“You don’t buy it, though?”
“Do you?”
“No, but my logic is kind of goofy.”
“Big surprise,” she said. “Tell me.”
I said, “Answer me something first. Circe dismissed the changing into bats stuff, and we know that bullets kill the knights, so that’s two bits of folklore down the crapper. But, what do the reports you’ve collected about the Red Knights and real-world vampires say about immortality? That’s supposed to be a real theme with vampires, right?”
“Nothing lives forever, but from what little we know about the Red Knights, they’re supposed to be exceptionally long-lived. Not necessarily immortal, but with lifespans far exceeding ordinary humans.”
“Okay, so they’re immortal-ish. Enough so for the sake of argument, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Then tell me why immortals would want to destroy the world. No way that makes sense.”
Aunt Sallie grunted. “This isn’t like you, Ledger. This is very clever thinking. Let me run it by Deacon and Dr. Hu. In the meantime, Deke wanted me to text you. We have a safe house location that has been triple verified. It’s close to where you are now, and Echo Team will meet you there in a few hours. It’s an apartment over a convenience store. Deacon knows the man who owns it.”
“One of his ‘friends in the industry’?”
“No, just an old friend. Jamsheed Mustapha is a good man. We’ve worked with him in the past. Good guy, so try not to get him killed.”
I let that pass. “What about Krystos?”
Auntie said, “That’s your call.”
She disconnected.
I still had the phone in my hand when I went back into the living room. Krystos looked at me with mingled hope and dread, but his mouth continually repeated a prayer of deliverance.
“Well,” I said, “turns out that it sucks to be you.”
I shot him through the heart.
Chapter Sixty-Two
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 1:18 p.m.
The gunshot made Ghost bark again, but it was a single sound. Loud and shocked and angry.
I ignored him as I watched Krystos slide slowly onto his side, eyes emptying of light, mouth hanging slack with his last prayers unfinished.
None of the thoughts inside my head were pretty ones. However, when I looked inside for self-recrimination I came up dry. That’s something I knew I should be worried about, and I was pretty sure that all of this was going to come back and bite me on the ass, at least in an emotional or psychological way. At the moment, though, I watched Krystos die and did not feel a single thing about it. Not for him or the six other Sabbatarians. They were ordained priests; they were official Holy Inquisitors acting on orders given by a pope centuries ago. They believed that what they were doing was right, that they were doing what they had to do to save the world.
From vampires.
Vampires with nukes.
I closed my eyes and imagined for a moment that I stood in a cool breeze that was scented with lilacs and honeysuckle and just a hint of salt water. I strained to hear the soft whisper of Grace speaking my name.
But there was nothing.
When I opened my eyes, though, it was only me and Ghost in a house filled with ugly death. Ghost looked at me and I couldn’t meet his eyes. I hung my head and told myself that the stinging in my eyes was from the gunpowder.
Yeah.
Before we left the house I dropped the magazines from the two nine millimeters and swapped bullets until I had a full magazine in one and a half-filled mag in my pocket. I took Nadja’s .25 popgun, too, and the valise that was filled with stakes, hammers, garlic, and holy water. Who knows, maybe I’d really need them.
Lingering in the doorway to the hall, I glanced down at the dead man and spat on the floor by his shoes.
“That’s for Taraneh and Arastoo Mouradipour, you piece of shit,” I said quietly. And although it was true, I felt a hollow place in my chest. I’d just shot an unarmed man, a man who was injured and bound, and I’d made a joke about it as I pulled the trigger. It made
me
feel like a piece of shit.
My phone rang again. No ID. I didn’t answer. Instead I headed toward the door, clicking my tongue for Ghost. After a moment I heard nails clicking on the floorboards.
Ghost followed right at my heel.
We went out the back.
There were two cars out back. I debated taking one, but there was no time to do a proper search for trackers or other bugs, and I already had enough problems.
I did rummage around, though. I found half a chicken sandwich on flatbread and gave that to Ghost, who didn’t even bother to sniff. He attacked it as if it was trying to escape. As he ate, he cut me some hard looks, letting me know that we still had some issues to work out.
The first car had nothing else in it.
In the second I found a locked briefcase under a blanket on the rear seat. The locks were good and the case was reinforced. No time to jimmy it now, so I decided to take that with me. I popped the trunk and stood staring for a ten count at a full-blown arsenal. Six AK-47s with bundles of magazines held together by heavy-duty rubber bands, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and a small duffle bag of 1980’s-era Russian hand grenades. The underside of the trunk lid was rigged with slots for a dozen of the stakes and four hammers. These guys were serious about this. I took some party favors and slammed the trunk.
Ghost finished his sandwich and looked up for more.
“Sorry, kiddo, but that’s all I have.”
His look of disgust eloquently showed how deeply disappointed he was in me. Man’s best friend indeed.
There was nothing else to find.
“Let’s go,” I said softly.
We did not exactly run, but we walked mighty damned briskly away from there.
Interlude Eight
Krak des Chevaliers
June 1203 C.E.
Sir Guy LaRoque stared at death.
And death, in its many forms, stared back at him. The big stone fireplace blazed and threw its dancing light across the floor, and yet the shadows of the vast hall were not chased back. Rather they recoiled like some dark serpent, ready to strike the unwary.
Monks had brought a chair for Sir Guy and helped him into it, lifting his legs onto cushions and tucking a rug around his spindly limbs. The knight felt empty, like a suit of clothes stuffed with straw and sticks. No longer a vital man, not yet a corpse. Tottering in the gloom of a cancer that was consuming him from the inside out.
The figure closest to him was both death and life in Sir Guy’s mind. Father Nicodemus, wizened but unyielding. He had been old when Sir Guy was a boy, but the man had not changed. Not a line, not a day. In his cups, Sir Guy comforted himself with the thought that it was God’s own grace that touched this man with a lighter hand, sparing him so that Nicodemus could serve heaven on earth. Sir Guy needed drink to believe it then, and now, sober and loitering at the edge of the grave, he knew that it was sophistry of the weakest kind. In truth, he did not know how to think about the old priest. To do so conjured dreams, and his nights were already troubled.
“You have done so very well, my son,” murmured the priest. “You have served Almighty God with a fealty and a zeal unmatched by any in the Red Order.”
Sir Guy said nothing. He had so little energy that breathing was a herculean task that required all of his powers. Father Nicodemus patted him on the shoulder and his slender fingers lingered to stroke the dying knight’s neck where it was exposed above the soiled collar of the Hospitaller doublet. It was so strange a thing, a pretense of tenderness that felt like a violative caress.
Then the priest took a few steps forward and held his arms wide as if to embrace the other deathly figures who stood in silent stillness.
Three men. They stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers. Hollow faces that gave them a starved appearance. Thin-lipped mouths like knife slashes. Three shapes that pretended to be men. Three creatures Sir Guy had brought here from different parts of Europe and Asia. From Newburgh, from the Carpathian Mountains, and from a destroyed town in Turkey. They shared no common language, no sameness of culture, no drop of familial blood. And yet they were cut like poisoned fruit from the same blighted tree. Slender, pale as wax, with dark hair and eyes that burned like red coals. And teeth. Christ Jesus and all His saints, those dreadful teeth. Even after all this time that was the thing that continued to haunt Sir Guy, awake or asleep. Teeth like dogs. Like wolves.
Nicodemus spoke a word and it hung burning in the air.
“Upierczi.”
Three pairs of red eyes widened, filling with fear, filling with wonder.
“The children of shadows,” Nicodemus said to them. “Yes—I know you. Born of cold wombs, shunned and hated. Slaves to a hunger that you have been told is an affront to God. Reviled and condemned. Excommunicated and driven out to hunt in the night.”
Three pairs of red eyes studied him. It was the only thing about them that moved, shifting slowly to follow Nicodemus as he paced across the burning expanse of the fireplace.
“The Upierczi have been called monsters, sons of Judas. Pariah. Demons.” He stopped and fixed them with his own stare and it was darker and more fell than theirs. “But that is not what you are. Not demons. Not creations of Satan or fiends from the pit.”
They watched him. Sir Guy watched them as they studied the priest. Now there was uncertainty on their faces.
“When Sir Guy asked you to come with him, he promised safety. He promised you a place where you would be free, and be protected. He extended the arm of the church to you, offering to bless and sanctify you, to forgive you your sins and let you walk once more in the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ.”
They watched. One of them bowed his head and began softly to weep tears of blood.
Father Nicodemus stalked over to him and used one clawlike finger to lift the creature’s chin. “Listen to me, child of shadows,” he murmured in a gentler tone than Sir Guy had ever heard him use. “The Lord God has not forgotten you. You have not fallen out of His favor. You have not been barred from the grace of heaven.” He leaned close and licked the bloody tear from the weeping monster’s cheek. “God
made
you!” he whispered. He reached out his hands to touch the other two creatures, tracing lines across their wax white cheeks. “God is all and He makes all things and He made you. Therefore you are God’s creations. Whoever tells you otherwise is a heretic and will burn in hell.”
The silent creatures said nothing.
“I
know
what you feel, my children,” continued the priest. “I, of all who walk upon the earth, understand the fires that burn in your hearts and the need in the pit of your stomach. You kill because you cannot prevent yourself. A power greater than your own will compels you to hunt, to tear open the flesh of your prey, to bathe your face and lips and tongue in the heat of the blood. And afterward you revile yourself because this is against God. This is what you have been told. Yet what does Deuteronomy chapter twelve, verse twenty-three say? ‘The blood is the life!’ Did not Jesus shed his blood to redeem all? Does not His blood wash the world of its sins? Does the wine of communion not
become
blood as it touches the lips of each Christian?” He pulled them all closer still, and Sir Guy had to strain to hear. “You are not sinners, my children. You are merely lost. All your lives you have been seeking to understand why God would strike you with so heavy a hand and force you into a life of sin. I tell you now that God has not shaped you to be monsters or sinners. God has forged you into weapons.”
They stared at him, and the room—perhaps the world—was utterly silent.
“You have been brought here to be the holy weapons of God on earth. Do you hunger? Then know why: you were
meant
to feast upon the blood of the pagan and the heretic and the infidel. Do you seek shelter in the darkness? Then understand this: the darkness is
yours
. Use it. Let it heal you and hide you. Become the darkness and let it become you.”
He stepped back from them and signaled to one of his monks who came hurrying over with Sir Guy’s sword laid ceremoniously across his folded arms. The monk knelt and offered the handle to Nicodemus, who drew it with a ringing rasp. The priest turned and held the sword aloft, letting firelight flicker along its wicked edge.
“This sword,” he intoned, his voice deep and grave, “has drunk the blood of countless enemies of God. In the service of the king of France, in the cause of the Knights Hospitaller, and in the war of shadows we have fought with the Saracen and the Jew and other enemies of Christ.”
He turned and offered it to Sir Guy. “My son, my friend, take your sword.”
Sir Guy’s trembling fingers closed around the handle of the weapon he had thought he would never hold again. The touch of it lent some power to his withered hand and he held it out toward the Upierczi. The tip dipped for a moment but it did not fall to the ground.
“Sir Guy, Grand Master and Scriptor of the Holy Red Order, defender of the faith, servant and soldier of God, I entreat you to bestow upon these sacred warriors the title and privileges of knights of
Ordo Ruber.
”
Sir Guy flicked a surprised glance at Nicodemus. This was nothing they had ever agreed upon. This was unexpected and strange, and he knew that it was wrong.
And yet, Nicodemus stood there, eyes burning and mouth smiling.
“I…” began Sir Guy. But he could not endure that stare, that will. “Y-yes,” he gasped. “Yes.”
One by one the Upierczi came toward his chair and knelt before him, and one by one Sir Guy LaRoque touched their shoulders with the sword, blessing them in the name of Michael the Archangel.
When it was done, so was the last strength in Sir Guy’s arm. Nicodemus took it from him and handed the sword to a monk, who bowed out of the chamber.
Nicodemus ran a fingernail along Sir Guy’s cheek. “You have served me well for many years, my son.”
Sir Guy looked wearily up into his face, and his heart seemed to freeze. The old priest stood with his back to the Upierczi so that only the knight could see him. The priest’s eyes underwent that process of change which Sir Guy had seen before, the colors swirling and changing, but this time the process did not stop until all color was completely gone, leaving eyes with no color, no whites. Eyes that were totally black. And the face also changed. It was not the wrinkled countenance of a priest grown old in the service of his God and his church. This face was both younger and older, timeless, endless; and endlessly wrong. It was a mask of a bottomless corruption and deception. The nose was still long and hooked, but the nostrils were more like slits; the mouth was lipless and lined with scores of needle-sharp teeth. Even the skin was mottled to an ophidian texture like a diseased toad. Worst of all, Sir Guy
knew
this face. It was the face of all the evil in the world. The face of the trickster. The enemy of God.