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  “What is it now?” I asked. “You want to set me up for a playdate with Satan?”

  She laughed. At least someone thought I was funny. “No,” she said, “you said you wanted to meet me.”

  “I do.” I tried not to sound too eager. I used my thumbnail to slide back a panel on the side of my phone. I pressed a button that activates a trace. “Name a place. I’ll buy the coffee.”

  “Sorry … it will have to be over the phone. I want to ask a question.”

  I almost laughed. “Why on earth would I want to answer one? Last time we chatted, you put a laser sight on my balls.”

  “I could have shot your balls off. I did not. You can check if you like. I’ll wait.”

  “Okay,” I said, “admittedly you get some Brownie points for not blowing my balls off. Thanks bunches, but it’s hardly a basis for enduring trust.”

  “‘Brownie points’? You are a strange man, Captain Ledger.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Before I could respond to that she came at me out of left field. “What did Rasouli give you?”

  “What makes you think he gave me anything?”

  “He said he wanted to give you something.”

  “Okay, there’s that. He’s your boss, why don’t you ask him?”

  She made a gagging noise. “God! I would rather shoot myself than work for such a cockroach.”

  “Didn’t look that way an hour ago.”

  “Eh,” she said dismissively. “It was contract work. Believe me, Captain Ledger, it is all I would ever be willing to do for him.” With her accent she pronounced my last name as “La-jeer.” I liked it. Made me feel exotic and mysterious.

  “Even so,” I said, “why not ask him?”

  “He doesn’t know me. I’m a voice on a phone to him. Why would he trust me?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I am asking very nicely,” she said.

  Despite everything, I laughed. She did too. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I promise not to shoot you.”

  “Yeah, that earns you those brownie points, but so far you’re only a sexy voice on a phone line. You don’t have enough points to buy much more than civility.”

  There was a short silence as she considered this. I looked at the display on the side of my phone. The trace was about halfway completed.

  “Maybe I can earn some extra ‘brownie’ points,” she said.

  “How?”

  Instead of answering she asked, “Can I call you ‘Joe’?”

  I smiled and shook my head in exasperation. Ghost looked at me in disgust. He would have hung up a long time ago, I suppose. “Only if I have something to call you.”

  “You have to know that’s impossible.”

  “Then give me anything. A nickname.”

  “I have a thousand names.”

  “Yes, that’s very ‘international woman of mystery’ of you, but I only need one.”

  After a few seconds she said, “Violin.”

  “Violin,” I said, testing the name. “That’s pretty.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll bet you are, too.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m a monster.” And in those four simple words her tone changed from playful humor to something else. She packed that word with such intense sadness that I was momentarily left speechless. Before I could fumble out a reply the line went dead.

  I stared at the phone. The LED tracer went from green to red. Trace incomplete.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “That was surreal.”

  Ghost stared at me with huge doggie eyes. Sadly he offered no wise insights into what the hell was going on.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Kingdom of Shadows

  Beneath the Sands

  One Year Ago

  They walked through the shadows, two incongruous figures that did not look like they belonged in the same century let alone the same reality. Vox found it very amusing even while it was frightening. He admitted to himself that Grigor scared him. In Vox’s estimation, Grigor—with his pale skin, black clothes, and otherworldly demeanor—would scare anyone. He wondered how much of it was window dressing to sell the idea of immortal monsters, and how much of it was the real deal. Not knowing the difference is what made the fear sweat run icy lines down Vox’s back.

  After all, Grigor was in many ways the real deal. He was one of Upierczi, the reigning king of his kind. Ancient by any ordinary standard and, if the stories the Scriptor’s father had told him were true, faster and more powerful than any of his followers—and they were faster and stronger than …

  Than what? He asked himself. Than humans?

  As they walked, Vox pondered that question and his fear grew and grew.

  Grigor led him through a maze of tunnels, some of which looked to be centuries old. Some of the tunnels opened into well-organized living quarters, with proper lights, rooms like dormitories, niches for worship, mess halls, and many rooms for training. There were cells down there, too, and as they walked past, Vox could hear the wretched whimpering of female voices.

  He paused. “What’s that?”

  Grigor turned and regarded the line of cells with heavy-lidded eyes. “Breeding pens.”

  “Who are those women?”

  “They are not women,” sneered Grigor. “They are cows. If they are lucky, if God favors them, they will bear a Upierczi son.”

  “If they don’t?”

  “Then they are less than useless to us.”

  He spat on the floor and turned to continue down the long corridor.

  Vox lingered for a moment. One voice, a very young voice, suddenly screamed with the absolute and immediate horror of someone who was being brutally used and who knew, with absolute certainty, that no one would ever come to rescue her. It made Vox feel sick. He tried to tell himself that it was the chemo upsetting his stomach. If it accomplished nothing else, the lie at least kept him from vomiting.

  He hurried to catch up to Grigor.

  After another quarter mile, Vox stopped again, this time to peer at a piece of broken mosaic on a cracked wall. When Grigor saw him staring at it, the pale man said, “That is Darius the Great being crowned. It was placed there on the first anniversary of the Persian king’s death. This wall was made four hundred and eighty-five years before the birth of Jesus Christ.”

  Vox turned and looked at the open mouths of tunnels and side corridors. “These tunnels are that old?”

  “Some are,” agreed Grigor. “Some are older still; and we have tunnels like these in many cities.”

  “You dug these holes?’

  “The Upierczi did much of it, but your kind made many of them,” murmured Grigor, still caressing the stonework. His eyelids drifted shut. “Do you know how the Upierczi came to be the slaves of the Ordo Ruber?”

  “I … know the version I was told by the Scriptor’s grandfather. About Sir Guy going looking for … your kind.”

  Grigor leaned his cheek against the stone wall. “Father Nicodemus sent Sir Guy out to find Upierczi anywhere he could. In Turkey and Russia, England and Romania. Many places. There were rumors of us, of course, and most rumors were false. They said that we were the corpses of the dead risen from graves to haunt and prey upon the living.” He laughed and then shook his head. “We were not a race then. We were an aberration, an abomination. Freaks who were born to live in shadows, always hungry, always on the point of starvation, driven to mad acts of violence merely to survive. It is no different with any creature God has made—in the direst moment need overwhelms control.”

  “That hasn’t changed,” said Vox.

  Grigor nodded. “Your people feared us, and that is to be understood. The Church, however, denounced us as demons, as children of Satan. Knights and warrior priests and anyone who could raise a sword on behalf of the Church were empowered to kill us, to hunt us to extinction.” He sighed. “Think of that life. To be alone, and to believe that there is no o
ne like you. No one who shares your nature, no one who understands your hungers. No one who loves you.”

  “Love?” said Vox quietly. “They make a lot about that in movies. Dracula and Twilight and all that shit. I don’t suppose you get to the multiplex very often, but that’s a kind of a theme out there. They think you are all about eternal love and romance. But I heard those women in the cells. Didn’t sound like love songs to me.”

  Grigor turned away and looked deep into the shadows, and Vox wondered how much the man could see that he could not. Without immediately commenting on Vox’s statement, Grigor continued his story.

  “When Sir Guy died, his son and successor, along with Father Nicodemus, created the Red Knights. A new order of chivalry, of knights errant given authority by the Church to prosecute a campaign against faithlessness. But that was in name only. They called us knights, and we call ourselves knights, but that is not who and what we are.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “Assassins. We were created to be the Order’s answer to the Tariqa’s fida’i. We were chess pieces. We were a sword, a knife, a gun. No different. Tools of war.”

  “You’re more than that,” said Vox.

  “Yes,” said Grigor and it was the first word he’d spoken that had real passion. “We made true knights of ourselves. We became in fact what they said we were in name only. We became a true order of chivalry. We became a society. A people.”

  “You still live in tunnels, Grigor.”

  “Because we choose to. It is our world, within but apart from the world above. We have thousands of miles of tunnels. We come and go and no one knows we are here. Archaeologists and miners sometimes find the tunnels, but we collapse connecting tunnels, and we are experts at disguising our private tunnels. We are not found unless we choose to be found.”

  “That’s pretty fucking impressive.”

  Grigor gave a half smile. “It’s necessary. We know that we could never integrate into the world above. We can play dress up and ‘pass’ for one of you, but not on close inspection. And we are still hunted up there. The Inquisition was created by a papal bull to hunt us down. Us and other things that move in the dark, most of who are only fantasies concocted by fools. Father Nicodemus was able to use some aspects of the Inquisition so that he and the sitting Scriptor could find true Upierczi. Find and recruit us; but to the Church at large we were monsters and therefore evil; and they still hunt us. We do not fear any man in single combat, or any two or three men. But the Inquisitors did not come at us in small numbers. They sent armies against us. They sent special teams—the Sabbatarians, the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, and many others over the years. Some—most—of those groups are long gone. Died out or killed by us or disbanded by changes in Church policies. Only the Inquisitors remain, and after a long silence they’ve become active again.”

  “Yeah,” said Vox, “I know about one of them. The Sabbatarians. The Seven Kings ran into them a couple of times. I even used them once in a while for some wetworks stuff, but I broke off my ties with them. Idealistic trash. They’re still around, though, and they’re formidable in numbers.”

  “In the same way locusts are.”

  “There are a lot of them,” said Vox, and Grigor nodded.

  “Over the years we—with the help of Father Nicodemus—have managed to weaken their effectiveness by feeding them lies about who and what we are. About our strengths and weaknesses.”

  “Disinformation,” Vox supplied. “Stakes, crosses, sunlight, that sort of shit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nicodemus is a tricky bastard. What about garlic?”

  Grigor did not answer.

  Vox said, “I heard a rumor that some other group is gunning for you too. Arklight?”

  Grigor hissed like a snake. “Whores and daughters of whores.”

  “Maybe,” said Vox grudgingly. “Whores with high-powered sniper rifles, though.

  With a black-nailed finger, Grigor pointed into the darkness in the direction of the wretched weeping. “They were our whores once. There is not one of them who has not screamed for us.”

  “Charming,” murmured Vox. A wave of nausea swept through him and he stopped to steady himself on a wall. “When do we start the treatments? I’m losing a lot of ground here.”

  The King of Thorns smiled.

  “The treatment will make you scream,” he murmured.

  “Then I’ll fucking scream,” snarled Vox.

  The word “scream” echoed through the endless darkness.

  A challenge. A promise.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Homa Hotel

  51 Khodami Street, Vanak Square

  Tehran, Iran

  June 15, 9:06 a.m.

  The sniper’s name was not Violin.

  But it would do. For Joseph Ledger and for this crisis, it would do. The name meant something to her from a long time ago. Back when she meant something to herself. When she had a life instead of a mission.

  Violin.

  Even the sound of it in her mind was bittersweet. A memory of a girl who laughed freely and who thought that all the monsters in the world were in storybooks. Back before her eyes were opened.

  Violin. She had liked the way Ledger had repeated it. He had truly tasted the name, the way a sensualist would. That intrigued her. She already knew that he was a passionate man, that was clear from the profiles Oracle had read to her. Ledger was a sensuous man, and a tragic one. He wore death and grief like garments.

  And Violin understood that very well.

  What she did not understand was why she had lingered to watch him, or worse yet, why she had called him. It felt correct while she was dialing, and yet in every way open to her analytical mind it was wrong. A tactical and strategic error and a clear break with Arklight protocol. Mother would be furious.

  No, she corrected herself, Mother will be furious. The call was now part of her phone log, which meant that it was part of the mission file. Lilith would never overlook it.

  “Oracle,” she said aloud.

  The screen on her small computer lit up with its smiling Mona Lisa.

  “Oracle welcomes you.”

  “I want to enter a new code name.”

  “Voice recognition is active. What code name would you like to enter?”

  “Violin.”

  “Is this for file or field use?”

  “Field use. It will be my call sign for this mission. Enable.”

  “May I inquire as to why you have changed your code name? Has your cover been compromised?”

  “My cover is intact. The change is to … maintain high security standards.”

  “Thank you. Call sign ‘Violin’ is enabled. All appropriate field teams will receive a coded memo. How may I help you, Violin?”

  “I need to speak to my mother. Right now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tehran, Iran

  One Year Ago

  Hugo Vox sat in his car and wept.

  He had never felt pain like this before. Not during chemo or radiation. Not even the cancer hurt this bad. Upier 531 was a lot more than gene therapy. Vox knew about gene therapy and it didn’t hurt beyond the simple injections.

  He felt like every cell in his body was tearing itself apart.

  The car was soundproof, so his screams bounced off the windows and the leather seats and smashed into him like fists. He punched the steering wheel and dashboard.

  Tears ran down his face.

  “God!” he begged. “Please, God…”

  But God had never once answered his prayers, even when Vox still believed.

  Vox felt his mind fracture, felt pieces fall away. A fever burned through him and his skin was as hot as if he sat in a furnace. The sweat ran down so heavily that he felt like he was melting.

  What had he done?

  How could he have thought that this was going to save him, because now he was sure it was killing him.

  Not only gene therapy.

  G
rigor’s pet mad scientist, Dr. Hasbrouck, had given him three injections of something else. Three syringes with long needles. Syringes filled with fluid the color of blood.

  No, not just the color of blood.

  Upier 531.

  Blood of the damned. Blood of the monsters who tunneled like pale moles in the bowels of the earth.

  Blood of vampires.

  Hasbrouck had strapped Vox down for those injections. Bound his wrists and legs and chest. And then he had raised one gleaming syringe above him. A bead of blood gleamed on the needlepoint.

  “This may hurt a little,” Hasbrouck had said with a sadistic chuckle. And then he had plunged the needle into his chest.

  Into his heart.

  Vox had screamed. Oh, how he had screamed.

  The pain was so far beyond his understanding that he had no adjectives to describe it. He felt the alien blood as it entered him.

  It shrieked its way into his heart, into his blood, throughout his body.

  Vox did not pass out until the second needle. Hasbrouck, courteous man that he was, splashed cold water in Vox’s face before he gave him the third injection.

  “You really should pay attention to this,” said the doctor. “It’s not every day that someone makes you immortal. Have a little respect.”

  The third needle was the worst of all, because every inch of Vox’s skin tried to recoil from it. Like a torture victim who knows that his last inch of unburned flesh is next to feel the Inquisitor’s touch.

  Vox passed out again.

  And woke up behind the wheel in his own car.

  The pain came and went. Discovering that he was still alive was little comfort. He put his face in his hands and sobbed.

  A voice said, “Stop it. You embarrass me.”

  Vox’s head shot up and he jerked sideways in his seat. A scream bubbled inside his throat, but it died on his tongue.

  “How the fuck did you get in here?”

  Father Nicodemus smiled. “What does it matter?”

  Vox stared in mingled horror, doubt, and fascination at the old priest. It had been years since he’d seen him, but the cleric had not changed at all. Not a line, not a day.