Magistrates of Hell

vampire pinned him, caught his wrists and again pulled back with a hissing scream of pain and rage. Asher rolled, scrambled clear and shouted, ‘In nomine Patrii, Orsino! I’m here from Ysidro!’

The words weren’t out of his mouth as the vampire slammed him against the ruined altar-rail, clawed hands gripping his shoulders with brutal power.

But Asher felt him hesitate, and he said into that moment’s stillness, ‘Simon Ysidro sent me.’ He spoke Latin. At a guess, Padre Orsino wouldn’t understand modern Spanish.

The vampire tilted his head. Regarded him with eyes that were, in the candlelight, dark as coffee and had clearly not been sane in centuries. Straddling his body, he held Asher without effort against the broken railing and the floor. When he pressed a clawed hand to the side of Asher’s face, it was warm. His clothing smelled of blood.

‘You are his servant?’

‘I am. I am called Asher.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I came to see if you knew that. I have heard nothing of him for seven days.’

‘He is vanished.’ Father Orsino rose. He stood over Asher’s body, a small man whose hair, like his eyes, seemed very dark in the dense gloom of the chapel against the pallor of his skin. He wore the long Manchu ch’i-p’ao and ku trousers, but his hair was sleeked back into a bun on the back of his head, after the fashion of the Chinese before the conquest by the Manchus. ‘Come,’ he said. He glanced around him, held down his hand to pull Asher to his feet – Asher guessed by the pain in his side that the vampire’s violence had cracked a rib or two. ‘They cannot hear us, beneath the earth,’ Orsino whispered conspiratorially. ‘They cannot listen – cannot find me.’

He took Asher by the elbow, picked up the lantern and led the way past the main altar to a broken doorway and the ruin of a vestry. Most of its roof and part of a wall was gone, but there was no sign of rats or other vermin. Another doorway opened on to a stairway down to the crypt, two full turns down into a Stygian abyss that smelled of mold. A new door had been installed at the bottom. There were bolts on its inner side, a hasp with a padlock. The stone vaulting of the crypt beyond barely cleared the top of Asher’s head, and by the lantern’s feeble glimmer he made out piles of dug-up earth, and straw baskets for moving it, among the fat wooden pillars.

Presumably Father Orsino was in the process of making a more secure lair for himself deeper down. Asher wondered where he planned to dispose of the dug-out dirt.

The vampire shot the bolts and turned to face Asher. Though Ysidro was too wary to risk a kill anywhere in the city, Asher knew that the weight of the earth blocked vampire perceptions. Father Orsino might consider it safe.

‘Don Simon told me that I could find you here,’ he said, to remind his host – in case it had slipped whatever was left of his mind – that he, Asher, was supposedly a good Catholic and working for the Pope.

‘He said you could take me back to Rome.’ Orsino set the lantern on a corner of the huge old chest that lay, half-hidden, by the low pillars at the nearer end of the crypt, and he folded his heavy, thick-fingered hands. ‘He said His Holiness would forgive me my sins, because I have in all these years killed only the damned. God save me . . .’

‘I know nothing of what His Holiness said to Ysidro. It is only my task to serve him.’

‘What, none of you know?’ The hushed voice had a twisted shrillness to it, the gleaming eyes narrowed. ‘Are you lying to me? Trying to trap me?’ Orsino seized Asher again by the shoulder of his coat, shoved him back against a pillar. ‘Is that what happened to Don Simon? That you betrayed—?’

‘I know nothing.’ Asher kept his own voice steady with an effort. ‘Truly. It’s why I must find him.’

The Father’s lip lifted back from his fangs. ‘I find it hard to believe that none in your company knows the mandate of His Holiness.’

‘There is no company. Only myself and my master. Did Don Simon tell you otherwise?’

Father Orsino passed a hand over his forehead, his brow suddenly tightening with confusion and pain. ‘They are gods,’ he said. ‘You cannot . . . A man cannot fight against gods.’ He blinked at Asher, dark eyes filled with terror. ‘I’ve done everything I can, but hundreds worship them, you see. Thousands. The living bow down to them in their pagan temples, bring them sacrifices. And they have, each of them, a thousand and ten thousand and a hundred thousand prisoners, dead men, dead women, flesh burned off their bones but walking still. These they call up out of Hell . . .’

‘Have you seen them?’

‘Every day.’ Orsino’s voice sank still further, hoarse with terror. ‘I sleep, and I see them, surrounded in flame with their flayed worshipers all burning around them.’

Truth? Dream? Madness? A recollection of his days trying to convert the Chinese? ‘And they trust their worshipers?’

‘They are gods,’ the priest repeated. ‘Of course their worshipers must obey. Else they themselves will be dragged down to Hell by the bailiffs, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, down a thousand and ten thousand and a hundred thousand black iron steps to the gates of the First Hell, which is called Chin-kuang. The living must obey them because their ancestors are in Hell, where all unbelievers go. They dare not disobey. Their families will not allow it.’

His face convulsed, and his grip tightened on Asher’s shoulder. ‘Did he send you to trap me? My father . . . and the Pope . . . The monster that first came to the hills was Catholic! Did the Pope send him? I heard him pray . . .’

‘The Pope has not betrayed you.’ Even cold with fright, Asher felt a queasy shiver of enlightenment. ‘The Devil speaks Latin as well as the Pope, Padre. It was the Devil who sent you a monster out of Hell, to try your spirit and your faith. His Holiness would never betray you.’

Father Orsino released his hold, almost threw Asher from him. ‘What you say is true.’ His eyes were ravenous, riveted now to the shoulder of Asher’s ch’i-p’ao where hot blood soaked through the padded cloth.

Get him thinking of something else quickly. ‘Do the vampires rule over their living families here? Is that what it is? That some of them are the ancestors that the family venerates?’

‘No. Yes.’ The vampire stammered as the words disrupted his attention. ‘I–I have never seen them. I don’t know. Not one. Ever, ever in all these long years . . .’

‘Not he who made you?’

The question seemed to confuse Father Orsino, who shook his head. ‘They don’t make others like themselves any more,’ he said. ‘Nor do they suffer one another to make them. They trust no one, do you understand? Not their families, not one another.’

He stepped forward again, put his palms against the sides of Asher’s head, drew him close, his words a frightful halitus of blood. ‘They told me it is the children that lead vengeance to their doors. When we come up out of Hell we are helpless, like snails ripped from their curly armor. It is why they all had to become gods, you see. They wouldn’t let me, because I had sinned. The Yama-King gave them a choice about which Hell they would rule, once he’d reorganized. There used to be twelve thousand, eight hundred hells under the earth, eight dark hells, eight cold hells, and eighty-four thousand hells located on the edges of the universe, though I should imagine some of them were quite small. When I was a man I used to study them.’

He frowned, gazing into Asher’s eyes as if hypnotized. ‘When I was a man—’

‘Is that why he made you vampire, then?’ asked Asher steadily. ‘Because you were not of his own family?’

‘He wanted—’ Father Orsino blinked, trying to call memory back. ‘I no longer remember what he wanted. There was a reason then.’ He pressed his palms hard against Asher’s skull, struggling with some thought.

‘He is—?’

‘Li. Li Jung Shen. He is insane now. His family brings him prey, that he may do their bidding. Except . . .’ He fell silent again, losing the thread of his thought. His hands slackened their crushing grip, only stirred through Asher’s hair, absent-mindedly, as a man might stroke a dog. But his wandering gaze returned to Asher’s shoulder where the blood darkened his coat.

‘Except—?’ Asher reminded him gently.

‘Except when I waken sometimes at fall of dark, I hear him screaming.’

He stepped back a little then, and Asher slipped out of his reach, half breathless with the pain in his side, and