The old man stepped forward, reaching an angular hand, grinning skull-like. "You owe me . . . hospitality. The tribute due to a master from his progeny. You owe me . . . sustenance." Horribly, he licked his peeling lips.
"You fended for yourself for a millennium before you ruined me. I will give you nothing."
Perversely, the old man chuckled, the sound of cracking papyrus. "I knew you were a strong man, able to resist our bond. Very strong. I knew it. I chose you well."
"Leave here. Leave. I never want to see you again."
"Never? Never? Do you know what that means? You are only just beginning to realize what that means. We will always be here, we will always be bound."
"Come in, get off the street." Gaius grabbed the old man's tunic--he refused to touch that leathered skin--and pulled him into the courtyard, slamming the door behind him. The ancient fabric of the tunic tore under the pressure, as if it had rotted in place.
Kumarbis slumped against the wall and grinned at Gaius as if he'd won a prize. "You have servants."
"They're mine, not yours."
"You are mine."
"I am not." He sounded like a mewling child.
What he ought to do was drink the old man dry. Suck whatever used-up blood was left in him, destroying him and taking all his power. But he would have to touch the monster for that. And . . . that pull. That bond. It made the very idea of harming the man repulsive. He couldn't even bear the thought of stabbing him through the heart with a length of wood, putting him out of his misery. The terrible magic of his curse, that he could not bring himself to kill the one being in the universe he most wanted to.
"I don't have time for this," Gaius said, turning back to his tools, the mission. He should just buy a slave for the old man to drain and be done with him.
Kumarbis pressed himself against the stone. "What are you doing here, Gaius?"
"Showing my strength. Proving a point."
Wincing, craning his neck forward, the old man studied what Gaius had prepared, the writing he had begun. "This magic . . . Have I seen anything like it?"
Gaius spared a moment to glare. "I wouldn't know."
"Explain this to me." He seemed genuinely confused, his brow furrowed, a hand plucking at the hem of his garment. "You're working a spell . . . a spell made of fire?"
"No! I owe you nothing!" He stomped forward, raised his hand to the old man--and could not strike. Fist trembling, he snarled.
A knock came at the door. Both Gaius and Kumarbis froze, looking at each other as if to ask, Were you expecting someone? This night was cursed with disruptions. Gaius went to the door and cracked it open.
"What?"
"May I enter? Am I interrupting anything important?" He seemed like a young man, but Gaius had learned not to trust appearances of age. With his bright eyes set in finely wrought features and the confident stance of a patrician, this man would have been at home in the Forum in Rome. The kind of man who always had a curl at the corner of his lip, as if all he gazed on amused him. His tunic and wrap were expensive, trimmed with gold thread.
"Who are you?" Gaius demanded, and seemingly of its own will the door opened and the stranger stepped inside.
At the same time, Kumarbis dropped to his knees, which cracked on the flagstones.
"Hello there," the stranger said amiably to him.
"You! It was always you!" the old man cried. "Your voice in the dark, drawing me forward. I tried! Don't you know I tried to build your army? I tried!"
The stranger's mouth cracked into a grin, and he turned to Gaius. "Is this man bothering you?"
Some sort of balance tipped in that moment. Gaius felt it in the prickling of skin on the back of his neck. In the way this stranger drew the eye, held the attention, though there seemed to be nothing noteworthy about him.
"Please! Why have you forsaken me?" Kumarbis had prostrated himself and was weeping. It was . . . almost sad.
The stranger said, "I found a stronger man. Or, you did. Thank you for that." He looked Gaius up and down, as if surveying livestock.
"For thousands of years I've--"
"And? Do you expect pity from me?"
"Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . mercy?"
The stranger laughed. "Oh, no, old man. No. Not from me."
"But--"
"Get out. Go." The stranger took Kumarbis by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He had no care for brittle bones or bent back. Why should he, when the old man didn't seem inclined to break? Only to weep.
He pushed the old man out and gently closed the door. Almost, Gaius worried. Where would Kumarbis go? Would he find shelter by daybreak? Would he find sustenance? But no, Kumarbis had survived this long; he didn't need help. He didn't need pity.
The stranger turned back to Gaius. "There. Where were we?"
Gaius stood amazed. "Who are you?"
"Call me Lucien," the man said, smiling like he had something to sell.
"What do you want?"
The man paced around the courtyard, studying the stone walls, looking over the charcoal and candles Gaius had laid out. "That's not the question. The question is this: What do you want?"
His words held a largeness, a vastness to them that expanded far beyond mere sound. They spoke to the depth of Gaius's anger, his urge to grab Kumarbis's skull and smash it against the wall. To break everything that would break, to shatter it all. But a dozen skulls would not satisfy. And rage was unbecoming to a soldier of Rome.
He said, "I want to see how much of the world I can change with my actions."
"Change?" Lucien said. "Or destroy? I see what you're doing here--this isn't change."
"Destruction is a kind of change."
"So it is." His pacing brought him in a spiral to the middle of the courtyard. To the candles, the charcoal, the wax tablet with the symbols Gaius had copied for practice. The precious lamp. For a moment, he was afraid Lucien would break it. That he was some crusader who had somehow gotten wind of his plan.
Lucien had just tossed a two-thousand-year-old vampire out onto the street. Gaius was fairly certain he wasn't powerful enough to stop this man--this whatever-he-was--from doing whatever he wanted.
Lucien turned to him and stopped smiling. "I know your plan. I support your plan. Be my general, Gaius Albinus. Gather my army for me. And you will have power."
"What . . . what army?" Gaius asked.
"Ones like you. There are more than you think, and by rights they should serve me. Also the werewolves, the demons, the succubi--"
"Werewolves?"
Lucien smiled. "You'll meet them soon enough. Use that army, destroy what you must. And hand it all over to me at the end of days. Agreed?"
A cause to march with. Gaius had missed the structure of direction, of orders delivered for a righteous cause. And here this man appeared. This easy, smiling patrician with an answer and quip for everything. Gaius could see a moment, some years or decades--or even centuries--in the future, when Lucien would turn his back on him. Literally throw him onto the street as he had done with Kumarbis. This man used and disposed of tools as needed.
But at least Gaius understood his role here.
Lucien offered his hand. "Come, my friend. I can make sure your talents don't go to waste."
Stepping forward, Gaius placed his hands between Lucien's and pledged his loyalty. He was surprised at how warm Lucien's skin was against his own chilled, bloodless hands. As if the man were made of fire.
And then he was at the door, a light of victory in his face. "Good journeys to you, until next we meet."
"When will that be?"
Lucien shrugged, his lips pursed. He might have known, he might not have. Maybe he wanted to keep secrets.
Gaius said, "Then I will simply go on as I see fit. Gather this army for you. Gather power."
"And this," Lucien said, "proves that I have chosen well this time. Vale, my Dux Bellorum."
"Vale," Gaius said softly, but the man was already gone.
Gaius had
work to do.
He assumed that Kumarbis still rested in Herculaneum. That he had somehow found a safe place to sleep out the day, as he had every day for the last many hundreds of years. Gaius couldn't confirm this, and he had no desire to waste time looking for the old man, however much a thread of worry tugged at him. That thread was false, and Gaius owed it nothing. But the suspicion determined the target of his strike. Of his masterpiece.
The next night, he woke at dusk and gathered his tools: flint and steel, chalk and charcoal and ash for making marks, candles for light, his own will for power. The lamp to ignite it all. He slung the bag containing everything over his shoulder, wrapped his cloak around himself, and took the road out of town.
A half hour of walking brought him to a field where goats grazed in the day, at the foot of the great mountain Vesuvius. The eaten-down scrub gave him a surface on which to write, after he kicked away stones and goat droppings. The open space gave him a vista in almost every direction: the lamplight of the towns along the coast, the bulge of the mountain blocking out stars behind him. He had some six hours of night in which to work. He moved quickly but carefully--he had limited time but needed perfection.
Once he began he could not stop. No different than any other campaign march. He cleared a space around twenty cubits across. Marked the center with a stake. Then he began writing in powdered charcoal carefully poured out from a funnel.
The first circle of characters was an anchoring to drive the spell deep underground, hundreds of feet, to the molten fissures that fueled the mountain. The next ring of symbols built potential, stoked fires that already existed within the mountain. The third ring directed those energies outward. Then the next, and the next. Thirteen layers of spells on top of the work he'd already sealed within the lamp. The casting took all night. He would barely have time before the sun rose and destroyed him. He didn't think so much of the time that passed, only of the work that needed to be done, methodically and precisely. The good work of a Roman engineer.
The thirteenth circle, the outermost ring, was for containment, protection. The power he raised here would not dissipate, but would instead burst out at once, and only at his signal. As great a show of power as any god could produce.
A deep irony: magic provided him with the knowledge that gods did not operate the Earth and Heavens. A volcano's fury was not the anger of Vulcan making itself known. No, it was a natural process, pieces of the world crashing together and breaking apart. The resulting energies caused disasters. Sparks from the striking of flint and steel, writ large. The fires of the Earth bursting forth under pressure.
Magic didn't create. It manipulated what was already there. Placed the power of the gods in human hands. Or vampire hands.
At last the text was done. The moon reached its apex; dawn approached. He had finished in time, but only just. He went to the center of his great canvas and placed the lamp.
The object served as a focus and a fuse. A battle of primal elements and energies, a physical poetry. Words only captured a shadow of the true forces. Many languages, symbolic conventions, all of them together were still an imperfect representation and only approached the sublime. Magic was the art of trying.
In the middle of it all remained a need for brute force. The inchoate power of the Earth itself. He lit the lamp and waited a moment. Another moment. The lamp burned with a single buttery flame. The terra-cotta orange of the clay seemed to glow, and he couldn't tell if this was the natural light or burgeoning magic. The slight, rounded shadow of the lamp on the ground shuddered, then vanished as a circle of illumination spread out, stretching along the pasture and up the side of Vesuvius. The scrub-covered ground seemed to glow with the same light. People in the town would think the hillside had caught on fire.
Gaius waited, the nails of his hands digging welts into his palms. He didn't know what would happen, what signal he should wait for. He knew only what he wanted to happen, and waiting for that was agonizing. To the east the sky faded with a hint of the gray of dawn. He had to get out of the open, but he wanted to see the spell ignite.
The faint glow on the hillside disappeared. It didn't fade, didn't dissipate. Gaius swore he saw the light itself sink into the ground. Then the earth rumbled. Just an earthquake. Tiny, inconsequential. The kind anyone living near a volcano must sense from time to time.
But this--he had triggered it. He was sure of it. And he was sure this was just the start. He laughed. Put up his arms in triumph and brayed like a fool.
The lamp in the middle of his circle had burned out. The clay was cold. Its power had all gone into the mountain. It was working!
He scooped up the lamp, the charcoal, the candles, knife, wicks, and other tools and shoved them into the bag. Then, before the sun rose, he raced back to Herculaneum, and from there to safety.
He had arranged for a boat to wait for him. He had given careful instructions to the captain: however strange and chaotic the world became, they should not leave until Gaius Albinus was on board, or they would forfeit their very large fee. The galley had a cabin belowdecks, a cupboard that Gaius sealed up with waxed leather and blankets until the place was perfectly dark. He paid enough that the captain asked no questions.
In the middle of that day, Vesuvius exploded. While he was sorry he'd missed the main of the eruption, asleep in his sealed cabin, that night from the safety of the boat at sea he watched the fires light up the darkness. It was glorious.
In the centuries after, he collected eyewitness testimonies. Pliny the Younger and other historians gave a great accounting of the disaster that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Some eighteen hundred years later, the first excavations of the cities revealed grotesqueries, shapes of despair frozen in ash and preserved in plaster by archaeologists. Gray husks of mothers bent over children, of dogs chained helplessly to walls. They had known they were going to die. They'd had moments to prepare, to wait. Squeeze shut their eyes, hold their breath, and hope that they would survive the flood of ash. Seeing photographs of those cast figures so many years later, Gaius felt that stab of triumph all over again. That thrill of realization: he had done it, he had caused this terrible thing to happen, this explosion of the Earth.
And he could do it again.
Gaius Albinus emerged from the basement of Diocletian's palace with the lamp, which he had named the Manus Herculei, safely in hand.
He had heard and read the speculation of philosophers on the topic of immortality. Did humankind need the challenge of mortality? A limited span of time in order to feel the drive of ambition? Would ambition even exist without the need to leave one's mark on the world before one died? If granted immortality, would a person become bored? Would they long for death? Would they cease to even remember all the time they had experienced? Would they become little more than ghosts?
Gaius held the two-thousand-year-old clay lamp in his hand and could declare that immortality did not cause forgetfulness, did not dampen ambition. He remembered everything. He could smell the musk of goat and the tang of dried grass of that field; he remembered the fires of Vesuvius lighting up the night, the last of the screams that came from the town as the ash flow settled. The satisfaction, knowing that hideous old vampire was likely burned to nothing and buried under a ton of ash. The touch of clay against his skin was like a spark that transported him through time.
The power of the lamp had not diminished. No, by hiding it he had allowed it to sleep as its power grew. The next disaster he triggered with this artifact would make Vesuvius seem like a candle.
He was securing the gates as the archaeologist had instructed when he sensed a presence, an eddy of power in the night. Several of them. Enemies.
A call echoed on stone and through shadow. "Dux Bellorum! Your time is done!" Arrogant laughter followed.
Gaius knew the voice, though he had not heard it in decades. Not every vampire chose to follow Gaius, to join his army. Some rebelled. This man was an upstart, Master of the city of Barcelona with centuries of power pr
essing from him. Still a child, really. Nothing to worry about for Gaius Albinus, known as Dux Bellorum, also called Roman. Last of his people.
Gaius slapped the crowbar against his hand and waited, mindful of the precious artifact wrapped in cloth and tucked in his pocket.
Early on, there had been those who recognized what he was doing and opposed his quest. Even if they didn't entirely understand the nature of his quest and its origins. That he was merely a general, following orders from his Caesar. Everyone who had opposed him, mortal or monster, full of power or merely earnest and naive, had failed. They would fail now, and he would enjoy putting them down.
One more hurdle, then, before leaving Split. Then he could begin his journey to the park called Yellowstone, in North America.
ALTAR BOY
JONATHAN MABERRY
"Altar Boy" is set in the world of the Joe Ledger weird science thrillers. The series began with Patient Zero, and the more recent Dogs of War is the ninth volume. Joe Ledger is a former Baltimore cop recruited into a covert Special Ops group tasked with confronting terrorists who have cutting-edge science weapons. This story, however, does not feature Ledger but instead focuses on Toys, a character introduced in the first volume as a villain and who continues in the series as a "recovering bad guy," fighting for his soul every step along the rocky path to redemption. Toys is no one's idea of a hero, but he isn't quite the villain he used to be. Maybe . . .
1.
Saint John of Patmos Catholic Church
Pacific Beach, California
It was a small church, which was good because he felt small. It was old, and that was also good because the young man felt old. Used up, spent, wasted, overdrawn, weathered, and past his sell-by date.
It was a Catholic church, and that was good. Not only because he was Catholic--or had been, once upon a time--but because the Catholics kept the doors open all day. Anyone could come in and sit. Anyone.
Even someone like him.
Even one of the damned.
2.
His name was Alexander Chismer, though everyone called him Toys.
He hated the nickname because it belonged to another man, to another life. But like a bad smell, the name stuck to him. He wore it without complaint. Toys complained about very little these days. It wasn't that everything satisfied him or that he was too timid to speak his mind. No; it was that he felt he no longer had any right to complain. If he hated his nickname but other, better people wanted to use it, then that was fine. It was a small thread in the cloak of punishment that he wore. That's how he saw it. Any unkind word, any unfortunate accident, any bit of physical damage that came his way was, in some overarching way, his due.