The Magnificence
Chapter 1
“Dead Apostle” was a phrase that filled the uninitiated with more than a little puzzlement. Oh, yes, the son of God had had followers that clearly passed away in the two-thousand-plus years since His crucifixion, but what did any of that have to do with vampires?
To begin at the beginning, Gaia called out for a savior, and something like and unlike a man descended from the Moon. Gaia was pleased. So pleased, in fact, that She ushered into the garden of her body something that could be considered a pantheon of nature spirits struck from the moon-man’s mold. These were the True Ancestors.
Like so many before them, the True Ancestors had their priests and disciples, those who wished to share in the gift of life measured in more than mortal years. These were the Dead Apostles.
Like their masters, the Dead Apostles were blood-drinking immortals. Like their masters, the Dead Apostles were only as good as they allowed themselve to be.
Which is, in the absence of Gaia’s grace, rarely good at all.
Imagine all the world’s hunger, all the world’s desires with power enough to explore those parts of themselves in a bacchanalian orgy of violence and arrogance. This is a Dead Apostle.
Among the Dead Apostles, there are royals, those who are impossibly long-lived or powerful or whatever other piece of criteria is used to delineate those monsters among monsters. These are the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.
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“On second thought, make that two.”
With two shots in his left hand and a pint glass in his right, Kairi Shishigou sauntered from the tiny little bar to the tiny little booth on the way to the bathroom.
It wasn’t anything special, this hole in the wall, and that’s what made it special to him. It had all the usual trappings: booths, bar stool, creaky old fan and two fraying pool tables crammed so closely together that two simultaneous games were theoretically possible yet impractical at best. Paint flecking in places that you would only ever see if you knew where to look, a bathroom that smelled vaguely of urine without ever leaving any messes out in the open. Little things that made it trash not so trashy that Kairi lost all self-respect. It was neither ritzy enough for Lords nor scummy enough for the other Lords looking to slum it for cheap thrills or a personal reminder of why they stapled their noses to the ceiling. It was cheap, too, but not so cheap that the first-years would be drawn like moths to its high-proof flame.
Most of all, he did it because it was far enough away from the Clock Tower campus he wouldn’t have to worry about someone trying to mix his work with pleasure.
Which meant Shirou Emiya had to stake a claim on a table after asking the bartender, Old Joe, questions so obviously leading that OJ would surreptitiously nod him toward Shirou’s corner of establishment with a warning that someone was looking for him.
Fuckin’ amateur hour.
But who was the real idiot if he was waltzing right over?
He dropped his shots on the table hard enough that they sloshed up and over the rim. That was fine. It was cheap booze anyway.
“If you’re here, that means both of us fucked up,” he said by way of greeting. “I’ll tell you mine, and that’s getting predictable. I don’t go to magus bars so I don’t have to run into guys like you when I’m off the clock.” He knocked back a shot without wincing. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Shirou said. He didn’t make a move to take the second shot. He didn’t drink much, if ever, and, more importantly, he wasn’t sure it was meant for him.
“It’s too bad. I like this place.” Kairi paused to sip on his pint. “Spill.”
“I need your advice,” Shirou said, eyebrows drawing together pensively.
“Is it about the new look? ‘cause I got to say, you’re rocking it. Not too many redheads can pull off that kind of tan.”
“I...thanks,” said Shirou, too polite to brush off the compliment, as far from the pressing topic as it may have been. “I spent some time in the Serengeti. I was in the Caribbean after that. I got a lot of sun.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to dwell on the people he had followed to those places or what they did to catch his attention.
“Is that when you got the contacts?” Kairi said, prying him from the memories.
“What contacts?” said Shirou, blinking the eyes in question.
“Y’know,” Kairi leaned back, spreading out his arms and legs languidly to engulf his side of the booth, “when I first met you, I thought you had to be part-something-other-than-human. I said to myself, ‘there’s no way a guy can have 24 karat eyes without being part vampire or something.’ Figured you were a hybrid with how popular those are in Japan.” Kairi took another sip, wistfully thinking back to his first time meeting one Shirou Emiya. “What a clusterfuck.”
“I didn’t come to talk about Las Vegas.”
“On?” Kairi’s eyebrows danced in merriment just above his sunglasses.
“I ran into a group of Danish teenagers asking about Dead Apostles.”
“Oh.”
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“Are you sure we can trust him, Ana?”
The Ana in question just so happened to be the petite young woman whose little problem had sent Shirou across town.
“For the last time, Freddie, yes!” said Sven, the brunette sprawled across one of the two queens, absently flicking through the best the BBC had to offer. In Sven’s humble opinion, it wasn’t much.
The Freddie in question was a pale, plump of a blond nervously tinkering with his homework assignment at the cramped hotel room’s desk, but he wasn’t getting much of anywhere with all of the nervous starts and stops.
Ana murmured something, muffled from the restroom.
“If Ana says it’s fine, then it’s fine, right?” Sven added. “At least it’s a start, you know? He’s the first one to take us seriously since we got here.”
Freddie paused, digested and considered. He turned back to his work while Sven went back to his TV, and Ana went back to doing whatever it was Ana was doing. (Freddie was just young that he half-believed women only used the restroom to powder their noses.)
“But...are you sure?”
“Freddie!” Sven threw the remote at his co-apprentice.
“Sven,” Ana said with a stern gaze and a shake of her finger as she rejoined them just in time to see Sven’s mild outburst. Freddie found her a bit hard to take seriously with her face caked like that. When had she started wearing so much makeup? “We don’t need to resort to violence.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sven muttered, unfolding to his true height to retrieve the remote from what looked like half the room.
Mildly mollified, Ana put on her winningest smile and her most assuring tone.
“Trust me, Freddie. I know it will all work out. It’s just like Master said! He’s not a magus! He’s a sorcerer, just like us!”
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“Jesus Christ,” Kairi muttered before he polished off half his pint in one gulp.
“I know.”
“I had you pegged for the kind of guy who liked to take in strays, but you’re talking about fighting a Dead Apostle head on.”
“I know.”
“That’s some serious stuff.”
“You’ve done it before,” Shirou crossed his arms.
“It’s not like I was doing it on purpose. I just ran into him because my mark had a pet vampire.”
“I seem to remember you were the one that finally killed it.”
“Yeah,” Kairi smiled dreamily. “I did, didn’t I?”
“If you’ve done it once, you can do it again,” Shirou said as if that settled it. “Just teach me how.”
“Hold on, Van Helsing.” Kairi sat up a bit straighter as he put a hand like a bear’s paw on Shirou’s shoulder. “There’s a bit more to killing Apostles than a two-step tutorial. And even if it was that simple, you would need some more guys to pull it off.”
Shirou was already sitting up straight, so he leaned forward intently.
“How many?”
“That’s a big question, kid,” Kairi sat back. Now it was his turn to cross his arms as he hunched in thought. “I would need to know what kind of blooduscker we’re going up against here. Newly minted? Old-school? Or, shit, Ancestor?”
Shirou’s eyes glinted like white gold in the dim light. Kairi didn’t like it one bit.
“What if it was a Dead Apostle Ancestor?” He said it with a conspirator’s delicateness. “What then?”
“I’d get out of town. That’s the Church’s problem. Or Bartholemoi’s. Whoever has a bigger hard-on for putting more canines on the mantle that day.”
“But what if it wasn’t that easy?”
“Fine,” Kairi threw his hands up before slamming them back down on the table. “Let’s say we can’t go through the official channels, so that’s no team of Executors, no Enforcers, no Batallion. Whatever and whoever you can pull together, and I do mean who because there’s no way you’re doing this alone. So, it’s whatever guys you can get, whatever skills and weapons they have. But let’s say you get lucky, get some guys with some decent firepower and more than one spine between ‘em. I, God, I hate to even say it, but I think you’re looking at seven.”
“Seven magi?” Shirou frowned. It couldn’t be that simple. There was a reason highly specialized vampire slayers like the Executors and the Bartholemoi family’s personal Battalion of Chron existed.
“Is that too many? You want to do with three and earn bonus points for how crazy you are?”
“No,” Shirou said, metallic eyes shining with thought. “No, seven is good. Anything less is too risky, and anything more is too obvious. The Association would get involved or the vampire would see it coming. Seven. That just means five more.”
“Hold on. I never said that I was in on this or that the plan was watertight. That was just a thought exercise. Shirou, listen to me. Running off half-cocked to fight vampires is a cool thing for Keanu Reeves to do, but, man, I hate to break it to you, you’re not Keanu Reeves.”
Shirou stared at him impatiently. He didn’t know who Keanu Reeves was or how he was relevant.
“You need as much help as you can get, kid. Look, I’m not saying I’m on board with this venture, but I can make a few inquiries, you know? Ask around about anyone who has some experience with this sort of thing. Maybe even scare up a few guys with death wishes as strong as yours.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ve already involved you more than I should have. I saved that girl and listened to her problem. This is something for me to handle.”
“It becomes my problem when I let you go marching off to meet the reaper without any backup.”
It was then that Shirou remembered why he trusted a man like Kairi Shishigou, a man who smelled of blood and drank like a fish and had a heart so big he had to wear it on his sleeve.
“Thank you, Kairi,” Shirou said quietly, bowing his head.
“Whatever, kid. You came to me because you know I’m the type of guy to put my neck out for you.”
“No one is asking you do that,” Shirou tried to say it with a sense of gravity, to give Kairi another opportunity not to bear his burden, but Shirou found himself smiling in spite of himself. He didn't hate people like Kairi.
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
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