Department 19: The Rising (27 page)

Latour looked at Dante, then back at Frankenstein. His face wore a look of confusion, and a conflict of loyalty was evident in his eyes.

“W-why would you want to hurt me, Pierre?” asked the girl, tears now flowing down her face. “What d-did I ever d-do to you?”

Lord Dante leapt to his feet, so quickly that it was impossible to see the movement. His eyes burst crimson, and he swept the glasses, bottles, china plates and silver cutlery from the table, where they crashed against one of the red walls.

“Enough!” he screamed, his voice high and furious. “That is more than enough! I am Dante Valeriano, the vampire king of Paris, and I have never heard of this man you are mistaking me for. Now kill her, Latour – I command you to kill her!”

Latour didn’t move.

He was staring at Frankenstein, a pleading look on his face. The monster realised that everyone around the table was looking at him, that the authority in the room was shifting away from the vampire king. Dante followed the gazes of his guests, and realised it too.

“You doubt me, Frankenstein?” he asked, his voice full of menace. “After all the time we have spent in each other’s company, you doubt me?”

The monster ignored him, and stared around at his guests.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice like rumbling boulders. “How long have any of you ladies and gentlemen actually known our illustrious host?”

The cowed man, the husband of the white-faced woman, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and looked at Frankenstein.

“Well, sir,” he said, nervously. “Of course we have only had the pleasure of Lord Dante’s presence among us these last ten years or so. It is common knowledge that before that he was in seclusion, avoiding the Tartars who had been sent to bring his head to Moscow.”

He smiled, like a schoolboy who is relieved to have been asked a question to which he knows the answer. Frankenstein thanked
him, then turned a gaze of utter contempt towards Dante, who visibly recoiled.

“You mongrel,” growled the vampire king. “You dare doubt that I am who—”

“I dare,” interrupted Frankenstein, pushing his chair backwards and rising to his full, towering height. “I doubt you,
my lord
. I have seen better fakers and far better liars than you this past century, and
I doubt you
. I call you Pierre Depuis, of Saint-Denis. I call you a fraud.”

“Kill him!” shrieked Dante. “Kill them both, and bring me their lying tongues on—”

Thunk.

Dante’s eyes widened. He looked at Frankenstein, then followed his gaze down to the monster’s outstretched arm. The pale grey-green hand at the end of it was gripping the handle of the heavy
kukri
knife the monster always wore on his belt. The thick, heavy silver blade was buried up to the hilt in the vampire king’s chest, pinning him solid to the wall behind him. Frankenstein had moved so quickly that nobody had realised what was happening until it was already done.

Dante reached out a trembling hand towards the monster, then watched with uncomprehending horror as it began to dissolve before his eyes, falling apart into wet chunks of scarlet flesh that pattered on to the table. Then, just as quickly, it began to regrow, new muscle knitting, new skin bursting into place. As it did so, his neck began to slide apart, then stopped, and repaired as his arm had done. A thick gout of blood exploded from the vampire king’s chest, then was stilled. Dante’s face began to melt into blood, then solidified, then melted, then solidified, as he stared down at the blade that had crunched through the centre of his heart.

For a moment, the dining room was utterly still. Then the white-faced woman shrieked, and the vampire guests leapt back from their chairs, their eyes flooding red, their fangs bursting into view. Latour stood, frozen to the spot, staring at the stricken vampire king.

Frankenstein didn’t wait.

He leapt over the table towards the long-haired man, his vast size driving the vampire back against the wall. Without looking, he reached out, grabbed the white face of the woman and smashed her head against the wall. She went to the floor, blood spraying from the holes her fangs had punched in her own lips. Frankenstein kicked out to his right, connecting solidly with the woman’s partner and sending him sprawling. Before either had a chance to get back to their feet, he pulled a short dagger from inside his waistcoat and plunged it into the long-haired vampire’s chest.

The vampire exploded, soaking Frankenstein from head to toe in steaming gore. He turned away, appearing not to notice. The side door to the dining room crashed open, and Jacques stepped through it, his eyes blazing, drawn by the pungent scent of fresh blood. He stopped dead in his tracks, staring at his master; it gave Frankenstein all the time he needed. He thrust the dagger into the waiter’s back, and was moving again as the servant exploded, showering his gaping master with blood.

He advanced on the white-faced woman, who was hauling herself to her feet. She raised her hands to protect herself as Frankenstein, a giant blood-soaked nightmare, bore down on her. The dagger went clean through her left palm, pushing the hand backwards as it thudded into her chest, cleaving her heart in two. She burst like a balloon, but Frankenstein was already moving again, and the blood splashed across his broad back. The woman’s husband was backing away, an apologetic look on his face, his hands out in placation.

“Please,” he said. “Please don’t. I’ll leave, I’ll—”

What he was offering to do, Frankenstein would never know. The dagger flashed out for a fourth time, and a millisecond later a final eruption of blood soaked the dining room. The four vampires had been destroyed in less than ten seconds, and their destroyer whirled to face the head of the table, where Dante was still gasping incredulously at the injury that had been done to him, where both the girl and Latour were staring at him with frozen horror.

“We must go, Latour,” said Frankenstein. “Right now.”

Latour glanced at Lord Dante. The fraudulent vampire king was staring in horror, as his body threatened to dissolve then healed, over and over again.

“What have you done to him?” whispered Latour. “What dark magic is this?”

“I don’t know,” replied Frankenstein. “Nor do I care. Take hold of the girl, and let us leave, while we are able to do so.”

Latour’s gaze flicked between the girl, Dante and Frankenstein. His face was a mask of torment.

“Last chance, my friend,” said Frankenstein. “Are you coming or not?”

Latour said nothing, but a look of terrible shame passed across his face.

It was all Frankenstein needed to see. He stepped forward quickly and grabbed the blonde girl. She cried out as his mottled fingers closed round her forearm, but when he hauled her towards the door, she went willingly. He paused for a moment, placing his ear to the door, then pushed it open. He cast a final look back into the blood-soaked room, and saw Dante staring at him, a wide-eyed expression of utter outrage on his face. Then he was gone, pulling the girl behind him.

The following morning, Frankenstein stood outside an elegant stone building on Rue Scribe, and took a deep breath.

He had dragged the unprotesting girl, whose name he eventually discovered was Daphne, through the theatre of La Fraternité de la Nuit, without attracting so much as a glance from the assembled vampires; the destruction of Babineaux had thinned the crowd, and those that remained were focused on the stage, where two female vampires were deflowering an adolescent boy.

Frankenstein had pushed through the foyer, abandoning his overcoat, and out into the Paris night. Only once they were clear of the theatre, and had attained some measure of safety, did Daphne begin to cry. Tears spilled from her eyes, and her legs gave way beneath her; she would have fallen had Frankenstein not caught her by the waist. He had taken her to a small hotel on Rue Saint-Claude, and coaxed her gently on to the bed. She had lain awake for a long time, staring at him, but thankfully she had been unwilling, or unable, to ask any questions.

He had no answers for her.

Eventually, she slept. Frankenstein stared out of the hotel room’s window, and as he watched the sun rising to the east, he made a decision.

For as long as he could remember, he had considered himself worthless. The circumstances of his birth, the recycled nature of his very body, had made it an easy conclusion to reach, and what he had done to Victor Frankenstein, the man whom he had eventually come to recognise as his father in every way apart from the biological, whose name he had ultimately taken in a belated attempt to honour the dead man, had confirmed it.

He had intended to die in the Arctic, had believed he deserved to, was looking forward to welcoming the end. But a Norwegian
explorer vessel had denied him even that most fundamental of rights, the right to end one’s own life. He had been suffering from advanced hypothermia when they found him, and had been unable to articulate that he did not want, or deserve, their assistance. Instead, they had nursed him back to health, and several months later, his recuperation complete, he had arrived in Paris.

The pleasures of the night came easily to him because he believed, deep inside his tortured soul, that he was less than human, and therefore that human morals and human decency need not apply to him. He had done terrible things in the decade he had spent in the French capital, under the cover of darkness, and the long shadow of war. In Latour he had found someone similarly unburdened by guilt, or by conscience, and they had indulged the very worst of themselves, together. And when the doubts came, as they occasionally did in the dead of the night, as he was washing blood from his hands or shivering through an opiate haze, he pushed them away. He would not listen; doubts were for the good, for the human.

He did not deserve them.

But something had happened in the Fraternité’s dining room; he had felt something change within himself. He did not know if it was the brazen, pathetic nature of Dante’s deception, or the revulsion he felt towards the pathetic, cloying sycophants the fraudulent king surrounded himself with, but when Daphne had been brought into the room, he had felt something more clearly and powerfully than anything he could remember.

He had felt guilt.

Guilt that he was a part of the dark underbelly of Paris in which girls like this were tortured and murdered, guilt that he was standing of his own free will in a club where torture and evisceration were viewed as entertainment, night after night, victim after victim. Guilt
that he had let weakness and self-pity determine the path his life had taken, when he could have used the curiosities of his condition, his incredible strength and stamina, his immortality, for the good of others, rather than in the service of his own worst desires. And guilt over the things he had done, with his own two hands, things he now resolved to never speak of again, providing he survived the next night.

He knew Dante’s men would come looking for him as soon as the sun set, but felt no fear. Saving one girl did not begin to atone for the hundreds he had failed to save, for the ones he himself had helped on their way to the next life, for the harm he had done and the pleasure he had taken in it. But if it was the last thing he did, if it turned out to be the final deed of his long life, he believed he could be content.

But as he stared towards the east, he realised that he was lying to himself.

He
wasn’t
content for this to be his end; moreover, he would not permit it to be. He was suddenly full of a fire he had not felt in many decades, as if his soul had been pulled from his body and held up to the sun, cleansing it and filling him with a righteousness he would not have believed he was capable of.

He would atone for the evil he had done.

Even if it took him until the end of eternity.