The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith (21 page)

As she took the cloak from a hook, she quickly seized one of the
razor-sharp stone blades she had chiseled and slipped it into her blouse.
With her cloak around her shoulders, she charged past the waiting
Gareth. The vampire caught up with her at the door and led the way
across the yard, which was now carpeted with lovely yellow flowers. A few daffodils and crocuses waved in the shadows of the walls. One of the
sentries lifted into the air and drifted away on the spring breeze.

Gareth strode out the dilapidated main gate and into the city. Adele
followed his black frock coat as his long legs ate up the cobblestone
streets and muddy lanes. Occasionally, he turned to check on her, but
she was always a few steps behind, maintaining a look of bland detachment although she was busy studying the street layout. Adele caught
sight of a dark shape as it swooped between crumbling buildings and
caught hold of a rooftop. It was Flay.

Gareth saw the lurking war chief too. A small chuckle escaped the
prince as he said over his shoulder, "Cesare's afraid you might escape
from me."

Adele felt the blade resting hard against her stomach. "Hilarious."

Gareth laughed again and openly stared up at Flay as they passed
beneath the vampire's perch. Several more times over the course of the silent
stroll Flay appeared outlined against the bright blue sky like a gargoyle.
Eventually, Gareth and Adele passed between two wrought iron gates and
stood before a large domed building with a great colonnaded portico.

Gareth asked, "Do you recognize this place?"

"Should I?" Adele replied sharply.

"It's the British Museum. My home in London."

"Hmm. I imagine it is more pleasant than the crypt or hole in the
ground where you lived before."

Gareth smirked at her retort with real amusement, his angular face
softening.

The thought of a vampire making its nest in this great museum
chilled Adele. This was a place that had been dedicated to preserving the
valuable past and learning from it, a uniquely human activity that the
vampires could never understand.

She asked, "Do you intend to hold me here?"

"You're welcome to stay here," Gareth replied very quickly, then
added, "But you're also free to keep your rooms in the Tower. Come."

Adele followed his tall, straight back along the gravel walk. Flay
drifted high overhead as Gareth pushed open the massive bronze door,
stepped aside for Adele to enter, and then closed the door behind them.

His voice echoed in the empty space. "Don't worry about Flay. She
won't dare enter. To violate my rights would mean her death. Not even
Cesare could save her."

Gareth stretched out his arms in a shaft of sunlight. He looked
around the vast entryway with something like pride. "Come, walk with
me. I have questions."

Adele stood rooted to the floor. Was this it? Would he begin the
interrogation proper now?

Gareth pointed to his right, like a tour guide. "The books were
through there once. Rooms full of them. Quite amazing. I didn't realize
you had created so many." The vampire seemed apologetic suddenly.
"They are gone now, I fear."

"Yes, I know. Your kind destroyed them all."

"We did." He nodded gravely. "But not completely. Many of them
were used later by humans for fires. Still, no matter. There are other
things I want to show you, and ask you about."

"I have no intention of telling you anything. Ask your brother; I'm
capable of prodigious silence."

The vampire looked disappointed, then brightened. "And I told you
I have no interest in the affairs of your state. Or your spies. Or the numbers of your ships or soldiers."

Footfalls rang in the emptiness as Adele followed Gareth through dim
chaotic galleries. She stepped carefully through the detritus of ancient
societies, as well as the remnants of furniture and fixtures from the time of
the Great Killing. When their path was blocked by toppled and smashed
statuary, Gareth reached back to assist her, but she ignored his outstretched hand. He sighed softly but respected her independence.

Great mute heads and muscled arms and torsos of marble lay useless
all around them. From cracked wooden panels and terra-cotta vessels
stared faces of peoples from distant lands, many now part of Equatoria,
and Adele's future subjects. There were dusty clumps of shredded tapestries and portraits. Bronze helmets and weapons stood in piles. The
princess noted several greening daggers that would serve her, but she
didn't dare stop. They paused before a great winged lion, humanheaded, with a long curly beard.

"Magnificent." Gareth ran his hand slowly along its massive stone
flank. "But why make such a thing? I understand making tools and
weapons. There is a purpose in it. But this? It must've taken enormous
effort. To what end?"

Adele didn't answer. Was he actually interested in human culture?
He seemed sincere, and it was difficult for her to believe a vampire could
pretend so well. It just wasn't in them. It would be like a cat feigning
interest in intricate needlework techniques for the ultimate goal of getting its paws on the ball of yarn.

Gareth didn't seem disturbed by her silence. The prince had too many
questions to worry about one. He quickly cut through another doorway
with Adele in his wake. As they stepped around an enormous stone head
facedown on the floor, Gareth pointed up at a colossal Egyptian figure of
a man, a red granite trunk and head, partially sheared off.

"There," he said. "See? That is extraordinary. Why make it so large?"

Adele recognized the monument instantly. An ancient pharaoh of
her homeland, wasted here in London. It had no power in this place. It
should be standing in Victoria Palace in Alexandria. After all, her father
was the heir to the pharaohs. As was she.

Gareth asked, "What was his name? Do you know?"

"Ramses." Adele couldn't help herself. There was a certain amount
of family pride involved. "He was the greatest ruler of his time. One of
the greatest of all time. The king of Egypt."

"Ramses was from Egypt," Gareth mused. "Why is his statue here?
Did the British hold him in esteem? Did he rule here too?"

"No. He is long dead. When Ramses ruled, Britain was peopled
with savages. Like now. But when the British were civilized, they found
the statue in Egypt and brought it here. All this material was brought
here by Englishmen with an interest in mankind."

"The Egyptians then had become savages?"

Adele didn't answer. She stared at the immortal statue. Then she
noticed on the stone pedestal, in faded red letters, perhaps even scrawled
in blood many years ago, were the words "Look on my works, ye mighty,
and despair." How odd. How sad. And true.

"How old are you?" Adele suddenly asked Gareth.

"What?"

"How old are you? Do vampires live forever?" She started to touch
the granite base of the great pharaoh, but hesitated. "Were you alive
when he was alive?"

"Of course not. This stature is three thousand years old. There are no
vampires alive from his time."

"How can you possibly know how old it is?" Adele's eye fell upon a
mildewing label posted on the stone pedestal, with the only legible
information being a date listed for the colossus. "You can read!"

Gareth replied defensively. "We know more about your history than
you suspect. We know more about you than you do about us. Humans
think that vampires are their own dead, risen to life. It's grotesquely vain."

"Don't change the subject," Adele retorted. "Only ignorant people
believe that fairy tale about the undead. We know what you are. Parasites. And I know your kind couldn't care less about human culture or
history. Your brother, Cesare, made that clear. He wouldn't know
Sulayman the Magnificent or Julius Caesar if he fed off them. But you're
different, aren't you? You can read even though your kind holds reading
and writing in great disdain. Cesare said so."

"Perhaps you shouldn't believe everything Cesare says."

Adele raised a bemused eyebrow. "I wonder what your brother
would think if he knew the heir to the clan could read human writing?
That doesn't sound like proper behavior for a king of vampires."

Gareth stared at her for the first time with a look that scared her.
Then he turned away, the long hem of his frock coat snapping with the
movement. He strode off through collapsed funerary accoutrements,
heels clicking loudly in the silence. Adele followed as the prince kicked
his way through mummies without care.

"Wait!" Adele called out. "I won't use it against you."

Gareth kept walking.

"Listen to me." She grabbed his arm. "Didn't you bring me here to
talk?"

Gareth spun around in a blur, his face angry at first, but quickly subsiding to mere annoyance. "Very well. You're right. I can read some of
your languages. I do have an interest in your culture. And yes, there may be very few of my people who share my interest. Well, none most likely.
We hold writing in disdain. As we do all things your kind has made.
Art. Agriculture. Cities. Weapons. They're all nothing to us."

"You mean like those clothes you wear?"

Gareth heard the sarcastic edge to her question. "We use your
clothes because your skin is too fragile to wear." Despite the savage
words, his tone was melancholy. He knelt and dug into a pile of detritus,
lifting a tiny figurine made of translucent alabaster. Gareth rolled the
lustrous white object along the tips of his long fingers with a tenderness
that surprised Adele.

He said, "We make nothing. We create nothing." He pushed his
other hand deep into a mound of shattered clay fragments. "And we
leave nothing behind."

The vampire stood and tossed the figurine back onto the waste pile.
"We are parasites. Which is fortunate for you. It would have taken little
effort to make your kind extinct. But we need you to survive."

"Yes. But we don't need you."

Gareth inclined his head graciously. "Among our greater failings,
vampires are notoriously slow to appreciate irony. We have grown lazy
and decadent, with no desire to go back to living in crypts and holes in
the ground. We like the houses and the clothes. Not enough to make
them, of course, but enough to want slaves who will make them. And
we like having meals that don't require hunting or danger. It seems that
we aren't even good parasites anymore."

"So you don't care about the survival of your kind?" Adele's voice was
incredulous, perhaps slightly sarcastic.

The prince wiped dust from his hands. "I think only the valuable should
survive. It remains to be seen where my kind falls. I'll take you back."

Adele watched his lonely figure as it disappeared among the toppled
magnificence of ancient humanity. Then she stooped to recover the precious figurine. It was a washabti. In ancient times they were placed in
tombs to be vessels where the wandering souls of the dead could rest.
She blew the dust off its lustrous surface and followed Gareth.

ESARE STARED ANGRILY as Flay concluded her report. The
vampire prince let his twitching meal slide to the filthy floor of
the empty House of Commons. His appetite was gone. Feeding meant
little to him these days. Merely sustenance. He remembered the dark
days hunting humans in forests and sleeping in catacombs, but those
days were gone, and it was his duty to see they never returned.

Cesare asked, "How long were they closeted together in that
museum tomb of his?"

"Not long," Flay replied. "An hour at most. Then he led her back to
the Tower."

Cesare wiped blood off his face and absently licked his hands. The manshaped lump at his feet fumbled feebly at his throat in a vain attempt to
stanch the flow of blood. His pitiful moan attracted Cesare, who indicated
the wounded man to his war chief with a brief nod of invitation.

Flay smiled a polite decline, but when Cesare looked away she shot
him a fierce glare. As if she would deign to feed after him. It took a conscious effort to remove the disdain from her face, but when Cesare
looked up she again appeared the ever-patient retainer awaiting orders.