Ghost Soldiers (22 page)

John struck a match and touched it to the corner of the card she held. “Repeat after me. If I betray my friends and our family, I and my soul will burn in hell like this saint.”

“If I betray my friends and our family, I and my soul will burn in hell like this saint.”

The card blazed in her hand. She let it blacken and curl, singeing her pale skin, careful not to let them see the burns healing. After the fire consumed the picture, she turned her palm and let the ashes flutter to the floor.

“You're a Man of Honor now,” John said, his voice solemn, without a trace of irony. “Welcome and congratulations.”

He shook her hand and kissed her on the cheek. She turned to face the rest of her capos. Their faces remained grim, and none of them would meet her eyes. The radio played Benny Goodman swing jazz. Davey Abello came forward first, and when his back was to the others he looked at her and smiled. He shook her hand and kissed her cheek. The rest of them followed suit, but their every motion screamed of reluctance and disapproval.

She listened to them murmur their congratulations and watched them kiss her cheek with a strange kind of detachment, as if the whole thing were a dream. The smell of their flesh and hair and blood lingered in her nostrils. Their dry lips brushed against her skin. As soon as they spoke their words they left the room one by one until she at last stood alone with John. A hollow chasm yawned inside her, a disappointed emptiness. She'd finally climbed the tree to snatch a choice piece of fruit from the branch, only to find the fruit overripe and repulsive, bursting in her grip.

She looked down at her finger. Healed already, of course. Same with the burns. In the other rooms she heard the sound of footsteps leaving, thumping across the porch. Speed dialing on cell phones, voices calling for drivers to pick them up. John watched her as the rest of them departed.

“Was it all you hoped?” John's face stayed emotionless, but his eyes were keen. Knowing.

“Doesn't matter. Had to be done.” She looked him in the eye. “And I'd earned it.”

He didn't answer, but he didn't look away either. The corner of his lips turned up in a half smile. “I remember when I got the call. I was so fucking nervous. That was way back. Back when things were run out of Providence. Before that shit went down with Cadillac Frank. I stuttered the last part of the oath. Your father made me say it again. That's what I remember most. Having to repeat myself.”

“I can't see you stuttering. I can't even see you nervous.”

He shrugged. “Was a long time ago. Better days maybe.”

“Bullshit. Good times are here to stay. We're gonna make a shitload of money.”

“You got drive, I'll give you that.” He turned and started for the door, but he glanced back over his shoulder. “Your father would've been proud.” He hesitated. “He would've shot me for letting this happen, but he would've been proud.”

John walked away. She heard the door creak open and close with a clunk, heard the sharp slap of his expensive shoes on the concrete steps. She stared at the ashes of the card lying on the wood flooring, and she stood alone in an empty house.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Crimson Taste

Constanta, Romania had one of the biggest ports in Europe, feeding into the Black Sea. Still, it had taken almost five hours to travel the hundred and forty or so miles from Bucharest to Constanta due to constant delays and work being done on the tracks. It'd been well past midnight before Karl and Bailey rode into the city, past long kilometers of dark fields and farms, with a cloudless sky above them flecked with a million stars. The cityscape itself had blocky housing complexes and towers and red-roofed buildings. The port and shipyard had glowed with lights as huge cranes loaded or unloaded freighters. Beyond the city spread the dark expanse of the Black Sea.

No sign of pursuit by either Cojocaru or the Thorn, so they'd hidden in an abandoned freight car on a section of track that appeared long unused. He worked the remaining hours of darkness to make the car safe to stay in, coming very close to dawn before he was satisfied they wouldn't find themselves burning in the daylight as the sun curved across the sky, or end up discovered by humans—who just might pull them out into the sunlight to await a coroner or transportation to a morgue. An ironic end, at the very least, but not without the flair of black humor to it.

After the sun went down again, they set off through the city. He sensed two other vampires, both shielding, but both weaker than he, so he picked up their presence anyway. Karl had better luck shielding both him and Bailey to keep them undetected. He skirted past the vampires and circled wide around some other sinister presence living in an alleyway, hiding in a dumpster, but sending out waves of strong force like a magnetic field. He headed toward the harbor where the MCS
Talos
was docked, but first they needed to feed before setting off on the long journey across the ocean. He felt Bailey fighting to hold her hunger in check, so he kept her away from the groups of tourists on the walks or in cafes and clubs as they avoided the old Casino and descended into an area of dark streets and bleak apartment complexes.

He could smell the sea, brine and a hint of low-tide stink, garbage left too long in bins, and people. A stripped car rusted alone in a weed-choked lot. Potholes riddled the asphalt, and the sidewalks weren't much better, so they kept to the roofs of the high-density living complexes. The street had little traffic, but farther down at an intersection he saw an empty, vibrantly pink bus halt so briefly he knew the driver didn't wish to linger any more than necessary.

“I always hated these kinds of places.” Bailey crouched down, huddled near the ledge.

“Wait,” Karl said. “Watch. There's always some other predator.”

Two hours later and two blocks south they found their man. He ran down the street directly below them and veered off into an alley. Karl had seen enough to mark him. Blood on his knuckles and fingers. Knife clutched in his hand. Stinking of violence and adrenaline.

He motioned to Bailey, and they set off after him, catching up easily. They peered down from the sagging rooftop of a wide gray apartment building into a shadowy courtyard filled with stacks of half-crushed liquor boxes and a heap of rubbish in one corner. The man slid to a halt behind a row of stained pillars and arches in front of a building whose decayed bleakness made Karl think of an old, grim veteran watching new soldiers march to war.

The man sent a furtive glance around the courtyard and squatted down. He shoved the bloody knife into a pocket, pulled a tiny flashlight from his coat, turned it on and put it in his mouth. He drew out a wallet and opened it, shining the light down while he pawed through the stolen Euros, traveler's checks and credit cards inside.

“Let's get this done,” Karl said.

He stepped to the roof ledge and dropped straight down. He hit the ground hard, feeling the impact jolt up through his bones and muscles as he crouched, the sword sheath scraping along the paving stones. His eyes glowed red, and he did nothing to suppress them. The guy scrambled backward, his heels dragging on the paving stones beneath the arches. The wallet went flying. He yanked at the knife, trying to free it from his pocket, but it caught on the edge of the fabric.

Karl stood slowly. Bailey landed next to him, her long white coat billowing out like albino bat wings. Her eyes also shone with a deep, hungry red.

He blurred across the ten or so feet between him and the man, leaving the sword sheathed and the pistol in the waistband behind his back. This was fang and claw work. The guy finally ripped his knife free, but Karl smacked it away. It clattered to the paving stones and bumped against the wall. He slammed the thief into the column, grabbed his throat and held him still. The man cursed and struggled, not strong enough to break his grip.

He glanced at Bailey. “Do it.”

Bailey hurried forward and pushed his hand away from the man's throat, pinning the thief with her arm across his chest. Her eyes flared brighter red, and her lips pulled back from her fangs.

The man stared at her in horror, and the stink of fear shimmered off him in waves. The smell of blood from the guy's hands filled Karl's nostrils. The blood belonged to someone else, some unfortunate tourist, judging from the wallet and the red knife blade. He'd seen far less violent crime in Romanian cities than back in the States, but that didn't mean violence couldn't be found, if one looked. If one had a nose for it.

Bailey drove her head forward and bit into the man's neck. He shuddered and tried to push her away, but she held him still. The scent of new blood flooded the air. Bailey closed her eyes and drank deep. Karl watched her with that old, cold ache in his chest, but the hunger fought its chain inside him. He'd need blood for the long trip across the Atlantic, even more so if he had to fight Cojocaru or vampire hunters. He leaned forward and sank his fangs into the man's throat and drank. There was no ecstasy in it—just assuaging the hunger ever gnawing at its dark cage in the back of his mind, yammering constantly, its voice growing louder and more irresistible the longer he went without.

In less than ten minutes it was done. Bailey backed off, swiped a hand across her mouth and smeared blood across her cheek. She stared at the lifeless body Karl still held erect. Gently, Karl lowered the man to the ground and pressed his eyes closed. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth. He could feel himself brimming with dark energy again—his senses sharper, his powers strong.

Bailey glared at him, the smear of blood still across her cheek, her blue hair almost black in the shadows. Music drifted to him from somewhere distant—something that sounded like an opera, floating down the alleys and echoing off the concrete.

Neither of them spoke; neither of them moved. Then Bailey ran at him and shoved him hard enough to throw him backward. He grunted but managed to keep his feet, though he slid on the grime for a good three feet.

“I'm not a monster,” Bailey said, her voice low and vicious. “I'm not a monster. Fuck you, I'm not a monster.”

He watched her, thinking of how she hadn't hesitated to feed the first time. Not like Maria, whom he'd almost had to force to feed. “Come on. We have to finish.”

She didn't answer, standing in the shadows and trembling. He walked back to the corpse and squatted beside it. He held out his hand to her. The anger dimmed in her glowing eyes. She hunched down opposite him, so one of them squatted on each side of the body. For a long moment she stared at his hand before she grabbed it, and they clasped hands over the body of the man they'd killed together.

“Pray for him,” Karl said softly.

She nodded and her eyes fluttered closed. Karl didn't shut his eyes. He stared into the face of the man whose blood he'd tasted but whom he'd never know, or care to know.

Her words spilled out in a fierce stream. “God of all, be gentle with this soul we send you. Forgive him his failings and his sins. May he walk on white paths, upon the roads of light, with his face forever in the sun.”

Karl kept his silence. The man had been a killer, but since Karl had more than his share of blood on his hands, who was he to sling stones and damnation? When she opened her eyes, he retrieved the man's knife. Cheap, speckled with rust. He tested the edge. Sharp enough. He cut open the double puncture wounds on each side of the neck, marring the flesh, disguising the bite marks. Bailey stared at the knife blade as it sawed through muscle and skin. Her mouth slashed across her face in a tight, thin wound.

When Karl was done, he broke the knife blade and tossed it into the rubbish pile. “Let's go.”

 

Karl led her eastward toward the docks and the containership, moving quickly across the rooftops, down into the streets, avoiding traffic, avoiding streetlamps, scaling walls and running along power and laundry lines. They paused on the roof of a long two-story building a half mile from the docks to reorient. He could see the water and hear the distant surf as he scanned for the best approach to the shipyards.

Bailey broke the silence. “Have you ever killed anyone you later regretted?”

“I've killed a lot of people.”

Bailey shoved her hands in the pockets of her white coat and stared at him. She didn't seem shocked or angry or surprised. He reached out and wiped at the blood on her cheek, meaning to clean it away, but it had grown tacky and didn't come off. She raised her hand and rubbed at her skin, then looked at the dark color on her fingers. She drew closer to him, her pupils dilating as she gazed up into his face. She put a hand on his chest, grabbed his black shirt and pulled herself up to kiss him.

He drew back immediately and turned his face away, prying her hand free. “Don't.”

Emotions flitted across their link almost too fast to read. Hurt. Anger. Frustration. Shame. She snorted and shook her head, glared at the distant water until she finally turned back to him.

“Vampires don't fuck?” she demanded, her words razor sharp. “Or do Masters just not fuck their sirelings? Or is this a personal thing?”

“I belong to someone else. You know that.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “Hell, hey, I was just looking for some fun, don't get your jockstrap in a knot. Can't hate a guy for staying true, even though I do, cuz it's goddamn rare and just my shitty luck. Men. All the good ones are either dead or taken. Sometimes both.”

“I'm sorry.”

“
Fuck
your sorry. I can't do anything with a son of a bitching
sorry
.”

“You just fed. Feeding sometimes stirs you up.”

“Stirs me up.
Ha
. More like makes me do something incredibly stupid.” She shook her head. “Like tequila.”

He turned away and started toward the roof ledge, eager to be gone. “We're almost to the shipyards. Dawn will be here too soon.”

“Wait, Karl.”