The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith (29 page)

Adele was desperate to know where she was so she could keep terror
at bay. Survival wasn't just about knowledge and skill; it was about
sanity. Mamoru had impressed that on her. Cold, stiff fingers found one
of the round objects that littered the ground nearby. Blindly, she gently
caressed the features of what she held, her brain trying desperately to
puzzle it out. She peered closer at the object as her fingers found hollows
and breaks, as if by sheer willpower she could bring this thing to light.

Then a cold chill of fear found her that displaced the numbness
drawn from the cold water around her. She knew what she held in her hands-a human skull. There were a great number of them all around
her. She had stumbled into a tomb. Only it was more than a tomb; it
was a mass grave.

The skull tumbled from Adele's hands into the water. The young
princess didn't want to be down here another minute. There had to be a
way out. She began to explore the small dimensions her world had been
reduced to. Hands reached into the dark in an attempt to gather information. She felt more of the objects that she recognized as human
debris. Skulls and femurs and smashed rib cages were all around. She
didn't know which terrified her more, touching something solid or
touching nothing at all.

Long, agonizing moments of effort gave Adele what she needed to
know. She was in a tunnel of some sort, about seven or eight feet in
diameter. She could stretch out her arms and almost touch both sides.
The walls were made from overlapping circular pieces of iron.

Adele had fallen into one end of the tunnel and had no way back up.
The stairs were gone, and the walls didn't seem to provide handholds for
climbing. Her only option was to follow the tunnel wherever it led.
There was no help coming.

The water at Adele's feet was icy, but shivers racked her body and,
along with the tremendous amounts of adrenaline, warded off the worst of
her chills. A stroll should warm her further. The water grew deeper as she
traveled the tunnel. She surmised that she was walking under the Thames.
This must have been a foot tunnel that fell out of service long ago. Humans
had been trapped inside when the vampires invaded and were slaughtered.
Or maybe they had tried to hide here during the occupation and had died
waiting for salvation that never came. Adele longed for daylight. Her every
sense was straining to see, hear, or feel. She endured an oppressive fear, as if
something were just about to seize her, but she knew she must either find
an end and escape or go mad in the darkness with the dead.

Something long, cold, and sharp brushed against the side of her face
and pulled gently at her hair, like a cobweb's sticky touch. She flung an
arm out wildly. Something skittered on the ceiling like nails on chilled
steel. Abruptly Adele felt the touch again on the other side of her cheek;
this time it drew a nail sharper across her flesh, extracting blood.

She screamed and struck out with the halberd. The blade whistled
through the rancid air and elicited a hissing from a large object above
her, though she knew she had not struck it. A vampire. But its hissing
was not language like other vampires. It was guttural and formed no
words. Adele froze in the ankle-deep water. There was more scuffling
above her, and she slashed again without connecting. She strained to see
in the blackness. This thing was toying with her. It could kill her at any
time. It had all its senses, even in this night.

Suddenly two long bony hands seized her neck from above, lifting her
off her feet. With choking breath, she twisted and kicked, hoping to break
its grip. Its nails dug deep into her throat, cutting any sound she could
utter save a strangled whimper. With both hands clutching the halberd,
she stabbed up in a straight thrust. This time blade met bone.

The grip on Adele's neck lessened. One rough hand still clutched
her, while the other pulled at the halberd stuck in the beast's belly. The
princess twisted the handle so that the blade tore through the vampire's
innards. Suddenly she was falling, and she hit hard. The halberd tumbled from her grasp. With a desperate cry, she fumbled through the
garbage-filled water for her weapon.

Then there was a splash behind her and her hair was roughly seized,
sharp nails scraping her scalp. Her head was jerked back, exposing her
throat. Adele screamed, and listened to the echo of her voice as it
resounded through the tunnel. Instead of fighting to pull away, she
thrust herself back into the vampire and landed atop the thing. They
rolled in the water, clawing at each other. To her shock it was naked. It
was hairy and terribly lean. It was a savage, not at all like the "civilized"
creatures that lived off the remnants of humanity. This was a true
animal.

The princess drove her elbow into its face; its fang ripped into her
skin, and a grunt showed that the blow had some effect. She leapt to
her feet, but it grabbed her skirt and flung her off her feet once again,
her chest slamming against the floor. A strong yank pulled her back
through the water, her open mouth filling with the sour stuff. Her
hands scraped at the floor, desperate for a handhold. What she found
instead was a divine providence.

Adele twisted onto her back and swung two-handed the recovered
halberd with all her body strength. The invisible arc of the weapon sang
in the tunnel. Only a sickening squishing sound and the slightest hint of
resistance on the blade told her she had struck true. Then something
splashed beside her, and she could feel a round object bob beside her leg.

The creature's head. At least part of it.

A moment later the torso collapsed on top of her. Adele thrashed
wildly to be free of it, but its dead weight and her exhausted muscles
made it difficult. The way it flopped around seemed to give it new life,
though her brain insisted that it was truly dead. Finally she pushed free
and scrambled to the side of the tunnel, where she sat gasping. The dripping water from her hair felt like cold tears on her face.

Adele shivered uncontrollably. Her hand lifted to gently touch her
burning cheek and slid down to check her throat, which ached horribly,
especially when she swallowed. She could feel raw skin, but the damage
didn't seem major. She counted herself as fortunate to have survived at
all. The vampire had had every advantage being able to see in the dark,
while its victim could not. It had underestimated her, which was the
sole reason she still lived.

Adele's strength was gone; exhaustion beat at her, and every bruise
and wound ached within her. She had to escape this place now, while she
still had energy. If one feral vampire had found refuge here, so might a
dozen more. Rising unsteadily, she balanced herself against the wall and
took shuffling steps forward. Then she stopped. She didn't know which
direction she'd been heading. The fight had twisted her around so many
times that she was no longer sure. A curse dropped from her lips.

Calm down, she thought angrily. You've got a fifty-fifty chance at worst.
There was no light in either direction. Pick one. Adele took a deep breath
and started off.

Hours seemed to pass. To Adele's relief the water began to recede a
bit and she seemed to angle slightly upward. Finally she bumped into
something solid. Grime-crusted fingers felt a wooden structure.

Stairs. She had found stairs. The path she had chosen had been the
right one. There was no water at her feet, so she hoped that the wood
had not rotted through like the other end. It held her weight as she slumped against it, without so much as a shiver or a scattering of dust
from above. Perhaps luck was still with her.

Trembling hands grasped the handrails. With a deep breath she took
her first step, and it held. Then another and another. It took every ounce
of patience not to rush up to the top. She kept her pace slow and steady,
listening all the while. Her fingers felt every nuance of the stairs in an
effort to predict if the structure would fail under her.

It took a few minutes before she realized the blackness was turning
grey. Shapes formed in her vision. The darkness was receding. Daylight
crept in through cracks above and cast its rays in her direction. Her
blindness was at an end.

D CLAWED HER way into daylight. The lifeless air outside side was almost clean after the cloying stench in the tunnel. As
she got her bearings, she saw vampires were moving about. The princess
could only hope that she looked as ragged and dejected as she felt,
because she needed to appear like the rest of her subjugated kind. She
stumbled, partly on purpose and partly in true exhaustion, as she
trudged eastward.

Slowly green displaced the dull dead grey of London. Adele made it
out of the city. She would never have believed she could make it this far.
The green called to her, lightening her footsteps as the hours passed. It
was clean and alive, so unlike the city behind her. She touched the leaves
and trunks of the trees, relishing the feel of living things beneath her
fingertips. It seemed like ages since she had been around such things.
She pushed her way though hedgerows and groves, sometimes with the
tree canopy so heavy she walked through a tunnel of green. She kept to
heavy cover and skirted the edges of open fields. Patches of berries
helped her stave off growing hunger.

In the growing dusk, Adele spotted ancient stone monoliths, worn
short and smooth with time, in the middle of an overgrown field. The
two parallel slabs of stone immediately fascinated her. Against all reason, she dared the open ground to walk over to the grey monoliths.
She placed her hand on cool stone and felt an unexpected sense of
warmth and protection.

Shadows crossed over the field in front of her-vampires hunting,
silhouetted in the sky. Adele almost bolted for the forest's edge, but it
was too late for that. Any movement would betray her presence, though
there seemed no way they could miss her.

She shrank between the two stones, praying, cursing. She could feel
her heartbeat through her hand pressed against the monolith. The vampires paused in their flight, their pale forms like wraiths floating in the
air directly above.

Exhaling slowly, Adele held herself motionless, melting into the
stone and vines. She gazed up into their eyes as they looked down, but
to her amazement they could not see her. They turned away and drifted
to the west, leaving her to stare after them in disbelief. There was no
rational explanation. She had not been hidden; she was in the open.

There in the stillness of the glade, she felt a vibration through the
stones, humming from below the surface. It wasn't her heartbeat. It was
something else-a power of some sort. And it had kept her safe. Perhaps
this was the energy that Selkirk tapped to walk unseen among the vampires. Somehow, she had the same ability. Perhaps Greyfriar did as well.
He seemed like a creature of shadow. When last Adele had seen him, he
had been fighting for his life against Flay. And she had left him. Her
heart sickened at the memory. He had come for her across the whole of
vampire territory. He had dared bloody London. For her.

So had her Intended, of course, but he had an army at his disposal,
and more than likely he was more interested in not losing his claim to a
powerful throne. She could never be sure of the senator's motivations.
Not like Greyfriar. He had no claims on her or her throne. He had
placed his life on the line over and over again. He spoke to her not of
politics but of books and simple people. He never gave up, even when
all odds were against them.

The strange power of the stones rumbled to a halt and was silent
beneath Adele. Immediately she missed its presence. It had spoken of
things she had almost forgotten: warmth, safety, and relief from her weary reality. But again, she was alone and unprotected. She had to move
on.

Greyfriar, please don't be dead, she pleaded.