Blood Bank (27 page)

No matter.

It would be easy enough to find what he was looking for.

They could lock themselves away, but Henry would find them. They could beg or plead or pray, but they would die. And they would keep dying until enough blood had poured over his hands to wash the stain of Ginevra's blood away.

*

Messina was a port city and had been in continuous use since before the days of the Roman Empire. Beneath its piers and warehouses, beneath broad avenues and narrow streets, beneath the lemon trees and the olive groves, were the ruins of an earlier city. Beneath its necropolis were Roman catacombs.

As the students followed their hired torchbearer from the docks to the university, Henry followed the scent of death through the streets until he came at last to the end of the Via Annunziata to the heavy iron gates that closed off the Piazza del Dominico from the rest of the city. The pair of stakes rising out of the low stone dais in the center of the square had been used within the last three or four days. The stink of burning flesh almost overwhelmed the stink of fear.

Almost.

"Hey! You! What are you doing?"

The guard's sudden roar out of the shadows was intended to intimidate.

"Why the gates?" Henry asked without turning. The Hounds preferred an audience when they burned away heresy.

"You a stranger?"

"I am vengeance," Henry said quietly, touching the iron and rubbing the residue of greasy smoke between two fingers. As the guard reached for him, he turned and closed his hand about the burly wrist, tightening his grip until bones cracked and the man fell to his knees. "Why the gates?" he repeated.

"Friends. Oh, God, please..." It wasn't the pain that made him beg but the darkness in the stranger's eyes. "Some of the heretics got friends!"

"Good." He had fed in Reggio, so he snapped the guard's neck and let the body fall back into the shadows. Without the guard, the gates were no barrier.

*

"You said he was ready to confess." Habit held up out of the filth, The Dominican stared disapprovingly at the body on the rack. "He is unconscious!"

The thin man in the leather apron shrugged. "Wasn't when I sent for you."

"Get him off that thing and back into the cell with the others." Sandals sticking to the floor, he stepped back beside the second monk and shook his head. "I am exhausted and his attorney has gone home. Let God's work take a break until morning, for pity's..."

The irons had not been in the fire, but they did what they'd been made to do. Even as the Hunger rose to answer the blood now turning the robe to black and white and red, Henry appreciated the irony of the monk's last word. A man who knew no pity had died with pity on his tongue. The second monk screamed and choked on a crimson flood as curved knives, taken from the table beside the rack, hooked in under his arms and met at his breastbone.

Henry killed the jailer as he'd killed the guard. Only those who gave the orders paid in blood.

Behind doors of solid oak, one large cell held half a dozen prisoners and two of the smaller cells held one prisoner each. Removing the bars, Henry opened the doors and stepped back out of sight. He had learned early that prisoners would rather remain to face the Inquisition than walk by him, but he always watched them leave, some small foolish part of his heart hoping he'd see Ginevra among them, free and alive.

The prisoner from one of the small cells surged out as the door was opened. Crouched low and ready for a fight, he squinted in the torchlight searching for an enemy. When he saw the bodies, he straightened and his generous mouth curved up into a smile. Hair as red-gold as Henry's had begun to gray, but in spite of approaching middle-age, his body was trim and well built. He was well-dressed and clearly used to being obeyed.

On his order, four men and two women shuffled out of the large cell, hands raised to block the light, bits of straw clinging to hair and clothing. On his order, they led the way out of the prison.

He was using them to see if the way was clear, Henry realized. Clever. Ginevra had been clever, too.

Murmured Latin drew his attention back to the bodies of the Dominicans. Kneeling between them, a hand on each brow, the elderly Franciscan who'd emerged from the other cell performed the Last Rites.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen." One hand gripping the edge of the rack, he pulled himself painfully to his feet. "You can come out now. I know what you are."

"You have no idea, monk."

"You think not?" The old man shrugged and bent to release the ratchet that held the body on the rack taut. "You are the death that haunts the Inquisition. You began in Venice, you finally found your way to us here in Messina."

"If I am death, you should fear me."

"I haven't feared death for some time." He turned and swept the shadows with a rheumy gaze. "Are you afraid to face
me,
then?"

Lips drawn back off his teeth, Henry moved into the light.

The Franciscan frowned. "Come closer."

Snarling, Henry stepped over one of the bodies, the blood scent wrapping around him. Prisoner of the Inquisition or not, the monk would learn fear. He caught the Franciscan's gaze with his but, to his astonishment, couldn't hold it. When he tried to look away, he could not.

After a long moment, the old monk sighed, and released him. "Not evil, although you have done evil. Not anger, nor joy in slaughter. I never knew your kind could feel such pain."

He staggered back, clutching for the Hunger as it fled. "I feel nothing!"

"So you keep telling yourself. What happened in Venice, vampire? Who did the Inquisition kill that you try to wash away the blood with theirs?"

Over the roaring in his head, Henry heard himself say, "Ginevra Treschi."

"You loved her."

It wasn't a question. He answered it anyway. "Yes."

"You should kill me, you know. I have seen you. I know what you are. I know what is myth..." He touched two fingers to the wooden cross hanging against his chest. "...and I know how to destroy you. When you are helpless in the day, I could drag your body into sunlight; I could hammer a stake through your heart. For your own safety, you should kill me."

He was right.

What was one more death? Henry's fingers, sticky with blood already shed, closed around the old man's skinny neck. He would kill him quickly and return to the work he had come here to do. There were many, many more Dominicans in Messina.

The Franciscan's pulse beat slow and steady.

It beat Henry's hand back to his side. "No. I do not kill the innocent."

"I will not argue original sin with you, vampire, but you're wrong. Parigi Carradori, the man from the cell next to mine, seeks power from the Lord of Hell by sacrificing children in dark rites."

Henry's lip curled. "Neither do I listen to the Inquisition's lies."

"No lie; Carradori admits it freely without persuasion. The demons hold full possession of his mind, and you have sent him out to slaughter the closest thing to innocence in the city."

"That is none of my concern."

"If that is true, then you really should kill me."

"Do not push me, old man!" He reached for the Hunger but for the first time since Ginevra's death it was slow to answer.

"By God's grace, you are being given a chance to save yourself. To find, if you will, redemption. You may, of course, choose to give yourself fully to the darkness you have had wrapped about you for so many months, allowing it, finally, into your heart. Or you may choose to begin making amends."

"Amends?" He stepped back slowly so it wouldn't look so much like a retreat and spat into the drying blood pooled out from the Dominicans' bodies. "You want me to feel sorrow for the deaths of these men?"

"Not yet. To feel sorrow, you must first feel. Begin by stopping Carradori. We will see what the Lord has in mind for you after that." He patted the air between them, an absentminded benediction, then turned and began to free the man on the rack, working the leather straps out of creases in the swollen arms.

Henry watched him for a moment, then turned on one heel and strode out of the room.

He was not going after Carradori. His business was with the Inquisition, with those who had slowly murdered his Ginevra, not with a man who may or may not be dealing with the Dark One.

…you have sent him out to slaughter the closest thing to innocence in the city."

He was not responsible for what Carradori chose to do with his freedom. Stepping out into the square, he listened to the sound of Dominican hearts beating all around him. Enough blood to finally
be
enough.

". .. seeks power from the Lord of Hell by sacrificing children in dark rites."

Children died. Some years, more children died than lived. He could not save them all even were he willing to try.

"You may choose to give yourself fully to the darkness. Or you may choose to begin making amends."

"Shut up, old man!"

Torch held high, head cocked to better peer beyond its circle of light, a young monk stepped out of one of the other buildings. "Who is there? Is that you, Brother Pe...?" He felt more than saw a shadow slip past him. When he moved the torch forward, he saw only the entrance to the prison. A bloody handprint glistened on the pale stone.

*

The prisoners had left the gate open. Most of them had taken the path of least resistance and stumbled down the Via Annunziata, but one had turned left, gone along the wall heading up toward the mountain.

Carradori.

Out away from the stink of terror that filled the prison, Henry could smell the taint of the Dark One in his blood.

The old man hadn't lied about that, at least.

Behind him, a sudden cacophony of male voices suggested his visit had been discovered. It would be dangerous to deal further with the Inquisition tonight. He turned left.

He should have caught up to Carradori in minutes, but he didn't and he found himself standing outside a row of tenements pressed up against the outer wall of the necropolis with no idea of where the man had gone. Lip drawn up off his teeth, he snarled softly and a scrawny dog, thrown out of sleep by the sound, began to howl. In a heartbeat, a dozen more were protesting the appearance of a new predator on their territory.

The noise the monks had made was nothing in comparison.

As voices rained curses down from a dozen windows, Henry ran for the quiet of the necropolis.

The City of the Dead had tenements of its own; the dead had been stacked in this ground since the Greeks controlled the strait. Before Venice, before Ginevra, Henry had spent very little time with the dead—his own grave had not exactly been a restful place. Of late, however, he had grown to appreciate the silence. No heartbeats, no bloodsong, nothing to call the Hunger, to remind him of vengeance not yet complete.

But not tonight.

Tonight he could hear two hearts and feel a life poised on the edge of eternity.

The houses of the dead often became temples for the dark arts.

*

Warding glyphs had been painted in blood on the outside of the mausoleum. Henry sneered and passed them by. Blood held a specific power over him, as specific as the power he held over it. The dark arts were a part of neither.