Dhampire

by Baker, Scott

  I returned to my body, and to the pain.

  They took me to the caverns, chained me to a wall a few yards away from Dara. My chains had enough slack so I could slump a bit, but not enough to let me sit or kneel, even with my arms over my head. Not nearly enough to reach out to Dara and touch her.

  She waited until they'd left us alone in the stench and silver-glowing darkness before asking me what had happened. They hadn't hurt her, hadn't told her why she'd been kept chained to the wall. But Stephen stood guard in the shadow corridor, cutting me off not only from Dara but from the deeper landscapes where we might have met in safety, and Monteleur was still wriggling through my agony, listening, ready to punish me again: I couldn't tell her about Michael or ask about the four-armed woman who'd looked so like the statue of Kali dancing in my father's Oriental room. My body was out of control, would have given me away if I'd tried to answer her Naga-whispered questions in any way. All I could tell her was what Monteleur had done to me at Nepenthe and how I'd awakened in the truck.

  Dara tried to get Monteleur to tell her at least why the pain kept getting worse and worse, but it refused to respond to any of her questions.

  The pain continued to worsen all the next day—I knew it was day because my father had returned to his coffin and I could no longer find my way up out of the pain to him—but when at last dusk came and he reawakened I was able to draw on him once more for the strength my body needed to heal itself, that I needed to endure its agony.

  It was enough, barely enough: if they did nothing more to me I would survive.

  Hours later I heard footsteps outside the door, the sound of keys turning in the multiple locks. The door opened and the man who'd claimed to be a doctor entered carrying a lantern. He hung it on an iron hook jutting from the wall just above our heads, then examined us to make sure we were still securely fastened in place, finally took two gags from his pocket and fitted us with them.

  It would have been pointless to resist. Neither of us even tried.

  He was laying a fire in the open furnace at the far end of the chamber when Stephen entered with Michael and one of the men who'd put Dara on the ladder for him that first night. Michael was blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back, and staggering, barely able to walk. Stephen and his assistant were dressed in black: the same uniform he'd had me wear when he sent me after Dara.

  Michael's face was etched deep with pain and fatigue, marbled purplish-red with broken veins and capillaries like the face of some sixty-year alcoholic; his body and hands trembled and he kept shifting from one foot to the other, licking teeth and lips, swallowing.

  Uncle Stephen took off Michael's blindfold, pushed him down into a cane chair the assistant brought forward. Michael sat awkwardly on the edge of the chair, blinking up at Stephen but unable to meet his gaze. He kept glancing over at the two of us chained to the wall, at the iron maiden standing half-open next to the horizontal ladder so he could just glimpse the spikes inside, at the benches along the walls where the various instruments were laid out and gleaming, at the fire roaring to life in the open furnace.

  Uncle Stephen took a half step back, turned to face Dara and me. Behind Michael's back the doctor was attaching a rope and pulley to the ceiling. "Michael tried to kill me," Stephen said. "Tried stupidly—it's been thirty years since my familiar would've let something like that hurt me. And for the wrong reasons, if I believe him when he says he thought I was planning to crucify the three of you."

  He paused, staring at Michael, challenging him to contradict what he was saying. Michael looked away, jaws working, finally found the strength to meet his gaze and demand, "Then what are the crosses for?"

  "For Lucifer and his two assistants, Satanichia and Sataniciae." Stephen turned back to Dara and me, pretended to ignore Michael while he explained everything to us. "So that when they found themselves in the goats' crucified bodies they could descend from their crosses to their worshipers in proper traditional fashion. The three of you were to have had no part in that—I was just going to use you for some ritual magic later in the ceremonies. Nothing all that different from what I've already had you do for me."

  "You're lying," Michael said.

  Stephen seemed delighted with his response. "You'll never know whether I am or not," he said. "Because three days from now I'm personally going to nail you to the center cross in place of one of the goats. And after Lucifer abandons you I'm going to tear your heart out and eat it, then burn what's left of your body. Not as a sacrifice, but to make sure you can never become a vampire. Because I want you dead and in Hell with no way you can ever escape."

  He paused a moment, smiling, then added, "Though I intend to use your three remaining days to find out the truth behind that oh-so-pretty story you told me about how you decided to risk your precious immortal life for the good of the family."

  "For all of us," Michael said. "Even for you."

  "You'll forgive me if I don't believe you." Stephen walked over to a bench, picked up something like a rusty fisherman's gaff, turned back to Michael.

  "I've always thought the art of interrogation reached its finest point with the Inquisition. The first step was always to familiarize the… accused… with the instruments which were to be employed on him later, so he could better imagine and anticipate what was to come.

  "So… This, Michael, is an eyeball gouger. Though you probably won't have to worry about it until tomorrow, or even the day after, since I'll want you to be able to see what I'm doing to you…

  "And this"—a spiked cylinder—"is a spine roller, while this is a forehead tourniquet. We have Spanish boots, of course, thumb and toe screws, throat pears, burning irons and pinchers… everything you were so anxious to have me teach you how to use."

  His smile was frozen, terrifying. "But I think we'll start with squassation. Do you know what that is? We hang you by your arms while we drop weights attached to your legs. Very heavy weights. You'll dislocate your feet, hands, elbows, knees, shoulders, hips… And then, perhaps, while you're still hanging there we can begin with the toe screws, go from there—"

  Michael slumped forward, unconscious, and would have fallen from the chair if Stephen hadn't caught him.

  "It won't help you, nephew. Not now, not ever." And, turning to his assistants: "Finish preparing him. I'll awaken him when it's time."

  They brought high wooden stools, put heavy metal balls with chains attached to them—like the ball and chain convicts wear in comic strips—on the stools, locked the manacles at the end of the chains tight around Michael's ankles. They undid his wrists, manacled them together behind his back, attached them to a hook at the end of the rope the doctor had prepared earlier, hoisted him free of the ground.

  I could hear his shoulders scraping out of their sockets.

  Uncle Stephen picked up the eyeball gouger again, prodded Michael's dangling body delicately with it, then closed his own eyes for a second. Michael jerked back to life, whimpering.

  "It won't work, Michael. You can't hide from me there." With his left hand he was caressing one of the cannon balls. "And we haven't even begun dropping weights, so this is just strappado, no worse, really, than the ladder, especially for someone like you, with your dhampire's resistance to pain—"

  He pushed the ball from the stool. It fell, jerked to a halt just above the ground, swung slowly. Michael began to scream and Stephen jabbed the eyeball gouger at his face.

  Michael burst into flame.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-seven

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  Michael hung twisting and blackening in his cocoon of ever-brightening flame, his fading screams not yet lost in the greater violence of Bathomar's frenzied bellowing. Stephen and the assistants had retreated to the far corner of the room, stood huddled together with their hands over their faces. The heat beat against my face and hands, crisped the unprotected skin, was beginning to reach through my clothing to the rest of me as the flames climbed the spectrum through ever-brighter, ev
er-fiercer oranges to a yellow-white like that of the sun.

  I held my breath, tried to keep the rich fatty smell of my brother's burning out of my nostrils, but it was hopeless, I could smell him anyway, and when I couldn't keep myself from breathing any longer and opened my mouth, tried to gasp air around the wadded mass of rags with which I'd been gagged, my mouth was full of the roasting pork taste of him. My stomach contracted, heaved, I could feel myself starting to vomit, but I forced it back down again, swallowed it before it'd had a chance to block my nose and throat, choke me to death.

  A tongue of blue-green appeared where Michael's chest had been, spread. Bathomar's bellowing rose to a bleating scream and was cut off. The charred flesh was crumbling, flaking from the bone, consumed even as it fell away.

  The flames drew in on themselves, shrank to a single point of intolerable blue-green, winked out. What remained of Michael's skeleton slipped from the manacles that had been holding it suspended. The blackened skull hit the floor and split open to reveal the seven staring heads of a black Naga with eyes like bubbles of bright glistening clay, wet and empty, like the eyes of the four-armed woman Michael'd said was our mother.

  The woman he'd said was only waiting for him to die so she could devour him, consume him, destroy him utterly.

  The Naga pulled itself out of what remained of the spinal column, coiled in and around the charred fragments of bone, raised its seven blunt Chinese-dog-like heads and tasted the air with its many tongues. Michael, or the thing that had devoured him? There was a watchful malevolence to it, a sliding grace, but no intelligence, no humanity, nothing of my brother. It was at least six feet long, the thick base of its many necks tapering to a body no bigger around than Dara's wrist—slender for a serpent, but still too big to have ever been contained in my brother's spinal canal, in any human spine, just as the seven slowly weaving heads with which it was regarding the torture chamber could never have been contained by a human skull. And yet I'd seen it emerge from Michael's shattered skull, seen it pull itself free of what was left of his spine.

  "Michael?" I tried to make myself heard around the vomit-sodden rags, choked on them without succeeding. But the Naga understood me.

  It hissed sibilantly at me, a cold inhuman sound from its many mouths, nothing like my brother's voice. I was too tired, too confused, to try to make sense of the sounds emerging from the different mouths, orchestrate them into something meaningful.

  "No, David," Dara interpreted for me. "That's Vasuki. Michael's Naga soul. Michael chose to die and forget. His soul has gone on to find rebirth in another body."

  "Not—" I choked on the rags, managed to continue—"destroyed?"

  "No." But the Naga's hissing seemed to have shocked Uncle Stephen awake. He grabbed some of the instruments he'd been heating in the furnace, handed two long-handled knives to his assistants, and kept a hooked pole like the eyeball gouger, only longer, with a triple-barbed tip glowing red, for himself. The doctor took up position on his right, the other on his left. They began to advance, spreading out so they could come at the Naga from three sides at once.

  The Naga had all seven heads trained on them now. Dara was whispering something to it through her gag but I couldn't make out what she was saying. The heads were weaving back and forth on their short necks, hoods spread, and the raised body was beginning to sway.

  Stephen halted just beyond the Naga's striking range—and Monteleur struck. But even as I felt it starting to rip through me again, before I could scream, the Naga had somehow come uncoiled and crossed the distance separating us with a motion fluid and effortless as an incoming wave, had flung a smooth cool coil around my left wrist and flowed up onto my arm.

  The room flickered, imploded, lost all silver. There was a confused shouting from the other side of the locked door, a scream. Another scream.

  But Monteleur was still within me, smooth and heavy and cold like a porcelain egg. The Naga had stopped it before it had had time to kill me.

  The Naga touched two red-tipped tongues to my manacles and they fell away with a smell of hot metal. I stumbled, half-fell, felt something new rip free inside of me, and then the pain was too much and my legs gave way and I fell the rest of the way to the floor. Lying there I reached out instinctively for my father, tried to climb the shadow tides to his strength, but I couldn't find the way back to him.

  I made it to my feet, lurched the rest of the way to Dara without dislodging the Naga still coiled around my arm. Steadied myself against the wall as it freed her the same way it had freed me. She plucked the gag from her mouth, freed me of mine, then put her arm around me to keep me from falling again.

  "David." A whisper only I could hear. "They're going to rush us. You've got to bring your arm up, hold it out so Vasuki can strike at them—hurry, David! Now!"

  I brought my arm up. The Naga anchored itself to it with a few tight coils around my wrist, lashed out in warning at all three attackers before any of them had had a chance to realize what was happening. It weighed almost nothing but even so I was too weak to keep my arm out straight in front of me.

  "Dara, I can't…" She took hold of my arm, helped me support its weight.

  "You can't hurt us now," she told Stephen. "If you try Vasuki will annihilate you as it annihilated Michael. But if you unlock the door for us and protect us until we're safely away we'll let you live."

  "I can't stop you," Stephen said, lowering his hooked pole, "but I can't protect you either. With Michael gone and that Naga cutting David off from Gregory I've lost control of the vampires. They're waiting for us on the other side of the door."

  "Then get Monteleur out of me."

  "I can't, David. Not with that Naga paralyzing him."

  "Is that true?" I asked the Naga.

  "Yes." A sibilant hiss.

  "Can they get in here?" I asked Stephen. "Force the door or come sliding under it as a mist or something?"

  "Not until they break through it. There's a veneer of wild-rose wood on the outer surface and around the frame they can't penetrate."

  "But they'll break in eventually?"

  "Of course." A patronizing smile. "They're not stupid, David. Just limited in what they can think about."

  "He's telling the truth," Dara said. Then, whispering again. "Vasuki can't stay here. Now that he's free of Michael he has to return to Patala and we have to go with him. Monteleur will kill you if we don't."

  "I can't. Not without Father's help… I'm not strong enough."

  "You have to be. If he frees you to draw on Father Monteleur will kill you."

  "Why can't he kill Monteleur? Or get my Naga soul to do it?"

  "He can't. Not here… in Patala, maybe, I remember that—No. It's gone again. And you've been cut off from your Naga soul for so long it would kill you to contact it now. Like it killed Michael. But he can take us back to Patala with him."

  Something heavy crashed into the door. The wood cracked but held.

  "You see?" Stephen asked. "Not stupid at all."

  Another crash and the door burst open. Beyond the four vampires wielding the iron beam as a battering-ram I could see a confused struggle filling the main cavern. A few of Stephen's followers were still on their feet but most were down, dead or dying, Bathorys lapping blood from wounds torn with blunt teeth and nails in their victims' necks.

  The vampires with the beam dropped it, stood aside. Behind them Father was crouched over John's twitching body, his cheeks working as he sucked at the gaping wound in John's chest.

  I tried to force Father away, make him make them all stop, but I couldn't reach him. And the depths of the cavern were dark, shadow-filled, without trace of silver.

  Father looked up, staring straight at me but not seeing me. His mouth and face were smeared with congealing blood, flecked with shredded skin and flesh. Like an infected wound with the scab torn off.

  He got to his feet. John tried to hold on to him but Father pushed him effortlessly away. As Father entered the torture chamber another
vampire bent over John, put his mouth to the wound in his chest.

  Father made for Stephen without once glancing at us. Stood there before him waiting until at last Stephen closed his eyes, offered him his throat, moaned with what could have been pleasure or pain as Father took him gently by the shoulders and ripped open his throat with blunt teeth.

  Dara said, "David, Vasuki can free you of Monteleur in Patala. He can take us there. But only if we swear to return value for value, to pay for what we are granted with something of equal value."

  "Who decides what it's worth?" I was feverish, only half-conscious. I couldn't breathe. The hot gnawing in my belly and chest was getting worse. I no longer had the strength to fight it. '

  "We decide."

  "Do you want me to?"

  "Yes."

  Stephen lay on the floor, his mouth open. His body was still arching, spasming more and more feebly as Father fed, lips clamped tight to the ragged hole in his neck.

  "Then I swear."

  And the caverns were gone.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-eight

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  There was nothing but the void, infinite dark-ness, limitless emptiness, without even the absence of color, shape and form to give it definition and potential. And yet the void was alive, was filled with a thousand swimming, gliding serpent shapes bleeding in and out of existence, in and out of emptiness, like color bleeding from new clothing into too-hot wash water and then, somehow, back again. The thousand serpents were one sole serpent, thousand-headed, its ivory scales and crimson eyes burning in the emptiness like a swarm of suns, and Vasuki, Dara, I myself were only three of its myriad heads. But even that sole serpent that was all there was or ever could be was only a coiling in upon itself of empty darkness, a curdling in the void.