Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (73 page)

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him as Tomas and a few others had dared. “You ask the

impossible!”

Alejandro didn’t move, didn’t blink, but Tomas knew what was coming.  A flick of the guard’s wrist broke the man’s neck, his body tumbling to the floor to join the others. The young man who had been intended as the next victim fainted and was

dragged back into the waiting throng.

“Do it,” Alejandro told the girl, who was staring at the body  of her fallen colleague as it was arranged in line with the others.  “Now.”

She transferred her stare to the creature on the throne, and  Tomas knew she couldn’t do as he asked. It was written on her face, along with horror and revulsion and abject terror. She was shaking, just standing there, and he doubted she could con concentrate enough to  rmember her name at this point. Much less manage a complex spell.

“She’ll fail,” Sara said suddenly, “and my brother will be

next.”

Tomas looked around frantically for any sign that she had been overheard, but there was nothing. The closest vamps, two guards a few feet away at the bottom of the stairs, never even flinched. They were watching one of the captives who was busy vomiting up his dinner, the gasping, wet sounds followed by painful dry gasps. Tomas glanced at Sara, who nodded at the fanatic. He was clutching his bones and murmuring something with a distracted air, as if everything below wasn’t enough to hold his attention.

“Silence shield,”  Sara explained. “Have any suggestions, or

do you just want to wing it?”

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Forkface had taken off his bulging pack and was systematically tucking stoppered vials into his already weapons-filled belt. It was pretty obvious how he was voting. Too bad they’d all be dead within half a minute of an attack.

“This is Alejandro’s power base,” he said, struggling to  explain in terms a human could understand. “In addition to his  own, he can draw power from every vampire in the room. A  frontal assault will not be successful.”

“Any idea what will?”

Tomas’ eyes were on the woman necromancer, who was crying and chanting at the same time, with theatrically raised arms but no discernable effect on any of the bodies. “Can he do a spell to allow you to move through the crowd  unseen?” Tomas nodded at the fanatic.

“The best he can do in full light is a shadow spell to make  us less obvious. It works on humans by redirecting their  attention away from us. But I don’t know what effect it will  have on vamps.” She glanced at her colleague, who was still  muttering to himself but was now staring at an old inscription in  the rock. She kicked him.

“Yes, yes. Will not work on master-level, but all else, yes.”

Tomas nodded. “I’ll distract Alejandro. While he is occupied with me, slip through the crowd and get your brother.”

“That won’t help everyone else.”

“If I can defeat him, his position will devolve onto me and  they’ll be safe.” But the odds were a lot less in his favour than  he’d hoped. Catching Alejandro somewhere in the tunnels or the  jungle, alone except for a few of his closest attendants he might

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have stood a chance. But nowhere in his plans had he figured on

anything like this.

His voice must have reflected some of his doubt, because

Sara narrowed her eyes. “And if you can’t?”

“Once they see me, the court will likely have eyes for  nothing else. Get as many people out as you can while they are  distracted.”

“Distracted killing you, you mean. Bullshit.”

“I came here knowing this was the likely the outcome.”

“Another little thing you forgot to mention. We’re gonna

have to work on our communication.”

Tomas decided he couldn’t waste more time arguing. The woman necromancer had failed and Alejandro’s power was boiling through the room, hot on his neck. He was furious. And when he  lost his temper, people died  –  a lot of them. It would be perfectly within character for him to simply order every human in the room put to death. As if in response to Tomas’ thoughts, the guard behind the woman started forwards, hand raised.

Tomas was grateful for vampiric speed, which allowed him to reach her before the guard could snap her neck. He caught the vamp’s arm, but needn’t have bothered. The room had frozen.

“Tomas.” The voice was the one he remembered, echoing  inside his head like cool silver, but crawling under his skin like  something alive. However, the power behind it, the force  compelling him to do Alejandro’s will, was gone. For the first  time, Tomas had reason to be grateful for his current master. As  much as he hated the man, Louis-Cesar’s ownership ensured  that Alejandro’s unspoken command exerted no more pull than  that of any other first-level master. A rank he currently shared.

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Tomas opened his hand and the guard retreated in an undignified scramble. The rest of the court was moving  closer, not attacking, yet, but on high alert. No one had any doubts about why he was here.

Apparently, neither did Alejandro, because the moment  Tomas made a move in his direction, a strong force pushed against him, like a hundred invisible hands holding him back.  Make that 200, he thought, glancing about at the family he’d once called his own. The fifteen feet to the bottom of the stairs felt like miles; he had  to fight for every inch with eyes burning into his spine like acid and a thick, roiling nausea in his gut. He had a moment of vertigo, swaying on his feet like a drunk trying to dance, and someone laughed, high and cold and mocking. It wasn’t Alejandro. His eyes were glittering dangerously and he’d lost the faintly amused smile that was his usual  armour.

The stairwell leading up to his throne had twenty steps. By the time Tomas reached them, he was panting like he’d run a mile.

“I challenged you once before,” he said around the mass  that had risen in his throat, huge and cold and sickening. “But  you were too cowardly to face me. I have come  ”–

It was a good thing he hadn’t worked too hard on his speech, because he never got to give it. The vampires had closed in on every side, jostling each other, trying to get up the courage to attack him. Tomas  had hoped that Alejandro’s pride would force him to fight his old servant himself, especially with the odds so heavily in his favour. But Alejandro remained seated, letting his men get more and more worked up until, finally, two broke away from the crowd  and dashed in snarling.

They came from opposite sides, and while Tomas was dealing with the one on the left, turning his own knife back against him, the one on the right smashed something heavy

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against his leg. It was the one he’d injured earlier, the one  that  had yet to completely heal. He fell to his hands and knees, the  jar of landing on the shattered kneecap turning the whole room  white hot with blinding pain.

He pulled the knife out of the first vamp, who retreated back into the crowd, howling and clawing at his wound, and rolled in time to slash at the second’s throat. He missed because the vamp dodged, lightening fast, at the last minute, but Tomas didn’t need weapons to crush his throat, only an application of raw power. The vamp was young and that  effectively put him out of commission. But it also used power Tomas couldn’t afford to lose, and there were doubtless dozens of others that the family would consider expendable if their deaths served to further weaken him.

Tomas dragged himself back onto  one leg, momentarily crippled while his system fought to rebuild torn cartilage and shattered bone. Alejandro leaned forwards, still not bothering to get to his feet. “Do you really believe you will make it all the way up here, Tomas? Because I believe I  will sit here and watch them gut you as you try.”

Four more vampires rushed him, all from the same side and although he dealt with them and with the low-level master who had waited on the other side for them to distract him, he missed the axe that someone  threw from the crowd. Alejandro made a small gesture and the assault halted, for the moment, while  Tomas shuddered and leaned his fore head against the slick, cold surface of the third step, a buzzing uproar surging all around him. On the third or fourth  or tenth try, Tomas managed to take a couple of shallow breaths. He brought up shaking hands and tore the weapon out of his belly.

“Really, Tomas. I’m disappointed. I remembered you as

better than this.” Alejandro had finally bothered to get out of his

seat, but he didn’t come any closer. “And to think, I was

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contemplating offering you a position at the head of my new

army. I really will have to reconsider.”

Hot tendrils of agony  shot out from Tomas’ stomach wound as he tried to stand. At least he couldn’ t feel the throbbing in his leg any more, Tomas thought, and laughed to cover the scream that wanted to tear out of his chest. An all-out assault on

Alejandro was the only chance he had. If he hurt him badly enough, the family might back off, waiting to see the outcome before they risked attacking the man who might be their new master. Slogging slowly up these steps, one by one, being battered from all sides and buffeted by Alejandro’s power, was a sure recipe for disaster. But it was also the only hope thehumans had.

He couldn’t hear anything from the back of the cave, from the mass of 400 or 500 people who had been corralled there.  And there was no way so many could remain silent while witnessing something like this. Not unless they were being shielded and hopefully guided out. But it was a long way through the maze of hallways, as countless mortals had learned to their terror, and even further to the town beyond. He had to give them time if they were to have any chance at all. And in this slice of hell,  time meant pain.

Pain wasn’t a problem, Tomas decided, looking into  Alejandro’s amused black eyes. He’d brought it to enough people through the years. It was his turn.

“Still a coward posing as a gentleman,” Tomas gasped, and

threw the gory axe straight  at Alejandro.

His old master turned it aside with an elegant wave of his hand, but anger and surprise caused his attention to waver slightly, allowing Tomas to make headway against the stream of power opposing him. He made it to the tenth stair before theworld spun around and dropped out from under him, and he hit

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something hard and unyielding. Only when the pain receded a  fraction did he realize he’d been dumped on the floor by another  axe, this one to the spine.

And master or no, no one healed a wound  like that instantaneously. Suddenly his limbs didn’t work: his arms and legs flopped uselessly around him, his head fell back into a puddle of his own blood. Alejandro waved off the guards who were rushing to finish Tomas, as he slowly descended the remaining stairs.

He stopped directly in Tomas’ line of vision, his booted feet just touching the bloody pool. He unsheathed a rapier, good quality Cordoba steel instead of wood, making it obvious that this wasn’t going to end quickly. “How the mighty have fallen.  That is the phrase, isn’t it? From my lieutenant to this, all because of ambition.”

Tomas tried to tell him that ambition wasn’t the point, that it never had been, but his throat didn’t seem to work either.  Although that might have been because of the  sight that suddenly loomed up behind his former master. At first, Tomas was sure he was imagining things. But not even in a pain-induced near faint could his brain have come up with something like that.

Behind Alejandro, a withered arm encased in a few rotting rags appeared, a tracery of thin blue veins pulsing under the long dead skin. A head followed, cadaverous and brown, but with two enormous, glittering eyes rolling in the too-large sockets.  They stared at Tomas for an instant, full of terrible ancient fury, before the arm caught Alejandro around the neck and a mouth full of cracked and yellowed teeth clamped onto his neck.

Alejandro gave one sharp gasp before the others were on him, a crowd of dry, old bones and tanned leather skins that glowed slightly from the inside, like someone shining a

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flashlight through parchment. And although Alejandro’s power still surged around Tomas like a hurricane, they didn’t seem to  feel it. There was a crack, a thick, watery sound, and then  silence  –  except for the ripping, chewing noises coming from  the middle of the once-human mass.

The kings had returned.

Another pair of feet came to rest beside him, just brushing his hair. Tomas looked up to see Jason, slack-jawed no longer, but with a quiet intensity in his eyes. It seemed Alejandro had kidnapped one necromancer worth his salt, after all.

“You brought them back,” Tomas managed to croak after a

moment.

Jason didn’t look away from the creatures and their meal.

“They brought themselves.”

Tomas didn’t have a chance to ask him what he meant, because the earth began to move in a very familiar manner.  Jason grabbed him under the arms and pulled him backwards down the stairs. No one tried to stop him. It was as if the court was frozen in place, staring in disbelieving  horror at the sight of their master being attacked by supposedly harmless sacks of bones.

They made it to the edge of what had been the holding pen before Alejandro’s power suddenly cut off, like someone throwing a switch. A ripple went through his vampires as they felt it too and realized what it meant. They came back to life with a vengeance, but too late; half the roof collapsed in a cascade of limestone.