"Yes," said Rhoshamandes, laughing softly, "he's whispered a lot of that rhapsodic nonsense to me too. He has an exalted idea of himself." He laughed again. "He didn't begin at such a pitch, however. At first it was simply, 'You must kill them. Look at what they're doing to you.' "
Again, he did not let on that he was in a rage, a rage now that the Voice had sought after all their many intimate conversations to enlist his Benedict. Did the Voice see through Rhosh's eyes? Did it hear through his ears? Or could it only pitch its tent inside Rhosh's brain and talk and talk and talk?
"Yes, but then he started all that about his coming into his own. What does he mean?" Benedict brought his fist down on the old oak desk. He'd screwed up his face like an angry cherub. "Who is he?"
"Stop that," said Rhoshamandes. "Be still now and let me think."
He sat down again by the stone hearth. The flames were burning brightly there, fanned by the cool wind that now and then gusted through the glassless windows.
Rhosh had been speaking to the Voice for weeks. But the Voice had been silent now for five nights. Could it be the Voice could not attend to two tasks at one time, that the Voice, if it were to possess some wretched revenant and drive it to burn, could not be speaking politely to Rhosh at the same time or even on the same evening?
Five nights ago the Voice had said, "You of all understand me. You of all understand power, the desire for power, what is at the heart of the desire for power."
"Which is what?" Rhosh had asked the Voice.
"Simple," the Voice had replied. "Those who desire power want to be immune to the power of others."
Then five nights of silence. Mayhem throughout the world. Benji Mahmoud broadcasting all night long from the infamous Trinity Gate house in New York, with recordings of the show looping during his daylight hours so that those in other parts of the globe could hear them.
"Maybe it's time I discovered what's going on here for myself," Rhosh said. "Now listen to me. I want you to go belowstairs and stay there. If some benighted emissary of the thing should crash-land on our wintry little paradise, you'll be safe from it down there. Stay there till I return. This is the same precaution being taken by others the world over. Belowground you are safe. And if this thing talks to you, this Voice, well, try to learn more about it."
He opened the heavy iron-braced oak doors to the bedroom. He had to change his clothes for the journey, another terrific annoyance.
But Benedict came after him.
The fire was low in the bedchamber and glowing beautifully. Heavy red velvet draperies covered the open windows, and the stone floors here were covered with old oak boards and layered with silk and wool Persian carpets.
Rhosh stepped out of his robe and flung it to the side, but then Benedict rushed into his arms and held him fast. He buried his face in Rhosh's wool shirt and Rhosh looked to the ceiling thinking of all this blood smearing onto his own clothes.
But what did it matter?
He embraced Benedict tightly and moved him towards the bed.
It was an old coffered bed from the court of the last Henry. A splendid thing with rich knobby posts, and they loved lying together in it.
He stripped off Benedict's jacket, and then his shirt and his sweater, and brought him down on the dark embroidered covers. He lay beside him, fingers tightening on the pink nipples on Benedict's chest, his lips grazing Benedict's throat, and then he pressed Benedict's head against his own throat and said, "Drink" under his breath.
At once those razor-sharp teeth broke through and he felt the mighty hungry pull on his heart as the blood flowed out of him towards the heart beating against him. A gusher of images opened. He saw the burning house in London, saw that hideous wraithlike thing, saw what Benedict must have seen but never registered, that thing falling to its knees, the rafters coming down on it, an arm cracked loose and flung away in the fire, black fingers curling. He heard the skull pop.
The images dissolved in the pleasure that he was feeling, the deep dark throbbing pleasure he reveled in as the blood was drawn out of him with greater and greater speed. It was as if a hand had ahold of his heart and was squeezing his heart and the pleasure washed out in waves from his heart, passing through all his limbs.
Finally he turned and pulled Benedict off and sank his teeth into his neck. Benedict cried out. Rhosh ground him against the velvet cover, drawing the blood with all his strength, deliberately sending spasm after spasm through Benedict. He caught the images again. He caught the sight of London below as Benedict had taken to the skies. He caught the roar and the scent of the wind. The blood was so thick, so pungent! The fact was every single blood drinker on this Earth had a distinct and unique flavor of blood. And Benedict's was luscious. It took all his determination to let go, to run his tongue over his lips and lie back on the pillow and stare up at the worm-eaten oak ceiling of the bed.
The crackling of the fire seemed hugely loud in the empty chamber. How red was the chamber, from the fire, from the dark red draperies. Such lurid and beautiful and soothing light. My world.
"You go down now to the cellar, as I told you," Rhosh said. He rose up on his elbow and kissed Benedict roughly. "You hear me? You listening to me?"
"Yes, yes, and yes." Benedict moaned. He was obviously weak all over from the pleasure of it, but Rhoshamandes had taken only what he'd given, passing the zinging red ribbon of his own blood through the younger one's veins before whipping it back into himself.
He climbed off the bed and, before the open armoire, pulled on a heavy cashmere sweater and woolen pants, then wool socks and boots. He chose his long Russian coat for this journey, the black velvet military coat of czarist days with the black fox collar. He pulled a watch cap down over his hair. And then took from the bottom drawer of the armoire all the papers and currency he might need, and put these securely into his inside pockets. Where were his gloves? He put them on, loving the way his long fingers looked in the sleek black kid leather.
"But where are you going?" asked Benedict. He sat up, mussed, rosy cheeked, and pretty. "Tell me."
"Stop being so anxious," said Rhoshamandes. "I'm going west into the night. I'm going to find the twins and get to the bottom of this. I know this Voice has to be coming from one of them."
"But Mekare's mindless and Maharet would never do such things. Everybody knows that. Even Benji says that."
"Yes, Benji, Benji, the great prophet of the blood drinkers."
"But it's true."
"Downstairs, Benedict, before I drag you there myself. I have to be off now."
It was a fine retreat, that cellar suite of rooms, hardly a dungeon what with its thick animal skins and abundant oil lamps, and of course the oak fire laid ready to be lighted. The television and computers down there were comparable to those up here, and a slender air shaft actually brought a steady bit of fresh ocean breeze in from a tiny opening in the rocky cliff.
As Benedict went out, Rhosh went to the eastern wall, lifted the heavy stag-hunt French tapestry that covered it, and pushed back the door to his secret office, one of those doors weighted so that no mortal alone could move it.
Familiar smell of beeswax, parchment, old leather, and ink. Hmmm. He always stopped a moment to savor it.
With the power of his mind, he quickly ignited a bank of candles on iron candelabra spikes.
The rock-cut chamber was lined with books to the ceiling, and on one wall hung a huge map of the world painted by Rhosh himself on canvas to feature the cities that he most loved in correct relationship to one another.
He stood there gazing at it, remembering all the reports of the Burnings. They'd started in Tokyo, moved to China, then, Mumbai, Kolkata, the Middle East. And then broken out madly all over South America, in Peru, Bolivia, and Honduras.
Then Europe had been stricken. Even Budapest which contained Rhosh's favorite opera house. Maddening.
It seemed there had been a plan at first; but the plan had broken down into utterly random attacks--except for one
thing. The Burnings in South America had occurred in an arc that had become a crude circle. Only there did such a pattern appear. And that's where the twins were, he was sure of it, deep within the Amazon. Those who knew for certain were clever indeed, and of course he was far too close to the twins in age to have a telepathic advantage with them. But he knew. They were in the Amazon.
The eccentric Maharet favored jungle locations, and always had since the Sacred Core had been taken into her sister. He had now and then caught some weak flashes of the twins in his dreams, emanating from other minds, conveyed to yet other minds and so forth. Yes, they were in the jungles of the Amazon, the ghastly pair who had stolen the Sacred Blood from Akasha's Egypt.
Rebels, heretics, blasphemers. He'd been nourished on those old tales. In fact they were reputedly the cause of it all, were they not? The twins had brought the evil spirit of Amel into Akasha's kingdom. He didn't really care about that old mythology but he did appreciate irony and patterns in human behavior just as he appreciated these elements in books.
Well, he had scant affection for Akasha, who'd been a raving tyrant by the time he'd been dragged into her presence and forced to drink from the Sacred Fount and pledge his eternal fidelity. Icy merciless goddess. She'd been reigning for a thousand years. Or so they said. How she had inspected him, running her hard thumbs over his head, his face, his shoulders, his chest. How her unctuous fawning priests had examined him in all his parts before he was pronounced perfect to be a blood god.
And what fate had awaited him as a blood god? It was either fight under Prince Nebamun's command with the Queen's defenders or be walled up in a mountain shrine, starving, dreaming, reading minds, passing judgment for peasants who brought him blood sacrifices on holy feasts and beseeched him with endless superstitious prayers.
He'd run away soon enough. He'd planned it early. A wanderer from the isle of Crete, a seagoing wanderer and merchant, he'd never bought the dark tangled beliefs of old Egypt.
But he'd refused to abandon Nebamun in the time of his worst trial, Nebamun who'd always been kind to him. And he was not going to run when Nebamun stood before the Queen accused of high treason and blasphemy for the frivolous and selfish making of a woman blood drinker.
Making women into blood drinkers was the decadent and foul practice of the First Brood rebels, and utterly forbidden to the Queens Blood. For the blood gods and the dedicated soldiers of the Queens Blood, there need be only one woman, the Queen. Why would anyone dare to make a blood drinker of a woman? True, it had happened a few times, but only with the Queen's reluctant blessing. Not even her own sister had she brought into the Blood. Nor her daughters.
He'd been sure that Nebamun and Sevraine, his bride, were going to be put to death when Rhosh had delayed his own escape. But it hadn't happened.
The all-powerful Queen who thought her smallest whim a reflection of the Divine Mind had "loved Sevraine" when she had looked upon her. And she had let Sevraine drink her powerful blood and called her handmaiden.
As for Nebamun, for his transgressions and presumptions, his soldiering times were over. Shut up in a shrine for all time, he was to ponder his offenses. Were he to serve obediently for a century he might be forgiven.
In the early hours of the morning, when the guards of the shrine slept in a drunken stupor, Rhosh had crept to the brick walls and begged Nebamun to speak to him.
"Run away, leave this place," said Nebamun. "She has taken my precious Sevraine and doomed me to this harsh and unbearable existence. The time will come when I'll escape these walls. Leave here now, my friend. Get as far away as you can. Find the First Brood rebels if you can, and if you cannot, bring others into the Blood. All we've defended is lies built upon lies built upon lies. Blood drinkers of the First Brood tell the truth. She is no goddess. There is a demon inside her, a thing named Amel. I have seen the work of that demon. I was there when it possessed her."
For words like that they would have ripped out his tongue. But no one had heard that night through the brick wall except Rhoshamandes. And Rhoshamandes would forever love Nebamun for those brave words.
It had been fifty years before Rhoshamandes had returned and smashed that shrine to dust, freeing Nebamun. As for Sevraine, she'd long ago betrayed the Queen. She'd had no use for the old religion either. There was a price on her head. She was hated, as were the twins. Cursed for her blond hair and blue eyes, as if these natural gifts alone marked her as a sorceress and a traitor. And she had vanished.
"Well, old friends, wherever you are," said Rhoshamandes out loud in the quiet of his little library. "We may soon have to meet over this present disaster. But for now I'm going forth to find out what I can on my own."
Of course he knew where Nebamun was, he'd known for centuries. Nebamun had become Gregory in the Common Era, and kept a blood drinker family of awe-inspiring stability in the greatest luxury. Just about every year or so, the face of that ancient and powerful Nebamun would flash full bright on a television screen as some mortal commentator spoke of Gregory Duff Collingsworth's vast pharmaceutical empire, his worldly dealings on different continents, even his famous fin de siecle tower on the shores of Lake Geneva.
How many catching those televised glimpses recognized that face? Probably no one. Except Sevraine perhaps. But then perhaps Sevraine was with Gregory. And perhaps they too had heard the Voice.
Perhaps the Voice was a consummate flatterer and liar. Perhaps the Voice played blood drinkers against one another.
"You alone, I have loved above all, your face and form and your mind," the Voice had said to Rhoshamandes.
Hmmm. We'll see about that.
He blew out the candles. For some reason his telekinetic powers could never just make them go out. He had to do it with his breath. So that's how he did it.
He went back into his bedchamber and opened another armoire that was indeed a true armoire, holding his weapons, those items he'd collected over the years more for sentiment than any other reason. He took the sharp knife he loved best off the shelf, and tied the scabbard to his leather belt inside his coat. Then he took out another weapon, a small greenish weapon from modern war called simply a hand grenade. He knew what this could do. He'd seen it plenty during the great wars that had laid waste to Europe in the twentieth century. He tucked it into his coat. He knew how to pull the pin and hurl it should the need arise.
Then he went out on the high windswept battlements and stared up at the misty sky and out over the cold, roiling gray sea.
For a moment he was tempted to abandon all this, to return to his library and light those candles again and the oak he'd chopped himself for the little fireplace, to sink down into his velvet chair and pick up one of the many books that he'd been reading of late, and just let the night pass as so many others.
But he knew he couldn't do that.
There was a raw inescapable truth in Benji Mahmoud's chiding words. He and the others like him had to do something. He'd always admired Maharet, and cherished the wee bits of time in the past that he had spent with her. But he knew nothing of her in this era except what others had written. And it was time to go see her himself and get to the bottom of this mystery. He figured he knew exactly who this Voice was, and it was time for Rhosh and the Voice to meet.
He'd never bowed to anyone's authority, but avoiding the wars and quarrels of the Undead had cost him dearly. And he wasn't so sure he was willing to acquiesce or migrate again. The Voice was right about power. We seek power so as not to fall under anyone else's power, yes.
Long years ago, this cold island remote from the British mainland had been perfect for his retreat, even if it did take him one hundred years to build this castle and its dungeons and its fortifications. He'd brought the trees here for the barren gullies and gorges, planting oak, beech, alder, elm, sycamore, and birch. He'd been a benevolent lord to the mortals who constructed this castle, dug out his many secret chambers from the bedrock, and created a refuge eventually which humans could not themselves conquer
by any siege.
Even in the last two centuries, this place had been perfect. It had been simple to ferry coal and firewood from the mainland, and to keep a pleasure boat of his own in the little harbor for those times when he wanted to be out on the stormy seas.
But the world was wholly different now.
Coast helicopters regularly patrolled the area, satellite images of the castle could be accessed on any computer, and well-meaning mortals frequently made a nuisance of themselves attempting to confirm the safety and well-being of the inhabitants.
Wasn't it the same now for other immortals, those legendary vampire musicians who lived in the Alps, for instance, Notker the Wise with his fiddlers and composers and immortal boy soprano singers? Those boys were such a treat. (You didn't have to castrate a boy to fix him as a soprano forever. Just give him the Blood.) And wasn't it the same for Maharet and Mekare in their remote jungles, and any other exile from the world who'd counted on the survival of impenetrable wildernesses which were no more?
Only the clever ones like Gregory Duff Collingsworth and Armand Le Russe--who could thrive right in the midst of mortals--were undisturbed by the shrinking of the planet. But what a price they paid.
Where would immortals have to go next to build their citadels? Into the mountain ranges beneath the sea? He'd thought of it of late, he had to admit, a great sprawling palace made of space-age steel and glass in a deep dark ocean ravine, accessible only to those powerful enough to swim to the lower depths. And yes, he had the wealth perhaps to create such a retreat for himself of sorts, but he was angry, angry that he had even to think of giving up this lovely island where he'd been at home for hundreds of years. Besides, he wanted to see trees and grass and stars and the moon from his windows. He liked to chop wood himself for his own hearths. He wanted to feel the wind on his face. He wanted to be part of this Earth.
Now and then he reflected: What if we did come together and use our considerable powers to destroy half the human race? It wouldn't be that hard, would it? Especially when people don't believe you exist. Wholesale destruction and anarchy would make for new wildernesses all over the planet, and blood drinkers could hunt with impunity and have the upper hand once more. But then Rhosh also loved the technological accomplishments of the shrinking planet--great flat-screen televisions, recorded poetry and music, DVDs and the streaming of documentaries and dramatic programs and films to viewers everywhere, magnificent electronic sound systems, satellite broadcasting, telephones, cell phones, electric heat and modern construction techniques, synthetic fabrics, high-rise buildings, fiberglass yachts, airplanes, nylon carpet, and modern glass. Saying goodbye to the modern world would be anguishing, no matter how good the hunting became.