Part 28 (2/2)

When did we stop playing streetball and getting subs down at Arnold's Soda Shop, he wondered, and going down to the Hudson in the summer and walking around the old railyard with our s.h.i.+rts off, looking for fun, looking for trouble, looking not to be bored-- I have become. Become what?

Debra, of course. f.u.c.king idiot.

He rose up from his fas.h.i.+onably anemic furniture in his rumpling of fas.h.i.+onably anemic Armani suit and Italian shoes and began to circle his psychotically tidy living room, seeing it and smelling the five spice curry in the take-out boxes on the coffee table, seeing the movie and knowing it was there, but feeling only a white, heavy, clockless silence.

I have become.

And what have you become, hey, Book? Other than a rich, sn.o.bby pain the in the a.s.s like all the folks you and Alek used to make fun of down on Central Park West, hey? What are you other than some black-boy- made-it-good stereotype with plenty money and an interns.h.i.+p and a Jag and about three hundred dead vampires to your f.u.c.king name?

What the h.e.l.l are you?

And there, trapped inside his silence and his questions, Booker circled the room once more.

26.

Sometime after midnight, the Covenmaster of the New York City branch of slayers rose to standing on the golgotha's sacred dais, the sand of the spent host crunching under his heels and a deep long Abbey breeze casting the few remaining white crystalline hairs like spider's silk against the altar's thousands of bony faces.

The skull in his hands crumbled away, The Covenmaster let the bone dust fall between his fingers, then he put out those hands to see the grinning wall of dead bones. ”Exegi monumentum aere perennius,” he said and smiled. The sh.e.l.l was finished, the creature reborn once more. He took away his hands and explored his new body from collarbone to hipbone.

So strange to be young and new again. Each time it was a new experience, but after so many years, so many hosts, it was an experience he grew accustomed to very easily.

He went directly to his cell and shook out his good homespun clothing, put them to his face. In his imagination he could still smell in them the salts of the Atlantic, and the pitch and greenwood of the great s.h.i.+p. He remembered his covenant with the church and he remembered what it meant. He was tempted to dress himself in these clothes, the collar and the cloak and the Quaker's hat--but to do so, he knew, would be to undermine all his work this evening thus far. Instead, he went to Sean's cell and found among his things a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans and his slayer's coat made of leather. He found the whelp's wrist blade with its intricate little mechanism, and this he strapped on his forearm and tested the slide of the blade using the knowledge inherent to the temple. Satisfied, he armed himself with a sword as he had always done in the past before a great mission. Not his sword. Hanzo's sword.

Alek's sword.

Alek.

Yet would be their time.

He went to the parlor and summoned the remnants of his Coven down to the Great Abbey. Aristotle fidgeted in his seat and thrummed his fingers as Amadeus explained his instructions to them. Robot said nothing, of course.

The shadows of the skylight grew long. Nightfall. And finally, when silence fell across the Abbey and he had finished his address, Aristotle said, ”So, like, when did G.o.d die and put you in charge, whelp?”

Amadeus was crouched atop the Coventable in front of the whelp, his wrist blade under the whelp's chin before all the words were out of his ignorant mouth. ”About an hour ago, actually. Cross me not, Aristotle.”

He smiled.

Aristotle gasped soundlessly with the instrument pressed firmly against his carotid artery. He swallowed, gathered what little wits he owned. ”What--oh, Jeezus Christ--he was right--someone really was going to kill him--”

Robot was on his feet, coming around the table like a train. Without removing the blade from Aristotle's throat or otherwise turning away, Amadeus sent his messengers out, heard and felt them wrap like Punjab la.s.sos around the bulk of Robot's body and lift him quite literally off his feet. Robot sucked in great, greedy mouthfuls of air, the only sounds of terror the big mute was capable of making, and flailed uselessly in the grip of Amadeus's personal, Medusan retinue of servants. They rattled irritably and tossed him away like a child tossing a rag doll across the room in a fit of temper. Amadeus stepped down off the table, lithe like a cat, and cast his blind gaze down upon the Coventable. It trembled and rattled a moment as if under the spell of a lunatic seance. Then it turned end over end and splintered into shards against the far stone wall.

The tapestries rippled as if touched by invisible ghosts.

The golgotha herself moaned dryly.

Amadeus felt the vibration of the shattered wood vibrate all throughout the floor and up through the soles of his feet, and he knew Aristotle felt the same. ”Do you believe in your heart that the Sean boy is capable of these kinds of miracles, whelp?”

Aristotle, frozen in his seat, still as a statue, still as a victim of the alien powers at work suddenly in his life, squeaked, ”No. Father.”

Amadeus drew the wild tangle of his hair back into a tight halo around his head. He smiled and let Aristotle see the old Lilithine blood rise in his eyes. Then he snapped the wristblade back and gathered his coat close to himself. He went to the great oaken double doors and threw them open to the above and the night and the city cowering like a collection of children afraid of the dark. To Alek.

Wind whistled down the corridors of the old house like whispered promises.

”Then let's get it on then, man,” he said.

Inside the overstuffed chamber he awoke. He blinked up at the armory of defiant monsters' and heroes'

faces hanging on s.h.i.+elds over him. And frowned. He s.h.i.+fted his weight, cramping his back on thin leather and sharp, nail-like coils. Pungent old tobacco, familiar.

And when a chill came to his temple he gasped. Where was he? A hand. But whose? Very dry.

”Mrs. B--Tahlia,” he guessed.

”You got it, kid.” Through the haze of her cigarette smoke her face shone like a white jewel, like the visage of some wartime songbird he'd forgotten the name of.

Alek tried to rise, but his body hurt in too many places--his hip, his ribs where he'd fractured one in his fall on the icy alley floor--and he gave it up after a moment of effort and too-much pain and lay back down.

Tahlia undid the b.u.t.tons on his s.h.i.+rt, took a wad of cloth-wrapped ice from an empty ashtray beside her and pressed it against his side. The immediate pain took his breath away. After a moment or two, Alek found he could speak. ”How--?”

”Teresa brought you back. I'm strong, but not strong enough to haul your bulk, let me tell you. You're G.o.dd.a.m.n heavier than you look!”

He groaned and tasted cotton in his mouth, a hollow ache in the pit of his stomach. His body was mending, but it was running out of juice again. He was hungry. He ignored it. He concentrated on the stinging ache in his side instead. How do you know where I need it, Tahlia? He made a face--he felt like he was breathing through ground gla.s.s--and decided not to verbalize his musings.

”I have my ways,” Tahlia answered and smiled at her patient's astounded expression.

Alek carefully shook his head. Byron's blood had worked mysterious miracles over Tahlia's mortal flesh, that was for certain. ”More to you...Tahlia...than I thought,” he managed.

”But of course,” Tahlia proclaimed with her big false pride. ”I am a veritable jungle of talent, don't y'know.”

She winked. ”An old jungle, granted, but that fact need go no further than this room, right?”

Alek laughed and that hurt too. ”Help me up?”

Tahlia eased him into a slumped sitting position. And when she was certain her patient wouldn't slide, she poured Alek a mug of spicy foreign whiskey from the decanter on her husband's desk and handed it to him.

Alek put it to his lips, then away. The smell was unbelievably offensive; how could he have ever drunk this stuff in the past? ”Tahlia,” he said, holding onto the mug to be social, ”exactly how much to you know?”

”Know.” Tahlia settled on an art stool and tapped her temple thoughtfully with the painted tip of one finger.

”About art, a lot. Other things, some. I do know that Amadeus is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of the first school, though. I know last time I seen Byron was the winter of '62 when the worm set his dogs on him. I do know what the Father's dogs can do. I know I never seen Byron again after he took to his heels.” She stroked her chapped bottom lip with tragic ease. ”I do know I want you to kill the f.u.c.ker for me and for Byron and mostly for yourself.”

Alek sat back on the couch. ”I don't know if I can do that, Tahlia. I don't know if I'm good enough.”

”Then you ain't never gonna be free of him, are you?”

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