage stamp of white collar at the throat. His arms, freed from the stovepipe sleeves of the cassock, were strong, veined, and richly furred. None of these garments were equipped with pockets, which Sax presumed was something to do with being a monk. Instead he carried the small black purse on a wrist strap favored by European men.

Sax found himself fervently desiring to be young again. He'd show
this beautiful bit of Italianate ornament a thing or two. One thing, at least.

Fra Paolo was chatting happily about inconsequential things: how strange it was to be wearing ordinary clothing, and how well the interview with Achenbach went, and what dry weather it was. After a few moments, when the sleep and prurient desire had been cleared from his brain, Sax erected a finger to signal he wished to speak; there was something important to say. Fra Paolo shut up immediately.

“I am,” said Sax, “pleased to have you along.”

“Thank you,” Paolo said. “The honor is mine. You are a famous man in our field.”

“Now, hang on. I wasn't done. You'd better sit down. Have an Orangina from the fridge. Here's the thing. I am, as is obvious, a homosexual. That is the least of my disqualifications, but it does cause the narrow-minded some discomfort. But there's more to me than just that. I am, in addition, an unscrupulous, greedy, spiteful coward—with the scruples of a jackal and the reliability of a Renault 9. I'll betray anybody for a profit. Judas wouldn't have stood a chance against me; I'd have been down at the Pharisees' office with a copy of Christ Jesus's driving license for thirty pieces of copper, no questions asked. Any stories you've heard about some dashing vampire killer are absolute rubbish. Look at me. I can scarcely get across a room without widdling myself, let alone bung a spike through some bloodthirsty monster. Every single bit of the hard work on this job will be done by others. I won't do a bloody thing. And afterward, when everyone else is dead, injured, and infected with plague, I'll shove everything worth having in a couple of suitcases and off I'll go. Not a glance backward.
That's
who I am.”

“Yes,” said Paolo. “So I was told.”

Sax was terribly offended. But at least he'd made his case. He'd gotten it all out there. Now Fra Paolo could bow out of any personal
involvement, find Sax some proper assistants—meaning sociopathic mercenaries—and Sax could get on with the job.

Sax found he was sweating. He fumbled out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“I see,” Sax said, when Fra Paolo failed to add
just kidding
.

“I was told you are a bad man for this job. I was also told you are the
only
man for this job.”

A
pparently, Fra Paolo's dispensation amounted to a free pass. His usual existence was constrained by Church regulations, and what he wore was the least of it. There were rules and obligations accreted around every imaginable aspect of the monastic existence, the result of fifteen hundred years of trying to outwit the devil or defeat human nature, depending on one's point of view. The idea, hatched apparently in the Vatican itself, was for Fra Paolo to blend in, at least as far as a man dressed as a priest can do so. It would get more difficult the farther they got from the Vatican.

When Sax suggested Fra Paolo take him around to some antique shops in the immediate area so he could see what worthless brummagems they were trying to pass off as sound articles, Sax got some insight into what a life of avoiding sin—as opposed to seeking it out, which had been his own approach—was like. It was misery, from Sax's point of view. Fra Paolo was forever second-guessing himself, hesitating, and deciding he'd better not. And that didn't just apply to the obvious things.

In one of the shops there was, Sax had to admit, a very nice ebony crucifix with delicate ivory mountings. It was Victorian, distinguished because it was a common object crafted with uncommon skill. Worth relatively little. Fra Paolo picked it up, examined it, and then put it down with a little guilty jump as if he'd been caught shoplifting the
thing down the front of his trousers. When Sax had asked him, in an entirely conversational way, if he liked the object, Fra Paolo had responded, “No, I couldn't.”

“You don't, or you can't?”

“I couldn't.”

“I only asked if you liked it, not if you wanted it. Is that against the rules?” Sax genuinely wanted to know. He was fascinated by people who denied themselves, as they were so alien to him.

“It is an object made by men. To worship the material, the craftsmanship—”

“Yes, well that's what you do already with that dangly thing round your neck, for that matter,” Sax said, indicating the small silver cross Fra Paolo wore on a long chain.

“This? It's a symbol only. I don't think of it, only what it represents.”

“So you've gotten used to it, in other words.”

“Yes,” Fra Paolo said, and shrugged with great force.

“In that case,” Sax said, picking up the ebony cross, “would you not get used to this nice bit of workmanship here? As you say, it's just an object.”

“But to become accustomed to an object of such beauty would be an act of pride.”

“Pride? Because you had something nice on the wall?” Sax found himself pressing the tips of his fingers against his forehead, as if to keep it from falling off until they could reach a hospital.

“Yes,” Fra Paolo said, shrugging with less force this time.

“But,” Sax said, aware that he'd gone down a rabbit hole with no bottom, “you can see the dome of bloody Saint Peter's out your office window!”

“So?” Fra Paolo looked even more worried now, his big dark eyes wide with alarm.

“Do you ever look at it?”

“Yes,” Fra Paolo said, as though admitting he was addicted to cough medicine.

“And you've never felt a little tickle of pride at that?”

“No. Perhaps, Mr. Saxon-Tang, you do not realize Santa Maria della Pietà is not located within the margins of the Holy See. We are across the street. When I look out my window, I am looking from my humble outpost in the secular world at the very threshold of heaven. It is a kind of penance, to my way of thinking.” Fra Paolo shook his head mournfully and extracted the cross from Sax's fingers. He placed it back on the little wire stand that held it upright, and they went out into the street.

From that time forward, Sax no longer called the man Fra Paolo; he would now be only Paolo. To stick a title on the front of his name was only encouraging the poor fellow. And he had a little side project to occupy the empty hours when they weren't after the vampire. Paolo was afraid of his own mortal weaknesses, it was clear. So all Sax had to do was to find which weakness Paolo had the least control over and exploit it. That would be jolly good fun. There were many ways to seduce a man.

That night, Sax felt quite lively. Paolo was allowed to drink, apparently, and showed no special hesitation at doing so, which demonstrated that wasn't his weakness. After an aperitif in the hotel bar they repaired to a small
osteria
with which Sax was familiar. Sax was gratified that Paolo had never heard of this place, less than a ten-minute walk from his office. Of course Paolo, being the austere type, probably ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Sax was energized, he suspected, by the simple act of making something happen. Not everyone, after all, got the Vatican's blessing to go out and loot a vampire's hoard, and was given a piece of Italian beefcake to go along with it.

9

Mumbai

It had to be Yeretyik who was following Nilu.

He was too big, his movements too drunken as he walked, to be anyone else. And he had wrapped himself from head to knees in tattered blankets so that only one long, pale hand was visible, clutching the fabric together; there was a slit where his eyes would be. People would mistake him for a leper. His wounds were still fresh and even if he'd drained fifty dogs and a few beggars of blood to stay alive after his escape from the hospital, he would be extremely weak and hampered by his injuries—vampires healed quickly and could regenerate any part of their bodies, but regeneration took months or years, not days.

Min adopted a shuffling, hesitant gait and hunched her head over her chest, as if she were very old. The blanket-wrapped figure that had emerged from the darkness ahead of Min looked around furtively, saw her, but did not mark her as important. Just another shrunken peasant in the sweltering night, two blocks behind. Min didn't even know if the Russian could see her at that distance. He only had one eye, and it wasn't likely to be working as well as it had before Min blew his face off.

Min kept herself hunched over but increased her stride, closing the distance between herself and the quarry. The vampire was intent upon Nilu. He was moving fast. Nilu's steps slowed, and she stopped moving, as if in a trance—which she probably was. Yeretyik halted, and there was some kind of invisible communion between them. Nilu turned as if to run away, but she moved in slow motion. In her mind, she probably thought she
was
running—vampires could do that, make their victims lose all sense of the passage of time. Min was acutely aware of time. She had another few meters to go before she would be within attacking distance, the critical intersection of how long it took her to draw her weapons and how fast she could run.

Her steps picked up speed. The vampire had not observed her, still fixated on his victim. Nilu had crossed the street and now she was leaning against a building, rocking her head back and forth as if to deny Yeretyik's existence. He threw the blankets aside and seemed to grow in height, expanding at the scent of his prey so close.

He was about to attack.

Min bolted flat out, the scarf falling from her head, and she had her silver hammer and the shotgun in her hands. It would be five or six seconds before she could reach the vampire. She might be too late.

Then there was a whirl of blackness against the caramel night sky. Something soared down from one of the rooftops above Min and caught itself on the rotting Art Deco façade of an apartment house, hanging there for an instant, appraising Min, who skidded to a stop, pulling back against her momentum.

It was a second vampire, a female, its white face and hair gleaming in the bilious light of the streetlamps. Min had never seen anything like this. Even vampire couples hunted alone.

The creature bounded off the wall of the building a split second after it alighted, its black hooded robe luffing behind it, whirling
through the air. Min's heart was racing. She wanted to kill this new creature and the Russian as well, but the threat was too great. She had lost her strategic advantage. The female vampire hit the pavement on churning legs, catching up with its own speed, and before Yeretyik had time to react, they collided.

Min's shotgun split the thick night air. She was running again, and in full motion she fired three times. Hit nothing.

The new vampire threw Yeretyik over her shoulder, and in a rattle of robe tails she was gone into the shadows, carrying the Russian down an alley with a swiftness and agility that defied the laws of physics.

Nilu collapsed. There were street people on their feet now, pointing at Min, who was racing to Nilu's side. No use pursuing the monsters; they would be gone by now, or waiting in ambush.

Min knelt beside Nilu; the girl was perspiring, her eyes wide and bewildered. The trance was broken. She was present for what was happening now.

Min didn't care how many witnesses there were. She was nobody to them.

She pressed the barrel of the shotgun against Nilu's head. Better to blow her brains out before the inevitable vampire infection took her over.

Nilu grasped the barrel in her hands, but she hadn't the strength to push it away. She was begging in Hindi.

Min didn't care. She was about to squeeze the trigger when it occurred to her that she now had something Yeretyik wanted. Vampires didn't leave half-finished victims behind them. Yeretyik had risked destruction to find Nilu again. He would keep trying as long as the girl lived. Wherever Min took her in the world, the monster would track Nilu down. Min could set up an ambush on her own terms. She'd kill
the second vampire, too, if they both appeared. The advantage would be hers next time.

She depressed the safety, shoved the shotgun back into its harness, and caught Nilu beneath her arms. Min hauled the girl upright, then propelled her away into the night, ignoring the jabber of excited onlookers.