Blood Awakening (21 page)

Ramsey approached slowly and cleared his throat. “You
okay, milord?”

Napolean frowned.

“Whatever gems we don’t have, they could
manufacture,” Santos added.

Napolean pushed the map away and nodded. “And if
they’ve been using diamonds to mask their presence, then we really have a
problem.”

Ramsey nodded. “We can’t materialize down there.”

“If we really are going into an
underground...colony”—he practically choked over the words, his eyes cloudy
with skepticism—“we’ll have to go in through the tunnels, and only the gods
know what we might be walking into. They’ll have security. Surveillance. And
there could be—”

“Hundreds of them?” Nathaniel spoke the common fear
aloud.

“Perhaps thousands,” Julien added, causing the
entire room to blanch. “Think about it:  Do you know how easy it would be for
them to reproduce if they’ve been existing right under our noses, unchecked,
for gods know how long?”

“Damn.” Nachari shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Do we need a larger army?”

Napolean frowned. “Absolutely not. The larger the
team, the more likely we are to be detected, to have to engage the enemy. We
don’t want an underground war, not in their territory or on their terms. They would
pick us off like flies. No, this is reconnaissance only: Get in undetected; get
to the princess; and get her out. And then, we can regroup, start thinking of ways
to deal with this new threat. If, indeed, there is one.”

Marquis snarled. “We’re not going to get her away
from Salvatore without a fight.”

“Of course not,” Napolean agreed. “We’ll have to
make a few kills, but, warriors, we do not want to start a battle, understood?”
He steadied his gaze at Marquis and then glanced at his watch. “It’s about
ten-thirty now. It’ll be at least noon before we reach the target area, now that
we know we’re going in on foot—”

“Blind,” Ramsey reminded him.

“One way or the other, we have to be out of there
by sunset,” Napolean continued. “As it stands, we have the advantage: The vast
majority of our dark brothers will be sleeping, and they cannot follow us out of
the tunnels into the sunlight. But should the sun go down…”

Nachari rested his chin on his folded hands. “Then
we’re all dead...and the princess is lost.”

Napolean nodded, and the room became silent, each
male processing the new information.

Holy Pegasus, Marquis,
Nathaniel said angrily.
I’m not so sure I want Nachari going on this mission, after all
.

Kagen chimed in from the other room, where he
waited with the females; clearly, he had been listening to the entire
discussion:
Let me trade places with our youngest brother
.

Nachari spun around and glared at Nathaniel.
There’s
no way in hell I’m staying here now! And Kagen, if you’re going to listen to
everything, then why not just join us in the room?

Kagen materialized at Nachari’s side with a smirk
on his face, and Marquis held up his hand to silence them both.
Nachari is
right; we need him. We’re walking into a den of Dark Ones, countless unknown
traps, and a host of black magic. The first two threats we can combat; the last
one…we need a wizard.

Napolean has powerful magic,
Kagen
insisted.

If the Dark Ones are living right beneath us
and discover that our sentinels are in their territory—leaving Dark Moon Vale
unprotected—then our females will be in more jeopardy than ever before, Kagen. We
need a seasoned fighter
with the women!
Marquis was losing his
patience.
We have already lost one princess; I don’t want to have to go
after another.

Nathaniel sighed then.
Kagen, there is no one
else I would leave Jocelyn and Storm with, especially knowing what we now know.
Please, brother...

Marquis waved his hand to indicate that the
discussion was over. His words were his brother’s law, and that was that.

Napolean turned to the sentinels, his countenance
lacking his usual patience. “Let’s get working on a strategy.” He glanced at
the window. “Because as it stands, brothers, we’re burning daylight.”

The males surveyed the oddly-shaped underground
cavity in silence. Having entered the mountain beneath a thin, arched doorway
at the back of the Red Canyon cliffs, just beyond a waterfall, they had
followed the familiar limestone tunnels to their destination: the ruined
sacrificial chamber of the Dark Ones.

Marquis watched as Nachari moved about the cavern,
gathering and reading energy. When his little brother’s eyes scanned the
ancient limestone birth-slab, he knew exactly what he was thinking of: Shelby
and Dalia. The last place his twin’s
destiny
had lain before her brutal
death. To his credit, he betrayed no emotion. His deep jade eyes simply
regarded all of the damage to the gigantic chamber with cool objectivity.

While several of the white limestone columns still
stood like statues, randomly erected about the chamber, the ceiling of the cave
had collapsed in on itself, scattering jagged pieces of stalactites about in
hazardous piles of debris. The smell of blood still mixed with the musty scent
of sulfur in the stagnant pond at the back of the cave, and two of the three,
low-lying ledges that led to the steep cliffs remained intact.

Napolean gathered the males at the rim of the eastern-most
ledge. “Marquis, Julien, Ramsey, and Nachari: I want you to split up into one
team and take the eastern tunnel. You are to proceed in the order I have called
you, and as the senior warrior of the team, Marquis will be in command.” He
glanced at the remaining vampires. “Myself, Nathaniel, Santos, and Saxson will descend
the western cliff and proceed parallel to the first team.” It went without
saying that Napolean would lead the western charge. “From this point on, maintain
cloaked appearances and speak only with telepathy.”

The males nodded in unison.
So be it
.

With that, Napolean and the second team
dematerialized.

Marquis waved his warriors close, carefully eyeing
the males on his team. They were each dressed in black fire-retardant leather
with diamond-inset collars around their necks, wrists, and ankles to help
maintain their invisibility as they approached the Dark Ones. While vampires
could easily cloak their personas from humans, other
Nosferatu
—especially
those who were ancient—could easily pick up on subtle shifts in the energy
field around them, or measure slight variations of temperature in a cold room
to detect the presence of a warm body. The diamond collars would block infrared
detection and provide a secondary barrier from energetic projection.

Julien shifted his taut, muscular frame, twitching
in anticipation as he fingered the edge of his M4-carbine and deftly slid the
handle of a time-worn battle ax into the palm of his hand. The others followed
suit, adjusting sickles, spiked bolas, nine millimeters, and one AK-47, along
with numerous hidden daggers for hand-to-hand combat. While guns were virtually
useless when used by humans against vampires—the species was simply too fast to
hit—all bets were off when they fought each other: Bullets had their use as a
tactical decoy, and fired in rapid enough succession, they could stun an enemy
long enough for another vampire to step in and take the head or heart.

Marquis balled his right hand into a fist, testing
the perfect fit of his ancient cestus, the gladiator version of brass knuckles,
which employed sharp iron spikes as opposed to hard brass for impact. The
leather was dyed a dark inky brown, from all of the blood that had seeped into
it over the years, and the fit had become like a second hand. His steel-toed
boots had matching spikes along the toe and heel, and there was hardly a square
inch of his body that didn’t conceal an easily accessible stiletto or throwing
star.

When Ramsey pulled out a three-pronged, barbed
trident, Marquis blanched and stepped back.
What the hell, Ramsey!

Ramsey smiled and shrugged, his golden eyes
lighting with mischief. The weapon was too large and cumbersome for Marquis’s
taste, but Ramsey could wield the thing like a switch-blade, and one good stab
from a trident could tear an enemy’s torso in half, extracting the vital organs
in one blow. The sentinel was known for his ruthlessness and strength.

Do you have something special, too?
Marquis
asked sarcastically, eyeing Nachari.

Nachari opened his long, flowing trench coat to
reveal a simple medieval scabbard sheathing a perilously-sharpened sword,
always good for beheading. Not to mention, Nachari had taken a special interest
in fencing while at the Romanian University. That and a curved sickle, which he
deftly maneuvered like an extension of his own hand, were typically his weapons
of choice.

Marquis rolled his eyes.
Wizards!

The other males chuckled, releasing some nervous
energy as they stepped off the ledge and began floating downward, a slow
descent into the pitch-black precipice. While their eyes adjusted instantly to
the darkness, the going was slow because they had no idea what they were heading
into. The smell of sulfur and wet earth grew stronger as they went deeper, and
the air grew colder as they passed several clusters of bats and other strange
troglophiles.

Nachari winced as he flicked a strange insect off
his jacket only to come face to face with an albino-looking reptile with no
eyes.
What the hell—

Welcome to subterranean life,
Julien
teased.

As they passed the one-mile mark in depth,
Julien’s light-hearted countenance became all at once serious.
This isn’t
natural
, he commented to no one in particular.

Marquis slowed to a halt and ran his hands against
the shaft wall.
Julien, come feel this.

The tracker shook his head in disgust as he ran
his hand against the smooth, precise surface.
Man-made.

Vampyr-made to be precise,
Ramsey countered.
Those sons-of-hyenas built this place. It must have taken—

Centuries,
Julien supplied.

Nachari held up his hand.
Yes, they did, and
the deeper we go, the more I’m beginning to feel the influence of magic in the
architecture.

Meaning what?
Marquis asked.

Meaning there are energetic booby-traps in the
cave walls.

Napolean’s psychic voice joined the conversation
from the western shaft.
There are kinetic trip-wires, if you will, all
around us. In other words, don’t touch anything as we descend further.

Marquis nodded.
Understood.
He gave his
little brother a separate nod of approval.

The next two miles went painstakingly slow as the
shaft occasionally narrowed into a tube so small only one male could fit at a
time. As they slowly passed mile number three, they began to hear a distant clip-clop,
clip-clop coming from several different directions.

Footsteps?
Julien asked.

Marquis nodded and held up his hand to still the
warriors.
Napolean, what do you see over there?

We’re approaching an entrance. It looks like an
arched doorway, leading off into a westerly direction.

Marquis looked off to the east and noticed the
same thing—a horizontal corridor leading into the mountain.

Sentinels at two-o’clock!
Napolean’s harsh
voice snapped them all to attention.

I’ve got them in my sights
, Nathaniel
assured his Sovereign from the westerly tunnel, no doubt referring to the sight
on his favorite semi-automatic weapon, a polished, nine-millimeter Beretta.

Good
, Napolean said.
Fire only at my
command
. He turned his attention back to the males in the eastern tunnel.
Marquis,
these entry points will lead us in opposite directions. Where do you sense the
princess?

Marquis stilled his mind and began to concentrate,
using his finely-honed senses. He followed the essence of Ciopori’s life as it
ran through his own veins. The pulse grew steadily stronger and stronger, like a
radio wave, a central beacon leading into the mountain.
She’s definitely
east,
he said.

Napolean sighed.
Very well. We are going to take
out these guards, enter from the western vantage, and as soon as possible, try
to make our way over to your team. Keep going. We’ll catch up to you as soon as
we can.

Very well.
Marquis waved his warriors
forward.
Stay in tight formation.

Julien palmed his battle ax as they made their way
into the vertical shaft. And then all at once, the warriors heard distinct
voices:

“With Valentine gone, both Demitri Zeclos and
Milano Marandici are battling for his seat on the council,” a deep male voice echoed
from inside the corridor.

“Yeah, so I hear,” a younger male answered. “If
you ask me, Valentine never belonged on the council to begin with. He was only
there because of his brother.”

“Salvatore.”

“Exactly.” The younger male laughed. “Don’t get me
wrong, Valentine was definitely twisted enough to do the whole political office
gig, but he was straight-up incapable of leading, know what I’m sayin’?”

The older male cleared his throat, hawked, and
spat. “Didn’t have the patience for it.”

The second male snarled, “Who the hell would? I
sure wouldn’t want to spend all my nights locked up in some freaky council room
with a bunch of pissed-off ancients. Good way to lose your head, if you ask
me.”

Sneaking up behind the younger male, Marquis swung
one arm around the vampire’s chest and held his head steady, using the other
arm as a vise. He swiftly slit his throat from ear to ear. “And this is also an
excellent way,” he whispered.

The older male lunged at Marquis, his jagged
canines exploding from his mouth, but not before Ramsey caught him dead-center
with the trident—plunging, twisting, and retracting in one smooth motion. The
male’s innards fell to the floor as the top half of his body severed from the
bottom.

Bleed them out,
Marquis commanded, knowing
full well that both males were still alive and could still regenerate with a
powerful injection of vampire venom. Who knew how many of their brothers were
just around the corner.

Nachari slit both wrists of the older male
vertically before turning his attention to the popliteal artery next. With cool
precision, he sliced a lethal gash in both of the vampire’s thighs. Just as
quickly, Julien crouched down and sliced the jugular of the male Ramsey had
taken down.

Marquis probed the Dark Ones’ minds, searching for
information about Ciopori. Gossip, innuendo; that was all he could find, a quickly
spreading rumor that Salvatore Nistor had captured one of the original females and
was keeping her in his private lair. Marquis withdrew enormous blocks of
information from each male’s mind, one at a time; then he swiftly sorted
through the knowledge in order to acquire a firsthand blue-print of the colony.
He needed a mental map of the halls leading to Salvatore’s private chamber.

Good gods,
he exclaimed as the information unraveled.
There is an entire ...
organized
... civilization down here!

The colony was built in a huge three-story circle,
the east quadrants flowing under Dark Moon Vale, the centers existing directly
beneath the Red Canyons, the remaining quadrants extending to the west—where
the sons of Jadon had believed, all of this time, that the Dark Ones kept their
lairs: haphazardly carved out of caves or empty mine shafts.

Not hardly.

In the center of the circle, on the middle level—the
level which they were now on—there was a series of four intersecting chambers,
all four linked like Olympic rings: the council hall, a
snake pit
, a breeding
and birthing room, and a torture chamber that also served as a courthouse.
What
the hell? Did these bastards follow some rule of law amongst themselves?
Marquis
found it hard to fathom as the Dark Ones didn’t possess a soul or a conscience,
but apparently, they possessed a powerful need for organization.

He continued to study the colony.

There were hundreds of halls leading out from the
center four chambers like the spokes of a wheel, each spoke ultimately leading
to a private lair before breaking off into a suite of ten rooms, five on each
side, as they went along. Families lived in “spoked” clusters, in
thousands
of lairs.

Linked to Marquis’s mind, Ramsey, Julien, and
Nachari gasped: One-hundred halls bearing five rooms along either side, with one
large lair at the end, meant there were at least eleven-hundred lairs on the
main floor of the colony. Surely, they couldn’t all be filled.

Holy hell!
Ramsey exclaimed.

Marquis let out a deep breath and tried to
concentrate. No, they weren’t all lairs. Two of the ten rooms in each hall—or
along each spoke—were set aside for other purposes. Some were used for storage.
Others were wood shops, weapons caches, or
nurseries.
You name it, they
had it. Marquis recoiled at the sight of human slave quarters, both sex-slaves
and blood-slaves. As he looked closer, he saw that, under special
circumstances, they even restrained and punished each other in ritualistic stations.

He cleared his mind and studied the second level. There
were no lairs up there, but the evil ones had built a congregational hall, several
teaching and sports facilities, sparring quarters, a library, and several laboratories
for the practice of black magic.

He had never felt so foolish in all of his life.

Why had they just assumed that the descendants of
Jaegar were less intelligent, less driven—
less sophisticated
—than the
descendants of Jadon? Just because they were evil?

He dipped down to the lower levels. The nerve
center of the colony was held below: surveillances centers, security equipment,
generators, electrical grids, and anything else needed to keep the colony
functioning smoothly. With a newfound respect, he analyzed the flow of the
entire structure, calculating what they would have to do to move around
undetected.