If Angels Burn (Darkyn #1) 5

John took the tape, inserted it into the VCR player sitting atop the old television set, and started it.

Several seconds of static, and then a picture snapped into place. The film quality was poor, and there was no sound, but it was still possible to see what was happening on the other side of the lens. Three monks, dressed in odd-looking cowled robes, dragged a wounded, naked man into what appeared to be a dungeon.

"This is an interrogation room." Tea gurgled from the pot as Hightower refilled his cup. "The vampires nest together, you see, like the vermin they are. When we apprehend one alone, we question it to find our way to the others."

The naked man, whose blackened legs had compound fractures, and whose feet had been reduced to blobs of raw ground meat, fought as they bound his arms to a large upright stone pylon. His bloodied face twisted into an animal's snarl, but his lips didn't move.

A veteran of jumping fences, too many to count, John recognized what they were using to bind the prisoner. "Why use barbed wire to restrain him?"

"It's made of copper, the only substance besides fire that can hurt them." The bishop's hand flashed up to smother a small belch. "Pardon. It doesn't hurt them for long, once it's removed from contact with their unholy flesh. Observe the wounds."

John went very still as he watched the gashes left on the prisoner's arms stop gushing blood. They began to shrink and close, impossible as that was. John's stomach clenched as his eyes registered not only the horror of it, but the familiarity of it. He had seen this before, in his nightmares.

He had seen it that night, in the alley.

Huddled in a collapsing cardboard box, his arms curled around Alexandra, holding still so the frayed piece of cord around their waists wouldn't rub into her skin. They'd run away from the foster home a week ago, and John tied the rope around them every night now, so he'd wake up if someone tried to take her from him. Like the old bastard at the corner candy store, who had offered John a hundred dollars for an hour alone with three-year-old Alexandra in the back storeroom. He was probably still spitting teeth from the facer John had planted on him.

Someone giggled nearby. Gee-oh… Heavy, shuffling footsteps drew closer. Oh-gee-oh…

A junkie, or a maniac. There were too many of them on the street. John held his breath and willed the footsteps to move on. Night sky and a snatch of alley wall appeared for a second in the hole as something tore back the top flap of the box, and John reached for his pipe. Two big, ugly hands snaked inside, groping. He smashed the hands away, and the jagged end of the pipe dragged as he yanked it back for a second blow. Blood spurted from a ragged gash on one straining forearm.

John's lips peeled back from a silent howl. Got you. Motherfuckincocksuckinbastard, got you.

Then the air was gone, and one of the monster's hands dug into John's neck. His eyes bulged, and his neck bones creaked. As he fought, Alexandra began to writhe and shriek, and he looked up to see where to kick. His eyes widened as he watched the edges of the bleeding wound puckering, shrinking——

It was a stupid nightmare. John had woken up from it the next morning, still in the alley, still in the box, still tied to his sister. Still homeless and hungry, but alive. He'd looked for evidence. No bruises on his throat, no blood on the box or anywhere. His pipe had disappeared, that was all. What he had dreamed had never happened.

"John."

He looked up, his eyes blind. Cabreri and the bishop were staring at him. "What?"

"You've paused the tape," Hightower said gently.

John rumbled with the remote until the tape began to play again. The three monks picked up small clear glass vials from a table, uncorked the vials, and began to slowly dribble their contents on their writhing prisoner. From the looks of the wisps of smoke and burns spreading over the victim's chest, it was some sort of acid. Was that why the man's legs were black? Had they burned them after breaking them?

When John was a boy, he had run with street thieves, had preyed on winos and panhandlers. He knew a con when he saw one, but this looked real. "They're torturing him."

"Yes."

"With acid."

"With holy water," Hightower corrected him. "That is all the vials contain."

He looked at the screen, then at his mentor. He didn't know what to say. One did not use the word bullshit in front of an archbishop.

Cabreri gave him an odd smile and spoke for the first time. "I have witnessed with my own eyes how they burn. Like God's fiery hand, it is."

It might be some sort of special effect, like the infamous "alien autopsy" video, but if they were staging it, they would have made the film quality better. Besides, in this day of CNN and investigative reporting, why would anyone fake the torture of a prisoner?

None of the monks showed their faces to the camera, but it was obvious that they were questioning their prisoner. They paused now and then and bent over the restrained man, who would only bare his teeth at them.

His teeth, John noted, were perfectly normal.

"They call themselves the Darkyn," Hightower said softly. "We believe these creatures began rising from the dead in the fourteenth century, just after the Black Death. 'Dark kin,' their families called them, thinking at first that they had been buried alive—that happened, in those days, with alarming regularity—but then they began to feed on people."

John wondered how, when they had no fangs. "They rose from the grave to walk the night and drink blood, I assume?"

"They can tolerate sunlight, but they're stronger at night. Garlic doesn't affect them, but holy water does. Holy water that has been kept in copper, that is. We've been using underground copper cisterns to store our order's waters since the fifteenth century."

John didn't worry that Hightower had gone senile anymore. He was convinced of it. "Your Grace, have you shown this tape to your superiors?"

"No, dear boy, Rome knows nothing about this. Only members of my order are entrusted with the Brethren's secrets." His smile faded. "These minions of Satan have powerful allies. When they first rose from the dead and came into the world, their families turned them over to the church. Later on they hid them from us. Perfectly understandable. At that time, if the Templars found maledicti living among family, they would lock them all, human and Darkyn alike, in the nearest church. Then they would burn it down."

Sickened by this fantasy, and the sight of the prisoner's burned torso and the acid now being dripped over the broken bones of his thighs, John reached for the VCR's controls to stop the tape. "I've seen enough. I'm turning this off."

"Not yet," Hightower warned. "You have yet to see the grand finale."

Another man, this one wearing a black trench coat over his broad frame, came into the room. The monks turned and tried to fling their acid at him, but he moved incredibly fast, and knocked the vials from their hands. He drove his fist into the face of one monk so hard it disappeared in gore up to the wrist. John swallowed bile as he saw the man jerk his arm, tearing off the head of the monk in the process. The decapitated body fell over, and blood and ganglia spilled from the neck onto the stone floor.

The black-coated man shook the monk's head from his hand the same way another man might flick off a bit of snot from his finger.

John had seen terrible things, but nothing as baldly, pathetically grotesque as this. "God in heaven."

The other two monks retrieved the coil of barbed wire and threw it at the intruder. He caught it in his hands, stretched out a length, and began whipping the two monks with it. When they were on their knees, bloody-faced and cowering, he tossed aside the wire. His boot caught one monk on the side of the head and drove it into the other's with such force that John could almost hear their skulls fracturing. When the two monks fell over, the intruder slowly used his boots on their heads, stomping on them over and over until nothing was left but pulp.

The torture might have been staged, but this was too real. John swallowed a surge of bile. "Where did this happen?"

"In Dublin," Cabreri said. "The demon freed four of his kind, and killed twenty."

"All the brothers we had there." The bishop sighed. "God rest their poor souls."

The last minute of film showed the black-coated man quickly releasing the naked, burned prisoner and carrying him out of the chamber in his arms. Before he exited, he looked at the camera, reached out, and grabbed the lens. Glass shattered—was he really crushing it with one hand?—before the screen filled with static.

"You can shut it off now," Hightower said, startling him again.

John stopped the tape and rose to walk over to the window. Outside, a group of little black girls was playing double Dutch jump rope in front of the sanctuary. They sang a ghetto slang rhyme in high, gleeful voices that kept time with their rapid, bouncing feet.

Mistah, Mistah, ya wanna kiss my sista,

Mama, Mama, I saw him kiss Tawanda,

One, two, three, four, sneak him in the back door,

Four, five, six, seven, shuck yor pants and go to

heaven…

John wanted to be out there with them, with those little girls. He couldn't contribute much to their pool of advice on illicit sex, but he might be able to keep time with the ropes. "When did these murders take place?"

"Five days ago." Hightower inspected the luncheon cart and frowned at Cabreri when he saw the empty sandwich plate. "We had some problems dealing with the Garda, but it has been dealt with."

Cabreri, who had devoured all the sandwiches, selected a petit four and munched it with relish.

The Italian priest's appetite proved to be the final straw. "Excuse me, Your Grace."

John walked rapidly out of the study, turned the corner, and went into the men's bathroom, where he barely made it to the sink before he began heaving. He couldn't vomit, however. Nothing would come up; his insides had turned to stone. A damp paper towel appeared beside his face, and he looked up at Father Cabreri.