The Living Night (Book 1) (22 page)

This, too, came to an end when they moved to New York. They had lived
in the seething cityscape for about a year until one night when they decided to
hunt separately. After his excursion, Ruegger ventured to their apartment to
find Amelia lying lifeless on their bed, a dark immortal standing above her,
her blood dripping from his lips.

It was a kavasari.

Ruegger charged the creature, a man, but the kavasari
knocked him aside, a smile on his lips. Ruegger didn't stop. He kept charging
Amelia's killer, and the kavasari kept throwing him back. Eventually, after
he'd beaten Ruegger to the ground one final time, the kavasari took up Amelia
in his arms and vanished out the window. Ruegger tried to follow but could not.
Despair filled him. Amelia was dead.

Devastated, he sunk into depths of despair he
hadn't known since Maria's death. In fact, this time his insanity completely
consumed him, lasting for close to seventy years. It was a colder sort of
insanity, the sort that would be hard for anyone to detect; to all others, he
appeared rational. Around the time Amelia died, the Civil War was breaking out
and Ruegger fled the claustrophobic city of New York
for the more lush land of the South, where he started a cotton plantation in Louisiana with his
fortune and bought several hundred slaves. He was not to return to New York for a long,
long time; to him, it became a haunted place, a place of misery.

To him, the war represented the old ways versus
the new. The traditional rural life against the industrial age. These were
concepts that he could relate to, even though his love of life had completely
disappeared. Before Amelia’s death, he had killed slave-owners, and now he was
one. Life grew to be an evil thing to him, and he set about its destruction
coldly.

The war called to him, and he couldn't resist
the temptation to break open the bones of those that lived in the northern
world that so disgusted him, the world that had killed Amelia. He purchased the
title of colonel from the Confederacy and became, once more, a leader of men.
He was relentless and cruel, driving his soldiers savagely into the jaws of
death again and again, but leading them out successfully. His men hated and
feared him, but the Confederate generals loved him. They promoted him to their
rank. He agreed, under the condition that he could still lead his soldiers into
battle.

At this point they began to call him the Demon
of the Mississippi,
as the river was his stomping ground. To this day, a portrait of him (bearded
and in Confederate uniform) lies embedded in one out of every four Civil War
textbooks in the country.

Of course, others were aware of the delicate
skin condition that prevented him from seeing daylight and understood his need
to keep indoors during that time. Ultimately this little eccentricity became
common knowledge, and the Union used it
against him, leading their assaults during daylight and killing enough of his
men to make his nocturnal counter-assaults ineffective.

To make matters worse, a few Union shades
realized what he was and made several attempts on his life. After surviving the
first, he immortalized a small group of his die-hard loyalists (there were only
a few), and they protected him.

When the war ended, he retreated back south a
burnt-out, hateful creature, only to find his plantation in ruins. The slaves
had risen against their overseers and set the mansion aflame. The overseers
hung by their necks from the towering oak trees surrounding the estate. The
slaves had hung them by their bull-whips.

In a rare display of emotion, he danced around
their bodies and collapsed laughing.

He had no idea where to go, so he disappeared
into the never-ending Louisiana
swamplands, where he lived alone, a savage. He actually enjoyed the solitude.
But, as fate would have it, his reputation had intrigued a werewolf called Lord
Kharker.

Kharker searched the swamps for months before
finding Ruegger, who had become something of an elemental, an extension of the
swamp itself. Kharker took Ruegger under his wing, teaching the one who was now
often referred to as the Darkling the finer points of evil through a seemingly
endless series of wars and debaucheries. They loved each other in the way that
only they could, appreciating one another's darkness, yes, but it wasn't that
simple. They understood that beneath all that they were still warm,
affectionate beings, capable of emotion and caring. They relished and embraced
their blackness, because they understood that that was their nature.

This was what Kharker taught him: to be evil (if
there was such a thing), because that’s what he was. But it wasn’t
all
of what he was. Kharker tried to
instill in him the zest for life that the Hunter had. In this, he failed.
Ruegger could never be at peace with his darkness as Kharker was with his.

It all culminated in World War Two, the war
Ruegger thought of as that which had taken his soul, if he had one left. The
Hunter and the Darkling were indiscriminate. To them, war was a playground.
Everyone on the field was prey. The two would attack soldiers, civilians,
anyone. For fun, they even assassinated a few people with high rank, just to
stir things up. It didn't matter which side, just as long as there were no
witnesses left. With Kharker beside him, Ruegger committed unimaginable deeds,
atrocities so dark he couldn’t even name them.

Infrequently, but sometimes, they'd hunt
separately. On one such night in Germany, Ruegger woke up in a cave
surrounded by bodies, not knowing how he had gotten there and crying out for
Amelia. It all came back to him in a rush, and he left the cave hating himself,
determined to go out and slaughter a whole slew of humans to prove to himself
one last time that he was really and truly evil. Then he would lie down, smoke
a cigarette, and watch the sun come up.

Later, he would understand. After seventy years,
the ice simply broke. The walls he’d erected between himself and emotion
dissolved in a blaze; he’d killed one person too many. But what were his
options? He couldn’t continue on as if he hadn’t reached a defining moment, and
he couldn’t suddenly reverse sides and fight for justice with the weight of his
crimes poised above his head.

The Vampire Hauswell found him first. Hauswell
saved him, if not the soldiers he'd destroyed. Hauswell, a staunch German who'd
been living in America until
the war, had come over to Germany
to kill off the evil elements of his native country so that he could still be
proud of his homeland. Ruegger never learned how Hauswell knew of him or found
him, but the vampire did, and he brought Ruegger back to the light. He
convinced Ruegger not to kill himself, that there could be life for him yet in
redemption. After Hauswell's arrival, Ruegger understood that he could never go
back to Kharker, never surrender again to evil. As much as he loved his mentor
and friend, Ruegger knew he could never see Kharker again.

After the war was over, Ruegger returned with
Hauswell to Las Vegas,
where Hauswell was rising in the ranks of the criminal underworld. He was a
kind man, in his way, but not to be trifled with, and Ruegger learned much
under his tutelage. Hauswell become a different sort of mentor to Ruegger, not
goodly, exactly, but noble. Ruegger had to figure out how to be goodly himself.
Breaking people’s knees when they didn’t pay up didn’t quite qualify, in his
opinion. For all Hauswell’s virtues—for instance, his refusal to feed on the
innocent—he was a ruthless businessman.

Soon, Ruegger knew he had to return to New York, if only to
stare his demon in the eye. To conquer it.

Once he'd done this, New York became a sort of base of operations
for him, somewhere to stay between his many road-bound odysseys. He only fed
now on the unjust. Sometimes he even fed on other immortals who had preyed on
humans indiscriminately. Slowly, he began to develop a new sort of reputation.
He became an avenger. He became the boogeyman that unrighteous shades feared.

This went on for decades until he found
Danielle, and except for the months Danielle had spent with Jean-Pierre at Lord
Kharker's, they'd been together ever since.

*
    
*
    
*

Ruegger,
though dry-eyed immediately after the telling, soon broke down with violent
sobs. Danielle embraced him. She didn’t exactly know how to respond. He’d been
evil (she had no problem using the word), she knew that. She had already
forgiven him for it, in fact. He’d never apologized for it, and she hadn’t
asked him to. It’s simply who he was. Or had been.

The strange thing, to Danielle, was that in
telling the story he made himself out to be more vile than he had been. Kharker
had told her enough to give her an accurate picture of his days as the
Darkling, and it was not the portrait he painted himself. Not that she believed
Kharker, who had
admired
Ruegger’s evil, but she would sooner believe
the Hunter than Ruegger, who couldn’t be objective about it. The way Kharker
told it, Ruegger very simply hated life and wanted to stamp it all out. He had
been quite cold and methodical about it. Without emotion. A reaper.

One day emotion had returned to him, and he’d
lost the driving force behind his attempted genocide. And never apologized for
it. Until now.

"I killed hundreds, thousands ... " he
said through his tears. "I deserve death a million times over."

"No," she said, stern. "No! Don't
you see, you've changed. You're not with Kharker anymore. You've turned your
back on all that. You're with me now, and we've never killed an innocent—have
we?"

"No, never. I could never kill an innocent
again, not even if my life were in danger. But don't you see, I go insane after
I lose someone I love. If you were to ever—"

"No, stop it! You didn’t go insane after
Ludwig died. Besides, no one's going to kill me. But if they did ... Well,
consider this. You'd respect my last wish, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

"Then as my last wish I command you never
to kill an innocent. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, but—"

"No, never! Now swear, damn you."

"I swear it." He tore off his shirt,
pressed his thumbnail over his heart and carved a bleeding X in his chest.
"Cross my heart.”

She kissed the wound, took his blood into her
mouth and swallowed. Tearing off her own shirt, she threw her legs around him
and straddled him, then pressed herself tight against him, kissing his face and
licking his tears away.

"I love you, Ruegger. Always."

"I love you, too," he said.

Their lips met, and everything after was a blur.

Afterward, rain pounded the remains of the
window, and Danielle knew that Laslo would not be happy; they had just defiled
this room.
Thank God.

"Let’s go outside,” she said. “I don’t care
about the rain. I can't stand this place. Mount Vapor
never made me claustrophobic, but this place does. Let's dance in the rain and
perform some ungodly rituals."

She led the way out, down the corridors and the
twisting staircase and through the angular vestibule until a light rain fell on
them. They picked their way down to the still-dry earth and toward a little
rise, where the cemetery was, crested the hill and came to the burial ground, surrounded
by a dilapidated wrought-iron fence. A large black archway, leaning to the
right and with a twisted gate, allowed access to the holy ground.

“Damn it all,” Ruegger breathed.

Danielle stared. All the graves—and there were
no more than fifty—had been unearthed.

"What does it mean?" she said.

"It means that Laslo's resurrected them
all."

Chapter 18

"Groovy,"
said Cloire, eyeing the penthouse, and her voice was only half-mocking. One day
after Initiation, the death-squad had just arrived in Las Vegas.

Jean-Pierre nodded. Things had been going pretty
well, he had to admit. There was still some tension among the crew, but it had
lessened dramatically since the Initiation, and Sophia was part of the reason.
Instead of focusing on themselves so much, the others could concentrate on
getting to know her and, when they did start to bicker, she made an effort to
come between them, acting in an almost motherly capacity. She was no mother,
though. She could be as cold and brutal as any member of the crew. Because of
this, she'd earned their respect.

The truth was that Jean-Pierre was impressed. Not
only was she all the things he admired in a warrior, but she was sensual, as
well. In his effort to detach himself from Danielle, Sophia might just be the
thing he needed. And every time he'd made some small advancement on her, she'd
returned it, which built his confidence.

It seemed childish, this little game, but he was
determined that if he and Sophia were going to become involved, it wouldn't be
on the sideline basis that Kristen and Veliswa had fallen into. Moreover, it
wouldn't be of the obsessive nature as his love for Danielle. No, if this
happened at all, it would be mature and, as such, it must progress at a mature
pace. But did mature necessarily mean slow?

There were enough rooms in the penthouse suite
for all of them, and after exploring their new surrounds the crew began to
unpack. It was one of the nicer casino/hotels along the Strand,
and the owner reputedly had connections with the mob.

After throwing his one suitcase on his bed,
Jean-Pierre moved into the living area and broke out a Pall
Mall.

The others drifted in. "I think we should
hit the casino,” Loirot said.

"Well, you would," said Cloire.
"But hell, we're in Vegas, why not? Ruegger and Danielle can wait a few
hours. As
Sofe
said a few days ago, it's a paid vacation.
What
d'you
think, Jean-Pierre?"

He shrugged, thinking it would be good for them.
"Let's do it."

Smiling, Cloire turned to Sophia. "You ever
been to Vegas,
Sofe
?"

"Used to live here, a long time ago, back
in the mob's heyday. It's nothing like it was."

"I'm
fleshstarved
,"
said Kilian. "Are we still going to uphold the tradition of the four-day
fast? It seems ridiculous under the circumstances. Without food, we'll be weak,
so what happens if we run across the odd flock?"

"If we find them, we'll feed," said
Jean-Pierre. "If not, we'll uphold the fast and the second stage of the
Initiation immediately afterwards. Everyone okay with that?"

They nodded, and he led the way downstairs to
the casino. After trading in some cash for chips, Loirot went off to play baccarat,
while Cloire and Byron found a roulette table and Kilian decided on a nice game
of blackjack. Kiernevar migrated to the slot machines.

Suddenly Jean-Pierre was aware that he was alone
with Sophia and that she was very near him, almost brushing his side. He
remembered last night during Initiation when they'd all begun the ritual orgy,
and he'd thought at the time—while he and Sophia were coupling—that they were
especially close somehow. Something about the genuine nature of her smile.
Although
... She'd seemed reluctant to
become intimate with him at first. Perhaps he’d imagined it. Still, standing so
close to her, his mind flashed on that smile of last night, when she'd writhed
above him in thoughtless abandon, and how that smile had warmed his heart.

Their hands touched. "Shall we play
craps?" she said.

"Together?"

"I'll blow on your dice."

They wandered over to the craps table.

"Do I scare you?" she said.

"Of course not."

"Your hand is trembling."

Fool
, he thought.
Suck it up. I can be every bit
as cold as she is.

It was this coldness in her that he liked, this
impenetrable inner strength that reminded him of the way he'd been back in the
days before Danielle. Even then he’d felt incomplete, though. Sophia was
different. She accepted her nature, which was so close to the albino's own, but
unlike him was complete in herself. Perhaps her inner strength would awaken its
counterpart in him.

"It's nothing,” he said. “Just need a
cigarette." He fumbled getting one out. She lit it for him, and he liked the
way she moved. "Thanks."

They began to play. Of course, it was easy for a
shade to win at these kind of games, what with their telekinetic and telepathic
abilities, but this took the fun out of it, and what did money mean to them?
They played it straight, no tricks. True to her word, Sophia blew on his dice.

When she whispered in his ear thirty minutes
later, "Wanna go upstairs?", he nodded, and she put her arm through
his and let him lead her away from the table. They'd been losing in craps and
didn't bother to retrieve the last of their chips. To the contrary, they went
straight up to the penthouse. He took her into his bedroom, knocking the
suitcase off his bed.

"You
are
frightened," she said,
drawing him towards her. "Never made love to a woman you could
respect?"

He studied her, but her face was gentle, not
mocking.

“I—” he started.

She placed a finger to his lips, then kissed him,
pressing herself against him. She did a slow pivot, not breaking the embrace,
then pushed him roughly down on the bed.

"You just need to relax," she said,
and her voice was so silky that he found himself giving in to the power of
suggestion. She ran her hands up and down his body, then unfastened his belt
with her teeth.

"Just relax ... and have a little fun. Fun
is allowed, you know."

Their lips met again. He gave in. Soon they were
naked and rolling around on the bed. For some reason he found himself unable to
go through with it, though, and before he’d gone very far he broke away,
panting. He placed a hand over his eyes.

"What is it?"

He sighed. “What are we doing?”

“What do you mean?”

He stood up and started pacing. “
Sofe
, you’re very good. I don’t know why you’re really
here, but I know you’re acting. You play the seductress very well. That’s not
what I want.”

She stared up at him. “I acted too fast, didn’t
I? Is that what gave me away?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “That wasn’t
really acting, Jean-Pierre. That was instinct. You and I, I guess we were meant
to find each other.”

“What are you talking about? Have we met
before?”

“No. And I didn’t come up here for a one-
nighter
. I wanted to begin something. Maybe I did it wrong,
but it wasn’t an act.”

Who was she? Why had she tried to seduce him so
quickly? Probably the Titan had set her up to it, in order that Jean-Pierre
should get over Danielle. Perhaps some real emotion had gradually entered into
it, though. He wanted to believe it.

“If you came here because you actually felt
something,” he said, “it wouldn't be right, not now."

"Then when? When Danielle is dead?"

"Especially not then. Then nothing could be
resolved."

"Then where does that leave us?" She
slid up against him, his back to her front, and kissed his neck.

"No," he said. "Just put your
arms around me.” She did. “Do it like you mean it."

"I do."

"You don't even know me."

"Then you don't believe in love at first
sight?"

"Don’t be absurd."

She paused. "Sometimes there's a connection
between two people that happens instantly, and it's best to make the most of it
before their differences tear them apart."

"So this connection—you feel it towards
me?"

She squeezed him around the middle. "I do. I
think you feel the same toward me."

He lit a cigarette and moved to the window,
where he looked down on the neon city.

She came to stand beside him, her arm around his
waist in a strangely familiar gesture. He offered her the cigarette and she
took it, expelling the smoke with a cool smile.

"What do you say to finding a coffee
shop?" she asked.

"No.”

“What then?”

"I say we find a bar."

*
    
*
    
*

After
the graveyard, Ruegger and Danielle explored the land beyond the airfield. Small
hills rose up, covered by stunted-looking shrubs and ugly grass. The night was
cool, and the air became fresher the further they got from the mission/hangar.

"I'm hungry," Danielle said.

"Me too. Should've eaten before we left
Vegas.”

The vampires made their way up the embankment, becoming
slippery in the rain, toward the airfield and past the vacant cemetery. As they
were descending the last hill, Ruegger started as lightning flashed. A lone figure
stood on the mission's roof. The man seemed tall, but it was hard to tell from
here, and he was utterly naked, his face raised to the heavens. He mounted the
scaffolding toward the platform on top of the bell tower.

Ruegger gestured, and Danielle looked as another
blast of lightning cut down, illuminating the glistening, storm-swept roof, but
the figure was gone.

"What is it?" Danielle said.

"I think I saw Laslo, but I don't know.
Whoever he was, he was on the roof near the bell tower. Then not. I think he
went
into
the tower." Chills ran
up his spine. Had Laslo been watching them? Was he watching now? Did he know
that they'd been joined in ungodly union not long ago? Had he seen
that?

"Let's go inside,” Ruegger said.

The moment they entered the mission's vestibule,
Ruegger was hit by a wretched stench.

"Do you hear something?" Danielle
said.

He paused to listen. He could hear a strange, rhythmic
noise ... but it was something he'd heard before.

"Let's see what it is," she said, and
her voice was a whisper.

They crept down a narrow hall, hearing the noise
grow louder, then turned down another, and finally came upon the chapel.

“Fuck,” Ruegger said.

The zombies were here, at least thirty of them,
kneeling in the pews, chanting softly, steadily in Latin. They wore ratty gray
monk-robes with hoods thrown over their heads, concealing their faces. The
leader of the congregation was not Laslo but one of his bloodfinders, a man
Ruegger recognized, had even played poker with a few times; Singer, he was
called.

A tall man with a scarred face and a severe
widow's peak, Singer had been a werewolf who worked for Hauswell before being
murdered in a gangland war. Now he was Laslo's right-hand man and, to prove his
devotion to God he’d had a cross burned into the smooth flesh of his
forehead—smooth because he was an immortal and immortal corpses do not rot
easily. In fact, Singer just might still possess the ability to shapeshift.

His eyes were closed, and he was leading the
chant. A large cross stood behind Singer, suspended by wires, and a naked man
hung where Christ should be, nailed at the hands and feet to the wooden beams,
his blood dripping to the floor. Covered in a slick bloody grime, the man was
tall and gaunt with salt-and-pepper hair and big glossy black eyes set back in
his head, giving them a hooded appearance. His flesh was the color of ash.

"Laslo," whispered Ruegger. Laslo,
taking the place of Christ! He must have only just gotten into position, as
he’d been at the tower moments ago, Ruegger was sure of it.

Danielle pulled him away. "Why don't we
plant some bombs and blow this place up?" she said. "We’re supposed
to fight evil where we can, and this ... this is ... "

"Evil?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. But to
feed all these bastards they've gotta kill a lot of humans, don't they?"

"That follows." He caught a whiff of
something else, more zombies somewhere close by. He set off in that direction,
Danielle just behind.

They came upon a large wooden door, set in a
little alcove. Half a dozen zombies grouped in front of it like a pack of
wolves. One of them was Tommy
O'Connel
. The zombie
smiled when he saw the odd flock and stepped forward, a shotgun in his hands.

"How
d'you
do,
mates?"

"What's going on here?" Ruegger said.

"
Nothin
' much.
We'd all be
attendin
'
th'Midnight
Mass if ya'll weren't
stayin
' with us. But we aren't
an' we're here instead. Least we don't
haveta
don
those fool robes."