The Living Night (Book 1) (21 page)

Tommy handed it over. "Want I should give
you directions to Laslo's?"

Ruegger fell back in his chair and stared
blankly forward as the self-styled
bloodfinder
guided
Danielle to Laslo's mission. He just couldn't believe Hauswell was really dead.
So many things left unsaid, so many debts left unpaid, and at the end they
weren't much more than casual acquaintances ...
I should've tried harder
,
thought Ruegger.
I should've tried much, much harder. All the time in the
world and it's still left incomplete ...
He took a swig from the bottle and
swore under his breath.

At Tommy's direction, Danielle turned the
mini-bus onto a poorly-maintained private road, pausing while Tommy pushed open
the gate, then wound her way up to what was left of the airfield. There was the
twisted maze of runways stretching off to the left, where the ruins of many
buildings lay wasted, and off to the right, incongruously large and tall among
all the bleak flatness, rose the stone hangar and the three-story mission on
top of it. Or, more properly, part of it. It was one great big stone nightmare,
complete with ominous tower.

The bell tower soared like a battlement in the
center of the mission's roof, which was unusual; in most cases, the bell tower
was located in a corner of the mission, whereas this one seemed to run through
the center of the building itself. Ruegger could see that the roof of the bell
tower had been torn off and the bell itself was missing. Most strange of all, stairs
made of scaffolding material led up to the top of the tower from the roof of
the mission and, where the roof of the bell tower used to be, a type of fragile
wooden platform, almost like a diving board, stuck out, as if someone were
about to jump into the well itself. Very curious.

"What's all that?" Danielle asked
Tommy, seeing it too.

"Not
s'pose
to
say,
lassy
. Sorry an' all, but me mouth is
closed."

Climbing out, Ruegger noticed that all the
windows of the hangar had been boarded up and the hangar door (the only thing
not made of stone on the exterior of the building) was sealed.

"I need to go in the hangar," Ruegger
said. "I need to see Hauswell's body."

"'
fraid
not,
mate. No
outsiders're
allowed inside. Been closed up
like that for nigh on twenty years.
Hauswell'd
taken
to using the old hangar 'fore he got whacked."

"Then I want to see Laslo."

"Sorry there, again, pal o' mine, but
yer
uninvited guests an' the
Lord'll
come to see ya when 'e
choses
.
Nothin
'
I
c'n
do about it."

Ruegger felt himself grow cold. There was
something very strange about this place, something haunted. He hoped they could
just find Hauswell's corpse and get the hell out of here. Something bad was
going to happen in this place.

"So what now?" Danielle said. "We
sleep in the bus till Laslo decides to say hi?"

"Nonsense," said Tommy. "I'll
show ya both to a room in the mission ...
Yer
married,
ain't ye?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Don't see no
weddin
'
rings on
yer
fingers. Best not have relations while
ya stay here or Laslo won't like it, an' you wanna get on the Lord's good side,
trust me. I've seen folks who've learnt the hard way an' it ain't
purtty
, on that ya
c'n
be most
certain." He hitched a thumb toward the mini-bus. "Best get
yer
bags. I ain't no bell-boy. You might be
stayin
' awhile."

Ruegger and Danielle glanced uneasily at each
other and retrieved their two suitcases. He could see that Danielle was getting
spooked and didn’t blame her.

"Where are the other bloodfinders?" he
asked.

"Oh, don't worry, mate ... they're around.
Follow me, if you'd be so kind."

Tommy ushered the vampires to the far side of
the monolith, to a stone staircase that snaked up into the mission's vestibule
on the first floor above the hangar. Once inside, Ruegger found it to be a
narrow, angular room devoid of warmth.

"Wanna visit the chapel?" Tommy asked.
"Have a chance to wash
yerselves
of
yer
sins? Laslo doesn't like the sin and that's a fact.
Best to burn it off now 'fore 'e does, and this is
m'good
nature
speakin
' to ya."

"No, thanks," said Ruegger. "Just
show us our room."

"You ain't atheists, is ya? The Lord
doesn't like the ungodly ones." He yanked up his T-shirt to reveal a
rotted torso marred by countless giant welts in cruciform shape: burn marks
left by a brand. "I was without God once 'fore Laslo showed me
th'true
an' righteous path. God is with that one, He is,
and the angels sit on 'is shoulder."

"I'm sure they do. Where's that room?"

Tommy showed them past a large dining hall with
stained-glass windows, down a series of corridors until they reached a
staircase, which they took to the second floor, then down a narrow hall.
Finally Tommy opened a dirty wooden door, which creaked as it swung wide.

"This'll be
yer
room, lass, an' the one down there'll be the mister's."

"Separate rooms?" she said.

"To ensure that this place remains without
sin,
y'understand
. 'course, if ye were interested,
Laslo could marry ye both in holy union an' you could carry out God's good work
in the bedroom at
yer
leisure. I've seen '
im
marry before, I have—burns the sin outta the newlyweds
before they
c'n
be joined with God's
blessin
'. Beautiful, just beautiful."

"Thanks, but no,” Ruegger said. He was
becoming used to the strange, frenzied stillness of the place, but there was
some sound, just under the silence, some horrible noise like screaming ...

"Now, if that'll be all, I'll be off.”
Tommy crept back the way he'd come.

Danielle laughed nervously, then whispered,
"I think we should just get the fuck out of here, Rueg, Hauswell or no
Hauswell. You with me?"

Ruegger lit a cigarette, took her hand and led
her into the room, which was small and sparse, a narrow bed there, a cramped
desk here, and the only window shattered; the fragments left gleamed of stained
glass. Above it hung a large iron shutter—open now—to block out the sun.

"We've got to find out if Hauswell’s really
dead. If he’s not, we need to know what he found out. Either that or Liberty takes over the
world.”

"Baby, I want to get the hell away from
here. Whatever we find out from Hauswell can't be worth what's going to happen
here."

"Nothing's going to happen." He moved
to the window and saw the cemetery not too far away, but there was something
strange about it. The air outside blew suddenly cold, and dark clouds massed
above.

"Looks like the storm's followed us,"
he said.

"Raining?"

"About to.” He turned to look at her.
“What?” She was staring at him strangely.

She bit her lip, then let out a breath.

“Nothing,” she said.

*
    
*
    
*

Rain
drummed against the windows. Danielle fidgeted. They’d been waiting for too
long. A sudden impulse grabbed her. “Ruegger,” she said.

“What is it?” he said, sounding wary.

She sucked up her courage. “Your story,” she
said.

“My what?”

“Your past. I want to know. I
demand
to know.”

“Danielle, please. Now isn’t the time—”

“It never is. It never
will
be.” Fuming, she said, “Now is the
perfect
time. We’re waiting on Laslo, we’ve got nothing better to
do, we’re in a spooky fucking castle and there’s a storm. What better
atmosphere could you want?”

He stared at her.

“I ... don’t know,” he said.

She lit a cigarette, rebellious. “Start
talking,” she said.

“But ... I—”

“I said start talking.”

He blinked. He looked away in thought for a long
moment, seeming to wrestle with something, then nodded. “You’ve waited long
enough.”

She almost melted, but made herself be tough. “I
have.”

“Where … where should I begin?”

Finally
. “At the beginning.”

And, wonderingly, he began.

Chapter 17

Ruegger's
family had moved to Vienna from Germany when he
was ten. It was a large family, and he was the youngest of six children; as
such, he'd pretty much raised himself, his parents cold and distant to him,
having exhausted their supply of tenderness on the offspring who'd come before.
Ruegger's father Henri had brought his parents with him from Germany, and they were harsher and
more parochial than Henri himself, who was every fiber a tyrant. In all
fairness, he was considered a rebel by having married a Spaniard.

The family lived in the most upscale and
conservative pocket of town they could find. They were aristocrats from old.
Their estate was large and sprawling, complete with the catacombs of the family
that had lived there before. In many ways, Vienna didn't suit them; its free-spirited
and artistic ways offended them, so they mingled mostly with the
moderately-politicked gentry of the area.

When Henri told his youngest son he was to be
sent to boarding school, the young Ruegger disagreed. Henri would not be
denied. Once in boarding school, Ruegger had tried to burn it down. His protest
was duly noted by the school authorities on his way through the expulsion
process.

Following, his family hired a private tutor for
the boy, a governess. He liked her. In fact, he enjoyed learning in general,
but he couldn’t force himself to be idle. Wanderlust held him rapt at an early
age. He ran away frequently, learning criminal behavior from friends on the
street, but soon discovered a society of artists who accepted him and the good
name his family brought.

By this time, his family had given up and all
but cast him out. He didn't care. No love was lost between the
Rueggers
and their youngest son. The artists taught him
poetry and literature, and it was in their company that he began writing. Under
their tutelage, he also learned how to play chess, and he became well-known for
his skill at the game. Only later did he come to see most of the artists as
shallow and pretentious. They were disappointed when his family cut him off.
Since the Ruegger family money solved a lot of their problems, they made their
displeasure with the young poet abundantly clear.

One big exception proved to be Maria, a sincere
poet with some talent. Seventeen when he met her, Ruegger fell in love from the
start. She was an eighteen-year-old Spanish refugee, whose family had fled from
the authorities in their home country after her father had killed a wealthy
merchant for political reasons. The irony didn’t escape Ruegger that, like was
father, he’d fallen for a Spaniard.
  

Her intertwined innocence and cynicism attracted
Ruegger. It hurt nothing that she was also voluptuous, with oily black hair and
almond eyes. He couldn’t understand what she saw in him, but she did. As they
began courting, Ruegger's family became enraged at the low breeding of Maria's
heritage and her family's lack of material assets, and they threatened to
disown him. He invited them to do so.

Maria and Ruegger fell deeply in love, and
eventually he asked her to marry him; she accepted. By this time, Ruegger was
living almost exclusively among the poets in town—had rented a flat himself, in
fact, and had very little contact with members of his family. The situation
suited him fine, and Maria didn't seem at all disappointed that they wouldn't
have the benefit of his family's money. Indeed, she was delighted at the
romantic notion that she and Ruegger would have to make it together all on
their own.

For awhile, they did. He honed his skill in
vaudeville acts, always hoping to publish something, while she became an
excellent professional dish-washer.

Their happiness didn’t last. Perhaps due to all
their romantic midnight
cavortings
, which had exposed
them to rain more than once, Maria caught pneumonia and became desperately ill.
Her family had no money for a doctor, and Ruegger's family refused aid—a fact
which he would remember later.

He knelt by her deathbed day and night, tending
on her every need, but to no avail. Winter had come, and though it was the
kindest one in recent years, the cold was too much for her and she faded away,
turning frail and skeletal, her dark skin now pale. Finally death claimed her,
and Ruegger nearly died with her.

Some would say this was the beginning of his
insanity.

He dressed her body in her nicest dress, stole a
suit for himself along with a pair of tarnished silver rings, and slipped these
on their wedding fingers so that they could be married in death if nothing
else. He gathered her in his arms and crept onto his family's estate during the
night, delving deep into the catacombs, where he walled Maria and himself up in
a tiny chamber, with hardly air enough to breathe. Air which soon become
unhealthy and fetid.

He stayed there with Maria, waiting for death,
for three days and four nights before his family discovered the new brickwork
and unearthed him.

Most said he'd probably gone insane during his
days in the tomb, but the ones who spent the most time with him felt it was
only after his release that madness took hold. Whichever, he was clearly sick,
walking around his room talking to himself, throwing occasional violent fits
and cutting himself with anything he could get his hands on. He blamed his
family for Maria's death and vowed revenge. They sent him to an insane asylum,
where he stayed for seven very unpleasant months before he found a way to
escape.

Armed with thoughts of avenging Maria’s death,
he returned to his family's estate. Before giving in to his desire for
vengeance, he kept the presence of mind to steal as much money and clothes as
he could carry. Then he set fire to the house and ran off into the night.

He never found out if anyone had been harmed in
the fire, but they had killed Maria through their own prejudices and he felt
that they deserved whatever they got. Being raped and beaten and starved in the
insane asylum didn’t ease his feelings toward them. May their souls burn as
bright as their house, he remembered thinking, though he cringed to remember it
now. Two weeks later, he woke up to find his mind suddenly clear, sane again,
and he was alone in an alien city, hung-over and sleeping in a ratty inn.

He became a wanderer. Times were different then
and people were more hospitable to charming young vagrants. Ruegger always
managed to work a certain spell on people, frequently finding lodgings with
gullible families but street-smart enough not to rely on this.

Often, to occupy his time, he played chess. It
was in this way that he met Ludwig:

"I was playing chess by myself on a stone
bench near a fountain when he came up and plopped down opposite me and
challenged me to a game,” Ruegger said. “He was this tall, skinny thing who
hadn't bathed in weeks, with wild hair and expensive clothes. I never found out
why he'd left his home, but he had. Naturally, being the stubborn sort Ludwig
is ... was ... it took him two hours to concede, but by then we'd grown to like
one another, so we took up together, rogue chess-playing poets with enough
stolen money to keep up minimal appearances and sustenance. For awhile, anyway."

They became well-known characters and often
people would gather round to watch them play. When they ventured outside of Austria
and discovered that they were unknown in other places, they turned their
obscurity to their advantage when someone would challenge them to a game. Mostly
these challengers went away disappointed, but it got so that Ruegger and Ludwig
made a sort of living off of placing money on the games, and this sustained
them until they got to Paris.

They'd bounced around Europe
for so long that it was only a matter of time before they wound up there sooner
or later; it was just a question of timing. They arrived starving and
destitute, not even speaking much French. They were forced to learn quickly.

Ludwig had always been fascinated by Ruegger's poetry,
so when they met a group of spirited, impoverished philosophers, Ludwig sent
out some of his friend's material. In retaliation, Ruegger distributed some of
Ludwig's weird epics to the populace, and they were both surprised when their literature
was well-received. Of course, they learned soon enough that the young
philosophers they'd encountered were anarchists—revolutionaries. To them, the
fact that the newcomers’ poems made no sense was a good thing. It showed a
desire for change.

The revolutionaries dubbed Ludwig and Ruegger
the "odd flock" (a phrase out of one of Ruegger's poems), and the two
stayed on.

This was during the early stages of the
Revolution, when most of the revolutionaries ended up dead and rotting of
gangrene on the barricades. No one ever would have guessed that Napoleon would
eventually take over the country and lead one of the most violent reigns of any
ruler, ever. Gangrene tends to take the romance out of most things, Ruegger
learned, and it was at this time that he discovered his natural violent tendencies.
He killed better than he wrote, it seemed, even if his heart rested with the
latter. Soon his fame spread among his peers for his suicidal antics on the
front lines. Meanwhile, Ludwig rose in the ranks of the revolutionary leaders,
becoming something of a commander, a strategist, which suited him wonderfully.

It ended one day when Ruegger was leading an
assault on a corrupt police station. The revolutionaries were ambushed and
slaughtered without mercy. A traitor had given them away. The survivors were
forced back to one of their secret encampments, just about to be overrun.
Ruegger, dying with two bullets in his stomach, gathered the remnants of his
men and told them that he was going to make his last stand there. In a touching
gesture, they agreed to stay with him.

Amid the stench of gunpowder, gangrene, burning
flesh and hair, the anarchists loaded their weapons and waited for the final
assault. When it came, it was swift and brutal. Half of Ruegger's men were cut down
within the first minute, and he was struck twice in the chest and a few times
along his limbs. He crumpled in a wet heap at the bottom of the barricade.

One thought chased at him as he lay there dying:
he had to find Ludwig, make sure Ludwig knew that he was passing over. But
Ruegger was too weak and there was no time. He was using his own blood to write
a good-bye letter when one of the revolutionaries easily hefted him off the
ground and sped him off into an abandoned alley.

Gunshots echoed off the streets nearby. The
revolutionary patted Ruegger with a gloved hand on the cheek and smiled. It was
a woman, a girl really, no more than seventeen, perhaps, but though she looked
several years Ruegger's junior, she gave off a presence and had such command of
herself that he felt she was much older, and of course she was. Approaching her
200
^th
birthday, in fact. She had cloudy, pale green eyes and deep
dark brown hair shot through with streaks of soot and ash.

"She told me that she'd read my poetry, had
watched me from afar—watched me smoke my cigars, or mull over some stratagem,
or laugh with the other anarchists at some small joke when the tension got too
high. She said I should live forever, and that she would do that for me under
the condition that I use my gifts to continue the fight for freedom."

He’d started to drift into unconsciousness, but
the revolutionary pulled out a knife and nicked his throat to keep him awake.
She made him promise, and he did. She drained him of what blood he had to give,
then gave him her own, making him a vampire. He later found out that her name
was Amelia.

Ruegger returned to Ludwig at once and offered
him immortality, but Ludwig refused. At first. As Ruegger and Amelia became
lovers, she introduced him (and by extension Ludwig) to the various covens and
rogues in the area. The original odd flock met many of her immortal friends and
acquaintances, and Ludwig discovered the morbines—an immortal race that fed off
of brain fluid—and was delighted. He called them the "intellectual's
vampire", and, since he was just as well-known as Ruegger, the morbines
were honored to make him one of them. They seemed to consider it good
publicity.

After another year of fighting, Ruegger grew
disgusted with his mortal and immortal comrades, finding that they were every
bit as corrupt as those they hated. Reluctantly, Amelia agreed. Together they
left for the New World, leaving Ludwig behind in France. They begged him to go with
them, but he refused, saying he must continue the fight.

Ruegger and Amelia spent nearly a hundred years
together, and she taught him everything she knew, starting off with the basics:
first how to choose his victims (only evil-doers), then how to amass one's
personal fortune by taking money and properties (including stocks and bonds)
off one's victims. It was a lesson many shades never mastered.

Other lessons followed—small-scale telepathy and
telekinesis. Meanwhile they explored the New World from the frigid tip of
present-day North America to the warmer tip of South
America. They hired natives to build them an estate in the wilds
of Canada.
Occasionally war would break out somewhere in the world, and Ruegger and Amelia
would go to fight for the side that they considered just, if there was such a
side, then return to their exploration of the earth. They were deeply in love.