Camdeboo Nights

by Nerine Dorman

  Helen stiffened, not daring to turn. His breath was cold on her right ear and she could curse herself for being unaware.

  “What do you want?”

  “You, of course.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Nothing, save introduce you to those who care much for you, Miss Helen.”

  His words struck cold terror through her.

  Cold fingers clasped around the flesh of her upper right arm.

  “Come. Don’t make this difficult for us. Your fate has always been unavoidable.”

  Helen turned to face a man no taller than she. He bore the unmistakable signs of San heritage, with his tight peppercorn curls and slits for eyes, as if he had been squinting against the sun for too long. Only his ghostly pallor gave him away as being somehow, other.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Some have called me Jan Regop but you can call me Johannes.”

  “Why, Johannes? Why me?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Helen.” He looked down. “I only follow my masters’ wishes.”

  “What would you do if you could have your own way?”

  “I’d watch you, for a while. Perhaps we’d talk and I’d show you my forefathers’ stars.”

  “That is cold comfort.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss.”

  Why was it difficult to hate her captor? Why had she been so afraid? His fathomless black eyes blinked back at her.

  Vampires still blinked?

  The gesture made him seem almost human.

  “Will they hurt me?”

  “I can’t answer that question.”

  Chapter 37

  Digging Old Cows out of Ditches

  Trystan hated walking into a situation without knowing what lay ahead. He chose patches of shadow and avoided open sections of lawn. His route took him along the edge of a tall, squared-off hedge which bordered a footpath running along the edge. He paused every few paces to listen and scent at the air, disconcerted by the faint trace of rotted fish that permeated this area.

  Fish, here?

  The thought fled when a movement to his left, at the crest of a small acacia-covered hill, caught his eye. The glimpse had been quick but he was certain he’d seen the turn of a too-white face framed by long black hair. Mantis!

  Immediately he dashed ahead to a gap while cursing the lack of his ability to reach through the cloying muddle of Essence blanketing everything. Trystan moved on cat feet, and reveled in being the predator, for a change. Tonight he’d stop running.

  Mantis, however, was neither foolish nor unaware of her situation. She twisted to Trystan’s right then cut across a large open expanse, her limbs a blur.

  Damn!

  She was fast but she had not recently supped on the heart’s blood of her kindred. Trystan’s Essence flared through his limbs and he gained on the female.

  He crashed into a thicket close on her heels. The thorns ripped into the skin on his face, hands and feet but he did not register any pain.

  Mantis made the error of looking over her shoulder, collided with a low branch, and fell back with a crunch of cartilage accompanied by a soft grunt.

  All that ran through Trystan’s mind was how much and how long he had desired to suck down this particular vampire’s Essence.

  His teeth grazed an exposed neck at the same moment cold steel penetrated the base of his throat, pricking through flesh and sinew to whisper against his spine.

  “I have claws, Trystan.” Her voice carried the promise of death, which sliced sense into his actions, though he couldn’t move to kill or retreat.

  “An impasse, then, Mantis.” His extended canines tickled her flesh. His right hand found her left, pinning it to the ground.

  She retaliated by digging her fingernails into the top of his hand, drawing blood.

  “You’re at a disadvantage. Do you honestly think you can tear out my throat before I sever your spinal column?”

  “You won’t find out until it’s too late, will you?” He kept his lips brushing against her skin, each movement intended to remind her of lethal fangs.

  She chuckled but relented some of the pressure that threatened his nervous system. Trystan pulled hard at his Essence and shifted it to speed his reflexes. To her credit, Mantis anticipated the move but could not match him. Pain blossomed in his throat when he grabbed her knife-wielding hand, neutralizing that particular threat. The blade gleamed dark and wet with his blood.

  “What’s your game, Mantis? Not liking it so much now that you’ve discovered I’m not such a pushover?”

  “I never thought you were a pushover, although I must admit I was surprised when you followed me so meekly all the way to Knysna. A clever ruse, though methinks you don’t know your own strength.”

  Small bones in her wrist gave with a dull snap, crushed in his hand. Mantis couldn’t quite hide her grimace.

  There was no pity, if she’d hoped for it, which he doubted. He gave a bitter smile. Hers was the resignation of a predator who knew when the game was up. “And now I’m supposed to apologize for injuring a lady? You’re trying to distract me from the purpose of this confrontation.”

  “What? To suck out the last of my Essence like you did with the half-dozen other vampires you’ve murdered over the years? Don’t think your actions have gone unnoticed.”

  “No! God damn it!” Trystan lurched both of them to their feet and slammed the female vampire against a tree trunk. More bones snapped.

  This time Mantis did cry out.

  “What have you done with Helen?”

  “Nothing.” The word whistled through Mantis’s clenched teeth.

  Dull, flat hatred blazed out of eyes almost without pupils. Years of carefully cultured humanity fell away, replaced by the feral visage of a beast brought to bay. What did she want with Helen?

  Mantis’s laughter was a low, chilling sound–almost a snarl. “Oh, I see now, you are fond of the little pet, aren’t you? It will be all the more delicious then when I bring her over to our ranks.”

  “She’s just a girl!”

  “When did that ever matter, Trystan? Do you think humans care for the lambs or cattle they slaughter every day?”

  “Compare apples with apples. Who are you really working for? The Black Pope was most interested when I told him about the girl. He mentioned that he’d requested–no, in fact ordered–that you bring him subjects to aid in his campaign. Now, the way I look at it, Helen definitely represents a rather valuable potential subject, yet you abandon me on his Little Lordship’s doorstep without checking in–which is highly suspicious if you ask me. You bank on me keeping my precious little secret while you go running after the prize of the century yourself.”

  Mantis growled, so he twisted her injured hand with more force. Bones crackled, joints rubbing against joints, on the verge of being pulverized.

  “So, if there are jagters from Jozi–I recognized their Essences before the static–then you are not here representing the interests of the Johannesburg elders. Neither, do I expect you to have healed the rift in your relationship with the Cape Colony elders, so what’s the deal here?”

  “Ashton Murray rules in Cape Town.”

  “He’s younger than I am. He may have the colony by its balls–which is hardly surprising–but I can’t see you according him much respect, either. He borders on being a pariah like me, even if he has not taken that first, definite step. What is your game?”

  “Maybe I’m not here under Ashton’s orders,” Mantis hissed. “There are other elders in the city, many of whom have a bone to pick with him.”

  “Somehow, Mantis, you don’t inspire much confidence in me and I doubt you’d do the same for those who have more status than I.”

  “Good! Then I won’t disappoint you when I do this!”

  Somehow she’d managed to gather enough force to pull up her leg to kick him a glancing blow to his knee, knocking him off balance. Sharp pain and a crunch informed him that cartilage had torn aw
ay from ligaments. Although Mantis was able to free one hand, he gripped her right.

  The female vampire let out a short, angry yelp.

  Bloody hell, at this rate the others would zone in on them.

  Mantis flung herself on top of Trystan, and raked with her free hand. A sharp fingernail narrowly missed his eye.

  In retaliation, he wrapped both legs around one of hers and rolled her onto her back, delivering a blow heavy enough to break a human’s neck.

  She was ready for this and the strike glanced off her cheek when she ducked her head. She bit hard, her fangs sinking with delicious agony into the meat below his wrist. While Mantis’s jaws ground, her eyes blazed, furious. Trystan had often likened a vampire’s bite to that of a large predator and he was not far off, for Mantis jerked her head to the side, her teeth shearing through muscle, tendon and bone as she dragged a mouthful of flesh away.

  Trystan stared stupidly at the wound, the dark blood welling through the damage.

  Of course it wouldn’t spurt. His heart didn’t beat anymore.

  His moment of inattention cost Trystan his advantage. Mantis thrust him away from her, and his grip was loose enough for her to free her other hand.

  She kicked savagely so that his cheekbone snapped as her boot impacted with his face. The pain was relative. There was so much of it and, besides, the world exploded into stars before a moment of darkness swallowed him and he could bring his surroundings into definition again.

  He lay face down, leaf litter filling his mouth and something heavy–a foot, perhaps–pressing down heavily on the small vertebrae of his neck.

  “Vampires take at least a week to heal from a snapped spinal column, Trystan. By then the sun would have done its work, especially if you’re already weak from blood loss.”

  Don’t.

  The pressure came down a fraction harder and a groan wheezed past his lips.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and finish the job then?”

  “Because I’m not done with you yet. Adversity, if it doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. You amuse me and, let me tell you, it takes a lot to amuse me after six centuries shuffling around on this mud-ball.”

  He didn’t know how to answer that but a spasm caused him to twitch. Although he hadn’t thought she would, the boot came down harder.

  “Because I don’t want you messing up my plans for the immediate few hours, I am going to have to incapacitate you. It’s for your own good and you’ll even thank me one day.”

  “One. Day. I’ll... Kill. You.”

  Her laugh was bright and, under different circumstances, could have belonged to a young woman finding amusement with her friends. Not so with Mantis.

  If he’d known that she’d hidden blades in her boot-tips he may not have reveled in his pain for so long but she cut him, again and again, employing her knowledge of all the important veins and arteries so that Trystan’s Essence flowed into the dark, moist soil with his blood.

  “What is easily gained can be easily lost,” Mantis quipped.

  One. Two. Three... Nine. He counted the slashes, his skin ripping like wet silk.

  A very human scream echoed through the night and Mantis halted her deliberate ministrations.

  How effortlessly she had almost destroyed him. He really hadn’t stood a chance, had he? He should have finished the bitch sooner. His extremities turned numb and the overwhelming desire to sleep stole up his spine. When had he last slept? Trystan hardly registered when Mantis’s boot no longer pressed his face into the ground. Darkness drew him into its velvet depths and he let out a long groan as a wave of agony broke through his being.

  Chapter 38

  See Right Through You

  What Etienne hated the most about sneaking through the garden was that it was far too quiet for his liking. No crickets, nothing. For all her earlier pluck, Arwen had grown reticent, walking half a pace behind him with her hand resting on his shoulder. Her fingers bit into his flesh every time he stopped to listen out.

  “Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

  “This was your idea to come with Trystan and, besides, you’re a good sneak. Your surname should have been Baggins.”

  Better not to answer to that and neither did she say anything for a while.

  Tall stands of giant bamboo clacked in a skein of a breeze, the sound hollow, for some reason making Etienne think of old, dry bones. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth.

  Now was not the time to wonder at the intricately laid brickwork path that made pleasing curves beneath an avenue of trees. A stairway to their right led to an open-air restaurant–now shuttered–but they would be less exposed if they sought sanctuary there for a short while.

  The bushes two hundred meters away, toward the dam, crashed as if some large animal had passed through. Eerie barking drifted from the distance, sounding closer than he hoped it was. Etienne’s veins contracted with icy fear and Arwen’s fingers kept drilling into his skin. She did not need to be told that she must stand absolutely still.

  In the starlight, the whites of her eyes gleamed. She opened her mouth and he shook his head. The beating of his heart thundered unnaturally loud in his ears.

  When he was certain no one approached, he gestured for Arwen to follow him to the outdoor eating area, where white plastic chairs loomed in stacks that had been chained together.

  “What was that in the bushes?” Arwen whispered.

  “If we were lucky, it was nothing more than a stray dog, but I don’t think it was a dog and we shouldn’t assume that anything is what we’d hope it to be unless we have proof.”

  “I need a cigarette.”

  “Then you’ll kill us both.”

  Arwen rolled her eyes, hissing through her teeth as she looked around. “Do you know anything about the layout of this place? I mean, where do we start?”

  “I know about as much as you do.”

  “Then where are we going to find Helen?”

  Etienne pursed his lips and looked about. Between the trees wide spaces of lawn stretched up a gentle slope and down toward the dam they’d passed earlier. An unhealthy pale mist swirled on the water’s surface, the occasional wet schlopping noise indicating when a wavelet made landfall. Or was it a fish?

  A line of tall trees–pines or beefwoods, he couldn’t be certain in the low light–formed a barrier that appealed to him. If they could stick to the pockets of shrubs they could make it to cover and maybe gain better insight in their situation.

  Arwen grasped what he intended then shook her head. “We’ll be too exposed over the last stretch.”

  “Do you want to stay here, rather, on the off chance that Helen will know to find us?”

  “I don’t even know what we’re going to do if we find her.” Arwen’s voice quavered.

  “Neither do I but we’re here now and it can’t be helped, so let’s make the best of it. We must just be careful.”

  Some of the tightness went out of Arwen’s posture. She swallowed, nodding. Now if only someone could lie to him and make him feel that everything would be all right.

  “C’mon, we don’t have all night.” Etienne grabbed Arwen’s hand. Her warmth was reassuring.

  Since when did he have the courage to hold a girl’s hand?

  What he imagined to be the thud of footsteps disappeared to the far side of the restaurant. They were retreating.

  He did not allow the cold wash of relief to distract him. Arwen squeezed his fingers and he set his sights on the distant line of trees.

  A cobbled path wound between stands of ornamental shrubs and provided a measure of cover. Most of the distance stretched in the direction they needed to go so he kept to his course. By a willow at the edge, they stopped and he crouched, listening, scenting and searching for any other form of life. The silence was too quiet, oppressive.

  “I smell off fish,” Arwen whispered as she hunkered down next to him.

  “I don’t. Keep quiet. I’m trying to keep us alive.”

  A s
nap of a twig five paces away almost sent him lurching out of his skin. Arwen enveloped him in an embrace that pushed the air from his lungs and he squirmed until he registered that they were no longer alone. A tall, thin man with an aquiline nose stood on the other side of the shrubs. He looked about him, sniffing loudly. Any moment now he’d turn to stare right at them and...

  In the starlight the man’s eyes looked dead, cold, as if he had marbles for irises. He gazed directly at them–through them–hunched his shoulders then stalked past.

  They stood still for a few breaths more, until they could be certain the threat had removed itself from earshot.

  “Did you see that, Arwen? Do you think it was... For once your party tricks worked.”

  She nodded, shivering, and pushed him away to tilt her face to the sky. “Thank fuck.”

  “How long will this last?”

  “Dunno. Until sunrise, maybe? I hope. I’d only ever read about it. Had heard some practitioners had success with these methods. Didn’t believe.”

  They rushed, unhindered, to the line of trees where they sat against the trunk of a near-horizontal fig tree whose aerial roots formed thick wormlike clumps that struck into the soil.

  “What now?” Arwen asked.

  “We could split up, cover more ground.”

  Arwen snorted. “Like in the movies and then we get eaten?”

  “This isn’t the movies, if they can’t see us when we’re still.”

  “Etienne. No.”

  “I was making a suggestion. All right, it wasn’t logical. Let’s go up a ways. Can you feel anything?”

  Any advantage, however slight, made him happier than he’d been moments before.

  Arwen closed her eyes then shook her head. “It’s as if there’s a lot of static, like a snowy TV screen.”

  “That doesn’t help us. Let’s see how far the gardens stretch then work our way down and around in a loop.”

  They hadn’t gone far when voices reached them, a man’s and a woman’s. Once again they stopped and pulled back into the shadows. The sounds of a struggle reached them.