Of Masques and Martyrs Read Free

beneath his powerful hands, flashing talons, razor fangs. Rolf would show the arrogant elder the true face of the vampire.
     
    At her lover’s side, Erika Hunter flew in silence. Though he could not speak aloud, Rolf had become quite talkative in the year they’d spent together as a couple. Telepathy was only possible among shadows of the same bloodline. Fortunately, they shared an ancestor, and she was able to hear his kind voice in her mind, and was often required to communicate for him.
    Yet, over the days they had spent waiting for Hannibal’s followers to appear, so that they might follow the bastard creatures home to their master, Rolf had communicated with her less and less frequently. And when he did speak in her mind, she could feel the tension, the obsession, the darkness welling up within him.
    Erika wanted Hannibal dead. Without question, the coven led by Peter Octavian needed Hannibal dead. But she wondered, as they flew, hawk eyes focused on fleeing bat wings, if Rolf realized how suicidal this mission really was.
    They were going to die. If Erika had to bet, it would not be in their favor. Shadows, vampires. Whatever they called themselves and each other, they were very hard to kill. Through some combination of humanity, divinity, and demonic influence Erika had never completely understood, the race of shadows had achieved a kind of cellular consciousness and control. They were shapeshifters, really, and could become anything.
    Or, at least, that was the potential. But long centuries earlier, the Roman church had handicapped the shadows by implanting certain psychic controls. Myths. The sun burns. The cross terrifies. Silver poisons. Running water. Native soil.
    Bullshit. But psychically altered to believe in such things, the shadows’ cellular consciousness would react. A psychosomatic reaction of the most destructive and fundamental kind. It made them easier to kill. At least until the Venice Jihad six years ago, which revealed the truth, uncovered the conspiracy. The world’s shadows had begun to shake off the church’s brainwashing, but individual success had varied. Some were still susceptible to the old flaws. And Hannibal’s insistence that his followers pay heed to ancient tradition, to hunt only by night, to limit their transformations to creatures of darkness . . . made it more difficult for them to liberate themselves from the myths, thus making them more vulnerable.
    So, Erika thought with amusement, the shadows had that going for them. Not much, considering the vastly greater number of the vampires, of Hannibal’s coven. But something was always better than nothing.
    Not that it would help.
    A siren wailed in the distance. Televisions blared from within apartments locked up tight. Cab drivers ferried home unfortunate souls who’d had to work late; the taxis’ windshields were festooned with garlic and crucifixes, in hopes that they would have some kind of effect. Erika wondered how much such kamikaze cabbies could charge for a ride home through the murderous night.
    She felt the muscles in her hawk’s wings ripple as she and Rolf soared between and above the buildings of the Bronx. Erika allowed the city to distract her, to turn her thoughts away from the coming confrontation. But when the Bronx disappeared behind them, and they began to enter the more suburban area of Westchester County, she realized that they must be getting close. It wouldn’t be logical for Hannibal to be much farther away from Manhattan.
    Her thoughts turned again to losing. To dying.
    There were all kinds of tricks they could use to try to infiltrate Hannibal’s headquarters, wherever it was. But to kill him, and then escape with their lives? Erika just didn’t believe it was possible. So be it, then, she thought. If tonight was the night, she would die by Rolf’s side, with the blood of her family’s greatest enemy on her lips.
    The Tappan Zee Bridge appeared on the horizon, and for a moment Erika thought the