He pushed the mounts forward, the two camels dragging the tube struggling to keep up with him. After an hour the mist seemed no closer, and Nosferatu began to fear it was an illusion. Even after several more hours the silver apparition still hovered over the horizon, but lower and closer, he saw a dark line on the ground. Just before dawn the line was close and he knew it indicated vegetation— the edge of the desert. And where there was plant life there would be people.
And where there were people, there would be blood.
Knossos, Crete: 1450 B.C.
It was completely dark. As black as the inside of his tube. Vampyr turned his head to and fro, trying to find any light, while his hands explored the large stone that lay across his thighs, pinning him in place. How long had he been unconscious? He had no idea, but the hunger was gnawing at him.
He tried with all his superhuman might to move the stone off his legs but to no avail. His legs didn’t feel injured, but he couldn’t move them. After several more attempts to free himself, he laid his head back on the stone floor and closed his eyes.
Vampyr had no idea how long he stayed like that, trapped in his own Labyrinth. Days at least. Perhaps a week. The hunger grew stronger with each hour that passed. He tried several times to free himself, each attempt draining him of energy.
Sometimes he thought he heard voices, but in his weakened state he wasn’t sure if they were real or delusions. His soldiers didn’t know where he was and, even if they did, he knew they would not come for him. Ruling by fear had its disadvantages.
There was a noise and Vampyr turned his head, straining to hear. Something was moving in the dark, coming slowly closer. He heard voices and now he was sure they were real. Young voices, speaking Greek.
“Help me,” Vampyr cried out in the same language.
There was total silence in response.
“I know the way out,” Vampyr yelled. “If you help me, I will get you out of here.”
Vampyr couldn’t make out the whispered words the youths exchanged. He knew they had to be hungry and scared. He sniffed, picking up their scent. He felt the hunger surge, but he fought to control it.
“Who are you?” a fearful voice queried.
“A caretaker of the tunnels,” Vampyr lied. “I know the passages. I will help you escape.”
There was more whispering and Vampyr reined in his impatience. What choice did they think they had even to be discussing it? One of the youths was crying, a girl, and someone hushed her angrily.
A decision apparently made, he could hear the youths making their way toward him in the darkness. He called out several times so they could find him. He directed them to the stone across his thighs. With their help, he was able to push it off. He staggered to his feet. He knew the exit from the Labyrinth was right behind him.
The blood scent of the fourteen youths all around him was overpowering.
Vampyr reached out and grabbed the closest, a young girl. He wrapped one hand over her mouth while he tore into her neck with his teeth. He savored the blood flowing into his mouth even as he heard the leader of the youths just a few feet away demand he show them the way out. Vampyr slowly backed up, the girl in his arms, unseen in the darkness. His back hit the swinging stone and he passed through into the tunnel beyond.
He pressed the stone shut while he finished draining the girl. He lowered her body to the floor and turned, making his way back the way he had come so many days before. The torches that lined the corridor had burned out and he picked his way carefully, several times having to step over stones knocked loose by the earthquake.
After several minutes he saw a glimmer of light ahead and knew he was approaching ground level. The light grew stronger and he reached the wooden door leading to the palace. The frame around the door had buckled and he could see starlight through the cracks. With a mighty shove, he yanked it open and walked into the courtyard.
The palace was destroyed. What had taken over seventy-five years to build had been destroyed.
Vampyr slowly turned, taking in the ruins. He sniffed the air and his nose confirmed what he had suspected—not only was the palace destroyed, it was abandoned. Centuries of work building an empire undone in one moment.
Vampyr wandered through the remnants of his once magnificent palace. There were bodies here and there, some killed by the earthquake, others in the fighting afterward. The palace had been looted and stripped bare—even his throne had been stolen.
Vampyr went behind the throne room, to a secret passageway hidden by a rotating stone similar to the one leading to the Labyrinth. He passed through, then down a set of stone stairs to a thick wooden door, which he unlocked with a key hanging from a chain around his neck. He entered, locking the door behind him. Inside the chamber, set on a stone pedestal, was his black tube. He crawled into it, pulling the lid shut.
Vampyr slept for fourteen straight days, recovering.
On the fifteenth night, he arose. He left his lair and went back to the Labyrinth to feed. Catching another of the youths was easy, as they were slowly starving to death. Sated from the two feedings in two weeks, Vampyr went back to the surface to ponder his future, leaving the twelve surviving Greek youths trapped in the Labyrinth without a thought.
The tall tower had been destroyed in the earthquake. He sat on the pile of rubble that was all that was left of it and looked about. He could see smoke from fires slowly rising into the air. He had kept a tight leash on the people of Crete for over a century. He was enough of a realist to understand that leash could not be put back on.
He went below the palace to his hidden tube chamber. He barred the door and climbed inside. He set the control panel as he had watched Aspasia’s Shadow do, except adjusting the time for a shorter amount. Then he shut the lid on his ruined empire.
Africa: 1450 B.C.
Nosferatu had been forced to leave Nekhbet’s tube for three days while he ranged the edge of the jungle in search of blood. On the third night he came upon a small hunting party and turned the tables on them over the course of the next two nights, taking down four of their number, a pair each night, to feed on.
Gorged, he returned to where he’d left Nekhbet’s tube. He knew he could wake her and feed her human blood, but then they would be back where they were before. She would still age more rapidly than Nosferatu because she’d been more completely drained of her original half-Airlia blood more than he. He needed the blood of the Gods, and that was not possible just then.
The camels had refused to go forward shortly after entering the jungle. Nosferatu had been forced to release them so they could go back to their beloved desert. He slept next to the tube that day, robes and blankets covering him, the noise of the daytime jungle all around. When darkness fell he packed up all he had, tying everything to the top of the tube. Then he grabbed hold of the harness, looping the straps over his shoulders, and leaned into it.
Nosferatu made it a half mile into the jungle that first night.
The second night he did slightly better, covering almost a mile.
The third night he quickly fed, got back in harness, and pushed forward into deepest, darkest Africa for another mile.
And so he moved south, pulling his love behind him, blazing a narrow trail through the thick jungle.
After a month he passed along a ridgeline and an opening in the jungle gave him a view of the land to the south.
Nosferatu came to a halt, staring at the vista. Mountains with their peaks covered in white clouds filled the southern horizon. He realized they were what he had seen from the desert so long ago.
Nosferatu looked left and right. The mountains stretched in both directions.
He assumed there was a way around, and his inclination was to the right, to the west, as he needed to get to that coast eventually. But how far would it be to get around the range? Would there be more desert? Nosferatu stepped back, releasing the pressure from the harness. He had calluses on his shoulder where the leather bands had rubbed for so long. His body
was hard, all muscle.
It had been four days since he’d fed, and he was burning energy at a high rate. He realized he would never be able to pull Nekhbet’s tube across another desert, even a small one. The mountains ahead promised to be an extremely difficult endeavor.
And what did it matter, he realized, if he did get her to the Skeleton Coast? So they could sleep next to each other every day, while he waited for the time to bring her back?
Nosferatu looked at the peaks. He focused on the center one, a mountain slightly apart from the others. Leaning into the straps, he headed toward it.
He reached the base in a week, surprised to find himself in the midst of swamp and marshes. He splashed his way through, the going actually easier where he could partially float the tube. Then he reached a place where the watery landscape gave way as the ground sloped up. He began the arduous task of pulling the tube upslope. He wondered if the peaks were the source of the Nile as streams splashed down the rocky terrain around him. It was certainly the strangest place he’d ever been. At one point he passed through a bizarre level on the slopes where monstrous plants grew among the rocks, some over ten or twenty times the normal size. Nosferatu picked up a sense of the primeval about the place, as if it had been forgotten in some hole in time, while the world around it had progressed.
After ten days, most of the vegetation fell behind as he passed above the tree line. The terrain now was the exact opposite of what it had been. A few bushes struggled to grow, clinging to wind-scoured rocks. He was in the mist now, able to see only a short distance ahead. Several times he had to retreat and try to find a different way as he ran into slopes that were too steep to pull the tube up.
Twice he had to abandon Nekhbet’s tube and make the climb down to the more temperate zone to hunt the villagers who lived at the base of the mountains. Each feeding cost him a four-day round-trip and almost wasn’t worth the effort by the time he climbed back up.
Soon he was in snow, the whiteness blinding as he pulled the tube upward. Finally, he could go no farther. There was no trail and he would have to climb hand over hand to go higher. Nosferatu rested the next day, then spent the evening searching the mountainside.
On the third night, he found a small cave, more a crack in the side of the mighty mountain that extended about twelve feet in, but was only waist high. The fourth night he moved Nekhbet’s tube into the cave, shoving it ahead of him until it touched the end.
He spent the next day sitting cross-legged at the foot of the tube, swathed in robes and cloaks taken from victims to protect him from both the cold and the white mist light. He was tired and the hunger was strong. But he did not want to leave. Though he had slept for thousands of years and some things had changed, the world still was not a safe place for Nekhbet and him. How many more years would have to pass before he came back and recovered and revived her so they could walk the world together?
Nosferatu felt the cold hand of loneliness begin to grip his heart.
He spent another day and night and the following day at the foot of her tube until finally he knew the time had come. He leaned over and placed his hands on the cold metal. His lips lightly touched the smooth surface with a last kiss, then he slid out of the hole and began piling rocks in it, covering the tube. When he was done, there was no sign of the hole, just a small clutter of rocks along the side of the mountain.
“I will return,” he whispered. Then Nosferatu turned and headed downslope, leaving his love behind on the mountainside.
CHAPTER 5
Egypt: 671 B.C.
Vampyr watched the plumes of gray smoke rise in the night air. The horizon in the direction of the Giza Plateau glowed blood-red from the hundreds of fires the invaders had set. Even at this distance he could hear the cries of the wounded and the pleas of prisoners prior to summary execution by the invading Assyrians.
The Third Age of Egypt was over.
Vampyr knew there were battles raging in other places throughout the kingdom.
The third Pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, Taharqa, still had forces under his command and was slowly giving way to the south, continuing a war that had been going on for fifty years and ranged in scope from Palestine to Ethiopia. Chaos was rampant, and the opportunity for which Vampyr had waited so long finally presented itself.
He moved quickly, running across the desert sands toward the east and the plateau. He’d followed the western flank of the Assyrian Army, staying far out in the desert, as it closed on Giza. He hoped in all the turmoil to steer clear of Aspasia’s Shadow if he was about.
As he crested a dune, Vampyr saw the plateau. The three pyramids were silhouetted by flames from the wooden temples and other structures that dotted the area. Vampyr headed directly for the river area, but the Watcher’s hut was empty. Hiding, Vampyr had no doubt. He grabbed a gray cloak from a peg near the door and left the hut, throwing the Watcher’s cloak over his shoulders.
Vampyr ran to the edge of the Nile, moving along until he saw an old weather-and waterworn stone pillar. Vampyr looked around and spotted a large rock. He picked it up and grasped to it his chest. Then he jumped into the river.
The weight of the stone quickly pulled him under. Even in the dark water he could see relatively well and he spotted the opening for the Roads of Rostau. He let go of the stone and pulled himself toward the opening, only to find that the water of the Nile was streaming into the opening with such force, that he was immediately sucked in. He was pushed along with the current, tumbling against the smooth stone walls.
Vampyr spread his arms and legs wide, pressing against the walls of the tunnel. His left hand slipped into a side opening and his fingers clawed at the edge, grabbing hold and bringing him to a halt. It took all of his strength to pull himself into the side opening against the force of the current. He was in another tunnel, one where the water was still. Lungs bursting, Vampyr swam forward, not sure at all what direction he was going in.
He popped to the surface, gasping for air, looking about. There was a ledge about two feet above his head where the tunnel he was in opened up. He realized he had diverted into a shaft that went upward and he must have achieved the surface level of the Nile. He reached up and pulled himself into the chamber. There was a minute bit of light given off by a thin strip that ran around the top edge of the chamber, not enough for a human to pick up, but enough for Vampyr’s half-alien eyes to see his surroundings. The chamber was twenty feet square with a door in one wall. Dripping, Vampyr went to the door and walked into a corridor. He sniffed and picked up the faint scent of humans. He turned in their direction.
He found the Watcher and his family camped inside the Great Pyramid entrance to the roads, a stone guarding the outside opening. They were huddled in the darkness and did not see or hear him approaching. He saw an old man, an old woman, and two grown sons. He had no desire to negotiate. He walked right up to the family, grabbed the old man, and tore his throat out.
Screams echoed in the darkness as one of the sons tried to light a torch and the mother and other son yelled for the father. When the torch came alive, it revealed Vampyr holding the eldest male in his arms, drained of blood and life. Vampyr threw the body to the floor and glared at the three survivors.
“I will kill all of you unless you take me where I want to go.”
The son with the torch had a dagger in his other hand and charged Vampyr with a yell. Moving faster than the young man could have anticipated, Vampyr snatched the dagger from his attacker’s hand. Vampyr hit the young man in the chest with an open palm, sending him tumbling back, the torch flying from his hand. In the flickering light, Vampyr took a threatening step forward. He pointed at the one who had held the torch.
The young man got to his feet. “You are one of the creatures. The Undead.” He looked at his father’s body. “He warned me about you.” He turned to his mother and brother. “Stay here. I will be back.”
The old woman took no notice, throwing herself on the body of her slain husband and l
etting loose with an ululating wail that echoed down the tunnel. The younger brother went to console his mother.
“Your name?” Vampyr asked as he nudged the older brother away from the spectacle and into the Roads.
“Kajin of the line of Kaji the Watcher.”
“You people are like rats,” Vampyr said, as they continued, the mother’s cries chasing them.
“And what do you consider yourself?” Kajin demanded.
Vampyr did not answer. “I want to know where the Gods sleep. And where the Grail is kept.”
“You cannot get to the Grail,” Kajin said. “The key was taken away from here a long time ago. And where the Gods sleep is guarded by a terrible creature. You cannot enter.”
“Take me to the Grail first anyway.”
Kajin shrugged. They wove their way deeper into the rock, Kajin counting steps and intersections to himself. Finally, he halted and turned to what appeared to be a blank wall. He placed a medallion that hung around his neck against a point on the wall. The outline of a doorway appeared and the door slid open.
Kajin and Vampyr walked in. Vampyr halted on a narrow ledge overlooking a huge cavern. Light that hurt Vampyr’s eyes reflected down from a five-meter orb overhead. The far end of the cavern was a half mile away and the walls, which Vampyr recognized, were curved. When last he had seen them, they had been open to the light of the sun and stars. A hundred feet below was something else Vampyr had last seen under an open sky: the Black Sphinx.
“The Hall of Records,” Kajin said. “The Grail is within. The Ark and sword, though, are gone.”
“The Ark? What sword? Who took them?”
“When the Israelites rebelled, a woman and man came here. They knew the tunnels. They were able to get into the Black Sphinx, as they had their own key with them. They took the Ark and the Grail, and the great sword Excalibur, and left, joining the Israelites in their Exodus. Forty years later, one of my order came here with the Grail and put it back inside. Then he left with the key and went far away. I do not know any more than that.”
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