Context fades.
She flicks through the earlier pages. “Lots more like that. Thinking that if I’d been about I’d have tried to lock you up too, Albie. Political hits too. Witches always wondered why there were no masters older than you. Sure they were monsters too but a few must have been okay. Law of averages. Answers are in here. You killed them all. Every last one, took a millenia. Some for reason, some for fun, some for…”
“Always a good reason” says Stanley.
“There was a very good reason. Nothing fun about the art of pruning the tree so it grows true.” All for good reason.
“Killing your own maker, that’s a fresh one. Though you killed your own family immediately you were turned and destroyed your city so maybe you were angry about that or it was that blood thirst you’re so hot on. Old Camelle seems pretty well adjusted set against you. Oh.” She flicks forward. “This one’s your own get, killed for rallying a revolt against you in the council and ordering the destruction of some ruins. Then there’s… for a protector of humanity you’ve killed a lot of them too. Goodies, baddies, heroes, kings and queens, peasants in the fields.”
“Cities sacked and burned. And from the records you were enjoying yourself something rotten. Until you got ha! You got buried by the Pharaoh and stuck there for two hundred years. Inhumation seems to be a bit of a hazard for you doesn’t it, Lumpy me old lad?”
She flips through the oldest book once more, towards the beginning, a period of fire and blood that I will not remember. “I’ll give you that one. I can just about see how you could con yourself into thinking that one was in the best interests of humanity but come on…”
“You kill and you kill and you love killing. Then as you age, the excuses begin, but the killing does not, it just moves from us to your own. Even the ghouls at the farm, killed to gain our trust, did you put them there yourself? Sounds like the sort of shit you’d run.”
Maybe, it’s all a bit blurry and if I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have had… Enough with this.
I move forward. The cat’s eyes flare but there’s not much in this world that can stop me when I am so minded. Nan herself might have required more than a modicum of effort but Ariadne’s suggestion is correct. Force at a distance minus fulcrum is the cube of… something or other. I brush her objections aside and her mind, and those of her coven, recoils.
Ariadne’s grin becomes fixed as my claws click closed on her wrist. There is silence for a moment as the wards protecting her fuse away in electrical sparks, a malfunctioning generator, crossed wires. All that jazz.
“And you know why you did it? Why you started to try and help out? Master Lump?” Last bit comes out as a screech of terror. She is a brave woman, but I am who I am.
I am what I am.
I close the book and let go of her wrist.
“I would rather not know to be truthful young lady. I can be trusted to try to do the right thing despite my past, as I am who I am now, we all are who we are now.” I emphasise the ‘now’ each time. “Many of us have pasts we have chosen to forget. In my case…” I brush some dust off my shoulders, there are explosions from nearby that are causing debris to fall throughout the catacombs, the alarms are a din that hurts my ears and much closer.
“In my case I have little choice in the matter. I do not believe it would be possible for me to remember everything I have done, and if I did it would mean I would not have risen from my tomb as the weight of it would have crushed me.”
I can feel the memories contained in the book leaking through the paper. Some of the stories were recorded in the arcane languages of yesteryear so are magically active. I feel like I am navigating unknown waters with the tides pushing and pulling me. Yet there is a point there, a destination.
Something I am missing. I pinch my nose, something I am missing. Why are things like they are and what does that bloody secretary want that meant I had to be buried away?
More memories, the older ones are filtering into clarity. I should wait. I am supposed to be here. I have something to exorcise. I came up with the plan that led to this world but I feel responsible when I should not. It is why I must make things better and why my past is staring at me from the recesses of this library.
“What are you…”
“Shush Ariadne. We’re good. I need to think for a moment.”
Flashes of vision, I remember a two wheeled chariot driving over a young family and a laugh. It is my laugh. An insult shouted out to someone far away, my voice deep and booming with power, speaking something like Greek. I have always hated carriages, horses, my Greek is atrocious.
“I feel if I can remember this, I could have something important. If I understand why something happened I can work backwards, repair the damage, and there is… too much I don’t know. It’s all here. I will explain.”
Dead witches falling from the air. No cause. No reason. To know him is to die.
A city is burning around us. My troops have sacked it days ago, the majority of the population chased down and left broken around the fields of olives and grain. The temples burnt and the offerings scattered. Only the God King and his family and retainers remain. Why did I keep them back when I slew the priests?
A scream of anguish from far away, I laugh again but I cannot see the source of the sound.
I’ve lost it. The alarms are too loud and I have a nagging feeling I owe Ariadne more of an explanation. There is a strange pull to the knowledge that I shall follow when I may.
Instead I settle the shaken witch in a soft chair. Emmet will ensure we are not disturbed. “Dear girl, there will be lots of records in there of horrible things I have done, as I myself am a horrible thing and it seems my friends and my enemies have noted every single atrocity I have performed, but there will be other books, as yet unwritten of what I will do. Perhaps with friends to help me. To keep me grounded.”
“I don’t know Lumpy. I see you here and I read about…”
The nagging feeling at the back of my mind is back. A link between the pasts I have experienced. If I could only remove that itch to know the trial it could all come together. “Oh. So close. Could you do anything about those alarms?”
“Ah, sure.” She gestures and the sounds muffle around us. Threads of meaning damping them down to a bearable level.
I flick to the end of the records with my free hand. Records of my capture. Records of those in favour of my trial and how they voted, all written in Serah’s secretary’s cramped hand. The records of the debates, each time a point of order from the Chair as advised by the Secretary to curtail debate on my virtues, to strengthen the hand of my enemies. All the bad and none of the good. Just as with the witch’s reading of my past.
Confirmation. The decision of the council was unanimous. I was a threat to everyone and everything around me, even if my intentions were good. And there was much discussion on the missteps, the balloon thing, the locusts plan, the issue with the ferrets. That test run of the volcanoes back when everyone wore togas and wrote execrable poetry.
The dead masters, the destroyed cities. The experiments. A deep breath.
“My future. I would like it if you Ariadne – or whatever your real name is – helped me to write those chapters – to our mutual benefit. And you too Nan – I can see you there still. There is good in this universe and I want to be part of that, not… that. That is gone.”
I remember looking up from my tomb, held in place as my friends are killed before my eyes, blood draining into the channels cut before them by my enemies. In the warm darkness, in the chanting of the combined council. Is it fear or ignorance that drives them? Were any there who fought my corner at the last?
Solution.
The record is clear. No one spoke for me. All watched as I was driven into the darkness. If I could look at the mob, they would all have been there. Even Serah, a note of regret in her chanted formula but also relief that they would no longer have to live in fear that they would be sacrificed to my dubious judgement.
<
br /> Humanity better off without my direct intervention even if my ideas lived on in more humane form.
And standing next to her, recording the event in perfect detail, a familiar face.
Knowledge pulls at me. A whirlpool that drags me from the paths I had been drifting along down into the darkness of my past. I fight the pull.
Why is Adam’s face familiar? I never met him. He avoided me, we corresponded, he met every other master, attended their meetings. A personal dislike according to Serah; I had thought it was a mix of respect and ill-considered fear, for what is there to fear from me? My knowledge comes from some other time. I concentrate on my recovered memories from the book of my deeds, and snatch at the truth as the moment drifts past me, maddeningly down into the darkness.
I try again, and again but each time the face sails away pulled into the whirlpool in a predetermined arc I cannot change with all my strength.
I not a fool. I know what must be done. I cease my resistance to the pull and I descend into the swirling darkness where Adam waits.
A despairing howl as I drive my chariot over a bound family, the hooves of my dead horses smashing and crushing the life out of them before the wheels bounce over their bodies with a jolt that smashes skulls.
A scene on a dock at a city of white washed buildings and golden temples where death priests lay in their own blood. The Captain of the King’s guards drawn out to fight a battle far away at sea by means of a faked message from a slain Overlord. My ships arrive and sack the city, kill his lord and kill his family.
Why should anyone have a family?
That familiar face stands watching me from the prow of a ship, in the then and in the now, as I turn away and leave the ruins of his life and city behind me, whole kingdoms before me to burn, pillage and deep in the mists of time. I see an oath made by a broken man to another in multi-coloured robes by a dry stone wall. I see a singular purpose to ruin the race of vampires by leaving them in a world without hope, without sustenance as in my hopeless fifth plan.
A dead planet is useless to vampires, no food and endless gnawing hunger. A fitting revenge for a man who dedicated himself to it. The last piece of knowledge locks into place and I understand what I face.
I…
There is nothing but Adam and he moves to take me into death’s embrace. He is too late. I died long ago.
Look up.
The alarms are back and the explosions are close now.
“I understand.”
Ariadne stands from her chair. “Whatever it is you have been up to, I think we might need to be moving soon.”
“I agree.” I smile. “There is nothing more here. I have the answers that I wanted, as painful as those are, and the answers that I needed to make up for some of my former missteps. The question I pose to you, dear girl, is whether you would care to join me in achieving them?”
She looks up with a bright smile. “Well if I don’t then from what I’ve read you’ll probably just murder me.”
I pull a face. I make it as non-threatening as possible.
The sound of automatic rifles nearby and a shriek.
“Got everything you need?”
“I believe so.” On all counts.
“Kay, lets go.” Ariadne takes off her hat and shakes her dark locks out. “Can’t believe you thought anyone actually spoke the way I did Master Lumpy.”
I grimace. “That stupid nickname really is part of the deal though isn’t it?”
“Oh yes. But I can lose the stereotypical swearing I suppose.” She sniffs the air. “Well. Here we are. Is that fighting I hear?”
“Yes, I think my friends are having a visit from the Union, we need to get Emmet and get away from here as quickly as possible. I have a destination and we have a journey ahead of us. I take it you’ll be coming along? You’re very welcome.”
“She’ll be going with you, the coven’s concerns have been answered Albrecht, but I’ll be bringing Hemlock home.” Hemlock is quite the surprising cat. He is particularly surprising when he’s speaking with Aunty Clem’s voice.
I gesture to the door, taking one last look back at the records of my life. The ghosts are fading, Johnson gives me one last wave, Helene takes his hand and they step back into the dark. Stanley follows. Even my dear wife who I have forgotten for so long fades with a sigh.
Then I take a determined step forwards, away from the library, with Ariadne and Hemlock and Emmet following me back through the catacombs to the guest quarters.
Hemlock is trotting along besides us, chattering away. “Unfortunately, Nan’s suffered a little when you did you trick with Ariadne’s wrist, so you’ll be dealing with me for a bit.”
“I apologise to you and Nan, though I am a little disappointed in you, you must know how foolish it is to try and stop me when you’re not even on the same plane of existence?”
“A hard lesson, but one we’d all learn again were it needed. Nan has a soft spot for Ariadne. She’s the baby of the coven. A talented but self-willed baby.”
“Aww and hey” says Ariadne. We are making good time. I can see the flash of lights around her as the coven protect her from the ambient radiation in this part of the catacombs. Behind us, along the corridors that lead back to the room where my history is written I see my friends smiling from the shadows as they fade into the past once more.
35
Union
We turn at the end of the corridor up to the world of ice and scarlet cloud light, and are confronted with a skirmish in media res.
A single armoured soldier in black and blue is fighting a dozen vampires who swarm around him like wolves. The fight is not as one sided as I would have expected. Our young are fast and strong, but his armour seems to give him the strength to toss them around like children, whilst his weapons stab light into pale flesh causing burning wounds that incapacitate with pain reducing the odds.
I push my companions back and prepare to engage but more vampires approach from the side of the guest quarters, led by Camelle and one of his long-nailed sidekicks. A hail of bullets from the ghouls knocks the man in blue and black down to one knee and the survivors of the initial pack of young vampires leap forward to feed.
Camelle screams at them “Back you idiots, back…”
The soldier’s fist closes around a globe that had been concealed in his palm. A puff of Verdigris gas stinking of age and copper emerges. It swirls in the dusty air climbing upwards and outwards greedily. Where it touches, his assailants contort, spines cracking into agonised bows and muscles twisting under their skin, working against them, their veins turning black, dark lines arcing upwards and back to their hearts.
The soldier gives a single cough as he inhales the gas and dies. I sense triumph from him as he passes, and agony from my colleagues as they reach their end.
Camelle curses and a couple of the ghouls race forward with long tubes held out, which spray the dead with a water like concoction contained in spray tanks carried on their backs.
He sees me. “Hey, you. We need to evacuate, the MDR is here.”
“MDR? Like the troopers?” I look down at the broken man. “Like this one?”
“Exactly. Wasps. Get it now?” He gestures at the dead body of the soldier as his compatriots work on the doors to the next area. “More will be coming, swarms of the fucking things. They’re here in force…”
“We think they’re after you” says Miri. She has somehow got behind me. “You need to leave before everything is ruined.”
“You or the library, but if they’d wanted the library they could have come any time in the last decade.” adds Camelle. “And you know what? Damn the library, they can have it. Mouldy books no use to anyone and I hope the radiation kills a whole heap. We have to get you out of here. And your companions.”
“Or the message, maybe they want that?” I muse. “Maybe they’ve been speaking to the Colonel?”
“Message? No time. Tell me later.”
He consults a map handed to him by Mi
ri, it has the new tunnels from the Colonel’s note drawn on it in ink pen. The marks running from condensation dripping from the fittings. “Nearest escape tunnel is here.” He turns to one of his long-nailed friends. “Double time if you don’t mind, leave everything.”
We scuttle along a side corridor, Emmet falls behind as there are sections which he is too wide to pass, and he is required to make a path. There is more gunfire from up ahead and Miri is scanning the walls for hidden panels as we slow to a halt.
A hint of the toxin on the air makes my nose tickle.
“This one’s a bust.” Camelle says, “need to switch, asap. Anything?”
“Here” she says and pushes a stone into the wall. Nothing happens.
“Miri?” Camelle’s coughing as are his companions. It is an unnatural thing for a vampire.
“No wait. My bad. Here.” This time the stone she pushes sinks back and through a series of grinding counterweights a door is revealed, warded with old runes. She recoils. “Fuck.”
“God in heaven,” says Camelle, “Can we not catch a break today?”
The runes are specifically designed to repel non Masters. This would appear to have been my colleagues bolt hole in a storm. Though a bolt hole would surely fill with water?
“If I may assist?” I make the appropriate gestures and the runes twist into lines and then shiver out of existence. The the hidden door slides open. The corridor beyond slopes up and I can feel the slightest hint of cold air playing against my face without even the hint of the Union’s toxic gas.
The others feel it too. I can see it in the sudden hope in in their eyes. I am more dubious. No gas, but there is a hint of copper and primer powder on my tongue.
Miri smiles and touches her nose. “A good sign.”
A small group of Camelle’s followers scramble up from behind us, fleeing the catacombs. Noting my burdens an elderly ghoul with faded blue gang tattoos takes our bags with a bow which I return. Tradition holds everything here even in the darkest of moments.
Master In His Tomb Page 29
