Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

Krystos whimpered and forked the sign of the evil eye at me with his bloody hands. I rang the barrel of the pistol off the top of his head. Not too hard, but hard enough.

“Last try,” I suggested. “English?”

All at once the fight drained out of him. Maybe he finally grasped the fact that he was totally helpless and I owned his life. He kept staring at what was left of Inigo’s head. Without looking at me, he spoke in a tiny voice. “Y-yes. Some. A little.”

“Good, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said with an approving smile. “Are there any more of you fucktards around here? Anyone else in the house?”

His eyes roved around to take stock of all the dead. He shook his head.

I placed the hot barrel against the knee of his undamaged leg. “Be real sure.”

He whimpered as he cut a quick look toward the stairs and back. “No. My people… are all down here.”

I didn’t like the way he leaned on “my people” and knew that I was going to have to go upstairs. I sure as hell did not want to.

“Who sent you?”

“W-what?”

I said it slower. “Who. Sent. You?”

Now Krystos looked at me, and the expression that washed over his face was one of complete puzzlement. He said, “God.”

His tone of voice suggested that he was surprised I didn’t already know that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“God,” he said again, shaking his head.

“You’re saying that God sent you to kill me?”

He nodded.

“Do you even know who I am?”

He shook his head. “It does not matter. You are one of them. Upier!”

“Which is what, exactly?”

He shook his head in exasperation, apparently perplexed that I did not know what he was talking about.

“We’ll come back to that,” I said. “Why does ‘God’ want me dead?”

Krystos licked his lips and winced at the taste of his own blood. “To… stop.”

“Stop what? Or who?”

“Evil. Big evil.”

I was getting tired of this and it must have shown on my face because he immediately recoiled from me. “No! Please, no!”

“You’re jerking me around, friend, and I’m not digging it. You can’t be this stupid, so tell me what I want to know or we can up the ante on this game. Who are you people?”

“We are Sabbatarians. We are Sat… Sat…” and again he fished for the English version of a word but this time he came up with it. “The… Saturday People. Our… cell… was alerted. About you,” he said, picking each word with care. “They said… you were working with… the Ordo Ruber. Against God. To… kill us all.”

I sat back on my heels. “What in the wide blue fuck are you talking about? What are ‘Saturday People’?”

Krystos touched his chest then nodded to the dead scattered around the room. “Saturday. All Saturday.” He was trying to tell me something but he was clearly playing the wrong song for the wrong audience. His face twisted in fear and frustration. “They said… I mean… we believed… that there were no more… like you… no more Upierczi left. We thought you were all gone. Years ago. A hundred years. More.”

“What do you mean ‘like me’?”

He looked away, not wanting to say the word. I used the barrel of the pistol to make him face me again. I repeated my question. He thought about it and finally came up with a word that I did understand.

“ Vampir!” he whispered.

Oh boy.

It was all so absurd that I almost smiled. Or, maybe I did. I felt my mouth do something ugly and twisted.

“Let me see if I have this straight. You jackasses think I’m a vampire?”

He cringed away from me, but he also nodded.

“Does that mean you think the Red Knights are vampires?”

Another nod.

I will rip your throat out and drink your life.

“Well, that’s just fucking peachy, isn’t it?” I said with a sigh.

There was a sound and we both turned to see Ghost, weak and trembling, standing in the doorway to the entrance hall. He started to come into the room, but I stopped him with a click of my tongue. Ghost sat down and studied Krystos with savage dog eyes.

A strange expression came over Krystos’s face. He looked at me, confused. “Are you… Stregoni benefici?”

I tried to sort out the translation. “Beneficial witch?”

He gave his head a violent shake. “ Vampir,” he insisted. “Church vampir. Vampir for God.”

“Do I look like a fucking vampire, Einstein?” I snapped. Then I sat back on my heels and blew out my cheeks. “And… I can’t believe I just asked that question.”

Krystos continued to stare at me, but now there was a splinter of doubt in his eyes.

“Okay,” I said, “here’s the game plan. You are going to sit here and not move while I go check the rest of the house. My dog is going to watch you. You do anything to my dog, you even look at him crooked, and you’re going to find that I’m a lot scarier than a vampire. Are we communicating here?”

Krystos cringed back and tried to melt into the wall. “No…!” he gasped. “No hurt. Never hurt white dog… fetch dog… fetch! ”

I was getting more confused by the minute. “You want to play fetch with my dog? Really, you want to make a joke now? ’Cause I have to tell you, pal, it’s not a great time to jerk my chain.”

“No,” he insisted, “ fetch dog. Fetch!”

He searched my face for understanding and obviously found none because I had none to give. He turned his face toward the wall and began muttering prayers.

“You’re less than useless,” I told him as I got to my feet. “Stay there and shut up. Don’t even think about trying to escape. You wouldn’t get far and I’ll kill you for trying.”

He shook his head. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped onto his shirt. A small part of me wanted to feel sorry for him, hurt and scared as he was, but the rest of me told that part to shut the fuck up.

The house was quiet. I checked the rest of the bodies. They were all dead.

I collected the weapons from the fearless vampire hunters. A couple of guns, some knives, and the hammers and stakes. I looked at those for a moment, still amazed that they were any part of my version of the real world. The stakes were eighteen inches long and lacquered to a high gloss. They hadn’t been whittled, either; each one had been turned on a lathe by someone who understood woodworking. There was a long prayer carved into each one. The writing was tiny and I had to squint to read it, turning the stake in a circle to read the Latin that rolled around and around. Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus; supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.

My Latin is only passable, but I could make out some of it: “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle…” As far as I could make out it was a prayer against evil. It seemed to fit the agenda for Krystos and his crew, but it explained nothing.

“Joe, old son,” I said aloud to myself, “you need to go the hell back to Baltimore. You need to take in an Orioles game, get drunk. Maybe get laid. Either way, you need to get your ass out of this freak show of a country.”

How do you process something like this? I mean… these guys were actual vampire hunters. Or, to rephrase that, these total whack jobs were taking their shared delusion to an impressive level.

I found a second leather valise in the dining room. It was crammed with more stakes, pouches of garlic powder, jars of pure garlic oil, and bottles of water marked with a black cross. I opened the lid and sniffed. Far as I could tell it was only water. I looked at the cross again and then back to the babbling guy on the floor.