Seeker (25 page)

The thug was a Sekhite.

Holding back was no longer an option. Feigning left, Frederick struck from the right, tearing his talons down the back of the Sekhite who had fallen for the misdirection. He arced in shock and pain, but before he could recover Frederick was on him, driving his fingers deep down the man's throat and ripping out his oesophagus through his mouth. The Sekhite fell, his life ebbing away by the second.

Frederick dropped to his knees beside the Sekhite, and brought his mouth over the dying man's. His tongue lapped up the blood frothing inside the shredded mouth cavity, and he closed his eyes.

If the followers of the Sekhite way knew of the test then it could only mean someone had betrayed the Three, and the Sekhite's lifeblood would reveal whom. If Frederick was fast enough.

A hand touched his shoulder, and a quavering voice asked, “Frederick?,” but Frederick was so caught up in the hunger that everything else failed next to it.

Enraged, Frederick lashed out, delighted by the feel of his talons penetrating more flesh.

He forced himself to stop once he had the information he needed; or at least the face of the one who had betrayed them. He lifted his head, licking the blood still on his lips, his eyes closed. Behind his eyelids Frederick saw a face he knew well enough, the black hair with the stupid electric blue hi-lites, the arrogance splashed all across the young face. Frederick didn't understand why Erwyn would do such a thing, he was one the Three! It made no sense to…

Frederick's eyes opened, and he looked down at the destroyed man beneath him. Then over at the other three thugs who had been dispatched so easily. That made four. And there had only been four attackers. So who had been the fifth person he had torn his talons in…?

A dead weight hit his heart and Frederick turned around, his talons pulling back into the sheaths of his fingers. Lying on the ground behind him, a pool of blood forming from the gaping wound in his neck, was Willem. Still on his knees Frederick scrambled to Willem's side.

Willem blinked, his eyes drifting everywhere, trying to focus on one thing. With much effort he looked at Frederick, seeing the blood-smeared lips. He reached out a hand, his fingers gently touching the redness on Frederick's cheek.

“Tears of…” Willem coughed. “Blood?”

Frederick placed a hand on his face and felt the warm substance. He had drunk so much from the Sekhite that his grey contacts could not contain the excess blood now flowing behind his transparent eyes. He shook his head sadly. “This was not…you were supposed to be…”

“What…” Another cough, this time accompanied by bloody spittle. “What are you? A vam…” More blood. Willem forced the word out. “Vampire?”

“No, yes…well, technically yes, but…no, not exactly.” Frederick wasn't sure what to say. Willem was dying; he had slashed a vital artery in Willem's neck. Centuries of practice meant that Frederick knew how to strike the killing blow every time. But he couldn't lose Willem; not now that he had only just found him. “I'll explain all later, I promise,” he said, lowering his face towards Willem's.

“Later?” Willem coughed up more blood. “Everything's going cold…is it cold?” He reached a feeble hand to stop the descent of Frederick's face, but Frederick just brushed it away.

“I'm so sorry, Willem, I was wrong. I'll make it up to you…but first I must do this.”

Willem tried to pull away, but Frederick held his head still and forced Willem's mouth open with his tongue. Through the viscous blood rising from his throat, Frederick's own tongue found its way beneath Willem's and like a snake striking out Frederick pierced the lingual artery. A minute orifice opened at the tip of Frederick's tongue.

Leech-like, the blood was sucked directly from Willem's tongue and into that of Frederick's.

But as Willem's heart slowed close to stopping Frederick ceased sucking, and pulled his tongue from Willem's mouth.

He looked down at the pale face, Willem's almost lifeless eyes looking up at the stars above. Frederick wasted no time, he placed his tongue deep within the gash on Willem's neck, and a geyser of blood spewed from Frederick directly into Willem.

The eternal kiss was given, and Willem succumbed to the First Death.

* * *

The clean-up crew arrived within ten minutes, to find Frederick kneeling beside Willem's corpse. The nightclubs were still open, and those rare few who came out onto Lucy Road were either laughing too much or engaged in drink-induced arguments to notice the commotion in the alley along the way, not that there was much of a commotion, of course, since the clean-up crew were very good at what they did.

Their black van pulled up on the road behind the church, adjacent to the alley, and the back doors opened, spewing out three men. Frederick looked up, and smiled slightly at their black outfits. Minimum visibility was the order of the day in their job. They quickly got to picking up the corpses, dumping them in the back of the van. They came to get Willem but Frederick held them back with a hand.

“Sir?” Just by his stature Frederick had spotted Dai immediately. He was a specialist, and only ever called on directly by Celeste.

“Wait,” Frederick said. He reached into Willem's trousers pocket. He pulled out the mobile, not too surprised to see the screen cracked slightly. He deposited it in his own pocket, thinking that Willem would probably need it again later. He then removed Willem's wallet.

“This is most irregular,” Dai said again looking at his three colleagues who were still clearing up the blood and viscera, “we have specific orders from the Three. No trace to be left.” He nodded at his men to continue, and they strapped canisters to their backs.

“I know your orders,” Frederick pointed out, “but this is a special case. And you know who I am.” He stood up, and looked down at the much shorter man. He might not have been one of the Three, not for lack of trying on Celeste's part, and the majority of his people knew that. “Do you really want to come up against me?”

Dai held his hands up. “No need to be hostile, sir, I'm just saying. This is damned irregular.”

“Then that's how it will be.”

He grabbed his leather jacket off the ground and left the clean-up crew to it. He stopped on the way out of the alley and glanced up at the CCTV camera. He wondered how much of this Swanson got. Hopefully she had already arranged for the tape to be removed and replaced with pre-recorded footage of the alley, if not then she might have seen him remove the things from Willem's pocket.

It didn't matter really. She knew better than to say anything.

* * *

Frederick crouched on the sand and pebbles, looking out across the Thames Estuary. He had got as far as Westcliff before he realised he needed to wash the blood from his lips. It was almost three in the morning and the seafront was pretty much empty, but for the occasional person leaving the Maxims Casino. He had received a few odd looks, but his mind had been elsewhere and it didn't occur to him that he was walking around with drying blood over his mouth.

He splashed water over his face and washed away the evidence of his zealous feeding.

He had been sure that Willem was to be the Seeker. That he carried an old ka inside his own human soul was beyond doubt, and according to the Book of Sekhmet only one such ka was to be reincarnated.

Not for the first time he wished Melinda the Scribe was still among them; her linguistic skills were second to none. As the Ancient had told him he would, Frederick had found her once the Sumerian language was rediscovered. For over a hundred years they had worked side by side, in secret, uncovering the mysteries contained within the Book. Together they had learned of the truth of their origins. When they had taken this to the Three it was quickly decided by Celeste that Melinda had to be removed permanently. Celeste trusted only Frederick, for his heart was of Celeste, but Melinda was a scholar, and her knowledge could be bought or tortured out of her by the right people.

Frederick could forgive Celeste many things, but killing Melinda was not one of them. Although she had taught him how to read and translate the Neo-Sumerian and the dozen other languages the Book was written in, he didn't have Melinda's skill. And now, as he looked out over the water, he had to wonder. Had he misinterpreted the writings in the Book?

The test was simple. Put the suspected Seeker into a situation where the fires of hunger would take over. His people didn't need blood, not anymore, but every now and then it was nice to feast upon it, for ultimately they were the offspring of a blood drinker; Onuris the first vampire. But over the centuries they became civilised and resisted the hunger that once drove their ancestors, even to the point of distancing themselves from the term
vampire
, and had opted for the Slavic word
upyr
. Alas, still the hunger came on them when they were threatened, when their very lives were at risk. It was hoped to be the same for the Seeker, that with his life threatened the hunger would manifest and bring forth Onuris.

This had not happened. Instead Willem had acted like a human. Out of his depth and transfixed by the horror he witnessed, until he ended up one among many victims of the upyr hunger.

Frederick looked up at the stars. Celeste would not be happy about what he had done. The Rebirth of an upyr was not to be taken lightly. There were strict rules governing such an event, rules that had been in place for over two hundred years, but Frederick had thrown those rules aside, driven by his desire to keep Willem.

In three nights Willem would be one of them; he may not have been the Seeker, but he surely would stand by Frederick's side from therein.

* * *

Frederick had not been able to sleep, and as he entered the private meeting room of the Three the following morning he was fresh and alert. Still he could feel the fresh blood coursing through his body. Celeste had tried to contact him last night, initially by phone, but once she realised he was not taking any calls she called him through the blood bond they shared. Her voice had echoed in his mind, but he was too stoked by his gorging in the early hours of the morning to make any sense. Celeste knew but chose to not mention it; no doubt Dai had already informed the Three how two of the dead had been drained.

There were no rules on the consumption of blood, but there were warnings. They had all seen the result of too much blood, how some of their people had become addicted to the life fluid. In the upyr world it was called
haemomania
, a strong psychological craving for blood. These blood junkies rarely ended well, and were a cautionary tale for those who liked to consume blood just that bit too much. Frederick knew he wasn't anywhere close to that depth, but for hours he was intoxicated by the amount of blood in his veins, and needed to come back down before he went to meet with the Three.

Now he was at a manageable level once more, although the new blood made him more alert than usual. Which was no bad thing. He had decided to keep an eye on Erwyn, to let him play his hand before Frederick made a move against him. Erwyn had been one of the Three since the beginning, and for him to betray them made no sense. And worse, why would he enlist the services of a Sekhite?

Frederick opened the door, ignoring the welcomes of Nate, and walked straight through the chamber and into the private room. He saw Erwyn sitting there, talking quietly to Theodor. Celeste had yet to arrive. Erwyn looked up and smiled.

“Would you care for a glass of blood wine?” he asked, standing and walking over to the cabinet that contained decanters of various blood types.

Frederick swallowed. The thought of more blood made him nauseous. He had had his fill. “I think I'll pass this time.”

“I don't doubt it, Freddy,” Erwyn said, making a display of pouring some blood wine into two glasses. One for him and one for Theodor. “So what went wrong, then?”

Frederick bit back his response. Erwyn knew exactly what had gone wrong. Frederick knew how the Sekhites would benefit from the death of the real Seeker, but he couldn't see how Erwyn would benefit. Maybe Erwyn merely wanted to spite Frederick? For hundreds of years Erwyn had played second place to Frederick, and an occasional feud had grown out of that resentment. It was only Erwyn who had noticed Frederick's attraction to Willem, although he had stupidly thought it a case of ka transference. Frederick knew it would not be beneath Erwyn to have Willem removed simply to get at Frederick; but to use a Sekhite to do so was a bold move indeed.

If Willem was proved to be the Seeker then everything the Sekhites believed would crash down. It made no sense, though. As one of the Three, Erwyn knew the truth, that the Sekhite way was built on lies perpetuated by the Brotherhood of Sekhmet. Erwyn had been the most vocal when Frederick had first told the Three of Willem, and even after meeting Willem, Erwyn was not convinced about him.

No, the only thing that made sense was that Erwyn found a Sekhite the best tool in eliminating Willem as a personal attack on Frederick. Only…somehow Frederick was sure he was missing something important.

“I'll discuss it when Celeste arrives,” Frederick said, finally, “since it involves news of the Seeker.”

Erwyn froze mid-step, and looked sharply at Frederick. Frederick held his gaze, and allowed the younger upyr to carry on with handing a drink to Theodor. The German looked from his twin to Frederick and back again. The warning was unmistakable. It was impossible to believe Theodor would also conspire against the prophecy; his loyalty to the Three and to Celeste was second only to Frederick's. It was more likely he was simply warning Erwyn to not push.

“And here I am,” Celeste said, gliding into the room. She swept past Frederick, placing a hand on his shoulder briefly, and helped herself to a glass of actual wine. Once she was seated, Frederick explained all that had happened the previous night, omitting only how Willem had died. He gambled that the CCTV had been wiped and so told them that the Sekhite had killed Willem before Frederick could stop him. Once he had finished silence fell on the room; even Erwyn had little to say, although it was clear he was itching to say something, to put forward his own theory before anyone else. But he had enough sense to remain quiet, for to speak before Celeste would arouse immediate suspicion.