He was a goner. He could see that now. As good as dead. Or worse. Fear crowded his throat, but he swallowed it. He straightened his shoulders. At least he could go out with dignity ... as much as he could muster without a stitch of clothing.
The crowd of undead, all armed with pistols and machetes, grinned and pointed to him. The scarred one grabbed one of his arms and hauled him before another of their kind standing by the Observation Deck wall, staring out into the night. He turned at their approach, and smiled when his cold gaze came to rest on Joe.
"So . .. this is the man who has chosen to vex me."
He was almost as tall as Joe, with broad shoulders, a blond leonine mane and mustache. A jutting nose and aggressive chin dominated his face.
His excellent English did not completely hide an Italian accent. Joe noted that he was the only undead on the deck who wasn't armed.
"A big one, this vigilante priest"—he glanced at Joe's genitals—"but not exactly built like a stallion, is he."
This brought a laugh from his guards or retainers or whatever they were.
Joe stared past him, focusing on the impenetrable darkness over Franco's right shoulder, and said nothing.
The vampire clucked his tongue in mock concern. "Chilly? Under different circumstances I might relish your discomfiture, but not tonight." He turned to one of the undead holding Joe. "Find him a blanket or something to wrap about him."
The one-eyed guard said, "But Franco—"
"Do it." His dead eyes lit briefly with an inner fire.
The underling stood firm. "Just hours ago he killed Gregor."
The other undead milling around nodded and murmured, as if this were a telling fact.
That name again ... Gregor. The second time he'd heard it tonight. Joe stood there wondering who Gregor was. The only thing he knew was that he hadn't killed him—at least not knowingly. "Just hours ago" he'd been searching for Lacey. Had the same thing happened to her? Whisked away into the night. No. Lacey had disappeared during the daylight hours. Where was she then? He prayed her circumstances were better than his.
"I don't care!" Franco said. "It will be our blanket, you dolt! It won't conceal a cross, so you'll have nothing to worry about! Move! I've already wasted too much time waiting for his arrival."
A few moments later some sort of fabric was roughly thrown over Joe's shoulders. Apparently they couldn't find a blanket; this was like a window drape. He pulled it close around him, grateful for the shelter it provided from the wind.
"Thank you," he said, deciding to play this as cool as he could.
"Oh, don't think I did it for your sake. I did it for mine. I want your complete attention." He motioned Joe to the wall. "Come. Let me show you my domain."
Something had been nagging at Joe since he'd stepped out on the deck ... something wrong . . . something missing . . . and now he realized what it was.
He'd been up here once in his life, in his teens, when his father had brought him. The reason for the trip had been a French exchange student staying with them for the summer. They'd gone to the Statue of Liberty that summer too. Strange. He'd grown up only a short distance from these American landmarks but probably never would have visited them if not for the presence of a foreigner.
He remembered that on his one and only visit here there'd been high safety fencing all around the Observation Deck, with tall, pointed steel tines curving inward like fishhooks. Now most of that was gone, torn away. It made sense, though: The undead weren't worried about one of their own becoming a suicide jumper, and the fence would only hinder the fliers.
Joe approached the wall, eyeing its upper edge. It ran about mid-chest high. Eternity—and perhaps salvation—waited on the other side.
As he came up beside Franco, the vampire waved his arm at the darkness. "There it is: mine, as far as I can see."
Joe's heart broke as he took in the vista, not for what he could see—moonlight glinting off the crown of the Chrysler Building off to the left—but for what he couldn't.
Darkness. The city was dark. Any light he saw was reflected from the moon or this building. Everything else was dead and dark. This wasn't the New York he'd known. This was its corpse.
"The first thing we did was kill the power," Franco said. "It has a numbing psychological effect, especially in a place like Manhattan. People here were so used to light everywhere, all the time, and then it was gone. It serves another purpose. It makes the few who are left light fires to cook, to stay warm on the cooler nights. We home in on those fires. They're like beacons to us. Manhattan is pretty well cleaned out now, but the other boroughs still teem with survivors. We hunt them judiciously, preserving them like a natural resource."
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"But I keep this building alight. More psychological warfare. The tallest building in this fabled city, its most recognizable landmark, and we have it. I live here with some of my get, just one floor down. Why should I hide in a basement when I can seal off windows in this magnificent building that affords me such a unique view of my domain. I wish those Islamic thugs had left the Trade Towers alone. They were even taller. How I'd love to be standing atop one of them now."
So full of himself, Joe thought, wondering how he could turn that to his advantage.
Franco shrugged resignedly. "But I suppose the Empire State will do. Its generators power everything in the building." He pointed to the cameras ringing the deck. "It has an excellent security system to help our serfs protect us during the day. No one moves in this building without being watched and taped. I like to review the tapes now and again, and punish any slackers I catch. As an extra security measure, we've cut the power to all but two of the elevators."
He held his hand over the edge of the wall. A red glow lit his palm from below.
"But my favorite accessory is the filters they have for the spotlights that bathe the upper floors. Red, white, and blue for July Fourth, red and green for Christmas. We use only red now. It's our color. The color of blood. More psychological warfare." He turned to Joe and smiled. "You're pretty adept at psychological warfare yourself."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Joe said, tearing himself away from the dark vista.
Franco stared at him. "I can't tell whether you're being obtuse or coy. I'm talking about your campaign against the serfs in your area."
"Serfs?"
"Oh, I forget. They like to call themselves cowboys, you people like to call them collaborators—"
"Vichy," he said, thinking with a pang of Zev. "Some of us call them Vichy."
"Vichy." Franco nodded. "I like that. It shows a sense of history, though it gives them more cachet than they deserve." He waved his hand as if shooing a fly. "But my point is, you and your minions have caused more trouble than anyone I can remember."
Again the temptation to tell this beast that Joe had no idea what he was talking about, but he suppressed it. He was good at suppressing temptation.
"It was the terrorist aspects of your campaign that worked. The serfs are such disloyal scum, and so very susceptible to fear. You had the local contingent quaking in their boots. But you made a grave tactical error when you revealed yourself and took back your church. That gave you a face, and you weren't so terrifying anymore. Or so I thought. But when you sent Gregor into true death I decided I wanted to meet you."
Joe had to ask—because he wanted to know and because he sensed that the question might unsettle Franco—"Who the hell is Gregor?"
Franco stared at him a moment. "I suppose it's possible you didn't know his name. Same with Angelica, I imagine. But you and yours have sent two important subordinates to true death in a matter of a few days. No one has ever done that."
Angelica . . . could that be the flying undead that Zev told him about?
"Those winged ones," Joe said, taking a stab in the dark. "They always give me the creeps."
"Of course they do. They're supposed to. Psychological warfare again. Strike terror into the hearts of the cattle." He sighed. "I never cared for either of them. Angelica was too impetuous and Gregor too grasping, but the fallout from their deaths has been, well, vexing. But only temporarily."
He turned back to the night with another grandiose wave of his arm.
"My kingdom. We're facing east, you know. Long Island is out that way. We're well established there."
Joe stretched up on tiptoe, leaned over the top of the parapet, and looked down instead of out. Red light from the banks of spotlights bathed his face. Beyond them, far below and out of sight, empty pavements beckoned.
Not yet, he thought. The guards were too close. They'd stop him before he got over. He eased back and watched his host.