Slayer - Death Becomes Him Part 6

Amadeus touched his cheek.

Alek flinched and looked up. He hadn't perceived that the man had even moved. "It is the morning of your ascension, my most beloved," Amadeus said, his fingers melting against the thin bones of Alek's face as if he would mold them as everything else.

Master...my dear sweet Creator, Alek thought helplessly as Amadeus's fingers fell down over his eyelashes and down farther to the mark on his throat. And then his lips were there, briefly, making Alek's skin shiver alive with the familiar intimacy of it. We are the most important part of each other, he thought with serene wisdom. He's right; we're married to each others' destiny. Never before, he wanted to say, never before have I felt this. But in the end he did not, for he knew it was a lie.

"Finish your affairs in the world this day," said Amadeus. "Gather yourself and the things most you value. I give you today. And then you will come to me at midnight in your faith and your loyalty and I will give you the Dominatio, and it will be my greatest act. Verstehen?"

Alek shuddered within and without. Dominatio. To absorb another vampire's soul through the ultimate partaking of blood--to become that person, to let that person become you. For a moment his whole being rebelled against the concept. So much so, that he almost shied away from the Father's touch.

But the Father was patient, as always. "Do you trust me, mein Sohn?'

"You know I do. It's just--"

"I shall recede."

Again he shuddered, but this time in mind-numbing horror. Recede in the Dominato. To let one's soul die...

Alek held his master's eyes.

Amadeus smiled as he pressed the habit into Alek's hands, and when his voice came a moment later it had no fear, purred, in fact, with perfect fulfillment, the finish of a promise too long denied. "Go now," he said, "yet return to me, my beautiful slayer." Alek nodded and turned to leave his cell, to do as the Father had requested of him. But in the end he faltered, one foot upon the threshold, and turned back abruptly. Desperate. Was there any way to show this man his grief? Amadeus. Father, brother, his best friend in all the world. He would never know how much his child wanted to die for him. But because he could not, because it was not his time to die, Alek only returned to his master and kissed him, a gift and a covenant.

Then he left.

"Mister Knight?"

He'd been watching the girl on the street corner for almost twenty minutes. Punishing heels and phony bloodred hair lying limp and cold on her leathered shoulders. A wood crucifix at her throat. One of the children of Adam gone to darkness and running. A child of the night now, though her black mascaraed eyes would not shine in the dark and she would not live forever. Perhaps a few months on the brutal back of this devouring city. No more than that. Somebody's daughter. Sister, even.

The girl posed for a pa.s.sing john in a blue sports car and Alek noticed that beneath the girl's cheap rhinestone-encrusted jacket her thin, cold little dress was red. Red.

Debra's color had been red.

But Debra was gone-- "Mister Knight?"

He let the chintzy curtain fall back over the window and wandered back across the studio to the galley where Eustace was helping him pack boxes. Not that he needed the help, mind you. All the important things he'd managed to collect outside the Coven would probably fit into half a dozen suitcases. The rest the new owners of this hole could have, the evil green sofa and the Formica and cinderblock coffee table some SoHo residents called shabby chic industrial, the card tables and the faded bedsheets and the rest of the mess he'd managed to make of his human life.

He looked at the few things of importance here, his tools of the trade, easels and canvas stretchers--and the pair of commas he'd never learned to use. The ring he slid onto his first finger. Maybe sad, all this, he mused to himself, watching the tarnished gold flash in the harsh overhead light, but then, what were possessions but chains to bind a soul to earth when he might fly--?

Fly with me, Alek, please?

Debra. Her voice. Her plea from so long ago.

He closed his eyes. Begone, Debra, he prayed. Torment me no longer. He waited, hoping breathlessly for the voice to fade, then let out a long sigh of relief as her special laughter eddied away into darkness inside him.

His eyes ached as if with headache and he felt a strange, lagging sense of disorientation. He looked again at the ring, tried to twist it off, but now it was stuck, d.a.m.nit.

"Mister Knight, sir?"

His blinked and the undeparted faraway feeling cracked at the edges. Shaking away the remnants, he regarded the debris of his life scattered across the counters and the tall young man placing it all with such gentle reverence into brown boxes.

Trying to make points with the new authority, a cynical part of his mind whispered, though he knew for certain it wasn't the truth. Eustace just wanted to please. He was simply too d.a.m.ned honest and too d.a.m.ned simple to have any subterranean devices.

"What's this, Mister Knight?" he asked as he held up an object.

"Alek, please."

"What's this, Mister Alek?"

He smiled, took it from the boy's hand. "Tortillion," he explained and brushed the rubber tip against the boy's nose. "You use it to rub lead into the grain of the paper for a better blending of values."

"Laws," said Eustace, taking it back and observing it like a newly discovered species of otherworldly life.

"Don't got nothing like that in Morningvale. Why do you get better value mixing lead with grain?"

Alek shook his head, almost amused. "I'll teach you sometime. Like to draw, son?"

"Sure. Houses and horses and things. Whatta these?"

Alek reached across the island and took the shabby deck of cards from him. "Tarot. They tell the future.

Sometimes. Though not for me. A friend gave them to me in the summer of '69. Everyone was into it back then." He riffled the cards, came up with the High Priestess, the conceiver of mystery. Truth be known, he seldom consulted the Tarot; the cards never seemed prepared to reveal anything of any real importance. It was almost as if they knew him for what he was and resented the fact that to tell his future would occupy them for far too many years.

He scowled over the top card, one finger ringing the High Priestess's portrait with her casually juggled moons and stars. All wrong. When he'd split the deck he'd antic.i.p.ated the face card of the Hermit to embody the new position he would be entering into tonight--at the very least the Hanged Man for his act of surrendering his professional life, such as it was, to a priest's order. The cards were probably as muddled as ever. He set them in a box. Useless things...

He squinted as his mind swelled suddenly with the dark shadow of laughter and a promise of grief. Of revenge. Debra would do anything if it meant returning to him to wreck her vengeance, anything at all. He felt her hands on him, he felt his own heartbeat in his left hand, he felt-- Eustace spoke his name with some concern but he scarcely heard the boy. He had to drown that f.u.c.king little-girl laughter, drown it before it drove him insane. He went to the cupboard and poured himself a three- finger whiskey, downed it too quickly and scorched his mouth raw. He threw the gla.s.s tumbler into the sink and watched in satisfaction as it cracked into a dazzling rain of false diamonds.

He laid his forehead to the cupboard door and moaned. Sean was right. He was coming apart. Tipped. Hmm.

Some Covenmaster. He wanted to weep, almost thought it would help, but he knew from too much experience that his tears might fall forever but they would bring with them no relief or release.

"Mister Alek...Mister Alek, you look badly ill."

He shook his head. Carefully. There was an abrupt, sullen ache like a stab wound in his left temple. He touched it meditatively. Migraine. Half-head. Come to me, he pleaded. Please, come and destroy me or else go and leave me in peace...

But Debra remained an ambient ghost, always prepared to torture him but forever beyond his reach and command. Fool. He was a d.a.m.ned f.u.c.king fool to believe he could summon her. Debra, wicked Debra. In life she'd been an unbound vampiress the likes of which even Amadeus could not hold back. But in death she was a G.o.ddess. Why did he try?

Vermouth. White Horse. Wormwood for the brain. Anything was better than this madness.

He tried to twist the ring, failed. Felt like it was f.u.c.king soldered onto his hand. He wished he'd never found it or that d.a.m.ned doll. I should throw 'em off the top of this building, he thought. Or maybe the Empire State. Yeah, that'll work. He lifted the amber bottle and saw with horror that it was empty. When had this happened? It had been half-filled only a moment ago. He looked at it long and hard as if the image would change suddenly like an optical illusion. But the bottle remained stubbornly empty. And his headache was worse, so much worse.

Female laughter crested in his head, as rusty as h.e.l.lish old bells.

It hurt so bad.

He was supposed to go to Amadeus as a priest in just a few hours and there was no hair of the dog to make him right. He was all pain, all laughter, all bones and hair and ragged fabric like a doll with faulty craftsmanship. Amadeus would touch him and he would simply fall to skeletal pieces like a smashed jigsaw, his pieces scattered across the length of the Abbey like the fragments of the tumbler at the bottom of the rust- yellow sink.

"Oh f.u.c.king h.e.l.l..." He turned around and checked the time. The clock over the sink was only now plodding toward ten. He had time to visit Sam's Place, and if he did not he would make time. He dropped the bottle into the sink and swayed past Eustace and his studio and all the f.u.c.king repulsive Bosch jobs hanging from the f.u.c.king repulsive walls, all the women with black steel cable hair and the machines eating their makers, and if this didn't make him right, G.o.d help him, nothing would.

"Mister Alek?"

He paused partway up the hill and looked back down at the Village. What once had seemed quaint and glowing and as opulent as stained gla.s.s only looked tired and defeated. Overindustrialized.

Industry, that's all it was--empty and echoless and inhabited by minds as flat as those of store mannequins.

Urbanized industrial rich. No sun. No night. No inspiration. He realized with something close to panic that he was stuck in the middle of the very f.u.c.king thing he'd once looked upon as a parentless child and abhorred.

It was no wonder he could no longer paint. How the h.e.l.l had this happened? "Mister Alek...wait up!" called Eustace as he came loping up the street and took him by the arm. "Where're you going, Mister Alek?"

"An errand."

"Can I come?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"I'll be real quiet, I pr--"

"No! I said no! Are you on stupid pills?"

Eustace jerked. His eyes were young and afraid.

f.u.c.king lunatic, what had he done? Alek reached out, carefully, and gathered the boy under his arm. This was no good. What was wrong with him? What the h.e.l.l was going on? "I'm sorry, son," he said. "I--"

He paused. He felt it first in his back, and then a rush in his neck and jaw. Something coming their way.

Down that alley across from them. He looked at Eustace. Eustace only looked back. He was innocent. No blood there. He and Book would be getting together pretty soon, but Alek didn't think he needed to ask how it had gone the other night. Dairy Queen, obviously.

"Wait here," he said and crossed the street to where a pair of crumbling tenement buildings stood side by side, so close their ornate stone cornices nearly necked.

Dark here. While waiting for his eyes to adjust he drew his katana, brought it up under his forearm into the ready-strike position. Paranoia? But of course. Vampires were especially capable of vendettas. He felt for the presence with his mind, sensed its retreat. Oh no you don't, he thought. You're following me and I'm just in the mood for you tonight!

He stepped into the alley, felt the presence retreat all the way to the back. Useless. This alley, like the majority of the Village alleys, were flat dead ends. He sidled against one wall and stalked the creature slow, his feet making no sound on the dirty asphalt. Deftly he avoided the stacked boxes and mounds of refuse scattered down the throat of the alley. A rat scrabbled loose from one mound of garbage and skittered between his feet to reach the next. He ignored it. His eyes narrowed, crawled over the darkness and the rearing graffiti-covered city walls.

There. A shadow fluttered like a wing not a hundred feet ahead and a little to his right. He stopped, gauging its size and speed. Small. Childlike. Christ, but he hated doing the kids.

A pair of catlike eyes studied him out of a pocket of utter darkness, red and reflective.

"Who are you?" he said, swinging his sword overhead. "Speak, and I might not tear you apart."

He was about to corner it when it did the unexpected and strode gallantly forward like a priestess cloaked in awry shadows. He did not move, did not react. The sword and his arm were suddenly disconnected for the first time in his li fe.

His instinct, for either flight or fight, was gone. His breath was gone. The alley of which he'd been the expert on only a moment ago whirled around him in a lightless tempest. Bosch. Bad melee of studies in half-light.

From somewhere on the avenue came the severe throb of music. Rhapsody of my heart, he thought.

But then everything grew still and devoutly quiet before the phantomlike figure floating toward him, the face the finely chiseled chinabone craftswork of a doll, the hair frayed black flamelike silk, the mouth red, the eyes red, Snow White, Rose Red.

Alek's mouth rasped open over no words and no voice. He dropped his sword; then he himself dropped to his knees.

Debra had returned at last and she was going to kill him.

8 His earliest memory was of a pallid room, the last in a long line of pallid rooms which came to be his and his sister's prison for the first eight years of their lives. The dormrooms of McEnroy Home slept four apiece and in each corner of each room was an iron-framed bed with a white chenille spread and white pillows. Drapes and valences were colorless and s.e.xless and the air of the Home smelled perpetually of cold hospital antiseptics. And then there was Ms. Bessell, the dorm mistress, and in his earliest memory she was scolding some kid--his name was Louis or Lenny or something--because he had gotten a b.l.o.o.d.y nose from picking it and there was blood on the white laundered spread now and the blood was bright and warm and fascinating to Alek, a single island of life in the midst of the apocalypse of seamless whiteness.

These were the things he remembered first, the things that stood out farthest in the most distant part of his mind.

It was said that it was the Home cook who'd found them, he and his sister, swaddled in newspaper and cradled in a cardboard box on the back stoop of the Home under the eaves. No note or keepsake, so went the legend, only themselves, waxen foreheads touching, their faces androgynous and similar. The eleventh set of twins forced upon the Home that year, the social worker in charge of their case scratched the surname Knight on their records in true d.i.c.kensian tradition and yanked their given names, Alek and Debra, from the skin rag hidden in the pencil drawer of his desk. After that, he handled them in terms of paper only.

It was Cook, a big dark woman with a great laugh and the fearsome habit of smoking lavender cigars, who saw to it that the twins were not separated and placed with their own s.e.x. And in time they came to occupy their own room exclusively, though Cook had little to do with that. The year was 1950 and though postwar America was prospering from oversea's fortunes and Ipana toothpaste ads were telling the baby boomers that in America no child had so bright a future, twins were still especially difficult to place and it wasn't expected they would be. So this token by McEnroy Home was like a consultation prize.

But it was more than that. Cook knew it; they all did.

The twins were special. Magic, some said. Some said things about the twins, wondrous and strange things, things which scarcely deserved imagining. They learned all their lessons quickly because they were clever, and they made everyone think of them as thoughtful because they were. But there was a subconscious degree of separation that no one in the Home seemed able to measure or rightly label. They were almost never seen apart, and their soft, silent looks weighed things between them constantly. But of course to the other children who could not hear their thoughts they were a mystery. They did not exchange secrets in the showers, did not pa.s.s or receive notes during cla.s.s, did not join any of the playground cliches that grew and constantly reformed. And the torment the older Home children wrought upon the younger--the books knocked from desks, the legs outstretched In aisles, the pillowcases full of shaving cream, the braids knotted and dunked in school ink--these things somehow pa.s.sed them by completely. Cook called them her little blackbirds because of their clever obstinate eyes and soot-black lashes and their habit of perching on the breadboard and waiting patiently whenever she was putting in the gingerbread, and the name stuck as names will, but the name carried with it no stigmas, no disgrace.

Alek and Debra Knight came to accept their innate separation at least as quickly as the other children did.

And as the years pushed them gently but insistently out of infancy and into adolescence and their magic and reputation grew and the world changed around them from one of security and domestic bliss to a globe of cold war uncertainty and minority suspicion, they found little changed within the microcosm of the Home.

Kids got big and got into fights and sometimes kids died, or were adopted and went off into mysterious corners of the city, never to be seen again. But the two porcelain-faced beauties of McEnroy Home remained year after year and found with time that while the others who remained were always nice to them and quick to praise them and sought to be near them and eat with them and talk to them and considered them lucky to be with, none chose to be their friend, for the children were afraid.

Wilma Bessell: Bessell the b.i.t.c.h.

She was a big muscled women, strong and pale as chalk as if the sun had never touched her flesh in her whole lifetime. She smiled avidly at the children and whistled softly, constantly, as she wandered down the asylumlike halls of the Home with her open notebook and busy pen. Her eyes were tiny, clever, always bright and full of a mysterious and bottomless glee. A solid woman, she made the children on her floor--the twins' floor--hug her each night before bed. Hateful thing: hugging Ms. Bessell was like hugging a rolled-up mattress drenched in Chanel No. 5. And when she wasn't walking or whistling or otherwise driving kids crazy, she could usually be found reading old books of immense size on a bench on the playground tarmac, her back to the brick wall of the Home so he could watch the children play. The covers of the books she read were always black and faded gold, covered with long, overcomplicated t.i.tles.

Ms. Bessell came to work at the Home when the twins were six, and almost from the beginning they sensed her demure, sometimes suspicious eyes crawling to find them on the playground, in the halls and gameroom, in cla.s.s through the wire mesh panes of the cla.s.sroom door.

No one else seemed to notice. No one but Cook who snarled when Debra said something about it, Cook who called Ms. Bessell a "hoe-beech" and slammed the door of the old iron oven with a clang of utter authority.

Debra smiled and went about repeating the word to everyone insistently--at least until she slipped and used the word on the woman herself and got solitary confinement for not naming her source of origin for that one.

Yet not two days later Alek felt those eyes on himself and his twin and became first annoyed with it, and then afraid.

Alek, what is it? Debra demanded to know.

Don't look. She's watching us. Again.

The b.i.t.c.h? Debra's hand never faltered as she copied the lesson from out of their reader. Stepping Stones, the book was called, and there was a happy green pond frog on the cover that Alek had always liked, had drawn many times. They did the speaking in the back of their minds usually, where they could keep it going and use the rest for their work. Dumb hoe-beech is always watching, Alek, Debra said and turned a page of the book.

The frog on Alek's book smiled up at him, but now it seemed horrible and open-mouthed to him. Sinister.

As if it would begin to speak at any moment and say things he neither understood nor wanted to hear from it. I know, he answered her. I hate her. Cook says she ain't for real.

How?

Alek shrugged, only believing Cook because she was nice and always spoke softly to Debra and sneaked them treats after dark when the kitchen was closed and no one was looking. Cook had said those very same words that very morning when she found out about Debra's confinement--She ain't fer real, chile. You best beware the beech, you hear, little bird?. And Alek had nodded dutifully even as Cook grunted and smiled through her bulldog face and wiped the raspberry stain off his face from the tart she had given him.

Maybe she's got an awful monster inside her chewing her all up inside, Debra suggested and it was just like her. You know? Like in Thriller Theatre?