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  I stood and found myself pacing around the small room while I searched the catacombs of my mind for a single rational thought and found none. Judas watched me with a keen gaze.

  “One of those madmen…he called me Vicar. Why?”

  Judas’s shoulders rose and fell on a breath. “The original followers were Apostles. Priests. Good men turned evil by greed. Vicar was a title of great import. Those who carried the coins were seen as… I suppose one would call them demigods as well. They wielded powers unlike what humanity had ever seen, but they did so out of hatred and greed.”

  I let this thought fester for a moment, desperate for resolution. Yet, none came. Even with my dubious and highly improbable origin, I could not fathom the truth in Judas’s existence or the idea of cursed coins.

  “If the coins twist mortals into monsters, why are you not one?”

  “I am…different. The betrayal you Christians speak of? It was planned by God Himself as a way for me to take possession of the silver, and it is because of my abilities that they were given in tribute.” He cleared his throat. “I have devoted my existence to retrieving them—among other things—and restoring order. This one,” he held it up, “is number fifteen.”

  Judas flipped the coin into the air toward me. I caught it and tucked it back into my pocket. “Luke—Vlad—whoever he is, said it would gain me entrance into their ranks.”

  Judas nodded. “It will. As those who carried them may as well be gods among men, I would assume the sentiment holds true today.” He looked over me with a wry smirk. “But I imagine you are seen as something else entirely. You are quite large.”

  “When you are the sum of eight or so men,” I replied, “it comes with the territory.” Judas snorted in response. “You said you spoke to…the vampire—” I wasn’t sure exactly what to call him at this point, “—and that you’ve been following the Brotherhood for quite a while.”

  “Only eight hundred years or so.”

  “What do you know of the ones we follow?”

  “I know they keep a woman in their company who is capable of horrible things. The name Erzsébet Báthory is not unknown to those of us who hunt evil.”

  “I wish I could say I was surprised,” I replied. “You do not, by chance, know how to destroy her, do you?”

  Judas shook his head. His face was a mask of calm collectedness, save the small crease between his eyebrows. “Sorry.”

  “So you came to me to see the coin and tell me fairy stories?”

  “I suppose I did…” His expression darkened. It appeared to me that he wanted to say more.

  “Can you offer me any advice? At least tell me what she is.”

  “Has Vlad not told you?”

  “He says she is immortal and will tell me no more. He claims he does not know.”

  Judas made a small, musing sound. “Odd that he should want to protect her so.”

  “They were lovers.”

  Understanding dawned on his face. “Makes sense. Quite a bit of sense, at that.” He thought for a moment, then shifted his position and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I still haven’t any clue what exactly she is.”

  “What she is, is an abomination that should never have been suffered to live.”

  “I need specifics,” I urged.

  “Getting there.” Judas cleared his throat as he glanced over his shoulder out the window. He seemed to be doing so with increasing frequency…as if he were looking for someone. “There are multiple types of vampire on this Earth. Vlad is the type that has been infected. Something bit him. She, however, is not the product of a virus, but of dark, dangerous magic.”

  “Magic?”

  “Best explanation,” he said, raising one shoulder in a shrug, “the gift of immortality was bestowed upon her by a demon, but at a price. She will exist forever, but she requires blood to remain young and beautiful. Without it, she becomes a withered husk.”

  “Are virgins required?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” he admitted. “Perhaps she believes pure blood is more potent.”

  I waited for more but received nothing. “Can you tell me anything else? Help me in any way?”

  “No.” Judas rose to his full height and glanced out the window. “But I am here and will help when the time comes…for a price.”

  “Always a price… Let me guess: the coin?”

  He nodded again.

  “Then I shall see you soon,” I replied.

  He crossed toward the door, stopping beside me. “You might want this back,” he said and dropped an item into my hand.

  I looked down as the door fell closed. The bullet I fired at him lay in my open palm.

  Weariness crept into my bones. I’d been at this for days now—almost weeks—and was no closer to a resolution. The feeling of helplessness angered me, made me desire blood and death. I wanted to give into my baser instincts and destroy. My control over the monster inside had already begun to slip.

  It would be hours yet before Luke arrived, and despite a sleepless night, I could stand to sit and wait no more. I rose and left my flat in search of a way to relieve the tension coursing through my bones.

  Chapter 12

  The people of Paris moved around me, oblivious to the roiling pit of madness among their ranks. It would be so easy to reach out, to close my hand around any throat and squeeze the life out of these meat-bags. I wanted to. Oh, so desperately I wanted to, but to do so would undo everything I’d worked the last hundred years to overcome.

  I am not a monster, I told myself. I will not succumb to the beast. I am better than this.

  My conversation with Judas replayed in my mind again and again. It was a surreal experience, yes, but no more improbable than my existence. Nothing, I realized, is impossible. A reanimated monster, vampires, blood rituals, an immortal follower of Jesus Christ, cursed coins…I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Then I wanted to hurt something.

  I wanted to destroy.

  I went back to the house where I’d found Erzsébet only to discovered it empty. Every indication of life was removed from the inside—clothing, papers, books, food… it appeared to have long-since been abandoned despite the fact that they’d attempted to kill me here only days ago. No one stood guard beside the crypt in the cemetery, either. Both places were devoid of life, the zealots and their young prisoners gone without a trace. I knew there were other Brotherhood strongholds, but I hadn’t a clue where they might be.

  I am not a tracker. I do not have the ability to find humans by scent or footprints alone. I cannot sense auras or see the future. I’d been forced to kill the one contact I had. For all intents and purposes, I was back at the beginning of this horrible, circular race.

  I found myself wondering about the children I’d left with the police. Surely they were safe and on their way to reunions with their families. I wondered after the others as well. What became of them? The fear in those innocent eyes haunted me.

  Forty minutes later, I knocked on the back door of the warehouse in Montmartre. The sun hung just above the horizon, and the last, desperate colors of sunset clung to the sky. The door swung open, and a face I did not recognize stared back at me. Color drained from the young man’s face and his jaw quivered as he looked up into my eyes.

  “Frankenstein the Monster?” he asked, his eyes wide and fearful. I nodded. “You have returned!”

  “I have. Let me in and find me someone to kill.”

  He stepped aside and allowed me entrance, then followed me into the stale-smelling waiting area. The stains about the room appeared old, as if little activity had occurred since my last visit.

  “Have there been no fights?” I asked.

  “Not many,” the boy confirmed. “Most men are afraid of winning, then having to face you. You kill them.”

  “So did the Beast.”

  “Not as many. Some say you are not human.”

  “How do you know I am?” I questioned. The boy’s eyes went wide, and he
laughed nervously as he tried to convince himself I was making a joke.

  “Jacques has not returned either,” he said. “I hoped he was with you.”

  Jacques. The name of the man whose throat I’d cut. The one who had called me Vicar.

  “Jacques is dead,” I said. “He met with the unfortunate end of a sharp object.”

  The young man—for very young he was—stumbled and fell into the wall, his face a mask of terror. “D-did y-you…” he stammered.

  “No,” I lied. “But I know he is dead.”

  The kid nodded and scurried toward the warehouse floor.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I will let the others know you have returned.”

  Almost immediately after his departure, the room flooded with people—organizers and spectators alike crowded in around me, all welcoming me back and crowing with delight as I pulled my shirt from my shoulders and sat on the rickety bench to remove my shoes.

  I killed two men that night and mortally wounded three more. There was no fighting, only my rapidly flying fists knocking down man after man in my urge to expel the vicious poison working its way through my veins. I took no hits at all and was dragged from the cage when opponents stopped volunteering. None of the men willing to fight were willing to go up against me. I’d become too powerful.

  There was an addictive danger in this behavior, and I couldn’t seem to stop. My anger with Luke only fueled the murderous desire, and even after my body was spent and my muscles singing from the adrenaline rush, I could not curb the need to inflict the same pain on the old vampire.

  As I walked back to my room that night, the simmering anger flared back into an uncontrollable burn. The longer I walked, the faster I moved, and the more I hated him. Or rather, I wanted to hate him, which only made me angrier. I understood his hesitation and his fear. I even understood the lingering affection for her, but I could not excuse it. Affection made men—mortal and otherwise—weak. There was no room left in my life for weakness, even if it lurked deep inside the most powerful being I’d ever met.

  I took the stairs to my third-floor flat three-by-three and burst through the door as a ball from a cannon, only to halt two steps in as my vision blurred red with fury.

  Luke stood before my window as if he’d belonged there all this time.

  Chapter 13

  Gottverdammten stück Sheisse…”

  I snarled in my native tongue and lunged as he came into view, my fist cutting across his face with a loud, echoing crack. His head lurched hard to the right, but he remained on his feet. Pain blossomed up my arm as the bones came to a sudden halt against his face. Luke’s gaze remained on the floor at my feet even as his body tensed for a second blow.

  “You lied to me!” I wanted to shake him, to hurt him. To kill him. “You knew what that woman was, yet you could not find the decency to tell me!” My rage grew with each breath. Anger, betrayal, fear, pain… Emotions tumbled through my mind. I wanted to hit him again. “Say something, Luke.”

  “You have been practicing.”

  “I despise you.” I flexed my fingers—not broken.

  “You probably should.”

  “Have no fear. I do.”

  “I am sorry, Adam,” he replied, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

  I hit him again, the rage boiling beneath my skin taking control of my senses. His bones should have broken from the impact. Instead, my fist met again with the resistance of cold iron. My knuckles collapsed in on themselves, driving new shards of pain up my arm. I crumpled to my knees, clutching my ruined hand as tears sprang to my eyes. He did not retaliate. He remained unmoving.

  “She is stronger than I remember,” he said after flexing his jaw. “Perhaps it is true that when one is deprived of one of his primary senses, the others compensate.”

  “So you were going to just let her kill me,” I snarled. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend,” he replied.

  “You have a strange way of showing it. You refused to tell me anything of value, and once you did, it was much too late. If something has happened to those children, their blood is on your hands.”

  “I told you there was more you needed to know,” he retorted. “But you saw fit to greet me with your fist. If I am allowed to speak freely, I will tell you what else I know.”

  I turned my back on him and sat on the edge of my bed to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t think clearly, could focus on nothing but the red haze clouding my vision.

  “May I?” he prompted.

  I nodded.

  “Thank you.” He straightened the collar of his shirt and brushed back the few stray hairs hanging across his forehead. “Erzsébet was dying when she made a deal for immortality,” Luke continued. “She and her husband were both afflicted with a disease we now know as polio. Her husband died in battle very suddenly, and she would have died not long after. But Erzsébet was persistent. When medicine and religion failed her, she turned to darker paths. It was through her studies that she fell into the companionship of a demon who was willing to trade her illness for immortality.”

  “How, exactly, is this information going to help me?” I asked.

  “Her power was given for a price. Since then, she has been forced to provide regular offerings to keep her youth and vitality. To keep her life.”

  “The thing I saw was neither young nor vital.”

  “Not now,” he said, his tone heavy and bitter, “but you must remember that she was entombed in a desiccated state for nearly two hundred years.”

  The hard lump beneath my legs reminded me of the one piece to this disturbing puzzle I’d yet to figure out. Shoving my hand between the mattress and the pathetic frame, I pulled the book free and turned it over in my hands. The oils in the skin were gone, and the surface crackled under my touch.

  “So far you’ve told me nothing of value, Luke. You have one more chance to help me,” I said.

  “How am I to help?”

  “How many languages do you speak?” I asked.

  “Seventeen,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Tell me what this is,” I said as I handed the book to him. Luke turned the book over in his hands, his fingers slipping over the crackling leather.

  “Her diary,” he replied, fingering the rough edges of the pages. “Or one of them. She uses the skin of her victims to bind the pages. It’s her way of remembering them.”

  “Morbid.”

  “Yes, but her tribute all the same.”

  “What does it say? Can it help us?”

  Luke opened the book and skimmed the pages. “It is recent,” he said. “She began this one a little more than a year ago.”

  He flipped through the diary, glancing from entry to entry.

  “Can you read it?”

  “Yes. The language is Hungarian. Older, rural dialect.”

  Luke read bits and pieces aloud, sharing tiny tidbits of useless information about her life. She wrote of her journey to America from Hungary at the turn of the century, of the pain she endured as she came back to her humanity—such as it was—and of her desire to die. For a moment, I felt a kinship with her. She was a monster, much like Luke and me. Lonely. Remorseful.

  I would be more than happy to accommodate the last request of hers, if only she would allow me close enough to achieve said goal.

  “The ritual is here,” Luke said. He sat in the single chair in my room and began to read.

  They asked how it was done, wanted it documented. This is what I told them—what I remember from my previous conjurings:

  Virginal blood is required to transcend the boundary between life and death. To bring forth the demon Verliaan, the sacrifice of five pure lives must take place. Blood must flow from the five points of the pentacle in representation of the elements, and a live soul must be given from which to draw the eternal force. Should the demon Verliaan accept the sacrifice, the gift of immortality shall be bestowed upon the offeror. Should he see it unworthy, the result could be ca
tastrophic. So far, I have been lucky. I have seen only success.

  “Today is one of those days where I despise being right,” I said as he stopped reading. “Judas told me—”

  “You spoke to Judas?” Luke appeared surprised. The book lowered.

  I nodded. “He came to see the coin. He suspected my theory—what you just read—would be the truth.”

  “I am quite surprised he came so quickly.”

  “From the sound of it, these coins are pretty damned important to him. He said he wants it once this is over.” I paused and debated telling him the last part. “He offered to help.”

  “He is still in Paris?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. He said he would come when we were ready and would take the coin as payment for his assistance. I was under the impression you knew he was here and willing to help.”

  “Judas is…different. I suspect he has gone to another time and will return when his companion tells him to.”

  “Companion?”

  “He travels with a seer.” Luke turned his attention to the book once more.

  “He was alone when he came to me. Who does he travel with?”

  “There is more,” Luke said, abruptly changing the subject, and turned his attention back to the book.

  9 April, 1834

  My hands ache. Everything will go wrong…I know it. I know it as certainly as I know my name is not Delphine LaLaurie. I keep telling these men I am not strong enough. I tell them again and again I unable to acquiesce to their request, but they do not listen. They do not care. They are greedy men, desperate to take what is mine. They demand repayment for a favor I did not request. I hate them.