by Rae Else
- Chapter Eighteen -
Breaking and Entering
They lined up their equipment on the lowest steps. They left the air valves on their tanks open and kept their masks around their necks, ready for a quick getaway. The passage was low, forcing them to crawl. After a few metres they found a boarded-up hole above their heads.
They listened a while for any noises above, but all seemed silent. El noticed Talus’ frown. He was probably wishing that he could phase out to be sure the coast was clear but the empousa blood in his system made it impossible. After a few minutes of silence, Dan hit at the boards. They were damp and seaworn, giving way easily. Their path clear, Dan heaved himself up through the newly formed hatch, then helped Talus and El up too.
Beyond was a bare cavern. As they entered, El spotted a large, metal container. It was open, its lid propped up against the wall. El wouldn’t have regarded it any longer, but Dan fished out his camera from the pocket of his diving vest to photograph it.
Talus was looking at Dan questioningly.
‘It’s how Janos deduced that the Waseem had moved the empousa,’ Dan said. ‘He saw the metal container arriving here.’
Talus walked on without comment. El examined the container, noting it was deep enough to hold a body. Talus had said that graeae couldn’t see an empousa’s power. But Janos had predicted that the empousa would be here because of the transportation of this container. El continued to blink at it, thinking about the stories about vampires travelling in coffins. Maybe there really was some truth to those tales.
Steps led up to the left but they proceeded through the cavern, advancing into the next room. This was a more fully-formed space, its walls and ceilings properly shaped and angular. Automatic lighting came on and illuminated the cold, grey room. A few metal counters and cupboards ran along one side. Dan opened one of them: a refrigerator. Shelves of vials containing a dark, thick liquid were inside. He snapped a picture of the fridge’s contents before pocketing one of the vials.
Talus was at the other end of the room and opened a larger cupboard. He grimaced.
‘What is it?’ El whispered.
‘Nothing,’ Talus said, closing the door.
Dan strode over. ‘I need pictures of everything that implicates the Waseem.’
Talus was still frowning but nodded. He looked over at El. ‘You might want to stay where you are.’
Her heart drummed but she edged nearer as Dan opened the cupboard door.
‘Keep quiet,’ Talus cautioned her as she approached.
As Dan took pictures, El looked into the shadowy space. From the light leaking into the cupboard, she saw that it was a freezer: a whole room like a restaurant or butchers might have. There were people … corpses … piled up within. In the flash of Dan’s camera, El caught sight of a pale, blue-tinged face and a mop of hair, but the overriding impression was of a tangle of limbs.
El gagged and turned away. The freezer was full of bodies, yet they weren’t here because of this injustice. Once again it struck her that the upper spheres of the arete world were cruel and callous.
‘The Waseem aren’t bothering to get blood donations from humans but are taking the lot instead,’ Talus said.
He scraped back the bolt of a large metal door at the end of the room, edging it open. The walls of this space were rough and cavern-like again, devoid of any electrical lighting. Wooden torches were set in the brackets on the walls.
Talus shook his head, pre-empting El’s request for her lighter that was in his diving vest. ‘We don’t want to leave any sign that we’ve been here.’ Talus shone his electric torch into the room.
As El trembled in the gloom, Dan handed his torch to her. She shone it ahead. The white beam fell upon a cluster of objects in the cavern. The outline of furniture: chests, tables, chairs, terracotta urns and amphorae. Something beyond the cluster of objects caught her eye. Something taller and shaped like … a person. Her hand shook. The torchlight illuminated a silhouette. She held her breath. Was it the empousa? Then El took in the stone features and form of the woman. Her hand steadied. It was a statue.
Talus’ torch beam swept to the right. Bars stemmed from the ceiling to the floor. He had found a prison cell.
‘Jackpot’, Dan said, pointing at a woman inside the cell.
Her arms were strung up behind her in a pair of manacles. El jumped. The chains were the same she had seen in her dream. This was the place she had seen in her dream. This is where Dan had been chained up.
The woman was slumped forward. A needle rested in her arm, feeding a collection bag. Both El and Talus shone their torches on her, but she didn’t respond. Behind the dark tresses of her hair, El could just make out the woman’s pale face. Was she unconscious or too weak to respond to the light?
Talus’ eyes were wide, but he soon took control of himself. ‘It still doesn’t prove that she’s an empousa. I mean an empousa’s skin is impenetrable, how have they got a cannula in her arm?’
‘Can we do something for her?’ El asked, more concerned with the conditions this woman was being kept in than with what she was.
‘We are doing something,’ Dan said. ‘Once we have proof that the Waseem are taking too much of her blood, the Arete Council can depose them. You can see the bite marks around the needle, Talus. They’ve inserted the needle by getting her to bite herself.’
Talus stared. ‘It’s one thing for the Waseem to be drawing and distributing more empousa blood than is sanctioned but if they’ve moved an empousa to an insecure location…’
Dan took out a vial from his vest pocket.
‘What’s that?’ El asked.
‘Human blood,’ Dan replied. ‘I need photos that show that the woman in there is an empousa. The blood will awaken her.’
Talus was riveted by the woman in the cell. Both he and Dan seemed to be possessed of a shared resolve.
Talus gestured to the vial. ‘Shall I pour while you get the shot?’
He took the stopper out and upturned the container, blood dripping to the floor. The tang of iron filled the air and the empousa’s head snapped up. Wide eyes stared out of a petite face: crazed eyes, tinged with amber. Pointed teeth descended, filling her open mouth. The empousa gnashed at the air in a frenzy as if trying to bite at something. Something like a growl escaped from her throat, more animal than human.
Dan started to take pictures.
El stepped back, her heart hammering as she watched the empousa straining against the chains. As Dan said they would, the restraints held. El stared at the struggling woman, imprisoned by shackles made indestructible by her own blood. It was cruel. Horrible. Dan was right though, they were here to get proof. Presenting it to the Council would hopefully help the empousa.
El thought about how eerily familiar the chains and the cell were: manacles that she’d seen binding Dan’s wrists. Her skin became damp with perspiration. She wanted to get out of here, wanted to leave.
‘El,’ Dan said, ‘your torch is interfering with the photos.’ He was scrolling through the shots he’d taken but all of them were bright with El’s torch beam.
El turned around and pointed the light over to the other side of the room, towards a mishmash pile of furniture and junk. She concentrated on breathing steadily as she had earlier while coming through the submerged tunnel. They’d be out of here soon. They’d be back on the boat.
The clicking of the camera sounded behind El as Dan made another attempt. The empousa still snarled.
El approached the stack of amphorae, which were coated in a thick layer of dust. She wondered how old they were. Talus had said the passageway they’d entered through was thousands of years old. Were these amphorae that old too?
Her foot caught on something. She tripped, stumbling forward. The torch clattered to the ground as she put her hands out to stop herself.
‘El?’ Dan said.
‘I’m alright. Sorry – I tripped.’
Her right hand stung. She picked herself up and inspe
cted it. Great. She’d sliced it on some broken pottery.
Dan had stopped taking pictures. The camera beeped as he flicked through the frames, checking them.
El’s torchlight travelled up to the face of the statue she’d seen earlier, skimming its features. The symmetry of it was perfect. El wondered if it was a reproduction or if it could have fronted an ancient building. She imagined it on a temple, painted in bright colours, resplendent in the sunlight as worshippers came to pray to the gods.
The statue’s hair was sculpted in a braid that fell in a thick weave down its back. El’s light trailed further down the statue, taking in the folds of the beautifully carved robe. They looked so deceptively life-like as if the slightest breeze might stir them.
El was surprised to find her hand outstretched. She couldn’t recall deciding to move but, as the torch beam swept the statue’s face again, the urge to touch it was overwhelming. It was like a magnetic pull. El’s palm cupped the statue’s cheek. She had drawn so close to the marble figure that she could see the gold veins in the creamy marble.
The statue’s cheek felt soft and … warm … lifelike. As if a kerykeion veiling was lifting, the skin of the statue started to swim, changing from cold stone to the warm hues of living flesh. It was the whites of the woman’s eyes that first leapt out at El, their dark irises and the fringe of lashes startling her. The gold-veined marble was now skin, beneath which real veins ran with blood. The statue’s robes had changed too into a dark blue material. The fabric stirred as the woman suddenly gasped for air.
El flinched away from the woman, who fell forwards, toppling into some of the furniture and amphorae which shattered on the floor. The woman keeled over, hitting the ground with a thud.
‘El!’ Dan shouted.
El stood, her hands over her mouth as she gawked at the woman on the ground.
Dan and Talus reached her. They stared.
‘Where did she come from?’ Talus asked.
El swallowed the knot in her throat, tasting the dust that lay thickly in the air from the disturbed junk.
‘She was a statue … I touched her and now she’s—’
‘What is she?’ Dan asked, his eyes darting to Talus.
Talus frowned. ‘If I could phase, I’d be able to check her power, but I can’t—’
‘I touched her cheek…’
Dan crouched down and grasped the woman’s shoulder, turning her over. Her eyes were closed. El examined the other changes her face had undergone. They weren’t full and rounded as the statue’s had been but gaunt. She was emaciated, more wasted than the empousa in the cell behind them, who had now fallen silent. There were deep shadows beneath the woman’s eyes. The bloodstain on her cheek, where El had touched her, was still there.
Talus grabbed El’s bleeding hand, ‘It could have been a veiling of some kind, somehow shifted by serpent blood?’
El magnified her hearing, focusing on the woman’s pulse. It was weaker than it should be.
‘We have to get her to Alex,’ she said.
‘What?’ Talus said.
Dan shook his head. ‘We’re here to get photos, that’s all.’
‘We can’t leave her,’ El said. ‘What will happen when the Waseem find her? Do you think they’ll help her? They’ll think she’s a trespasser.’
Dan frowned. ‘But she’s in no fit state to get out the passage.’
‘Wait,’ Talus said. ‘What if it wasn’t your blood, El – serpent blood – that woke her, but the empousa blood. We’ve all taken some to enter the Waseem’s territory.’
‘Dan, the empousa blood you took from the fridge, give it to me,’ El demanded.
Dan was still scowling but removed the vial from his pocket.
El parted the woman’s lips, pouring the blood into her mouth. Within seconds, her eyelids fluttered open and her breathing, although laboured, was apparent.
‘Time to go,’ Dan said, leaning down and scooping the woman up. She didn’t stir, cradled against him like a child.
Talus looked suspiciously at the woman. ‘Who knows if she’ll make it out the passage with us or not.’
‘We’ve got to try,’ El said.
Talus pocketed another vial of empousa blood from the fridge to replace the one they’d given to the woman.
‘Take a few more,’ El said, ‘in case she weakens.’
‘No,’ Dan said, glowering, ‘we’ve taken enough. We’re trying to leave as few signs that we’ve been here as possible.’
El grudgingly acquiesced. She hoped Alex would have an idea of how to treat this mysterious woman without empousa blood.
Dan went down into the passage first, passing the woman to Talus, who then passed her carefully back down to him. He had to drag her along the low-ceilinged passage. When they got back to their kit, Dan checked his camera and torch were secure before getting the equipment on. The woman mutely submitted to Dan slipping the regulator into her mouth.
They all descended, checking their equipment was okay before entering the tunnel. The unknown woman hung limply by Dan’s side in the water, despite the way he supported her against him. El worried that she had stopped breathing, the flow of bubbles from her mouthpiece were fewer than those that came from the rest of them. Now and then, her head flopped too, reminding El of the drowned people from her nightmares.
Five minutes later, they all exited the tunnel and surfaced.
The boat was only a short distance away, but Talus held them back. ‘Don’t say anything of the empousa’s presence to anyone else. That information is to be shared with Yia Yia alone.’
After both El and Dan agreed, they swam over to the yacht. Once they boarded there was a frenzy of activity: Eirene steered the boat away as they all de-kitted and they heard with relief that Uma had been dropped off without any trouble. It wasn’t until they were out of Waseem territory and nearing Kea that they talked about the unexpected cargo they’d brought back.
Eirene got the woman out of her sodden dress and bundled her into a bathrobe. As El helped wrestle the woman into the robe, she noted her clearly defined ribcage, how her hipbones stuck out, and that her chest was almost flat. She was starving. They left her lying on the couch, barely conscious.
Near Kea harbour, El examined the dress that they’d removed from the woman. It wasn’t so much a dress as some sort of ancient-style of garment: one long swathe of material which had been pinned at the shoulders. She couldn’t remember what they were called but recognised it from history books. She tried to get Eirene’s take on it but she was busy watching Talus leave in the RIB to bring the others back from the marina.
‘What does it matter?’ Eirene murmured. She looked dejected as she went down below deck, adding, ‘Once Talus is back, it’s home to the snake. Then we’re all screwed.’
- Chapter Nineteen -
More than Meets the Eye
Once the others were back on board Alex turned his attention to the mysterious woman they’d rescued. He proposed drawing blood from El, Dan and Talus, who had all imbibed empousa blood in the last hour. The woman was set up in one of the cabins, a makeshift IV slowly feeding the blood into her system. For the time being she seemed stable.
Talus set course again for Carras Island. Robin Hood, Jim and Giuseppe, who Dan had sailed with to Kea, followed on a second yacht. As they all set out again, El didn’t feel the triumph she’d expected despite all they had achieved. They’d done what they needed to: Dan was safe and they had the photos to prove the Waseem’s misconduct. Surely the latter would count for something in Yia Yia’s eyes. But Eirene’s continued despondency permeated El, casting a shadow over their return journey.
Talus seemed distracted by the discovery of the empousa. He sat alone for most of the afternoon at the front of the boat. It must have been frustrating for him, not to be able to phase out and find out who and what the woman was. The promise he’d elicited from Dan and her played on El’s mind. She remembered what Alex had told her while in London about the empousa: the
y were beings that only the most senior Order members knew about. Talus had been staggered to find that there really was an empousa being held in the villa. She wondered where the empousa was supposed to be and how many of them existed.
For a couple of hours the yacht sailed east, making the most of the evening light. As dusk licked its way along the horizon, a squall halted their progress forcing them to anchor for the night in a sheltered cove. The second yacht moored further down the bay.
Even El’s short hair was rustled by the wind and she realised happily that her locks had grown over the last few weeks. She still wasn’t pleased with the reddish colour and the blonde roots showing didn’t make it any better. At least it was growing out. Its movement around her face made her feel more like her old self. She was also pleased that they weren’t attempting to travel through the storm. For the last couple of hours, as the seas grew rougher, she’d experienced bouts of queasiness.
As night fell, Alex cooked up a seafood risotto. He’d picked up provisions for them in Kea and they all tucked into the dish, along with some wine. Jim, Giuseppe and Zoe stayed on the second boat, engrossed in a high stakes game of Mahjong, but Robin joined them for the meal.
Over dinner, the discussion centred on the mysterious addition that they’d brought back from the Waseem Villa.
‘The small amount of empousa blood seems to be keeping her stable,’ Alex said. ‘I suspect that it was the empousa blood in you, El, that healed her and woke her in the first place.’
‘But why didn’t I foresee her?’ Talus said. ‘I checked the timeline multiple times before I took empousa blood and she didn’t appear at all. That’s what I don’t understand.’
Dan piped up, ‘If she’d drawn a kerykeion to veil herself, surely the Waseem would have detected that and discovered her?’
As the seconds wound on and the unanswered questions hung in the air, everyone fell into their own musings. El caught Luke’s gaze across the table. He was worried for her; she noticed the crease between his eyebrows and experienced the urge to reassure him.
