Hunter of the Dead (25 page)

Cicatrice adjusted his Stetson and cleared his throat, regaining the crowd.

“I’ve decided to move my seat from Paris to El Dorado – what the locals call The Meadows. The only problem is there’s nothing there. It’s going to take some time and some doing before a decent-sized city takes root there. It would be interesting though, I think, to help build a city from the ground up. A city designed by immortals for immortals. A city of night.”

“A New Necropolis?” Topan ventured.

The mine became very, very quiet. Topan worried he had spoken out of turn.

“Some of you have not yet met my get, Topan. He will need to be built from the ground up as well.”

“Forgive me, Father Cicatrice,” a woman with her face tattooed as a skull said, “but the boy doesn’t exactly smell of impressive power. Certainly not like…”

She trailed off. Topan bit his lower lip. He was feeling picked upon, but didn’t want to betray weakness.

“No,” Cicatrice agreed, “He does not match the raw natural talent of…others I have chosen. For a long time I believed if I lived in this world long enough I would meet a perfect heir. Someone who, after being granted the Long Gift, would be worthy within a few days. But now I think it must be a slow burn. And as I build my new city, so too will I build my new heir. Until he is ready.”

Cicatrice paused, glancing down into the shaft which seemed to stretch blackly into infinity.

“That being said,” Cicatrice continued, “Disrespecting my get – and my decisionmaking – with a question like that…let’s just say if it happens a second time from any of you, being an elder in my House will not save you from my wrath. Which indeed brings us to our next order of business.”

Cicatrice gestured and Rahim quickly pushed a minecart up in front of Cicatrice like an altar. Topan felt like a child sneaking a peek inside a red birthday envelope. From within the minecart a woman stared up at him defiantly. She was wrapped in heavy lengths of chain that looked better suited to anchoring a naval vessel than restraining a person but was otherwise naked. A metal plate had been placed over her mouth and bolted into her jawbones to keep her quiet.

It was the first time Topan had seen a woman in the nude but he felt (perhaps appropriately) more pity than lust.

“Surely even chains such as those can’t subdue one of our kind?” Topan whispered breathlessly in Cicatrice’s ear.

“Normally not. But she has been starved. Remember what I told you? About the blood and the earth?”

“The blood is the power but the earth is the life.”

Cicatrice squeezed Topan’s shoulder. It had been one of their first lessons. Immortality was granted by the native soil they slept in each night. But their ferocious power was granted by draining the blood of others – and, someday, Cicatrice had promised, there was a still more perfect way of draining power without cutting a vein.

“Mercy is not a quality I am often accused of possessing,” Cicatrice said to a mild titter of laughter, “nevertheless it has always been my policy to grant great leeway to my elders. Your affairs are your own inasmuch as they don’t reflect poorly on me.”

Cicatrice glanced down at the chained immortal.

“Winter was my first and most trusted elder. That makes this difficult for me. Impossible, really. You eleven, step forward.”

Cicatrice tapped Topan on the back and gestured at a mattock leaning against one of the pylons. Topan went to fetch it as Rahim and the other elders emerged from the crowd, and the lesser immortals receded quietly.

“I’ve forgiven Winter and the rest of you many small trespasses. I’ve never considered it a patriarch’s place to enforce the code mindlessly, but rather judiciously. That being said, there are some things I can not forgive.”

“The telegrams,” Rahim said quietly.

Cicatrice nodded.

“Each of you received a message that I would be moving my seat. What you may not know is that each message indicated a different spot – Laredo, San Francisco, and so on. And then when you arrived you received a second message redirecting you here. But my spies in Salt Lake City spotted Otto Signari and a band of fixers arriving just ahead of my dear Winter here.”

“Treason!” Topan exclaimed, before clapping his hand over his mouth.

“Yes, my boy,” Cicatrice said, taking the pickax from his hand and twirling its handle with a single hand to test its balance, “Something I’d refused to believe for some time. Whether for love or money I don’t know, but the fact remains your fellow elder has betrayed our House. The undertaking of moving my seat to The Meadows is too important to withstand such treachery. I suppose I’ve thrown the Signaris off the scent for a while, but now I’m left with the odious task of meting out judgment to a loved one.”

“Kill her, Father Cicatrice, put her down,” Topan said.

Cicatrice shook his head.

“No, my boy, the punishment for treason is even greater than death.”

“What could be greater than death?”

“Life. Eternal life. I would not do this to an elder without you all being in agreement. Think carefully. For if Winter has fallen this low, then so could each and every one of you.”

Cicatrice tossed the mattock to the ground before the feet of the eleven remaining elders. The woman with the skull-face tattoo was the first to pick it up. She looked to Cicatrice.

“I know kings don’t kill kings,” she said, “but I will ever be loyal to you, Father Cicatrice.”

She raised the mattock over her head and swung it down into Winter’s heart. Winter grunted and moaned in pain. Rahim approached next and wheedled the mattock out of his former peer’s chest. He gestured at the tattooed woman.

“Well said.”

Rahim swung and delivered a blow as well. One by one, each of the elders approached. Only the last, a Russian noble by the looks of him, seemed hesitant, but after a moment he too delivered a damning blow. Cicatrice plucked the pickax from Winter’s chest.

“Then it is almost decided. Rahim, you are now my new senior elder. Topan, you are now my junior.”

He pointed the handle towards Topan. Astonished, Topan took it.

“When your training is complete you can take your seat at the table in Rome. Until then I intend not to trade with that reptile, Otto Signari. And your position within my House, should anything happen to me, is now official. And secure.”

“But not as your heir.”

“Not yet. Now you have a decision to make. For this punishment it must be unanimous.”

Unhesitating, Topan drove the mattock into Winter’s eye.

“Then it is accomplished. Topan, go fetch Winter’s circle. The rest of you leave. We’ll meet again tomorrow evening to discuss building up The Meadows.”

Topan flew ahead of the crowd out to where the mortals had set up camp on the downslope of the mountain. Most of the mortals were gathered around campfires, but a few armed men were watching over a sad and lonely group of about twenty that had been lashed together and were shivering in the dark.

“Come,” Topan said, “Bring the equipment.”

Groaning in agony, the mortals rose to follow him. They were all burdened down like mules. When he returned to the crosscut he found it empty except for Cicatrice and Winter.

“Though you are mortal scum,” Cicatrice said, “You know our ways, and some of you have proven useful. Other uses could be found for you with other masters. The Long Gift might still be yours one day. But that depends upon your answer to a simple question. You have all been ever-loyal to this woman. Some for decades, some for only a few months. So I understand it may be with varying degrees of difficulty that you answer: who among you will renounce her?”

The mortals looked to each other for answers like beaten curs. The head of the circle was the first to fall to his knees, though, and the others all quickly joined in, cursing Winter’s name and begging for forgiveness. Winter screamed all but soundlessly in impotent rage.

“Enough,” Cicatrice said finally, “Enough. Set about your work. Dawn is almost upon us.”

Cicatrice retreated from the minecart and joined Topan at the entrance to the crosscut. Even in their frigid, exhausted state the mortals scrambled like beavers to carry out Cicatrice’s punishment. They assembled the smelting furnace and brought it to a roaring heat – foolhardy work for the interior of a mine indeed. They wrapped sticks of dynamite and barrels of black powder around the crossbeams that held the mine up.

As it became clear what they were doing, Topan said, “Seems a shame to lose all the wealth of the mine.”

“You’d think so. It’s owned by a Signari, though.”

Topan grinned. Finally the mortals came to the conclusion of their tasks. One emptied a sack full of charnel soil over Winter, who sputtered such as she could with her mouth nailed shut. Through her nose she continued to condemn her treacherous circle and Cicatrice and all the world for all Topan could tell.

“The blood is the power…” Cicatrice said.

“…But the earth is the life. She’ll live then?”

“For ever and ever. Trapped at the bottom of a mine in a prison of gold.”

The mortals finished liquefying a small fortune in gold ore. With some difficulty because of her struggles, they filled the minecart with the scalding metal, sealing Winter away under a bed of native soil. Her struggles and contortions played out for a few moments in the liquid, a hypnotizing dance that Topan couldn’t rip his eyes away from. Then the liquid finally cooled and froze Winter in one last pose. The mortals struggled to tip the cart into the long shaft.

“Come,” Cicatrice said, pressing Topan’s shoulder.

As they left the crosscut, Cicatrice dumped the fuel from a lantern across the entrance to the crosscut, then smashed the lantern in the fuel. A small wall of flame licked up the crossbeams, threatening second by second to tickle the black powder and dynamite. They heard a cheer as presumably the cart finally tipped over, followed by screams as the mortals finally realized what was happening to them. Explosions ripped through the mountain as they emerged from the mine entrance.

“Why did you ask them to renounce Winter if you were going to kill them anyway?” Topan asked as they mounted their horses and joined the snaking line of immortals and their disciples ambling down the mountain.

“I wasn’t. I told them their fates depended on the answer to a question. They answered incorrectly.”

Topan thought for a moment.

“Loyalty.”

“Remember this day, my beloved get. Remember the wages of disloyalty.”

***

Cicatrice folded his hands in front of him. Price remained standing, too wary to sit.

“Shall I order you some tea? A speech therapist, perhaps?”

“The Hunter of the Dead has reappeared. In Las Vegas.” They waited in silence for a moment. “You’re not going to deny it?”

“I heard a rumor. I’m still trying to determine its accuracy.”

Price tossed his cell phone across the conference table. Cicatrice snatched it and glanced at it. The picture depicted a broken lance tip, coated with some supernatural black tar-like or oily substance. Cicatrice tossed the cell phone back onto the conference table.

“You have this…evidence?”

“I don’t. But I trust the people who showed it to me.”

“And what do you want from me exactly? We are sworn enemies, you and I.”

“There is a truce between House Cicatrice and the Inquisition. We don’t kill your kind and you don’t kill ours.”

“This ‘truce’ as you call it was bought through terror and intimidation. It is the not the foundation for an alliance. It is an understanding between enemies. A cold war, not a friendship.”

“It may be all we’ve got. There was a red telephone between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War. The Soviets and the Americans hated each other’s guts, but they figured out a way to stave off nuclear Armageddon together.”

“And you think the Hunter of the Dead is the mutually assured destruction that will make us strange bedfellows?”

“Perhaps.” Slowly, Price lowered himself into a seat. “Is he real?”

Cicatrice paused.

“Yes.

“Have you really seen him?”

“Yes. I’ve seen him.”

“Do you think he’s really back?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“What’s the other possibility?”

“A copycat. Perhaps an oldblood who’s gone off the reservation. Dresses up as a knight and starts killing immortals. There’s been rumors of a serial immortal killer in the community for some time now. It could all be an elaborate farce.”

“What if I told you he killed one of The Damned?”

“Not possible.”

“I don’t know how you can be certain about that…” Price started to say.

“I am.”

Price nodded.

“Well, if you really have access to The Damned and they’re not just some old legend like The Hunter, why don’t you go count them? Because I found a dead one last night. And hoofprints leading away from the scene.”

“You’re certain it was one of The Damned?”

“A lamprey-faced, ghoul-like monster with power that dwarfs even yours? Yeah. I’m pretty fucking sure I saw it. I’m pretty fucking sure I fought it and only got away by blowing up a gas station.”

Cicatrice leaned back in his chair.

“The Hunter is back. The Damned are stirring. Strange times we live in.”

“Yeah, strange days indeed, Jim. I want to propose that we work together to find The Hunter.”