The Living Night (Book 1) (13 page)

"Now what is this bullshit about having to
see me in person?" Vistrot demanded. "I haven't seen you in the flesh
in years, and could do without it now."

"Yes," Kilian said, careful to keep
his voice low, "but I needed to see you in person myself, to confirm that
you’re still alive and that I wasn't receiving my instructions through an
impersonator." He leaned over, stretched his arm ever so slightly, and
plucked a cigar from its varnished case. He put it to his nose, breathed in its
odor with his eyes closed, then smiled. "Nice.”

"Jesus," swore the Titan. "I
should have you killed. I value your ear in the albino's squad, but ears are
cheap."

Kilian swallowed. "There's something I
wanted to talk to you about."

Vistrot arched his great white eyebrows, his
death-blue eyes almost lethal by themselves. He waited.

"I think Jean-Pierre needs to go,"
Kilian said. "He's become an impediment to his own team."

Vistrot
steepled
his
gold-ringed fingers to his most prominent chin. "He’s having difficulty
about Danielle," the Titan said. Was there
sadness
in his voice?

"Yes. I believe he heard from several
sources about her arrival in town but only acted when one of our own brought
the news to his attention.”

Vistrot inhaled deeply. "I knew this day
might come. I'd hoped by giving him this assignment that he would prove himself
to be above such concerns."

"I don't mean to say that that was a mistake,"
Kilian said carefully, "but the arrangement doesn't seem to be
working."

Vistrot tilted his face upward. Oddly, it looked
as though he were praying. "What do you suggest?"

"Either Jean-Pierre's squad needs to be
disbanded ... or a new leader needs to be elected."

The Titan gave a closemouthed smile. "Ah.”

"I’m only saying.”

"You want to replace Jean-Pierre."

"I don't recall saying anything of the
kind.”

"Good. You won't do. You won't do at all.
So go. Now, while the plastic at your feet is still clean."

"You won’t do anything about
Jean-Pierre?"

"His test has just begun, and you're not
part of my plan," Vistrot said pointedly, and Kilian realized there was
more at stake here than himself.

"What do you mean?"

The Titan shook his head. "
I
will deal with Jean-Pierre, if it
comes to that. As for yourself, we’ll talk later. Go."

Kilian rose, hearing the plastic crackle, and in
silence crossed to the door, which he realized was
knobless
and could not be opened from the inside. Surely Vistrot's minions kept a tight
telekinetic hold on it, too; unless the Titan so desired, the portal would not
open. For a moment Kilian feared he had gone too far, that the door would stay
shut, that he would be butchered here like so many others. Then, mercifully,
the door swung to and Kilian, taking a deep breath, stepped across the threshold,
leaving the Titan to his solitude.

Just as he returned to street-level, his phone
rang.

“Yes?”

“It’s Jean-Pierre. It’s time.”

*
    
*
    
*

Byron
and Cloire rutted in the back of the van. Curtains covered the tiny windows at
the rear, but several of the small slide-away panels along the van's flanks
opened to reveal what could be seen through the tinted, one-way glass windows
that were built in to allow easy surveillance.

The werewolves used what talents they hadn't
devoted to copulation to insure that the van didn't rock too much, and to keep
an eye out. The Cardeux
Building stood just
across the way, the obvious place to acquire Ruegger and Danielle. Kilian had
already been inside and verified no one was home.

Byron tweaked Cloire’s nipples. She growled,
pressing her hips against him as hard as she could, bestial face locked, every
fiber of muscle in her straining to sustain that intimacy. Eyes mashed shut,
she let loose one long, low moan as she came, then drew closer to him and kissed
his hairy chest. He continued to thrust, slicing into her now-hairless mound
again and again and again, until he too let loose with a gasp, but still thrust
reflexively for several moments. Sated, they collapsed.

"That was great," murmured Cloire,
reaching for a cigarette.

Byron, still panting, grunted assent.

Cloire lit the Camel, took a hit, then passed it
to him, who, like her, was slipping slowly back from beast to human, his fur
disintegrating, his ribs and
pecs
sliding into place
once more, his snout leveling off, his teeth losing their bite.

"Why don't you go to sleep?" Byron
said. "I'll keep an eye out, wake you if I need to."

"You're cute, you know. I hope you're not
falling in love or anything."

"Of course not."

"Good.” She blew a perfect ring of smoke.
"A big fat zero," she said. "Wreathed in smoke. I think that's
symbolic."

"How?”

"Jean-Pierre's taking this whole thing way
too personally. It’s not professional."

He accepted the cigarette from her. "He
needs this. Remember how we all cavorted around Danielle when she was one of us
and the albino was staying with Lord Kharker? Have you ever seen him so
happy?"

“
Cavorting’s
a little strong.”

"He wants that back."

"It can never be. Doesn't he understand
that?"

"No," the Australian said. "But
by the end of the night I think he will."

"Then what?"

He passed her back the cigarette and lit one for
himself. "Then I suppose they die.”

"You don't seem too happy about it.”

He took a long time to answer. "I'm not like
you, Cloire. I take no pleasure in killing. And Danielle ... I taught her how
to play
chess
, for fuck's sake. Jean-Pierre and Lord Kharker would be
off stomping around the jungle, and Danielle would come up to me and say she
had to prepare for a chess match against Kharker the next night, and would I
please refresh her on the steps and the pieces."

"You wanted her."

"Maybe," he admitted. "Does that
upset you?"

"No. I actually like the thought of you
fucking other women. Just don't ever try it, if you value your cock." Her
mind drifted back to their days in the Congo, lounging around Lord
Kharker's jungle palace; the bugs, the trees, the blazing sun, the sweaty
twilight, the bloody nights.

"I remember Loirot always trying to court
her while Jean-Pierre was away," she said. "I often thought of
informing on him."

"Why didn't you?"

"Loirot and Kilian hate each other, you
know that. Better to have Loirot around to combat that fucking asshole,
right?"

One of their phones rang.

"Yeah?" Byron said into the receiver.
"Sure. We're on our way."

"Well?" Cloire said.

"Jean-Pierre. He says he had Loirot tail
Veliswa, and she led him to Ruegger. They’re at a
Rocky Horror Picture Show
screening. Jean-Pierre's sending someone
over to replace us."

"Then let's snap to it, lover."

*
    
*
    
*

"Where
is she?" Veliswa asked, watching the colorful crowd pouring into the
theater.

"We hunted separately tonight,"
Ruegger said.

Veliswa let out a breath. "Another one
bites the dust, eh?"

"Only one more left. With him, the
tradition ends."

“It’s a dark thing, what she does.”

“I know,” he said.

“I mean, we all must kill to live, and you two
always pick worthy targets. Rapists and killers, all of them. The world is a
better place without them. But usually you do it without emotion. When she goes
after those bastards, she uses a
lot
of emotion.”

“I know. I don’t like it either. Of course, they
have it coming. Hell, I’d help if she asked. But ... well, it takes a lot out
of her. I guess that’s the part I don’t like. I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

The ghensiv grew silent for a moment, then:
"Does she know about us, about how we were, after Amelia—?"

"No."

"It would be okay to tell her, you know.
She wouldn't be hurt, I don't think ... although we should have told her long
ago. But she
might
be hurt if she finds out years from now. Then it
would be as if we'd kept something from her."

"I have."

"Does she know anything about you yet,
Ruegger? About Amelia, the wars, about Kharker?"

"Bits and pieces. Here and there."

"Dear-heart, I know what you think: that
she'll stop loving you if she knows, but she's stronger than that. I'm sure she
suspects already, knows more than you think she does. How could she not, after
having spent so much time around Kharker and Jean-Pierre? You think Kharker
never talked about you? That's one thing that man never was—closemouthed. And
to this day do you think he'd choose the albino over you? Of course not. So
sure he told Danielle—some of it, anyway."

"You talk like you've met him. The albino."

"Well, I haven't."

He raised his eyebrows.

"I hear things," she said. "But
you changed the subject, didn't you? Hey, wait. Hear that? Show's
starting."

“I think I should wait here for her.”

"Come on," she coaxed. "Maybe she
didn't locate him right away—maybe she still hasn't. When she's ready, she'll
find us; she knows where we are. Okay?"

Ruegger paused, then acquiesced.

The odd assortment of people who gathered for
The
Rocky Horror Picture Show
never failed to intrigue Ruegger. Straights,
gays, lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals—they all thronged to watch the
horror musical and even interact with it in their own way, performing the movie
scene by scene up near the silver screen. As the show began, he realized he was
enjoying himself, but soon thoughts of Danielle disturbed him.
I should be there for her
.

When
Rocky
ended, many of the
congregation departed, but most stayed for the second feature. Towards the end,
Ruegger frowned, turned to Veli and said, "I think she's here."

"If she's here, she'll come in."

He frowned. "No," he said. "Not
this time. I … feel something else, too."

*
    
*
    
*

After
avenging herself, Danielle felt oddly refreshed. Burnt clean, even. She paused
in the glowing lights outside the theater to stare up at what sky refused to be
drowned out by the metropolis—not much, as it turned out. A picture of Jason
Locke swam before her, but she was able to face it now without flinching.
You can never terrorize me anymore
.

“You
are
beautiful,” said a voice from the shadows.

She spun. “Who ... ?”

Jean-Pierre emerged from the blackness, green
eye shining. "What I feel, just looking at you, Danielle—words fail
me."

"Then there is a God." Ever since
Ruegger had talked her into returning to New
York, she’d dreaded this moment. She held her ground,
but it was an effort.

"Not scared of the big bad wolf?" he
said.

"Is this business or social?"

He stepped closer. "We both know that if
this were business you'd be dead."

"What do you want?"

Another step closer. "You. Only you."

"Too bad."

Within touching distance now, the albino
extended an arm towards her face, the colorless hairs of his fingers just
brushing her cheek.

"Oh, really?" he said. "Oh,
really
...?"

Chapter 10

Ruegger
found the aisle and flew up it too fast for a mortal to clearly see. It was a
trick not feasible outside the darkened room, so at normal speed he pushed out
the theater door—and froze.

“Dear gods.”

A small crowd encircled a bloody mass of human
wreckage lying gutted and decapitated on the asphalt. It was a man, or had been.
His blood pooled around him to encompass the quizzically
expressioned
head nearby. He looked as if he were floating on a red sea. The crowd muttered.
Some talked on cell phones, summoning the police.

Ruegger staggered up the sidewalk, dismayed, not
just for the dead man, but what it meant about Danielle.
Jean-Pierre has her
, he realized.
This is his way of thumbing his nose at me.

Several shapes emerged from an alley. Before he
knew it, they had surrounded him.

“Ruegger,” said a voice, and the vampire wheeled
to see a dour man with dark hair.

“Kilian.
You
did that.” Ruegger gestured toward the dead man.

“Actually, I did this,” Kilian said, and with
one hand lifted the bloody remains of Danielle’s little black pig, Cerberus.

“Bastard!”

“
I
killed the man over there,” said another shape. Loirot.

Ruegger bared his fangs. “And now you’ll kill
me, is that it?”

“That’s the idea,” another shape, huge and with
an Australian accent.

 
Ruegger
braced himself. “Come, then.”

The werewolves crouched, ready to tear him
apart. Suddenly, a gun cracked, loud and close, and one of them reeled back. Then
another. Before he knew what was happening, Ruegger was jerked by the arm and
found himself running up the sidewalk side by side with Veliswa.

“Mon ami!”
Veliswa said. “What’s
happening?”

“David betrayed us,” he panted. “Luckily you go
armed.”

“I’m a New
York girl. The bullets are coated in poison.”

“They’ve been to your apartment,” he said. “They
know you’ve been helping us.”

She hissed out a breath. “Then my time in the
city is done. But where’s Danielle?”

“With Jean-Pierre,” Ruegger said. “If only I knew
where he lived …”

Veliswa fell silent, then: “Actually, I have an
idea.”

*
    
*
    
*

Danielle
fingered the rusted, blood-stained end of a hooked chain that dangled like so
many others from the ceiling of Jean-Pierre's apartment.
This is his living room
.
She’d struggled against him, but he was just too strong, and now she was in his
lair.
Great
. She stared up at all the
long, black chains that swayed, just slightly, to and fro, the gentle motion
making her think of some nightmare anemone that shifted to a rhythm all its own.
Jean-Pierre watched her with all the patience of a cat.

"I just love what you've done to the
place,” she said.

He seemed neither amused nor offended.

"You're beautiful," he said.

"You’ve said that already.”

"Don't be flip.”

Angrily, she spun away from him.
"Goddamnit, Jean-Pierre, this is too much. You've actually stooped to
kidnapping now? At least last time I was willing."

"You were ... in love with me."

She crossed to the one open window, the source
of the breeze stirring the chains.

"I was afraid," she said, the wounds
opening again. She didn't want to play games with him. “You showed me Ruegger’s
body, or one that looked like it. You said you'd protect me. Took me away. All
lies, Jean-Pierre. Everything you told me, lies. You wanted me for yourself.”

“You
loved
me,” he repeated.

She paused. “Maybe I came to be fond of you. I
envied your nothingness.” When he winced, she added, “I'm sorry. I was crushed
when I thought Ruegger was dead.”

She heard him fumbling with one of his Pall
Malls, clicking on his silver cigarette lighter—silver to spite the gods, of
course—and breathed the acrid stench deep into his lungs.

“I
need
you.”

Frustration crept back into her voice. "I
can't, Jean-Pierre. I
love
Ruegger—not for any other reason than he's who he is. We're a part of each
other, as inseparable as flesh and bone."

"Flesh and bone can part, Danielle. Flesh
and bone can part."

She half wanted to hug him and tell him it would
be all right and half wanted to gouge out his fucking eyes. She settled for
turning back to gaze out the window.

She remembered the faces of the vagrants that
roamed the halls as Jean-Pierre had led her to his rooms; adulation and loyalty
had swept their faces at the sight of their overlord. She thought to herself
that he was a god here. He was the pied piper of the insane, his void drawing
them in like flies to a carcass.

"You belong here," she said. "You
and your hooks and chains. I don't.”

She turned to catch him with his eyes averted;
she saw what looked like a tear in his eye, but it must not have been because
he glanced up in the coldest manner he could, and that was very cold indeed.

"Is that it?" he said. "Your
final word? Because not even I can save you both, and if you leave right now I
won’t want to."

“Fuck off.”

“Just so you understand the terms. What I’m
offering you.”

"Either death or life with you?"

He let the cigarette spark between his lips a
moment, threw his gaze to a ceiling barely visible through the chains.

"That seems to be the situation," he
said.

They watched each other, each waiting for the
other to speak or move. The nightmare sea festered hypnotically.

Finally, Danielle broke the spell. Her eyes still
locked on his, she drifted through the rusted metal towards the door, where she
could already hear mortals shuffling by the scores: the albino summoning his
flock. Too cowardly to kill her himself, he would use them. She could just
imagine the tormented faces of those souls who hovered on the other side,
puppets to his abilities, ready to tear her apart.

"Good-bye, Jean-Pierre," she said, and
opened the door.

There they waited, pinched and filthy, with lips
of tanned hide and unblinking vacant eyes, all trained on her. They stood
unnaturally still, a legion awaiting the fatal order. Eight stories worth of
the mentally disturbed, now all zombies to the albino's will.

"Yes," he whispered. "
Au
revoir
."

She entered the hall, where she could feel the
hot ragged breaths of the figures pressing in on her from every side. She
shoved her way through them toward a stairwell that she couldn’t even see they
were so many. It seemed very far away.

She ran into a man who would not be moved, a
towering, unshaven creature with lice crawling through his hair and human feces
smeared across his skeletal chest. Flies buzzed about his head.

“Out of my way, asshole.”

He leered down at her, and she wondered whether
this man was strong enough to retain his own presence of mind despite Jean-Pierre's
influence. Or maybe the albino was choosing to represent himself through him.

Either way, Danielle could tear off his head and
be feeding on his heart before he could even register what she was doing, but his
murder would incite a riot. The other mortals couldn't be connected to
Jean-Pierre by more than a tenuous link at best. There were just too many of
them for even him to control in more than a nebulous fashion.

The mortal with the crown of flies spoke: "
Kiernevar
."

Was that his name? “Fuck you, Kiernevar.”

She pressed her hands into the crusty feces that
covered his chest and
shoved
, sending the mortal and all his merry lice
into the mass ahead, creating a corridor for Danielle to pass through, which
she did, step by careful step. The minions’ eyes jittered back and forth.
Spittle dribbled from cracked lips.

The hand of one woman clutched at Danielle’s
elbow. She swiped it away. Unease seemed to be spreading.

Shit
. If these mortals
started attacking her, she would have to defend herself. If that happened, she
would likely kill some of them. Most were too far gone and probably wouldn’t
notice the difference, but she would. She did not kill innocents. Ever. Then
there was the disturbing possibility that their sheer numbers were actually
capable of overpowering her.

“You’re a coward, Jean-Pierre!”

The mortals started to grab at her, tear at her
clothes, her hair, long nails scrabbling toward her eyes. The stairwell was so
close she could taste its vomit-tinged smell at the tip of her tongue. She
lunged for it. The action was too much. The puppets surged toward her.

Hurry
. They ripped at her,
but she shrugged them off. Plucking the stairwell door from its rotted hinges,
she discovered that
the minions
waited here too. They surrounded her, raking and biting. With a growl, she beat
them back, but s
till they came
.

She grasped what would be her last hope: the
stairwell itself. It wasn't circular, and therefore she couldn't simply drop
the eight floors to safety; she would have to ricochet off the balustrades
themselves—painful but ...

She rose from beneath the swarm and threw
herself over the edge. Her body crashed into each and every rusting balustrade.
She shoved herself on, downwards, feeling at the same time hands from mortals that
lined the stairs ripping at her, sometimes digging into her with broken glass
or razors.

Her head crashed into something hard, and her
mind flickered, though her body still fell ... and fell ...

She landed on them. Their faces upturned, their
arms outstretched, waiting for her. When they tore away her jacket, she woke up.
She defended herself as best she could, but there were too many.

“Jean-Pierre!” she said, when she could get a
breath. “Call them off!”

Their hands and fingers and limbs and teeth and
bodies slashed her, pulled her and tore at her. She was going to die. She knew
it. There was no way—

Crunch
.

The minions fell back. The floor disappeared
below her as something hoisted her into what seemed like a different realm. The
hallway and the faces of the minions slipped by her as everything faded away …

*
    
*
    
*

Danielle
cradled in his arms, Ruegger plowed through the humans to either side of him,
here and there a mortal that he'd missed on his way in standing defiantly in
his path only to be flung aside. Unlike Danielle, he felt no moral compunction
to restrain himself. Tragic though it was, these humans were merely the will of
the albino made flesh.

Ruegger burst from Jean-Pierre’s little hell into
the warmth of the moonlight and carried Danielle to Veliswa's waiting limousine.

A rear door flung open. "Get in,
damnit
!” Veliswa said. “Get in!"

Ruegger lowered his precious burden onto the
leather seat and slid in himself. With one last look up to Jean-Pierre's
wrought-iron balcony—actually seeing the Frenchman staring down at him from the
balustrade, cigarette held close to his lips, its smoke wrapping his pale
head—Ruegger slammed the door and said, "Let's get the hell out of here.”

As the limo shot off, he turned his attention to
the semi-conscious Danielle and stroked her bloody black hair.

She opened her eyes a fraction and raised a hand
to trace his jaw.
"Rueg,"
she whispered. Her eyes closed and her hand fell away.

“Is she all right?” Veliswa said.

“She needs blood.”

"She'll be all right,
mon ami
."

"She'd better be.” He bent to kiss
Danielle’s cold lips.

*
    
*
    
*

Expelling
smoke from his mouth, Jean-Pierre watched the limousine pull away. When it was
gone, he turned to the mortal that stood quiet and erect at the other end of
the Hooked Room. Chains rattled, flies buzzed, but the mortal didn't seem to
care. Tall, maybe seven or eight inches the albino's senior, with lice-ridden
hair and his own excrement smeared across his bare, hairy chest, a stupid,
maniacal grin had plastered itself across his sharply-angled face, but his
solemn eyes belied some sort of intelligence.

"You withstood me," Jean-Pierre said.
“I’ve never had a mortal withstand my will before.”

The man just grinned, his yellowed teeth bared
profanely.

"I can't let that go unpunished," the albino
said. "But your death would be too much a waste, I think. You're more
insane than Laslo, I'd wager. A competitor, at least."