by J. C. Diem
I had the feeling this was an invitation I couldn’t refuse. Everyone looked at me curiously, almost as if I was a new species. Compared to them, I guessed I was.
Ty drew me aside as their leader returned to his book. “Roxie,” he gestured to the pixie girl. She scowled then ambled over. “Show Natalie to the sleeping chamber,” he instructed.
With a bad tempered jerk of her head, Roxie stomped off toward a wider tunnel. We headed upwards and the passage emptied out into an abandoned subway station. A few carriages had been left behind when the station had ceased to be operational. There were five in total. All were made of wood with the paint long ago faded or peeled off. It was like stepping back in time before everything had been made of metal or plastic.
Roxie headed straight past the first four carriages to the last one in the row. Climbing the narrow stairs after her, I saw that the carriage had been converted into a sleeping area. All the seats had been removed and bunk beds had been installed.
“Pick a bed that doesn’t already have blankets,” Roxie said without a speck of graciousness. “Blankets are in the box up the front.” I followed the finger she pointed with and saw the box in question. It was a beat up old trunk that was covered in scratches.
“Thanks.” My reply was about as gracious as her offer had been. I retrieved a couple of moth eaten blankets from the trunk and chose the top bunk right at the back of the train. Roxie watched me with all the welcome of a dog hunkered over a rotten bone. “So,” I said when my bed was made, “what do you all do here?” I was trying to make idle conversation and was doing a dismal job of it. Something about these vamps, about this whole place had my fight or flight instincts jockeying for position. Vampires were everywhere, watching me, watching Roxie, watching each other. It would be impossible to leave without being noticed.
“We eat, we sleep, we fuck,” Roxie said with a sneer. “What else does our kind do?” On that note, she turned and stomped back toward the main cavern.
While eating, sleeping and fucking were all enjoyable to some extent, it just wasn’t enough for me. There had to be more to this existence than satiating our hungers. Was that why I was so different from other vampires? Because I had retained my favourite pastime of reading? Because I missed my old life?
Walking back to the main cavern slowly, I reviewed what I knew of vampires in general. I hadn’t spent enough time in their company yet to know what habits they had. Luc and I had been on the move so much that we hadn’t had time to chat about what we liked to do in our spare time. Thinking of him brought another flash of shame. I was startled to realize I missed him. Out of all the vamps I’d met so far, Luc was easily the nicest. You just miss his body, my mind whispered snidely. That was true. I hadn’t fed my flesh hunger in a while now. I wasn’t the least bit tempted to bounce on any other vampire I’d met. Ty was cute in a pierced, bad boy kind of way but I just couldn’t see myself getting naked with him.
Conversation paused as I made my reappearance then quickly resumed again. I was a nine second wonder. Sidelong looks were sent my way but heads turned away when I tried to catch anyone’s eye. After five minutes of this, it dawned on me that almost all of the vampires here were terrified. From the way their gazes returned time after time to Alexander then skittered away again, I deduced that he was the source of their fear.
Standing on the fringes, I watched them all watching their supreme leader. It was one tiny mistake that gave Alexander away. He sat at the table, once more hunched over the book. His silhouette lay on the floor beside him, reading its own shadow copy of the book at a shadow table. Alexander raised a hand and scratched his nose. His shadow didn’t. It was good. Very good. But the silhouette wasn’t quite paying enough attention.
Every vampire I’d met who had a shadow that could think for itself had tried to kill me. I was under no illusions that Alexander would be any different. So far, none of the vamps had seemed to be aware of what their shadows were up to. Sentient shadows were a mystery that I just didn’t have an answer for. One thing was certain, in my efforts to avoid my destiny I’d landed in the den of yet another evil being. More evil than the average vampire, that was.
A group of four rebels standing nearby exchanged whispers, taking turns to stare openly at me. After a heated discussion, they sauntered over with exaggerated casualness. Three were male and one was female. All wore black coats like Ty and had almost as many piercings. The female’s eye makeup was gothic and made her skin seem almost translucently pale. Her pale yellow hair was cut short, like a boy’s.
“So, what part of Australia are you from?” one of the guys asked. His accent was more Irish or Scottish than English.
“Brisbane, Queensland.”
“Queensland is supposed to be the ‘sunshine state’ isn’t it?” another male said. “You don’t have much of a tan do you?” he sniggered.
“I don’t get much sun these days,” I reminded him. I’d have one hell of a tan for approximately a nanosecond before I disintegrated. The others sniggered some more.
“How long have you been one of the nocturnal?” the girl asked. Her accent was almost as cultured as Ty’s. I judged her to be the oldest of the four, in vampire years. All looked to be around their early to mid-twenties.
If I told them I’d been turned less than three weeks ago they wouldn’t believe me. I should still be a ravenous, sex starved lunatic from what Luc had told me. “Almost a year,” I lied.
“If you need to screw, I’m up for it,” offered the third guy. His teeth overlapped when he grinned. How he could take a bite from a human and not tear out their jugular by accident was a mystery.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I responded as politely as possible.
During our conversation, Ty kept his eye on me from a distance. He didn’t make it obvious but I was aware of his scrutiny.
Several other small groups approached me to make inane conversation. They sized me up and offered their services if my flesh hunger got out of control. All were jittery and their attention constantly flitted to Alexander. The man himself kept his focus on the book, flipping through it and reading pages seemingly at random.
I wondered how fifty-odd vampires could live in one place without being discovered. Even in a city the size of London, surely they would be noticed. That’s not your problem. You need to concentrate on getting out of here. That was true and it was becoming clearer to me as each minute passed with excruciating slowness. I didn’t want to live in fear of a man who wasn’t even my master. If I had to live as a monster then I’d rather do it on my own than in company such as this.
As the hours passed, I tried to blend in and to watch the group as a whole. Patrols of two came and went regularly. They reported to Ty each time they returned. He listened gravely, nodded then sent another pair out into the tunnels. I’d had no chance of remaining undetected in the lair that had so temporarily been my home.
Dawn neared and vamps began drifting off toward the railway tunnel. I hadn’t had enough time to work out whether there were any patterns to the patrols yet but I wasn’t going to stay here much longer. Come nightfall, I was going to make a break for it. I had a bad feeling about these sewer vamps, especially about their leader. My hope was, if he really was up to something, he would let me settle in for a few nights before he did anything unpleasant to me. As a newcomer and someone who had killed two of his watchdogs, I wasn’t going to be held in very high esteem.
Following the small pockets of huddled groups, I trudged to the last train and made my way to my chosen bunk. Copying the others who had the top bunk, I vaulted up and lay down. This time I managed not to smash my head into the ceiling. Not only would that have been embarrassing, it would have been difficult to explain. Vampires were many things but they were rarely clumsy.
I didn’t want to accidentally roll over when I woke and risk crushing the journal. Thinking of a hiding place that might work, I removed it and the cross from their place of concealment beneath my clothes. Slitting a ho
le in the side of the mattress facing the back wall, I winced at the low tearing noise and slid my belongings inside. A thorough search would uncover them easily enough but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. This time tomorrow, I’ll be far away, sleeping somewhere safe. I hoped this was true. I really did.
·~·
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Waking with unaccustomed alertness, I lay utterly still, filled with the knowledge that something was seriously wrong. This had happened to me numerous times lately but this time it was worse than usual. The lumpy mattress I’d been lying on had mysteriously changed into a cold, hard surface. I’d also managed to acquire bracelets around my wrists and ankles while I slept. The kind of bracelets with chains attached to them, if I wasn’t mistaken. They were too heavy to be made of anything but strong steel or iron. Knowing I couldn’t put it off forever, I opened my eyes to see what kind of trouble I’d landed myself in while I’d been dead to the world.
I’d been transferred from my not so comfortable mattress onto a far less comfortable stone slab. The stone was deeply black and had been polished to an almost mirror like quality. The word ‘altar’ sprang to mind. This conjured up images of more black and white movies where the hapless damsels were rescued in the nick of time by their burly boyfriends. I didn’t have a boyfriend of any description let alone a burly one.
Disappearing beneath the altar, the thick chains were secured somewhere out of my sight. My hands were clenched tightly into fists, hiding the twin holy marks. Had my body managed to protect itself while I was being carried away in an unanimated state? It must have because otherwise I would have woken up dead. Wait, I’d already done that once. I guess I wouldn’t have woken up at all then because the vamps would have taken drastic steps upon discovering my not so fashionable holy marks.
Six of my kin stood a few feet back from the altar. Dressed in black cloaks with the hoods up to hide their faces, they were mostly anonymous. Despite his disguise, I recognized Ty from his general shape and size. Not to mention from the glint of metal I spied from his piercings beneath his hood. They stood silently, waiting for something. Or someone.
Torchlight flickered unsteadily on the walls. There were too few to illuminate the area very well, not that any of us really needed the light. We were in a natural cave going by the roughly formed rock walls and dirt floor. Moisture ran down the walls and gathered in tiny streams that flowed into a crack in the floor. The monotonous plinking sound of dripping water echoed from within one of the four tunnels that branched off to the sides. I sensed we were deeper beneath the earth now but I didn’t know just how far down we were.
A small table sat at the base of the altar. It had been carved from the same black stone as the smooth slab that I lay on. The workmanship was functional rather than decorative. It had been designed for one purpose and that wasn’t to dazzle people with its beauty. A small bowl was centred on the table. Made of plain brown clay, it had been stained almost black from repeated usage. Some type of thick, dark liquid had spilled over the sides. Sitting beside it was the book Alexander had been reading. This was clearly a room where dark rituals were performed. Since I was the helpless damsel in distress who was currently chained to the altar, it wasn’t hard to guess that I was going to be the star of the next ritual.
Muffled footsteps sounded in the distance, quickly drawing closer. My anxiety grew. If my heart had been able to beat, it would have been working at triple time.
Alexander’s shadow preceded him as he strode into the room from one of the smaller tunnels. It turned its head and studied me for a long moment before suddenly falling back behind its master. Instead of retreating to the floor like everyone else’s shadows, it took up a spot on the wall so it could watch the proceedings. Why no one else could see the moving silhouettes was an ongoing puzzle to me. I knew it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination because of the shadow that had tried to suck my energy dry. The sentient shadows were real but I was the only one who ever saw them in their unnatural action. Sometimes it sucked being Mortis.
Alexander wore a cloak of deep maroon. He threw the hood back dramatically to reveal his solemn expression. The leader of the sewer vamps obviously saw no reason to hide his face from me. Why would he when I would be dead soon? His eyes, black, inhuman and as insane as my maker’s had been, raked over me. Fear crawled from my stomach upwards and lodged in my throat. What was it with ancient vampires? Were they all crazy? Maybe that’s what happened to beings that lived for thousands of years. Their minds couldn’t cope with a life that never ended. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live for another hundred years let alone a thousand.
“Good, you are awake,” he said with a small, polite smile.
“I have to say, I’m not impressed with your hospitality so far,” I replied, hiding the quiver in my voice. It was highly unlikely I could kill these creatures with shame but I’d give it a try anyway. “I thought Europeans were raised better than that.”
“You murdered two of our...associates,” Alexander pointed out as he rounded the table and picked up the book. It was a weak excuse to chain me up and kill me and we both knew it. “If you were expecting hospitality then you should have found somewhere else to cower during the daylight hours.”
Gee, I guess I’ve been told. “How can I murder someone if they’re already dead?” I muttered. I hadn’t been cowering in the lair I’d so briefly occupied. I’d been shivering with cold. There was a big difference.
Alexander raised his head and his silver hair glinted in the torchlight. “You will very shortly find that out for yourself, my dear.” He smiled to display just how delighted he would be at having the chance to show me.
“What exactly are you planning to do to me?” I wasn’t expecting a detailed answer and was unpleasantly surprised when I received one.
“I am going to cut open your chest and pour my blood directly onto your heart.” Alexander didn’t bother to look up from the book as he gave his off-hand reply. Now I knew what the black crud in the bowl was, although I’d already had my suspicions. Two of the black hooded vampire lackeys shifted uncomfortably at the pronouncement of my doom. So, not everyone in on this little ritual was happy about it. Maybe because it had been practiced on members of their dysfunctional family before. Random disappearances within their ranks would explain why their family members were so nervous and scared. Deep down, they knew Alexander was responsible. With nowhere else to go and without anyone else to lead them, they stuck around and hoped they wouldn’t be the next to disappear.
“What purpose is that possibly going to serve?”
This time, Alexander did look up from the book and I wished he hadn’t. His eyes glowed with almost religious fervour. “I pride myself on being somewhat of a scientist. You will help me to perform an experiment. This book,” he held it up and I saw a detailed drawing of our Father on the crudely made leather cover, “is incredibly ancient and was passed down to me from my maker. It foretells our ascendance to a greater state than we currently occupy yet does not indicate exactly how this will happen. And so, I experiment on trespassers in an effort to discover how to make this happen.” Yep, that was definitely religious fervour alright. Did I even want to know what kind of religion an ancient vampire followed? Nope. Not in the least. My curiosity on that subject was non-existent.
“Ok, so you want to experiment on me. What result is the experiment supposed to have?”
A crafty look slid over his face, he didn’t want to divulge his reasoning to his followers but he also didn’t want to give up on an opportunity to gloat. Gloating won out, as I’d suspected it would. “As the book foretells, I am trying to create a new breed of vampire. One that is stronger, faster and superior in every way. We will finally become what we were meant to be instead of the pitiful creatures we are.” If he’d been human, spittle would have flown from his lips with the force of his conviction.
I almost didn’t need him to say the rest. On some level I knew where he was going with his exper
iment. “And what are we meant to be?”
“Divinities!” Alexander gazed at the cover of the book then gently lay it down. “Or as close to divinities as we can become.” The description he meant was ‘Gods’ but he just couldn’t say it without stuttering.
“You want to rule the earth, enslave mankind, etcetera, etcetera?” That was usually what the vampires ultimately wanted in the movies. I didn’t see the sense in it myself. Humans were unpredictable and extremely inventive. They’d find a way to overthrow their evil masters. Even if some of the oldest vampires could stay awake during sunlight hours, they were still extremely vulnerable to it. One shaft of sunlight would be their undoing. There were a lot more humans than there were vampires. Surely they would overwhelm us and drag us either kicking and screaming or dead to the world from our daytime hiding spots.
“Naturally,” Alexander’s smile was urbane and he even managed a twinkle in his eye. “Why should we hide out here in the bowels of the earth when we should be living high above the humans?”
You couldn’t argue with a madman and Alexander had left sanity behind a long, long time ago. I chose to remain silent.
Luc had told me the first night we’d met that to drink the blood of our kind would kill us. I didn’t suppose having it poured onto my heart would be a fun experience. In fact, it was almost certain to be excruciatingly painful and end in my death. Pretty soon I’d be just one more blemish to be wiped off the altar.
“I take it you’ve tried this experiment before?” I made one last ditch effort to escape using the power of persuasion. Persuasion had never been my strong suit before but maybe I’d gained the ability when I’d joined the exclusive undead club.
“Many times,” Alexander replied, flicking through the book again.