The Living Night (Book 1)

THE LIVING NIGHT

PART ONE

by Jack Conner

Copyright 2014

All rights reserved

Cover image used with
permission

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Chapter 1

When
the sun went down over the Sahara, Ruegger
stuck his head above the sand and scanned the horizon for assassins.

Clear. For the moment.

He stood, dusted himself off and lit a
cigarette, feeling the cooling desert wind against his neck. It was so peaceful
here. So hot during the day, but when the sun disappeared the land cooled
rapidly. As a vampire, Ruegger was only able to enjoy the last of the day’s
heat before the cold of night took over, and he relished it.

Sand stirred. He turned to see Danielle emerging
the ground and brushed at some of the sand around her lips.
 

“We survived another day,” she said, and kissed
him.

“Now to start running again.”

She shook an arm, and sand spilled out of her
sleeve. “At least it’s better than tunneling through dirt.”

Too true
. Tunneling didn't
afford much sleep, whereas some rest could be had sitting on a camel—not much, but
some. He could see the exhaustion in her beautiful face, and the fear. Though also
a vampire, Danielle was much younger and therefore more vulnerable than he was.

"The hunt ends tonight,” he promised. “One
way or another."

As they checked their weapons for sand clogs,
Danielle swore.

“What is it?” he asked.

She pointed. A sandstorm boiled up from the
south, blotting out the stars. Before it moved a string of dark figures—the
death-squad, surely, ready to continue the pursuit across land.

“Damn,” Ruegger said. “Let’s hurry.”

 
They
picked their way over to the camels, which they’d led along by psychic means
during the day while the two vampires tunneled. He helped her mount, then
climbed astride his own camel. “Ra,” he said, and the animal set out. Danielle
rode at his side, looking half ready to slide out of her saddle.

“Want some more blood?” he said.

“You don’t have any left to spare, babe.”

He bit back a curse. “I’m sorry I got you into
this.’

“Hell with that.
I’m
the one that wanted to come.”

But I’m the one that let
you
. When
she’d learned of his habit of going on a vision quest every decade or so in the
Sahara and asked him why he hadn't gone on one
since they'd been together, he hadn't known what to say. Under the premise of
their anniversary, she’d demanded to go with him on one. Now here they were.

“You couldn’t have known the abunka would show
up,” Danielle said. “Besides, if there’s a hit out on us, they would go after
us anywhere. Hell, coming all the way out here to get us probably slowed them
down.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But why are they after us in
the first place?” It had been a strange hunt, with the abunka (a race of
immortal distinct from vampires) and their abilities to tunnel through sand at
speed. It had certainly kept Ruegger and Danielle busy.

“We’ve made plenty of enemies,” she reminded him.

Too true
. “They must be
renegade.” Traditional abunka lived only in the ground, but these only went
below during day. Neither race, abunka nor vampire, could survive the sun.

“They’re pretty handy underground, though,”
Danielle said. “Anyway, tonight we reach the pillar.”

“And Triboli, if he’s there. Are you strong
enough to face him?’

“Like a bull.”

Frowning, Ruegger watched Danielle. Sand
plastered her face and tangled her hair. Her lips were dry and cracked and
parted slightly as if she didn't have the strength to keep them closed, and he was
sure he looked just as bad. They required human blood on a regular basis,
sometimes feeding more than once a night when they were in a city (only small
sips, never a kill ... unless the person deserved it), but it had been too long
now and, in heading toward one of the twenty or so sacred pillars scattered
throughout the desert, they hoped to find a source of blood. And cigarettes.

"That the last one?" he said.

She nodded, the dark-stemmed clove crackling
between her lips. She corkscrewed atop her bumpy perch to catch a glimpse of
their pursuers less than a mile behind and slapped the flank of her camel to
make it go faster.

He glanced up at the moon, half full and waltzing
across the clear sky, a hot wind having blown up from the equator. He focused
on the wasteland before them, trying to sort through the
billowings
of the sandstorm …

"Bingo!" called Danielle. "I see
it."

A sudden clearing of the storm had revealed the
pillar, about a hundred yards ahead.

"Is that what I think it is?" she
said.

He examined the structure more closely. Three
camels were tied to a post outside it. Probably one rider, he thought—one
animal to ride and two reserves. Ruegger and Danielle kept reserves, as well.

"Looks that way," he said.

"Think …” She swallowed. “Think it’s
Triboli?”

He heard the fear in her voice. If Triboli had
reached the pillar ahead of them—if he’d fed …

"We'll be all right," he told her, hoping
it wasn't a lie.

They drew near the pillar and he hopped off his
exhausted mount, then helped Danielle out of her stirrups.

"I hope this place has got some
cigarettes," she said.

"Don't count on it.” He wondered at the
reliability of the
suka
, the tribe of humans
that worshipped immortals, then looked back one last time at the hunters. It would
be some time before the death-squad arrived.

Ruegger stepped forward alone, moving past the
generator half buried by sand, and stopped before the pillar. About five feet
in diameter and fifteen high, with exotic sculptural embellishments at the top
(just below the satellite dish) reflecting its African roots, the moon glinted on
strange bas-reliefs and sand raged like a screen in front of it.

A small hole opened at waist level, just big
enough to put one's hand in, but deep. Mortals who wished to be admitted were
supposed to prick their fingers on some unseen spikes at the back of the recess;
if the hole decided to admit them, a panel would fall back and reveal a narrow
stone staircase leading below the sand, but if for some reason (maybe if it sensed
some duplicity) the hole took a disliking to the supplicant’s blood, a rusty
blade would descend and slice off the part of their forearm in its grasp, leaving
them to bleed to death in the desert.

Having lived for hundreds of years and having
learned to use some of the powers immortality had given him, Ruegger used his
mind to
push
the panel in; it opened slowly, sand scattering about,
moonlight illuminating a few slivers of time-worn steps, bowed in the center,
that disappeared around the twist of a bend.

“You sure you’re ready?” Ruegger asked.

Danielle hesitated, but only an instant. “Let’s
do it.”

Ruegger crossed into the pillar and edged down
the staircase, Danielle just behind. Both drew their pistols.

At the bottom, they emerged into the sanctuary.
Torches flared along the walls in different-colored gouts of flame—blue, red, green—casting
dream-like hues across the chamber, which was low and wide, the floor and walls
of stone, most of the cabinets of wood, probably built in more modern times. Blankets
arranged loosely on the floor, as if to give the room a warmer appearance, and
a great four-poster bead loomed at the far end. A computer with a modem hunched
on a desk in a corner, and Ruegger thought how bizarre it was that this symbol
of modern technology had invaded even this most ancient and sacred of places.
There were several pantries, some oil paintings on the walls along with decorative
curtains and crossed swords, and a basin had been carved into the floor,
half-full of water. Rafters that looked semi-petrified arched over the room.

The vampire Triboli occupied the center of the
chamber, naked and covered in blood. He stared at the vampires expectantly.

“Good evening,” he said, his English inflected
with a South African lilt.

Ruegger stared at the object that hung from the rafters—no,
he saw.
Objects
.

Two humans, a man and woman, both naked, had
been bound in razor wire and suspended in a cocoon made from the wire. Though
both were clearly dead, blood, not quite coagulated yet, continued to drip down
on Triboli. A vampire could not drink corpse-blood, but he seemed to be
enjoying the tactile sensation.

“Bastard,” hissed Danielle, and started forward.

Ruegger pulled her back.

Triboli smiled. “I’m honored, really. To merit
the attention of two such notorious shades. The Marshals, is it? Ruegger and
Danielle?”

“You better believe it, motherfucker,” Danielle
said. Anger burned in her eyes, and Ruegger feared that she might try to leap
at Triboli without him to back her up. Ruegger could feel the power coming off
the other immortal and knew it would take both of them to kill him—if they were
even enough together.

Ruegger indicated the bodies. “Why? Did they
offend you somehow?”

Triboli wiped a bit of blood off his chest and
sucked on his fingers. “They’re sacrifices,” he said. “What else was I to do?”

Ruegger knew that the
suka
often selected, either by lottery or with the aid of volunteers, people to go
into the sanctuaries and sate the hunger of their gods. Most immortal races fed
off humans one way or another—vampires with blood, werewolves flesh, morbines
brain fluid and so on. It was an awful custom and unique to the peoples of the Sahara, who alone among humanity knew of the immortal
community—
the
Community.

“Accepting their sacrifice is one thing,
terrible though it is,” Ruegger said, watching the way the razor wire dug into
the mortals’ flesh. “Sadism is something else.”

Triboli lifted his lips. Blood coated his fangs.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’ve heard you two only feed off of those you feel deserve
it—murderers, rapists and so on.”

“And wicked shades,” Danielle added.

Triboli spread his arms. “Take me if you think
you can.”

“Well?” she said to Ruegger.

He shoved his pistols away and drew out his
curved dagger. She did the same.

“Are you up to it?” Ruegger asked her.

“Hell yeah,” Danielle said.

“Then I find this vampire guilty of the murder
and torture of innocents.”

“I concur.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Without another word, they moved in.

*
    
*
    
*

Jarvick
frowned as he chased Ruegger and Danielle across the desert. The hunt had
lasted eleven days and nights and he was beginning to feel a weariness in his
bones, as well as a twinge of something he hadn't felt in a long time. Fear. He
turned to Sasha, second-in-command of the death-squad, and said, "There it
is."

Sasha squinted into the wasteland until he saw
the pillar, then yelled to the men, "Faster!"

Jarvick studied the pillar with detachment.
Erected by the ancients long ago, it marked the presence of one of the several
dozen sanctuaries scattered throughout the desert. Often called "resting
places" by those who used them, they'd been built to ensure the safety of
any immortal crossing these bleak regions. The
suka
kept the sanctuaries stocked with foodstuffs, booze, fresh sheets and the occasional
human sacrifice.

Jarvick hungered.

The hunt had gone on too long, and the immortals
of his squad needed blood and flesh. Without it, they would die. It was this
threat of imminent death, at least in part, that sobered Jarvick. Mainly,
though, his small-but-growing feeling of apprehension stemmed from the threat
of Ruegger and Danielle themselves. Ruegger especially had a savage history,
and he was very strong—much stronger than a two-hundred-year-old shade had any
right to be, thanks to his friendship with the werewolf Lord Kharker. Danielle
was reportedly quite fierce, as well, but she was young and posed a much lesser
threat. Hunting those two—who, together, were known sometimes as the Marshals,
sometimes as the odd flock—had been a sleepless endeavor, and if the vampires
lived up to only a fraction of their reputation, violence would be the
inevitable outcome.

As the abunka drew closer to the pillar, two
black-clad figures with livid black eyes emerged from the sanctuary, a corpse
in their arms. Ruegger and Danielle flung the blood-drained carcass of a tall,
dark-skinned immortal to the ground, then withdrew into the pillar.

"Impossible!" hissed Sasha. "They
couldn't have killed him in the sanctuary!"

"Is that where your thoughts are,
Sasha?"

Sasha’s gaze moved to the corpse. “Triboli,” he
said. “They killed
Triboli
.”