by Tanya Huff
She’d understand. But would I?
Forcing his muscles to respond, he swung his legs off the bed and sat up, golden afterimages of the sun still dancing across the periphery of his vision.
When I face this wizard-priest, I face the sun. When I face the sun, I face death. So when I face him, I face death. I’ve faced death before.
Except he hadn’t. Not when he truly thought he was going to die. Deep in his heart he had always known he was stronger and faster. He was the hunter. He was Vampire. He was immortal.
This time, for the first time in over four hundred and fifty years, he faced a death he believed in.
“And the question becomes, what am I going to do about it?”
It was one thing to endure the dreams when he had no knowledge of how or why they came, it was another to let them continue knowing they were sent. He must have become aware of me from the moment he woke at the museum. But even knowing who, the question of why still haunted him. Perhaps the dream of the blazing sun was a warning, a shot fired across his bow saying, “This is what I can do to you if I choose. Do not interfere in what I plan.”
“So it all returns to running. Do I let him have his way or do I face him again?” He leapt to his feet and strode across the room, head high, eyes blazing. “I am the son of a King! I am Vampire! I do not run!”
With a loud crack, the closet door ripped off in his hands. Henry stared at it for a moment, then slowly let the pieces fall. In the end, the anger and the fine words meant nothing. He didn’t think he could face Tawfik again, not knowing he had to face the sun as well.
The sudden ringing of the phone slammed his heart against his chest in a very mortal reaction.
“All right, Mr. Fitzroy says you can go up.”
Tony nodded, brushed his hair back off his face with a hand that still trembled, and hurried for the inner door. The old security guard disapproved of him, could see the street kid lurking just below the surface; thought thief, and addict, and bum. Tony didn’t give a rat’s ass what the old guy thought, especially not tonight. All he wanted was to get to Henry.
Henry would make it better.
Greg watched the boy run for the elevator and frowned. He’d fought in two wars and he knew bone-deep terror when he saw it. He didn’t approve of the boy—part of his job as security guard included keeping that type out of the building—nor did he approve of his relationship, whatever it was, with Mr. Fitzroy, but he wouldn’t wish that kind of fear on anyone.
Henry could smell the fear stink from across the apartment and when Tony launched himself into his arms it became almost overwhelming. Keeping a tight grip on the Hunger that had risen with a body so vulnerably presented, he set his own fears aside and held the younger man silently until he felt muscles relax and the trembling stop. When he thought he’d get an answer, he pushed Tony gently an arm’s length away and asked, “What is it?”
Tony rubbed his palm across lashes spiked with moisture, too frightened to deny there had been tears. The skin around his eyes looked bruised and he had to swallow, once, twice, before he could speak.
“I saw, this afternoon, a baby . . . he just . . .” The shudder ran the length of his body, Henry’s presence finally allowing him release. “And now, he’ll . . . I mean I saw him kill the baby!”
Henry’s mouth tightened at the suggestion that someone would threaten one of his. He pulled Tony, unresisting, over to the couch and sat him down. “I will not allow you to be harmed,” he said in such a tone Tony had no choice but to believe it. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”
As Tony spoke, slowly at first, then faster as though he were racing his fear to the end of the story, Henry had to turn away. He walked to the window, spread one hand against the glass, and looked out over the city. He knew the dark-haired, dark-eyed man.
“He’s killing children, ” Vicki told him.
“He’ll come for me,” cried Tony.
“Because we’re all there is.” Even Mike Celluci had a voice in his head.
I feel the sun. It’s hours to dawn and I feel the sun.
“Henry?”
Slowly, he turned. “I’ll go to where you saw him last, and try to track him.” He had no doubt he would recognize the scent, pick it out of a hundred scents laid across concrete on a November afternoon. And if he found the creature’s lair, what then? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
Tony sighed. He knew Henry wouldn’t let him down. “Can I stay here? Until you come back?”
Henry nodded and repeated, “Until I come back,” as if it were some sort of mantra that would ensure his return.
“Do you, do you need to eat before you go?”
He didn’t think he could; not eat, not . . . “No. But thank you.”
Brushing his hair back off his face, Tony managed a shaky grin and the shadow of a shrug. “Hey, it’s not like I mind or anything.”
Because he could do no less than this mortal boy, Henry drew up a smile in return. “Good.”
The shrilling of the phone snapped both heads around wearing almost identical expressions of panic. Henry quickly slid a mask in place so that when Tony glanced over at him and asked, “You want me to get it?” he appeared under control and could calmly answer, “No. I’ll take care of it.”
He lifted the receiver before the second ring had quite finished sounding, having moved from the window to the phone in the space between one heartbeat and the next. It took him almost as long to find his voice.
“Hello? Henry?”
Vicki. No mistaking the tone split equally between worry and annoyance. He didn’t know what he’d expected. No, that wasn’t true; he knew exactly what he’d expected, he just didn’t know why. If Anwar Tawfik decided to contact him, he would not be using the phone.
“Henry?”
“Vicki. Hello.”
“Is something wrong?” The words had been given a professional shading that told him she knew something was wrong and he might as well tell her what.
“Nothing’s wrong. Tony’s here.” Behind him, he heard Tony shift his weight on the couch.
“What’s wrong with Tony?”
The obvious conclusion; he should’ve known she’d jump to it. “He has a problem. But I’m going to take care of it for him. Tonight.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Just a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece, half turned, and raised a questioning eyebrow.
Tony emphatically shook his head, fingers digging deep into a cushion. “Don’t tell her, man. You know what Victory’s like; she’ll forget she’s only human, just charge out there and challenge the guy and the next thing we’ll know, she’s history.”
Henry nodded. And I am not only human. I am the night. I am Vampire. I want her with me. I don’t want to face this creature alone. “Vicki? He doesn’t want me to tell you. It’s uh, trouble with a man.”
“Oh.” He didn’t dare read anything into the pause that followed. “Well, I want to spend some time with Mike this evening; fill him in on what we know is happening. Warn him.” Again the pause. “If you don’t need me . . .”
What did she sense? The half lie? His fear? “Will you be here for the dawn?” Regardless of what happened tonight, if he was to have another dawn, he wanted her there for it.
“I will.” It had the sound of a pledge.
“Then give my regards to the detective.”
Vicki snorted. “Not likely.” Her voice softened. “Henry? Be careful.” And she was gone.
A little of the horror lost its effect. It was amazing how much “be careful” could sound like “I love you.” Holding her words—her tone—like a talisman, he went over the location with Tony one more time, shrugged into his coat, and went out into the night. He took dubious comfort in the knowledge that now, at least, he could be sure he wasn’t going crazy.
Many of the spells he had spent long years learning would have to be adapted to this new time and place. Unfortunately, as he now found himself
in a culture that held few things sacred, finding substitutions would not be easy. The ibex had been revered to the extent that sacred had become a part of its name and that made beak and blood and bone very powerful agents for magic. Somehow he doubted that rendering up a Canada goose would have the same effect.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright in the chair and twisted to face the windows. It was out there. And it was close. He scrambled to his feet and began to throw on street clothes. His ka would not need to search again, simple awareness of the young man would be enough to find him.
He didn’t know how that glorious light had been hidden during the day, although he expected he’d soon find out. One way or another.
Henry had traced the scent to the southeast comer of Bloor and Queen’s Park Road where it split, one track going north, the other south. Slowly he stood, brushed off the knee that had been resting on the concrete, and considered what he should do next. He knew what he wanted to do, he wanted to go back to Tony, say he couldn’t find the creature, and deal with the younger man’s fear instead of his own.
Except that wasn’t the way it worked. He had made Tony his responsibility. Honor had driven him out onto the streets and honor would not let him return.
Night had followed day, cold and clear, the kind of weather where the scent clung to the ground and the hunt rode out behind the hounds.
His best friend, the brother of his heart, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, rode beside him, their geldings tearing across the frozen turf neck and neck. Ahead, the staghounds bayed and just barely ahead of the pack the quarry raced in a desperate attempt to outrun the death that closed upon its heels. Henry didn’t see the exact moment the dogs closed in, but there was a scream of almost human pain and terror and then the stag thrashed on the ground.
He pulled up well back from the seething mass of snarling dogs who darted past striking hooves and tossing antlers to worry at the great beast, but Surrey took his horse as close as it would go, leaning forward in the stirrups, eyes on the knife and the throat and the hot spurt of blood that steamed in the bitter November air.
“Why?” he asked Surrey later, when the hall was filled with the smell of roasting venison and they were sitting bootless, warm before the fire.
Surrey frowned, the elegant line of his black brows dipping in toward the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t want the death of such a splendid animal to be wasted. I thought I might find a poem . . . ”
His voice trailed off so Henry prodded, “Did you?”
“Yes. ” The frown grew thoughtful. “But a poem too red for me I think. I will write the hunt and keep the stag alive.”
Four hundred and fifty odd years later, Henry answered as he had then. “But there is always death at the end of a hunt.”
The track to the south had almost been buried beneath the other footsteps of the day. The track to the north seemed better defined, as though it had been taken more than once; to and from a hotel room perhaps. Henry crossed Bloor, drew even with the church on the corner, and froze so completely motionless that the stream of Sunday night pedestrians flowed seamlessly around him.
He knew the dark-haired, dark-eyed man approaching.
Twelve
Henry waited, motionless, while the other man drew closer. He felt like a rabbit caught in headlights, fully aware that death and destruction bore down on him but unable to move. The sun grew brighter and brighter behind his eyes until he struggled to see around it.
I have no way to fight this. . . .
And then, suddenly, he recognized what he faced. His kind could sense the lives around them, not only through scent and sound but also with an awareness peculiar to those who hunted the night. What he felt approaching was a life, ancient, unlike any life he had ever felt before, and the sun only a symbol created to deal with it.
I have been aware of his life from the moment he awoke, most aware in the times I am most vulnerable. Blessed Christ, he has driven me almost to death just by existing.
Brows down and teeth clenched, he fought to drive this life from the foreground of his mind, finally managing to push it back and dim the light although he could not banish it entirely. It existed now as a background to all he did, but at least it no longer blinded him.
The night returned, Henry blinked, and found himself sinking into irises so deep a brown they looked black. Just before this darkness closed over him, he snarled and pulled free.
“I will not go unresisting like a lamb to the slaughter!”
Force of will slammed at the spell of absorption and shattered it. In all the centuries since his god had changed him, he had never felt such raw power.
He should have known it would not be so easy and he would not have even made the attempt had he not been blinded by the glory of the other’s ka. This one had protections; not only personal strength but also strong ties to the one God who had swept the old ways down. Each alone might be enough to stop him from taking what he so deeply desired, together they were very nearly an impenetrable barrier.
But I will have this ka. I must.
He touched only the very outermost edges of the other’s thoughts. In them, he could feel himself and he could feel fear. Both would give him, if not a way through, a way around. He probed for other weaknesses but saw only the blaze of unlimited potential.
“What are you?”
Henry, muscles twisted into knots across his shoulders, hands clenched so tightly into fists that his nails cut crescents into his palms, saw no reason not to answer. He pitched his voice so that it traveled across the distance between them but no further and threw it like a challenge.
“I am Vampire.”
The ka he had absorbed since awakening gave him a confusing pastiche of images not many of which seemed to have much to do with the young man standing before him. He sifted through the information until he recognized what he faced. His people had called them by another name.
No wonder the young man’s ka burned so brightly; as long as the Nightwalkers fed on the blood of the living, they were immortal. As immortal as he was himself. Did his own ka burn like a beacon? A pity he would never know, for it was the one ka he could not see.
What power would be his if he fed on the ka of an immortal being! It would no longer be necessary to work through pitiful human tools. He would rule from the beginning in his own name.
Perhaps . . . perhaps a seat in the council of the gods would not be beyond him. He saw himself surrounded by glory, no longer the servant of a petty minor deity but a master in his own name. Quickly, as much as he thrilled to it, he buried the thought deep. It would not do for Akhekh to find it.
But to devour an immortal ka—he had been so blinded by the life remaining, he had never even looked at the life lived, never even noticed it was far longer than the normal human span. He was, he discovered, the elder by a good many centuries, even discounting the millennia he had spent imprisoned. Still, he would have to move carefully, for if he was to finally feast, the Nightwalker’s protections must be lowered. He did not have the power to break them down, even considering the fear woven through them.
Why do you fear me, Nightwalker?
Although it was an emotion he would use, it was a question he could not ask. So he asked another.
“Why do you search me out, Nightwalker?”
Why indeed?
“You hunt in my territory.”
Ambiguous enough to hide a multitude of motives and also, Henry discovered as he spoke, the truth.
Again he attempted to read the other’s ka, to enter past the surface, but he got no further this time than he had before.
“I would talk with you, Nightwalker. Shall we walk together for a time?”
Henry wanted to say no, torn between a desire to run and a desire to rip out the creature’s throat and drink deeply of the blood he could hear surging beneath the smooth column of throat. The first would bring him no closer to a solution. The second . . . well, even if he could get past the defenses all wizards wore,
which he doubted, it was Sunday evening at a major intersection in downtown Toronto and committing a violent murder in front of hundreds of witnesses, while it would be a solution of sorts, would not be one he himself would likely survive.
So, because it seemed the best, if not the only choice, he turned and fell into step at the other’s side, trying to ignore the sun that continued to blaze in one comer of his mind.
They walked south down Queen’s Park Road and the power that walked with them turned more than a few heads as they went.
“What shall I call you?” Henry asked at last.
“I use the name Anwar Tawfik. You may call me that.”
“That’s not the name you were born with.”
“Of course not” He laughed gently, an elder chiding an errant pupil. “I took the name upon awakening. I am not likely to give you the power of my birth name.” He had not heard his birth name spoken since before the joining of Egypt into a single country. “And I am to call you . . . ?”
“Richmond.” Although he had answered to it in the past it had been a title, not a name, and so should be safe from whatever magics could be wrapped around it.
They walked a short distance further, until the sounds of Bloor Street faded and then, in mutual agreement, crossed over to the park. After dark on a November evening, they walked alone on paths damp with fallen leaves, under trees nearly bare. No one would overhear the words to be spoken; no one would have to die because they had heard.
The scattering of lights pushed back the darkness only in isolated areas; in the rest of the park the night stretched unbroken from infinity to the ground. Little light of any kind reached the bench they chose and as Henry watched Tawfik lower himself carefully down, he realized that the other had no better than mortal vision.