The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith

by Clay; Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith

  Kelvin then handed the note to Admiral Kilwas, who read it quickly and leapt to his feet in alarm. Clark stood too, his hand going instinctively to his holster.

  "What's wrong?" the senator barked.

  Lord Kelvin looked at the admiral's ashen face for confirmation. Clearly he hadn't misread the message. It was, in fact, the end of the world.

  The prime minister regarded Senator Clark and said with dour precision, "The court has just received a message from Colonel Anhalt, the commander of Her Imperial Highness the princess's household guard. Her Imperial Highness the princess Adele's ship was attacked. It went down with great loss of life. Her Imperial Highness the princess is missing. It is assumed she was taken by the vampires."

  "Oh no," Lord Aden breathed.

  "Taken? Or killed?" Clark asked coldly.

  "We do not know. We have no idea where she is. Or if she is alive now."

  "Well then for now we'll assume she's alive." Clark straightened his saber. "Take me to the emperor. It's time to start a war."

  Lord Kelvin nodded sadly and closed his schedule book.

  CHAPTER

  O WAS A charnel house.

  Adele smelled the city long before she saw it. Desolate hours had passed locked in the cabin of the squalid airship with only her thoughts of her poor brother for company. With the sunrise, she was allowed on deck under watchful eyes. She wra pped herself in a stinking blanket to ward off trembling that was only partly caused by the damp chill air.

  When the shadow of the airship had passed from the slate sea onto the rolling green of southern England, Adele felt a spark of fascination growing that gratefully distanced her from her situation. The country far below was the land of her father's ancestors, a realm of legends and heroes held in highest esteem by her family. Of course, no one in the royal family had living memory of Britain, but many treasured relics had been spirited away in the chaotic years of the vampire onslaught. The imperial palace in Alexandria held paintings of the English landscape that, to Adele, might as well have been another planet. But here now she gazed down on that mythic landscape. It had grown much wilder since those grand days of gentlemanly squires showing their prize heifers, but the lines of fields and pastures were still visible from the air. However, towns and villages were ruined and largely abandoned, with only rare and infrequent trails of smoke betraying the existence of the vampires' human herds.

  Suddenly, a wretched stench overwhelmed Adele. She coughed and covered her face with the disgusting blanket. Nothing she had ever experienced matched the vile odor wafting up toward her-not even the slums of Cairo in summer. The reason for the stench loomed on the northern horizon. A dark shape squatted along the shining line of a river. It was London, the great city. London, the seat of the vampire clan that ruled Britain.

  There were many accounts of nineteenth-century London as it had been before the vampires came. The young princess had been amazed by descriptions and pictures of the city's grandeur. It had been the center of art and science and technology, the center of the world. Now it was the heart of a cadaverous kingdom. Centuries before, travelers often complained that London smelled, stinking of smoke and chemicals and compressed humanity. Adele could testify that it still smelled, but now it was the stench of blood and decomposition.

  She possessed an intellectual concept of what she was going to see. For years, ghastly reports had come south on the wretched state of the great cities of northern Europe. Adele had experienced chills reading the grisly communiques in her warm, lemon-scented gardens. But those reports in no way prepared the princess for the visceral reaction she had to the evidence of her own senses.

  The ramshackle airship descended, approaching the spires and domes and the horrid slate grey blocks of buildings. Adele saw dark mounds scattered on the avenues, streets, and alleys. A closer examination revealed that the mounds were piles of dead bodies. The city's wide circles and narrow courtyards were heaped with bones. The turgid river Thames was at low tide and, as the airship skimmed over it, Adele saw white femurs and rib cages protruding from the muck along the shoreline. Nearly all the glass windows in the city were smashed, except, amazingly, some of the stained glass of Westminster. Green grass sprouted through the cobblestones while lush vines grew without restraint, hiding edifices and obscuring the statues of the formerly great humans. The airship glided over the collapsed roof of Parliament. Dark figures clung to the outside of the ivy-choked ruins of the Big Ben clock tower and rose into the air like blowflies from a cadaver. Adele's heart raced with terror and despair to see so many.

  The airship captain shouted orders, breaking Adele's grim reverie, and the bloodmen scrambled into the rigging. The ship reduced sail, heeling slightly, starting its turn over a large expanse of trees that were just beginning to leaf out with spring. The land below was once a park, but now it was fenced and the ground beneath the trees was brown and worn. Then Adele saw why. Crowds of humans, naked or clad in rags, shuffled aimlessly among the trees-food for the city's vampire lords. Only a few of them troubled to gaze up at the passing ship; then they quickly returned to pacing or drinking from a pond. Their distant, uncomprehending faces were blank like livestock. Adele felt sick.

  The airship leveled off over sprawling, decrepit Buckingham Palace. A lone figure ascended from the roof of the palace and seized the shrouds of the airship with amazing grace and swung aboard. It was Flay. Adele was suddenly enraged by the memory of her brother hurled carelessly against a tree like a toy, and the careless slaughter of the people who had thought nothing of sheltering her as Greyfriar's ward. The bloodmen shuffled away from Flay, who was now wearing a man's heavy brocade coat with broad cuffs, garish green, that made her pale flesh underneath even more translucent.

  "Princess Adele," the female vampire said. "Welcome to London."

  Adele ignored the early evening chill and dropped the blanket, unwilling to accept any comfort from the enemy. She stared contemptuously into the female's eyes without flinching. The imperial heir wouldn't give the vampire the satisfaction of seeing fear. The confident public face that her father adopted during private crises became hers to emulate.

  Flay slowly stooped and lifted the blanket from the deck. The creature held Adele's cold stare and deliberately dropped the blanket over the rail. "Princess, I shall no longer burden you with comfort. I am Flay, the war chief of Prince Cesare, lord of Ireland. And you are his prisoner."

  In the twilight, Adele paced a dingy outer courtyard in the Tower of London, where she had been deposited without further word. Numerous vampires crouched on the parapets, looking down at her with animal curiosity. A bloodman emerged from a dank doorway carrying a large sack over his back. He stared at her too, but surreptitiously, from under downturned brows like a born servant. The miserable drone emptied the sack of skeletal remains into a cart that was already full of bones, and appeared as if he wanted to say something to her, if he was even capable of proper language, but his nerve failed. Adele was grateful not to have to interact with the filthy thing. Two bloodmen put their shoulders to the cart and pushed it under an archway out of her sight. Ravens rose from the crumbling ruins with excited cries and followed the creaking bone cart.

  As Adele's eyes lifted with the black birds, she spotted two vampires drifting toward her over the wall. One was the warlord, Flay. The second was a fine-boned male, dressed in a passable formal suit with a long swallow-tailed morning coat. The male was a few inches shorter than Flay, but as they settled noiselessly to the cobblestones, the female showed the deference of distance.

  "I am Cesare," the male said as he walked past Adele.

  This was the one, the princess thought as she stared at him. Cesare. This creature had every soul in Ireland put to death. He was one of history's greatest monsters. And she was in his hands. She wondered what his game was. If she had been captured for food, surely she'd be a drained husk by now. Perhaps Cesare was saving her for himself. Maybe he intended to torture her slowly to death. There was no way to kn
ow the mind of one of these animals. But Adele was sure she would give them no pleasure by pleading or crying.

  Flay prompted Adele to follow Cesare. They all entered the doorway from which the bloodmen had just carried the bones. The princess followed the vampire's light footfalls up stone steps into a chilled, dim room that was empty except for a pile of straw in one corner. How thoughtful, she mused grimly as she surveyed the chamber, to clean out the remains of the previous residents.

  Adele snapped, "I will need a fire if you want me to survive." Cesare turned quickly from the window, clearly surprised by a demand. Adele was pleased by the reaction and asked sharply. "What do you want from me?"

  "Ah, good," Cesare responded, interlacing his fingers in front of his chest. "I want two things. First, tell me all you know about the Equatorian war plans. Second, tell me about your spies in Britain."

  Adele laughed, partly in relief that he wanted information, not just the joy of pain. "You know nothing about me, but I assure you I will tell you nothing."

  Cesare tilted his head and spoke quickly. "Princess Adele, you are nineteen years old. You were born in Alexandria. Your mother, the empress Pareesa, died when you were seven years of age during the birth of your late brother, Simon, prince of Bengal. Your father is the emperor Constantine, the second of that name and the third of his line. Both he and your government are dismayed at the prospect that you, a mere female, will inherit his throne. They fear that you are not capable of ruling and that under your feeble hand the Empire's fragility will be exposed and it will fly apart in a series of rebellions and secessions. To prevent such a disaster, it has been arranged for you to marry the Butcher of St. Louis, a"-Cesare's lips curled in disgust-"war hero from the American Republic. This union between you and the renowned murderer will place a man on the throne and create an alliance between the Equatorian Empire and the American Republic. Thus joined by sacrificing your precious virtue to the bloody Clark, the two greatest human states will start a war to destroy my people utterly. Please correct me if I've made a mistake."

  Adele laughed again. "I'm sorry, but watching a vampire talk politics is like putting a gown on an ape and calling it a duchess." But in fact, the vampire had not made a mistake. While some of the information that Cesare had revealed was common knowledge, she was frightened nonetheless by the thought of this vampire being aware of her personal affairs. She was also increasingly disturbed by Cesare's humanness. Provided his sharp fingernails were covered, the creature wouldn't attract undue attention relaxing in an Alexandria cafe with coffee and a newspaper.

  Adele's face must have betrayed her uneasiness, because Cesare smiled, revealing sharp teeth. "Apes and duchesses aside, Princess, I am well informed. I know that your heavily armed warships crowd the towers of Port Said and Malta. And likewise, I am informed of a great buildup of American forces in Cuba and the Yucatan. I am also aware that your people have spies in my domain, scuttling about like bugs, hiding in the woods. I have killed several myself-after they told me everything they knew. But I want to know more. Centuries of struggling for survival have shown us the value of intelligence."

  "Even mad dogs fight to survive. That doesn't imply intelligence." Adele averted her eyes to the stone floor, to her own feet clad in the boots scuffed in the sandy streets of faraway Alexandria. She couldn't bear to watch the sardonic face of the creature who had butchered hundreds of thousands. The young woman tried to control the shaking of her hands and to steady her voice. Cesare's questions about spies seemed to indicate that geotnancers might truly exist, or at least that vampires believed there were human agents operating in the dead north.

  Cesare's eyebrows inched up again, this time giving him a falsely sincere facade. "A human's opinion means nothing to me. In fact, human opinion in general has meant nothing for more than a century. Tell me, does it amaze your scholars that it took us less than five years to destroy the greatest societies your kind had to offer, societies that had been constructed over many centuries? Five years! A fraction of a second to us. You are nineteen. I am nearly three hundred years old. And I will live to be over eight hundred. I participated in the Great Killing. What you know only as distant history, I remember and savor."

  The vampire's smile faded, and he took several clicking steps toward Adele. "I disdain your weak, failed culture. Machines. Books. What good are they? I use your names because it amuses me. I wear your clothes because it amuses me. I speak twelve of your human languages because it amuses me. How many do you yourself speak? One? Two? But I needed no books to learn them. I don't need tools to master the world." Cesare was only an inch or two taller than Adele and, again, he tilted his head with derision when she defiantly matched his gaze. He held up his hand, and razor-sharp nails extended slowly from his fingertips with a faint squishing noise. "These are my tools." Cesare spread his clawed fingertips lightly over his icy face. "And these. From here, I can see a bird over the ocean. I can smell blood spilling miles away. I can ride the wind and become a shadow. I can hear your heart beating. I don't need technology. When we rose up, we faced you humans and your machines. Your guns were not powerful enough. Your ships and railroads were not fast enough. Your homes and palaces were not strong enough. None of your creations could save you from me. I killed all of you I laid my hands on, and I drank your blood. And I will do it again when the time comes."

  Adele remained quiet. She would say nothing more to this thing. She had no reason to bandy words or debate. Silence would be her weapon. If it killed her, so be it.

  Cesare retracted his claws and said, "Tell me about the Equatorian war plans."

  Adele turned away from him, holding her breath, waiting for a blow from behind.

  Cesare said evenly, "Tell me about your spies."

  She stepped to the window that Cesare had vacated. The sun was sinking, and the city was succumbing to the same cold darkness that killed it every night. She closed her eyes against the unbelievable thought of spending her first night in this terrible place. First night. That implied that there would be many. It was worse than the fear of death.

  She heard Cesare's footsteps moving to the door, followed by hissing words he spoke to Flay. And Adele could understand. The harsh sounds made some sense to her. She didn't know how, but she had always been good with language. Adele didn't recognize words concretely in the disgusting hissing, but she grasped the sense and the intent.

  Cesare instructed Flay to bring the princess "roasted flesh," and Adele knew that the term meant human flesh. It was Cesare's idea of a joke, no doubt. It disgusted her enough that, gratefully, her formerly ravenous appetite was destroyed. If they wanted to keep her alive, they would eventually find bread or vegetables.

  As Flay glided down the winding stone stairs, Cesare said to Adele, this time in excellent Arabic, "I am giving you food. And I will arrange for you to have fire. When we talk tomorrow, you will tell me what I want to know and you will go home. This door will remain unlocked. I pray you abandon hopes of escape, if you hold any. There is no possibility. I notice that you wear a garish ring, no doubt given to you by Senator Clark. I have not deprived you of it because it is yours and we respect your peculiar human notions of property. But here in my domain, even the brightest diamond is no different than a common stone you may find on the ground. You can barter nothing with it. It has no value to any vampire, nor, I can assure you, to the humans among us."

  Adele continued to gaze out the window at the glistening river and the dark shapes bobbing in it. Her mind cast back to her former world in Alexandria, existing at the same time as this one: Simon climbing trees in his garden, her seat in the library, warm spring days with the air scented by lemon and lilac, warm sand and the endless drum and rush of the surf.

  Adele's hands touched cold stone, and her aching shoulders slumped in despair.

  "Do rest, Princess," Cesare said with mock kindness.

  Adele straightened her back, but her quick recovery was evident. She was angry for showing weakness in front of
the thing. Still, she refused to turn, and soon she heard the sound of his retreating footsteps.

  Placing her back against the wall, she slid to the floor. The darkness reduced her world to mere arm's reach. She was almost grateful; she didn't want to see what was out there. It was nothing but evil. An evil she despised.

  Equatoria would not stand for this. A retaliatory strike was coming as soon as the swift hand of retribution could gather itself. Adele knew this without doubt. And no doubt the Americans would come for those that dared kidnap the future wife of their most renowned vampire killer. Surely Senator Clark was not the kind of man who would suffer such an affront.

  There was also Greyfriar and his uncanny ability to emerge from the shadows to pluck her from the encroaching darkness. She missed his stalwart presence, offering hope where there was none to be had. His absence made the time before her seem like a great chasm.

  Still, regardless of what actions were being set in motion, or were in motion already, it meant little to Adele's life. Her fate was sealed. Cesare would never free her, and he would kill her as soon as the first human set foot on the shores of England. That was a certainty. After all, she would do the same with a captive of her sort.

  Adele had no intention of sitting like a poor little princess and waiting for that moment to arrive. Cesare and his kin would pay a terrible price. She would strike at the heart of the vampire court. Cesare would no doubt come frequently within her reach. Perhaps if she played it right, she might get close to the king, Dmitri. What a dream strike that would be. Adele swore that she would take off the head of this foul clan at this most important time in history. It would send their filthy court into chaos and make them vulnerable to the war machine that would soon roar up from the south.

  Adele's heart lifted. Suddenly she wasn't afraid of the path looming before her. Instead a rush of excitement and anticipation filled her, and she welcomed the faint warmth it brought, pushing away the chill of dreadful London.