Death of Connor Sanderson_Prequel to Fire & Ice Series

by Karen Payton Holt

  Malachi’s powerful grip closed over Connor’s shoulder, and, with irresistible force, Malachi pushed him back. The keening frustration of a feral animal tore from Connor’s throat.

  “Addictive, isn’t it?” said Malachi.

  A snarl cramped Connor’s features, and congealed blood stained his bared teeth the color of rotting meat. Reining in the hunger, he straightened, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “I was right. You are strong.”

  Connor realized that Malachi’s voice was inside his head, his words appearing as writing etched into his brain. He clawed his way back from the feeling of insanity. His stomach roiled and blood filled his mouth once more as he finally found the courage to look at his tormentor. The skin covering Malachi’s face clung to his skull like crumpled tracing paper, and opaque, colorless strands of hair barely concealed the putty gray membrane stretching over his scalp.

  “I don’t understand, if I will always look like this, have my youth, then were you…?”

  “Old?” Malachi laughed a paper-thin sigh of self-derision. “No, I said ‘if you feed your tissue, hydrate your brain, then you will remain young and strong’.” Waving a hand to indicate Connor’s bulk, Malachi’s beaded eyes glittered as he took in the young doctor’s physique, and he grinned ruefully. “I, too, had good raw material, but I was untutored.”

  Connor was fascinated as Malachi’s presence inside his head began to take on color and shape.

  “Sadly, I was not instructed by my maker. But, perhaps he didn’t know. After all, in the beginning, vampires were an abhorrent notion. We were cursed by nature, and more died out than learned how to survive.”

  “So, how old are you?” asked Connor.

  “In vampire years? Many centuries, and, as for the rest, it no longer matters.” Malachi shrugged. “I did not feed enough in those early undead decades, when rehydration transforms vampire tissue to thirst pockets. It is a little like charging battery cells which boosts your strength at your will’s command.”

  “Decades? The change takes that long?”

  “Yes, building your strength takes decades. But, you have only a day, two at most, to master the art of rehydration; the time it takes for the reproduction of cells in bone marrow to cease. But then, as a doctor, you know this. Every twenty-four hours, cells in your body die and are replenished. This will no longer happen for you, so you must nurture the ones you have right now.”

  “And there is an art to this rehydration?” Connor’s features tightened, not believing the words which were about to come out of his mouth. “I just have to drink human blood. Where is the art in that?”

  “Merely drinking human blood will feed your body, but not your brain. Gray matter is not the same as muscle and sinew.” Malachi’s chilling smile soaked his lips in saliva. “Think of the brainstem as the gatehouse of a fortress. Inside the fortress of the brain, you have three prisoners, each locked inside a cell. Unlocking a cell door, means we are no longer fully alert. You can only release one at a time, but each one must be fed or part of your brain will die. That is where the art lies.”

  “Why one at a time? Why not all at once?”

  Annoyance jerked through Malachi’s bony body. “You dare ask why. Ask yourself this, do sharks sleep?”

  “They drown if they sleep... sharks,” said Connor slowly.

  “And so will you. Vampires do not sleep. Although humans wish that we did. If you feed all three centers of your brain at once, you lose control, permanently. You will not die, not until your brain rots away, but you will not ‘wake-up’.”

  Stillness crept over Connor until it was complete. “And if one of these... prisoners inside my head starves?”

  “Vampire dementia. Not a pretty sight.” Malachi said, “From what I have heard, the vampire, literally, dies of thirst as his brain desiccates. The hardened tissue locks the jaw shut and immobilizes the neck.

  “Heard? You’ve never seen it?”

  Malachi’s grin exposed rows of yellow pegs buried in white gums. “In Egypt, vampires walked out into the sun before they suffered the final strangulation.”

  Connor wiped his hands down over his tight face. “Is it too late for me, now?”

  Running a cold fingertip over the tear in his arm which had closed to a thin silver-tinted trail, Malachi said, “Yes, you fed from me. It is too late.”

  Anger boiled up inside Connor. “You tell me this now? You did not let me choose.” He struck out at Malachi’s complacent features. But his fist accelerated through empty air and buried itself in the tiled wall. As the shattered tile fragments clattered to the floor, his mentor’s ethereal laughter clawed its way up Connor’s spine. Breathing heavily, Connor laid his forehead on the cold surface. It burned his skin, and he groaned, “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  The silence lasted barely a second, before Connor straightened, turned back into the room and demanded quietly, “I know you are still here. Tell me the rest. Do I have to hide from sunlight? Am I some boogieman who can only come out at night?”

  Malachi’s words arrived before his body. “For many years I believed that to be so. Because the sun burned my skin, I thought I could come out only at night. In the deserts, my only choice was to bury myself deep under the sand during the hours of scorching sunlight, but the sand was like a blast furnace.” His bone-dry finger dragged over the cracked parchment coating his cheekbone like tanned leather. “Life became easier when I took refuge inside the pyramids. The royal tombs became my home for centuries.”

  Remembering the burning sensation on his face when the sunlight had caught him out, Connor ran his fingertips over the hardened skin on his brow to find it was as smooth as glass once more.

  Malachi nodded. “You have fed. Minor sun damage repairs easily.”

  “But you... we can go out in daylight?”

  “We can go out during the day time, yes, but we need cloud cover and shadow as protection.” Malachi grinned. “England, with winter approaching, is a good place for you to practice.”

  Connor examined Malachi’s face. “Your sun damage was not so minor then. Another lesson you learned the hard way,” he said quietly, “what was it like for you, in Egypt?”

  Chapter 9

  “As a human boy, I was a member of the Pharaoh’s household. I brought him his clothes and ceremonial jewels. I helped my father to dress him. I suppose, in English society, you would call me the valet’s apprentice?” Malachi held out a bony hand and the oil lantern flame glinted on the band of gold, fashioned into a serpent, which wound around his fingers. It meandered between three of the bone-white digits. The serpent’s head rested on the last knuckle, facing upward, as though it was about to slither up over the back of his hand. Its ruby-red eyes appeared to glitter with intent.

  “If I remove it, I will die. Superstitious rubbish of course, but Egypt was built on that.” The complacency faded from Malachi’s stare.

  Connor waited, without breathing, sensing a moment of candor.

  “My brother and I heard stories of the scraping sounds echoing from inside the pyramids at Luxor. A Pharaoh was always buried with his chattels. My uncle told us all his servants were buried alive inside the tomb, and went with him to the afterlife to live in glory and splendor. But, it was said that three decades after the sealing of the tomb, in the dead of night, you could still hear their broken fingernails scraping over the stone slabs.”

  Staring at Connor, Malachi painted his memories inside Connor’s head until the ceramic white-tiled walls of the morgue became streaked with copper-colored veins in rock, and the smooth surface ruptured into rough-hewn stone wall...

  The day my master was buried, I was there.

  Malachi’s words whispered inside the cavern of Connor’s skull. A band of tension gripped his head as, suddenly, he was walking along behind a boy who wore a gold-embroidered cloth band, tied tightly around his forehead, like a fabric, jewel-encrusted crown.

  The biceps in the boy’s wiry ar
ms were braced, as if he carried something heavy in front of his body, which could not be seen. Connor judged him to be about twelve years old. The boy glanced back over his shoulder at Connor, a nervous sheen glistening like tears in the fish-scale opaque eyes.

  Ah. Is this Malachi as a boy?

  That was Connor’s last detached thought as he became a conduit for every emotion rattling through the boy’s reed thin frame, as though he was inside him.

  The boy entered a chamber, and Connor caught sight of the burden he carried; a bowl fashioned from beaten gold. The dead pharaoh lay on a stone plinth.

  When the boy set the bowl down, without thinking, Connor reached out and boosted him up onto the concrete platform. Connor frowned when he noticed his own arms were as thin as sticks. Hoisting himself up too, Connor sat beside the youngster and watched the boy’s thin brown hands wringing out a leather cloth. Beginning at the pharaoh’s forehead, his companion began to wash his skin.

  Connor leaned forward to get a better view, and froze, as the reflection looking up at him from the bowl of water was not his own face, but another boy. A boy who looked just like Malachi. So, they were twins? In this surreal world of dreams, Connor tried to decipher the meaning, but the sudden noise of a man entering the chamber disrupted his train of thought.

  The tall Egyptian wore a white headdress decorated with a gold cobra positioned at his forehead, its hood flared and ready to strike. “Faster boys. The high priest is waiting, and you must be gone before he arrives,” said the Egyptian in a guttural tone.

  “Yes, Ebanar, we will be gone.” The boy sitting near Connor placed his palms together and touched his thumbs to his brow as he bowed his head. As the stern Egyptian stared at Connor, the simmering resentment inside the body Connor now realized was not his own, burned brighter as he reluctantly imitated the salute.

  Grunting, the tall man left.

  Alone together once more, the twin looked deep into Connor’s eyes, the pearly sheen glistening with calculation as he said, “Hurry, brother. We must hurry.”

  Plunging his childlike hands into the water, the boy Connor now embodied helped his brother wash the pharaoh’s body. They cleaned the soles of his feet last, and then, together, they unfolded a thin linen sheet and covered the corpse.

  As agile as chimps, both boys hopped down, landing silently on the sandstone floor. The brother collected the bowl and emptied it onto the ground in a corner where the sandy residue devoured the liquid, becoming a dark brown stain.

  Connor felt irritation tight in his chest as he hissed, “Fool, brother, they will see.”

  The other boy shrugged. “So, we are skinny boys. They will think we were too tired to carry a heavy bowl, so we emptied it first. Come, we have to hide.”

  As Connor tried to move quickly, breathing in the thick, damp air of the tomb exhausted him, the lack of oxygen draining him of energy.

  Climbing up onto a marble dais, relieved to be resting at last, he and the other boy folded their bodies into crouched balls. Staying close to his brother, Connor burrowed into the irregular space of an alcove until both boys were concealed behind the carved skirt of a gold-colored statue of Isis.

  The murmur of rhythmically chanting voices drifted into the chamber, and the soft sound of shuffling feet grew louder. Finally, the high priest walked into the room, dressed from head to toe in gold, the pleated fan of his gilded mantle trailing in his wake. He stopped at one end of the waist-high plinth, positioned at the feet of the resting corpse, and looked up towards the Pharaoh’s head.

  Connor had no hope of deciphering the musical stream of words which began as a whisper, and swelled into a lilting prayer. Two tall Egyptians held marble bowls from which wisps of smoke spiraled upwards, obscuring their striking faces behind shifting ribbons of mist.

  The priest’s attendants removed the cover from the body, and with the deft touch of practiced hands they wrapped it in strips of linen infused with a blend of aromatic oils.

  “Why are they covering his face?” the other boy asked Connor.

  Connor did not know the answer, but the quick mind he shared this body with, did.

  “Do you not know anything, brother? The ceremony demands that his breath be locked inside his chest, it keeps his spirit whole,” said Connor’s host pompously, the voice sounding thin and reedy, as though it had not yet broken.

  The pharaoh’s retinue exuded proud reverence. Their impressive physiques, bared to the waist, created a fitting spectacle.

  Four-inch deep golden fans fastened at the base of their throats accentuated broad shoulders, and the simplicity of milk-white cotton skirts was transformed by the drama of gold belts molded to the chiseled muscles at their waists. The candlelight picked out cobalt strands in the fall of poker-straight, jet-black hair.

  Connor felt the thin boy he embodied tremble in awe at their presence.

  After the incense bearers set the mortar-bowls of fragrant burning wood fibers down on to a ledge, four other warriors joined them, lining up three abreast on either side of the pharaoh’s body.

  The high priest stepped back, and the fierce expression on his face dared the cortege to ruin his ceremony. With the gliding control of finely honed muscles, the six men lifted their pharaoh up onto their shoulders.

  Tapping into the mood of his host body, Connor absorbed the boy’s uneasy fascination of the ceremony, and the feelings simmering inside the mind he shared. We should not be here.

  The other boy failed to smother the giggle tugging at his lips as he said, “The pharaoh is stiff as a board Malachi, do you see?”

  Shock erupted inside Connor as he turned to look at the excited face only inches from his own. It still looked eerily similar to the adult Malachi he had met. So, if I am Malachi, we are identical twins, then? The closed fist of Connor’s boyish hand aimed a hard blow at his brother’s arm, and it wiped the smirk from his face.

  “Shh, Numu,” Malachi mimed with the barest sound.

  The chanting reached a crescendo as the high priest turned around and led the solemn attendants from the chamber. The boys remained as still as the statue which shielded them, until the melodious baritone echoes faded and silence thickened the air.

  Connor wondered where the procession would lead, and the answer appeared inside him as Malachi thought about it too.

  Along an ornately decorated passageway beyond this chamber, lay the burial chamber. Malachi has clearly been inside it. Three sarcophagi were laid out in order like a series of Russian dolls. The wrapped, embalmed body would be placed inside the smallest, made of sandstone. The second was carved in granite, and the final sarcophagus, engraved with the pharaoh’s likeness, was encased in a thick layer of gold leaf. The detail of the pharaoh’s garb of office, painted in the most exquisite intricate design, transformed the gilded surface into a work of art.

  “Come, we should follow,” said Numu, his punishment at Malachi’s hand forgotten.

  Connor agreed with the other boy. He wanted to see, firsthand, the scene Malachi’s memory had revealed.

  Malachi gripped his brother’s arm, his fingers digging in hard as he snapped, “Don’t be a fool, brother.”

  The other boy winced, but still his feet scrabbled as though his legs would leave without him.

  Malachi reached out, closed his fingers over his brother’s chin and brought his face around until he could see his eyes. “Numu,” said Malachi gently, “We will wait, look at me.”

  The boy’s eyes ceased the skittering movement that Connor, as a doctor, recognized as a sign of a simple mind. The vacant gaze focused on Malachi’s face. “We should not be here, so just stay quiet.” Enclosing his brother’s thin body in a restricting bear hug, Malachi hung on tight until Numu stopped struggling and his limbs went slack. “Hush, brother.” The sensation of speaking, but the thoughts not coming from his own mind, was disorienting.

  Through the eyes watching for movement which could mean they had been discovered, Connor saw elaborate pictures painted on the
polished stone of the chamber. The garb of the warriors that had borne the pharaoh away were replicated on the walls. The images were laid with gold leaf and painted with the pictorial narrative of Egyptian fable. The depiction of curiously erect, awkwardly posed rows of figures, with their faces presented in profile, fascinated Connor. He had never seen anything like them before. What kind of civilization is this?

  Inside the chamber, hushed whispers drifted through the cracks, and a shower of sand scurried down over the wall, to gather in a miniature dune on the floor. Is that normal? Connor wished he had control of a voice to ask. He knew now how coma victims felt, trapped inside a conscious, but unresponsive body.

  Impotent frustration was a stranger to him. He scanned the sand dusted wall, knowing Malachi was doing the same, because he could only see what his host saw.

  Malachi’s head whipped around as the clattering noise of a heavy rainfall of sand gave way to a distant shout echoing down the corridors, accompanied by the slapping sound of bare feet running.

  “Numu, quick.” Malachi leapt to his feet, dragging his hapless brother by the arm until he fell to the floor of the chamber with the yelp of a startled pup.

  The ground vibrated beneath them, and the distant shouts became punctuated with blood curdling screams. Grabbing Numu’s hand, they were running. Scrawny legs pumping as hard as the thin muscles could manage, they raced up the slick stone slopes. Like rats running through a maze, Connor saw the walls whipping past him, and every one looked the same, but Malachi dived left at one intersection, and right at the next.

  He knows where we are going then. His lungs were burning, and the air tasted of sand, laying an emulsion of grit onto his tongue as he gasped for oxygen. Rounding a final bend, his body hit a dead end, pain shot through his shoulder and he heard a snap. Slabs of sandstone filled the exit route, the fractured surfaces forming an absurdly beautiful gold-leaf draped avalanche which sealed them inside the tomb.