Kardinal (7 page)

PART THREE.
POWER.

Poienari Castle, Wallachia, Romania – December 1476

SIMEON of Tălmaciu nervously opened the door to Vlad’s bedchamber.

He peeked inside, and what he saw almost made him faint. He had to sit on the trunk he’d only moments before dragged out of the room.

He had been told to take the trunk to Bucharest, seventy-five miles away, where his Nebuchadnezzar brother, Prince Mehmed, waited for him with the Ottoman army. Mehmed would return the chest’s contents to the East, to Constantinople. The prince was not really an Ottoman. No more than Simeon was truly Christian and European. They were both descended from King Nebuchadnezzar. They both strove to bring Babylon back. Babylon and her vampires. Mehmed had once told him, “We are not Christian, we are not Jews, we are not Mussulmen.”

They weren’t. They were none of those religions. They were of an older religion. A religion born in the bowels of Babylon thousands of years before Christ. The most powerful faith in history.

“Go,” Simeon’s mistress had told him. “Go and find Mehmed, and keep the chest safe.”

And then his mistress had faced Vlad the Impaler, enemy of all vampires, killer of the living and the dead. The voivode had murdered Simeon’s father months earlier. Impaled him as he’d impaled the vampires. Left him alive with a post driven into his bowels. Left him alive to rot and have his eyes plucked out by the crows. It took days for his father to die, and every second was agony. Simeon craved revenge, and his mistress would be his sword.

His mistress Ereshkigal.

The ancient witch.

One of Nimrod’s hundred brides.

The oldest vampire in the world.

Five thousand years old.

A beautiful monster.

Simeon’s father, whose cover was as priest of Tălmaciu, had been so close to resurrecting the trinity.

But Vlad, the Wallachian prince, had been at war with the Nebuchadnezzars and their vampires allies for decades. He had harried them and murdered them. He was a dangerous man who showed very little fear and no mercy.

Forests of stakes had dotted Wallachia.

Screams filled the mountains.

Death saturated the air.

Vlad would impale the vampires, but not through the heart. They would be alive and pinned to the tall, wooden poles through their bellies. They could not escape. They writhed in agony and terror, waiting for dawn to come. Waiting for the sun to fry them alive. The Wallachian mass murderer had done the same to Simeon’s father. Driven a sharpened post up into him. Simeon could still hear his father’s dreadful shriek as the stake pierced him.

After a moment sitting on the trunk, he now stepped into Vlad’s bedchamber.

The voivode lay dead, an arrow wound in his chest.

Ereshkigal’s remains were scattered on the stone floor.

She was dust.

Simeon cried out.

He raced to the window and stared out. Down in the valley near the River Arges, Vlad’s army was camped.

A man with a longbow strapped across his back trudged down the gorge towards the camp.

Simeon looked at Vlad’s body.

The archer walking down to the valley must have fired, aiming to kill Ereshkigal. But he’d also struck his own master.

Simeon wanted to laugh at the archer, wanted to mock him.

But he needed to stay alive and not draw attention to himself.

He needed to gather his mistress’s remains.

Hurriedly, he found a clay jar. He tossed out the contents. They were trinkets – rings, bracelets, necklaces.

Simeon carefully swept up Ereshkigal’s ashes. She was dirt now. But he knew she could be resurrected. The trinity had only been fragments. However, the right conditions allowed you to bring such immortals back to life.

And he would bring Ereshkigal back to life.

He found a donkey and cart in the stables.

He loaded up the trunk, which carried the Spear of Abraham, on the cart. He kept the jar containing his mistress’s remains under his cloak.

Simeon rode out and began the dangerous journey to Bucharest.

Tălmaciu – March 1497

SIMEON enjoyed torturing people. He found he was good at it. It made him feel powerful. That was important for such a weak man. He spent half a day on inflicting pain, and that was after telling his victim what his or her fate would be. That always made their suffering much worse. That made his joy greater. It filled him with strength, as if he were feeding off the sufferer’s dread.

The man suspended above the cellar floor screamed.

“Please,” he begged. “I have gold – I have silver – I have a daughter – you can have her – she is ten – please don’t do this to me – I shall burn in hell – ”

Simeon dragged the coffin across the stone floor and placed it directly beneath the man, who screamed and bellowed when he saw its content. The noises he made did not sound human. His struggles increased. Simeon had tied him to a scaffold. Leather straps bound the man’s wrists and ankles. He was stretched in a star fashion, facing down. He was about five feet above the coffin.

He was shrieking now: “Please – No! – In the name of God – In the name of Jesus and his Holy Mother – ”

Simeon had found him at the inn down in the village. He was drunk and clearly a sodomite. He made lewd suggestions to Simeon, who had used the man’s lust to tempt him outside.

Once in the dark street, Simeon had clubbed him across the back of the head. He had hefted the man’s body onto the cart, and hen whipped the donkey along the narrow road that led from town, through the forest, to the ruins of the church where Simeon’s father had been captured and murdered by Vlad Tepes.

For months, he had lived in the bowels of the church. It had been where his father had tried to resurrect the vampire trinity. It was where he would resurrect Ereshkigal.

After he left Vlad’s fortress, he had travelled to Bucharest. He made it to Mehmed’s camp and gave him the spear.

Mehmed had promised to return it to Constantinople. He had offered to take Simeon with him. But he’d declined the offer, saying he had duties in Romania. And when he had told Mehmed what they were, the prince had baulked.

“Do not bring her back,” he had warned Simeon, his eyes wide with fear. “She is death.”

“She is beautiful, and she killed The Impaler.”

“Good,” said Mehmed. “She has been useful. But the brides of Nimrod, like Nimrod himself, cannot be controlled by men. They are
not
the trinity. Our duties, as Nebuchadnezzars, lie with Kea, Kakash, and Kasdeja. That is our pledge, Brother Simeon. Nimrod and his witch wives are better off dead. They are not beholden to us. Do not give this creature life again.”

Simeon promised he would heed Mehmed’s warning.

But he hadn’t. He wanted to see Ereshkigal again. He wanted to worship her. And he wanted, as Vlad had done, to make love to her undead flesh.

“What is that creature?” cried the man on the scaffold now. “What are you doing to me?”

Simeon looked into the casket and gazed at what had terrified the fellow.

Ereshkigal was coming to life.

She looked haggard and ancient. A cadaver. Her skin was like leather, wrinkled and thin. Her body was emaciated, her face gaunt. You would not say by looking at her that she was a beauty. But she would be when she had been nourished. And Simeon was sure that the blood of this man would be enough to give her life.

During the past few weeks, he had brought six victims here and bled them into Ereshkigal’s ashes – and with each sacrifice, she became more formed. Simeon felt like God, making life out of clay.

He was so excited. He was erect beneath his cowl – erect for her, his dead queen.

He took the knife, and the man on the scaffold squealed.

Simeon gutted him.

The man howled. His innards spooled out of his belly.

Blood and slime gushed out.

The gore splashed over Ereshkigal’s remains.

The opened man bellowed and twitched.

Simeon then sliced him from throat to sternum, sawing through bone, which splintered and cracked.

The man jerked.

Blood rained.

The man died with a terrible noise coming from his throat.

Simeon snapped open his ribcage.

He clawed out the man’s heart and lungs, slopping them into the coffin.

Ereshkigal’s remains hissed.

Smoke rose from her cadaver.

Simeon stepped back.

The smell was terrible.

Steam filled the cellar.

Simeon retched.

And then he froze.

She reared up out of the smoke.

More beautiful than she had ever been.

She was naked and pale. Her black hair streamed over her shoulders. Her eyes burned red.

She opened her mouth. Her fangs were sharp.

Simeon fell to his knees, jabbering.

He was shaking with awe.

Ereshkigal floated up out of the coffin and slowly hovered down towards Simeon.

She clutched the red rag around his throat, the mark of the Nebuchadnezzars, protection against vampires.

Her voice was like a snake’s.

“Do you think this protects you from me?”

“I am your servant, Simeon,” he cried. “Do you remember me, my queen?”

He stared at her naked body. He was shaking with desire.

She tipped his chin back with her finger.

“Oh my queen,” he gasped.

She grinned at him, showing her deadly teeth.

“Shall I kiss you, Simeon?”

“Oh… kiss me, my queen.”

“If I do, you shall die. Shall I kiss you? Or will you live and be the eunuch in my court?”

He groaned.

“Choose, or I shall kill you,” she said.

He chose.

And he shrieked when she gelded him.

Tălmaciu – 12.15am (GMT + 2 hours), 18 May, 2011

LAWTON reeled, his head spinning. Every drop of strength he had seemed to leach out of his body. He suddenly felt weak in the woman’s presence.

“Five hundred years,” she said. Her eyes flashed. She hissed out a breath and it was putrid.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The woman didn’t answer. She was staring goggle eyed at the Spear of Abraham.

“How did you come by this?” she asked.

“I asked you who you were.”

She looked him in the eye. “Ereshkigal.
Mireasă de Nimrod
.”

Lawton furrowed his brow. “What?”

She shook her head as if she’d forgotten herself by speaking Romanian instead of English. “Bride of Nimrod.”

Lawton’s nerves fizzed.

“Where did you come by the spear?” she said again.

He didn’t answer. He was trying to regain control of his senses, trying to find his strength again. Slowly, it was returning.

The woman’s hand shot out, and she laid it flat against Lawton’s chest.

He stiffened. It felt as if pulses of electricity were passing from her palm into his body. He could have easily retreated, but he stayed put, not wanting to show any weakness. He had a feeling such a revelation would put him in danger.

“I can feel your heart,” she said. She panted, her lips partly open. Her tongue slithered across her lips.

Lawton’s defences were crumbling again. He had faced this temptation before. Three years ago, he had been forced to kill his ex-girlfriend Jenna McCall after she became a vampire. When she’d first appeared to him as an undead, Jenna had demanded he give her blood – or she would go out and kill. Lawton
had given in, and she’d fed from him, taking enough blood to survive, but not too much so as to kill Jake. She had mocked him, and he’d felt weak after she’d fed. But days later, he’d killed her. And he’d not hesitated. He did not shirk either when it came to crafting the death of another woman he loved when she’d returned from the dead. Sassie Rae had died at the Religion nightclub when Lawton and his companions prevented the Nebuchadnezzars from unleashing the vampire god, Kea, on London. After coming back to life, Sassie had hunted him down, and he’d watched as Aaliyah drove a stake through her heart.

He had the measure of vampires, even if he had loved them when they were human.

Or he thought he did.

This one was different.

She had power. Real power.

Vampires might be dangerous. They might be terrifying to most people. But they never conjured feelings of awe. Certainly not in Lawton.

But for some reason, that was exactly what he felt standing in front of Ereshkigal.

He sensed she was the most dangerous thing he’d ever met.

Her hand became a claw on his chest, and her long nails dug into his skin.

He gritted his teeth.

He gripped the spear.

He could have rammed it up into her chest.

She might have been quick enough to avoid his attack.

But he decided not to test her.

“You like pain,” she said.

“I try to avoid it.”

“You reek of it.”

“I should get a better deodorant.”

“Or let me heal it.”

She stepped towards him, her face turned upwards to stare into his. Her breath was on his skin. Her teeth flashed white and sharp, inches from his throat. Heat rose from her body. It warmed Lawton. Her hair smelled of roses. Her flesh smelled of
death.

Thorns
, thought Lawton.
She is thorns
.

“Your eye,” she said. “What is behind your patch?”

“Why are you close to me? If you are what you are, then you should be scared of this,” and he removed the patch to reveal the red skin of the ancient vampires encased in the glass eye.

Ereshkigal did not flinch.

“The mark of the Nebuchadnezzars,” she said. “You are one of them. A servant of my Lord’s offspring?”

He said nothing.

“Another Simeon for me,” she said.

“This doesn’t make you flinch? You’re not throwing a hissy fit.”

“A what?”

“Forget it. It doesn’t frighten you?”

“I am Ereshkigal. I am of Nimrod, not of his offspring. I watched him tear them from his chest. I saw him birth them, his children. I was there when they began. I gave them freedom when the prophet of Yahweh stole into Irkalla, killed my sisters – and buried my Lord.”

Her anger was mounting.

“And these,” she said, gripping both ends of the Spear of Abraham, “these the prophet of God tore from my husband’s head.”

Lawton finally shoved her away. She hissed. He quickly pulled the spear apart to make two swords.

“How did you come by it?” demanded Ereshkigal again, crouching like a panther. “I sent it back to the east. I sent it with Nebuchadnezzars returning home after a war with Vlad Tepes. How did you come by it?”

“I won it in a raffle,” he said.

She cocked her head. “Who are you? Are you a
voivode
? I sense pain in you, but I also sense… power. Are you a Nebuchadnezzar?”

He paused before saying, “I kill Nebuchadnezzars – and I kill your kind. And I’m going to kill your husband, too, if I ever find him.”

She straightened. “You are going to find Nimrod?”

“If I can.”

“Take me with you.”

He creased his brow. “What?”

“Take me home to Babylon.”

“I’m going to kill him, and you want to come with me?”

“I can gain you entry – I can protect you.”

“Why would you protect me?”

“Because you are taking me home.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But,” said Lawton, realizing that she wasn’t as powerful as she seemed, “without me, you are trapped here – for eternity.”

She shuddered.

“Give me blood,” she said.

Lawton raised his eyebrows.

“A few drops. I won’t kill you. I need you if I am going home. I’ve not fed in 500 years.”

“Five hundred years?” he said. “I thought you could only live three days without it.”

“Your experience of my kind has been limited to lower creatures. I am not a lower creature.”

She moved closer again and touched his brow with her cold hand. “Your blood, here, where your eye is red – there is something inside that is different. There is something alive in you that isn’t of you.”

He gently eased her hand away. “Can you take me to Nimrod?”

“After blood.”

When he’d given Jenna his blood, he’d felt weak. Now he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. He faced a long journey. He faced a dangerous one. Enemies hunted him. He was becoming paranoid, and needed to be alert.

“Blood,“ she said, throwing herself against him. “Blood, now.”

He dropped the swords and gripped her arms. He wanted her, this undead thing. This witch. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He twisted her around, aiming to toss her on the floor and mount her.

But he managed to control himself again and shoved her away.

“No,” he said. “No.”

But she flung herself back at him, sailing through the air as if on wings, and crashed into him, sending him staggering backwards.