Ghost Soldiers (21 page)

“You wanted the vampire for his ability to link to sirelings,” Karl said. “You want to replicate it.”

“In ancient days the vampires gave the gift of the Bond to the werewolves in return for peace and…” Cojocaru nodded at Bailey's wolf, “…the ability to summon spirit wolves. I wish the ability to bond with my brethren, to link us all in common cause, and you ended that chance.”

“All I saw was a man with innocent blood on his hands getting ready to sacrifice some God-damned vampire.”

“What were you looking through at the time, Karl Vance? A rifle scope?”

Karl didn't answer, but Cojocaru smiled as if he had.

“We've been set against each other, each according to his kind, for millennia, since the first of us stumbled away from the City of Entropy and mixed our blood, to our great diminishment, with those we found on this side of the Gates. I want us to come together again. Form a nation where we can be free and safe to live outside the shadow of the Thorn's tyranny. Am I wrong to work toward that goal?”

“A freak metropolis,” Bailey said. “Where do I sign up?”

Cojocaru glanced at her and looked back at Karl. “She's not yet fed, has she?”

Karl stayed silent.

Cojocaru frowned at her. “You have much to learn. Your Master has seen far more with his ancient eyes. What say you, Karl Vance? Will you join with us?”

“My answer is no.”

Cojocaru's image flickered inside the flames. “May I ask why you've chosen the side of humanity? Murderous. Traitorous. Hateful and bigoted. You know I am right.”

“Maybe so.” He gestured at Naoimy's slave collar lying on the ground. “But a slave is still a slave, no matter what rhetoric you couch it in. I won't serve another Master. Ever. Not you. Not the Thorn. Your slaves tore those people apart on the road. When I look at your face, I remember them. The world is gray enough without exalting a leader like you to bring forth the hidden into the light.”

“Well said, vampire, and true enough in its way. Yet, who would you chose to lead us? You?”

“I don't lead. I kill. That's all I do.”

“No,” Cojocaru said. “You run. Because that's what you'll be doing until I bring you to heel. I warn you, vampire, expect no mercy if I must hunt you down. I'll rip you apart to discover how you link with your sirelings, and for your crimes I'll crucify you upside down on a mountain, facing the dawn.”

“Then we understand each other. Nothing else to discuss.”

“Truly you are an assassin, Karl Vance, nothing more. A whore for the bullet. Neither patriot nor revolutionary. You kill who you're told. Little more than the Thorn's attack dog, and humanity will never love you for it.”

“I don't serve them. And I don't serve you.”

Cojocaru closed his eyes. When he opened them, his face had calmed. “Your lover refused me as well…though perhaps she merely needs to be enticed face to face. She seems much more amenable than you.” He smiled. “But I shall see you again. Soon.”

The white flames cut out, the light died and shadows flooded in. The image of Cojocaru smeared in the air, colors streaking like neon lights seen through rain-drenched glass, and the image vanished. Only the lines remained burned into the dirt.

Karl turned to Naoimy. “You should go.”

She bowed low, her strange braid flattening itself and spreading in mimicry of her bow. She picked up her collar and reattached it, her gaze intense but not hostile…almost speculative. Then she turned and wings grew from her shoulders like black smoke from a fire. She ran a short distance and her wings billowed out, beating the air as she soared over the lot and circled around, gaining altitude. Soon she disappeared, flying west.

“Shit,” Bailey said after a long moment of quiet. Her smoke wolf licked at her hand, and she laughed, but the laughter faded quickly. “We're fucked, aren't we?”

“Not yet.” But the woman he loved had never seemed so far away, with an ocean and enemies between them, and the night somehow darker without her beside him.

He turned to Bailey and his next words were hard. He said them carefully, as if he spat razor blades. “When we get to Constanta, you must feed.”

Chapter Twenty-One: Get Dressed

The ceremony went down the next night, and Maria hauled all her mental baggage along for the show. The constant low-grade hum of paranoia set her teeth on edge worse than four back-to-back cups of coffee. She wanted this over with. She wanted all her enemies revealed and dead. She wanted Karl back home.

Lots of wanting. Only the first one had any chance of happening tonight.

She'd picked out the place—Paolo “Quick Pao” DiBono's little bastardized Colonial Revival-style house in Chelsea, north of Logan International. She'd never liked Chelsea. She'd always found it dingy, ugly, and, ironically enough, wracked with one of the more impressive crime rates in Massachusetts. DiBono's place wasn't bad, though. The house sat close to the narrow street, tomato cages along the front, down enough from the forbidding brick mass of the Clark Avenue School building that the view from the steps wasn't marred…much.

DiBono was a soldier in Sam “The Banker” Fratianno's crew. She'd picked his place as unlikely to be bugged by the Feds, since he was so far down the hierarchy, though she'd still ordered Marco Lino and Freddy DeCicco to sweep for radio emissions and do a physical check of the room where they'd hold the ceremony. She'd had them empty the room except for a wooden stool with a radio and a folding card table placed in the middle of the floor with no chairs. They'd also covered the room's single window with tinfoil behind the heavy drapes. It didn't take much to get slapped with a RICO charge, and though the Feds used most of their high-tech toys and bugs chasing terrorists these days, she still couldn't be too careful.

John Passerini had helped her arrange things, but he hadn't been happy about any of it, despite his air of indifference at their little sit down last night.

“Give it some more time,” he'd said. “Let things settle. Give the skippers awhile to get used to the idea. We have the luxury to do it right.”

“No,” she'd told him. “The longer I wait, the more likely someone gets an idea to make a change, maybe invite over a few Zips to keep things tidy.” She'd stared straight into his eyes as she'd said that, watching for any flinch, any sign he'd known exactly what she'd meant.

He'd only nodded. “When?”

“Tomorrow night. Gather the capos, get Grimaldi, no soldiers. I'll tell you where an hour before. Tell the capos to drive randomly around and wait for your call after we set up.”

“What time?”

“Nine p.m., give or take.”

His tone had been noncommittal. “Usually done during daylight.”

“I'm a night person,” she'd answered, still watching him for signs of…of what? Of betrayal. Of suspicion about her vampire nature. Anything.

He'd stared back blandly and finally said, “All right. Tomorrow's your day. Come dressed up. This'll be different. Usually the boss does the deed—”

“Things change,” she'd said. He hadn't argued.

Now she watched from the shadows of the backyard as five of her six capos arrived, one after another, including Alfonso Grimaldi, her
consigliere
. She waited fifteen minutes for the last of her skippers, Sam Fratianno, but he hadn't shown by the time she walked through the back door. Way to ruin her fucking day, Sam, thanks. She was so tired of this shit. She had more pressing things to worry about than deciding how to respond to his disobedience and the insult. Whacking him might make more enemies, but her patience was hair-thin and just as brittle.

She shoved open the door to the living room. Her capos stood around in loose groups, all of them in suits, nobody drinking, the conversation low and grim. She caught bits of it jumbled together in profane little shards, like an obscene poem sliced into pieces and thrown into the air.

“—Jimmy tried to move it but his motherfuckin' fence didn't come through for him. So he busted up this fuckin' guy's prissy little car with a fuckin'
crowbar
—”

“—the fuck is this shit about? This is bad mojo. That bitch is creepy as fuck—”

“—those goddamn Pats. I fuckin' had lay off coming out my ass to meet the line and cover bets when they dicked up that last game. Jesus wept.”

“—don't like it. Back in the day, Lucky Luciano wouldn't have put up with this bullshit. Affirmative-action shit, I'm tellin' ya.”

John Passerini saw her enter and smiled. The smile was entirely too knowing, sharp with intelligence and cynicism. His eyes told her he knew she'd heard everything, and he hadn't busted down on the capos for their free talk—something she expected. That meant dissent ran deeper and had spread further than she'd suspected. God
damn
it. She'd given them everything. Won the war. Decreased her cut of the take. Expanded their rackets and fattened their wallets, and the least they could do was feel a bit of goddamn gratitude.

“Welcome, my friends,” she said.

Conversation stopped with the abruptness of a car wreck. Every head turned toward her. Every eye stared at her. Dark eyes, unblinking. She could almost smell a cloud of hatred, contempt and disapproval swirling around them.

Maria smiled. If they would not love her, let them fear her.

She walked to the closest of her capos. His eyes widened, but she merely held out her hand. After a pause he took it and kissed the back. His lips felt dry, like paper brushing her skin. She went to each of them, letting them take her hand, sharing a few words of hollow congratulations that echoed with insincerity.

Alfonso Grimaldi, her
consigliere
because of his age and experience—a political move to cement support for her claim to the
borgata
—clasped her fingers in one of his gnarled, liver-spotted hands and set his other hand on her shoulder, kneading softly. His voice trembled, a crumpled tissue paper sound that she would've had to strain to hear had she not been a vampire.

“Too bad you're a woman, no?” Alfonso said. “Your father would've been so proud. Your brother Paul too.”

Her smile flashed bright as mica in the desert sun, and she kept it that way. “Alfonso, you were always so kind.” Then she leaned in, set a hand on his bony shoulder and kissed him on his leathery, wrinkled cheek. She whispered in his hairy ear, “If you ever disrespect me again in front of our friends, I'll make you swallow your balls like the goddamn raisins they are, right before I tear out your throat. Understand?”

Alfonso flinched and shuddered. He nodded and tried to draw away but wasn't strong enough to break her grip. She let him go when she saw in his eyes that her point had been made. She could smell his old blood, hear his weak heart pounding away. She kissed him again and turned away smiling, showing no teeth. Keep the smile charming—that was the key. She could see no one was fooled. That was okay. That was abso-fucking-lutely fine.

John gestured to the back room, and they all headed toward it. Inside, John moved to the far side of the folding table. A knife, a .38 revolver and a picture of a saint lay on the tabletop. The picture shone slightly with an aura of pale blue light. Uncomfortable to stare at, the picture sent out irritating invisible pulses that felt like metal vibrating against her teeth, but they weren't nearly strong enough to stop her from getting this done.

She walked to the table and stood opposite John. The other capos finished filing in and surrounded them. Leo Antonelli turned on the radio, pointing the speakers at the window, in case some Fed was out there with a laser microphone pointed at the glass. The mid-song music of Duke Ellington's “It Don't Mean a Thing” filled the room.

“Maria Ricardi,” John said. “Do you want to join the organization for life?”

Ironic turn of phrase considering her condition. “Yes, I do.”

He nodded. “Anyone here have a problem with this initiate that needs to be cleared up before we go on?”

No one spoke, though the tension in the room wound tighter. Swing music continued to play, saxophones and trombones in notes like brassy sunshine. The question had always been nothing more than a formality, since real problems would've been resolved already. One way or another.

“Why do you want to join our organization?”

She gave the ritual answer. “To protect my family and my friends.”

“Will you keep our secrets?”

“Yes. I swear it.”

“Will you obey all orders from the head of our organization?”

She'd expected him to drop that line from the ceremony since she
was
the boss, but she only hesitated for a second. “Yes.”

They'd agreed earlier to drop the counting ritual in which a mentor would be chosen for her because it'd be unacceptable for the boss to have a mentor of lesser rank. John stepped forward, and Maria held out her right hand. He pricked her trigger finger with a needle. No blood flowed from the hole. John stared at her finger, his face unreadable.

“Do it harder,” she said.

Someone snickered. She thought it might have been Leo Antonelli, that greedy little prick, but she couldn't be sure. She didn't look around. The rest of them were probably smirking, but she didn't look at them either. She locked gazes with her underboss. He jabbed her again, deeper this time. She squeezed the tip of her finger until a drop of black blood pushed out, grew fat and fell to the tabletop near the butt of the pistol. She reached down and smeared it away, hiding the fact that her vampire blood had already started to dissolve.

John picked up the picture of the saint and put it in her hand. It felt hot on her skin, as if she'd set her hand on a radiator, but it wasn't enough to sear her. As the image burned she'd be expected to juggle it from hand to hand to avoid being singed, but it was time to make a point.