Garekyn
HE'D BEEN LISTENING to them for about an hour. They'd tied him to a table, with some sort of steel cable. And they were anxious as to how to hold him through the daylight hours when they, obviously, had to sleep.
He was no longer astonished to be alive. It had been all too like his coming out of the ice in Siberia so long ago, the sense of waking from a long sleep. The Parents had promised that there was almost nothing in this world that could kill him, and he felt disloyal somehow to the Parents that he'd feared it was the end. The Parents...oh, if only he could remember.
The strongest blood drinker, the one who'd overtaken him and drained the blood out of him, was speaking. This was Armand.
"And if I put him in my crypt and he does manage to break out of it, then he will find me in one of the other crypts."
"Well, then, what shall we do?"
Steel cables. Strong all right, but was this vampire correct in saying that Garekyn had the strength of ten men? That's what Garekyn had heard him say in his phone call to the Prince. Th
e strength of eight to ten men.
If Garekyn did have that much strength, he'd escape from these cables as soon as they had gone to their rest. And he wouldn't waste any time breaking open their crypts. He had discovered exactly what he had come here to discover. He had seen it as Armand drew the blood out of him. Amel, the Core, Amel the spirit that did in fact animate them all. Amel was in this being Armand who had attacked him, and in the midst of the struggle, as Garekyn fought the blood drinker who was killing him, he had seen the city, unmistakably the city of Atalantaya, and not as he could ever have envisioned it, but from another perspective, a distant perspective, a godlike perspective as the city erupted in flames and slowly fell into the sea.
He locked these thoughts deep in his mind now, fearing their telepathic gifts, of which they bragged over the airwaves night and day.
What a brazen bunch they were to tell their innermost secrets to the whole world and trade on the credulity of human beings to see them as fantasy makers, role-players in an elaborate game, dedicated and fractured fans of vampire lore. But it made sense. Who would believe Garekyn if he told "the world" these pale fiends were living and breathing vampires? Who believed the ancient tale of Atlantis as told by Plato, which Garekyn had first read in Alexi's library in Saint Petersburg a century ago?
Even the Prince had not believed the one called Armand when he'd explained that Garekyn wasn't human.
"All right, listen to me," said Armand. "The thing's coming round. There's only one crypt in the house that can safely hold him, the one made for Marius. Now I'm going to see whether or not I can open it and close it unassisted and somehow secure the door from the outside. You stand watch, Eleni, and you, Benji, come with me."
Sounds of their retreat, down a passage, up a stairway, the quick steps of the young one, Benji, trying to catch up with the barely perceptible steps of Armand. Up out of this cellar into the house above and on across a wooden floor.
Silence. Only the sound of the female blood drinker breathing. Sounds of traffic, sounds of trucks on Madison Avenue, those big noisy trucks that make their deliveries to the restaurants and bars of the metropolis before daybreak.
Cautiously he opened his eyes. She stood with her back to him, intent on some task. Then he heard it, a tiny electronic voice emanating from her cell phone.
"You know who this is." A male voice. A blood drinker voice too soft for human hearing. But Garekyn could certainly hear it. "Leave a message of any length."
Garekyn lifted his head, trying to see exactly how he was bound here and to what. Steel cables all right, heavy and strong. And the table itself was stone, likely marble. The obvious point of weakness would be the table itself, the brittle quality of the stone. If he were to buck, kick, apply all his strength, the marble tabletop would shatter. But what if it was granite? Well, if it was granite or any stone too dense and strong for him to crack, it might nevertheless break loose from its base, and then the cables might slide off of it. But when was the right time?
"Rhosh, listen to me," said the female blood drinker into the phone. "There's a creature here, a non-human. Armand's going to try and secure it at Trinity Gate for the day. At sunset he'll take it to Paris. This might be an occasion for all to come together, for you to go to Court and ask about this discovery, to find some way to be welcomed back in." On and on she talked. The thing was dangerous to vampires. The thing fed on vampire brains! "If the Prince calls all to come together, you must come, Rhosh. We must have peace." Silence.
Well, that was interesting, wasn't it? As she turned around, Garekyn slowed his respiration, closing his eyes again.
The female came close to the table. She was anxious, fidgety. He could hear her agitated breathing, her heels clicking on the concrete floor as she paced. She drew closer. He could hear her heart. Her heart was strong but not as strong as the heart of Armand. He listened for Armand. Only barely could he hear the voices of those two, not in this cellar but in another cellar, likely under another one of the three houses that made up Trinity Gate, houses that had been built separately a century ago.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, to see that she was staring down at him, and when she realized he was looking at her she jumped. Backing away, she caught herself, ashamed of her fear, her eyes fixed to his. Long banks of fluorescent lights glared from the ceiling, clearly illuminating her slender frame, her pale ivory skin, and her eyes as dark as his own. Her long glossy black hair was parted in the middle, hanging to her shoulders, and around her graceful neck she wore strands of cream-colored pearls. He could hear the black silk of her long dress rustling in the moving air. Some machine somewhere forced the air into this cellar chamber. She studied him as intently as he was studying her.
"Who are you?" he asked in his gentlest voice. He spoke English to her because they had all been speaking English before. His eyes inspected the room about him, but so quickly she wasn't likely to realize what he was doing. A great concrete chamber with an iron door of immense thickness, standing open before a dimly lighted passage. The door was like the doors one saw on large walk-in freezers or refrigerators with the big handle and lock on this side.
"Who are you, that's the question," she answered, but her tone was as gentle as his tone had been. "Where do you come from? What is it you want?" She appeared powerfully fascinated by him. "Listen, you mustn't be afraid of us."
He lay back gazing at her calmly. He realized that his wrists weren't fettered, and that he could flex his fingers now, that all the sluggishness of his sleep had worn away. He strained imperceptibly against the steel cables. There were perhaps four of these cables binding him to the table.
"What is this, marble on which you've bound me?" he asked her. "Why, why am I a prisoner here?"
"Because you destroyed one of us," she said. She sounded simple, sincere.
"Ah, but I thought that he was trying to destroy me," said Garekyn. "I came here to speak with you, ask you questions. I made no menacing move towards your friend Benji." He spoke slowly, almost whispering. "Then your emissary tried to kill me. What could I have done, but what I did?"
She was obviously enthralled. She came closer and closer until the silk of her dress brushed the side of his arm.
"Is this marble? Is this an altar?"