She smiled at him.
“Better go before I have time to rethink this,” Vandler said. “Or he does.” He tilted his head toward Hannuman; the older man was frowning with impatience, the narrow lips turned down in an expression that must be habitual since the wrinkles were so deep. He didn’t seem to want to say goodbye to anyone or take anything with him.
The two mercenaries beckoned to the mage and he came to join them, not even glancing at his wife and his children. Marla had gone to her sons and put her arms around them. She stood with her back to her former husband.
Batanya gave Vandler a quick nod, and she and Clovache set off with Hannuman in tow. They did not speak but followed the path back to the clearing where Geit had been, then across the narrow strip of land leading to the spot where the first party had arrived. It would be easiest to return from that point.
“You know, I did much for those savages,” Hannuman said, looking straight ahead of him.
“Sure you did,” Batanya said.
“I could tell they loved you,” Clovache said, deadpan. They stood on either side of Hannuman, and each gripped a stringy arm. Clovache pulled out her knife with her free hand, and the next instant it was at Hannuman’s throat. With his hands held, he could not attack them with magic.
“What say I cut his throat and we toss him into the swamp?” Clovache said.
“He’d be eaten up in no time,” Batanya agreed.
“And certainly no loss.”
Hannuman’s furious and frightened old eyes latched on to Batanya. He did not dare speak, not with the knife so close.
“Better not,” Batanya said. “It would be satisfying, though. Maybe Geit would like the privilege.”
Clovache shrugged. “All right, then.” She slid her knife back into its sheath with one smooth movement.
Batanya activated her amulet at the same moment Clovache did.
In the second before they reappeared on the platform where they’d been two hours before, safe in heart of the Collective, Batanya made a mental note to tell the mechs that she wanted to be sure she was the one sent to fetch Vandler.
In one year.
THE VAMPIRES KARAMAZOV
by Nancy Holder
In another life, it would be time to chant the morning prayers:Having risen from sleep, we fall down before thee.
But Alexei and his family had risen from sleep with the setting of the sun, and would go back to sleep with the dawn. A midsummer’s night was ending in New York City: hot, dirty, unpredictable. Alexei sat on a roll-around chair and faced a bank of camera monitors, the latest generation of tech. When the Karamazovs had first moved to New York in 1866, their home security system consisted of a chair and a rifle. As far as they knew, they were still the only living vampires in New York. No one had contacted them. No one had come after them. Still, they watched.
Alexei was on duty. Braced. He was always on duty, but his brothers didn’t know it. In their previous lives, he had taken holy orders as a monk, and as he could minister to no one else, his violent, graceless family was his flock. They were in ceaseless need: his father and brothers were like children, aggressive and violent. He was different, but then, he had always been different. No oneelse in the family would have dreamed of giving himself to the Church. But then again, no one in the family would have dreamed of becoming a vampire.
He caught the whirr of the elevator down the hall, the thunder of Pavel’s boots. His blissful solitude was about to end, and he consigned himself to the ensuing chaos as his father and brothers returned from their night revels, as inevitable as the sunrise. Drinking, whoring, feeding. The anonymity of modern life in New York eliminated accountability. Back in Victorian-age Russia, your neighbors saw you. If you committed a sin, your priest heard about it. Now there was no shame, only boasting, showing off how outrageous you could be, how many likes you could accumulate for bad behavior. Maybe it was foolish to hold vampires accountable for wrongdoing as had been defined for human beings. But the laws of the true God existed, and had endured for two thousand years, or else the world held no meaning.
But what about his existence? If he spent his time contemplating Christ, but couldn’t touch a cross, and was afraid to pray for fear of sullying the Lord’s name—what led him to the conclusion that he could turn anyone from the path of darkness to that of the light, least of all himself?
He had murdered his first victim. He had not known how to stop. The blood, flowing; his adrenaline pumping. The sheer lust. He had given in to it. And for that he was damned. He couldn’t confess, couldn’t receive absolution, couldn’t become clean again because he was cut off from the Holy One forever. God didn’t know of his struggles to repent. He didn’t know there was a sorrowful demon in vain pursuit of his own lost soul.
Then why not sin?asked the devil on Alexei’s shoulder.
He watched the monitors as the lumbering boots sounded, remembering the shifting hues in the stained-glass windows of themonastery, how the light would play over the huge mosaic icon and make the sad Madonna smile. The soft tolling of bells.
Then Pavel burst in, slammed the apartment door so hard the picture frames rattled, and flopped against it as if he had just outrun a band of marauding Cossacks. He was dressed like a Russian mobster in black leather pants, a black bomber jacket, black boots, and shades. His dark hair was close-cropped, his head almost shaved. He looked like someone you should avoid.
“Hi, Lex,” he said.
Alexei gritted his teeth. He hated the nickname.
Vodka fumes and the succulent aroma of blood billowed around Pavel as he staggered across their living room with its garish red velvet couches and Turkish rugs and plopped down into the empty chair beside Alexei. He’d drained some homeless person or maybe a beautiful rich girl, and no doubt efficiently disposed of the body. No doubt at all. No corpses, no questions. It was how they had lasted so long. Alexei’s secret vow never to take another human life endangered the family. For him, it was the lesser of two evils.
