“The stakes are questionable,” said Circe. “In most legends the vampire hunters use sharpened poles rather than stakes, and they don’t kill the vampire. The stake was used to hold the vampire down, pinning it to the ground or to its coffin, so that the full Ritual of Exorcism could be performed.”
“Dear God,” said Rudy, “what’s that?”
“They cut the vampire’s head off, fill its mouth with garlic, turn it backward in the coffin, then drive iron nails into the arms and legs of the vampire and rebury it. Or cremate it.”
“I’m here to tell you, Circe,” I said, “a bullet in the brainpan does a spiffy job of dropping your modern-day vampire.”
“I have found that a bullet in the brain works on
most
things,” Church said dryly, and I couldn’t argue with that.
“So, are we talking about something nonsupernatural?” asked Rudy. “If he could be shot and killed, doesn’t that mean—?”
“It means we know how to kill it,” said Church. “It doesn’t mean that we understand its nature.”
“Surely it’s more likely that this is some kind of genetic aberration,” insisted Rudy, “or at most an evolutionary sideline. We know that there were many kinds of human species evolving at once.”
“It’s very possible,” agreed Church. “And it’s the working premise I’ve maintained for many years. If these Upierczi are vampires, then we will want to ascertain whether that is a subspecies or separate species.”
“Wait, roll back a sec. You said ‘many years’?” I asked. “How long have you known about these Red Knights?”
He paused. “For quite a long time. I first encountered them in Europe, but that’s a story that we don’t have time for now, and it may not be relevant.”
“Getting back to the whole ‘stakes’ thing,” I said. “These jokers tried to use them on me.” I described the general size and design. “Each one has the same thing written on it. It’s Latin, so bear with me.” I pulled the stake from my belt. “
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium—
”
“Ah,” interrupted Circe, “it’s the prayer to Saint Michael created by Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. The whole translation is, ‘Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle, be our safeguard and protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil: May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.’” She paused. “An interesting choice, considering the scope of this situation.”
“Interesting in what way?” Rudy asked, beating me to the question.
“The archangel Michael has a dual nature. His name is a symbol of humility before God and at the same time he is regarded as the field commander of the Army of God.”
“Ah, so we’re talking
militant
psycho vampire hunters,” I said. “Groovy.”
Church added, “Michael is also one of the very few angels venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”
“Did Michael have problems with vampires? If so, I missed that in Sunday School.”
“Not likely,” answered Circe, “but as the leader of God’s army he would naturally be the enemy of all evil. Going on the assumption that vampires are evil.”
“The Red Knights get my vote for being evil. So are these vampire hunters,” I reminded her. “Krystos and his asswipes tortured innocent people and were quite willing to kill me. Oh, and here’s another thing to throw into the mix. Krystos said that he was with the Holy Inquisition. Even had their motto tattooed on his forearm.”
There was a silence.
“No,” I said, “that wasn’t a joke. Say something.”
“How does one respond to that? I … thought that had been disbanded a couple of hundred years ago,” said Rudy.
“Sure, and vampires were myths,” I pointed out.
“Ah,” he conceded.
“It’s always good to keep an open mind,” Church said quietly.
“Are we tracking any groups whose symbology includes a vampire motif?” I asked. “Some weird cult? Anything like that?”
“Only two,” said Church. “The Red Knights and another group that may be the same as your Inquisitors.”
“Let me guess … the Saturday People?”
“What?” asked Circe. “They’re
Sabbatarians
?”
I said, “According to Krystos.”
“Sabbatarians,” she repeated, “are people born on Saturday.”
“So what?” I asked. “So was my nephew. He doesn’t run around stabbing people with pointy sticks.”
“No, in folklore the Sabbatarians are monster hunters. The old beliefs come mostly from Greek legends, but it’s found in other places, too. People born on the Sabbath are supposed to have special powers. They can see evil spirits and they are empowered by God to oppose supernatural evil.”
“Were they connected with the Inquisition?”
“I can check, but I don’t know. That’s not to say they weren’t. We’re paving a lot of new ground here,” Circe admitted. “I have a colleague, Jonatha Corbiel-Newton, she’s probably the world’s top scholar on vampire legends. I’ll call her and pick her brain. Covertly, of course.”
Rudy sighed. “Until five minutes ago I thought we were looking for nuclear weapons. Now we’re hunting vampires.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “This is definitely one case, but don’t ask me how they relate. We came into this wa-a-a-y too late to make sense of it without a guidebook.”
“So it seems,” said Church. “Here’s the rest. Vox is definitely connected with this matter at several points. Some of that intel comes from a source connected to the woman, Violin. When you have more time I’ll give you a more complete briefing, but for the short term, Violin is considered a friendly.”
“She saved my life, so I’ve got some fuzzy bunny feelings for her.”
“She is part of a deep-cover special ops group operating independently of any government. Their code name is Arklight. They have no political or national affiliation and very few friends. Their story is a long and very sad one. If the situation requires it I’ll have Aunt Sallie give you a briefing. Their leader uses the code name Lilith. She’s fierce, highly dangerous. Underestimate her at your peril.” And then he filled me in on what he knew of the Red Order, the Scriptor, the Tariqa, the Murshid and, saving the best for last, he dropped the bomb about Nicodemus.
“That’s it,” I said. “I quit.”
Church ignored me. “A lot of what we know is in bits and pieces. Let me make some calls and see if I can get more useful information. In the meantime, Captain, get what you can get out of Krystos, but don’t take too long with it. You eliminated their team, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have backup. Unless Krystos has direct knowledge of the nukes, he is a distraction rather than a pathway to a solution. Find out what he knows and then get out of there. I’ll call around and when I can verify a genuinely safe safe house, I’ll text the information to you.”
“Good. Before I go … where are we on the flash drive and the nukes?”
Circe and Rudy gave me the bullet points of what they’d found. Church wrapped it up by saying that field agents were working to verify the four known targets, and to remind me that Echo Team was already inside Iran and heading my way.
“First good news I’ve had all day,” I said, and disconnected. I pocketed my phone and leaned against the wall for a moment.
“Vampires,” I said aloud. There was no doubt in my mind that, as Rudy observed, this was probably some freak of genetics. I believed in God, but, contrary to what Mr. Church said, I didn’t much believe in angels, demons, or monsters. Ghosts? Maybe. Vampires of the supernatural kind? Nope; and the word still didn’t fit right in my mouth.
Chapter Sixty-One
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 1:14 p.m.
When I came back to the living room, Ghost was standing over Krystos, growling right in the man’s face. Krystos cringed back as far as he could but he was trapped by a hundred pounds of furious canine.
“Down,” I snapped.
Ghost stopped growling but he held his ground, the hair standing stiff along his spine.
“Down!” I said again, but this time my tone was quiet. Ghost glared at me and uttered another low, threatening growl. There was no danger left anywhere else in the house. The growl was aimed at me.
“Down,” I repeated a third time, and after another moment of hesitation he lowered himself to the ground, but all of his muscles were tensed as if he was about to spring. I deliberately turned my back on him, the way a confident pack leader would. At the moment I wasn’t feeling all that confident. Dogs are smart, but when they’re hurt and confused their thinking can get dangerously skewed. From Ghost’s perspective, his pack leader was leading him into one painful situation after another.
Once more I squatted down in front of Krystos. I interrupted him in the middle of a prayer. His color was bad and he sat in a puddle of his own blood. I reached out and felt for Constantin’s pulse. He didn’t have one, and I felt a weird flash of irritation that he’d managed to duck out before we could have a meaningful chat.
Krystos watched me do it and read the news on my face. He closed his eyes for a moment and repeated the dead man’s name several times. Greasy sweat ran in rivulets down Krystos’s face.
I poked him on the forehead with a stiffened finger. “Pay attention, sparky.”
“I am praying for the dead!” he snapped.
“Did you pray for the people upstairs?” I snarled.
He faltered. “Yes. I … I mean that the others would have done this.”
“Before or after they tore out their fingernails?”
He looked at me with eyes that were glassy and bright. “They are the enemies of God!”
It was so hard not to yell back, to try and shout him down and make him understand that nobody’s God orders something like this. I wanted to make my case; I wanted to knock some sense into him. But—really, what would be the point? How could I ever make someone like him budge from an entrenched stance that was hundreds of years in the making and backed by a papal order? This wasn’t one of those debates where I could slide around to try to see things from his perspective. As the saying goes, that way lies madness.
The rage was hard to keep in its box, though. It burned in my mouth and in muscles, and it tingled like electricity in the dangerous tips of my fingers. When I trusted myself to speak normally, I asked, “Who told you I would be coming here?”
“I—I don’t know,” he said. “We got a call. My team was ordered to come here to do God’s work and—”
“Who made the call?”
“I don’t know.”
I searched his face for the lie but I think he was too scared to pull any new stunts on me, and unfortunately that meant that he was probably no more than a grunt. A foot soldier in a war that was out of step with reality and with my real mission. The nukes.
“How many more of you are there?”
His mouth tightened with either pride or defiance. “Enough.”
“Don’t get cute with me.”
“We are the Army of God,” he declared. “We will never stop hunting. We will never cease in our war.”
He said all that in awkward, broken English, but I got the point. I wasn’t impressed.
“All of this is because you want to rid the world of vampires?”
“No—not that. That is not our mission. We want to save the world from the Upierczi.”
“Upierczi? That’s another word for vampire, right? So, with all that’s going on in the world—wars, poverty, religious intolerance, disease—you ‘priests’ spend your time and resources hunting vamps?”
“Yes.”
“
Why?
” I demanded. “’Cause right now I’m thinking you psychopaths have done a lot more harm to the world. What makes you better than them?”
His face took on a contemptuous cast and with an imperious tone, he said, “We fight to save the world. They want to destroy it.”
“And how do they plan to do that?”
“They want to blow it up.”
I sat back on my heels and stared at him. Again he read my expression and he nodded.
“The Upierczi have hidden for centuries,” he said. “Now they are in the light. Now they attack openly. They have great weapons. Why else do you think they would reveal themselves to the world?”
“What do you mean by ‘great weapons’?”
“Great,” he repeated, letting me take the obvious definition from that.
Oh shit.
“How do you know this? Are you working for Rasouli?”
He looked blank.
“Hugo Vox?”
Krystos shook his head. “I do not know these names.”
“Who sent you here?”
“A priest of our church. He will know what you have done here. He will call down the wrath of the Almighty on you.”
His accent was atrocious but his message was clear enough; but I wasn’t buying. I’m pretty sure I could handle myself against a priest.
“I’ll take my chances,” I told him, but he sneered.
“Father Nicodemus will lay waste to your world. He has promised this!”
That, I thought, was mighty damn interesting, and it made me wonder whose side Nicodemus was on. There was Nicodemus with the Seven Kings last year. Nicodemus with the Red Order, and now Nicodemus with the Sabbatarians who were clearly enemies of the knights employed by the Red Order.
Who in hell was Nicodemus?
I left the room once more to call this in to Church, but got Aunt Sallie.
“What the fuck are you still doing at that house?” she bellowed.
“Trading Pokémon cards with the vampire hunters.”
“Why are you calling?”
When I told her about Nicodemus, Auntie shut up for a moment, then said, very grudgingly, “Good work. Now get out of there.”
“I wish I could spend some more quality time with this clown to see what else I can get.”
“If wishes were horses,” she said.
“Yeah. Tell you what, Auntie, much as it sounds goofy to say out loud, I think we need to take a look at this from the vampire doomsday perspective. I’m starting to think that maybe the Red Knights have the nukes.”
“We will, but I doubt whether your friend Krystos had that right. Circe and Dr. Sanchez have forwarded the idea of a doomsday cult.”