HAPTER SIX
The undercrofts smelled terrible, Will decided. He followed Amy like a puppy, hoping she wouldn’t get them all killed. There was a resolution in her movements that was almost out of control, and he figured that’s why Ryder had sent him along. More to make sure she didn’t start randomly murdering monks, to keep an eye on her. I’m playing babysitter, he realized, and wondered whether or not that should flatter her. It was definitely a testament to how much faith Ryder had placed in him. But he wondered if that faith weren’t misplaced. The warrior-woman who marched ahead of him, leading with her forward as if she might crash through a door, scared him on some level that he figured was left over from being human.
“I think we should slow down,” he would say, and she would simply turn, as if to answer him, and then ignore him completely and take a left down another corridor. Or we can just keep going. He slumped his shoulders.
After about fifteen minutes of sneaking around the hallways and dodging the occasional monk who was deep in meditation or muttering prayers under their breath, they found their way to one of the eastern sides of the monastery. Here the masonry was older, more archaic and smelled of mold and too many years. The light was darker here too, and he felt his Changed vampire vision come in handy as he plowed through the dim ambiance, barely able to keep up with Amy. It wasn’t like he couldn’t understand her impatience but all the same.
And then, almost by accident, they’d stumbled upon a group of the cloaked figures—Amy had disappeared into the shadows, hiding in plain sight but he had had only a moment’s notice to jump toward one of the walls, spring off it, and climbing up against one of the arches. His strong Changed vampire muscles groaned as he supported himself like a spider in the darkness above while black robed monks holding torches led two others between them.
He didn’t even need to see them to know they were Ryder and Lisa. What the hell is going on? he thought, after they had passed and he had plummeted to the stone floor quiet as a falling leaf on water. Amy appeared, as if by magic, from the nearby corridor.
“That didn’t look like a friendly tour,” Will reflected.
Amy shook her head. “No, it didn’t. They’re heading toward the dungeons or what I think are the dungeons, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here and even then I didn’t see very much. It’s hard to remember.”
“We should follow them… looks like Ryder and Lisa need help.” Will made to leave, and then turned, his brow raising under the mantle of his dusty brown hair when he saw Amy’s mouth curl up as she looked back the way they’d come. “Problem?”
“Lots of them,” Amy gave him a snarky expression.
“Aside from the obvious. They’re coming from the Friar’s alcove, if I remember these tunnels correct. You think Lisa and Ryder were prowling around his office? Sounds like something Ryder would do.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “They got caught.”
“Right.” Will slapped his chest. “Well let’s go undertake some dashing heroics, then.”
Amy stopped. “You go… you’re better at hide-and-go seek then I was willing to give you credit for. You should have no problem handling it on your own.” Her tone was cold but Will sensed it wasn’t directed at him. It was just a general aura of contempt around her, barely held in.
“Oh no, Ryder told me to keep an eye on you.” Will shook his head. “Where do you think you’re going? We shouldn’t split up.”
Amy growled, her lips flensing back over those sharp teeth, and her fangs grew just enough to let him know he was treading thin ice. “Go, I’ll catch up with you later. I have unfinished business with the Friar,” she hissed at him.
“The Friar is close to an elder as any of us. You really think you can go up against him? Think, Amy. We should find Lisa and Ryder first, and then we can try and go after the Friar. There’s still too much we don’t know.”
“He betrayed me!” she said, too loudly. Her voice seemed to echo into the stone rafters and Will held out both his hands and looked up, as if her voice were a scurry of bats flapping above them. “He betrayed me,” she said more softly. “I need to know why. And I intend to figure it out. You can go and get the others, it’s good that you do but I have to do this. Don’t try and stop me.”
Will could tell there was no arguing with her, and if he tried he’d end up in a fight. Still, he could see that Amy wasn’t thinking clearly, despite her apparent calmness. She’s hurt, he thought. And she was looking for anything—anyone—to take it out on. The best strategy would be to hurry off and free Ryder, then at least they could give her back up. He opened his mouth to try and voice his plan but she had already taken off, entering the shadows like liquid.
He swore and turned back, jogging down the dark tunnels. He was keenly aware of the torches again when he came around a corner, and slid into a smaller alcove. The skinny monk who had driven them to the Tour du Sang from the airport, and the one who had shown them to the dormitories, led the way. He looked more sinister now with his cowl and his eyes flashing underneath, and Will tried not to breathe as the caravan of figures passed by.
Creepy bastards, he thought, and kept walking. Soon the roof leveled out and there were two more candles that illuminated a semicircular prison cell. He knew instinctively that Lisa and Ryder were inside, and he creeped up, wary of any other possible guards that might’ve been lying in wait, he looked in and saw them curled up against each other on the straw.
“Aherm,” he said, clearing his throat.
Lisa flinched on Ryder’s chest, and reached for her glasses beside her, sitting upright but Ryder merely opened his eyes slyly at his protégé. “Took you long enough,” the vampire patron said. “Did you get lost or something?”
Will grinned and looked at the lock. “Just giving you two a chance for romance,” he murmured, and looked around, located an iron fire poker against the wall, and hefted it. It was sturdy enough. He returned and slipped it against the old-fashioned lock. “Thought I would take a leisurely stroll, get some history lessons. You know the drill.”
“Where’s Amy?” Ryder said sharply, standing up.
Will flinched. “Ah, yeah, about that. We witnessed the monks leading you away, and she went a bit loco, I think she’s been taking the whole thing a bit personally, what with Courson more or less being…”
“Yeah,” Ryder agreed.
The Changed levered down hard on the lock and it split apart with the ringing of metal. Lisa stepped out with Ryder and brushed hair out of her face. The smell of fresh cut hay seemed to linger in the whole room, and she adjusted her glasses.
“You look… different,” Will said to her, tossing the fire poker to one side.
She looked up at him and blushed. “Different?”
All he did was shrug. “I dunno, more comfortable. Like this is just another day, sort of deal. Maybe it’s Amy’s clothes on you, makes you look like a badass.” He turned to Ryder. “So what’s our next move, exactly?”
“I don’t know about that,” Lisa said, exchanging a look with Ryder, “more like I don’t really have a choice in the matter, so you just… adapt. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though. We found information in the Friar’s private quarters… assassination writs, in some ancient Cyrillic alphabet.”
“He more or less confessed to being a member of some brotherhood that has been influencing history from behind the curtains for a very, very long time,” Ryder brushed the dust off his shirt. The fine grey fabric of the sleeve had ripped at one corner, most likely when they’d been harangued and escorted to the cell by the other monks.
“So that’s why he had you two imprisoned.” Will nodded and shrugged toward the tunnel again as they followed after him. “Far be it from me to question the motives of individuals who think they’re the end all and be all of the vampire nation… but… it does beg the question.”
“How so?” Ryder said, shepherding Lisa in front of him. She was still half-blind in the dark tunnel, and at least between the two vampires they could guide her if she slipped or if they ran into more trouble.
“I mean, why? Why go to all this trouble? What are they hoping to accomplish anyway, by picking off members of the vampire leadership?”
“I can answer that,” Lisa said, “and Courson more or less divulged it, as well. They seem to be following some sort of moral conduct. However misguided, they believe they’re bringing balance to the world by eliminating those who would otherwise stand against them. It’s a flawless and tidy little logic loop.”
“Still alarming,” Will huffed, taking a sharp right down another corridor.
Lisa wasn’t sure if Will knew where he was going as they dodged up and down stairs and through secret passages that seemed to appear out of nowhere. In no time she had been turned around, and it felt as though they were going in circles, yet Ryder didn’t make a sound. If anything, he trusted his Changed friend completely.
Finally he slowed down, and Lisa caught her breath, bending over and putting her hands on the ripped knees of her black oily jeans. “Listen,” he said, and Lisa and Ryder both stooped and held their breaths, craning their ears.
At first there was nothing, just the sound of dust settling, ubiquitous. Her own heart beat against her ribs, and she hoped that the heightened senses of the vampires couldn’t pick it up. Then she heard it, sharp and distant, like something bottled. Muted.
It sounded like metal, a scuffle. Then a man’s scream, still far off.
“Amy,” Ryder said.
They both wordlessly took off at a jog, aiming for the reflected clash of a struggle that echoed off the stone walls, disrupting its localization. The sound got louder, and they came down another set of stairs into an open chamber. Amy was at the far end, and had what looked like a dusty sword covered in cobwebs. She raised it up against her head, and blocked another sword that came crashing down, wielded by one of the anonymous black monks.
There were three of them, but one was crumpled against the wall and holding his wrist which hung at an oblique angle. Ryder noticed that it was nearly severed, and perceived a look of frightened pain in the vampire’s face. If someone sewed it back together, it might reattach, he thought. But he doubted Amy would give them the chance.
“Yo!” Will shouted, sprinting forward with inhuman speed. He reached low, picking up what looked like a broken piece of a shattered pew, one of many that faced toward the back end of the room—Lisa suddenly realized it was a formalized church, although of an unusual design.
Amy didn’t look up from blocking the blows of her assailants, who also seemed to have acquired old antiquated swords. But unlike the ex-bodyguard, they seemed to have no skill with them, and wielded them with clumsy heavy awkward swings. Still, there were two of them, and only of Amy, and she was doing her best to fend them both off.
At Will’s yell, they both turned, and one of them raced forward. His white features glowered from under the hood, and he looked ancient, almost scrawny. The sword came down toward Will’s unprotected head and he raised the wooden piece of wood, felt the blade sink halfway into it. Using the same momentum, he flung his own club to one side, and the vampire monk’s eyes raised in surprise as he was pulled forward.
Turning sharply on his heel, Will swung out with his foot and caught the monk in the abdomen. He gasped, and flew back against the wall, denting the stone. Meanwhile the tides had turned for Amy and she easily stepped to one side as her own monk lunged at her. The blade passed an inch from her face, but she had expected it, and her eyes were unnaturally calm. Like Will, she spun and brought the sword around in a fluid graceful movement, and the blade sung inward, piercing through the monk’s back and coming out just below his sternum.
He gasped, unable to scream, and began to dissolve like black ash. His black habit toppled with a shifty sigh at her feet, ash strewn from its sleeves. “Bastard,” she spat, and looked up. “Will, behind you!”
Will had turned to watch her finish off her enemy, and had taken his eyes off of his own. The battered but still conscious second monk had leapt through the air, his talons suddenly extended and his fangs raised. A last ditch flight through the air and Will had no time to react.
He didn’t have to. Another piece of wood whistled over Will’s head and caught the monk in the face, burying deep into one eye and snapping the vampire’s neck back. He fell in an exaggerated sprawl at Will’s feet and began his own dusty transformation, until his features drained and cracked and all that remained was light black ash.
Ryder lowered his arm, his right foot forward.
“Nice throw,” Will said, and winced, “close enough to give me a shave.”
“You took your eyes off your foe,” Ryder remarked, “consider a ‘close shave’ the least of your concerns. You all right, Amy?” She hefted the sword over her shoulder and hopped down the ledge of the pulpit, her face screwed up but there was something distinctly different about her, Lisa thought, some liveliness in her face, like she had finally gotten something out of her system.
“Bloody well,” she said, stepping over Will’s dead monk with impassive obliviousness. More ash caught in an insulated breeze that seemed self-contained in the inner church. Lisa smelled something like gunpowder. “The third one got away.” She pointed the sword tip at where the other monk with the near-severed wrist had been cringing, only a scattering of blood on the stones.
“What do you suppose the price is for murdering a man of the cloth?” Ryder looked disdainfully at their foes. “Not that I have a particular affinity for religion, but it might be a valid question given our current circumstances.”
“I think we get special dispensation if they’re trying to murder us first,” Lisa said.
Amy moved closer and hefted the giant broadsword. It looked like an artifact, hardly usable, but the blade was sharp enough, and the steel though old was still rigid. Something that might have hearkened back to the earliest era of the brotherhood, Ryder wondered. It might have actually been an instrument of execution.
“Where’d you get that?” Will asked.
Amy put the sword back on one shoulder. “When I found Courson and confronted him.” She paused, as if collecting her thoughts but Lisa figured she was also trying to press back any emotion that would compromise her. “He told me. Probably what he told you, too. Said he regretted lying to me… of all people. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“Now that he knows we know,” Lisa touched her chin, “he can’t let any of us go. Not with what’s at stake right now.”
Will nodded. “Lisa’s right. We need to get out of here. Let the vampire leadership know what’s been happening right under their nose and I mean, in person. No telling if this monastic brotherhood has more moles inside the councils, human and vampire. There’s no way to know how deep this goes. We have to blow it up, make it so public that it’ll be impossible to bury again.”
“Easier said than done,” Amy mused, “but I don’t care about any of that.”
Ryder smoothed his black hair and his narrow eyes darkened. While the Shinji Clan may have been indentured to the vampire nation, and to its leadership and great houses, Amy was notoriously rogue. Everyone seemed to realize it, and the implications. She isn’t bound by any law or obligations, only her own sense of justice, Ryder thought. It made her more dangerous.
“Are you sure you can go on?” he asked.
She flinched. “He may have been the closest thing to a father I ever had,” she remarked with a cold disdain, “but this has to end, one way or another. Have you ever known me to get sentimental?” There wasn’t any time to answer her, because a loud booming ring suddenly filled the small room, shaking loose more dust in the upper corners.
Lisa reached out to steady herself against a broken wooden pew. “What the hell?”
Another booming ring. It seemed to be coming from the southern wing.
“I think we’ve been found out,” Will said. “If that doesn’t get the attention of every monk in the monastery, I don’t know what will. We have to go… now!” he snapped.
Ryder grabbed Amy by the arm, and she looked at him as if she had never seen his face before. “That means all of us,” he said, his own voice challenging hers. She tensed as if to strike him, and then stopped, and slowly lowered her eyes.
Lisa and Will went first, running hard as third chime rang out. Up here, at least, she could tell where they were, even though it was still dark. Torches had been lit at each hallway, and her eyes began to play tricks on her. Her mind had already mapped this area, even better than Will’s, and at one point she half-yelled No and pulled him down a different intersection. How long had they been inside the monastery? She knew it had been almost evening by the time she and Ryder had been captured, and after that she had completely lost track of the hours. But with the torchlight and lack of other illumination, she guessed it was night time. Not good, and she looked back and saw Ryder still tugging on Amy give her a nod.
It meant that the monks could follow them outside.
Her mind was still racing when they reached the big doors that led into the inner courtyard and Will kicked them in, causing them to scream protests on their hinges. Outside, cool air hit her like a welcome prayer, and she could make out stars above, constellations she didn’t recognize. Something in the air, like smoke. The car they had originally taken was gone.
“This way,” Will urged, never breaking pace as they ran across the courtyard toward another door, huge and barred like a barn’s. It creaked open slowly, and Lisa’s eyes raised at the sight of motorbikes. She tried to picture the monks cruising into villages like a faithful bike gang, and the image was ludicrous, cartoon-like.
Will moved between the bikes, checking for keys, and let out a distinct fuck each time he found the ignition empty, until he reached the last one. It was more of a dirtbike, pegged tires designed for off-road use. “Got it!” he exclaimed, revving the engine as Ryder and Amy came in behind them.
“One goddamn bike?” Amy exclaimed.
“Better than nothing.” Will tried to offer an excuse, even though none was warranted, “Okay, draw straws then? We can’t all fit on this piece of crap.”
Ryder was at the door again, looking out. No monks yet, but they could hear a fourth chime. The bell was high in one of the parapets, and was like a black shape against the pre-dawn sky. His mouth twisted like a rubber band as he contemplated their choices.
“Will, get on,” he said brusquely, and his friend obeyed instantly, “and take Amy.”
“He should take Lisa. She can’t fight against these assholes,” Amy snarled.
“No, she can’t… but as far as the Friar is concerned, Lisa is the most valuable one among us. She was the one who found the writs, who translated the old references. She was the key to all of this, to tracking the breadcrumbs their organization failed to sweep up across history. That makes her the prime target. There’s no telling how many other traces of this brotherhood exist, and Lisa is probably the only one who can find them. She’s the most dangerous.”
Lisa almost blushed, and wondered if it was appropriate. She couldn’t tell if it was a compliment to be considered the most dangerous enemy of a secret occult league of vampire assassins.
“Courson will expect us to figure the same thing, that Lisa is the most valuable, and that we’re trying to get her away from here first,” Ryder exclaimed, exasperated by having to explain his plan.
“I get it, a double bluff… they’re bound to come after us on these other bikes, in order to get Lisa,” Will said, and grabbed Amy by the sleeve, urging her onto the back seat.
“This is bloody ridiculous,” she said. “What are you two going to do?” She stabbed her sword down in the ground and grunted onto the seat behind Will, putting one hand on his shoulder.
“Make a run on foot, we’ll be less likely to be seen. Now go… make some noise on your way out,” Ryder remarked. Will fist-bumped him on the shoulder and revved the engine again as the tires tore up the hay underneath and they zoomed into the courtyard.