Karen Koehler - Slayer 01 - Death Becomes Her

Slayer

Table of Contents

Preface

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Slayer

By Karen Koehler

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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ISBN: 0-7388-4724-0

First Baen eBook edition, September 2001

Distributed by

KHP Industries

http://www.khpindustries.com

Preface

NOTE FROM THE LIBRARIAN:

As a general rule, we only put titles up in the Library which have been published by Baen Books. The

principal 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 Barnesandnoble.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

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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 bloody 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

http://www.xlibris.com/slayer.html

or at your favorite online books outlet.

Yours most Sinisterly,

Karen Koehler

1

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"Sweet Sorrows" appears courtesy of Wayne Heath and Black Death Music.

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 hell

Sweet is my embrace

Propelling you towards disgrace

Constricting your breathing space

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 hell

Hell to you I bestow

You're beginning to overflow

With this my final death blow

Moving slowly master hand

Hour glass 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

Dreading your fears

To you they do adhere

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And becoming a prison cell

Your neverending living hell

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 class 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-glass images of redemption and repentance, the low

stone altars and statues carved with sensual reverence and the sparse illumination of a multitude 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 passion. 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 whore sent a shiver down the slayer's spine. He'd been

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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 whores 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 prostitutes 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 glass, 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 associates had during Prohibition. And with Coven there was always an added aspect of mortal

danger.

"Empirius is alone," the slayer stated. "Don't fuck me around, Sal."

Sal held up his hands in defense. "Probably she's upstairs, sulking over some young god 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

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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 cum 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 oldshugo

blood. Her eyes moved analytically 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 accumulating, 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 space,

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 breasts, 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 scraped back and severe, she stared out of the portrait with damning 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 lust.

Without ado, or excuse, Akisha went to a low stone divan and lay down over the gracefully slumbering

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body of her newest interest. A college boy he looked like, someone scarcely out of his virgin skin where

vampire whores 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 assumed 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 sex in the room. He sighed. He was suddenly weary.

At the end of the room he turned around and studied the living fresco before 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

breasts. 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

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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 passion 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? Thisis

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 prone 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."

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"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 seemedCats 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 glass 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 passion, his Resurrection and his Ascension, and from the

many gifts you have given us we offer to you, God of glory and life eternal, this holy and perfect sacrifice:

this child of God who is now the body of Christ and the cup of eternal salvation which is His life's blood."

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Karen Koehler - Slayer 01 - Death Becomes Her

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