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There was no time for shoes if I wanted the hooker to live.

I’d left them on the floor on her side of the bed, and caught a glimpse of them when she picked up my T-shirt to dry her tears on. Watching her, something drew my eyes to her throat, some old habit, some new awareness saw the artery pulse, a little twitch she wasn’t aware of.

I grabbed her wrists and yanked her across the bed, rolled us both to the floor, kicked the bathroom door open bare-footed and listened to the floorboards. The worn-out quilt slumped to the floor in our wake, most of its weight having been pinched to the edge of the bed.

“What the fuck –”

“Shh!” I covered her mouth. Shit, I’d forgotten that it hurt to land on things. My hip flared in frustration. Those little things, those stupid little things, you could forget them so easily. “Ever been religious, Maggie?”

She spoke through my fingers. “Mass every Sun–”

“Got a cross, a crucifix, rosary beads, anything?” She didn’t answer, clearly thought I was the latest in a string of Crazy Johns and couldn’t figure how to handle me, but her eyes flicked to the box of costume jewelry on the bureau. I imagined I could hear footsteps in the bar downstairs, or the creak of the door to the stairwell, but of course I couldn’t: of course I was being swayed by the paranoia of the pulse. Mortality made a rabbit’s nose of me.

Didn’t have time to be nice, so I shoved her into the bathroom and leapt across the floor, imagined footsteps up the stairs, grabbed the jewelry box, found the rosary beads with a crucifix attached and flung them to her even as I dropped the box and kicked the glass out of the window over the wrought-iron balcony.

She was screaming but it didn’t matter, and it wouldn’t matter if they heard the glass break, because they knew I was here and they’d find me if I was there to be found. They could smell me, sweat and sex and beating blood.

“Pray, Maggie. The Devil’s real and he’s on his way. Find your faith and pray, or you’ll die.”

Stupid storybook words for a stupid storybook night, but all I had time for. I fell through the window, leading with my shoulder and pitching myself over the balcony, slamming against the closed dumpster hard enough to have broken my arm if I hadn’t rolled with the impact. Wood splintered apart in the room I’d left, and Maggie’s screams became shrieks. If she found her faith, she’d live: if she died, she’d die quickly, because they didn’t have time for play with the bonus levels, they were gunning for the big boss.

Idiot. I shouldn’t have stayed, shouldn’t have taken Maggie up on her offer. Shouldn’t have been out after dark. Should’ve just collected my guns and gone back to the hotel. Should’ve known even a bitch pup like Bango would’ve gotten the word out this quick, when the word was what it was.

I started running without taking the time to stand up straight, bare feet smacking against the pavement, feeling the artery in my throat pulse like a beacon. I needed a crowd, a herd, something to get lost in. No one was around except a few drunks huddled by the corners, a few cars lumbering by. Bourbon Street. I had to get to Bourbon Street.

I could taste copper in the muddy air of the Mississippi River, a foul mist rising up around me.

“I can smell you on her, Bishop! You won’t survive the night!” That was Vict’s voice, carrying further than a human’s could have across the humid streets. Not as close as I’d worried, though: they were having trouble following me. Having trouble scenting me because I was sweating and producing adrenaline and they weren’t used to that. Good.

Bishop. I was effectively excommunicated, dead among the dead and my title stripped, but few of them were old enough to have any other names for me.

I reached for — oh fuck. Oh fuck I was stupid. Near-perfect memory replayed it for me: taking off my piece at the hooker’s insistence, not minding because I didn’t want to sleep with a woman who lacked the sense to take care of herself, putting aside my security in a stupid moment of the meat. I could see it, black and oiled and brand-new and loaded and left in my jacket on the chair by the door. No jacket, no gun, and I had maybe four minutes to do something about it, if I was lucky.

Didn’t need a watch to know it was six hours till daybreak. Old habits, old skills. You keep track of the moon and stars, like a salty sailor. Keep an internal clock you could time an atom by.

Think, Tomás.

I ran while I thought, feet slapping, hitting puddles of beer and shards of bottle and fuck but I hoped I wasn’t bloodletting, wasn’t giving them more trail, more scent. Four minutes would be tough enough to catch as it was.

Rampart Street.

I headed away from the river, forgetting Bourbon for the moment, sticking to the outskirts of the French Quarter where tourism and T-shirts gave way to tattoo parlors and biker bars. Time to get into character.

There was a guy coming out of a bar without a sign, nothing identifying it except the neon Dixie logo twinkling like green glass fireflies. Looked the type. Just drunk enough, just burly enough, unnecessary leather jacket in the September heat. I ran up to him — and almost collapsed, forgetting how lungs worked, that when you ran and ran and ran they’d stop giving you enough oxygen, make your head go empty and your muscles dumb.

I raised my hand, the universal symbol for “gimme a second here” since time immemorial, and like a good boy he waited, hands reaching not for the right side but the left, for a pack of cigarettes, thinking I was going to bum one. God bless the international confederacy of smokers.

“Need –” I wheezed. “Your — gun.” Southern rock was blaring from the bar and he couldn’t hear me, shook his head, gave me The Concerned Look which usually prefaces “you okay there, buddy?” God but I’d marked him, just like the old days of last week and the century before, and if it were then instead of now I’d be –

But it wasn’t.

“Your — gun!” I wheezed again, and he shook his head slowly like maybe he’d heard me this time but figured he couldn’t possibly have.

Fuck it. I’d lost too much time. I drew the gun from the waistband of his jeans, smacked him in the side of the head with the butt, let him fall and took the jacket. Too big and smelled like whiskey but it’d give me a little bit. He was groaning, which meant I hadn’t hit him as hard as I’d wanted to. It was too soon, I wasn’t used to this yet, wasn’t compensating.

How far away were they?

I ran again, down the side streets, crossing over an alley towards the sounds of noise and drunk and too many bars with too many jukeboxes: Bourbon Street, blessed Bourbon Street, where I was just another guy in jeans and leather and bare feet.

“Bishop!”

Shit. Shit, I’d doubled into their path. How many? I weaved through the crowd as I hit it running, stealing a look down the street as I moved. Four. Only four? No, don’t think like that: think four, four you gotta take care of. Don’t get weighed down by ego tripping.

I recognized Vict and Stepping Razor but not the girl or the long-haired skinny kid. Didn’t know if that was good or bad and didn’t have time to decide.

Ducked through the crowd into the bar with the most bass, which would make it tougher for them to follow my heartbeat. Breathing exercises. Remembered my breathing exercises, which I hadn’t had long to come up with. Hoped they’d work to keep the panic out of my pulse, keep me focused. The butt of the gun jutted comfortably against my side as I moved through the bar crowd, jostled through the dance beats, and buttoned the jacket all the way up to cover my throat with leather. Better safe than buried.

Christ, it’d only been a couple nights and they were already after me without so much as asking for my side of things. Not that I had a side, but shit, couldn’t I get the benefit of the doubt?

There was a fire exit just beyond the trail of beer and butts leading to the restrooms. Unless the girl or the skinny kid had pulled alpha, Stepping Razor would be there waiting for me, figuring on the other three flushing me out.

Good. Stepping Razor was a guy I felt like hurting. Near-perfect memory flashed again to a devil in a powdered wig, slashing at soldiers on both sides of a civil war they’d call revolutionary later, slashing with the saber he’d replace with a razor later, blood hanging in the air around him like greasy smoke.

Grabbed a girl waiting in line for the ladies’ room, clutched her by the throat and couldn’t help but notice that flash of panic and something warm across her eyes, but I was all business right now, just feeling her pulse, feeling for that rhythm. There it was. Yes. The beat inside the beat. They were here. Either it was Stepping Razor outside or it wasn’t, but either way my four minutes were up and it was time for the show.

The furniture in the bar wasn’t wooden because metal and plastic hosed down easier. Plan B was dangerous, not because it wouldn’t work but because it was going to show more of my hand, remind them that no matter what my status now in the underchurch or the world at large, I was still the Bishop and would not go gentle into that good night.

I let go of the girl and waited, a beat, just a beat, just enough for Victor to see me as he came in, and for him to see me seeing him, let him think I was panicking as I broke for the door, ran right into Stepping Razor –

Gun already drawn, hammer cocked, firing dead on at his mouth. His stupid, surprised, what the hell is Bishop doing, mouth. In that imaginary moment between the bullet leaving the chamber and smashing his head I could see the question mark on his face, him wondering if I’d come by silver bullets. I hadn’t.

But the thing about teeth is, when you shoot them they break.

His throat opened up without bleeding and shards of his teeth flew everywhere, and I kicked the door closed, kicked him against it, using his surprise as the leverage I needed to muscle him. He tried to talk because he’d always been stubborn like that.

“Bish–” I could fill in the blanks for him so I didn’t bother letting him finish. You can’t kill me, is what he was going to say, not without silver or wood, and he was right except for thinking it mattered. I didn’t need him to be dead, just needed me to be alive, and that hadn’t clicked for them yet. They didn’t know how to think as prey and it hadn’t occurred to them that I did.

I shot him in the kneecap, nice and messy, giving them something to sniff after, a hunger they’d have to fight, not to mention a situation one of them would have to stay behind to clean if they hadn’t received unction for my death. I didn’t think they had. It was too soon. The Cardinals wouldn’t want to admit I was that much of a threat.

Razor had wanted me to himself: he didn’t have anyone waiting in the back with him. Stupid. He’d probably told the other three to wait for him in the bar if they flushed me, to leave me to him, let him play with me. Even with the gunshots I might’ve bought a full minute, so I used it, taking the side street to a fire escape and climbing up it fast as I could with the gun in my hand. Between the gunfire and the drunk on Rampart, it wouldn’t be long before there were too many cops in the Quarter for them to want to continue this here — but I wasn’t sure how badly they wanted me and how much they considered time of the essence.

Thing about vampires is, they’ve always got tomorrow night to finish things off, and the night after that.

I caught sight of Vict coming around the corner before I got to the top of the fire escape, but kept climbing, hoping he wouldn’t look up right away. He didn’t. I clung to the roof, on my knees, peering over the side as they passed under me. I tried to listen but they were being smart now, subvocalizing so human ears couldn’t pick anything up. Just like I’d taught them.

Skinny kid had a bloody mouth — not literally, not yet, but like the Italians used the phrase, meaning he had a hunger he couldn’t satisfy, he liked the blood too much. He kept inching away from Vict, towards where the girl was taking care of Razor. Kept wanting a piece of that crimson, wanting to taste his own. Good. I could take care of him if I needed to, then. The girl, the girl was an unknown.

If I survived the night, near-perfect memory would replay the next moment for me over and over again: a drop of sweat beading from my brow, following the line of my hair, hanging, falling — I’d forgotten that I sweat now. I pulled back from the edge, imagining its downward path, imagining it landing on the pavement, imagining supernatural hearing picking up the treblesplat of the splash and marking me.

They had me, but I had the high ground, the drop, and four bullets.

No point in hiding. I stood up, watched them. Met Vict’s eyes, only so he wouldn’t see me seeing that the kid was hedging to the side, trying to get nearer to the girl and Razor, drawn by the smell of the blood. Vict looked up at me and grinned, like he had me — there was a crowd gathering in back of the bar, keeping their distance as the blue glow of police lights on Bourbon got closer, and Vict was grinning anyway, which means they had unction. Word had traveled fast and high. The College of Cardinals knew about me. These guys weren’t just gunning for me cause they could, they were gunning cause they were told to.

That meant that if there were only four of them, the girl was someone to look out for. The other three were all but useless, and the Cardinals would know it.

I took slow aim and kneecapped the kid. Let him lick his wounds instead of Razor’s. He had the hunger on him enough he just might do that — he had to be one of Razor’s boys, no one else would take in someone strong enough for this job who was still this stupid.

Vict leapt up in the air, two stories straight up without taking a run, and grabbed the edge of the fire escape, flipped himself over, started climbing. He’d be to the roof soon. I took a shot –

And missed.

He was too fast, too smart, saw me raising the gun and swung to the side, holding on to the ladder with a handful of fingers. Bullet didn’t even graze his trenchcoat. Near-perfect memory flashed to Victor the night I’d brought him to the dark, to Victor bloody and merciless among the doughboys, to a vicious killer I’d wanted to call mine. I’d taken a lot of soldiers. People who already knew how to kill. I’d stacked the deck against myself without realizing it.

Two shots left. Needed to save one for me, in case they got me, in case the night went bad. Didn’t want to use the other until I had to, absolutely had to.

So I stopped my breathing exercises. Let him feel the panic, the anxiety, in my pulse. Felt it beating against my throat, my temples, my fingertips, thudding in my chest. Let him smell my sweat and fear.

“Outta bullets, Bishop?” he snarled. His voice hadn’t been human in a century. It took effort for him to sound mortal, and it wasn’t effort he felt like taking right now. His voice was a beast’s, a jackal’s, Anubis in a trenchcoat and last year’s shades. “They wouldn’t stop me anyway. All they’d do is piss me off. You don’t have any silver, pup. No wood. You’re my meat now.”

I stuffed the gun into the back of my jeans and as soon as he was in range, I jumped off the edge of the roof, crashing into him feet-first and leaning as hard as I could to pull us to the side, clear the fire escape, wrestling with him to keep him below me, break the fall with him and his back with the fall.

I heard the crack when we landed and I rolled off him, out of range, feet scrambling out of panic I hadn’t been faking. At least two vertebrae. I let myself watch his smirk glide off, just to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing the fall had hurt him. Hurting someone like Vict, sometimes it had been the only thing that got me through the night. That part, it doesn’t totally wear off. Living or dead, whoever you are, sometimes it feels good to do some damage.

I’d taken three of them out and that made the fourth dangerous as all fuck, because she knew I was playing this thing for what it was, she knew I was still the Bishop, no matter what the pulse said. I wished I’d taken them out in a different order, left the kid for last or Razor, but it was what it was.

The crowd was thirty, forty strong now, and uniforms were entering it, but we ignored it all as she prowled the street towards me like a cat, back muscles tense and fingers out like claws. She hadn’t spoken a word and I didn’t feel like being the one to start the conversation.

“So you really are that good,” she said, and she was backing me through the street but it was like a dance, like she was leading, topping from below, and something was off about it. She was letting me read her steps. Taking us further away from the crowd, yeah, but away from her fellow vampires, too.

“Always was,” I said, coaxing the piece back into my hand. The way she kept moving, I wasn’t going to have time to aim before she could react. I wasn’t gonna be able to get a decent shot without giving her time to close the distance.

“Had to make sure.” She relaxed a little, like she wasn’t worried about the gun any more than she was the crowd, the uniforms, the flashing blue. Someone shouted at us to lay down on the ground and so on.

“Sure of –”

But I didn’t have a chance to finish. She drew a razor-thin fingernail across her wrist in the shape of a T, and smeared the trace of blood with her thumb. “Sanctuary,” she told me. “There are two more squads of four in the Quarter, and they’ll be here soon. You want to accept.”

Thing about vampires is, they’re evil fucks, but in the history of it all none of them has ever dishonored an offer of sanctuary, properly made like this one was. So I had to weigh this — was she the exception, or did she have a game going on here? I bet on the game and nodded.

She grabbed me by the elbows and yanked, and the next thing I knew the streets were whizzing by. She was a lot faster than I’d taken her for — faster than she could have been not ten minutes earlier or she’d have caught up to me before I got to Bourbon. Meant she’d fed on Razor when she was cleaning the scene. Didn’t know how to take that.

When the whizzing stopped she kicked a door shut behind us and we were in a room in the back of Saint Louis Cathedral. Dangerous place to be with the crosses, like a scarecrow in a roomful of matches, but if there was no one to strike those matches nothing was gonna happen. Thing is, nothing was stopping me from grabbing a cross. Did she think I lacked the proper faith, that I wouldn’t do it because I had some reason to let her live, or that I was somehow bound to honor the sanctuary she’d offered? She didn’t strike me as stupid. That meant option #2.

She let go of me, but not before caressing my silhouette with hers, breathing deep the way only the dead breathe, that way of breathing that isn’t necessary, just something they do when they need to draw in a scent. When she let go, she kissed my wrist, lips firmly closed, and dropped to one knee. “Your Holiness,” she murmured.

I frowned, shook my head. “I’m not even a Bishop any–”

“There’s a new church,” she said, and I saw the look in her eyes when she looked up at me, recognized it from so many other contexts and so many other times, near-perfect memory bringing it all back. She was a believer. I just didn’t know what she believed, and that made her the most dangerous thing in the room.

“There’s only one church,” I said, murmuring just as she was, habit feeding me words, “One God, one church, taking one form by day and another by night.”

“Three,” she said, shaking her head with her eyes. “The church of the day, the church of man; the church of night, the underchurch, the church of the dead; and now, the new church, the church of the dawn. Your church, Your Holiness. We’re two hundred strong and growing.”

Two hundred. Out of twenty thousand vampires, the world over. Two hundred — in, what, two days at the most? No wonder they wanted me out. No wonder unction had been granted. I was suddenly far less confident of my ability to survive for long. Two hundred?

“Can’t be my church if this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

She stayed on that knee, kept my wrist between her hands. The way old women used to cling to Elvis. “You were a Crusader once.”

“I was a damn fool.”

“You were a Crusader. You were one of them, one of the nine, one of the first. You drank from the Grail.”

“So they say.”

Her eyes bled with fervor. “Tell me. I have to know. It’s true, isn’t it? You drank of the blood and were transformed, granted eternal life. You’re one of the first. One of the only three Crusaders left.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Okay. Yeah. I was.” Three of the other six I’d killed myself; the other three, they’d fallen victim to the sorts of things crusaders fall victim to, living or dead: lust, greed, envy, faith.

“And you gave it away.” Wonder mixed in with the fervor now, wonder and fear and lust. Once upon a nightmare, these had been a few of my favorite things. “You’re the first heresiarch since Justin.” I’d killed Justin myself, bled him dry over a moonless Seine and left him for the dawn to find, for abandoning the underchurch and trying to live in the mortal world, for professing that it was possible for the damned to be saved.

“You could look at it that way.”

“We want to join you. All of us. We’ll protect you, keep you safe. There are enough of us. Enough of us who are strong. I’m Maria, blood of Augustus, three centuries in service.” Jesus Christ. I’d heard of Maria: she’d been a legend even to me, an assassin rarely seen, working the darkest corners of the night. Rumor had it she’d seduced two popes, both of them Piuses. She’d answered only to the Cardinals since shortly after I’d stepped down from their ranks, bowing to political pressures.

I stiffened. “I’m mortal now, Maria. You can smell it on me. I know you did. Mortal as they come. These bones are going to wither, maybe quicker than they would have if I’d never touched the Cup, maybe not. I’m going to age and wither and die and everything will go back to the way it was.”

“No. Nothing will be the same, because you did it. Don’t you see? It’s what we want. More than will admit it, because they don’t want to want what they can’t have. We want to follow you, truly follow you, your example: we want to be human again.”

I hadn’t felt so cold since before my heart had started beating again. This was going to go very badly. I could smell it. I could see the faith in her eyes and was old enough, ancient enough, to recognize the fine wire between faith and fury, and to gauge what tensions would snap it. I started to move, slowly so slowly, letting her follow me, leading her. Her eyes stayed on mine, shining, loving, hopeful, needy. She would have cried if the dead had tears.

“That isn’t something I can give you, Maria. I think I would if I could. I’d take it all back if I could. I knew August — I didn’t bring him to the night, but I encouraged him to be brought, and so I apologize for your life. But I can’t change it for you.”

A flicker in those old eyes, a heat coming off her like lust. “I understand. We don’t expect you to bring us to the dawn,” she said it like it was a phrase they had for what I’d done, the transformation I’d undergone, “right away. Not until you’re safe. There’d be no point in you giving up your protection right away. But give us our chance. We’ll prove our worth. We’re ready to go to war with the underchurch if you deem it necessary.” That much, that soon? Hell, it wasn’t even about me. This “church” was a cult that’d been waiting to happen, I’d just been nominated the spark.

She thought she understood — she was seeing through faith, through that prism that made everything in the world crystal and strong and perfect, made it sit wakeless as a heron in the calm of your belief. And she couldn’t be more wrong. “Maria, that’s not –”

Her voice grew teeth. “You should know, there are some of us who think there is another way. That to feed from you would bring the dawn. That your blood remains both ours and theirs, damned and saved, and to drink it would make us like you.” She was threatening me, and the most dangerous thing about the threat was that I don’t believe she realized that’s what it was: she thought she was warning me about others, but I saw the flash of fangs behind her pale perfect lips, and I saw the thud in her throat matching mine. If she was willing to leave the underchurch — sanctuary might be breached. She might be so wrapped up in her faith that she wouldn’t even consider it a breach.

I decided she’d had long enough to be the most dangerous thing in the room. It was my turn.

I reached for my gun slower than I needed to, just to pull her eyes to that side as I yanked a wood-framed painting off the wall, smashed it against the stone, a painting of some French Cardinal from some century which had probably smelled bad and popularized uncomfortable clothing, and she was on me, thrashing me to the floor, and her teeth –

Oh God her horrible beautiful wonderful terrible teeth, they were at my wrist, they were piercing, they were drinking –

I brought the shard of shattered frame down as hard as I could, driving it through her back, a killshot I’d made hundreds of times before, following the gaps of bone and piercing muscle and tissue and –

She collapsed against me, motionless, the feel of her mouth burning against my wrist. Nothing pulsed in her, nothing lived, not even the thrill of damnation.

I retrieved my gun and listened for sounds in the front of the Cathedral. Nothing. She must have cleared it somehow. Must have arranged this. Did that mean there were others of hers nearby? No, not if “my church” only numbered two hundred — they couldn’t risk someone in addition to Maria, or they’d risk exposure. She had an in with the mortals, which fit her station.

If she was solo, it meant she’d arranged this to a T. I knew Maria by reputation, knew how well she worked. There was no way Razor or the other boys would trace her here, would find me here — except for the bite on my wrist. I could feel it burning. That wasn’t the way you were brought to the night, but a bite, a good solid bite like hers, it marked you, and other vampires, they could smell the mark. Like a brand. A “property of” tag.

I crept to the cathedral and found the holy water, confessed my sins and said my Our Fathers and Hail Marys and doused my wrist in the font until I felt the burn go away. That would do it. A mortal who would know to do that, it probably wasn’t a mortal you’d want to leave alive anyway. Something was itching me the wrong way, some discomfort on the tip of my tongue, but I brushed it aside.

I was safe for the night. Tomorrow I’d buy more guns, more bullets, and some shoes, and I’d get the hell out of town. Might be I could use this new church to my advantage. Might be I’d have to.

I would’ve given Maria what she wanted, that’s the hell of it. I’d give it to all of them. I’d spend the rest of my days traveling the world, bringing vampires to the dawn, ridding the world of the race I’d helped spawn. I’d show them what I’d done, how I’d become mortal again, tell them how it felt to see the sun break over the treeline for the first time without feeling fear, knowing only elation. What donuts tasted like. What it was like to realize, as dusk settled, that throughout the course of the day you’d picked up sunburn on your nose and the back of your neck.

I’d give it all to them, every damn one of them. If I could.

I’d been a vampire for centuries, slept days away covered in blood, gone lifetimes without a heartbeat except the reflective pulse of my prey when I was about to strike, keeping near the humans so I could feel like one of them without ever really belonging. And then, long after I’d stopped hoping for it, I came across the veil — I left the night behind and became mortal again.

But the thing about that is, I couldn’t fucking remember how it’d happened.

 

 

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