The Bleeding of Carthage

1. The Promise

Enoch the Knife kept guard, looking up and down the hard-packed earthen roads of Pompeii's warehouse district. Beside him, Elijah the Hammer inspected the corpse beside the fountain. The same as all the others, save the position in which it was found. Throat torn open with one savage bite and heart ripped from the chest and left to dangle out of the body cavity. This one, a man in life, was positioned as if it leaned over the edge of the fountain to watch the brightly coloured fish swimming around in the water below it, congregating eagerly around the drops of blood that fell haltingly into the fountain. Surprisingly little had fallen into the water. The corpse was drained dry. Promise me, a voice echoed from Enoch's past. Promise me she will be safe.

"Another one," Elijah said over his shoulder. "It's like a trail of breadcrumbs."

"Perhaps it is," Enoch said, scratching his cheek distractedly. "Where are the crumbs leading, I wonder?"

He expected no answer, and received none. The work of a vampire, obviously; the Knife and the Hammer knew the signs well. For fifty years they'd hunted them as agents for Angelic Control, culling the creatures' numbers or making sure they never got a foothold anywhere but Carthage, as per the ancient agreements. Enoch had hunted them for twenty years before that, for personal reasons. He knew what he was hunting.

Confident the city-watch would organise a cleanup detail in the morning, they left the victim and followed an obvious trail of blood deeper into the warehouse district, keeping swords loose in their scabbards in readiness. They were heading toward the eastern Nola Gate. Behind them, on the horizon beyond Pompeii's north-west walls, Mt Vesuvius towered above the city like a mighty Titan. Its burning core cast a fiery glow against the night sky, as it had done for a century or more. Talk was that the mountain would one day erupt, but Enoch doubted it.

The vampire they hunted had preyed on the citizens of Pompeii for six months. Angelic Control delivered instructions from Rome by slave. Their orders: that citizens of the Republic should not have to fear the night in the midst of their own cities. Stop the killing or die trying was the undercurrent of the message. No different from the majority of orders they followed, in tone if not content.

"What did Uriel mean when he gave us this task?" asked Elijah as they walked away from the fountain. "'Preferable if the Child can be taken intact,' he wrote. 'What's that supposed to mean?' I ask. They've never asked us to take prisoners before."

"I care not," mumbled Enoch. "A Child of Samael feeds on humanity. I have no intention of taking it to Rome. The creature will die tonight, or I will." Promise me, Enoch...

Elijah smiled at Enoch as if he'd heard him say the same thing a hundred times. "They won't like it," he said. "Gabriel needs to reaffirm Angelic Control's strength across the Republic, I think. The Children grow ever stronger in Carthage, appearing more and more often in mainland Europa. Why are they back? They were banished from Europa after the Moon Howlers beat them in their little war! Something is in the wind. I smell political machinations."

Enoch stopped, lifting his face to the night, his nostrils flaring. "I smell blood," he said, "lots of it."

For an instant, Enoch remembered the Carthage of his boyhood, ruled then as now by an all powerful vampire-elite, humanity merely food or workforce, except for the few merchant-prince families who kept trade lines open with mainland Europa. But Enoch knew well that even they were not safe during the yearly Scourge. He remembered the terror of the three-day Scourge and heard his father's words: "Go, son - leave. You must survive to carry on the family name." It was ironic that now he'd been given the angelic gift of immortality, his seed was lifeless. As soon as Enoch had realised he could not father a child, and never would, he cast aside his family name. He was simply Enoch the Knife, now and forever more.