He pressed his back against the elevator. He clenched his eyes shut. Thad had never been prone to fear. He had always been taller than others, athletic, well liked. He had never known the sting of a bully or abuse of any kind. He was the perfect extrovert, leaping into any situation with both feet, rushing headlong into adventure with the faith that no matter what, it would work out for him.
In retrospect, this old version of him seemed prissy and sheltered. That world vanished in the blink of an eye the moment Taos had bitten him. Now his life was off course, washed out to sea by an unimaginable storm. He drifted alone in an uncharted part of the map. The place where the inscription read here, there be monsters.
And there truly were monsters in the world. Not vague and metaphoric. No, there were real monsters, hidden away in the dark places of the world, places like the dungeon in which he stood. What other ignominies lurked below this house?
He tried to keep the image of Kole from rising in his mind. Vampires were frightening enough when you looked at them, really looked at them. Past the eternal youth and beauty, past the enchanting eyes and pretense of civility, they were still blood drinkers. But peal all that back, dig down to the center of the beast and what comes forth is truly horrific.
Thad shivered against the cool metal of the elevator door. In his mind’s eye, he could see them, a horde of savages creeping through the darkness toward him. He swatted at the void before him, but he didn’t know what he hoped this would accomplish. His hand came down, brushing something hanging at his side. He reached back and pulled the terrycloth belt from his back pocket.
Strange as it sounds, the belt calmed him, like some mystical talisman.
“And Death shall have no dominion,” he whispered to the darkness, remembering the first line of some poem he had read in English class a lifetime ago.
Thad opened his eyes and found that the darkness was not as impenetrable as he had first thought. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he could make out the far walls and a glimmer of light coming from a door at the end of a long corridor.
Thad pushed toward the thin strip of light at the back of the corridor. There were doors on both sides. Now and then he heard what he thought was a murmur of conversation behind them, but he kept walking toward the door at the back.
The door was unlocked, so he eased it open, just enough to peek through. The light from the next room seemed dazzling compared to the murky dungeon he was coming from, but he could see it was only a few bare light bulbs attached to the stone ceiling. The room was stifling hot and he could hear what he thought was the sound of movement within.
Clutching the belt tight in his hand (as if it could ward off danger), he eased the door open further, squeezed through, then pushed it almost shut again. The room was large and square with thick stone columns holding up the ceiling. Thad hurried away from the door and hid behind the nearest column just in time to see a long shadow slide across the floor.
A man called out and though he spoke in what sounded to be Russian, Thad could tell from the tone that he was asking if anyone was there. Thad held his breath. Another man spoke, again in Russian and the two engaged in a bit of small talk, before returning to their task.
There came a loud clank of metal and the screech of old hinges, then the room filled with bright light, dancing shadows and a gust of heat, as though the door to Hell had just been opened.
Thad chanced a glance around the column. Two men stood before a great open furnace, its intense flames lapping at the air within the belly of the large metal beast. Thad had never seen the men before, but he did recognize the two dead bodies—the men Shufah and Taos had fed upon—lying naked on a table, not too far away.
Rivers of sweat poured from the men’s heads, pooling in a swampy mess at the tops of their shirts. They took hold of one of the dead men, one man grasping him under the armpits, the other man hooking him beneath the knees. With a collective grunt they hoisted the corpse from the table and in a synchronized swing, tossed it into the flames. They repeated this method with the second corpse, tossing him in on top of the other dead man.
With their gruesome task completed, they closed the furnace doors, choking off the heat spewing forth and ending the dance of shadows upon the walls. They rubbed the sweat from their faces, then left the room without speaking.
Thad remained pinned against the column. His knees were weak and his stomach wrenched tight. He had known what the men were going to do with the dead bodies when he saw them slink past the door to his room, but seeing it first-hand made his head reel.
The corpses in the furnace had to be cremated. It was the only way to ensure they wouldn’t rise from their deaths as vampires born of the bite, the only way to know they wouldn’t turn savage.
Thad thought the stench of burning flesh would drive him from the room, but he could detect no scent at all, other than the earthy smell of the stone column. The heat of the room zapped his energy and he felt as though he could fall down on the floor and sleep for years. He watched the furnace and wondered if he would someday be pitched in among the flames, naked and unremembered.
One of the doors in the corridor slammed open and the crashing noise brought him out of his stupor. Several voices echoed through the empty passage. Thad moved to the door and pulled it open only a fraction of an inch.
Far down the corridor, close to the open room with the elevator, one of the doors to the left stood open. A pair of vampires waited on either side, each wearing a long black cloak with the symbol of the Hunters on the back. Though neither was a large man, their eyes—even at this distance—spoke of cruelty.
Were they sent to search for him? He looked back into the room in which he stood, searching for a place to hide. He had used the columns to escape the human workers, but that wouldn’t cloak him from the enhanced senses of the vampires.
Again the sound of voices caught his attention. In the corridor, from the open door, came a line of humans shambling out single file. There were men and women in the line, all dirty and disheveled.
Thad’s first thought was that these were the prisoners Marjek had spoken of. The poor souls condemned to death by their governments, purchased by the vampires to be food for the undead. This turned out to be untrue, as least for some of the humans in line, for a woman near the end of the line, speaking in a British accent boasted to her captors that she was to be judged now and would soon join their ranks. One of the Hunters silenced her with a slap that sent her to her knees. She climbed to her feet, massaging her jaw and wiping tears from her eyes, then followed along with the group.
Thad’s stomach twisted and he felt as though he might get sick. He choked back his nausea knowing that the Hunters would sniff him out in an instant if he vomited. That poor woman wasn’t a condemned criminal. She was one of the infected. But why was she being housed in this dungeon? Were the others infected, too?
He shouldn’t have left his room. That had been a terrible mistake, he realized now. He twisted the belt in his hands, hoping to wring some courage from it, as he had earlier, but it had lost its enchantments and felt no more pleasant to him than a dead snake. Thad tried to chase away his despair for the woman and her group, thinking that the Stewards would judge them worthy—the woman, after all, was very pretty despite the filth clinging to her from untold days within this dungeon—yet in his heart he didn’t really believe it. Thad had a feeling that if he lingered in this room long enough he would see the infected servants carrying the British girl and her companions back down to feed to the furnace.
The Hunters marched away, one before the line of humans, the other behind. He started to pull the door to the furnace room open, but leapt back, startled, when one of the other doors on the right side of the corridor opened with a loud bang.
Another set of Hunters stepped into the hallway. They were dressed just as the other two, except that this pair each held a long, sharp spear—the weapon Ralgar had called a skewer. They gripped their sk
ewers tight, holding them at the ready before their chests. One of them pointed the dangerous tip into the room and motioned with it for someone to come out. Neither spoke, but it was clear that disobedience would not be tolerated.
Another line of wretched souls filed out of the room, but these were not humans.
Thad counted half a dozen vampires, each shackled wrist and ankle, with heavy fetters. He could tell they were vampires, not by their fangs (he was too far away to see those, thank goodness), but by the way their skin remained pristinely clean without even a smudge of dirt. He had seen this with Jerusa, Shufah and Taos as well. Even mud and soot wiped right away without any additional cleaning. Also, the eyes of the group were not the eyes of mortals, but the gleaming jewels of predators, searching the darkness unimpeded.
They looked about the corridor, sniffing the air like a pack of hungry dogs. One vampire caught the scent of something missed by the others, even the Hunters. He stiffened, straightened his posture, looking almost gentlemen-like despite his tattered rags and chains. He turned his gaze slowly to the left, his yellow eyes glimmering in the light cast from the small crack of the furnace door.
Thad wanted to push away from the door, wanted to curl up in a darkened corner and hide, but he stood transfixed by the vampire’s stare. For a brief moment, he feared the vampire would call out to him or shout his location to the Hunters, but instead, he simply winked, then turned his face back toward his captors.
Thad did push away from the door this time, hard enough to ram his back into the column he had hidden behind. He stifled a grunt, which was from surprise as much as it was pain. The long moment of silence afterwards was terrible, each second stretching into an hour as he awaited the Hunters to burst in and take him. Or kill him.
But the furnace door never moved and after a time, Thad thought he heard the mechanical swish of the elevator doors. It took him a few more minutes before he could approach the door. His legs had become like rubber and when he did manage to push away from the column, a blast of pins and needles rose from his soles up into his calves.
Thad pressed his face to the door and peered out the crack. He detected no movement in the darkened hall, so he slowly pulled the door open, just enough to slip out. He pulled the door shut and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. When he could see well enough, he crept to the first door on his left.
The door was dense wood, inlaid with heavy brass hinges. There was a keyhole below the knob and a sliding latch near the top that wasn’t engaged. Thad reached out for the knob. It was cool, fixed firmly in its mount and yet turned without complaint. Thad had expected the door to be locked, but it drifted silently inward an inch. The stench of human waste belched forth and Thad stepped back shielding his face with his arm.
He pushed the door open to its fullest and found a long room, dimly lit, with what looked to be medieval prison cells lining both walls. Faces pressed against the bars, sometimes as many as ten in a cell. They looked at Thad, moaning in desperation or speaking to him in languages he didn’t understand. Arms extended through the tiny squares formed from the crossing bars, waving at him, compelling him closer.
“Please,” a voice said in English. “Don’t go.” It was a woman that spoke, though her voice was hoarse and gruff.
Thad stepped into the room looking for the woman that had called out to him. The extended hands swiped at him, almost in reverence, as though being on the outside of the bars had given him power to heal their wounds.
At the far end of the room, in the cell to the left, Thad found the woman that had called out to him. He gasped when he saw her. For a moment he thought it had been Jerusa. The girl had the same height and build as Jerusa, though her hair was blonde and she was still a human.
“Help me,” the girl said. The others in her cell were crowding her out, reaching through the bars toward Thad, jabbering to him in unknown tongues. “Please, help me.”
Thad wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak through the knot in his throat, but he managed to squeak out, “I can’t.”
The girl eased her way to the bars. “Yes you can. Just open the door and let me go.”
“I can’t,” Thad repeated. “There’s nowhere to go. Even if you get out of here, they are everywhere. Even if you made it outside, you’d freeze to death within an hour.”
“Why am I here?” the girl asked, her eyes stabbing at Thad as if he was the one that brought her here.
“Were you bitten?”
Her eyes widened. “Yes. I was on spring break with friends in Mexico. I got separated from the group. Someone grabbed me from behind. All I remember is him biting me on the neck.”
“How long have you been here?”
Tears welled in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks, leaving track marks in the grime of her face. “I don’t know.” She tried counting on her fingers, became unsure of her figure, tried again, but then just gave up. “Let me out. You have to let me out.”
“If I do, they’ll kill you.”
“They’re gonna kill me anyway. Let me out!”
Her shout quickened the others, who began to shuffle around their cells, shrieking, sometimes pitching themselves against the bars. The noise echoed off the stone until it grew to a mild roar. Thad glanced at the door, sure at any moment one of the Hunters would burst through to see what had agitated the prisoners.
“Okay,” Thad said, motioning for the group to be quiet. “I’ll get you out, but you have to shut up.”
He rushed out of the room, shutting the door to dampen the sound of their moans. He needed something, a pipe, a crowbar, anything, to pry open the door. Or maybe a knife would be better. He could use it to pick the lock. Thad went to the next door on the left side and made the mistake of rushing in. It was a twin room to the first, with cells full of human prisoners. They too began to call out to him, begging in different languages to be freed, but there was nothing in this room for Thad to use.
He continued down the left side of the corridor. Every door led to the same sight and had Thad not been able to see the large room with the elevators growing ever closer he would have believed he was stuck in some sort of temporal loop. By the time he reached the last door on the left, the cries of the prisoners were deafening.
Thad felt time slipping away. He ran across to the opposite side of the hall to the door nearest the elevator. He wrenched it open, preparing himself for the added cries of the prisoners inside, but instead he found quite a different group.
This room had no cells, but many prisoners. They were fastened to the stone walls by the wrist, waist and ankles with the thickest fetters Thad had ever seen. Piercing eyes caught the dim light and reflected it back with luminous fire, as they searched him with greedy delight.
Thad stood frozen in the doorway like a mouse in an open field, hoping the passing hawk didn’t see him. None of the vampires spoke to him, none pleaded to be released, but several did thrash within their shackles like feral beasts.
Thad backed out of the room and shut the door. He slid the locking bar into the thick eyelet, but it did little to make him feel safe. If one of the vampires managed to wrench their fetters from the wall, the locks on the door would do little to keep them from getting out.
Thad checked the rest of the doors on that side of the corridor, only easing them open a crack. They were all the same, full of vampire prisoners, until he came to the door closest to the furnace room.
This door opened unto blackness so dense the light spilling from the furnace room did little to penetrate it. Thad started to step over the threshold when he kicked a loose pebble and felt the floor disappear beneath his foot. He snatched back his foot and gripped the door as if it were a lifeline. Seconds passed before the pebble hit bottom and the sound echoed back up. Thad started to close the door on the pit when a noise, almost lost in the roaring cries of the human prisoners, caught his attention.
It started low, just a single growl, but soon others joined in. Thad couldn’t tell how many were down in th
e pit, but it sounded like a lot. He didn’t need a light to tell him what was below. He had heard those growls before, from Kole after he had gone savage.
Thad closed the door and sat on the cold stone floor. He felt so useless. All those people were going to die. He tried to tell himself that the girl in the cell, the one that looked like Jerusa with blonde hair, would be turned. The Stewards would see her beauty and give her the blood. Yet, he didn’t really believe that.
He twisted his hands together and found he was still holding the belt to the terrycloth robe. An idea, a dangerous, stupid idea began to form.
Thad jumped up and ran into the furnace room. He searched the ceiling until he found what he was looking for. A thick black pipe was anchored to the stone wall, delivering fuel to the furnace.
Thad moved one of the tables directly under the pipe and climbed up. He tied one end of the belt around the pipe and tested the strength of his knot with a hard yank. It cinched tight and held firm.
With the other end of the belt Thad began to form a makeshift noose.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The boards of the platform creaked as the five members of the High Council approached the edge. “What is your name child?” Marjek said to the human girl standing in the pit.
“Bethany,” she said. She clutched her arms about her and shivered uncontrollably. She spoke English, but her accent wasn’t American. British, perhaps, but her hoarse, quaking voice made it difficult to tell.
“Bethany,” Marjek repeated, almost as it were something savory rolling across his tongue. “Do you know why you are here?”
“No,” Bethany said. “Please, let me go home. I’ve done nothing wrong.” She looked as though she might start crying, but no tears fell. Jerusa had the feeling the girl had cried herself out long ago.
“I’m sorry. We can’t do that. You have been bitten by an immortal. You’re too dangerous to set free.” Though Jerusa couldn’t see Marjek’s face, she imagined him smiling when he spoke those words.
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