The Living Night (Book 1) (32 page)

"I told him about us," she said.
"I caught him with his whore and I blabbed! I'm so stupid, so horribly
stupid. I should be shot, shouldn't I?"

"No, of course not."

"Yes, I should. I really should. Say you
forgive me, my beautiful pale one, and I'll feel better."

"It's done. I forgive you."

"No, you shouldn't. I don't deserve it. Don't
you realize what he'll do?"

"What could he possibly do? He deserved
what he got and he knows it. You know he'll never hurt you."

"It's not me I'm worried about." She
took a deep breath before going on, then looked meaningfully back and forth
between Jean-Pierre and Sophia. "You've got to go, both of you. Far, far
away, somewhere he can never find you."

"That's no use, Krissy. If he wanted, he
could find us anywhere."

"Jean-Pierre, don't say that! He's not one
to take things passively. He'll do something rash, I know he will. Now pack up
and go! Here, I'll help you."

He laid a hand on each of her young shoulders.
"Calm down, girl. What's done is done and there's no use hiding. I knew
what I was getting into when we first started sleeping together, and I'm not
afraid to face the consequences."

"Then I'm afraid
for
you. Don't you
get it? There's no point in acting noble now. Just run! If you run, it will be
an act to appease him. He doesn't want to kill you and that'll give him an
excuse not to. Don't argue with me, Jean-Pierre. I know him better than anyone
alive."

"We're not going anywhere, Krissy. But
here, you stay with us tonight, okay? And for however long you need to."

Clearly, she was not lulled into any sense of
security, but she gave in under the albino's ministrations, and Sophia helped.
Around four in the morning, Sophia awoke with a start. Something was wrong.
Beside her, the albino lurched up. Two large black figures seized hold of her
and tore her, naked, from bed. Her first thoughts were that they smelled foul
and that she missed being in Jean-Pierre's arms, and then one of them struck
her over the head and she was out.

*
    
*
    
*

Peeking
around the doorway, Kristen marveled as Jean-Pierre leapt to his feet. She knew
Junger and Jagoda were much stronger than he was and either one of them
would've been more than sufficient to rip him limb from limb.

"Release her," he commanded.

Kristen gasped. He was so brave!

"Vistrot has a message for you," said
Jagoda. "He says that since you took from him the only thing he loved in
this life, he would take your bride in her place."

"He'll never live to lay a finger on her,
the bastard."

Junger laughed. "You misunderstand.
We’re
to dispose of her. Consider it a
professional courtesy that we don't kill her in front of you. After this, you
and Vistrot will be even." He turned to his comrade. "Brother, don't
you love New York?"

"It's beautiful," agreed the bearded
one. He peered at Kristen in the doorway. "Vistrot says you're free to
return."

"Fat chance!" she said.

"He says no harm will come to you."

"Tell him to fuck himself!"

Jagoda winked. "With pleasure, little
one."

He and Junger left through the front door, Sophia
slung over the bald one's shoulder. After they were gone, Jean-Pierre collapsed
on the floor and Kristen knelt beside him.

"I'm so, so sorry, Jean-Pierre. You'll
never forgive me, I know, and I wouldn't deserve it if you did. Here, would you
feel better if you hit me?"

He cupped his hands over his face. He limbs
shook.

"No," he said. "I don't want to
hit you, for God's sakes. It's you that doesn't understand. Kristen … Krissy,
honey ... she was pregnant."

"My god. I didn’t think that could
happen
."

In that moment, something snapped in him,
Kristen could feel it. It was as if all the knowledge Sophia had given him, all
the morality—with her abduction, it was gone. Vaporized. The old Jean-Pierre had
reemerged.

Fury possessing him, he started smashing things.
It didn't matter what it was, he thrust his fists and his feet into it,
cracking and splintering, ripping and tearing—destroying blindly, until there
was nothing left big enough to smash. Then he moved into the living room. By
the time he was through, the entire apartment was broken apart, the walls
fractured, the floor littered with gaping holes, the furniture shredded, the
ceilings caving in.

Then he started on the hall.

At first Kristen cried, hating herself, but then
the anger blossomed outward. She kicked at what was left of the toaster because
it was the nearest thing to her. As she listened to Jean-Pierre's sounds of
destruction from beyond the suite, she realized that Vistrot's revenge had been
a mistake, a grave miscalculation. His act had been irrevocable, and now it was
war.

*
    
*
    
*

Claude,
the four-armed dwarf, had to step over sleeping performers on his way to the
door. It had taken three penthouse suites to accommodate all of them, but ever
since that initial challenge it had been a non-stop party. Pretty much everyone
here was in a fitful, drunken stupor except Claude and several friends, including
Max, and that's only because they were snorting the last of an eight-ball. When
he finally got to the door and flung it open, he saw a very severe Jean-Pierre
with a grim-faced blond girl at his side.

"You're here to see Max.”

"That's right," said Jean-Pierre.

Claude led them through the living room into the
oversized den, where Maximillian and a few others—one or two of them groupies—were
still carrying on the festivities. The troupe had put on a good show tonight
and were hoping to spend another few weeks in New York. That would all change shortly.

Max glanced up at Jean-Pierre, then, smiling, rose
to meet him.

"So glad you could make it, my dear fellow.
And who's this lovely creature?"

"My name's Kristen," she said coldly.

Max studied the albino, and Claude saw what Max
saw: something about the werewolf had changed. He was more composed, more
confident. It looked, to Claude, as if Jean-Pierre had made up his mind about
something. And, having done so, he seemed even deadlier than before.

"So, my friend,” said Max, wary, "are
you ready to give a little blood?"

"No. But if you're willing to do something
for me, you'll be able to taste blood far richer than my own—blood that has been
building strength since 500 B.C. It will make you immeasurably more powerful
than you are. Of course, I'll need the complete cooperation of your
troupe."

Max frowned. "Whose blood would this be?"

"Vistrot," Jean-Pierre said. “The
Titan."

*
    
*
    
*

When
Sophia finally woke up, she couldn't open her eyes at first because of the
soreness and dried blood. She smelled something horrible, some slaughterhouse
stench. The bruises and abrasions she'd suffered under the hands of the Balaklava burned. Worse, from the throbbing between her
legs she realized that they'd raped her while she'd been unconscious.
Fucking bastards. Let them try to do that
when I’m awake!

She forced her eyes open only to find herself
inside of a giant belly. Human bones had been fused together to create much
larger ones, which arced over the chamber and down both sides like the ribs of
an enormous animal. A vertebral column ran along the top and walls of flesh
composed the top and sides, in which the ribs were embedded. Though it was
surely some illusion, the flesh appeared to be alive, as if it was in fact the
abdominal wall of some beast. Perhaps the Balaklava
had dribbled some of their blood on their gruesome artistry to give it life, or
perhaps the illusion was created by one of their voodoo tricks.

The belly stretched, cavernous, overhead, with a
height of maybe a hundred and fifty feet at its greatest, and tapering off at
either end, where brightly-colored black men with dreadlocks carried guns.
Apparently Junger and Jagoda had brought along some of their followers from Jamaica
and were using the humans as guards for their prisoners. Prisoners there were,
perhaps fifty of them—all perilously mortal—engaged in various boredom-induced
activities. Sophia noted that each and every one of them, man and woman alike,
was beautiful. This is why the Balaklava had
let them live, she supposed. Then it was surely the reason that she, too, had
been spared so far. Where were her hosts, anyway?

She sat up, joints aching. The prisoners nearest
her, two young men resting their haunches on upside-down buckets and playing a
game of checkers, noticed her.

"Well, will you look at that? She's
up."

"How do you feel, miss?"

She placed a hand to her pounding head and
smiled, going for points. "Fine. How long have you two been down
here?"

"About a week, I guess. To tell you the
truth, I've
kinda
lost track of time. Easy to do in
this place.”

“At least they haven't eaten us yet,” the other
put in. “That's just because we give good head, though."

Sophia nodded unsentimentally. "And by
`they', you mean ... "

"Junger and Jagoda, the dark gods. That's
what the Rastas call '
em
—that or the Balaklava."

"The Rastafarians are the guards?"

"Sure, if that's how you wanna say it.
Wardens, more like. Executioners when we ‘misbehave’. That's what we call them,
anyway. If they were actually Rastafarians, things would be a lot cooler down
here."

She surveyed the scattered prisoners. "There
are enough of you to make a break for it when Junger and Jagoda go out for
food. What stops you?"

The second pointed towards the belly's entrance.
“Beyond that is the Labyrinth. No one knows the way through ‘
cept
Junger and Jagoda and their people. And in case any of
us were inclined to give it a go …” He gestured. In a corner, about ten feet from
a cluster of the Rastas, rose a mound of gnawed corpses and bones. Lying there
as if it were a throne, a massive tiger lazily chewed on a fresh human skull.

"That's Kalanda, the
Balaklavas
'
pet. Pretty, isn't she? They say she's got enough of their blood to make her
one of them."

"
Kalanda's
a
shade?"

"You got it, miss. Not only that, but
smart, too. They say she's got a mind connection to the gods and that they can
watch us through her."

"You know I'm one of them, don't you—an
immortal?"

The young men exchanged glances. "It won't
make a difference, miss."

Chapter 25

A week earlier …

Hauswell
smiled as the odd flock approached, gesturing for them to take a seat, which
they did.

"Ciara told me you were here," he
said. “I was hoping you would find me.”

Looking at his old friend, Ruegger found himself
at a loss for words. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You, too, my friend. And Danielle, you look as
sumptuous as always. How did the sled race go?”

“Sophia won again.”

Hauswell stirred his drink. “A shame about Ludwig.”

“Yes. We’ve come a long way to find out why he
died.”

“I’m guessing it had something to do with his
army hanging in the balance. Second largest army in the whole Community, you
know.”

Quietly, Ruegger said, “I was under the
impression you knew more than that.”

Hauswell shifted his eyes, indicating the crowd.
“Later,” he said.

They talked about Ludwig, and old times, getting
used to each other once again, falling back into the rhythm. For her part,
Danielle was largely quiet.

When the pleasantries had been put behind them,
she said, "But why ... why did you fake your own death? If it's the
Scouring you're trying to avoid—well, I'm sure the Scourer knows that he hasn't
killed you. So the one person—or group of persons—that you're trying to fool
isn't fooled."

Hauswell smiled. "That's true, although I
think even the Scourer will be a little confused, because surely he did hire
someone to kill me, and there are many death-squads that claim to have done me
in. So it's more than likely that the Scourer will be uncertain whether or not
I'm in the ground. In any case, my ‘death' did manage to stir up quite a bit of
confusion, and hopefully my trail was lost in it. But ... well, that's not the
only reason I led others to believe I was taken out."

"Why then?"

"I wanted to see what would happen.
Whenever someone like me is Scoured, chaos erupts; I wanted to study this. In
the time that I've been ‘dead', I've researched the phenomenon in great depth.
The pattern is largely the same. In most cases, a crime lord is killed and all
hell breaks loose in the aftermath. All the lieutenants of the deceased clamor
for the throne,
but it's rare that any of the lieutenants ever get the
throne.

“The only circumstance in which one of them does
claim it is through an enormous infusion of money and resources—someone
helps
them to build a power base large enough to enable them to rule. It's either
this or an outside party—in my case, a shade named Karl Barnaby—comes from
nowhere to take the crown for himself. Interesting, isn't it?"

"So you're saying that these ascendants to
the throne were given a boost by someone."

"Exactly. And it would follow that they
would then owe loyalty to this person. In my research, I've found out who this
person is." He spoke in a coarse, strained whispered. "I know who's
behind the Scouring."

Ruegger and Danielle waited with baited breath.

Hauswell smiled mischievously. "Ah, but I
can't tell you here and now. Someone could be listening. I don't mind if you
know because your lives are on the line, too. But I don't want an outsider to
benefit from information that I've sacrificed so much—my entire kingdom, for
the gods' sakes—to gather. I've really said too much already."

Danielle ordered another drink, this time a
margarita. "But what's happening here in Lereba? We know that the Balaklava killed Testopha, but we don't know why. Is it
part of the Scouring?"

"Very much. See, there are two patterns to
the Scouring. One is the killing of a criminal boss—this is the most prevalent
pattern—and the second is the exploitation of a tense situation, such as that
one here between the karula and the abunka. The interesting thing to this
pattern is that the tension that the Scouring exploits is inevitably caused by
religious differences. That's what I've come to study.

“The karula and the abunka have been at each
other's throats since the death of their leaders, and I believe it will all
come to a head tonight. You have impeccable timing, I must say. But, if you
want to observe the phenomenon yourselves, stay here awhile. Mark my words,
after a few days of fighting, when everything is in ruins, out of nowhere there
will come a leader with a powerful gathering and a new fortune that will seize
control of the city. If Testopha was really Scoured, and if the Balaklava work for the Scourer, that’s what will
happen."

"So the Scouring either kills a crime lord or
a powerful religious figure,” Danielle said. “Chaos breaks out, a lot of people
die, and then an agent of the Scouring steps in and takes over."

"Precisely."

"Ludwig doesn't fit the profile."

"Therefore he wasn't Scoured. I think it's
significant in more ways than one that the targets of the Scouring represent
crime and religion. Ruegger, doesn't this strike you as interesting?"

"What are you implying?" Ruegger said.

"Well, the fact that you despise religion
is well known. You put up with some elements of crime as long as they suit your
purposes, but ..."

"You think I have something to do with the
Scouring? You've already said that you know who it is, and if that's true, then
you know I've nothing to do with it."

Hauswell looked doubtful. "Maybe. Ruegger,
back when I saved you in Germany
all those years ago, did you think I did it simply out of the goodness of my
heart?"

"Of course. If not, why?"

"It's true that my goodwill was partly the
reason—in fact, I was actually
selected
because of my goodwill."

"Hauswell, what the hell are you
saying?"

Hauswell stared at Ruegger silently, then shook
his head. "You really don't know, do you? Well, now is not the time or
place to tell you. Here, why don't you two accompany me upstairs so that we can
watch the city burn?"

"You certainly know how to show a girl a
good time,” Danielle said.

They returned upstairs to the mansion, where the
odd flock trailed Hauswell to his suite. The German retrieved a bottle of fine
bubbly from the mini-refrigerator and three glasses from a cabinet, and they
moved to the balcony. The city below lay in darkness cut by a smattering of fires,
which seemed to be spreading. Tendrils of smoke blotted out the stars. Far
away, the rattle of gunfire drifted from a tangle of narrow streets. A cool
breeze gusted up from the city, carrying with it occasional warm spots.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Hauswell said,
pouring the drinks. "Ruegger, you look upset. What's wrong, my dear
boy?"

"Thank you for sharing your information
with us. We've ... been through a lot ... to see you and to hear what you have
to say. But before I listen any further, I want to know why you let Laslo live.
You must've known how far gone he was. And if you lie to me, I will kill
you."

Hauswell nodded slowly. His face was suddenly weary.

"What did he do?"

"He crucified us. And many others."

"Damn. I knew he was far gone, but I never
knew just how much. When he locked me out of the hangar, I didn't put up a
fight. I guess I didn't want to know."

"He’s killed hundreds, maybe
thousands."

Hauswell's hands shook as he sipped his
champagne. "I swear to you, I didn't know. But, Ruegger, you were pretty
far gone yourself once, and I helped you out. Eventually you came around. I had
hoped that, in time, Laslo would come around, as well, although he refused all
my offers at getting him help and counseling. What else could I have done? Kill
him? What if I'd killed you all those years ago? If I had, you would never have
had a chance to redeem yourself. Redeem yourself you did, admirably, and the
world is a better place for it. I just couldn't kill him before he had that
same opportunity. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but I don't know if I can
forgive."

"Try."

Suddenly Ruegger remembered how he'd felt when
he believed Hauswell to be dead. Of things unsaid, unresolved.

"Hauswell, no matter what your reasons were
for doing it, I want to thank you for saving me all those years ago,” he said.

The German looked surprised. He smiled.
"You're most welcome."

"And I ... I forgive you for not killing
Laslo. I know you were only trying to do what you thought right. It couldn't
have been an easy decision."

"It wasn't. Now it's my turn to thank you.
It means a great deal to me to hear you say such things. Now, I’ll tell you all
I know about the Scouring."

Ruegger sipped his drink, strangely at peace.
The fires of the city were reflected in Hauswell’s eyes, curiously a little
moist. Ruegger held Danielle's hand, and together the trio watched the city
burn.

Hauswell began to speak.

*
    
*
    
*

"Remember
when I met you in Liberty
and told you that someone was investigating my total resources? Well, I
continued my search for the person behind it and at last was successful.
However, in the process, I alerted this person, and now she wants me dead
before I can spread the news of her identity."

"She?" said Ruegger.

"That's right. Before the Scouring began,
she wanted to determine how powerful I was. I believe she’d planned to start
the Scouring soon and was looking for a partner—someone that could provide her with
what contacts she lacked. She investigated me to see if I fit the bill and, for
whatever reason, decided not to go with me."

"Would you have gone along with it?"

"Of course not, which is perhaps the reason
she went with someone else. Or perhaps it was that I wasn't powerful
enough."

"Who'd she decide to go with?" asked
Danielle.

"My former greatest competitor—Vistrot."

Danielle exchanged a glance with Ruegger.
"So this woman and Vistrot are the forces behind the Scouring."

"Yes. This I've learned through weeks of
hellish research. In the early days of the Scouring, Vistrot used Junger and
Jagoda to perform several of the killings, including that of Testopha. I
presume he did this to cloud the issue, because people have recently tended to
associate the Balaklava with Roche Sarnova.
Don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying Vistrot intentionally framed Sarnova—not
in that instance—but he surely did it to create general confusion in the event
that the identities of the murderers became known to the public.

“After the first few killings, Vistrot and his
accomplice decided to play it safe by hiring local death-squads to perform the
wet work. They hired the teams through a series of front companies, and it took
me a long time to sort through them until I found out the truth of the
matter."

"What's the purpose of the Scouring?"

"To rid the immortal world of crime and
religion, I suppose."

"Then why did this woman seek help from the
greatest criminal alive? It takes a thief to catch one?"

"Who knows? I still think she sought out
Vistrot because of his contacts and his power base. Perhaps it appealed to her
sense of irony. Besides, who else could she have turned to but a major crime lord?
But we'll get to that in a minute. It all makes perfect sense."

"So once they've cleansed—excuse me,
scoured—the world of crime and religion, then what? Vistrot gets to be the head
honcho from then on and the woman disappears into the nether from whence she
came?"

"I don't know. As we’ve discussed, after
every
Scouring's
resultant chaos, a lone figure
emerges to take over the area, like Karl Barnaby of Las Vegas. A great deal of my investigations
have dealt with finding a commonality among these doomsday princes, as I call
them, and the only thing I've come up with is Vistrot. That's where his
contacts come into play; he has to be able to control these folk, so they have
to be people that have worked well for him before. After he Scours, he sets
someone up in each area that's loyal to him. These doomsday princes are one of
the main things the woman needed him for."

"What about Ludwig?" Ruegger asked.
"Where does he fit into the picture?"

"Think of it this way: Roche Sarnova could
be a serious impediment to the Scouring. So if you wanted Sarnova out of the
way, how would you go about killing him if you didn't want to use your own
soldiers?—and it
would
take an army."

Ruegger nodded. "So you're saying that
Vistrot and the woman had Ludwig killed—using the Balaklava, who are thought to
work for Sarnova—to incite the wrath of his widow and the Libertarians so that
they would attack the Dark Lord in retaliation."

"It probably would've worked, too, hadn't someone
stepped forward to take responsibility for Ludwig’s murder.”

Ruegger leaned closer. “We heard you know who
ordered the hit. In fact, that’s why we came to find you.”