by Lumi Laura
CHAPTER 31 The Ichor Dome
Alex had come to view darkness as her friend. It wasn't just that she could see so well in it. She enjoyed the way it heightened the rest of her senses. She could smell better, hear better, and use sound to judge distance. These new talents enabled her to distinguish the smooth gait of a vampire from that of a human more easily. Vampires were agile, quick, fluid. They had music in their step and a bearing that went beyond confidence to a sense of perfect existence.
Some things seemed to come to Alex by instinct. She'd had some furniture brought into her recess in the side of the Cathedral, her own little grotto. She'd had Cosmina pickup some clothes for her, maternity clothes, and she kept them in a cedar chest. One day, she broke off one corner of the backboard, a piece a half meter long. She used a sharp rock to whittle one end to a point. She started carrying it with her under her clothes. Sharp sticks were not a popular item in a nest of vampires.
Braxton was ever on Alex's mind, and one day when Cosmina mentioned that William and Jessica turned up missing, as they were apt to, she decided to go looking for them herself, down past Xanadu, where of course everyone had been warned not to go. Some unnamed danger was supposed to lurk there, but she knew the two little immortals had little sense of danger, even less than mortal children, and an exaggerated fondness for adventure. Cosmina wanted Alex to go with her to Shadowrise services, but Alex begged off again. She was more concerned about Will and Jess than she let on.
First Alex had to get rid of Alu's two security guards who shadowed her every movement. This was an easy thing for her because she'd groomed them for some future escape by sneaking out of sight for a short time and then magically reappearing just when they became concerned. She kept extending this period of vanishment until they became comfortable with her not always being around.
This was the situation when Will and Jess disappeared.
Light beyond Xanadu was nonexistent, so Alex stopped at the pond in the Pleasure Dome and gathered a little bioluminescent water in a phial to light her way. She didn't call out to Will and Jess because she knew they'd hide from her, them being in a forbidden area, if they were actually there. She was eight and one-half months pregnant now and quite large in the abdomen, but moved remarkably well. She found them a ways on, a little flickering candle that illuminated their playroom, a small flat area to the right of the path among the stalactites and stalagmites. Those in charge of the two children generally dressed the little renegades in light clothing, the better to see and find them.
Alex hid her own light in a fold of her clothing and approached quietly, but then heard another voice among them, a more mature, smooth and slimy voice that she recognized as that of Braxton. The baby jumped and her own heart raced as she stopped to determine her next move. She felt for the stake within the fold of her skirt. Sure enough, still there.
Having found him with the children, Alex knew she was going to kill him, the only question was how without the children knowing. Braxton was dressed in black, and probably didn't realize yet that she knew he was present.
She called out, "Will, Jess. Are you there?"
They went silent.
"Don't make me come get you. You know it's difficult for me now."
She heard them whispering, and then Jessica spoke up.
"Do we have ta?"
"You know this area is off limits. You'll be grounded."
Alex saw Braxton's shadow disappear off to the left, as the children started toward her.
"Go on ahead," she said. "I'm slow and need to take my time, but I'll be following. Cosmina has been looking for you. Hurry along."
When they were a safe distance, she entered their playground. "Come on out, Braxton, I know you're here."
He didn't. He was a slick maneuverer, but Alex heard him just in time. He'd come around behind her somehow, and she dropped to her knees, as a swish of some object he'd just swung at her whizzed over her head.
Then in spite of the baby, she sprang off the ground, clutched a stalactite high above them, and looked down upon him. She caught a faint glimmer as he moved to block her exit from the off-path chamber. He'd decided to take her on, which pleased Alex greatly. She dropped from her perch to stand a few yards from him.
"Let's do this," she said. "We both knew it was coming."
"I'll kill the child."
"You'll never make it back to them," she said.
"Not Will or Jess," he said. "Your child."
This stopped Alex for a just an instant, but somehow she knew he'd underestimated her. She walked toward him. He came for her.
Quick as a fluttering bat, he sprang from side to side using the hanging formations to push off. He seemed different. He'd changed, seemed more violent. He could have run from her and escaped with her being pregnant. But he didn't. He seemed attracted.
The world seemed to shift to Alex, seemed to go into slow motion, yet her movement was quick as ever. She caught him in mid flight, grabbed him by the arm and threw him crashing through stalagmites to the wall of the cave. She was on him before he could come to his feet.
Though she'd pinned his arms, he lunged at her with his head, busted her lip, and licked the blood. She saw him instantly undergo a change.
"Oh!" he said. "A hidden attribute." He laughed. "A vampire with sweet blood."
She felt for her wood stake and brought it out of hiding. "There are more things in my body and soul, Braxton, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In one swift motion, she drove it at his heart.
But Braxton brushed it aside. The taste of her blood had somehow excited him, and he found a new quickness and strength. He pinned her arms and sunk his fangs into her neck, sucked great gulps of blood. But it then turned on him. He sputtered and her blood belched from his mouth. His whole body trembled, lips quivered. He released her.
"Don't try to speak," she said. "Child molesters don't get last words."
His body started to glow. She smelled smoke coming from it, saw dim sparks arching along the skin as it sizzled like steak on an open flame, sizzled and then went out. A dark cloud of stench filled the cavern momentarily but was swept on down to the lower depths by air currents. Alex remembered the feral vampires that had bitten her that night out with Stefan. She realized that Braxton must have been feral and would have had to achieve that status rather recently. She felt dizzy and staggered against a large stalagmite. Breathing the smoke seemed a narcotic.
Alex knew she couldn't leave the partially burnt corpse there. Even though it was forbidden territory, someone would eventually stumble onto it. She pulled him out to the path. She retrieved her phial of glowing water and dragged him into forbidden territory. If a precipice did exist farther down, as they'd all been told, she'd throw him off it.
But the path didn't end. She did encounter a sharp drop, but it was negotiable, and she pushed Braxton off and climbed down herself and dragged him farther on. She detected a draft from what might be a branching cavern off to the right. No path led to it, but trusting her instinct, she dragged Braxton among loose rocks and stalagmites, weaving a trail for a ways, but then saw what appeared to be an ancient path covered with rocks and other cavern debris. Farther on, the path cleared and she dragged his body with her, now clearly in full exploration mode, through a small opening into a larger cave that she thought would be a excellent place to leave him.
Alex felt no guilt over the murder. She'd thought this through over the past few weeks, and now all she felt was relief that he was no longer a threat to the children of the world. The farther she went into this cave, the more she realized that at one time it had been occupied. It was a small tunnel actually, one artificially cut through sandstone. She noticed an obstruction up ahead, and when she got there, found it to be a gate, or more accurately an iron fence with a door, now standing open and hanging by a hinge. She dragged Braxton inside and looked around.
She discovered some ancient structures, small buildings and cages where at first she believed they'd kept
animals, but upon closer examination, she realized it contained human skeletons and mummified remains. Farther on, she located another chamber with an ancient throne that obviously belonged to someone of Alu's stature, and adjacent to it, another incarceration facility and beyond this, a torture chamber with stacks of skeletons. The room was a virtual museum of pain inflicting devices. On one wall, scratched with a spike, were the Romanian words Casa de Durere, House of Pain.
This had at one time been a prison and not one predisposed to rehabilitation.
It was all made of stone and iron, and not of high-quality metal at that. Alex dragged Braxton's charred body into a far corner and stacked rocks and other debris on him. She left using her phial to illuminate the way. Back along the tunnel, she hurried, but when she reached the main pathway, she heard voices and quickly slipped back inside the tunnel, hid her light within a crack in the wall and slid a rock after it into the crevice to extinguish all its light. What she'd just seen in the torture chamber had spooked her, and she didn't want anyone to know she'd been there.
In the distance, back at the main path, she saw a light. Two vampires were coming up from even farther down below, where no one should be. They carried a flashlight, something she'd not seen anywhere in the cavern before. She heard them talking.
"I tell you, Mitchum, I did smell something."
"Must be someone roasting a little meat, Cletis, in spite of the edict against any form of fire other than candles."
"You may be right, but I tell you, I've smelled a combusting vampire before. Someone's been drinking holy water."
"We've come two kilometers up the trail, and haven't found anything," said Mitchum. "I smelled it too, but I'm not so sure what it was. It's gone now. We need to get back. You know how Alu hates any of us coming this far toward Xanadu."
Alex waited in the darkness for a while longer, their voices trailing off into the cavern below, and then all was silent. But Alex didn't wait until the glow of their light completely extinguished. She retrieved her phial, slipped out of hiding, and instead of returning to the Cathedral, silently scurried after them. Something about these vampires intrigued her. They were different, as Braxton had been different. Their gait wasn't smooth and coordinated. They were jerky and unpredictable. Vampires, but somehow not vampires. These were the characteristics of a feral.
Alex had fallen so far behind that she could no longer hear them or see the glow of their flashlight. She heard the quiet rush of an underground river, and realized that it was the Alph that fed their bathing pool and also the Pleasure Dome. She continued endlessly on, hoping to eventually learn where Mitchum and Cletis had come from, but the path became more difficult to follow, being covered with loose rocks and winding continuously among stalagmites and stalactites. She finally gave up and turned to go back, took a few steps and halted.
She'd heard a noise.
It could have been nothing, but she'd come a long way to leave without learning anything. She couldn't imagine how far she was below ground. She'd descended for what seemed hours. She peered off into the black depths and heard a reeking sigh leach toward her, just a faint but ominous sound that somehow stirred her soul. Down she descended again. And then she saw it: a faint glow far ahead on the ceiling above the plummeting cavern floor.
She scrambled down an unruly rock formation, and as she got closer, the glow grew but strangely. The light was all on the ceiling of some giant cavern, the floor of which was not yet visible. The baby quaked, and Alex stopped dead in her tracks. She'd learned that that movement meant trouble. She backed up, saw a break in the path, and realized that she'd almost stepped into a bottomless chasm.
Off to right, she saw a bridge and standing on it, the two guards she'd been following, Mitchum and Cletis. She heard them talking and, listening closely, heard them call the place the "Ichor Dome."
Concerned that they might see her, Alex scrambled off to the left across a rock field and soon found an outcropping that had broken off the low ceiling and fallen over the chasm. Its sharp edge was up, but Alex felt sure that she could negotiate it to get to the other side, if she were careful. While traversing it, she heard the roar of a waterfall, and realized that the Alph dumped into the chasm.
Once on the other side, she crept through the stalactites and stalagmites until the floor dropped away exposing a gigantic cavern below and the source of the glow on the ceiling. The Ichor Dome. A hundred candles twinkled along paths and at the entrances to buildings. A distant groan and cry issued up toward her. The cavern's floor, if you could call it that, was not level but sloped downward and contained much cavern debris, and what surprised her most, actual habitable structures. The closer she looked, the more detail she could make out, and she finally realized that they were not dwellings at all, but prisons for human captives. Vampires were everywhere, ants along the maze of trails like streets of a small city. But these were not normal vampires. Their gaits were jerky, not agile, not coordinated. She could distinguish the smooth quick gait of a vampire from that of a human, "the dance of the vampire," she called it. Though she was a good distance away, she could see humans in chains, and vampires feeding on them.
And then she realized that the din she heard coming up from below was the groan and cries of human suffering. Vampires fed off them indiscriminately. A vampire would suck on one a while and then move to another. She saw humans being led in and others being dragged out. The vampires moved rapidly, gigantic black spiders pouncing from one victim to another. She saw a sparkle of silver light threading along the floor of the Ichor Dome and realized that the Alph had surfaced again.
Alex heard a commotion and saw the vampires separate, move to the side off the main street as another vampire, a special one, entered. He had a different stature, tall, proud, erect. He looked about as if viewing his realm. She knew this vampire. She couldn't believe it. It was Alucius Kardasian, and this was his kingdom of feral vampires, the über-coven of the Ichor Dome. Her heart just gave way.
But then yet another enormous vampire entered following Alu. He was a giant, some mythological beast, and not thin like Alu, but broad shouldered and heavily muscled. Pale as death. Alex heard the name "Pagomas" shouted among the crowd that formed about him. He looked a little like a cave troll. The ground seemed to shake with his step, and Alex felt as though she could feel a chill emanating from him. He carried an enormous axe.
The baby fluttered again. Alex had seen enough.
She scurried back to the chasm, scrambled across the jagged rock over the gorge, and worked her way back to the main trail, the image of Pagomas seared into her brain. She heard something from behind and saw a shape coming up toward her. She'd been seen.
Quickly along the trail she went, at first using the remaining glow from the great cavern behind her to illuminate the way, but soon it became very dark, and she had to once again break out her little phial of glow water. She began to tire. The child had become a burden. On she went although she could hear at times a small sound that told her she was still being followed. She struggled up the face of the cliff, shuffled quickly past the secret cave where she'd hidden Braxton's body, the Casa de Durere, and finally made it to Xanadu. She'd not heard anyone following her in a while. She'd shaken her pursuer.
She was overcome with sadness. Alu was indeed evil, and she'd fallen under his influence, just as Catalin had warned. She felt sick and realized that she needed blood and food. She was weak from the hours of walking. She'd committed another murder, this one premeditated. Perhaps she felt more guilt than she realized.
Alex's heart pounded and ears rang. What kind of colony had she joined? What form of creature had she become? Were these vampires really destined to be the end result of humanity? An immortal race of feral vampires? The revelation was more than she could bear. It affected her physically, and as she approached the Cathedral along the cold stone trail, she fell ill.
It all made sense. By biting Velinar, Alu had developed the ability to turn someone into
a vampire by simply sucking their blood until they died. The victim was passive, did not have to wish to be turned. This was the advantage he'd gained. Everyone a feral bit would also became a vampire. But they wouldn't be ordinary vampires. They were feral, conscienceless daemons without a soul and thus would not show up on Millennium Road. Everyone said that Alu had changed. Little did they know how much.
Alu had kept his new talent secret even from his own followers, which meant that he was planning something. The really scary part of all this was the prophecy coming from the vampire community that a war, wars actually, were imminent, something called the Vampire Wars.
Just before she reached the Cathedral, a pain hit her across the abdomen, a sharp biting spasm that knocked her to her knees. The agony was so intense; it brought tears to her eyes. And then it quit. She rose up and continued on but heard a noise behind her just as another excruciating contraction gripped her abdomen. "Oh no, not now," she said. Again, she fell to her knees. And then from behind, she felt something grab her arm. The cold hand of a vampire.