Slayer.

Death Becomes Him.

By Karen Koehler.

Preface.

NOTE FROM THE LIBRARIAN:.

As a general rule, we only put t.i.tles up in the Library which have been published by Baen Books. The princ.i.p.al reason for this is simply to avoid complications regarding rights with other publishers.

We are making an exception in the case of Karen Koehler's novel SLAYER. Although the novel is published by another publisher, Karen owns the electronic rights and asked us to put it up in the Library. Seeing no reason not to, we agreed. Those readers who enjoy the story and would like to obtain it in paper format can order it through Amazon.com or Barnesandn.o.ble.com or directly from the publisher.

And now, I will turn you over to Karen herself, who wrote a little introduction at my request.

Eric Flint Dear Reader: Welcome to the world of Slayer, a dark universe peopled by vampires, their lovers, allies and hunters. Here in this dark place nothing is as it seems and there is a b.l.o.o.d.y war for survival going on in the alleys and byways of our world.

Thank you for taking the time to download and read this ebook, the first in an ongoing series. The sequel Slayer: Bloodlines, will be emerging (escaping?) in late fall, 2001.

But before I tell you about myself I would like to extend a special thank you to Mr. Eric Flint and Mr. Jim Baen for including this book in the Baen Free Library, despite my not being a Baen author. Thank you both for the inclusion. I was born in the heart of haunted New England in 1973 and use this as a viable excuse for the literature I write.

(Hehehehe.) Early in life I was lucky enough to be exposed to some of the most talented and prominent writers of modern SF and fantasy literature today, including Isaac Asimov, Anne Rice, Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Kristine Katherine Rusch and Ray Bradbury.

As a sidenote, SLAYER now has a fan site located at http://www.ursamultimedia.50megs.com and the book is now available in trade paperback format.

Purchase it online at or at your favorite online books out let.Yours most Sinisterly, Karen Koehler 1."Sweet Sorrows" appears courtesy of Wayne Heath an d Black Death Music.Copyright 1998 by Wayne Heath.Sorrow churning up inside Deep within it does reside Pushing you towards homicide Retribution I do command Into you it does expand This thing you can't withstand So scream if you can Slow to understand I've been there and I always have Dreading your fears To you they do adhere And becoming a prison cell Your neverending living h.e.l.l Sweet is my embrace Propelling you towards disgrace Constricting your breathing s.p.a.ce Punishment I demand Gaining the upper hand Destroying this your wonderland So scream if you can Slow to understand I've been there and I always have Dreading your fears To you they do adhere And becoming a prison cell Your neverending living h.e.l.l He ll to you I bestow You're beginning to overflow With this my final death blow Moving slowly master hand Hour gla.s.s out of sand Welcome to No Man's Land So scream if you can Slow to understand I've been there and I always have Dreadi ng your fears To you th ey do adhere And becoming a prison cell Your neverending living h.e.l.l Wayne Heath "Sweet Sorrow" Having a great deal of time on their hands, and being a relatively closed society, all vampires were natural gossips. The old proverb which stated that one can trust only the dead with one's secrets did not take into account the vampire. They lived on secrets as much as on blood. They were avid voyeurs by nature. And what was gossip--and vampirism--but the act of subsisting on another's life? The slayer knew then, accordingly, that the story circulating around the East Village and parts of SoHo and Prospect Park had been embellished many times over and bore little if any resemblance to the truth. Still, he was prepared for anything. What else could he do? He could no more preguess an unstudied vampire's reaction to an affront then he could pick through the tatters of downtown hearsay and determine the ultimate truth--if indeed one existed.In any event, Empirius, the proprietor of the Abyssus, a lower Lower East Side nightclub, and master of the hive of vampires contained therein, invited him in graciously. The slayer bowed low and kissed his ring."Your Grace.""Welcome," Empirius said in his sibilant whisper. He was impeccably dressed, of course--grey Armani suit, red silk blouse, a gold papal cross pinned up tight under his chin. His dark blonde hair was combed straight back and tied in a three-inch ponytail, noticeable when he canted his head to one side like a curious cat. His eyes were tiny but brilliant, the black overexpanded irises reflecting the candlelight like chips of flint. His smile showed a row of perfect teeth. "You look most...disarming tonight, Master Alek."The old vampire had enough cla.s.s not to say anything in response to the slayer's long-coated appearance, but he could not help but keep a malicious splinter of glee out of his bloodshot eyes. Already he was thinking of what outrageous tales he would spin for his thralls after this night was done. A slayer here to brush against the souls of the outcast in his coat and cloak of long long hair, a warrior who wore his armor on the inside, Death, not Red but black and white--white-faced and black-clad, the lottery cast. But for whom? his Judastine eyes asked.The pit was crowded tonight. Amongst the stained-gla.s.s images of redemption and repentance, the low stone altars and statues carved with sensual reverence and the spa.r.s.e illumination of a mult.i.tude of votive candles the humans served. Spare, white-pale bodies like slaughtered swans, but alive, or nearly so. "Take me," they said to the slayer mistakenly, and "My blood is young." Others lied. "I've never been tasted" and "A virgin's nectar is the sweetest". It was their thoughts, their living emotions as much as their words that the slayer encountered as he made his way to the bar.The club was a swamp of incense, sandalwood or clove or some such sweet smoke undercut by the hot metallic tang of blood and pa.s.sion. The slayer spotted a beautifully androgynous vampire bleeding a mortal boy perhaps no more than fifteen years. The boy's white flesh looked nearly translucent, the ropes of his young veins strained near to the point of collapse. It was probably his duty to intervene, the slayer thought, except that from the gleam of old knowledge in the vampire's eye, the boy was probably a tenfold safer in its arms than on the street or in the overfilled holding cell of the communal NYPD bullpen downtown.Still, the sight of the vampire's languid slat-ribbed wh.o.r.e sent a shiver down the slayer's spine. He'd been outside this crowd too long. He supposed he'd begun to believe on some subconscious level the esthetic tales of cinema vampires and vampire novels, the black cloaks and garlic and coffins and casual murders. If the vampire race were that stupid and evil it would not have survived this long. The boy, like so many other wh.o.r.es in other parts of the city, would probably be leading a miserable life as slave to vice and one human pimp or other were it not for this vampire.The slayer moved on.Salvadori was behind the bar tonight. Greased and pin-striped, he looked as much the part of the Sicilian goodfellow as Marlon Brando ever did in his heyday. He nodded at the slayer's approach and started the workings of a Long Island Ice Tea before the slayer shook his head no. Sal's eyebrows peaked. On duty?"Good crowd?" the slayer asked, coming abreast with the bar."Always. Someone new every night. Don't know where they all come from. Masochism seems to be the thing. Must be the new city legislative.""Possibly. So who's new?"Sal shrugged. "No new vamps, just victims. Everyone wants to be a victim." He dropped his voice to a whisper and glanced around conspiratorially, "Personally, I think they just want to feel sorry for themselves, if you know what I mean."Sal was a monster and a murderer, but no liar. There were no new vampires here that the slayer was consciously aware of. Disciples, yes, there were always those--deviants and lowlifes and groupies behind the mask of sanctified stone and veil, mortal prost.i.tutes who serviced their masters' needs in exchange for the rare sweet high of blood loss that could be achieved through no known conventional drug. Then there were those who believed like a religion in their hearts that if they commingled with the vampires they might somehow mystically gain the rare genetic factor that permanently separated the breeds. But nothing save the young boy from earlier was suspect here. Empirius ran his hive like a militia, with strict attention to etiquette.He never allowed rogues to remain within the walls of his establishment for very long. Bad for business. If it got around the East Village that he was letting the psychotic muck of vampire society into his hive, if bodies started turning up in the Hudson, the mortals were more apt to pilgrimage to some of the safer uptown clubs to get their fixes. Something like that could ruin a reputation.Which led to another line of thinking."Where's Akisha?" the slayer asked.Sal shrugged. "With Empirius?" He was shooting seltzer into a gla.s.s, trying to avoid talk and trying unsuccessfully to be casual about it. The slayer knew Sal had no more love of police than any of his mortal a.s.sociates had during Prohibition. And with Coven there was always an added aspect of mortal danger."Empirius is alone," the slayer stated. "Don't f.u.c.k me around, Sal."Sal held up his hands in defense. "Probably she's upstairs, sulking over some young G.o.d of a child. You know Akisha." He moved evasively to the side to attend a newcomer.The slayer let him go. There was no reason to detain the barkeep over what was obvious. If he knew Akisha- -and he thought he did--Salvadori was probably right. Among other talk in the Village was rumor that Akisha was phasing herself out of vampire society. The once-proud and arrogant Black Queen was skulking free of her admirers' attention like some aging Hollywood actress craving the dark to hide her many shames. Some said it was age; other said it was Empirius's victory in dissolving her former Upper West End hive, the fortress of the mad vampire c.u.m alchemist Carfax. It was rumored that Akisha wept for the first time in two centuries the day Carfax was brought to bay by the Coven and destroyed. Was it not so far-fetched then to believe that her subsequent forced bonding to Empirius might have caused her enough bitterness to want to tarnish the name of her new lover with a few heinous crimes?A darkness flickered at the tail of the slayer's eye and here she came, the mistress of the hive, the devilless herself, like something conjured by thought alone. She looked twenty-five or thirty, dressed in a black leather motorcycle jacket, short shiny-black pageboy hair contrasting beautifully with her very white skin, smooth and poreless like the best Han jade. Her left nostril was pierced through with a length of narrow chain that found its glittering way to her left ear. For the past year or so Empirius's mate had been experimenting with the hip-punk Lower East Side look so popular in the club and sub-culture scene, yet even so she had managed to loose nothing of the regalcy--or ferocity--of her rich old shugo blood. Her eyes moved a.n.a.lytically across the room, then snapped around to find the slayer sitting alone and conspicuous in the center of her lover's hive."Alek," she said, coming upon him immediately. "It has been a long time, hasn't it? Business or pleasure?"She raised one raven-black brow in blatant challenge.And he wanted nothing more than to answer her with a gentlemanly smile and respond the latter, but the night was wearing on, the random murders in the East Village acc.u.mulating, and the Coven's business could be put off only so long.The long darkly paneled room above the club was respected by all in the hive as Akisha's private s.p.a.ce, a place of interrupted retreat where the mistress of the hive could lock herself away when her thinking grew too complex for distraction or she wanted to be alone with one of her boys. According to the stories the slayer had heard, not even Empirius was welcome here. So it came as something of a surprise when Akisha invited the slayer up.She lit a single candle and set it on the mantle as the slayer wandered soundlessly down the chamber. No less than four paintings of Akisha lined the gallery at the far end. The oldest was an ornately Romantic nude, possibly Matisse, except the colors looked too dark. A Klimt then. Changeless eternal Akisha. In every incarnation she had the same narrow hips and small high young-girls b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the slender long legs and warrior's muscle tone, the same somber dark eyes and shimmering furlike hair. The second portrait was a Weimer Berlin, by the slayer's educated guess, this one a fully-clothed Akisha in SS uniform. Long hair sc.r.a.ped back and severe, she stared out of the portrait with d.a.m.ning eyes, expression grimly defiant in a 1930's world that had gone mad around her. The third was a 1960's-style psychedelic kitsch of red and purple with a mermaid Akisha superimposed over a blazing red sun presumably going supernova on her.The final painting was done by the slayer himself, with Akisha very much like she was right now, dressed in black satin and steel, her hair an arrogantly streaming cloak at her back. Although a product of the Absolute Realism school the slayer belonged to, the picture showed Akisha as only one of her own kind would see her, eyes diamond-hard and predatory and scarcely able to hide an ages-old sorrow and l.u.s.t.Without ado, or excuse, Akisha went to a low stone divan and lay down over the gracefully slumbering body of her newest interest. A college boy he looked like, someone scarcely out of his virgin skin where vampire wh.o.r.es were concerned--his body had not yet acquired the gaunt paleness or loss of muscle tone so evident of an old hack. Holding the young man's body like a strange, Eastern-inspired Madonna, Akisha lapped like a wolf at the rivulets of blood coursing down his face from the crown of barbed wire the slayer a.s.sumed the mistress herself had affixed to his shaven head.The slayer shifted uncomfortably, turned away and began wandering among the tomes of Akisha's vast library, glancing at the swirl marks of fingerprints on ancient leather spines, the French and Portuguese and Cantonese gold leaf wearing to near unreadability. He let out his breath and sucked in the cottony scent of parchment and old oil paint and blood and s.e.x in the room. He sighed. He was suddenly weary. At the end of the room he turned around and studied the living fres...o...b..fore him. "Tell me, have you and Empirius been fighting again, Akisha?" he began.The young man stirred in his sleep and Akisha made motherly cooing noises until he was still again. She kissed his cheek like a young girl biting into a new golden fruit. She said, "He is master, I am his wench.What is there to fight about?"The words were supposed to sound off-handed, he supposed, but the bitterness in Akisha's voice was unmistakable. In many ways, the slayer could not blame her for that. Vampire society was by its very nature a primitive, essentially patriarchal setup. Males guarded their harems of females jealously, with the bloodbound females forcibly dependent on them for protection during those periods called the Bloodletting which struck them annually and transformed them into creatures little better than frenzied lionesses. It was a condition that made them captive inside even the lenient circles of their own kind. Feminism and independence were difficult to cultivate in a race so dependent on its second half. Were something terrible to befall Empirius, Akisha would be forced to find another master to bind her or die on her own, unbound, within a year. She could have done worse in the slayer's opinion; she could be bound to a far crueler master than Empirius. She could still be bound to Carfax, who'd had trouble discerning the difference between friend and experimental guinea pig. So in many ways she was right in her rage, but wrong in its direction.After all, to say she was cherished by Empirius was to say night is dark.The slayer shook his head. "You're being evasive, treating me like police, Akisha.""Are you in uniform?" She smiled with smeared red lips. "I think you are. You are like the Stazi now, or the Gestapo." She sucked in a breath, filtering a world of tastes through her Jacobson's organ, laying his intentions--including the forty inches of oiled steel under his coat--completely bare. "Yes," she said, her eyes slipping shut. "Like Gestapo, the sword is almost drawn."It was difficult to guess if she was talking figuratively or not. The slayer approached her, his leather greatcoat drifting ambient as wings around his ankles. Akisha lifted her attention to meet him, her eyes gleaming in the semigloom as if she would welcome him to her little personal orgy if she could. If she thought he would stoop to that level. So beautiful were those eyes. Like black Caribbean pearls. The slayer went to one knee before the divan and put the back of his hand to her white cheek. He tried to see deep but Akisha's age and power prevented his penetration. Her motorcycle jacket was unzipped and he followed instead the chain around her neck to the miniature sickle of obsidian dangling between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It glimmered there like a talon and he found himself all but mesmerized by it as he spoke. "Are you in your period, Akisha? Tell me."Akisha dropped her eyes to her beautiful young victim. Like the others, a swan, a crimson swan. Yet he breathed, his life's rhythm steady and sound. A look almost of profound insight seemed to hover at the edges of his expression. Undoubtedly he was having the deepest, most evocative dreams of his young life. Like some worshiper of the waterpipe in a London opium den, a bomb could have fallen over the city and he would remain undisturbed in his mistress' playground of the mind."Does it seem that I am?" Akisha asked innocently. The slayer glanced aside and said, "The city is understandably disturbed by these murders. Missing children, rumors of bodies picked clean of meat, of blood. The police are calling it Vulture Murders. You can imagine." He found himself whispering as though her victim were a young child in need of his sleep. And surely he was; how else would he endure yet another night of so dark a pa.s.sion with his mistress? The thought caused a stir deep in the slayer's belly and loins that he put aside immediately as ridiculous emotional shrapnel from another life. "This thing--it could have repercussions. The stories...I'm only seeking the truth."She watched him intimately. She smiled. So near and tainted with her lover's life and her face gained a wistfullness the slayer sometimes wondered if only he ever saw in it. "And so the Coven sends forth their gallant knight-errant to slay the dragon. How old-fashioned. What about the other possibility? This is New York. Human beings are still capable of deviant behavior, or has the Coven forgotten that?""That possibility exists," he admitted. "I'm not certain if they suspect someone or if they merely feel the need to investigate. But either way, it's become my problem." He stopped speaking.Akisha was reaching for him. He closed his eyes and followed her presence as it closed in on him over the p.r.o.ne body of the child. It glowed darkly, her presence, like a living cloak. He shifted his weight and moved his hand down an inch. He automatically brushed the hilt of the sword under his coat.Akisha's bitterly-sweet lips hovered an inch from his throat. "You still don't trust me, do you, Alek?" she said. "So long I've known you, known all your secrets and not spoken a word. But you will not trust me..."He waited in defiance of her words. No razor-sharp instrument slashed his face or cut his lip or throat. He opened his eyes and there was just Akisha in all her cold black and white beauty, waiting without patience.He shook his head and looked away. "You have the Book of Deborah on that shelf over there," he said."One of the Apocryphal books. It was edited from the final text of the Bible in the Tenth Century by King James.""You are changing the subject.""No," he looked up into her proud exotic face, "this is the subject.""What? Censorship?""Yes," he said. "No one ever gets the whole story. Only fragments, rumor. But rumor is dangerous. A rumor can destroy a man. Or a species."Akisha locked her jaw.He touched her hair compulsively. Oriental silk. Real when so much else was not. "Tell me the story. Tell me who is murdering those children. I have to know, Akisha. I can't walk away otherwise.""Empirius," she said, closing her eyes, "does not harbor rogues.""Perhaps he does not know this one well enough.""Empirius knows everything about everyone.""Then perhaps he is being set up by someone wanting his downfall?"Akisha laughed. "With Empirius gone I would be sole ruler of the vampires here until I became again bound.My period is in three months. Do you think I am doing all this terrible murder so Empirius is ruined and I am widowed and powerful for all of ninety days?"He shook his head at her wryness and wound a lock of her hair around his finger. He sensed her cold--her sudden thrill of fear for him because he was one of the few threats she still continually faced in her unchanging, uncomplicated life. "I think you know much," he said. "You always did."Again the innocence like a little-loved veil seemed to fall all over Akisha's face. Her sudden look was feverish, almost desperate to speak. And yet she held it all in perfect disciplinarian check. "I think," she said after a moment, "that you should join us tonight, unseen. I can tell you no more than that."As the slayer wandered down the streets he noticed men and women walking past on either side, completely unaware of what moved in their midst.It was late Sunday afternoon and the tourists were emerging from Broadway matinees and dinner at Mama Leone's and being safely bussed back to their suburbs in Jersey and Connecticut. There was a young mother with a little girl standing outside of the Winter Garden Theatre where it seemed Cats had been playing forever. The little girl, whose eyes had been turned forlornly at the wintry grey sky only a moment ago, suddenly dropped her gaze and centered it on him.And for one spare moment he saw himself through her eyes--long black scarecrow hair, leather longcoat, the undulating sensuality of a black snake that she had seen in a school film only a few days ago--and he caught himself like a vain man with the annoying habit of studying his reflection in every facade of gla.s.s and mirror, and tucked his conscious eye back into the pocket of his own flesh.Her eyes widened. What did she see? Only a tall strange man all in black? Or was it death-in-waiting? If only he could know. The girl turned to tell her mother, but already he was gone, dissolved back into the irreverent current of society where the carpet of concrete could usher him along anonymously toward the place where all his decisions would be made in only a few hours."The day before He suffered to save us and all men, he took offering in his hands and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for all of you. When the supper had ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: Take this, all of you, and drink from it: for it is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me."My people, let us proclaim the mystery of faith. Our Father, we celebrate the memory of Christ, your son.We your people and ministers recall his pa.s.sion, his Resurrection and his Ascension, and from the many gifts you have given us we offer to you, G.o.d of glory and life eternal, this holy and perfect sacrifice: this child of G.o.d who is now the body of Christ and the cup of eternal salvation which is His life's blood."For a moment Empirius glanced down at the child bound to the blood-blackened altar at the center of his club. The look clouding the child's eyes was one of utter doom. Not forced worldly misery as like so many of the children which visited the club and mingled with the d.a.m.ned, but true bone-quaking fear. Empirius smiled on him in the smallest, most meaningful way. Then he took up the steel knife lying beside the chalice on the pall and, with that gesture, dragged the instrument across the boy's throat. Blood pumped out of the open wound, washing the altar stone, darkening it farther. The child frantically gulped as his life pulsed out of his body in thick almost-purple pulses. Empirius placed the chalice under the torrent of blood and filled it halfway to the rim with the hot crimson liquid. An audible sigh, almost as great as a sung note, ran through the congregation of vampires gathered for Ma.s.s as the air became charged with the radiant fragrance of life eternal."Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take: eat, this is my body, broken for you." And with that and a surgeon's precision, Empirius sliced deep into the meat of the boy's side.Alone in the aftermath of Ma.s.s--by now the others returned to their warrens and city apartments--Empirius knelt down before the altar and sipped the remaining blood off the stone. The warmth entered the frozen labyrinth of his metabolism like the merest whimper compared to the raw primal roar of a true feeding, a true death. No matter how many times he tried to convince himself that the mechanics of this outlet might indeed be the redemption he and his people had been seeking so long, he could never overcome his contempt for the process, for the policing of slayers and the Coven and all the things that existed to deaden the rage of the hunt to him and to his fellows. Cursed by memory and by age, he still recalled in his private moments the sweet burning red rage of the predatory hunt and kill, the food of victory. For all the many miseries his state of existence had cost him, the days of mankind's ignorance and the vampire's absolute freedom were ingrained in his makeup for all time, never, never did he want the memories to fade, the l.u.s.t to let him go.Even as his fingernails dug into the soiled stone and his lips sought even the smallest warmth remaining, specters of past victims surrounded him, mocking him with their ultimate victory: The great and ancient Venetian vampire lord Empirius, and here he scrabbled at the blood of the dead like a starved creature!He sat back quite suddenly. A door had closed at the back of the vacant club, the sound as great as a gunshot in the silent chamber. In the corner of the catwalk that circ.u.mvented the pit a figure materialized, dark on dark, too dark for even Empirius to recognize it at first. He jerked backwards a step and narrowed his eyes."Who's there? Akisha?" he asked hopefully. "Sal?"The slayer stepped forward formally, a hand on the hilt of his sword in the event Empirius drew a challenge, and began the slow descent down the grilled steps into the pit. It would have been over much faster in a surprise affront, the slayer knew that--faster and far tidier--but nowhere near what he wanted. A dead vampire, no answers to his many questions--no. "Ah...Master Alek."The slayer sighed heavily. "I thought perhaps it was one of your young thralls, one of their perversities," he whispered. "But you?" He tilted his head. "Empirius?"