“So, in effect, this is a riddle? We must press the correct symbols in order to open the gate?” asked Marcos, although he felt that he already knew the answer.
“Either to open the gate, or to avoid triggering any traps”, answered Erica.
Marcos was feeling lost and had no problem admitting it. He knew nothing about ancient history, all those symbols looked the same to him. However, upon closer inspection, he noticed that the gate was entirely free of dust, unlike the rest of this place. Other than that, the symbols bore no difference in the way they had been made, nor could he tell whether some had been used more than the others. There was no easy way to figure out this riddle. Erica, on the other hand, appeared willing to give it a go. Terrified, Marcos saw her reaching out and turning a couple of symbols on the wall.
“What are you doing?” he almost screamed at her.
“‘Ba’ and ‘ka’ are what the human lose when they die. However, they retain their name. I am pretty sure that the symbols have no specific meaning, but I could form the name of the Ancient one, using these”.
Indeed, Erica turned ten symbols under those two Egyptian ones and immediately a metal clicking was heard from within the gate. She sighed with relief.
“I kind of guessed which Ancient sleeps here”, she admitted. “One of the Ancients, Demosthenes, was Greek and lived in Athens for many centuries”, she added.
Wasting no further time and without waiting for Marcos to respond, she turned her attention to the two other parts of the riddle. She raised her arm, looking to form another word, but stopped. She focused again on the “caduceus”.
“Hermes was also a master thief and a trickster. He was the most humane of the Olympians. Selene, right next to him, seems to be suggesting something else…”
“Vampires?” guessed Marcos.
Erica nodded and then, in a flash, turned all the symbols under the “caduceus”, one after the other, as fast as she could. Marcos saw her hand pass over them in a blur and, faster than his eyes could register, all the symbols on the gate had been rotated. He gritted his teeth, expecting whatever trap the Ancient had prepared to fall on their heads like the wrath of the heavens, but the only thing he heard was that same metallic clicking noise as before. Erica had chosen well, once more. He exhaled, relieved; he hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath.
“What about safe passage?” he asked Erica, trying to hide the fear he had felt.
“There’s no such thing as safe passage”, she replied, placing both her hands on the gate, pushing it.
For the first time, he heard her grunt in strain. The veins in her arms thickened from the pressure. A cry escaped her lips and at the same time the stone groaned loudly. The gate opened, making a devilish noise and a cloud of dust, decay and death rushed out to meet them. Marcos began coughing violently, bent in pain. He was feeling like his lungs were on fire, while his teary eyes could not see a thing. Erica, on the other hand, appeared entirely unaffected and stepped in.
Through his coughing and pain, Marcos realized he had been left alone and, waving his arms about frantically, tried to disperse the cloud of dust.
“Erica!” he shouted, but got no answer. “Erica!” he called again with all his strength and, although the coughing had not stopped, he rushed into the chamber, completely ignoring the pain he was feeling.
His eyes were aching but slowly his vision was recovering, so he managed to find her. She was standing still in front of something made of stone; he couldn’t see exactly what it was. She looked petrified. He grabbed her by the hand and tried to make her turn to him. He failed, it was as if he was pulling at a rock.
“Erica, talk to me!” he shouted, this time in desperation.
As if hearing him for the first time, she finally turned to him and looked him in the eye.
“He’s dead”, she told him; her voice was devoid of any feeling.
Seeing the look of surprise in Marcos’ face, she added”
“The Ancient one. He’s dead. Someone killed him”.
She pointed at something in front of her and at that moment his eyes recovered enough for Marcos to realize what it was that she was showing to him. A stone tomb was standing before them, opened. Inside it there was a skeleton, and at the place where the heart would have been there was a black crystal, shattered to smithereens.
The familiar scent of the mausoleum reached his nostrils. However, this time there was something different in it. He could sense that someone had entered that place. He sniffed again at the air around him. Not just one. He detected two different scents: one belonging to a human, the second to a vampire. He looked at his hands, which where skeletal, with black claws. As if responding to an invisible command, the claws extended and hardened. With a satisfied smile, he moved towards the scents.
Erica was feeling completely lost, she hadn’t considered the possibility she would find the Ancient one dead. Not finding him at all, yes, but not this. Marcos, standing before her, was trying to make her feel better, but she was not listening to him. Once again she looked at the bones inside the tomb, to be sure that the Ancient one was not playing some trick on her. Nothing. After all, she could feel it; she could detect traces of powerful magic in the shattered remains of his heart. Her plans had been upset.
She tried to calm down. A memory from her teenage years at the Order returned unbidden. One of the female knights had been dealing with her, personally. She had been trying to teach her how to mend clothes. Young Erica was furious. She had considered this to be a grave insult; all the other novices at her age were being taught how to yield a sword, and she was attempting to hold a needle. And as if this was not enough, she was faced with the sorriest pile of tattered clothes she had ever seen: clothes ridden with holes, torn, patched beyond recognition, frayed to within an inch of unravelling. She had failed to patch even a single one. After a while, she had simply given up. Het tutor hadn’t spoken; she was merely looking at her. Erica, in her stubbornness, began staring at her as well. The two, one older and experienced, the other young and impatient, were sitting like two statues, trying to stare each other down. Five whole hours lasted this battle of wills, whereupon Erica gave up and went back to her patching. Instead of trying to mend a cloth on the brink of oblivion, she began sacrificing an item in order to salvage another. The hours passed and suddenly, without realizing, she was out of clothes to mend. She was done. Her teacher looked at her and moved, for the first time in almost twelve hours. She got up from her chair and, as she made to leave, told her just one thing: “Today’s lesson was about patience and planning ahead; had you sat down to think how to act from the start, now you would have completed a fencing lesson as well”.
“I will help you sort this out, I promise”.
Erica’s mind returned abruptly to the present, listening to Marcos promising her something. It took her a little while to realize exactly what he meant and, to humor him, she smiled and nodded. She realized that he had been holding her by the shoulders and she looked at him somewhat oddly. He took his hands off at once, his face reddened and then he tried to observe the rest of the chamber, with the help of his flashlight. Erica let him struggle for a bit, smiling, and then focused her inner will. Dozens of torches around the crypt burst into flames, burning with a fierce intensity. Marcos turned towards her, to make some comment, but immediately froze. They were not alone in that chamber.
The crypt was far larger than he would have guessed. The walls were covered in odd murals while the ceiling above them was supported by tens of pillars. At the far end, inside massive glass tanks, were dozens of women. Their lifeless bodies were floating inside a thick red liquid that resembled blood, macabrely still. The tanks were hermetically sealed on top, while from their bottoms a number of small tubes extended, leading up to the ceiling, wherein they disappeared. Marcos was staring at the corpses, stunned. They all belonged to young women, he couldn’t count exactly how many there were in those tanks. Erica approached and touched him by the ar
m. He turned and looked at her, speechless. His eyes spoke volumes, though.
“Silver bath, this is the name of what you’re seeing here”, Erica began explaining. “When the Ancients slumber, centuries may pass before they reawaken. To them, it matters not, but no common vampire could spend such a period of time asleep. In an effort to bypass this problem, they created what you see before you. They trapped whoever they wished, retainers, friends, slaves, anyone, inside tanks filled with blood, so that they could survive until their masters awakened”.
“You mean to tell me that all these are vampires?” he asked, rediscovering his voice.
Erica nodded.
“And then, what? When the Ancient awakens, he simply resurrects them? He has such powers?” Marcos wondered.
“No, you misunderstood. They are not dead. The tanks, apart from the blood, contain countless fragments of silver. It is said that, upon entering the silver bath, those chosen for it can stand not to open their mouths. Needless to say that the silver pierces their skin, prickles their eyes, it burns them, but the pain is supposed to be manageable. Of course, they do not have the strength to escape, but they can keep their mouths shut and their nose closed. Lack of oxygen does not affect them; they are vampires, their bodies can heal any wound. The blood in which they float heals any damage caused by the silver and thus they do not die. Gradually, however, the silver coming in contact with vulnerable parts of their bodies, such as the eyes, manages to go deeper and the pain slowly but surely becomes unbearable. At that point all the victims instinctively scream, or at least attempt to, whereupon the silver fragments enter their stomach and from there the rest of their organs. Their bodies and minds collapse under the pain but at the same time they keep regenerating. They go into a coma and those who have experienced it claim it is akin to an indescribably nightmarish dream, which never ends. When the Ancient reawakens, he releases the rest of the vampires from this fate and completely heals them, using his powers”.
A terrified look had spread all over Marcos’ face. Erica looked at him and continued, calmly:
“Now, as to how this whole thing is feasible… In ancient times, they used stone tanks. They would bury them underground and connect them to an altar above. Then they would introduce to the population some concept of blood sacrifice in honor of some deity or as a form of punishment. The people gladly assented and thus provided the vampires with all the blood they needed, which flowed from the altar to the tanks beneath. Truly ingenious. The blood was kept fresh with the introduction of various herbs inside the tanks and the whole system required minimal maintenance. Now, in modern times, keeping blood fresh is fairly simple and as for finding it… I am certain that the Ancients have enough underlings, vampires and humans, willing to provide them with whatever they might need.
Marcos remained silent and Erica laughed, telling him:
“Relax, after all we saved them! Lucia Burton, whom we had been searching for, is right here. At least some good has come out of this sordid business”.
As she was talking, she approached the tanks. Lucia Burton was floating before all the others, the only one who had a whole tank to herself. Her body was perfectly still and Erica stood there for a while, observing her. She resembled her brother, Lucas, a fair bit. Both were blond and she, too, was fairly muscular. Erica approached the tank some more and, absentmindedly, she reached up and placed her palm on the glass. Lucia suddenly opened her eyes, which were blacker than black, and looked at her. She was opening and closing her mouth, attempting to speak, but the blood around her wouldn’t let her. Using her powers, Erica entered her mind to listen to what she had been trying to say. Her skin crawled, as if she had been hit by a blast of frozen wind. Lucia’s voice inside her head sounded melodious and sad, like the voice of a defeated man on the brink of oblivion:
“My bed has become my tomb and my body is now my prison. Hope has decayed inside my chest. I am afraid, afraid of Thanatos, him with the dark wings and porcelain skin. He’s standing at my door. He’s here, I can feel it. I can hear him laughing, knocking on my door.
“He’s toying with me.
“You should have been here, Erica. They had told me that you could defeat the Shadow; you would come marching in the Sun’s chariot they said, a true daughter of Helios. They had promised me you could defeat Death. They asked me to be patient, and this I did.
“Then, why am I dying alone?”
Lucia’s thoughts disappeared and Erica took a step back, away from the tank. She was feeling Lucia’s vitality waning, as was the case with all the other young women in the other tanks. The Ancient, before dying, had left a message for her, but in doing so he had effectively destroyed the brains of those women. Whatever force had killed him, the message had managed to reach her.
Behind her, Marcos was watching her, worried; he didn’t know what to do. Erica had been standing frozen in front of the tank, as if she had been stricken. Marcos took a couple of steps towards her, changed his mind, stopped. Now that Erica appeared to have snapped out of it, he asked her what had happened, but she did not respond.
He hated this place. He looked around, expecting something better from the chamber where an Ancient slumbered, but instead it was a very plain room. He realized that it was built in precisely the same manner one would construct a “panic room”: plain and functional. And yet, the creature entombed here didn’t have the time to awaken, and that made Marcos worry even more. As if all this was not enough, suddenly he was feeling cold. He pressed tighter his coat around his neck and then realized what was happening. He actually sensed it, moments before it happened: someone was standing behind him. He made to turn, but it was too late. A sharp pain pierced his side and he felt a set of teeth boring into his neck. He tried to scream in pain but could not do it. The very next second he felt a pair of hands grabbing and launching him against one of the crypt’s walls. His arm was the first part of his body he felt breaking, followed by several of his ribs. He didn’t get the chance to feel much more; his vision darkened and he fell unconscious.
One of the safe houses belonging to the Ancient, who had “secured” Lucas’ services by abducting his sister, was an old bar, built in the ’30s. It had been renovated, but it still retained that characteristic glamor of the era, at least that which existed parallel to the war. Lucas was sitting on a stool at a corner of the bar, isolated from the other vampires, who were spending their time with various amusements. In one hand he was nursing a glass of vodka, while in the other an empty bottle, which he was pressing on the counter. Alcohol had absolutely no lasting effect on his body, but he did enjoy the taste. During the last year he had spent a lot of time reminiscing about the past: the battles he had fought alongside his friend, before they had been turned into vampires, the time he spent with his sister, his partners over the centuries, even the nights he would spend around a campfire, drinking in the company of his battle brothers, while he was human. He cast a glance towards the vampires lounging at the bar and felt a wave of anger swelling inside him. He would never call these creatures battle brothers. He recalled the words of that girl he had fought a year ago, Erica: her promise that she would free his sister. With Naram-Sin dead, Lucia was the only one left who remembered Lucas as he was, before he was turned. Besides that, she was the only one left of those he had some feelings for; the only one able to look past the unholy darkness consuming his soul.
When they had been turned into vampires, Naram-Sin, Lucas and his sister had developed a special bond, possibly due to their previous fraternal ties. When close to each other, they could sense what the other one felt, even see through their eyes. The Ancient who had abducted her had taken her somewhere far away, so that Lucas was powerless to find her, but their bond was not completely gone. He could still sense that she was alive and this gave him strength, hope that one day he might see her again. He was feeling her presence in his mind, a constant companionship, even though he could not hear her.
He was emptying his glass, when he sensed
that bond slowly fade and then disappear. For the first time in all these centuries, he felt like he was truly alone; his sister was dead. Her presence had been gone from his mind, leaving behind only an insufferable silence. He put down his glass on the counter and tried to calm down; it was a futile effort. Images began swimming before his eyes, memories of his sister. A sob escaped the lips of the giant, forcing him to cover his eyes. The one good thing he had discovered in vampirism was that he could spend an eternity with those he loved, but in the course of the centuries he had lost them all, one by one.
The vampires in the bar were looking at him, he could sense it. Yet he did not want to look at them, he did not want them to be the first image he would see following the death of his sister. He wanted to see her, as per the ancient tradition of their family. He had failed to protect her, but at least he would observe this tradition.
“Ron!” he roared, keeping his eyes closed.
He heard the vampire who answered to this name get up and approach him. He could sense his nervousness.
“Grab my cell phone from my phone!” he commanded.
He waited patiently while his order was carried out and then continued: