Dark of the Moon

Except for the desire to kill.

He lifted his hands, making one last attempt to send Javier away. It was a wasted effort. Javier charged, slamming Dorian into the wall.

Everything that followed was a blur of motion and rage. Dorian’s fists worked like pistons. Bones snapped. He heard the grunts and groans of his opponent, felt flesh give way, tearing like paper.

And then he tasted blood. Not the sustaining blood of humans, but the bitter stuff that flowed in strigoi veins. The liquid filled his mouth. He spat it out, shoving at the body hanging from his arms.

All movement stopped. The creature who had been Dorian Black stalked from the room, leaving his enemy behind him. He smashed open the warehouse door and stalked the night, searching. The one he wanted was not here, but a fragment of memory emerged from the distant, rational part of his mind.

He moved from shadow to shadow, avoiding the circles of light cast by the street lamps. Cars glided by, the noise of their engines muffled to his ears. Breeders walked the streets, oblivious, easy victims for his hunger. They instinctively shrank away as he passed by.

Still he continued on, the need growing to a wrenching pain in his belly. A single light of reason flickered in his brain, leading him to the place where he would find her.

The building he sought was quiet in the cold hours past midnight. A single ambulance was parked in the hospital drive, and a white-coated doctor leaned against the wall, blowing puffs of cigarette smoke into the frigid air.

Dorian made his way toward the door. A pair of chattering females emerged just as he approached. He turned, hiding his face. He could have snapped their necks with a single blow, but his beast’s cunning told him that to do so would expose him too soon.

The space inside the doors was brightly lit, hurting his eyes. He kept his head low. Humans spoke in quiet tones, but to him their voices were like shouts. He hurried past to a desk where another female in a starched uniform sat tapping at a typewriter, her face expressionless, her blood rushing steadily under her skin.

“May I help you?” she asked. He didn’t answer. His mouth refused to form the words. He stared into her eyes until she looked away and then strode past the desk into the corridor.

No one stopped him. The doors were all alike, but his steps didn’t falter. He knew where she was hiding.

He paused at the end of the corridor. His tongue was swollen with thirst, his eyes like hot coals in his skull. He put his hand on the last door. It swung open soundlessly.

She sat in a chair by the bed, her hands folded in her lap, her chin lolling on her chest. The man in the bed snored softly. Neither one heard him enter the room. He moved to the side of the bed and looked down into the old man’s face. That one was unimportant. He turned to stare at the woman. Hunger and desire gave the room a cast of black and red.

He walked around her chair and stood behind her. He would strike so swiftly that she would never wake before he was finished.

But he hesitated, frozen by something inside him that he couldn’t name. His hands hovered over her shoulders. He lowered his head, lips drawn back from his teeth.

One swift bite would sedate her. Another would drain her life.

Or make her into one like himself…

Voices intruded, conversing just outside the door. He leaped away from the girl. There were too many humans here, too many to kill. With a snarl, he ran for the window and forced it open. He jumped through just as the strange humans opened the door and walked in.

After that he ran. Breeders were everywhere, but the scent of their blood sickened him. He reached the waterfront without having taken a single drop.

He charged into the warehouse and grabbed the nearest crate, tossing it across the building. He smashed the walls of his den to splinters, then tore at the blankets until nothing but shreds remained. Only when he had destroyed everything within his reach did he collapse against the wall. His muscles turned liquid, and he sank into blackness.

When he opened his eyes, faint light was filtering into the warehouse doorway. Dorian dragged his hand across his face, swallowing the foul taste on his tongue.

Then he remembered. The details were blurred, as if seen through a tarnished mirror, but he remembered enough.

He pushed himself up with his hands on the wall, testing the steadiness of his legs. He was always weak afterward. It was the small price he paid for his madness. Others paid much more.

The body lay where he’d left it, the head wrenched sideways at an impossible angle, arms twisted, throat torn. There was surprisingly little blood. Javier’s face was still unmarked, still handsome even in death.

Dorian turned his head aside and heaved. Nothing came up. He was empty, on the verge of starvation sickness. He welcomed the cramps in his belly and the fire that smoldered under his skin. It was hardly enough punishment for the things he had done at the dark of the moon, or in all the years before.

He knelt and closed Javier’s eyes with a pass of his hand. He would have to remove the body before anyone else discovered it. If he threw it in the river, humans would assume it was another mob hit.

They would not be so far from the truth.

Leaving Javier where he lay, Dorian wandered about the warehouse. Not a crate remained unbroken. Anything that could be moved had been shattered or torn or smashed. There was no sign of Walter’s bed or any of the small, precious mementos he’d collected on his visits to the rubbish bins and junkyards.

It wasn’t the fight with Javier that had done this. Dorian had run rampant after he’d returned from his fruitless hunt, blinded by rage and lust. He hadn’t been content to find the nearest human and drop him in some alley with just enough blood left in his body to keep him alive. This time he had sought very specific prey.

He had come within inches of killing Gwen Murphy.

Shaking with reaction and horror, Dorian went to the warehouse door. He edged his foot into the sunlight. All he need do was remove his clothes and take another few steps and he would begin to burn. Soon his skin would crack and blister, causing excruciating pain. But it would be over in minutes as his body’s resources were exhausted, every last particle of his strigoi strength and vitality given up to a hopeless fight.

Yes, it would be a quick way to die. Gwen would be safe from him. But even if someone else found his body before she did, she would learn of his death eventually.

Dorian stepped back. Exposure to sunlight was not the only way a vampire could end his own life. He could shoot himself in the head or sever his own spine.

Or he could simply stop feeding.

Knowing he had only a limited time, Dorian put on his overcoat and hat, and left the warehouse in search of something he could use to wrap Javier’s body. He found a roll of canvas among a stack of boating supplies. Another warehouse provided a coil of rope and a length of heavy chain, which he hid under his coat.

Javier’s body was stiff and brittle. Dorian wrapped it in the canvas, bound the bundle with the rope, and coiled the chain around everything. He couldn’t wait for nightfall to discard the body, so he dragged it out the door and scanned the docks to either side. The nearest humans were some distance away, busy loading a large freighter. Dorian carried Javier out to the end of the pier and dropped his body into the river.

It sank beneath the surface, trailing bubbles. As soon as it was out of sight, Dorian returned to the warehouse. He started at one end and began picking up the splintered remains of crates and unidentifiable objects scattered over the floor. He piled them neatly against one wall. When the concrete was bare, he put on his hat and coat again, and left without a backward glance.

DORIAN WAS THERE.

Gwen searched the warehouse in growing panic, bewildered by the heap of broken crates and the utter bareness of the space around her. Everything she saw hinted at some sort of violent struggle, and yet the way the shattered objects had been stacked so neatly against the wall hinted that someone had taken the time to clean up afterward. There was no sign of the knickknacks Walter had asked her to gather, no clue as to where Dorian might have gone.

Her heart stopped when she found the bloodstain where Dorian’s room had been. She crouched to touch the irregular circles, feeling sick. There wasn’t enough blood to suggest that someone had been killed, but Gwen didn’t doubt that the one who’d lost the blood had suffered a serious injury.

Was it Dorian?

But who would have attacked him? His past concealed a darkness she had yet to penetrate; he might have enemies. Yet this might as easily have been a random assault by hoodlums like the ones who had cornered her on the pier.

If he was hurt, why did he leave? Why didn’t he come to me?

Forcing herself into a state of rational calm, Gwen searched the waterfront. A few discreet questions gave her little to go on, though one longshoreman had seen a man in an overcoat skulking about early that morning.

By late afternoon she was sure Dorian was no longer in the area. She caught a taxi back to the hospital and rushed to Walter’s room, where the old man was taking a sip from a glass offered by the nurse at his bedside.

“Gwennie!” he said, trying to sit up. He looked past her toward the door. “Where’s Dorian?”

“Mr. Brenner,” the nurse said reprovingly. “You must lie down.”

Walter sank back, a little pale from his exertion. “Still couldn’t get him to come?” he asked.

“I can’t find him,” Gwen said, pulling a chair up beside the bed. “He’s not at the warehouse. It looks as if something might have happened there.”

“What?” Walter attempted to rise again, only to collapse in exhaustion. “What d’ya mean, something happened?”

Gwen cursed herself for upsetting him. “I don’t know,” she said carefully. “His things…” Were destroyed, she thought. But she couldn’t tell the old man that. “His things weren’t there.”

Walter uttered a mild expletive. “I was always afraid he’d run off someday.”

“Why?” Gwen asked.

“It was hard for him to be around people, even me. He thought he was taking care of me, but sometimes…” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes I pretended to be more sick than I really was, just to keep him from…doing something bad.”

“Something bad to somebody else?”

“No. I’d never believe that.” Walter closed his eyes. “The way he talked, sometimes…I thought he’d do himself a mischief.”

Gwen gripped the arms of her chair. “And now he thinks you’re in good hands.”

The old man opened his eyes again. “I won’t impose on you, Miss Murphy. Soon as I’m out of this bed…”

“Don’t you worry about that. We’ll find some decent place for you to stay until you’re well again.”

Walter was silent for a long half minute. “I hoped,” he said at last, “I hoped you’d make a difference. Give Dorian something else to think about. He took to you, Miss Murphy. Never seen him so interested in another human being.”

“Maybe you hoped for too much.”

“Maybe. But if he’s really gone, it ain’t because of you. He—”

The nurse intervened. “Mr. Brenner, it’s time for you to rest.” She gave Gwen a stern look. “You may return tomorrow, but our patient has had enough excitement for one day.”

“Just a few more minutes, please,” Gwen said. She leaned forward in her chair. “Walter, I have to find Dorian, especially if there’s a chance that he may be in trouble. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

The old man shook his head. “Always got the feeling he knew the city like the back of his hand. Could have gone anywhere.”

“You must have some notion, even if it’s just a guess.”

“Well…he used to talk about the place he grew up. Some old tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. Made it sound like he’d lived there a hundred years ago.”

“Did he say where this tenement was?”

“He mentioned Thirty-fourth Street.”

Gwen pinched her lower lip. “It’s a place to start.”

“Wish I could help. My damned heart…”

“I don’t want you to worry.” She squeezed his thin arm gently. “I’ll find Dorian, even if I have to turn this city upside down.”

He met her gaze with a crooked smile. “You know, I think you will.”

Gwen patted his arm again and rose. “I’ll report as soon as I know anything.” She nodded to the nurse and hurried to the door, her mind surging ahead of her feet. No one at the paper was likely to notice that she hadn’t returned to her desk; no one except Mitch took her seriously enough to care what she did or where she was. She could start looking for Dorian tonight. And if Mitch asked any questions…

Shrugging off her unease, Gwen took a taxi home and changed into a smart ensemble more appropriate to a night on the town. She applied rouge and lipstick, tied a bandeau around her hair and examined herself in the mirror, feeling self-conscious, as she so often did when she dolled up. The dress had been a gift from Mitch; she only wore it for him, and she felt like some sort of impostor every time. She’d never been glamorous and never would be.

Glamorous or not, tonight she would be entering a world of gangsters and speakeasies. She had to look like one of the regulars if she wanted to travel in that world with even a modicum of safety.

She stepped into a pair of patent pumps, threw on a coat and called another taxi. She had a feeling it was going to be a very long night.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TENEMENT HAD been gutted, scheduled at the behest of a newly enforced city ordinance to be demolished and replaced by a more modern building. It was, Dorian thought, much like him: the obsolete product of an earlier age, useless and ready to die.

Consciousness came and went like sun and shadow glimpsed through the broken basement window. Sometimes he was entirely lucid, remembering how he had come to be in this place, and why. More often he hovered in a dream world, only half aware of the pain, well beyond hunger or any desire to feed. Even when a herd of laughing children hunted through the ruins looking for abandoned treasures, Dorian felt nothing but indifference.

Until the past came to claim him.

THE BOYS WERE older than he by several years. Their faces were already hardened by abuse and starvation and long hours in the factories; they had no mercy for one weaker than themselves. Especially one who read books and pretended to be better than they were.

“Come on,” the leader said. “Show us what you’ve learned, pretty boy.” He lifted his fists. “Aw, look. He’s afraid. He’s going to start bawling any minute.”

The boys laughed, but Joseph knew they weren’t going to stop. They would probably let him live; a murder would draw too much attention. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t beat him to within an inch of his life.

He raised his own fists and waited. When the leader attacked, Joseph punched the way he’d seen the boxers do that time when Da had bought into a bare-knuckle fight and forced him to watch. The gang boss collapsed with a woof of pain.

Fifteen minutes later Joseph lay in an alley, his face a bloody mass of cuts and bruises. He told himself it wasn’t so bad. Da had done worse.

But next time they wouldn’t have it so easy. Next time he would teach them to leave him alone…

DORIAN OPENED HIS EYES. He could no longer see well enough to make out the details of the room. The rats had crawled over him at first, trying to determine if he was edible. In the end they’d left him alone. Even when he was dead, the scavengers would leave his body untouched.

THE NIGHT WAS BITTERLY cold. Joe and the boys had been waiting for hours, knowing that Schaeffer and his gang would be coming this way after an evening of robbing hapless sailors who’d strayed from the waterfront.

Benny spat a curse and flapped his arms across his chest. “Where the hell are they?” he complained.

Joe gave him a hard look, and he subsided. The other boys shifted knives and billy clubs, working frozen fingers. When their rivals appeared, they were ready.

The fight was vicious. Two boys went down and stayed there. Schaeffer got the worst of it. What remained of his gang ran or limped away as fast as their legs would carry them. By the time the coppers arrived, Joe’s boys were long gone.

DORIAN RAISED HIS hand to his face, feeling for the scar Schaeffer’s knife had carved into his flesh. It wasn’t there. He mourned its loss; it had served him well in the old days, terrifying his enemies and followers alike. No one had challenged him after Schaeffer. No one except Little Mike.

“YOU’RE FINISHED.”

Little Mike grinned at the pickpockets, muggers and thieves who crowded behind him. Most of them were close to Joe’s age, the youngest perhaps sixteen and the eldest in his midtwenties, like Joe himself. They laughed, as much out of fear as appreciation. No one wanted to be on Mike’s bad side.

Joe knew he was as good as dead. His own bunch had fought hard to keep their territory; they’d been the last gang to maintain their independence after the Nineteenth Street band started taking over Poverty Lane. Now Joe’s boys were scattered or had given their allegiance to Little Mike. Only Joe had refused.

Mike was about to make him an example.

They handcuffed him and hung him against the wall in a boarded-up slaughterhouse, suspending him by hooks and chains. One by one, the Nineteenth Street boys punished Joe, each according to his own vicious nature. Little Mike was last. When he was finished, Joe was close to unconsciousness. His chest was on fire, making it nearly impossible to draw breath. Blood flowed from his mouth and numerous cuts, pooling beneath his feet. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and several of his teeth were loose. At least one of his arms was broken.

Mike strolled up to him and drew his knife. “I’ll kill you quick,” he said, “if you call me boss.”

Joe spat blood in the gang leader’s face. Little Mike roared and raised the knife to slit Joe’s belly.

“Stop.”

The voice rang with authority, echoing from wall to wall. Mike swung around, knife raised. His followers also turned, but instead of confronting the intruder they melted into the shadows and kept their weapons at their sides.

The man was not tall, nor was he particularly big. He wore a top hat, a handsomely tailored frock coat, a gleaming white shirt and a perfectly tied cravat. His every movement was elegance itself, hinting at wealth and power. His face was handsome and utterly without fear. No man had ever looked more out of place than this one.

“Good evening,” he said, planting his gold-headed cane on the stained floor. “I see that you boys have been amusing yourselves.”

Little Mike stepped forward. “So?” he said. “What’s it to you?”

The stranger regarded Mike as he might a particularly ugly rat. “You’ve chosen a poor place to conduct your business,” he said. “If you wish to continue, you will have to work for me.”

“Who the hell are you?”

Dark eyes fixed on Mike’s. “My name is Raoul Boucher. I am claiming this territory on behalf of my…associates.”

Little Mike burst out laughing. His underlings tittered, but their amusement didn’t last. They fell silent as Mike advanced on Boucher, a length of chain in one hand and the knife in the other.

“You’ve made a big mistake, boyo,” he said. “There won’t be nothing left of you when we’re finished.”

Not a hint of apprehension touched Boucher’s smooth face. He simply stood, waiting, until Mike charged. Then, with a movement almost too swift for Joe to follow, he thrust out with his cane and caught Mike in the belly. Little Mike stumbled and fell flat on his face.

“One last chance,” Boucher said. “Swear allegiance to me.”

Mike struggled to his feet and scrambled away, wiping blood from his nose. “Get him!” he shrieked.

No one moved. Frothing with rage, Little Mike lunged at Boucher. This time the stranger caught Mike by the collar, transferred his grip to Mike’s neck and twisted his hand. The sound of Mike’s neck snapping was grim and final.

Boucher dropped the corpse to the ground. The leaderless Nineteenth Streeters scampered away like rabbits, leaving only a handful behind.

“Well,” Boucher said. He looked over the remaining hoodlums with appraising eyes. “You may live, if you do as I say without question. Return to this place in two days’ time, at midnight, and my vassals will instruct you.”

The gang members glanced at each other, uncertain.

“Go,” Boucher said. They ran. Boucher glanced at Joe. He sauntered toward him and stopped a few feet away.

“Will you survive, human?” he asked.

Joe forced his tongue to obey him. “I will,” he said thickly, “if you’ll cut me down.”

Boucher cocked his head. “I believe you will,” he said. Still he made no move to help. “You didn’t cry out,” he said.

“I…don’t…”

“You made no sound when they tormented you. You have courage.”

Joe felt his body shake and realized that he was laughing. “What…good would it do to scream?”

Boucher studied him for a moment longer and then released the chain that held Joe suspended. Joe fell, striking the ground hard. The pain nearly destroyed him.

Boucher knelt behind him. Joe felt the cuffs spring open, though Boucher had no key.

“Can you stand?” Boucher asked.

Joe crawled to his knees. Whirling blackness tried to suck him under. A strong, narrow hand pulled him up by the ruins of his shirt.

The eyes that stared into his were a deep brown tinged with red. “Will you serve me?” Boucher asked.

A coldness washed over Joe. “How?”

“As my enforcer. You will keep other humans obedient to me.”

“Hu-humans?”

Boucher smiled. There was something wrong with his teeth.

“Don’t be concerned, boy,” he said. “You will no longer be among them.”

He leaned forward, tearing open the collar of Joe’s shirt. It seemed for a moment that he was kissing the base of Joe’s neck, and Joe thrust out his arms in panic. But then he felt a strange sort of peace mingled with incomprehensible pleasure, and his muscles relaxed.

When he woke, there was no pain. He was naked between clean sheets, not a single injury marking his body. The room in which he lay was spartan, holding little more than a bed and a washbasin, but fresh clothing hung in the plain armoire against the wall.

Joe rose from the bed, feeling the strength surge through his body, aware of a ravening hunger such as he had never known. He had just begun to dress when Boucher walked into the room.

In an instant Joe remembered everything. And something strange happened inside him; when he looked at Boucher, he knew he was bound to the other man by means he had no way to explain.

“Good,” Boucher said. “You will come with me, and I will instruct you in what you must know.” He smiled and touched Joe’s face in the way a man might stroke a favored pet. “You shall keep your name for the time being. Someday, when you earn it, you may choose your own.”

He turned for the door. Joe closed his eyes, caught in a maelstrom of sensation.

“What am I?”

Boucher paused. “You are more than human, my protégé. And you will live a thousand years.”

DORIAN WOKE AGAIN. It was several minutes before he could distinguish the past from the present.

Joseph. Dorian. Neither name had any meaning now. Soon the husk of his body would begin to rot. He would become incapable of movement, and then his brain would start to die.

He let himself sink back into the half world of formless dreams and visions. Sometimes he thought he saw Gwen Murphy, her heart-shaped face framed with soft red curls, green eyes blazing, full lips parted as she prepared to admonish him. “You can’t die,” she said. “I won’t let you.”