“You do not have leave to go.”
The young vampire glared into her mother’s face. Then her eyes darted toward her young siblings. “You have them to control for a while longer, but not me.”
Caterina tried to hold onto her daughter’s arm. Isolde jerked her hand free and stalked out without looking back. The manservant appeared in the doorway and dropped the baby on the floor before staggering away. The child’s face was smeared with fresh blood. He held his arms up to Caterina. She slowly picked him up. The twins whispered to one another, eyeing their mother suspiciously.
Caterina held the baby tight and he pressed his warm head against her shoulder as he drifted off into well-fed sleep.
Caterina walked slowly across the bridge and south into the narrow labyrinths of the Left Bank. She tried not to think too much about the coming meeting with Lady Hallow. She had sent a servant with a message to her son’s advisor, pleading of a troubled heart and a concern for family. The queen indicated that she understood Hallow was now a part of the clan, and that she had resisted that notion for a long time. There had to be a reconciliation between the two powerful women. They both knew the men involved, Lothaire and Honore, were not truly the ones making the decisions. The clan would go the way Caterina and Hallow chose, so they should work together.
It had pained Caterina to talk about Lothaire that way, but she knew it was honest, and she knew Hallow would perceive it as such. So the queen asked Hallow for a private meeting to work out a compromise. They had much in common, and the clan wouldn’t survive their continued strife. Caterina stated she would wait in the catacombs and hoped Hallow would see fit to join her.
Hallow would understand and value secret one-on-one conversations. They were her métier as a political creature. Hallow perceived the queen had little ground to negotiate; she would consider this meeting to be a prelude to Caterina’s surrender.
That was what Caterina wanted. She needed Hallow to believe that so the meeting would take place and Caterina could kill Hallow. This stain had to be removed from the clan and from the family.
Caterina had lost her skills at being secretive. Still, she wandered the streets, up and back, doubling over the same terrain for a long while. She looked for familiar faces or shapes, trying to discover if she was being followed.
Only after the third passage down the same narrow lane did she notice a figure overhead. It had been there before. She couldn’t make out the face in the sun, but the figure was smaller, likely a young female about the size of Isolde.
Caterina sprang up, kicking off old stone walls and swinging onto a failing slate roof. If this spy was one of Hallow’s, it was best to just turn her out and forget about the meeting. Caterina stood openly staring at the floating figure above, daring her to present herself.
The figure sank toward her, drawn up, hunched as if embarrassed at being seen. The face came clear. It was the young female from Gareth’s group of child malcontents. Nadzia.
“What are you doing?” Caterina demanded. “Spying on me?”
“Um. I suppose so.” Then Nadzia quickly added, “But not in a bad way.”
The girl was so innocent, Caterina almost smiled at her pluck. “Did Gareth tell you to watch me?”
“No! He’s never told us to do anything. It’s what I do. I watch and report back to Kasteel.”
“Why?”
“To gather information.”
“Why?”
Nadzia thought for a moment. She stayed silent.
“Are you watching me to see if Gareth has returned?”
The girl’s shoulders slumped. “Yes. Kasteel is worried that we won’t ever see him again, that we failed him. We’ve been observing you and the king whenever you leave the palace.”
Caterina was disturbed and a little angry that this was the first time she had observed the watchers. They were better than she expected, or perhaps in the chaos of Paris it was impossible to notice anything so minor.
“Well, on your way, Nadzia.” Caterina saw the girl smile broadly when the queen called her by name. “I have heard nothing from Gareth. You may inform Kasteel. And please don’t follow me any longer.”
Nadzia bit her lip, hesitant to speak, but couldn’t stop herself. “Majesty, you have many enemies in Paris.”
The queen bristled at the boldness. “Do I? How would you know?”
“We listen.” The girl was embarrassed to be speaking to the queen like this. “It’s clear. There are few who support you and the king.”
Caterina tried to appear unaffected, glowering at the messenger. “Thank you, I’m sure. I aim to set that straight even now.”
Nadzia blurted out, “Don’t do anything dangerous! We can help you. Lord Gareth is very fond of you. We will do as you say.”
Caterina impulsively reached out for the frantic girl, anxious over her desperate outburst of support. “No, no, stop. I don’t need your help. You’re children—”
“We’re not! We helped save Lord Gareth and the empress from the packs of Bruges. We’ve fought and killed.”
Caterina squeezed Nadzia’s hand. “I don’t want you to fight and kill for me. Why don’t you go home? Don’t stay in Paris. It isn’t safe.”
“I have no home. Kasteel and the others are my family now.”
“Then go back to them. Do not involve yourself in my affairs. Do you understand? It is too dangerous for you.”
“Yes,” Nadzia said quietly.
“Good. Go.” Caterina released the girl’s hand with unexpected sadness. “Don’t follow me!”
Nadzia nodded and lifted into the air. The two kept their eyes together. Caterina felt a twinge of regret when the girl drifted out of sight beyond the rooftops. She wished she could have sat with her and passed the time as she once had done with Isolde.
Before Hallow.
CHAPTER 27
“I am Gareth, the son of Dmitri. I was born south of Kiliwhimin in the Great Glen of Scotland. My father taught me to hunt humans and drink their blood. That is what I am.”
Gareth stopped speaking. It was rare for him to say even that much in vampiric.
Yidak stared at a smooth cooper cylinder, deep in thought. In his wizened hands, the old vampire held simple tools, short metal rods with flattened tips. His eyes cast upward as he fought to recall something. “Could you repeat it, please? Your accent is odd to me.”
Gareth restated the phrases about his birth, the opening lines of his nonexistent book. Yidak tapped the curved copper with his instruments. After a few minutes of work, he studied the dimples and scratches while speaking silently to himself. He then proceeded to alter the marks before sliding the cylinder onto one of the spools of his strange loom. He sat on the bench and readied his hands and feet, muttering hopefully, “We shall see.”
Adele moved to Gareth’s shoulder, eagerly watching the machine. Gareth flexed his gloved hands anxiously, pretending to be calm. Yidak started the cylinder spinning and worked several levers. A hissing voice spilled out, “I am Gareth, the son of Dmitri. I was born south of Kiliwhimin in the Great Glen of Scotland. My father taught me to hunt humans and drink their blood. That is what I am.” Gareth gasped in amazement. It wasn’t his voice, but those were his words in his native language.
Adele grabbed Gareth’s arm, jostling him back and forth. “I understood that! It was just what you said. He recorded what you said!”
Yidak wiped his forehead, peering quizzically at Adele. “You understand our tongue? Knowing you, I’m not shocked, but I am surprised you can figure out what he’s saying. He speaks oddly. Hard to believe a vampire’s vampiric could be rusty.”
Gareth watched as the pockmarked cylinder slowed to a stop. “Why go to all that trouble? Why not simply write on a piece of paper?”
“Why should we write in a human language?” Yidak ran a loving hand over the cylinder. “This is vampiric as we hear it. Any of us can understand it.”
“As long as we have that machine,” Gareth added.
> Yidak smiled, not grasping or recognizing the sarcasm.
“Gareth,” Adele whispered with excitement, “he is creating a vampire script. Those marks are a written language.”
“No, Adele.” Gareth shook his head with academic surety. “He’s only making scratches on metal so it will create sounds that seem to be vampiric. It’s not a written language.”
“Yes it is. Don’t you see how incredible this is?” The scowl on his face told her otherwise. “Do you think humans created their first written language overnight?”
“No. He’s mimicking a human technology to imitate our language. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing.”
“Don’t be arrogant.” Adele’s annoyance was plain. “This is something no one, including you, thought was possible. What he’s doing here is astounding.”
Gareth stared at the old vampire, watching him continue to chisel small marks onto the cylinder. For a brief moment he considered Adele’s words. Chips and grooves in copper. Was that a written language? Was that vampiric script? It was something that had never existed. Vampires were an oral culture. They wrote nothing. They made nothing. They preserved nothing. This was impossible.
Adele lifted the camera out of her satchel. “May I take a picture of the machine?” At Yidak’s confusion, she added, “It’s one of the ways humans make a record of what we see. For the future.”
Immediately, Yidak came forward to examine the camera, excitement making his wrinkles more pronounced. “It is so small. Where are the cylinders?”
“There are none. Here, let me show you. Stand by your machine.”
Gareth sighed in mild exasperation, but it was merely out of habit. His heart was hammering at the thought of what he was witnessing. He even felt a twinge of shame for doubting, like a precocious child who discovered he wasn’t the unique prodigy he thought.
Adele nudged Yidak a little to the side so he wasn’t blocking the view of the machine. Then she lifted the camera, jostling for a good angle and more light in the dim room. Only when she was satisfied did she press the shutter release. The small click elicited the sound of whirring gears from inside the camera. She opened the back and removed the plate.
Yidak hovered impatiently. “Is that it?”
“Almost.” After she had counted off a minute in her head, she flipped open the plate and pulled out the picture. She held it up.
“There I am!” Yidak laughed. “It’s like a painting but not as attractive.”
“Yes.” Adele slipped the photograph into her bag. “Humans won’t believe a vampire could do such a thing without the proof. That machine will change the world.” She suddenly turned to Gareth. “That’s what your book needs as well. You should use my photographs. They’ll see you as you are.”
Gareth offered a cautious purse of his lips. “I’m sure your people would love to see me as I am, with their empress. Perhaps a picture of me drinking your blood?”
Adele snapped the lens cap on the camera with an angry huff. “Why do you always have to go to the worst case scenario?”
“Because in this case, there is only a worst case.”
Hiro appeared in the entrance to the temple chamber, wringing his hands. His eyes strayed curiously to the camera. “Holiness, Takeda requests you.”
The Demon King excused himself and went out. Gareth and Adele followed into the bitter night. Yidak rose into the air and joined Takeda, who clutched the minaret on the temple roof.
“I’ll find out what the issue is,” Gareth told Adele. He lifted to join them. When Gareth set foot on the cracked tile roof, he crouched and listened. Both Takeda and Yidak were staring off into the wide mountain valley to the south.
“There,” Takeda hissed and pointed.
“Ah yes. I see.”
Gareth followed their directions, and he saw it too. An airship. Many miles away. It wasn’t the sleek, little Edinburgh. It was a large European ship, but the sails were tattered and several of the masts were mere stumps. It was not a derelict; there were faint lights aglow.
When Gareth’s attention returned to his surroundings, he saw Takeda staring down at him. The samurai said, “That is the same ship we saw when we were attacked. Is it familiar to you?”
“No,” Gareth replied sharply. “But it is clearly a bloodman slave ship.”
Both Takeda and Yidak eyed him, as if he was leaving something unsaid. The old vampire asked his lieutenant, “What do you think?”
“I say we take it, Holiness,” Takeda replied. “It lurks here for a reason. We must destroy it.”
“I agree.” Yidak grew strangely cold; all the trappings of the peculiar old holy man fell away. He raised his head and sent out an ear-splitting shriek. Action erupted all around in response. Shapes scrambled over the ground and crawled along the buildings. The monastery became a moving carpet of living beings.
Gareth turned to go back to Adele, but Takeda grabbed his arm. “You’re coming with us.”
Gareth pulled free and snarled, “I am, but let me see to Adele.”
Yidak replied without mirth, “If she is as terrible as you say, she’ll survive a few minutes without you.”
Down below, Adele fought to keep her place amidst the roiling mob, now with Anhalt behind her. Gareth caught her eye through the crowd and a quick nod was sufficient between them to tell the story. The pack, in their dark red robes, went airborne and swept past the temple in the heavy wind. Takeda bellowed commands to his swarming forces, hanging onto the tip of the minaret with one hand.
The samurai slid back down to the temple roof and regarded Gareth. “Stay close to the west face. Don’t allow yourself to be silhouetted in the sky. And take off those gloves.” Then he pointed down at Hiro, who waited on the ground staring up as if he would burst with expectation. “Hiro! You are coming with us too.”
The young vampire bent at the waist and clenched his fists with uncontained excitement.
Gareth pulled off his gloves and tossed them down to Adele before he rose into the air with Takeda. He saw Yidak remain behind, but he had no more time to think as he fell into the tail end of the swarm. Arms and legs surrounded him. It had been more than a century since Gareth had traveled in a murmuration of vampires like this. He ran into the monks all around him, eliciting angry curses and snarled demands he stay in his place. A strong grip took his arm. Takeda glared and adjusted Gareth’s position within the group before doing the same to young Hiro on his other side. Gareth took deep calming breaths, desperately craving open air and room to stretch his arms out. He needed to drop out of the mob and fall into the soft clouds beneath him. He wanted to fly alone.
He had no choice, however, so he kept his hands moving, touching the figures around him, and trying to anticipate their movements. Vampires banked and slammed against him. He hurriedly adjusted to follow the drift. He forced his senses to explore the changes in the air around him. The nature of the swarm altered the flow of the wind. Changes in course by the pack were translated to him in small bursts of air created by the arrangement of the individuals. The press of the bodies all around him brought terrible memories that Gareth had suppressed. It took him back to the glory days of the Great Killing. He could smell blood and hear the pleading of the victims.
Suddenly Gareth slammed against a wall of rock. Again Takeda grabbed him to keep him from tumbling across jagged stones. All around him, the monks settled onto the sheer wall, and crawled forward in one fluid motion, scrabbling hand over hand, hundreds of shadows wriggling over the mountainside. The humans on the airship shouldn’t be able to see them coming. And even if there were vampires with the ship, keeping close to the black mountainside should allow Takeda’s forces to draw near before they could be spotted.
The monks pushed off the rock face into the open air. Gareth did too, a split second later. He fell into place, banking into the wind, swooping down with the pack and then back up, hundreds of bodies moving as one. Every motion spread across the dark horde as it undulated in the air. With a
sickening feeling, Gareth surrendered to the surge that ran through him. His heart pounded at the prospect of striking the airship in force. The pure furious power of a charging pack resonated through every nerve.
Then, below him, Gareth saw thousands of odd blue spots. Tiny pinpricks of light were moving in the upper edges of the swirling mist that filled the valley.
Eyes.
A huge swarm of vampires erupted from the cloud tops. Gareth had just started to shout a warning to Takeda when he heard other cries of alarm interrupted by the resounding thuds from colliding bodies. He could feel impacts as they crushed into his pack like hammer blows.
Bodies cascaded around Gareth, slamming him into a cartwheel. Screams of shock and anger cut the air. Takeda shouted orders lost in the tumult. Gareth caught himself and felt sharp fingers slash across his chest. He tried to counter but he was pounded to the side. Crashing into the rock, he kicked back out into the melee. Gareth caught one of the attackers around the head and snapped his neck. He let the body drop and barely dodged claws plunging at his face. He seized the arm and pulled the vampire close, noting the look of shock. Gareth buried his teeth in the enemy’s neck and tore. Blood spewed and another dying body fluttered downward.
Vampires swirled around Gareth. Clutching arms and gnashing teeth collided everywhere. Torn robes. Flailing bodies. He felt dull thuds against his back and legs and arms. Gareth attacked, smashing faces and ripping across eyes. He struck and moved, killed if he could, but dealt damage in all cases.
A hand clamped on Gareth’s shoulder and spun him around. As he wheeled out of control, he clawed for the arm that held him. Takeda dodged the blow and grabbed Gareth to stop his spin.
“Fall back!” Takeda screamed into his face. “Gareth! Fall back!”
Gareth fixated on a small trickle of blood that made its way around Takeda’s nose. The samurai took Gareth bodily and tilted him down. In the hazy blackness below their feet were thousands of glowing blue specks rising into the starlight. Gareth fought the urge to drop amidst the oncoming army and wreak what havoc he could. Instead, he bit his lower lip and nodded. Gareth swept upward. He saw Takeda coming behind him with Hiro trailing. The boy’s face was a mask of terror.
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