The hidden door swung inward. Beyond was absolute dark. From within there came the odor of many lairs.
“Halte!” Everybody froze. “Do not move,” Colonel Bocage said. “Listen.”
It came again, a sound so deep that it was more a sensation than a noise.
“Could it be the Métro?” Becky asked. “Are we under a tunnel?”
Des Roches laid his arm around her neck, drew her close, uttered a breathy, almost-silent whisper. “That was a vampire.”
The French were in some ways far advanced in their knowledge. Becky and Charlie and Paul had been down many a dark tunnel, but they had never had to face anything this elaborate.
The place stank of wet stone and the musk of bats. The group had stopped its march and was clustering together in a low gallery. Becky shone her light on a stone where graffiti had been carved. “Merci à Dieu, m — ” and there it stopped, as if the carver had run out of strength or light or time. The letters were formed in an old script, perhaps from the last century or the one before.
“Listen — again,” Charlie said.
It was eerie, that sound — so deep that you wouldn’t notice it unless you were trained to. Paul had heard it echoing off the walls of the night in Beijing, in Osaka, in Bangkok. As a boy, he had heard it mixing with the sullen hoot of the owl and the barking of the fox.
After some moments, there was no sound but their breathing and the busy scuttle of rats. The roar of the great city above them was a bare whisper. Water dripped, echoing as if somewhere deeper there might be a hidden pool or even a small lake.
“Lights out,” Paul said. “We go to light-amplification goggles.” Their equipment packs rattled as they put the night-vision goggles on.
You could see perhaps fifty feet. Beyond that was the haze of a darkness so deep not even the goggles could gather enough light to be of use.
“Do you wish to go to infrared,” Bocage asked his men, his voice, in its softness, sounding curiously as if he’d meant to utter words of love.
“Let’s do it,” Raynard said. He and Des Roches clicked on the infrared floods.
A hand grabbed Paul’s shoulder, the fingers digging in. Becky was staring down the long, sloping corridor.
There had been something there, most certainly. “Vampire,” Bocage murmured.
Paul had seen what might have passed for a tall, elegant man, tall and very quick of step. The moment the infrared flood had turned on, it had gone.
The Keepers were calling to one another that human beings had penetrated the barrier. Their voices were calm, which made her throat turn sour and her mind race — don’t you understand, don’t you realize even yet?
She had the map of the ossuary, but there was no map of the labyrinth beyond. She had to go by scent and hearing and what little sight was available.
She had not moved ten steps before the darkness completely enclosed her. Now she had to walk blind, on faith only, trusting in her nose and ears for direction.
Behind her, she could hear the breathing of tourists in the ossuary and their occasional murmured conversations. There was something about the place that kept them quiet, as if the spirits of the dead demanded it.
Along a low side tunnel that angled sharply down came a faint reddish-purple glow. For a moment she did not know what it was. But then she saw a Keeper, dressed all in black, standing not fifty feet away from her. His back was to her. He was watching the glow, which was bouncing, waxing and waning, as it slid along a far tunnel.
When his odor touched her nostrils — powerful, richly masculine — a thrill trembled through her. He stood tall. His absolute stillness made him seem so very noble.
She murmured low, in Prime, “I, Miriam out of Lamia, greet you.” His back did not move. Then, very suddenly, he turned round.
He faced her now, the glow waxing and waning behind him. “I, Uriel from Enoch, now called Henri, greet you.” He inclined his head.
She bowed deep at the waist, as was the formality for a Keeper entering from outside a given Keep. He came close to her and laid his long fin-gers under her chin and raised her.
“I come to present myself before the conclave,” she added, still speaking in the measured, formal cadences of Prime.
He switched to French. “You want a kid, Miriam? Or a husband?”
“Both,” she replied.
He smiled, then. “You still live in that house, I presume, with your wonderful little pets.”
He did not sound too disapproving. Dared she hope? “Yes,” she said carefully. She lowered her eyes to him, as manners required.
“How can you bear the smell?” His tone slapped her. He was as contemptuous of her as the rest.
She tried not to reveal her disappointment. But she raised her eyes. Damned if she would show respect to a man who had contempt for her. “What is that glow,” she asked. It was getting distinctly brighter, so much so that she could now see the walls of this tunnel clearly, and even Henri’s narrow, solemn face.
“It’s trivial.”
She dropped the manners and looked directly at him. Martin Soule had been in such terrible condition that he had presented no appeal. Henri, by contrast, was not hideous. He was dirty and poorly dressed, but his body was gorgeous. She could sense his strength, and the thought of being held in his arms was not without appeal.
He seemed indifferent to the light. “It’s getting brighter.”
He was looking at her with the attention a jeweler might pay a gem. “It’s true, then,” he said.
“What is true?”
“Your beauty is the greatest in the world.” He reached toward her, a tentative, caressing touch. As his fingers shivered along the edge of her lips, she tasted of their flat salt. Desire flamed in her. She imagined herself lying beneath him, absolutely, wonderfully helpless as he came roaring into her like an inflamed lion. She would receive him, an open flower, an open wound. She would be a slave to him then, hold his cup and kneel before him. She would let herself be possessed, and in turn she would possess him.
The glow flared, and now she heard a steady tread of — she listened — twelve feet. They sounded to her like human feet. “That light — it’s the humans, isn’t it?”
“It’s nothing. Ignore it.”
“Is it human?”
He gazed at her. “You are a forward creature, just as they say.”
“Humans are dangerous.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You knew Martin Soule, of course.”
He nodded. “He went to live in that house your mother so foolishly built.”
“He died there.”
“Did he?” His voice took on a note of question. “Why would he elect to do that?”
“They burned him! As they intend to burn us all!”
“I remember your mother’s misfortune. But that should not — ”
The lights appeared like ghostly eyes, six of them, all glaring straight down this tunnel. Henri was trapped in the purple glow. He turned to face it, smiling slightly. “Stop,” he said in flawless modern French, “you have no business here.”
Paul’s breath whooshed out of him when he saw it. He’d never laid eyes on one like this, so large, so strong looking. In Asia, they’d been smaller, and they’d hidden at the back of their lairs.
“There are two,” Bocage said laconically.
Then he saw, behind the towering male in its fusty suit from fifty years ago, a female. It drew back into the shadows, but it also had a human appearance . . . just like the traveler. Had he seen blond hair? He couldn’t be sure. The creature had moved with the speed and grace of a panther.
“Mon Dieu,” Des Roches said.
“You saw that female?”
“The face — it was . . . so strange.”
Paul had not seen the face. But he didn’t care about that now. It wasn’t the traveler, the traveler was dead. He raised his gun and fired, and so did all the others.
The noise was shattering; a gust of wind b
lasted back into his face, as the narrow tunnel compressed the expanding air. The screaming thunder of it was accompanied by a dazzling flare of green light, and followed by hollow, zipping echoes as bullet fragments tore along the walls.
Silence. A distant howl, growing louder. Charlie tore off his night-vision equipment and went for his flashlight. He flicked the switch. The beam shone like a white laser into the murk of dust that now filled the tunnel.
“Non!” Bocage screamed.
There was a flicker in the air, no more. Out of the dust had come a knife, thrown with the vampire’s bizarre force, moving so fast that it was only a flash of light.
The beam of the flashlight wavered, then went crazy, then dropped to the floor. It rolled toward the vampires, and in a second nothing could be seen but a dim yellow glow in the murk of dust. This glow was pointing straight at them, away from the vampires. So they were visible, but they could not see.
Charlie began to make a sound, one that was almost comically like the whistle of a toy train. It changed to gurgling and splashing and the clatter of a body in seizure. He fell back, his head striking the ground with a crack like a breaking egg.
Des Roches went down beside him. Becky, stifling a scream, pushed close. Her hands touched the knife as if it was blazing hot. She made little, choked sounds in her throat, awful sounds. Her fingers fluttered around the handle. The sounds had a sense of question in them, but it was a question that nobody could answer. There was no answer. How do you extract a knife that is embedded up to its hilt in a man’s face?
There was another blast, this one from Raynard’s gun. Then Bocage fired twice more. Paul probably should have been terrified, but he felt the same calm, clear sense of inner control that always came to him at moments like this. His heart was sinking because of Charlie’s death. But he did not stop fighting, not for an instant, no matter his breaking heart. He watched that dust, looking for shadowy movement.
Another knife appeared, headed straight for Becky. He saw it gliding as gently as a leaf on the sea, gliding toward her neck. He felt her hair under his hand, and then he pressed with lightning speed and she slammed flat, and the knife went clanging and clattering up the tunnel.
From off in the yellow gloom he heard a faint sound, an unmistakable sound: it could only have been a gasp of surprise.
Wild emotions sped through Miriam — horror to see a Keeper blown to pieces, fear that the next blast would kill her, and then, above all, amazement at what she had seen that man do, and amazement at how she felt about him.
That man — only a human — had moved as fast as a Keeper. She knew the human genome intimately. There was nothing in their makeup that could enable them to do this. Their physical limitations were bred into them. But not into this one, no indeed.
Then there was the way he affected her when he pulled off his ridiculous goggles and she saw his chiseled, complex face. Her body responded to this human as if he were a Keeper. This was not the attraction she felt normally to human prettiness, but powerful, shivering, blood-pounding desire. She wanted him not under her but over her; she sweated and lusted for him; she wanted him to possess her and fill her with a startling, frenetic hardness. Her body was begging her; it was pleading as if he were the strongest, finest male Keeper in the weave of the world.
She backed away, as horrified at these feelings as she was at the power of the weapons that were being raised against her.
She dashed to the end of the corridor, took a turning, another, then flattened herself against the wall. She listened — the ever-present dripping, the scuttle of rats, the deep fluttering of Keeper voices as they called back and forth, in mixtures of French and Prime, inquiring of one another: “What was it?”“Is there reason for concern?”
There were a lot of them here. They had indeed been assembling for their conclave. She knew, after seeing that man, that there would be no conclave. He was going to go through this labyrinth like the red shadow of death, like the hand of an angry god. None would survive him, not with his exploding bullets and his team and his eerie personal speed.
Off behind her, another blast of fire echoed, followed by the awful thudding of another Keeper body being ripped to pieces.
They were going to lose their battle. Therefore, she had to do what was necessary to protect the rest of the Keepers. She had to go to the heart of this Keep and secure their Book of Names. To find it, she must be careful to make certain that every step she took was downward. Turning here, there, she went farther and deeper. Soon the dripping was general, water was running in rivulets, and she was concerned that the center of the Keep might be awash.
Every few minutes, there would be an awful roar behind her, followed by a series of weaker explosions. The humans — led by that eerie, beautiful monster — were clearing out the Keepers, moving with careful method. For their part, the Keepers, who had no call of alarm and no real way to react to an assault like this, were responding piecemeal, although with growing anger and ferocity. One after another, they would attack the human group. Then would come the roaring of the guns, and the distant, liquid thuds of bodies being torn apart.
She was moving fast, head down, when she suddenly sensed a change around her. She was in a much larger space, and not only that, she could see a little.
This was not a manmade tunnel, but something very much more ancient. The precise lines of its walls, the low, graceful arch of its ceiling, suggested that a far more careful hand than human had been at work here. Stalagmites rose from the ground. It looked like a forest on an alien world.
“I am Miriam out of Lamia, come seeking entry to your conclave.”
At first, there was silence. Then the light wavered and, with the softest of sounds, a shadow emerged. “I am Julia out of Helene who was Nef-ta-tu.”
She had not seen Julia since the days of splendor, when their kind had ruled Egypt, walking as princes among their human herds.
Julia had been as sweet then as a roe, as tender as an apple from the bough. What came to Miriam was a dark creature, so crusted with eons of dirt that only her eyes seemed alive.
Julia had the Book of Names with her, tucked under her arm as casually as some novel.“There is a human band in these caves,”she said, her voice mild.
“They are killing us.”
She gave Miriam a careful look. “How is that?”
“With guns.”
“We are faster than their hands. We can step out of the way before they pull the trigger. I’ve done it myself now and again.”
“These guns leave you no place to go. They spread a mass of tiny bullets. Keepers up there are being torn apart. The humans are coming for that book.” She smiled. “Let me take it.”
“I will not. You’re a pervert, Miriam. You’re unclean.”
“If they get your book, our whole world will be in danger.”
“They will not get our book.”
“They will be here in minutes. And they will get it.”
“There have been three hundred conclaves in this place. My grandfather built it when the humans were covered with hair.”
“May those days live in memory.”
“They were sour. The new ones now are much sweeter.”
Horribly close, there came the roar of gunfire. It was so close that the flash was faintly visible.
“We have to get out. We cannot waste another minute.”
“What is a minute or a hundred years? You have fallen from your nobility, Miriam. Everybody says it. I remember you in linen, how tall you were, your limbs like gold.”
“That memory is three thousand years old, Julia! This is now, and the humans are not armed with bronze daggers. Don’t you understand that they’re tearing the Keepers apart with their guns?”
“They will become lost. The labyrinth is more cunning than their minds can understand.”
“That was true a hundred years ago. But now they have sonar and digital maps and handheld locators. And they’re trained to kill us. They have killed all
of Asia, and they have their Book of Names.”
“Asia is far away.”
“It’s an airplane flight! I was in Bangkok a few days ago.”
“You have the restless soul of a human, always traipsing about.”
Miriam heard human voices. They would be here in moments. “Do you not think it strange that you alone are here at the appointed time? Where are the others? Can you explain it?”
“Don’t cross-question me. All will unfold in its course.”
“Then why hasn’t it? What’s wrong?”
“What has changed to prevent the conclave? Nothing.”
“Everything has changed.”
“A few humans cannot change the course of the world.”
Miriam saw the humans creeping among the shadows ahead, four of them.
“It’s lit,” the tall, powerful one said. He walked into the gray glow from the ancient batteries. Humans had found some of the Keepers’ batteries in the Valley of the Euphrates some years ago. They were still trying to understand how the ancients could have had electricity.
“Lookit — a power line!”
Discreetly, Miriam drew Julia into a pool of shadow. The humans were now at the far end of the chamber, perhaps a hundred yards away.
“How do you work the lights?” she whispered to Julia.
“They’re always on during conclave. That’s the rule.”
“Julia, there is no conclave. We’re all being killed. Turn out the lights.”
Julia broke away from her, strode out into the center of the chamber. For a moment, the humans froze. They drew closer together.
“Julia!”
“Miriam, they’re only —”
There came clicking noises, ominous, echoing. Only seconds remained. “Julia, run!”