Tantrics Of Old (24 page)

The man in the mask shook his head. ‘
Rashkor
. I merely came in when I saw you in a catch 22. I am not concerned with either of you.’ He had a gravelly voice which was further muffled because of his mask.

‘Right,’ Adri said. ‘We’ll just carry on, then.’

The man nodded.

Gray slowly got to his feet. ‘What was that?’ he muttered softly.

‘I don’t like their kind myself, Gray,’ Adri said, helping him stand.

Gray looked at Adri. ‘How did you take care of the other one so fast?’

Adri had almost forgotten. He let Gray go, withdrew a revolver, and jogged towards where the other Demon lay. He approached the pile of rubble gingerly, weapon raised. He inspected the debris closely, then looked around, holstering the weapon again. The masked man stood a few feet away.

‘It’s gone?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Adri said. ‘I had drawn a negative circle around its body, though,’ he murmured in a lower voice, mostly to himself. The man heard.

‘Curious. It must have scraped off a part of the circle with a brick or stone,’ he said.

Adri looked at Gray, still standing where he had been left; presently looking at the Demon’s dead body with great repulsion. Adri turned to the masked man.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

The masked man did not hesitate. The reply was natural and came with a practiced ease. ‘I am called Fayne of Ahzad,’ he said.

‘Fayne,’ Adri said, his eyebrows narrowing. ‘You are a long way from home, assassin.’

‘It is not coincidence which brings me here,’ Fayne said calmly. ‘I am on a charge: to protect the one called Maya Ghosh from any kind of harm until the charge is lifted from me.’

‘
Maya?
’ Adri could not hide his surprise. ‘Who put you on this charge?’

‘It is forbidden to reveal the owner of the contract,’ Fayne said.

Adri had already anticipated this reply. ‘Well, you’re a bit late. She’s a captive, and dying as we speak,’ Adri said.

‘I have been following both of you since Jadavpur,’ Fayne replied. ‘I know there is a chance of saving her. I am not concerned with either of you, but I will help you get the body back to the Ancients.’

The assassin had eavesdropped on them surely, or else had slight telepathic abilities—Adri wasn’t sure which. He knew that he couldn’t have taken the Demon down without Fayne’s help, and he knew that if Fayne
did
hail from Ahzad as he claimed, then he would be a powerful companion and certainly a useful one to have. The infamous Assassins of Ahzad needed no elucidation; their names were whispered with fear across lands. They were masterfully trained, extremely capable, and were incredibly expensive to hire; Adri had absolutely no clue as to who would pay that much for Maya’s protection and why. Who even knew she was here in the Old City? Adri brushed his questions aside for the moment. They did not matter. What mattered was not getting in the assassin’s way deliberately, or by error—the assassins of Ahzad were patient enough when needed, but otherwise they were cold and brutal. If shedding of blood was needed to save Maya, it would be shed. If he and Gray were to slow Fayne down—

‘So will you travel with us?’ Adri asked.

‘Normally I wouldn’t. The two of you were quite erratic in the fight with the Demon, proving yourselves amateurs of true combat. But since you are the only one equipped to enter the crypt and get the body of the vampire hunter out, I will.’ Fayne turned around. ‘The fires will attract undue attention, not to mention the Demon which got away. We should leave.
Ghawaziya
.’

True
. Adri walked towards where his backpack lay, occasionally glancing behind his shoulder at the unmoving assassin, now gazing into the distance.

Adri wasn’t all that sure if Gray was hiding something. Gray had said that he had no clue when asked who would pay money to protect Maya, but there was something too quick about his answer that put Adri on his guard. Something was not being revealed, some details were not being talked about. Fair enough, seeing that he himself had hidden as much as he could from the siblings; but there was something he wanted an answer to.

‘What was Maya looking for in the basement? What was she after?’ he asked Gray.

‘I’ve been thinking about that myself, and I really don’t have the faintest idea,’ Gray replied.

‘What do they keep down there? Records of what?’

‘Well since it was Demonology, I would presume Demons. Encounters, sightings, heritage.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Adri?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You think you can save Maya? From the Ancients?’

They had been walking for quite a long time, and it was almost dawn. They had not met with any encounters since the Demons, and it had been mostly walking and talking. Fayne did not talk much unless spoken to; he scouted ahead or brought up the rear, making sure no one was following them and there were no ambushes in store. They had moved from the main road to side streets. It had gotten increasingly quiet as well, and apart from the odd loud call of some nocturnal bird, their footsteps resounded loudly as they walked down the streets. Fayne’s bare feet, however, refused to make any noise.

‘Yes, I think I can, Gray. It’s partly my fault she’s in that mess and I intend to see her out of it. While in Old Kolkata, she’s my responsibility,’ Adri said without looking at Gray.

‘And mine,’ Fayne spoke quietly. He was a long way off ahead of them, and he spoke without turning back.

‘Yes, your sister’s got a new boyfriend it seems,’ Adri muttered.

It was madness, breaking into a protected crypt. If there was a curse on it, it was only going to be all the tougher for Adri. Being a Tantric did not grant him any natural immunity against the curse. It merely meant that he was supposed to have been educated in the ways around the curse, or in creating an anti-curse to neutralise its effects. Adri had been in expeditions which had broken into tombs, and he knew there was safety in numbers. He had never attempted something like this before, nor was he eager to. He had never heard of this particular vampire-hunter in his studies or travels, and thus he hoped the curse wouldn’t be something too deadly. Certainly deadly enough to scare the Ancients though; that alone worried him.

Maya’s fate hung heavy in his mind too, and try as his conscience might to convince him that it was Maya’s fault she had run off, his guilt still stabbed at him a little too often for comfort. He had brought her here and she had trusted him to keep her safe, although he now suspected she had come along for this very errand; that would explain the change in her behaviour after he’d first laid down his proposal, and her interest in seeing the Old City; but Adri had been her protector, and he had failed. Holding back a sigh, he patted his pockets for a cigarette.

Park Street, once the greatest social hub of Old Kolkata, was still somewhat of a hub, but with all the wrong kind of people. As the rumours went, it was mostly the looters who had control over Park Street; people who, before the fall of the Old City, had amassed a collection of whatever they could get their hands on from all kinds of shops, warehouses, and even homes—a great variety of things they now sold to survivors for large amounts of money or food. The looters were not gangsters as much as they were opportunists; some of them were just simple people with a fear of the supernatural, trying to make a living amidst desolation. There were, of course, others who were always striving for leadership and superiority, for recognition. Adri had been here before, he used to buy a lot of his ingredients for his rites from here. Once a shooter had also caught his fancy, but it had jammed in less than a week and the Gunsmith had stubbornly refused to repair it.

As they entered the main street, Adri realised that the population had dwindled even more than before. Not surprising, considering the territory wars had moved even closer, but still a visual shock, seeing the place so empty. And empty it was, like the landscape they had traversed so far.

Skyscrapers surrounded them, uncared for. Bits of buildings were breaking off; traffic lights burned with fire. Giant beacons. Enormous shadows. They occasionally saw movement. People went by; some hawkers closed up their roadside stalls. A group of people smoking cigarettes with confidence stared at them from a corner. They had guns on their laps, Gray noticed, but Adri did not seem to be worried about them. Gray found himself wondering yet again what the deal was with Old Kolkata. He had been taking pictures of the Old City and thinking about it as they walked. He had even remembered to take quick pictures of the dead Demon before they had left, though Adri warned him that possession of those pictures would be illegal once he was back in New Kolkata. Gray wasn’t really thinking about later. He was trying to breathe in the moment, this moment in which he had no clue as to what lay in store for his sister or for him; what kind of trouble they would face in the future, and whether they would even live to get back to the new city. Little mysteries knocked against his head, little questions that formed themselves in queues without him even realising it. Questions about Adri. Questions about Fayne. Questions about the old, unforgiving city.

The Park Street Cemetery was behind high walls and they could see nothing of it, except for all the foliage that rose above. Now that they were standing at the black gates—locked with chains and padlocked—they could see through the iron bars a narrow cement path that led into the graveyard. There was no one around, either to open the gate or question them. Adri looked up and saw that dawn was approaching. A few birds flew, and the sky was slowly turning into its usual red.

‘Is this it?’ Gray asked. He looked up and saw the curving metal above the gate.
Park Street Cemetery
. ‘Oh right, this is it. What are we waiting for, then?’

‘Sunlight,’ Adri said.

‘Sunlight?’

It was Fayne who replied. ‘In the Old City, you do not enter a graveyard until the sun is up, not unless you are asking for trouble. Of course, someone like me could manage that, but this is more than a tourist warning.’

Adri nodded slowly. That Fayne was someone with experience was quite evident to him, and it kept getting reinforced with Fayne’s composure and the things he chose to say. Adri never liked working with inexperienced people; they were a liability, a burden of all sorts, and he regretted, yet again, having to bring the siblings to the Old City, though momentarily, but yes. He didn’t know what he was going to do next. He was out of all supernatural defences at the moment. He needed to perform his rituals, and they would take time, something he did not have. He dreaded the thought of having to enter the crypt alone, without any spirits backing him up; but then again there was the problem with using spirits—no matter how powerful or useful they would prove themselves to be, they always had to be let go after their charge was complete.

The three of them sat down with their backs against the gate, looking at the empty street in front. Time had to be killed, the sun was not fast enough. Fayne withdrew a hip flask from a pocket and took a swig. He had pulled his mask back to his upper lip as he drank, and Adri caught sight of a fair, clean-shaven jawline. Fayne did not offer to share the contents of the flask, he merely pocketed it again.

Gray turned to Adri, who absolutely did not want to entertain questions. ‘The Ancients, tell me about them,’ he said.

‘Didn’t I already—’ a weary Adri began.

‘I will tell you about the Ancients if you want to know,’ Fayne spoke. ‘Did you see them, or did they talk from the darkness?’

‘Saw them,’ Gray replied, shifting in interest.

‘They live in darkness as they need no light to see. Vampires as they are, the blood they suck is circulated through the centre of all their bones. That is the essence of the Ancients—they need no organs as their bones have become the organs, the hollow within forming their regenerative system. They move like snakes, except for the human torso at the end, making them fast and vicious in combat. They’re exceedingly strong and equally swift.’

‘What’s their history?’ Gray asked, drinking in everything.

‘A storyteller would be able to tell you more about legends,’ Fayne replied.