Death of Connor Sanderson: Prequel to Fire & Ice Series (Fire & Ice - Prequel)

by Karen Payton Holt

  The boys fell to their knees, and the world went black as Malachi screwed his eyes tightly shut, and bellowed. His rage and pain was a potent cocktail of despair.

  Connor felt the pain too, for a moment, before it eased, and he knew that the vision was over.

  Chapter 10

  Connor wanted to stay to see the rest, and his throat muscles worked as he tried to find the words, but it was over. He still could not breathe until the mid-brown, tumbled outcrops of rock faded. The glossy sheen of the white tiles of the morgue walls rose to the surface like a layer of frost, and he was once more standing on solid ground. Gripping onto the edge of an empty autopsy table, he stared into the aged, wizened face of the thousands of years old Malachi.

  “So, you and your brother were buried inside the tomb?” croaked Connor, horrified.

  “Yes.”

  “What caused the structure to cave in?”

  Malachi’s thin lips bowed in a resigned smile. “My master had enemies. And Numu and I were the lucky ones. They wanted my pharaoh to rot in hell, his soul un-cleansed. While the preparations were only half done, they severed the ropes that held the counter weights in place. I remember lying there on the floor, hearing the grinding noise as rock moved slowly over the stones, and the shuffling dunes made the air so thick that I could not breathe. I was choking, dying...” Malachi’s smile became spiteful. “It turned out to be only the beginning.”

  “But in the vision, you were only a boy.” Connor frowned. “Vampires do not grow.”

  “No, we were buried alive, along with eight others. The inner chambers of a pyramid did not collapse.” Malachi’s eyes glistened as he said, “I think you can guess the rest. Numu and I stayed in hiding. We dug out a hole behind that statue in the ceremonial chamber, and we stole some of the food the demon brought in for the group. He fed on the servants, but he kept them alive, at least, until their hearts gave out.”

  “He did not know you and Numu were there?”

  “We did not think so. We became braver, and sat with the others around the altar candles, telling fables, and painting our own stories onto the walls. They accepted that the stranger who left the food demanded sacrifices in return. It didn’t seem so bad after a while.”

  “So, you were being kept like cattle?”

  “Exactly that. The warriors remained strong for the longest time. And then the wounds in their necks refused to heal, weeping. When the thin trickle of clear blood flowed down over their chests in a trail that glistened in the candle light, I started counting down their final days.”

  Malachi’s long pale fingers scraped through his lackluster hair and his fingertips trailed over the sinews in his neck, to where, Connor imagined, the bites he suffered could still be felt.

  “We thought he did not know about us, but, we were wrong, of course. When he ran out of food, he came for us.” Malachi’s expression became distant as he continued. “He found the stone behind which we were hiding, my brother and I. He kept us alive for many years, until we grew from children into men. When I, too, finally became weak, after years of waiting to die, I was relieved. And then, the pyramid slabs shifted, and another avalanche filled the tomb with a tide of rushing sand.”

  “So, the others, he killed. Why not you?”

  Malachi focused on Connor’s face. “I don’t know for certain.” Malachi’s dry throat crackled as he laughed. “Perhaps if the tomb had not collapsed... I think in his way, he was saving me.”

  Rousing himself as though from a waking dream, Connor’s words stuck in his thickened throat. “You? Only you survived?”

  “Survival is an interesting notion. I existed. I think the demon regretted his act somehow, because, the very night it was done, he left. And, for decades, I never knew other vampires existed.”

  Connor, despite the terrifying agony of the last twenty-four hours, began to wonder what would have become of him if Malachi had run. He felt a wave of unexpected gratitude. “I guess, if I can’t be glad you bit me, I can thank you for this, for helping me now.”

  An evasive look clouded the oyster shell sheen of Malachi’s gaze, and Connor was touched by doubt.

  “I felt I owed it to you. A debt to repay. But, if you are to survive, you must know there are others in London. You are not alone. There are rules and consequences to your existence.”

  “Consequences?”

  Malachi nodded. “It’s not just a case of avoiding direct sunlight. You have to become strong or other vampires will sense your vulnerability. We are good at sniffing out the weak.”

  “And I become strong by feeding?”

  “Feeding, yes. But covering your tracks is critical. The Undead Council in London has no patience for vampires who threaten to expose us. They... Principal Julian, will order your internment if you threaten that.”

  ‘Council? What on earth?” Monsters roaming by chance was one thing, but the notion that there were enough of them to become ‘an organization’? Connor swallowed noisily.

  Malachi locked gazes with Connor. “It should not be so surprising. Hunger must be controlled. The deterrent must be compelling.”

  “Internment? So, he, this principal, won’t kill me? How...” The question Connor wanted to ask evaded him. His human understanding did not extend to things worse than death.

  “Death would be too easy.”

  Connor’s mouth hung open, while he still tried to work out how death could be easy.

  Malachi suddenly closed the gap between them and whispered, “Trust me.”

  Connor’s collar pulled tight as a bony, vise-like grip closed around it. A rush of warm air preceded the feeling of hurtling through the space. His preternatural vision allowed Connor to fully comprehend the speed Malachi moved at, the walls of the ice-colored hospital corridors becoming a surreal toboggan run.

  Like obstacles in a ten-pin bowling alley, the hospital staff going about their duties hurtled towards him, frozen in mid stride or mid word. Malachi effortlessly avoided them. Although the wash of their vampire flight startled the humans, their ruffled hair and chilled human skin making them feel as though someone had walked over their graves.

  Outside the hospital, Connor concentrated on the darkened deserted streets whipping past, but soon gave up on trying to work out where they were going. I’ll just have to trust him. Connor knew he should be afraid, but when he met Malachi, gut instinct told him that the vampire was his savior.

  When the ornate gates of Kensal Cemetery came into view, Malachi stopped before them and released Connor. “Follow me.”

  Shrugging to settle his shirt back into place, Connor nodded.

  “This way.” Malachi’s hollow whisper echoed inside Connor’s head as he watched the angular bony figure move forward.

  Malachi scraped his fingernails scraped over the stone blocks of the cemetery walls, easily finding near invisible seams to grip onto. Using the ornate carvings in the masonry as footholds, he quickly scaled the wall and disappeared over the top.

  Connor arrived at the top of the wall in time to see Malachi drop and land silently on the lush grass on the other side.

  Without hesitation, Connor followed him across the graveyard. He had a surreal moment of wondering why the grass in cemeteries always felt thick and lustrous.

  They came to a halt outside the rusted gates of a mausoleum. Malachi effortlessly eased the seized rusted hinges open and went inside. Connor glanced around at the deserted landscape of moss-covered tombstones and quickly followed.

  The musty air inside the tomb felt like breathing in dirt, and without thinking Connor stopped breathing. He heard the sound of grating stone and a shiver trickled through him. It felt eerily creepy, and every human sense he still had, screamed ‘run’, and he may have, if Malachi’s heavy hand had not descended onto his shoulder and nudged him forward.

  Even in the darkness, Connor found he could see more than he wished. Looking down at a shrunken figure lying in the sarcophagus, he was poised to ask Malachi what he was supposed
to be looking for, when he heard, rather than saw the eyelids dragging back over dry eyeballs, and a pair of oil-black eyes stared up at him.

  “He’s alive!” Connor jerked back.

  “Barely.” Malachi said, “This is The Butcher. He is serving a sentence of eternal death, at the command of Principal Julian.”

  “Eternal death?” The words punched a hole in Connor’s chest.

  “Yes. This is your warning. The Butcher killed humans and almost revealed our existence to the living. We cannot have that. We are the thing of nightmares, the boogieman that rattles bones in the closet of human fancy. It is one thing to be a creature of myth or legend, but The Butcher crossed the line. He coined the term serial killer, leaving a trail of bodies littering his hunting ground, and was nearly our undoing.”

  “So, this is his punishment? To slowly shrivel and die?”

  “Shrivel, yes. Die, no.” Malachi eased the stone lid back in place. “He is regularly fed a small dose of human blood, enough to preserve his brain function, and to allow him to suffer. Principal Julian is not a vampire to be crossed, Doctor Connor. Make sure you learn the lessons I teach you, well.”

  A sense of fatality filtered into Connor’s mind as he stared into Malachi’s alert crystal clear eyes. “You don’t save all your victims, do you? Why me?”

  “I sense strength in you, power which would have been wasted in the shallow pools of being human. Call it sixth sense, every few hundred years I come across a soul too important to let die. You have a purpose, of that I am sure.”

  Connor tolerated the probing assessment of Malachi’s opaque eyes. “Of course, you must learn how to hunt. Meet me here tomorrow at sunset.”

  “Hunt?” His questions rose to choke him, but Malachi disappeared, leaving only laughter rippling through the air and stroking over Connor’s sensitized skin like a wave through water.

  Emerging alone from the mausoleum into the still dark night, Connor had no reason to stay. He straightened his jacket and found himself at the bottom of the steps leading up to the students’ quarters at the hospital before he had fully realized the thought. He did not need to sleep, but he did need somewhere to hide and to digest the maelstrom of thoughts rambling around inside his mind.

  I have to be careful of that, he thought, as he pulled himself to a dead halt, pressing the indent of his thumb pad into the copper doorknob. As he stepped into the bleached-white glare of the corridor, his pupils closing down to a pinprick of glacier-blue awareness, he heard a scream.

  It was the distant keening of breathless pain, and, his training stepping in, he took off. Remembering to travel the maze of corridors at vampire slow, he hugged curves and took sharp corners like a heat-seeking missile. He mapped out the terrain as a vista of thudding pulse rates, warm moisture-laden respiration, and fever hot skin.

  Reducing his speed to the urgent walk of an attending physician, he burst into the medical ward and joined the cluster of two nurses and a burly porter, as they tried to restrain a patient who reared and writhed in pain. The sheet covering his body billowed and sagged on one side where his left leg had once been.

  The honey-soaked sweet smell of blood swelled Connor’s hungry nasal lining until air could not pass.

  Connor’s presence invaded their consciousness as he stepped forward and, with a well-placed shoulder, shunted the porter aside.

  With his cold hands drawing a gasp from the patient’s agonized mouth, his skin scalding to Connor’s touch, he immobilized the man effortlessly and, locking eyes with the muddy delirium, Connor’s stillness seeped into the tense body.

  Both nurses launched into an explanation, at once. “He just started screaming, Doctor Sanderson. Fred did his best, but he is demented with the pain. Tore the gauze from his wound. He’s so strong.”

  One nurse stopped talking, absorbing Connor’s almost casual grip on the relaxed man’s shoulders and a frown chased across her features.

  Connor arranged his face into a smile, injecting warmth to melt the ice in his eyes as he said quietly, “Well done, Mary. The patient has clearly exhausted himself, energy drains away so fast in the sick.”

  Not allowing her to analyze more than the reassuring tone, he began a quick examination. He flipped back the sheet where the ruby-red stain blossomed, the red leeching into the snowy fibers in an intricate pattern like fingers of frost. A spasm slammed his throat shut and he drove determinedly past the poker-hot stab of ravenous greed twisting inside his gut.

  He examined the amputation stump, grateful when his cold fingers helped stem the bleeding, and, using that unexpected benefit, he molded his cold palm over the wound and barked instructions at the distracted nurses.

  Their stuttering speech and clattering nerves suddenly made something crystal clear. He measured distended pupils and the layers of delicate perspiration on their brows. The pheromone drenched aroma of attraction was almost his undoing as he ground out through clenched teeth, “Morphine, five milliliters, now! Nurse Green, ice pack. Move!”

  Packing and dressing the wound was accomplished at a frustratingly slow human speed, when all he really wanted to do was escape.

  Are all the bloomin’ nurses attracted to me? Why have I never noticed? Making a hastily retreat to his room in the students’ quarters, he laid out on his bed. Closing his eyes, he wished for sleep, but knew he would never again experience the oblivion of all thought that humans sleep embraced.

  Chapter 11

  The hospital corridors were deserted, although he could hear the labored breathing of the patients on the medical wards. They were diseased, consumptive, and death rattled in their chests.

  Should I put them out of their misery? Choose a meal that will find relief in my attentions?

  He considered it for barely a hair’s breadth, and then with a hideous grin, he headed out of the hospital. Leaping the set of eighteen stone steps and landing as silently as a shadow, he flitted along the sidewalk, weaving tauntingly in and out of the glow cast by the gas-lamps, flirting with the human imagination of those that caught a glimpse if they glanced out of their windows. His white face floated like a magician’s illusion, a pale-gray ethereal orb with the bowed gash of a sinister smile, and even moving at speed, his vampire senses collected the satisfying odor of dopamine drenched skin, as the flesh on human necks prickled with unease.

  He unerringly retraced the route the carriage and four had traveled merely hours before and, as the dark silhouette of Cranham Hall fractured the blanket of stars in the sky, each tall chimney reaching hungrily for the sharp pin pricks of light, hunger of his own scythed through his windpipe and dragged a path into his gut.

  “Nearly there.”

  The stones of the gravel driveway rattled nervously as he skimmed over their dew soaked faces. He swung left to the servants’ entrance, still undecided on his victim. The scullery maids would rise at four a.m. and the dairy delivery would be soon after.

  He stopped at the solid oak door and, pressing his hands to its warm surface, he closed his eyes and inhaled the moist warmth of the house full of slumbering humans. He scored a line around the small pane of glass with a diamond hard nail and dislodged it with a sharp tap.

  Reaching through and unbolting the door, he shouldered the door with the clumsiness of a human intruder. To twist the handle and mangle the metal inside would cause the police to be suspicious. And that will not do.

  Once inside, he passed into the bowels of the house. The brass pans hanging over the large wooden chopping bench swung in his wake. The stable boy was asleep in his cot. Stopping briefly in the door of his sleeping alcove, the intruder swung away and mounted the stone steps which gave way to carpet covered floor boards on the first floor level.

  He crossed the line where grubby oatmeal carpet met the sumptuous burgundy twill of thick hand-woven wool, and ascended the impressive central staircase.

  His hand folded carefully over the wooden balustrade, stroking it through his grip, its warm, smooth polished texture reminding him
of the time, before his turning, when he had touched a copper hot-water pipe and burned his palm. The sweeping rail whipped through his fingers as he glided up the thick-carpeted treads of the stairs. Even a human intruder would delight in effortless stealth. The rich were easy pickings.

  His reflection flitted across the glass plated silver-foiled mirrors, the imperfect distortions giving him pause as shadows cut across his features and his eyes glittered like ice-chips in blackened sockets. He anticipated the scream that would tear from human lungs if he allowed the victim sight of his face, and decided blood thickened with the adrenalin of heart stopping terror was a delicacy he could not resist.

  The servants’ quarters were in the attic of the house, and their access was via a much less impressive rear stairway. The vampire paused on the landing. On one side, the balustrade formed a barrier to the sheer drop to the parquet floor of the entrance hall, and on his other, was a row of richly carved oak doors. A heartbeat thrummed behind each one; the Cranham family slept.

  Moving swiftly to the last chamber in the row of eight, the preternatural intruder entered the near black room, and, with a wet smile, he lit a candlestick on the mantel piece, watching with satisfaction as his shadow danced over the forest-green velvet drapes of the four-poster bed.

  It will be no fun, if he does not see me.

  The drapes formed a shield, keeping out the draughts which whistled through the gaps in the window frames, and preventing a chill penetrating the cotton of a gentleman’s nightshirt.

  Opening the drapes with a decisive sweep, the brass rings rattled and the slumbering man turned swiftly.

  His eyes shot open, and he pushed his black hair back from his face. His assailant allowed him to shoot up to a sitting position, and even, not surprisingly, reach for the dagger he kept hidden under a cushion.

  Of course, he would be watching his back. Much good it will do him.