Of Masques and Martyrs Read Free Page B

toward her chest, hands . . . toward her guns.
    Damn Cody and his fondness for Hong Kong action movies, Rolf thought to her. You go for the guns when you need them not for recreation.
    Erika took her hands away from inside her coat and shot a hard look at Rolf. Who the hell are you, my father? she thought.
    But Rolf wasn’t looking at her; he was smiling and waving at the guards. No, he mentally replied, just a guy who wants to live through the next five minutes. Kill them quietly.
    “Sorry, folks, they stopped giving tours about two months ago,” a guard with a natural orange buzzcut announced.
    Next to him, a goateed, bald musclehead raised his weapon in alarm.
    “What the hell are you doing here this early in the morning?” Baldy asked.
    “You want fucking quietly . . .” Erika growled.
    It was all one motion, a split second of death. Her arms flashed forward, fingers digging into Baldy’s face, his eyes pulping under the pressure of her grip. Erika pulled him forward, and even as she twisted his head, shattering his spine at the neck, she used his weight for leverage and kicked out at a slender black man who’d only just begun to move. Her foot crushed his ribcage to powder and slammed him against the prison wall. When he fell to the ground, he left behind bits of hair and bone and blood at the spot where his head had struck.
    That quiet enough for you? she thought as she turned to Rolf.
    Perfect , Rolf replied, even as he gently lowered the twisted corpse of the orange-haired jarhead to the pavement. The other guard, an uncharacteristically chubby Asian, lay there already, face and nose ruptured, probably killed by bone shrapnel exploding into his brain.
    Quiet.
    Without exchanging a word, Erika and Rolf each knelt by one of their victims and drank of their cooling blood. No use passing up a free meal, Erika thought. But that thought she kept to herself. The thirst was a frequent topic of conversation among Peter Octavian’s coven—and their greatest curse, the ultimate obstacle standing between what they were and what they so desired to be.
    They pushed through the gates together, tensed in preparation for the appearance of more guards. More human slaves to Hannibal’s slavering clan. A fine line separated these human collaborators from those who worked with Peter, who volunteered their aid and often their blood. Both breeds of human were clearly fascinated by the immortal shadows, but some thrived on fear and horror, others on hope and kindness.
    Where are they all? I don’t like this at all, Rolf thought.
    Too late for that now, Erika replied. “We’re in the lion’s den.”
    Rolf reached behind his back to withdraw his own weapon, which had been hidden beneath his sweatshirt at the base of his spine. A gun, similar to Erika’s weapons, and loaded with silverpoint bullets, just as hers were.
    Erika smiled at him.
    “So now it’s okay?” she asked with sarcasm and withdrew her weapons from their armpit holsters.
    Rolf nodded grimly, not the response she’d hoped for. But she should have known better. They were close now. It was time. The moment they’d been waiting a year for. The silver bullets would not kill Hannibal; but they had discussed it, and Rolf seemed to think it might at least steal Hannibal’s focus, trapping him in his corporeal form for a few vital seconds. If that failed, and they could at least get him out under the sun, they might be able to disturb his concentration enough to kill him.
    But that might take a while. And there were sure to be dozens of other vampires with him. There was no way. . . .
    No. Erika pushed the thought away. It was time to act. To hell with the consequences.
    “Where do you think—” she began.
    The cells , Rolf replied. He’d enjoy that.
     
    Even without having to search offices, cafeterias, laundry, and other areas, their search took time. Despite the obvious size of the prison, Erika was astonished at the vastness of the cell blocks. Nearly half