“He’s gone, Hawk. The bastard’s dead.”
“Good,” said Hawk, and frowned at how rough his voice sounded. He wouldn’t have minded, but it felt even worse than it sounded. “You all right, lass?”
“I’ve felt worse. Could Trask be the vampire, do you think?”
“No,” said Hawk. “He hasn’t got the teeth for it. Besides, we saw him at the briefing yesterday morning, remember?”
“Yeah, right. Trask was just the Judas Goat. But I think we’d better stake him anyway. Just to be sure.”
“Let’s see to the girl first.”
“Sure.”
Hawk pounded the stake into her heart. It was hard work. He let Fisher stake Trask, while he cut off the girl’s head as cleanly as he could. There was no blood, but that somehow made it worse. Cutting off Trask’s head was no problem at all. When it was finished, Hawk and Fisher left the room and shut the door quietly behind them. Hawk had thought the air would smell fresher on the landing, but it didn’t. He held up the oil lamp he’d brought from the room, and studied the next door in its flickering light.
“He has to be in there somewhere,” said Fisher quietly.
Hawk nodded slowly. He looked at her, and then frowned as he saw she was holding a wooden stake in her left hand. “How many of those did you bring?”
“Three,” said Fisher calmly. “I used two on Trask and his daughter. If there’s more than one vampire here, we’re in big trouble.”
Hawk smiled in spite of himself. “You always did have a gift for understatement.”
He opened the door a crack, stepped back a pace and then kicked the door in. It flew back to slam against the inner wall, and the sound was very loud on the quiet. The echoes took a long time to die away. Hawk stepped cautiously into the room, his axe in one hand and the lamp in the other. The room was empty, save for a heavy metal bed pushed up against the far wall. Fisher moved slowly round the room, tapping the walls and looking for hidden panels. Hawk stood in the middle of the room, and glared about him. He’s here somewhere. He has to be here somewhere. He moved over to the bed, and looked underneath it. Nothing but dust and shadows. He straightened up and looked at Fisher. She shook her head and looked uneasily about her. Hawk scowled, and looked back at the bed. And then he smiled slowly as an idea came to him.
“Isobel, give me a hand with this.”
Between them they got the bed away from the wall, and Hawk studied the wall panelling carefully in the light from his lamp. He smiled grimly as he made out the lines of a hidden panel, fitted his axe blade into one of the cracks, and applied a slow pressure. The wood creaked and groaned loudly, and then a whole section of the wall swung open on a concealed hinge. Behind the panel was a hidden compartment, and in that compartment lay a huge coffin. Hawk felt his mouth go dry, just looking at it. The coffin was seven feet long and three feet wide, built from a dark red wood Hawk didn’t recognise. Glyphs and runes had been carved into the sides and lid. He didn’t recognise them either. Hawk looked at Fisher, standing close beside him. Her face was very pale.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get it out of there.”
The coffin was even heavier than it looked. They had to drag it into the room, inch by inch. It smelled bad. It smelled of blood and death and decay, and Hawk had to keep turning his head away in search of fresher air. He and Fisher finally got the coffin out of the hidden compartment and into the room, then stepped back to take a look at it.
“Big, isn’t it?” said Fisher softly.
“Yeah,” said Hawk. “Look, as soon as I get the lid open, you get that stake into him. As soon as the stake’s home, I’ll cut off the head. I’m not taking any chances with this one.”
“Got it,” said Fisher. “We’ve been on some dirty jobs in the past, Hawk, but this has got to be the dirtiest.”
“Remember the girl,” said Hawk. “Now, let’s do it.”
They bent over the coffin and the lid flew open, knocking them both backwards. The vampire sat up in its coffin and grinned at them with pointed teeth. Hawk’s hand tightened round the haft of his axe till his fingers ached. He’d thought he knew what a vampire would look like, but he’d been wrong. The creature before him might once have been a man, but it wasn’t anymore. It looked like what it was; something that had died and been buried, and then dug its way up out of the grave. Its face was sunken and wrinkled, and there was a bluish tinge to the dead white skin. The eyes were a dirty yellow, without pupil or retina, as though the eyeballs had rotted in their sockets. A few wisps of long white hair frayed away from the bony skull. The hands were horribly thin, the fingers little more than claws. But the real horror lay in subtler things. The vampire’s black robes were rotting and falling apart. Graveyard lichens and moss grew here and there on the dead skin. Its chest didn’t move, because it no longer needed to breathe. And it smelled like rotting meat that had been left to hang too long.
It rose up from its coffin in a single smooth movement and looked at Hawk and Fisher with its empty yellow eyes. Hawk looked away despite himself, and his gaze fell on the shuttered window. No light showed around the shutters’ edges. We left it too late! The sun’s gone down.... The vampire stepped elegantly out of its coffin. Its bare feet made no sound on the wooden floor.
Fisher wrinkled her nose at the smell. “Dirty stinking bastard. Lying down or standing up, it makes no difference. Let’s do it, Hawk.”
Hawk nodded slowly, and then sprang forward, swinging his axe double-handed at the vampire’s neck. The creature put up a spindly arm to block the blow, and the axe bounced off, vibrating as though it had struck an iron bar. Hawk’s hands went numb from the impact, and it was all he could do to hang onto the axe. Fisher thrust at the vampire with her stake, using it like a dagger. The vampire avoided the blow easily, and knocked Fisher sprawling with a single backhanded blow. She lay where she had fallen, her head swimming madly. There was an inhuman power in the creature’s slender frame. Fisher clutched desperately at the wooden stake, and struggled weakly to get her feet under her. The vampire looked down at her and chuckled suddenly—a low, filthy sound.
Hawk swung his axe at it again. The vampire raised its head and caught the heavy blade in mid-swing, wrenching the weapon from Hawk’s hand. It threw the axe away, and reached for Hawk with its bony hands. He darted back out of range and looked desperately about him for another weapon. The vampire laughed again, and bent over Fisher. It grabbed her by the shoulder, and she moaned aloud as the clawlike fingers sank into her flesh. Blood ran down her arm in a steady stream. She tried to break free, and couldn’t. The vampire drew her slowly closer, grinning widely to show her its long pointed teeth. Fisher tried again to stab the vampire with the stake. It grabbed her wrist and squeezed hard. The feeling went out of her fingers and she dropped the stake. It rolled away and disappeared into the shadows.
Hawk watched helplessly. He’d found his axe again, but he didn’t dare attack the vampire. Cold steel was no use against it. He needed a wooden stake.... He glared wildly about him, and his gaze fell on the coffin. A vampire must always return to its coffin before break of day.... Hawk grinned savagely as the answer came to him. He stepped forward, lifted his axe, and brought it swinging down onto the side of the coffin. The heavy wood split and splintered under the blow. Hawk jerked the blade free and struck again. The side sagged inwards, and splinters flew on the air. The vampire threw Fisher aside and darted forward. Hawk dropped his axe, grabbed the heaviest splinter from the coffin and buried it in the vampire’s chest as the creature reached for him. For a moment they stood facing each other, the yellow eyes and grinning mouth only inches away from Hawk’s face, and then the vampire suddenly collapsed and fell limply to the floor. It made surprised mewling sounds, and clutched at the thick wooden splinter protruding from its chest. Hawk threw himself down beside the vampire, snatched up his axe, and used the flat of the blade to hammer the splinter into the vampire’s heart. It screamed and tore at him with its clawed hands, but
he didn’t care. He hit the wooden splinter again and again and again, driving it deep into the vampire’s chest, and with every blow he struck he saw the dead girl’s face as she hung from the butcher’s hook. After a while he realised that the vampire had stopped struggling, and that Fisher was kneeling beside him.
“It’s all right, Hawk. It’s over.”
He looked down at the vampire. The dirty yellow eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, and the clawed hands lay still at its sides. He raised his axe one last time, and cut savagely at the creature’s neck. The steel blade sliced clean through and sank into the wooden floor beneath. The vampire seemed to collapse and fall in upon itself, and in a few seconds there was nothing left but dust. Hawk sighed slowly, pulled his axe out of the floor, and then sat back on his haunches. Some of the tension began to drain out of him. He looked wearily at Fisher, still kneeling beside him.
“You all right, lass?”
“I’ll live.”
Hawk smiled slightly. “Well, we got the vampire. Not exactly according to the book, but what the hell. You can’t have everything.”
He and Fisher rose painfully to their feet and leaned on each other a while until they felt strong enough to make their way back down the stairs. They left Trask and his daughter where they were. Burning the bodies could wait. Let the backup unit earn its pay for a change. Hawk and Fisher slowly made their way through the empty house and out into Chandler Lane. It was still hot and muggy, and the air stank of smoke and tannin, but after the house and what they’d found in it, the lane looked pretty good to them.
“You know,” said Hawk reflectively, “there has to be an easier way to make a living.”
2
FRIENDS, ENEMIES AND POLITICIANS
At the house of the sorcerer called Gaunt, the party was just beginning. It was an old house, situated in one of the better parts of the city. The party was being held in the parlour, a comfortably large room that took up half the ground floor. The walls were lined with tall slender panels of beechwood, richly worked with carvings and motifs, and the ceiling boasted a single huge mural by one of Haven’s most famous painters. But even without all that, Gaunt’s parlour would have been impressive enough simply for its collection of priceless antique furniture. Chairs and tables and sideboards of an elegant simplicity mingled with the baroque styles of decades past. It was a tribute to the sorcerer’s taste that the contrasting styles mixed so compatibly.
His parties were renowned throughout Haven; all the best people, wonderful food, and plenty of wine. Invitations were much coveted among the city Quality, but only rarely received. Since taking over the old DeFerrier house some four years earlier, the sorcerer Gaunt had shot up the social ladder with a speed that other newcomers could only envy. Not that Gaunt himself was in any way a snob. At his select affairs the elite of politics and business and society mixed freely, whatever their calling. But this evening the party was a strictly private affair, for a few friends. Councillor William Blackstone was celebrating his first year in office.
Blackstone was a large, heavyset man in his mid forties. Always well-groomed, polite and disarmingly easygoing, he had a politician’s smile and a fanatic’s heart. Blackstone was a reformer, and he had no time for compromise. He’d done more to clean up the city of Haven in his one year as Councillor than the rest of the Council put together. This made him very popular in the lower city, and earned him the undying enmity of the rich and powerful who made their living out of Haven’s dark side. Unfortunately for those with a vested interest in other people’s misery, Blackstone was himself quite wealthy, and not in the least averse to putting his money where his mouth was. At the end of his first year in office, the odds on his surviving a second year were being quoted as roughly four thousand to one. When Blackstone heard this he laughed, and bet a thousand in gold on himself.
His wife stood at his side as he talked animatedly with the sorcerer Gaunt about his next crusade, against the child prostitution rackets. Katherine Blackstone was a short, good-looking brunette in her mid twenties, and only slightly less feared than her husband. In her day she’d been one of the finest actresses ever to tread the boards in Haven, and though she’d put all that behind her on marrying Blackstone, she still possessed a mastery of words that left her enemies red-faced and floundering. Katherine had always had a gift for the barbed bon mot and the delicately judged put-down. She was also not averse to a little discreet character assassination when necessary.
Gaunt himself looked to be in his mid thirties, but was reputed to be much older. Tall, broad-shouldered but elegantly slim, he dressed always in sorcerer’s black. The dark robes contrasted strongly with his pale, aquiline features. His voice was rich and commanding, and his pale grey eyes missed nothing. He shaved his head, but indulged himself with a pencil-thin moustache. He’d arrived in Haven from no-one-knew-where some four years ago, and immediately made a name for himself by singlehandedly cleaning up the infamous Devil’s Hook area.
Devil’s Hook was a square mile of slums and alleyways backing onto the main docks, a breeding ground of poverty and despair. Men, women, and children worked appalling hours for meager wages, and prices in the Hook were carefully controlled to keep the people permanently in debt. Those who spoke out against the conditions were openly intimidated and murdered. The city Guard avoided the Hook rather than risk a war with the gangs who ran it. And then the sorcerer Gaunt came to Haven. He walked into the Hook, unarmed, to see for himself what conditions were like. He walked out again some two hours later. Not long after, the Guard were called in to start the long business of carting away the dead bodies. Every member of every gang was dead. None of them had died easily.
The Hook held a celebration that lasted for over a week.
Certain businessmen tried to send new people into the Hook to start the various businesses up again, but Gaunt simply visited each man in turn and pointed out that any attempts to run sweatshops would be taken by him as a personal insult. Conditions within the Hook began to improve almost overnight.
Gaunt poured himself more wine, and savored the bouquet.
“Darling, I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” said Katherine Blackstone. “Hillsdown has some excellent orchards, but their grapes aren’t worth the treading.”
“I have no palate for wines,” Gaunt admitted calmly. “But there’s always been something about the Northern vintages that appeals to me. They’re not particularly subtle, but there’s no mistaking their power. If this wine was any stronger, it would leap out of the bottle and mug you. Would you care to try some, William?”
“Perhaps just a little,” said Blackstone, grinning. “I had hoped it would get a little cooler once the sun went down, but I’m damned if I can tell the difference. Looks like it’s going to be another long, dry summer.” He gulped thirstily at the wine the sorcerer poured him, and nodded appreciatively.
Katherine tapped him gently on the arm. “You be careful with that stuff. You know you’ve no head for wine.”
Blackstone nodded ruefully. “A grave drawback in a politician’s life. Still, it has its bright side. Because I spend most of the evening with a glass of water in my hand, I’m still there listening when other people are getting flustered and careless.”
“That’s right,” said Katherine sweetly. “Sometimes I’m surprised you don’t go around taking notes.”
“I have an excellent memory,” said Blackstone.
“When it suits you,” said Katherine.
“Now, now,” said Gaunt quickly. “No quarrelling.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Katherine. “We enjoy it.”
The three of them chuckled quietly together.
“So, William,” said Gaunt. “How’s your new bill going? Is the debate finally finished?”
“Looks that way,” said Blackstone. “With a bit of luck, the bill should be made law by the end of the month. And not before time. Haven depends on its docks for most of its livelihood, and yet some of the own
ers have let them fall into a terrible state. Once my bill becomes law, those owners will be compelled to do something about renovating them, instead of just torching the older buildings for the insurance.”
“Of course, the Council will help them out with grants for some of the work,” said Katherine. “Just to sweeten the pot.”
“One of your better ideas, that,” said Blackstone.
“I’ll be interested to see how it works out,” said Gaunt. “Though I have a feeling it won’t be that simple.”
“Nothing ever is,” said Blackstone.
“How’s your latest project going, Gaunt?” asked Katherine. “Or aren’t we allowed to ask?”
Gaunt shrugged. “It’s no secret. I’m afraid I’m still not having much success. Truthspells are difficult things to put together. All the current versions produce nothing but the literal truth. They don’t allow for nuances, half-truths and evasions. And then of course there’s subjective truth and objective truth....”
“Spare us, darling,” protested Katherine, laughing. “You’d think I’d know enough by now not to enquire into a sorcerer’s secrets. Magic must be the only thing in the world more complicated than politics.”
“You obviously haven’t had to spend half an evening listening to an old soldier talking about military tactics,” said Blackstone dryly. “And speaking of which, aren’t the Hightowers here yet? You did say they’d be coming.”
“They’ll be here,” said Gaunt.
“Good,” said Blackstone. “I want a word with Lord Hightower. He’s supposed to be backing me on my next bill, but I haven’t seen the man in almost a month. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d started getting cold feet.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Gaunt. “Roderik’s all right, when you get to know him. These old military types can be a bit of a bore when it comes to refighting all their old battles, but their word is their bond. If he’s said he’ll support you, he will. Count on it.”