The Queen of Wolves (8 page)

I sighed, doing what I could to let go of my feeling of exasperation. “If you will not fly away, golden face, then you will come with me. We will find the food and water these men need. We will see if the wind picks up as the seer has predicted. If it does not, tomorrow night I will go with you to our deaths out over the dark sea, if need be.”

“If you call me ‘golden face’ again, I will leave you,” she muttered.

“Pythia, then,” I said. “Now, come. There is a ship not more than a few miles from here, and another beyond it. Gather what food and water you can from the closest one, and I will find the distant vessel.”

Feeling the power of new blood in me, I opened my wings to their fullest and leapt from the ship. She flew after me, but I sensed her cursing within the stream. We communicated in our minds as I told her to fly toward the nearest of masts, while I flew beyond it, seeing a phantom of a ship at some distance against the blanket of fog.

6

Within the quarter hour, I had located one of the sister ships of the
Illuyanka.
I landed upon it, and heard only the sounds of my own movements. The wall of fog all around created a kind of cave, encircling the ship with a stony silence.

The first thing that met my eye was the fresh kill on the deck.

7

A
sailor of this third ship had met a terrible death at the hand of one of my tribe, and based on the quivering of his fingers, the vampyre who had done this had departed just moments before.

I put the man out of his misery, for he was not going to regain consciousness again. The brutality of the act was evident from the multiple bites along the arms and shoulders—the skin had been shredded as if the vampyre’s jaw had locked in place when he’d bitten down.

This kill was not like that of the vampyres I knew—and I began to worry that several guards from Aztlanteum had followed us. I looked about the ship, among its ropes and barrels, and I found more evidence of this handiwork—always too vicious and inexact in the bite, which would have been unusual for even Nezahual’s tribe. I closed my eyes to feel the stream, and in its strange dark light, I neither sensed nor had a gut feeling that the vampyres who had committed these acts still lurked.

But could I be wrong? Was there some trickery at work?

I heard a human moan that was nearly a whistling sound—I will never forget it, for it chilled my blood just to hear it. I had still not gotten used to the worst of killing—when the death was slow and painful. I did not think then I would get used to it in a thousand years, for it reminded me too much of the sorrows of mortal existence.

I followed the sound of the strange noise, and as I did, I began to get a vague sense in the stream of at least one vampyre feeding. I moved swiftly through the warren of rooms beneath the deck, following the stream, tuning my ears to the sound of the man who seemed to be dying.

As I turned a corner, there was the victim of the vampyre—a man whose face had been obliterated by the attack, and blood everywhere around him. The strange sound from him had come because of the damage to his face and throat. Feeling pity for him, I closed off his breathing, and quickly sent him to the threshold of death.

I felt a tug in the stream, and turned to the left, and saw a brief flash of movement.

“Wait!” I called, but the creature moved swiftly along the low, narrow corridor that twisted suddenly to the right. All I saw of him was a cape and hood, and in his arms, he carried what seemed to be a boy—perhaps a kitchen servant on board, for the boy had left his handprints on the wall, the dust of flour upon them. By the size of the hands, the boy was not yet thirteen, and I knew what the vampyre meant to do with him once he had him in some quiet place.

I rose to my height and bounded after him, following his scent all the way to the upper decks. There, I saw a ship’s boy whose head had been shaved as if to ward off lice, and whose flour-dusted tunic had been torn at the throat as if the vampyre had just begun feeding upon him when I caught up to him.

The boy glanced at me, wide-eyed.

“Do not be afraid,” I whispered. “I will not hurt you.”

I reached for the shredding of skin at his shoulder, but the vampyre had not had time to bleed him much.

The boy tried to speak, but instead took deep gulps of air, one after the other. His face was pale, and the terror in his eyes did not diminish as I tried to comfort him.

I felt at his throat the too-quick beat of his pulse. His mouth opened as if in a scream, and then his jaw went slack.

Dead, from the fright of it.

I felt a cold wave of nausea go through me. Movement in the stream.

The creature that had terrified the boy stood behind me.

Without turning around, I knew that the vampyre leaned over me—as I crouched by the boy—and nearly tapped me on the shoulder. Challenging me to turn and fight him, probably for the boy’s blood.

I slowly twisted my head to the left. For a quarter second, I saw a vampyre as if in the mirror—a skull with long dagger fangs and the white of bone where his lips and chin should have been, yet with leathered skin held tight to the skull, and strands of thin hair dangling over his sunken eyes which were red and soulless.

Chapter 4

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T
HE
C
ORPSE-
V
AMPYRE

1

I could not move as I beheld him, though it was a mere second or two of time—and the creature seemed also to react as I did, as if seeing me at all was a shock to him.

His hood fell down over his eyes. He moved like a wriggling worm upon a hook, a blur of motion as he leapt from a crouching position into the air. His cape billowed out from him, and I heard a screech like an owl’s as he shot up through the mist.

After I laid the dead boy down upon planking and covered him with a torn bit of the sail’s matting, I looked up into the mist. No trace remained of this vampyre—nor did the stream reveal his presence to me.

2

The ship had been mostly abandoned, but a dozen or so men and boys had remained behind. The vampyre had worked quickly. I had not known any vampyre—except perhaps Pythia—to slaughter so well, so indiscriminately. One vampyre could not possibly have drunk deeply from all the men on board—his only object was to kill them. I wondered if he intended to use this ship as his sleeping quarters, and then had decided that he could not trust those on it to be protectors during the day.

He was a throwback in vampyrism to some age when vampyres were truly nothing more than the rotting undead. He had no glamour, no semblance of health. The blood did not bring back his youth.

In some respects, he reminded me of Artephius—one who held the essence of immortality, yet could not keep his flesh from falling away over the centuries. But Artephius was not a vampyre. He had stolen some of the secrets of the immortals, but not all.

A vampyre without youth?

The drinking of blood and the glamour—which was our youth and beauty—was part of our tribal energy. How could a vampyre have none of this? Surely such a vampyre would have extinguished long ago.

Why did a member of my tribe follow us, and yet not reveal himself?

3

I went in search of supplies for the other ship. I found salted meat and barrels of water stored belowdecks. I poured some of the water into wineskins I found in the galley and carried as much of the salted pork as I could. There were bags of grain, also, which I tied at my waist. As I was about to leave, a flash of red along an upper shelf caught my eye. It was the beloved red box full of dusty leaf for smoking. I sniffed at it and found the aroma intoxicating. I grabbed two of the boxes, tucking them beneath my arms, above the sack of pork.

When I returned to the other ship, I took these supplies to the young sailor and told him to give the red boxes to Illuyanket alone. “I am sorry that my friend has killed two of your men,” I said. “It was beyond my control.”

“Sir Demon, we did not mean to offend her. Nor you,” he said, a tremble in his voice. “She brought us food and water from a ship, as well. I will not talk of the spirits of the dead, for they may lurk nearby.” He drank greedily from one of the wineskins, and tore off a chunk of the salted pork, chewing it as I spoke to him.

“This will be good for all of you for several days, if you ration it carefully. The water, too. Tomorrow night, we will bring more of it. What they have in storage there might last another month or more.”

“All the men are dead?” he asked. “None survive?”

I tried to block out the face of the boy who had died from fright. “The ship is abandoned. I found no one.” I searched for Pythia within the stream and felt her presence far belowdecks.

I went with him to the old seer, who wept tears of joy as he lit his bowl and sucked the yellow smoke from the stem. Pythia crouched beside him, and I gathered he had been regaling her with stories that had bewitched her, for she was genuinely caring of his condition. I wanted to draw her to one side to speak of the vampyre who had followed our flight and now hid upon one of the other mired ships, but it was not the time to do so.

She glanced up at me, and in that brief look I saw another side to her—the aspect of this Pythoness that had been missing beyond our night of passion. I dread to say it, but it was her mortal side—and when she returned her attention to Illuyanket, she seemed not like a terrible vampyre who had slaughtered many, but like his granddaughter, sitting by his bunk, listening to stories and legends of another country that she had heard once as a little girl.

“Yes, Illuyan was the name of the great ancestor demon.” He nodded as he puffed on the stem. “There are many statues in the hills of my homeland of him dressed as a warrior, with sword raised so.” He lifted the pipe up as if it were a weapon and gave a fierce scowl. “He saved our people and drove back the enemy. These are ancient fairytales, but in my family, it is believed, for we are his bloodline. In those ancient days, demons and mortals mated, though when the demons were driven away, those of us with even a drop of demon blood were stripped of property and honor, driven to a life of hard work, and early death. Yet it was this same demon blood that awoke in me the dreaming. This Illuyan, my namesake.”

“I have known Illuyan,” Pythia said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “He was a great ruler in the nights before the night and day had parted.”

“Yes,” the old man nodded, grinning a smoke gust. “Before the moon held shadow, and in the days when the trees spoke of the treasures of the deep earth.”

He asked us both to try the burning leaf. Pythia refused, but I cupped the bowl in my hand as he had and sipped at the pipe stem until smoke filled my mouth. It was sweet and strong and seared my throat with its heat. Then I coughed it out, for it was too much like inhaling fire itself.

He laughed, though the other men were silent while they passed water and meat and boiled grain among themselves. One of them began singing a high, beautiful song of distant maidens and lovely flowers while more sacks of grain were poured into black pots and set to cook over the fire.

I began to love these men, despite their rough circumstance, and particularly Illuyanek, the Storm Dreamer, for his wisdom and respect. He did not fear me, nor had I given him reason to fear; but better than this, he treated me, a demon to his kind, as an equal—even as a son.

As if reading my thoughts, Pythia came up behind me as I stood in the doorway, watching the men enjoying their repast.

“You know this vampyre, Illuyan?” I asked.

“He ruled Myrryd, and founded many cities. But as with all the old Myrryd kings, he extinguished. All who wear the crown are hunted by those who wish to take the crown, yet no one wears it long.” She looked at me almost lovingly. She took my hand in hers, drawing me along the corridor, past the many rooms to the steps that led above. Once on the deck, she let go of my hand and went to look out over the deep mist. I followed her there and stood a few feet behind her.

“You are like my father.” She sighed. “You believe mortal man is worth saving.”

“And you?”

“This one man, Illuyanek, is worth the world,” she said. “But to care for the prey...it was the downfall of my father’s kingdom. It is like taking a soft rabbit into your arms and keeping it safe...until the hunger for it outweighs the love of the creature. My father protected many rabbits, but few vampyres.”

“You have rarely spoken so kindly of Merod.”

“What is there to say? He fulfilled his prophecies. In the end, that is all he cared for—he was a guardian, he told me. Not a wolf, but a shepherd—as if a blood-drinker who lives off the wine of man could also care for mortals beyond the thirst itself. He nearly ensnared me in his delusions.”

“Ensnared?” I faced her, shaking my head. “It was you who trapped your father.”

“Were you there? Did you watch me trap him?” she asked. For the first time, I genuinely believed I had hurt her in some way. She was not as invulnerable as she seemed. “You cannot pretend to know what I have done. Or what has been done to me.”

“No, I cannot know any of this, other than what you tell me. You have kept much from me. You spent years in Nezahual’s kingdom. Tell me of those times now. Was there another vampyre of our tribe there? A vampyre who had no glamour, no beauty? A vampyre whose eyes shone red with the blood that pulsed behind them? A vampyre whose skull jutted from rotting flesh?”

The golden mask rippled slightly on her face, and her eyes would not meet mine. “Why do you ask this?”

“I have seen him. You must have sensed him in the stream. He follows us from Aztlanteum.”

4