The Living Night (Book 1) (4 page)

She lit a cigarette and stared out the window at
the falling snow. Where was Ruegger?

*
    
*
    
*

“Don’t
you love it?” Ludwig said.

Ruegger regarded his oldest friend, a tall,
gangly man with curly brown hair and the kindest, most animated face Ruegger
had ever seen. He looked like a court jester, even though here he was king. Ludwig
had pioneered the Beat movement in the fifties, helped lead the masses in the
Hip movement in the sixties and seventies, and had really never come out of it.
Behind the act of this would-be ruler of the world lurked a long-haired hippie.

When he had originally founded Liberty, his idea had been to take over the
planet in order to make it a better place. Ruegger had always known he would
snap out of it sooner or later, but over the years Ruegger had begun to wonder.
Now, his suspicions confirmed, Ruegger was relieved.
I wouldn’t have wanted to have to kill you, Ludwig, you wonderful fool.

Ludwig hunched over a large table in his study,
a surface overflowing with blueprints, carving instruments and blocks of wood.
There his latest project rested: a chess board. As both he and Ruegger were
ardent players, this did not surprise the vampire.

“Remember my dream?” Ludwig asked.

“Remind me.”

“Oh, you were always the better player, I’ll
grant you, but I was the one who wanted something new. Remember that night, we
both agreed that traditional chess boards reinforced the class system? The
whole object is to protect the
king
.
Not only is it inherently elitist, but sexist, too.”

“The queen’s the most powerful player.”

“She’s expendable. The pawns, presumably just
poor schmucks drafted by the king to fight a war, don’t even get a horse. No
wealth, no power. The first to die. Then the rooks, the knights, the holy men,
the queen and, finally, the king. Sexist and classist and religion-
ist
. Well, I’ve just finished the prototype for my new
chess board. No peons, no royalty. You’ll love it.”

Ruegger inspected the board. He laughed.
“They’re animals!”

Ludwig grinned. “Well, to make the game work
right, I had to have
some
sort of
class system. But see, now the pawns are the small bugs. Rooks are birds.
Bishops are deer. Knights are lions. Queens are humans. And the king …”

“Is that the big bug?”

“That’s right. The whole cycle. From bugs and
back to bugs again. See, the pawns are beetles and the king is a maggot.”

“You should have been a toy maker, not a revolutionary,
though I pity the dreams you’d inspire in children.”

“Can’t wait to play it, can you?”

The truth was that Ruegger was far from in the
mood to play a game of chess. Yet seeing Ludwig’s enthusiasm kindled some
familiar spirit in him. Before he could accept the invitation, though, the door
burst open and both men looked up as a messenger approached. He whispered in
Ludwig’s ear, and Ludwig’s face dropped.

“What is it?” Ruegger said.

Ludwig visibly gathered himself. “There's ...
there’s a situation developing in Barrow, my friend. Just north of here. It …”
He cleared his throat. “It concerns you and Danielle.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you should get her. We leave
immediately."

*
    
*
    
*

"So
what's going on?" Ruegger asked, once they were in the helicopter and en
route to the small town of Barrow.

Ludwig’s face darkened. "Junger and
Jagoda.”

Ruegger blinked. "The Last of the Roving Balaklava? I … I thought they'd given up and gone to Jamaica
long ago."

"They're back."

"What're you talking about?" Danielle
said. “Who are Junger and Jagoda, and what are Balaklava?”

“A race of immortal,” Ruegger said. “Very
strong. Brutal. Their method of feeding requires them to rip open living
humans. They’re called Bone Crushers.”

“Damn.”

“Luckily, there aren’t many left in the world.
The other immortal races banished them to the West Indies
four hundred years ago. We haven’t heard much from them since.”

“They’re the second strongest race of known
immortal,” Ludwig added. “
Shapeshifters
. They feed
off of living human bone marrow. To get to the marrow, they have to tear open
humans while they're still breathing—break open their bones. Hence the name. Junger
and Jagoda, two of the most violent creatures ever to walk the earth, assassins
on a global level, were also Balaklavian artists, sculptors, known to
incorporate their victims into their work, and they refused to settle down
until the 1800s, when they realized that the island homes of their immortal
brethren were by then largely vacant of their kind—they have a tendency to kill
each other off for territory—and prime to be exploited. Since then, they've
fashioned themselves into Jamaican myth and folklore, becoming voodoo-gods of
the islands."

"So what are they doing in Barrow?"

Ludwig passed a hand across his face. "I'm
not sure, but I think they're the end result of a deal that I made not too long
ago."

"What sort of deal?"

"A very bad one that I had to go back on. There
was no choice, really, and now I have to pay the price. The problem's that I've
endangered you two as well, and Malie."

"Tell us,” Ruegger said.

"No," said Ludwig. "I can't, not
yet. Please understand."

"This is bullshit," said Danielle.
"This has something to do with the hit that's out on us, doesn't it? Is
that
the deal you made?"

Ludwig covered his face with his hands.
"You'll find out soon enough, my friends. But please believe me, I'd never
do anything to hurt you unless there was no choice in the matter."

Ruegger seized Ludwig by the lapels of his
jacket. Immediately, guards shot to their feet, crouching in the shuddering
helicopter, but Ludwig waved them away.

"
Trust me
," said Ludwig.
"We've been friends too long."

"I don't know what's going on,"
Ruegger said, "but you haven't just put me in jeopardy. You've endangered
Danielle, and I won't tolerate that. You owe us an explanation."

Ludwig glanced at the guards, then back to
Ruegger. "You're right, but not now, not here. I'll tell you after the
sled race tomorrow. Let me go."

Ruegger released him and sat back down. Danielle
reached for his hand. They spoke little after that, and shortly the craft
landed. Several trucks waited for them, and they piled in and set out for
downtown Barrow. To Ruegger’s horror, almost every building in the heart of the
city burned or had at least been touched by flame. Fire trucks choked the main
street, and corpses littered the ground—many of them police officers.

"
This
is the end result of the deal you made?" Ruegger said.

Ludwig’s face twitched. "Actually, I think
this is only the beginning of the end result."

Danielle tensed. “Why did we come here, Ludwig?
You could've sent others to scout out the damage. You didn't need to come here
yourself, and you didn't need to bring us."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I think you were hoping to meet with the
ones who did this. Junger and Jagoda. That's the only reason you would've come
yourself."

"If they're strong enough to destroy an
entire town, Danielle, why would I want to put myself in the danger required to
meet them?"

"Because you're not in jeopardy, are
you?"

Ludwig said nothing.

"Jesus," said Ruegger. "You're
not, are you? Did you bring us out here to hand us over to the Balaklava? Is that it? Why else would we be invited?"

"Of course not," Ludwig said.
"It’s just ... you're going to meet them soon. I wanted you to have the
proper appreciation of them first. Don't fight them. I'll take care of the
rest."

"What are you talking about?"

"Here," Ludwig said to the driver.
"Stop the truck."

The vehicle braked and Ludwig bailed out, the
odd flock behind him. The other truck, the one bringing up the rear, halted and
disgorged Ludwig's troops. The revolutionary leader glanced up at the building
they stood before, a structure untouched by fire but surrounded by a dense
layer of bodies, both living and dead.

"This was the mayor's house," Ludwig
said, marching up to a few cops who stood on the stairs leading into the small
mansion. Ruegger and Danielle followed.

"You can't come in," one police
officer said. He looked wretched, sickened and saddened.

"I'm Ludwig Keaton. You're familiar with my
name. I probably put both your kids through college, and I own most of this
town."

The cops straightened. "What can we do for
you?"

"Tell us what happened here."

"I don't know, not really. Everyone's dead,
sir.
Everyone
. If we'd been on duty
at the time we would be, too."

"Did you see who did this?"

"I'm not a religious man, but they were
demons. Had to be. The ones who saw them say they were foreigners, big black
fellows, two of them. They killed and torched everything. Shot, stabbed, raped,
whatever, they kept going ... left some witnesses just to have witnesses, I
guess. But that’s not all. Here," he said, his voice curdling with hate,
"look at this." He led the way inside, Ludwig and the odd flock
following through halls strewn with the bodies of domestic servants and
personal guards, their blood arcing across the walls in gruesome abstraction.

They passed a bench where an Inuit woman sat
sobbing, her shoulders sunken and her face hidden by her hands. A man tried to
comfort her.

"She's the mayor," the officer
explained as they walked on, up the stairs and down another hall into a large,
windowed room, the focus of much official attention.

When Ruegger and Danielle crossed the threshold,
Danielle stopped and braced herself against the doorjamb. Ruegger stared. Blood
and various body parts lay strewn throughout the room, but this was second to
the vision that looked down from the ceiling, where intricate patterns of bones
were spun in surreal, nightmarish configurations, connected by rotting flesh
and grayish tissues. At the center of the pattern hung two pale wisps, the
remains of what used to be the torsos of two young girls, identical twins with
wide dark eyes and hair that fanned about their lifeless faces. Very few bones
of the girls' bodies were left below their arched necks, and their sinewy
bodies disappeared in a ragged fashion just above their navels. Their arms
stretched out pleadingly, but they too disappeared before the girls' elbows.
The rest of their bodies were woven into the overall fabric of the tapestry at
different and symmetrical intervals. A quick glance at the pelvic areas
revealed that the girls had been more than killed.

Danielle slammed an elbow against the wall. “What
creatures could
do
this? Destroy a town
… kill children … fashion their bodies into … God, some
art
…”

“It’s terrible,” Ruegger agreed. The thing that
bothered him the most was the gruesome appreciation he had of the art itself.

Danielle balled her hands into quaking fists
until the worst of the shaking had subsided, then went about the empty motions
of lighting a cigarette. Ruegger wrapped an arm about her, glanced at Ludwig
and led the way out.

“Why did you show us this?” Ruegger said.

“You know why,” Ludwig said.

“We’re to meet them soon.”

“Yes. And it’s important you know who they are
before you do.”

Danielle spat. “Well, we fucking know now, don’t
we?”

It occurred to Ruegger that all this action
seemed centered around the winter solstice, by chance or design, and the climax
of the winter solstice was the dog-sled race.

Tomorrow.

Chapter 3

Danielle
woke up half a day later with a blood-wringing hangover, propped herself up in
bed next to Ruegger, squinted her eyes, and vomited onto the floor.

It took a lot of alcohol to give a vampire a
hangover, but it hadn't been enough to erase the memory of the Balaklava's art. She had only to close her eyes to see
the horror imprinted on the back of her eyelids. The bones stretching across
the ceiling in some deathly spider-web, the faces of those two girls, whom she
had learned were the mayor’s daughters, and the burning of a town. But this
latter was, disgustingly, secondary, because the destruction of Barrow could be
seen as calculated—maybe it was a message to Ludwig—but the Tapestry of Death
(as they were now calling it) was a creative effort, and obviously the artists
had enjoyed its creation. That was something else altogether.

The noise of Danielle throwing up woke Ruegger,
and he silently massaged her shoulders and poured her a glass of milk from the
mini-fridge—not that any fridges were really need out here; it was
cold
. Noticing that Ruegger was on his
second smoke of the day, she started her first and moved to the balcony, after
first wrapping a jacket tight about herself. She looked down on the snow-laden
trees and iced-over lake. Distantly, she could hear the swarm of voices coming
from the Commons, where the party-goers had gathered for the dog-sled race.
Slowly, she could feel their energy and enthusiasm affect her and undo some of
the horror.

Ruegger brought her a hot black cup of coffee after
diluting his own with sugar and cream. They drank without speaking, and she
realized that if they didn’t talk about it they might just go on not talking.

"So—you think we'll meet Junger and Jagoda
today?" she said.

His face clouded. "What …” He cleared his
throat. “What could they possibly have to do with Ludwig?"

"I don't know, but it helps answer a few
questions. The Balaklava are often
shapeshifters
, you said, so they were probably the wolves
and bat Hauswell talked about.”

“They've been terrorizing the compound, or
that's what makes the most sense based on what we know."

"Why, though? As part of the deal Ludwig
was telling us about?"

"If that's the way it is, then it looks
like Ludwig's bit off more than he can chew. He may be the leader of over two
hundred immortals, but the Balaklava are
stronger than any of us. So as long as they're careful, they could stick around
for awhile."

"But that's it!” she said. “Why are they
hanging around
here
?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe they're trying to intimidate Ludwig.
Remember, Hauswell said Ludwig's friend Gleason was killed.”

“You think Junger and Jagoda did that?” Ruegger
said.

“Who else? Maybe that's why we've got five
guards on us. Could be that’s the number it would take to kill the bastards.
Plus us, of course."

"Perhaps. If the guards were very good. But
Ludwig said that we would
meet
them, not confront them. Actually, he
said that he would take care of us, or something like that, which implies that
the Balaklava might not be so friendly. Why
would we meet them in the first place?"

Danielle shrugged. "Like I said, they're
trying to intimidate Ludwig, and what better way than to attack his closest
friend—you. And, of course, his best friend's wife, or whatever I am."

He kissed her forehead. “Wife sounds fine to
me.”

"The dissidents attacked Maleasoel, right?
So she's protected by guards, like us. The dissidents seem to be trying to
intimidate Ludwig, too. So they’re behind
that
plot ...”

“That might explain the death of Gleason. But,
if the dissidents compose as large a faction as Maleasoel hinted, they would be
strong enough to operate independently. So—"

"Why would they employ the Balaklava?"

Ruegger nodded. "A very good question. Therefore
the Balaklava represent a different party
entirely, assuming they're not acting on their own. Which means that in meeting
them we'll be dealing with the emissaries of someone else ..."

"Perhaps the mysterious visitor that came
to Ludwig.”

“Ah. That. I wonder … could any of this have
something to do with the Castle?”

She looked at him. “You mean Roche Sarnova? God,
I hope not.”

“He is the most powerful shade in the world, and
if Ludwig, or at least his people, are planning to act after all these years,
he might have grown nervous …”

She crossed herself. “If he’s involved, this
whole thing could explode into open warfare.” She didn’t have to say that a war
between two armies of immortals could prove devastating to the entire world.

"Okay," said Ruegger, "so where
does that leave us?"

"The sled race." She sipped her coffee,
watching its steam rise into the night.

"Which should be kicking off here
shortly."

They finished their morning rituals and made
their way downstairs to the Commons, which buzzed with the activities of
hung-over immortals. Everywhere dogs were being fastened to sleds. The animals'
barking and the party-goers mad whoops lifted Danielle's spirits, and she
actually smiled when Ludwig spotted her and Ruegger and made his way over to
them. He clapped Ruegger on the back and kissed Danielle's hand. He could be
very charming when he wanted to be.

"Looking forward to the race, I hope,"
he said and led them to their respective sleds. "Good luck. Just remember
that I'm looking out for you, okay? You'll be fine."

He vanished into the crowd. Danielle shot a
glance at Ruegger, but he appeared solemn.

Five minutes later, the racers lined up at the
starting line, talking and chuckling, some finishing joints or beer cans or
sniffing a few quick lines. Danielle could tell by experience that these were
the lightest of the drugs involved. She switched on the radio fastened to her
sled—she and Ruegger occupied different vehicles—then deliberated on the choice
of music.

“How about Wagner?” said Ruegger, his sled
alongside hers. “Seems fittingly grand and energetic for a sled race.”

She smiled. Their tastes in music varied widely,
she was all too aware. She and Ruegger had actually met in the New York punk scene,
where he had been attempting, without much success, to learn the intricacies of
the new sound.

She punched a button, and heavy metal flooded
out.

Ruegger sighed.

“Sorry,” she said, “but
Wagner
?” She made a face. “A sled race of shades in the heart of
darkness of northern Alaska
earns a little Metallica, if you ask me.”

“If you insist.”

A gun blasted, and the racers lurched off in a
confused flurry of dogs and shades, snow kicking up in all directions. The Ice
Queen Sophia leapt into the lead at once.

Danielle kept her stance firm, maintaining a
tight rein on the ten dogs at all times. Still, the sled bucked and rolled, and
more than once she felt her position shift precariously. Her blood started to
rush. Despite her best efforts, she laughed, then yelled defiantly at the other
contestants, who laughed and yelled back. She tried to pretend that Barrow had
only been a nightmare.

Casting frequent glances at Ruegger, she could
tell that, after some time, he was getting into it as well, making his dogs go
as fast as he could, trying to stay just a few strides ahead of her. Sticking
her tongue out at him, she prodded her animals on and screamed in exaltation
when her lead dog breasted his.

The competition proved determined, and Danielle
tried to extend her mind into those of her dogs. Never very good at the whole
psychic thing, she nevertheless knew instantly that her dogs couldn't be
controlled by her—because they were being controlled by someone else. A quick
look at Ruegger's grimace revealed that he wasn't that one. He was having
trouble with his dogs, too.

"Fuck," she said.

Their sled dogs started to veer off, cutting
across the tide of the other racers and into the more deeply forested regions
surrounding the main racing grounds. The boisterous cries of the racers receded,
replaced by the stirring of the wind, which swept through the white trees and
tickled at Danielle's ear.

She ripped out a gun from beneath her jacket.
For his part, Ruegger pointed up through the trees at something. Twisting, she
saw a winged figure, barely discernable against the stars. Maleasoel. What
could she be doing up there—following Ruegger and Danielle? The jandrow's speed
lagged suddenly and she swooped in a tight arc off in the direction she'd come
from.

Ruegger withdrew a gun of his own.

Their dogs went mad, deliberately charging close
to shrubbery or low branches, forcing the sleds to smack against trees or knock
into stubs or small rises. Ruegger jumped off his perch and Danielle followed,
embedding herself in the snow.

Slowly, she rose on her snow-shoes, turning to
locate him. For a wild moment she couldn't see Ruegger, but he was there,
dusting himself off and shaking his head. He glanced up, saw her, and they trudged
toward each other, embracing quickly and checking one another for wounds.

"It’s them," he said.

"Junger and Jagoda," she nodded, and
fired off a round to make sure her gun wasn't jammed. He did the same. They
each retrieved another gun and merged back-to-back. They watched the twenty
sled-dogs—wolves, really—bite through their harnesses and assemble around the
vampires in a bristling circle. The creatures were no longer operating under
their own wills—rather, they had to be under the mind control of someone else.
Two Jamaican assassins, most likely.

The wolves leapt.

Danielle fired. She blew apart the head of one
wolf, then another, shooting into their trunks and throats, too, not taking
time to aim. They swarmed her, biting, biting, their bodies heavy and rough.
Beside her, Ruegger fired, too, sometimes clubbing the beasts over the head
with his pistols. Bone broke loudly.

When her guns clicked empty, Danielle started to
go for another pistol, but there was no time. The wolves were all over her, ripping
and tearing. She bit back, elongating her fangs, and used her vampire strength
to hurl furry bodies against trees, where they broke open in red showers.

Ruegger flung his spent guns away and went to
work with a blade, but it got stuck in the ribcage of the first wolf he stuck
it in. Danielle heard him swear.

The wolves forced the vampires to the ground.

Danielle fought on with her fingers, teeth and
feet. A scrawny dark-haired thing burst at her, a knife (Ruegger's) stuck
through its chest, but still it tore at her. Danielle grabbed it by the mouth,
ignoring the pain, and ripped out its throat with her fangs. Several other
wolves gnawed at her legs and chest.

Their bites were calculated, teeth locating her
arteries. She could feel herself growing weak and knew that much of the blood
that stained the snow around her was her own. It wouldn't be long before she
was dead.

At last all the wolves lay in bloody chunks on
the ground, their blood soaking the snow in bright crimson, and in the middle
of it sprawled Ruegger and Danielle, their clothes and flesh torn. Too weak to
move much, they reached out their arms and held hands.

Footsteps approached, and the vampires propped
themselves up against each other to face whatever was coming.

The Balaklava
stepped forward slowly, letting themselves be examined. They seemed to enjoy
the attention. They were very tall, their skin nearly sheer ebony. Both of them
were completely naked.

"Good to see you," one said, boasting
a thick Jamaican accent. "I'm Junger." Bald from head to toe, his
flesh was so covered by twisting, intricate tattoos that his actual skin was
hard to see. Very small thin bones that were likely supposed to resemble tusks
stuck out of his skin in twin arcs along his cheeks.
Dear God
, Danielle thought.
Are
those ... ?

The bones looked very much like the ribs of an
infant human.

I’m going to be sick
, Danielle thought.

"I'm Jagoda," the other said, his
accent equally as thick. He wore expensive sunglasses and his face, framed by
long dreadlocks, was masked by a heavy, unkempt beard. A gold ring gleamed at
his lip, one through his nose, and several accentuated his right ear. "Sorry
about your clothes."

"Grant me a last smoke?" Ruegger said.
“I’m afraid your wolves tore all mine to pieces.”

Junger laughed. "We're almost out as it
is."

"Then could you please find our radio and
bring it over. I'd hate to die to silence."

Danielle knew what he was doing—separate them,
for all the good that could do.

"Well, mon, Bob Marley does go well with
rape," Junger told his partner, and marched off to find the sled and the
radio.

"Why kill us?" Danielle asked Jagoda.
Did he just say what I think he did?