Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) (36 page)

Mislav considered her words.

‘
She’s a lying witch,
Sir,’ Sergell called out. ‘I can finish her off if you’ll let
me.’

‘
No, Sergell. You and the
others return to the city. I will follow shortly.’

‘
But, Sir … You surely
cannot …’

Mislav turned his back on Sergell and stared
at Aelia.

‘
I missed you when you
left,’ he said. ‘I thought you might have destroyed yourself …
walked out into the sunlight. You were not happy.’

‘
No, I was
not.’

‘
Well?’ Mislav turned to
Sergell. ‘What are you waiting for? All of you. Leave now. I will
return soon.’

Sergell did as he was told. He took his
small army of vampires and left them.

Chapter Forty Four

Present Day

*

As soon as Sergell and his vampires had left
the snow-covered plain, Alexandre rushed to Madison’s side, joined
by the others.

‘
Are you alright, Madison?
Did he hurt you?’

‘
No, but I really thought
that was it.’ She took a breath. ‘I thought I was going to
…’

‘
I know.’ Alexandre
interrupted her before she had a chance to say the word. He put his
arm around her shoulders and brought her close to his
chest.

‘
What do you make of the
woman?’ Isobel asked.

‘
She is Havva Sahin,’
Alexandre said, almost to himself. ‘I cannot believe
it.’

‘
I thought Havva Sahin was
human,’ Jacques said.

‘
So did I,’ Alex replied.
‘And yet she is not a vampire either.’

‘
She saved me,’ Maddy
said. ‘She rescued me from the cold and brought me here. This is
where she lives. This cave behind us.’

Aelia’s voice rang out.

‘
Come,’ she said to Mislav
and the others. ‘Let us go inside. And there we shall sit and make
a pretence at being civilised for a few moments. I will tell you my
story and then you can leave.’ She sucked the blood off her finger
and walked into the cave, sheathing her knife. Mislav and the
others followed.

The cave was large and clean. Food had been
cooking on a fire which had almost burned down to nothing. Havva,
or Aelia as she now seemed to be calling herself, threw a log on
the embers and settled down on a large boulder in the corner of the
cavern. Mislav sat close by.

Alexandre followed Madison to a mattress on
the rock floor. She sat and leaned back into him and he kissed her
head, entwining her fingers in his. But Alexandre did not for one
second take his eyes off Mislav. This was a demon cut from the same
cloth as the Byzantine emperor – a cold and emotionless being with
no heart. Havva Sahin might feel comfortable talking to him, all
cosy and chatty in her cave, but Alexandre did not. That creature
had given the order for Madison’s death. It took all of Alex’s
willpower not to reach across and smash his head into the fire,
which was now blazing furiously. But he wanted to hear Aelia’s
story and guessed she wouldn’t take kindly to vampires fighting in
her home.

Everyone settled into a space, waiting for
her to begin, but Alexandre suddenly realised that someone was not
with them. That they had not been here from the start.

‘
Where is Leonora?’ he
whispered to Freddie.

‘
She said she had
something to do. That she would find us later.’

Alexandre did not have time to wonder about
this, as Aelia had begun her story. She was telling them of her
entrance to the underground city, armed with a box containing the
blood plague. As she continued with her tale, Alexandre found
himself impressed by her selflessness and bravery; although she did
not boast of her deeds and did not expect any pity.

Mislav’s face showed anger and incredulity.
It was clear he was not enjoying her tale at all.

Soon she came to the part where she had left
the city in despair, expecting the sunlight to kill her.

‘
I just wanted to end my
existence. To stop the sadness and mounting pain that swam in my
blood and battered my skull at every waking moment. I had been told
daylight was fatal to demons. Now that I was one of them I knew I
had no choice.

‘
But I didn’t die.
Something happened to me when the sun’s rays hit. I passed out and
when I came to, I felt different. More myself again. More human.
The dry air made me thirsty. But strangely, I was thirsty for clear
cool water, not for blood. And I felt hungry for food. For normal,
human food. I thought I might be dead and that this was the
afterlife. Or that perhaps I had lost my mind.

‘
I returned here, to the
Widow Maleina’s cave. I decided to walk here, like a mortal. I
wanted to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the desert dust on
my skin and the breeze through my hair. I wasn’t worried about
meeting anybody on the journey. For everybody was trapped beneath
my feet, living in terror. Not for long though. The plague soon did
its job and worked its way through the demons rendering them all
unconscious. And once that happened, the humans who survived were
able to escape.’

‘
I cannot believe you did
all that,’ Mislav said. He looked at Aelia, partly in admiration
and partly in anger. ‘You ruined everything. You destroyed our
whole civilisation.’

‘
There was nothing
civilised about you, Mislav. You were all despicable.’

‘
You never took the time
to see how wonderful our life was. You and I could have had
everything.’

‘
I never wanted
everything,’ Aelia replied.

She turned to look at the others, all
stunned by her story. She caught Alexandre’s eye.

‘
What happened next?’ he
asked.

‘
Next? Well, when the
demons finally slept their long sleep and the humans had emerged
into the sunshine, I plucked up the courage to return to Selmea.
Twenty thousand men, women and children had descended into the
earth, but only six hundred and twenty eight came out. It had been
a massacre. I felt partly guilty as many had died, not by the
demons’ hands, but from the plague I unleashed.’

‘
But that wasn’t your
fault,’ Madison said. ‘There was nothing else you could’ve
done.’

‘
So I keep trying to
convince myself,’ Aelia said. ‘Anyway, I had a theory of which I
couldn’t be certain, but I didn’t want to take any chances. You
see, when I emerged from the city, I think the sun did something to
my body. I felt it shock my system and I didn’t want to risk the
same thing happening to the demons. So I told the survivors that
under no circumstances were they to bring the creatures outside
into daylight. The villagers argued and said it was the only way to
truly kill them. But I believed the plague had altered them somehow
and that exposing them to the sun would regenerate
them.’

‘
You were right,’
Alexandre said.

‘
Yes, but it was different
with me than with you. You are still affected by the sun. I am not.
You still need blood to survive. I do not.’

‘
So you’ve been alive all
those years?’ Madison said. ‘That’s insane. Weren’t you
lonely?’

‘
Yes. In the early years
this cave became like a prison, but I was too scared to leave. I
had no family or friends. No society to become a part of.
Eventually I had to force myself to step out into the world and
make a new life.

‘
After a few years, I met
a man and we fell in love. We had children. We had to keep moving
so people wouldn’t grow suspicious. You see, I didn’t age in the
normal way. My husband did. And of course eventually he died. My
children died. My grandchildren died.’

‘
You put yourself through
all that pain,’ Mislav sneered. ‘For what?’

‘
For love, Mislav.
Something you never really understood.’

‘
There’s nothing
to
understand.’

Aelia shook her head sadly. She
continued:

‘
After a while, people
still talked of the demons, but there was no longer anyone else
left alive who had personally experienced the horror of it.
Centuries passed and I changed my name several times. I lived in
many different villages. But I always returned here to the widow’s
cave for long periods to contemplate my existence and decide where
to go and what to do next. I had also begun to age. Not at the
normal human rate, but very slowly and imperceptibly. I calculated
that maybe twenty five or thirty human years are roughly equal to
one of my years.

‘
In the thirteen hundreds
- or was it later? I can’t remember, but no matter - the locals
diverted the course of a river to bring it closer to their crops.
The new course ran through the very same valley as the cave
entrance to the underground city. I breathed easier after that. The
demons were still deep underground and now the entrance was covered
by a deep river. Memories of the demons passed out of history.
Buried under the weight of time. They had become legend or perhaps
a scary bedtime story. But there were still those who believed.
Although no one ever knew the full story. Except I.

‘
At the end of the
eighteenth century, I returned to the village of Selmea. By then, I
looked much as I do now. I had an enormous family and managed to
stay with them by leaving and then returning several years later as
an aunt, or later as a long lost great grandmother. I always
brought wealth with me and this usually eased their acceptance.’
She laughed. ‘… that, and the striking family resemblance which had
filtered down to my descendants.

‘
But then, in 1881
something happened that I never thought would come to pass. You
know this part, Alexandre.’

She stared at him and he felt shame.

‘
I was living peacefully
with my wonderful ancestors, the Sahin family. I was now known as
Havva Sahin, and my ‘great grandson’ was the village elder of
Selmea, then, and until this day, known as Zelmat. Alexandre, you
and your family came and ruined everything. I warned you not to
meddle, but it seems I underestimated your persistence. I never
dreamed you would find the cave entrance beneath the river. But you
certainly paid the price for that, didn’t you?’

Alexandre gave a single nod and bowed his
head. Madison squeezed his hand. When he looked up again, he saw
that Aelia looked tired. Reliving history had taken it out of her,
but she hadn’t quite finished the story.

‘
Harold Swinton wrote to
me, you know.’

‘
He was my father,’
Freddie said. ‘I’m Frederick Swinton.’

‘
Yes. Well while you were
sleeping, he asked me if I knew how to revive you. I lied to him. I
told him to keep you locked up in the dark. I didn’t know then that
you were capable of being human, of having compassion. I’m sorry
for that.’

‘
You did what you thought
was right,’ said Alexandre. ‘I probably would’ve done the
same.’

‘
Looking at you, I see
that maybe vampires aren’t all evil. Perhaps some of you can live
with some kind of love in your hearts. But you are still young.
Time may still warp and twist your soul into something terrible.
It’s the blood, you see. It changes you.’

‘
And so what now?’ Mislav
said to her, rising to his feet. ‘You say you carry the sickness in
you. As far as I am aware, all I need to do is destroy you without
spilling your blood. Then you can do no further damage.’

‘
You do not need to
threaten me. I will do you no harm, Mislav. You are not the
powerful civilisation you once were. Today’s society will not
tolerate your ungodly ways.’

‘
Today’s society is worse
than ever,’ he replied. ‘Have you not seen what is happening in
this modern world? We were angels compared to some of today’s
regimes.’

‘
Not by any stretch of the
imagination could you be called an angel, Mislav.’

‘
I have heard enough,’ he
said. ‘You cannot be allowed to survive, Aelia. You pose too much
of a threat. Once his Imperial Highness hears of your existence, he
will have you killed.’

‘
He will not succeed. You
cannot destroy me with sunlight, nor chain me with
silver.’

‘
We’ll see about that, old
woman.’ Mislav glared at her, threw a look of contempt at the rest
of them and disappeared so quickly, that none saw him
leave.

Alexandre did not want to let him go. That
demon was too dangerous to be roaming free. There were four of them
here, plus Zoe and Aelia. They could destroy him. If they went
after him now…

He felt Madison’s restraining hand on his
shoulder. She knew what was in his mind.

‘
No,’ she said. ‘Not
now.’

‘
Now
may be the only time we
have.’

‘
No. Please.
Enough.’

Alexandre sighed, but stayed where he was.
He knew he would regret his decision.

Chapter Forty Five

Present Day

*

Now Mislav had left the cave, the tension
lifted, lightening the atmosphere a little. But Alexandre remained
wary. Aelia was hundreds of years old, incredibly powerful and she
carried the sleeping sickness in her body. No matter how nice the
woman seemed, she was still potentially dangerous and the sooner
they left this place the better. In fact, the sooner they left the
country, the safer it would be for all of them.