Chapter 38

Baron stood before the manor's antique cast-aluminum gate. He lifted his gaze to the sky; at some unnoticed hour the sun and the black moon had both set, and twin crescents now rose and fell.

He drew a slow breath and pushed the unlocked door.

The plain hall stood empty, every surface in disarray—the aftermath of Yalilan's meticulous search the day before. The Pure-Blood Tigress had shown Baron Cambera no favor, sponsor of the bounty or not.

Without lingering, he headed straight to the basement door the Baron had brought him to two nights earlier.

Dragonfire melted the iron lock; he kicked it in, uncaring who heard.

Torches in the tunnel sputtered. From memory he found the small chamber with its shattered windowpanes.

He stopped inside and gathered the grey-green berries scattered across the floor. The Baron had claimed they were Mondra's native tree-fruit.

Doctor Rowan had confirmed it—berries of the chaste-tree, also called the holy berry. Mixed with calming grass, they treated malaria; more important, they helped women conceive.

Baron had asked no questions that night, but he had memorized every herb. Later, in the library, he wrote them down for the little novice nun to carry to the doctor.

After she relayed the list to Doctor Rowan, Baron teased out a single, chilling conclusion: every necessity for a girl's life, from birth to death.

That night, the children had wept—and Sheila, following the Baron's order, had smashed the basement window...

Baron knelt, fingers tracing the dying girl's last words along the corner. A hidden mechanism clicked. With a groan the floor slid apart, revealing stairs that dropped into darkness. Dense white vapor boiled up, carrying silent howls—and the metallic scent he had long since forgotten.

He drew the twin revolvers at his waist, checked the cylinders, snapped them shut, and rolled the guns across his sleeve with a serpent's hiss.

As he leapt into the dark, he tossed a sealed letter onto the floor—an account of everything that had happened—then his blazing golden eyes ignited, burning even in the abyss.

...

The stairway ended in a long passage. Following the cries, he soon stepped into light and an enormous space: a white altar, a crimson pool, a towering cross, and upon it a slight girl—Cecy—head bowed, tear-tracks gleaming on her small face.

Above, a glass ceiling showed the twin moons' faint reflection. An underground palace.

Baron lunged to free her, but an invisible wall slammed him back like a bird against glass.

A spike of dread—had the ritual begun?

He glanced at Cecy, drew his revolver, and fired twice. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly from the barrier.

His face darkened.

"You and I are both too late; the rite has started..."

A weary male voice drifted from behind.

Baron turned stiffly. From the left-hand shadows stumbled Baron Cambera, battered and bleeding, hauling his bulk up from behind the blood pool like a walrus flopping ashore.

The Baron gave a bitter laugh. "Elisa deceived me. I thought she would release the children if I begged—never imagined she would flee her cell..."

"She sacrificed the girls to fuel the ritual, and now she'll use little Cecy's life to house the soul of the vampiric Viscountess."

Vampiric Viscountess... A chill raced down Baron's spine.

He spun around. Above the entrance stood a second altar and cross, upon which hung a gaunt, silver-haired man in rich robes, his right leg missing, grey eyes glinting through the vapor.

On the altar table lay three objects: two withered yet pulsing kidneys, a blood-red upright cross, and the Timebloom he had sought for so long—offerings for the rite.

The long-dead Viscountess...

Without a word Baron pivoted, lunging toward the offerings. If he could break the ritual—

He struck the same invisible barrier and rebounded hard.

"It is the ceremony," the Baron whispered. "It has begun. You're too late."

Baron's hand tightened on his gun. "Is there a way to stop it?"

The Baron blinked, surprised. "Only by killing Elisa. She is the celebrant..."

"Where is she?"

Constantine strode toward the Baron.

"She'll be here soon..."

As the words left the Baron's lips, the glass ceiling shattered. A monstrous figure plunged through— the blood fiend Baron and Yalilan had seen days earlier—Baroness Cambera herself, once the courtesan Elisa.

Snarling, she seized the Baron's throat. His face purpled; he pawed uselessly at her claws, eyes pleading toward Baron.

Baron drew his broken sword, vaulted the blood pool, golden eyes blazing. The fiend roared, muscles swelling, green eyes flaring white—yet every power failed beneath the golden gaze.

Constantine drove the fiery blade.

The fiend dodged; the sword pinned the Baron to the floor.

Blood gushed from the Baron's mouth. "Why...?"

Baron released the hilt; the flames vanished.

He glanced at Cecy on the cross and said quietly, "Because you are the root of all this."

"Why..." the Baron gasped, crimson on his teeth.

"Everything began with the Second Faith War," Baron said. "There you met the Blue-Blood faction of the Crimson Church. They seduced you; you joined them, became a Blue-Blood cultist."

"Blue-Blood... I never believed vampires were avatars of the Blood God... why those..."

"The cult cares nothing for your theology, but it made you a vampire."

The Baron's expression changed. He tried to speak; Baron silenced him with a look.

"Baron, interrupting is poor manners."

The hunter continued, voice calm. "As a cultist you knew the Lamb-Blood Nunnery. You bargained with them—an undead vampire corpse in exchange for their aid."

"I suspect the price was an occult ritual. I don't care what you wanted from it, but I care what you did to prepare."

"You waited for your chance. Years ago Mondra's famine gave it to you."

"You lured young peasant women with food and coin, got them pregnant. Girls you raised here, then murdered for their blood. Boys..."

He added coldly, "I imagine you killed or abandoned them."

"All speculation without proof..." the Baron croaked. "Mister L... if I'm guilty, let God punish me..."

"Doctor Rowan confirmed the dead girls were virgins."

Baron produced a small card and held it before the Baron's eyes: "Nana Lee."

Nana Lee—name of a peasant woman who had confessed in the Crimson Cathedral yesterday. The card was forged, but the Baron's pupils flared wide.

"So I fear God may not see clearly."

He seized the Baron's collar. "The scattered toys, the jumbled herbs, the women's confessions, the children's weeping, the girls' corpses—does God truly see?"

"The graffiti in the basement that night—you knew we'd noticed. You brought Cecy here because she was one who escaped..."

"I... know nothing..."

The Baron's eyes glazed; his blood was nearly spent.

"Nothing? Or nothing you'll admit?"

Baron pressed the broken blade into the wound; sweat beaded on the Baron's brow.

The blood fiend merely watched, green eyes vacant as a groundhog's.

Panting, the Baron whispered, "Malice... isn't proof... L... If malice alone could condemn... the world would end..."

"I bear you no malice," Baron said softly, "but I have great malice for a devil who keeps girls in a cellar like livestock."

"Your wife—Madame Cambera—no, allow me: Miss Elisa. In Iron City she discovered your secret and tried to expose you. You poisoned her voice and fled."

"By some means you turned her into a blood fiend, planning to shift the blame. When the basement graffiti threatened exposure, you cast your wife as scapegoat."

Baron looked to the woman who had regained human form, his gaze gentle. "Am I right, Miss Elisa?"

She did not speak. She only stared at the child on the cross, tears of remorse carving furrows down her aged face.

After a long silence, she nodded.

"Elisa..." Baron Cambera looked at his wife in grief. "So you've finally betrayed me, have you?"

Baron seized the Baron by the collar, dragged him to the edge of the blood pool, and pressed his head against the rim. "At the end, I have only one question."

"I make no promise to answer."

The Baron shed his pretense and chuckled softly. His round face creased with laughter, making him look like a seal that couldn't haul itself ashore.

A demon-hunter pressed the muzzle of a gun to the Baron's forehead. "Why did you make Theresa kill Sheila?"

The Baron burst into wild laughter, his expression savage. "Because that whore climbed into my bed at eighteen, yet played the innocent virgin in front of you despicable hunters!"

The sound of a blade slicing through cloth.

Someone was about to die.

Not the Baron—it was the Baroness.

Her eyes widened in shock as a jagged claw-blade pierced her chest. Behind her stood a blood fiend, its face twisted in a snarl, long horns jutting from its forehead.