Blood Revealed (32 page)

“You’ve been drinking too much vodka, my friend,” Marcus told Sasha, as he struggled breathlessly through thigh-high snow.

Sasha glared at him and hitched his backpack into a more comfortable position. “If I had known that I was going to spend a week traipsing through the forests of Karelia, I would never have met you in St. Petersburg.” He paused and wiped sweat from his brow from underneath the heavy wool cap he was wearing. “Do you not think this is a fool’s mission?”

“I double-checked Rick’s computations,” Marcus said. “Nial agreed, too. If Rick says the Elah are here, then it’s a safe bet he’s right. He rarely makes mistakes.”

Sasha took a few more steps, trying to push his knees through the snow and making a wading movement. “He does make mistakes, yes?”

Marcus chose to ignore that question. He took a swig from the insulated thermos and grimaced at the cool coffee. Despite the very best insulation, the coffee had chilled off in the last few hours. At least it hadn’t iced over yet.

He looked around. For as far as the eye could see, towering firs stood over them. They hadn’t seen the sun for three days, except for quick glimpses every now and again through the canopy.

“You weren’t planning on sneaking up on them, were you?” Sasha asked. He grunted as he swung his knees for two more steps, then looked at Marcus. “Because there’s no way either of us can sneak up on anything right now.”

“Nope,” Marcus said shortly.

Sasha halted again. He had caught up with Marcus now. He looked at him with suspicious eyes. “You want them to find us.”

Marcus shrugged. “There are a lot more of them than there are of us and this is a big forest. Besides, someone has been following us for a couple of hours. I’m wondering why they haven’t shown themselves. They must surely see that we’re completely harmless.”

Sasha grew still. Only his eyes moved as he tried to peer in all directions. “How close are they?”

“Close enough to hear how unfit you are.” He turned and faced the trees in the general direction he thought they were. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

The creature stepped out from behind a tree to Marcus’s left, not too far away from where Marcus had thought it would be.

Sasha swore softly in Russian. He clearly didn’t like that someone had been able to sneak up on them. His paranoia had been spooked.

Marcus couldn’t take his eyes off the creature. It was clearly an Elah, because he had never seen any animal wear clothing before. It looked human, with arms and legs about the right length and a head about the right size. It was difficult to measure how tall the creature was because it was not standing at the same level as them. It only sank into the snow a few inches and had no trouble walking toward them.

Sasha fumbled for his gun under his heavy parka. Marcus grabbed his wrist and shook his head. Sasha subsided.

The Elah stopped several paces away from them and studied them. It was a mutual observation, for Marcus could not look away either. He was not sure of the sex. The Elah probably could not determine their gender, either, thanks to the heavy clothing they wore.

It had skin that was almost gray in color and very inhuman-looking. Its chin was sharp and fine and the nose was sharp, too. Its eyes were big, and they were set as far apart as a human’s. There was the suggestion of brows above.

It also had hair, of a distinctly furry type—thick and dark. It sprang up from the head and bent back, as if it was trying to stand up against a heavy wind. The brows had to be of the same coarse hair.

Its mouth was small and as Marcus looked at it, the thin lips moved. It spoke.

Marcus stared at it in astonishment. He didn’t understand what it was saying, but he did recognize the words. It was speaking Russian.

“What did it say?”

“It’s said,
why are you here
?”

“Does it speak English?”

“I speak what you call English only a little,” the creature said. Its voice sounded very human and distinctly male in tenor. Marcus stopped himself from concluding that the creature was male. Perhaps this is what all the females sounded like. Maybe the males had the light voices. They just didn’t know enough to draw any sorts of conclusions just yet.

“We’re here,” Marcus said, “because we were hoping we could speak to your leader. The one that we called Dai Chi. My apologies if this is not his name. It is the only name we have for him.”

“His name cannot be spoken in any of the languages that we have learned so far. Dai Chi will do for now. It is a symbol only, representing our leader.”

“Humans take their names very seriously,” Marcus said. “Clearly you haven’t figured that out yet. Would it be possible to speak to Dai Chi?”

“Why would you want this?” The Elah tilted its head, considering them carefully.

“We are quite harmless,” Marcus assured him.

“Yet you both carry guns.” The Elah did not smile, nor did its face move in any way that suggested emotion. It remained smooth and almost flawless in its symmetry. “Dai Chi has declared that you must put such weapons aside. He would speak with you. He has questions.”

As they pulled out their pistols and dropped them to the snow, Sasha looked around the forest and the blinding white snow. “Is he very far away?”

Almost in answer, dozens of Elah stepped out from around the tree trunks surrounding them. They moved silently, with only the light crunch of snow to give them away. All of them wore clothing of human origin, designed to trap warmth against the body. All of them carried elongated knives, that looked like they had been shaved out of wood. Marcus studied the edge of the blades and could see that they were sharp. He had no doubt that the blades would cut as efficiently as a steel knife.

The very last Elah to step out of hiding was taller than the rest. He wore what looked like an old Russian military greatcoat, with the insignia stripped away. Just from the way the Elah was holding itself, Marcus knew that he was looking at a leader. There was an agelessness about him and his eyes had the same far away, history-filled wisdom in them that Marcus had seen in some of the vampires who had lived for thousands of years. Nial sprang to mind.

Except this Elah’s eyes were a slightly darker gray than its skin. There were no irises and nothing like irises that would help the eyes compensate for different levels of light. The whole eye was gray.

“Dai Chi?” Sasha said softly to Marcus.

“So that would be no, then. They’re not that far away at all,” Marcus concluded.

* * * * *

Dai Chi only spoke Russian, so Sasha had to act as interpreter. After a while, Marcus forgot that Sasha was interpreting and only heard the words as if it was a normal conversation.

The conversation took place right where the Elah had found them. Many bows and branches were bought into the tiny clearing and spread upon the top of the snow, the soft fronds acting as padding for their backsides.

Marcus was more than happy to sit after walking for three days and Sasha groaned loudly as he put himself down on the ground and shrugged off his backpack.

The Elah did not sit. They squatted, their knees pressed up against their chests as they folded up on themselves and wrapped their arms around their calves. None of them seemed to feel the cold quite as badly as humans did, so Marcus’s first negotiation was to ask for a fire to be lit.

The request was also a test. He wanted to know if they used fire.

As they whispered with their heads together for a few moments, he listened to their native speech. There were discernible words there, using syllables and emotional inflections. He suspected that it might be possible for humans to learn their language.

That was a task for another day. Today, he had a more important goal to achieve.

He did not see how they started the fire, but within minutes of his request, dry kindling had been bought and the flames sprang up. Second branches were added, proving that the Elah knew how to handle fire.

Sasha leaned toward the heat with an appreciative sigh and held his hands out toward the flame.

This seemed to alarm them, until they realized that Sasha was not putting himself on fire.

Dai Chi did not sit, nor did he squat. He remained standing on the other side of the fire, his gaze flickering between Sasha and Marcus. Marcus wasn’t sure if he was anthropomorphizing or not, but it seemed to him that Dai Chi was very intelligent. He was also immortal and the only leader among the Others who had survived being held captive in the Blood Stone.

That must give anyone of intelligence a very different perspective on life.

Marcus had learned a lot about how long life affected the way one looked upon the world through dealing with the vampires and especially Rick, who was on his third millennia. So it allowed Marcus to shape the way he approached the conversation.

“I am human,” he explained. “I am here to represent vampires. You have clearly been studying humans, enough to learn their languages and their ways, including clothing. You have been hiding out in the forests of the world while you did so. That has led some of us to believe that you do not intend to attack humans. That is why I am here today.”

“Perhaps we are merely biding our time,” Dai Chi said. “We wait until you waste your strength upon the Summanus. Then we attack.”

“You do not have the numbers to attack humans,” Marcus pointed out. “Even humans depleted by Summanus’ attacks.”

“The Summanus will not stop their attacks. If we wait long enough, then your numbers will be few enough for us to deal with.”

Marcus felt the chill seep into his body. He pushed the negativity aside. He had to concentrate. “All of this is true. If you wait long enough, we will be weak enough for you to fight us and perhaps win. Except that you have not made allowances for the human will to live. It defeated you once before, do you remember?”

The Elah in the clearing shifted on their haunches and Marcus knew he had made a point.

Dai Chi did not move.

“Those of us who have studied you believe that it is not your will to fight the humans.” Marcus held his breath.

Dai Chi did move this time. He turned and walked in a circle while the Elah all pushed themselves to their feet and got out of his way. Then he came back to the spot where he had been standing and spoke. “We remember very well. We remember that humans breed much faster than we do. We remember that their numbers are akin to those of the Summanus, overwhelming the Earth so that it cannot breathe.”

Marcus nodded. It was one of the more succinct explanations for global warming that he had ever heard. “Humans have grown in number since you last encountered them. Without the Summanus as predators, we have flourished.”

“And now there is no room for us.”

Marcus drew in a slow breath, considering. He had a feeling that this was the crux of the matter for the Elah. They were not natural predators the way the Summanus were. While they had been trapped inside the Blood Stone, humans had covered the globe and now they had emerged, he could understand why they felt there was nowhere for them to go.

“You think you must fight us for the space that you need?” he asked.

Dai Chi said something in his natural language. Abruptly, every Elah in the clearing stood and walked away. Marcus watched the first Elah who had found them melt into the trees, moving between them with fluid ease.

That left them alone with Dai Chi.

Marcus caught Sasha’s glance.

Now what was coming?

Dai Chi moved around the fire and unexpectedly squatted next to Marcus. He began to speak.

“My people do not understand this. It is natural for them to fight for the earth that they need. That was the way it was always done. Now, we do not have the numbers to win, not even if we waited until the Summanus had culled you to the herd size that existed when we were enslaved within the Stone. The Ĉiela are already dying. We will die, too, even if we fight. There is not enough time for us. There is not enough air. Still, we hope. I hope. And so we must find our place.”

“Yet you have carved out a place for yourself, right here,” Marcus said.

Dai Chi moved his chin and although his lips did not move, Marcus felt that he was smiling. “We are as vulnerable to the cold as you. We cannot live here forever. Just as you cannot. We must find a more temperate land, with trees, where we can breathe, yet those lands are occupied by humans. What are we to do?”

It was the age-old dilemma of landless people throughout history. All they wanted was a place to call home. Some of the bloodiest battles had been fought and were still being fought by people in search of a place to live.

“Even humans find it difficult to find a place among other humans,” he told Dai Chi. “Those who have been successful did so by assimilating into the local culture.”

“Dai Chi wants to know what you mean by becoming human,” Sasha said.

“I said assimilate, not become human. Does he think that assimilation means a loss of identity? Make sure he understands the difference, Sasha.”

Sasha and Dai Chi exchanged comments. It took a long time. Eventually, Sasha nodded.

“He says he now understands this word, assimilate. It means to part like water around trees and settle on the low ground.”

“Close enough,” Marcus said. “Ask him if he is willing to meet with vampire and human leaders, to start this assimilation process.”

Again, the two exchanged comments, making sure each understood the other clearly.

Sasha shook his head. “He says no. It is too late.”

Marcus swallowed. “Too late?”

Sasha grinned. “They are already flowing like water around trees.”

Los Angeles. Same day.

Jake had preseason football practice that he didn’t want to give up, so Blythe had negotiated a deal with him that included at least one of the girls going with him on the bus. The bus was not a direct route home, but she refused to let him practice unless they caught the bus and travelled home in the most secure way possible, as practice ended far too close to sunset for her comfort.

So she wasn’t too alarmed when the sun dipped down toward the horizon and Jake and Simone were not yet home. She kept an eye on the clock and the steadily darkening sky as she worked to get supper ready.