A Dozen Black Roses (6 page)

The lights dimmed and the canned throb of the house music abruptly disengaged. Esher leaned forward in his seat, clutching the armrests with his powerful hands. His full attention was now riveted on the darkened stage below. The vampires and humans milling on the dance floor fell silent, their conversations forgotten, as the speakers crackled back to life, this time straining out the opening notes of Philip Glass'

soundtrack for Misihima. A powder-blue spot blossomed on the stage, spilling its light onto a solitary figure curled in upon itself on the boards.

The figure was that of a woman dressed in a classical-length tutu fashioned of white gauze. Underneath it she wore a white satin leotard and tights, which showcased her dancer's build. Her feet were laced into blood-red ballet shoes, the ribbons elaborately knotted just below her knees. Her hair was pulled into a soft bun that hung against the nape of her neck like a silken cloud. Her already pale skin was made even more so by a layer of clown-white greasepaint and a generous dusting of talc.

As the music swelled, the dancer languidly raised her head, looking out into the audience. Her eyes were heavily outlined in mascara, like those of an ancient Egyptian princess, and her lips were painted a brilliant scarlet. Nikola's gaze swept across the upturned faces—some pallid, some human, all of them hungry—and the doubt and confusion filling her head disappeared. She had an audience. It was time to

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) dance.

Esher's eyes narrowed, his features set in extreme concentration, as he watched his bride-to-be rise and go en pointe as if pulled upright by invisible strings. Her grace was what had drawn him to her in the first place, and it never ceased to awe him.

Moving with the tranquil ease of a jungle cat, Nikola displayed to her audience the shunts embedded in her arms. As she swayed to the music, she slowly opened the valves. Several of the vampires gasped in excitement as the smell of her blood filled the air. As the rhythms intensified, so did her movements, as her glissades gave way to pirouettes, arabesques, and grand jetes that carried her across the stage like a young gazelle, her blood flying in crimson arcs into the crowd.

The Pointers usually found Nikola's dancing boring, if not disgusting, but watched for fear that Esher would take offense. In contrast, the Kindred gathered at the edge of the stage, their wine-dark eyes gleaming in anticipation. For creatures decades, if not centuries removed from human sexuality, this was the ultimate in erotic dance. Those lucky enough to be spattered with her blood moaned and swooned in ecstasy as they licked the precious fluid from their fingers.

Nikola spun across the stage like a dervish as the music neared its climax. As she came out of her final pirouette, she stumbled and nearly lost her footing. Her pristine tutu and tights were stained so bright a red it was impossible to see where the blood ended and her shoes began. She collapsed onto the stage, her bosom heaving as she gasped for air. The smell of fresh blood was overpowering, and Esher felt himself grow excited.

So did a few members of the audience, judging from the noise below. One of the vampires, an anarch dressed in a plaid shirt and backward baseball cap, jumped onto the runway, baring his fangs in anticipation of slaking his lust.

A collective gasp rose from the audience as Esher leapt from his place in the balcony onto the runway.

He lifted the anarch by the scruff of the neck, holding him at arm's length as he would a miscreant pup.

"I will not destroy you, whelp, for you are new to Deadtown and its rules! But know this now and forever: The woman Nikola is mine! Have I made myself understood?"

"Y-yes, milord!"

Satisfied, Esher hurled the young vampire back into the crowd. Turning his back to the audience, he bent to pick up Nikola. He shut the valves on her shunts as he gently cradled her in his arms. Her face was pressed against his chest, her features as still and perfect as a porcelain doll's.

Father Eamon looked up from his prayers when the screaming started. He narrowed his eyes as he tried to gauge its distance and direction. Light cast from the flickering votive candles made the shadows surrounding the plaster saints pulse and shudder. Sound had a tendency to echo inside St. Everhild, and even after all these years he had yet to develop the ability to pinpoint the exact location of the noises that filtered in from the street. Not that it mattered. He never set foot outside the church doors after sundown.

His knees groaned as he rose from the prayer rail, his rosary swinging from his fingers like a carpenter's plumb. Hardly a midnight went by without Mass being disrupted by screams or gunfire from outside. Then again, since he kept the doors to the sanctuary barricaded, what difference did it make? Certainly none to the archdiocese, which had desanctified St. Everhild years ago. Actually, expunged was closer to the truth.

The parish had been erased from all records, yet it continued to exist as a rumor—an ecclesiastical urban legend, if you will.

He had first heard of "the parish of the damned" while attending the seminary, where it had been whispered of in the tone of voice reserved for campfire ghost stories. Little did he know then that one day he would seek it out and make it his own.

He grimaced as the rheumatism sent a sharp jolt of pain into his right knee. Sleeping on a pile of rags in an unheated room with a leaky roof was hardly the best thing for his condition, but he had little choice—or desire— to live elsewhere. As he hobbled down the aisle, he glanced at the line of heavy wooden pews knocked over like dominoes and made a mental note to right them and see that the hymnals scattered across the floor were properly dusted and put back in place. Just because St. Everhild had been forsaken by the Church did not mean it had been forgotten by God.

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) As Father Eamon reached the stairs leading to the bell tower, the screaming heightened in intensity. It sounded as if it was coming from the direction of the Black Lodge. Father Eamon hesitated for a moment, then began to mount the rickety wooden steps. As he wound his way up the narrow, dusty confines of the tower staircase, he knew he was helpless to change the outcome of whatever was transpiring below.

Perhaps this was his punishment—to witness horror upon horror and stand idle. Once, long ago, he had been tricked by Satan into thinking he was acting as an instrument of the Lord. Because of his sinful pride he was fit only to tend St. Everhild's altar.

With a mighty grunt, he pushed open the belfry trapdoor. His occasional trips to the tower were the closest he'd come to venturing out-of-doors after dusk over the last decade. The bells that had once hung in the belfry were long gone when he'd first arrived, but judging from the thickness of the rotten coils of rope and the size of a solitary clapper left behind, they must have been impressive. The tower had four large, narrow windows that faced the compass points, allowing him unobstructed views of Deadtown.

From this vantage point he followed the comings and goings of his "parish."

To the east was the river, gleaming dark as sacramental wine in the light reflected from the city. To the north was Pointer territory. To the south was The Street With No Name, the neighborhood's unofficial neutral zone, where the few remaining shops were clustered. And to the west, almost directly across the avenue from St. Everhild, was the Black Lodge.

Father Eamon was uncertain which had come first, the church or the Masonic lodge. Both were quite old. Perhaps the Holy See had elected to build St. Everhild in defiance of the antipapal bigotry of the Freemasons. Or perhaps the Masons had erected their lodge as an affront to the Pope. There was only one person in Deadtown who knew for sure, and that was Sinjon, and Father Eamon had no intention of ever asking him.

The priest glanced down the street and saw the source of the screams. He glimpsed the silvery grin of a Black Spoon death's-head in the moonlight as the jacket's owner held a gun to a quaking woman's head.

The girl was either a prostitute or a hapless tourist who had wandered into the area by mistake, since no citizens of Deadtown would be so foolish as to leave the relative safety of their squats once the sun set.

Father Eamon's attention was drawn from the attempted rape by a flicker of movement in the opposite alleyway. There was a sound like that of a book being snapped shut and the Black Spoon stiffened and stretched, as if trying to get a crick out of his back. He dropped his gun, his victim forgotten, as he tried to reach behind him and pull the crossbow bolt out of his spine, then collapsed with a choked gurgle. The woman stared down at her attacker, then looked in the direction the arrow had come from. Before she could thank her rescuer, there was another snap and a second bolt sank into her throat, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly.

Although Father Eamon could not see who had fired the shots, the killer's mocking laughter rose on the night air, making him shiver like a wet dog. He crossed himself and quickly recited the prayer for the dead. He hurried down the tower stairs to the comparative warmth of the sanctuary. He did not want to think about what he'd just seen, but he could not help but feel that it was the start of something bad, even by Deadtown standards. That one of Esher's minions had dared to kill one of Sinjon's men on his doorstep was Not Good.

The pain in his leg was now so intense it made his vision blur. He reached behind the pulpit, retrieving a quart bottle of yellow-label bourbon. He cursed his weakness as he knocked back a stiff slug. The liquor burned his gut almost as badly as his shame.

The first swig of the night was always the guiltiest. After that, they began to blur and soften, as did his memories and pain. He eased himself into the one pew he'd managed to upright in the ten years since he'd first arrived at St. Everhild, angling his bum leg so it was supported by the hard wooden bench. As the cheap bourbon dulled his senses, he decided that he was going to get around to righting the rest of the pews.

Tomorrow.

***

Well, maybe not really dead, like the rat he'd found in the alley the other day. The strange lady—the one who had helped him and Cloudy—was one of the Kindred. Sort of. Cloudy had told him, when he woke up that afternoon, that the strange lady wasn't like the other vampires in Deadtown. Ryan didn't know

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) exactly what to make of this, but if Cloudy said it, then it must be true. As far as Ryan was concerned, Cloudy knew everything. He wondered sometimes if his real dad was as smart and good as Cloudy, but somehow he didn't think so, or else his mom would have let him stay around.

Ryan thought about his mom all the time. Sometimes he would dream of how it had been before the monsters came and took her away. They'd moved around a lot—usually from one dingy studio apartment to another. His mother slept all day and worked all night, so Ryan spent a lot of time with babysitters. If his mom couldn't get someone to watch him, she'd lock him inside the apartment by himself. He'd learned how to take care of himself early. By the time he was three he already knew how to call 911 and microwave a burrito. Most of the time he sat up watching TV until his mother came home. After she fixed herself something to eat, she'd read him a story, like Curious George Rides A Bike or Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, and they'd go to bed. Until recently, Ryan had never slept anywhere but beside his mother. Their life was spent one day ahead of the eviction notices, but Ryan had no way of knowing that.

As far as he was concerned, theirs was a normal and happy existence.

And then the monsters came.

Ryan still had nightmares about that. It was just before dawn and he and his mother had just gone to bed for the day—because of her hours they usually slept until two or three in the afternoon—when there was a horrible crash and the front door of the apartment flew open and a bunch of strange guys and a scary-looking woman came in. Ryan's mom screamed for him to run away, but he was too scared and didn't want to leave her, so he grabbed her hand and held on tight.

The scary-looking woman pointed at Ryan's mom, and the guys started dragging her off the bed. Ryan was still holding onto his mother's hand, so he was dragged along, too. The scary-looking woman grabbed him and yanked him free and held him up by his hair, looking at him like he was a bug or something.

Ryan screamed, more out of fear than pain, and his mom broke away from the guys holding her and punched the scary-looking woman, calling her a bad word and telling her to put him down.

The scary-looking woman just laughed and backhanded his mom, sending her flying onto the bed, though the slap had been a light one.

Ryan was too scared to fight or cry or do anything except hide under the sofa, which is what he always did when the shows on TV got too scary for him. No one seemed to notice. The guys grabbed his mother and dragged her out of the apartment, the scary-lady following behind them. Just as she was about to close the door to the apartment, she turned and looked right at where Ryan was hiding under the sofa, and grinned. That was when he saw her sharp, pointy teeth and red eyes. That was when Ryan knew his mom had been captured by monsters.

The policemen never showed up, like they always do on TV, and after a day or so it was obvious that his mom wasn't coming back. So Ryan packed what few things he owned—mostly a few articles of clothing and action figures—and went in search of his mother on the streets of Deadtown.

He spent most of his time avoiding the gang kids, scrounging food out of dumpsters and garbage cans, and looking for a safe place to hole up. Being a little kid, he was able to crawl into spaces most people would never think to look in. Unlike most of Deadtown's residents, Ryan actually ventured out at night. It was the only way he could catch a glimpse of his mother. He'd actually gotten pretty good at sneaking behind Pointer lines—he even experienced a weird thrill, knowing he was getting away with something he wasn't supposed to. But it wasn't a game. It was survival.