The Queen of Wolves (2 page)

Only Natalia had entered the Temple of Lemesharra, and had sat at the table in the Great Hall, feasting on the finest food and drink. No other vampyre or mortal shared my tomb as she had.

Daniel may have been the most offended by her presence. He was barely more than a boy, and to me, he was a son. But as a son, he desired to be an only child and could not stand having a rival, in friendship or in love.

Natalia was a threat to him—I should have recognized this. Yet, in all her nights with me, I had watched him. I had believed him, based on his demeanor. Daniel had been nothing but helpful. He had made sure that her food and water were fresh, and her wine was among the best of the cellars of the Earth.

And yet, I should not have completely trusted him; he had been too solicitous of her.

Daniel was a jealous youth, not more than a handful of years from his resurrection into the tribe. Even when I had drunk from him in the alleyway where I’d found him, I’d sensed a dangerous nature. I was blinded by his resemblance to someone from my own youth, someone who had extinguished long ago. I could not resist bringing him the breath of vampyrism and resurrecting him from the dead.

I had put too much trust in him. Now, I would pay the price of this trust. If Natalia had been murdered, all of my existence would be for nothing.

All I had dreamed, and all I had done, would be as the fallen statues of gods in some dig of an ancient city—the dust of the past and no more.

I shouted to Vaspiana and the others to find Natalia and Daniel. “No harm shall come to them, but you must bring them both to me. She must be alive. If you have hurt her, or drunk from her, you will be drawn from the grave at morning’s first light and left beyond Alkemara’s protection!”

I pulled Vaspi to my side using the strands of the stream. She resisted, fighting against the pressure she felt at her shoulders and back. Like a fly caught in the silk strands, she struggled against the pull, but eventually gave in and stood before me. Her long, thick braid of hair came undone, and her dark tresses fell across one side of her face.

Her eyes were like a wolf’s as she glared at me.

“You know where they are,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Tell me now, and I will forgive you. If you wait but another moment, I will set the protectors upon you at tomorrow’s sunrise, and you will feel the fire of Extinguishing.”

She spat. “You love mortals too much, Falconer.”

“
Vaspi
,”
I said.

She curled her lips downward as she said, “The cave, above the serpent stair.”

“She
will
be
alive,” I said as if in warning.

I drew wings out from my body and rose in the great hollow mountain. I saw other vampyres rise from their tombs, their beds, their dark places. Like falcons, they flew out into the night sky, high above—and if I were to call any of them, they would return swiftly to my side.

I would find Natalia—and Daniel—myself.

I followed the tunnels and wormholes and caverns that snaked and curved beyond the city. I crawled across the great boulders that jutted out from the rock cliffs—they formed the serpent stair, a series of ledges that led to narrow caves. I sniffed the air—the faint mortal aroma seemed to linger there. I sensed Daniel very close—and then saw movement in one of the narrow mouths of a cave on the ledge above.

Yes, he is here,
I thought.

3

As I drew myself up to the cave, I saw his muscular, pale back—a rippling of alabaster—and his red hair like a beacon in the dark.

He leaned over Natalia, his face buried at her throat.

He was too busy with his task to sense my arrival. I only hoped I was in time to stop his thirst from taking her life. My heart seemed to beat too slowly. My fears overcame me. If she were dead, all was lost.

If she were dead, it would be too late.

I scrambled over to him, and wrapped my arms around his neck, and drew him from her. I knocked his head against the jagged rocks. I glanced at Natalia—she pressed her hands to her throat.

Daniel let out a keening wail as I dragged him out of that cave onto the ample ledge beyond it. I threw him down at my feet.

His shirt was a brown-red and his face shiny from her blood. He growled like a mad dog, and I struck him with the back of my hand. He tried to rise, but as he did so, I grasped him by the collar and threw him down again.

“After all I did to take you from your miserable life in Prague,” I said. “Begging for death in an alley. I made you a guardian of this world.”

“This
underworld!
”
He spat at me. “We could live in palaces. We could rule over men, and they would sacrifice to us, Falconer. You made me a wolf but hold against me the nature of wolves.”

“Spoken like a foolish young man.” I slapped him across the face. “You are no wolf. Why did you do it?”

“She tried to escape,” he whimpered.

“Did she?” I asked. “Or did you plot for many nights, and imagine that you might lure her up just at twilight, before I would rise? Risk the last of the sun, perhaps, and drain her, as you have done to others before?”

“That wasn’t it! She...she...” He wiped his bloodied mouth against his sleeve as he tried to come up with a lie that might convince me. “She’s a deceiver!”

“You had to drink from her,” I said. “The one person I told you was not for any here. The one person all the tribe knows they are not to bite.”

“They all wanted to. They did. Ask Vaspi. Ask any. They longed for her blood. I held them back. I fought them, for you. For you.” He nearly smiled, and his eyes gleamed. “I can see why you keep her for yourself. Private stock. Her blood...it’s rich. It’s not like other blood.”

“I would stake you for such an act,” I said.

“You taught me such acts,” he snarled, and when I moved toward him again, he flinched.

“Jackal,” I said. “I should have expected this.”

“A dog perhaps,” he whispered. “But a loyal dog, my master.”

“Get out! Get out and hunt, before I...” As I determined what his punishment might be, he crawled to the end of the ledge to be farther from me.

He turned around, pointing an accusing finger at me. “I know why she is here! I know what you will do!”

“Quiet,” I said, almost softly. I stepped toward him, crouching to be closer to his level.

“I want it,” he said, glancing about as if afraid someone might hear him.

“I should never have shown it to you.”

“It should be for me,” he said. “I could have it. Not her. Not a mortal like her.”

“It would destroy you,” I said. I reached my hand out to him. He looked at me as if confused by my sudden gentleness. He could be both a tiger and a lamb. When he took my hand, I pulled him closer to me. “You cause me so much pain.”

“Sons do that, I guess,” he said.

“Did you intend to kill her?”

“No,” he whispered. “I swear. She promised me blood. Each dawn.”

“
Dawn?
”
I asked.

“Before the sun, but after morning’s twilight. When the sun had not quite reached the rift. After you had closed your eyes. She bribed me with her scent. I could not...I could not resist.”

“You have drunk from her before?”

“Only a taste,” he said, pitifully. “Before this. Only a drop or two. Her taste is worth many vessels of ordinary blood.”

“Is this the truth?”

I felt him shiver as I held his throat in my hands.

He nodded. “I would not lie. Not to you.”

“How many days has she had her freedom?”

His eyes narrowed, and he counted it out on his fingers. “Since her twelfth night here.”

“Go,” I said, feeling as if I had lost my bearings. Why had she done this? Why had she not obeyed? Why had Daniel betrayed me in this way? I could trust no one, and did not want to risk Natalia’s life to these flying jackals that surrounded me. “Do not touch her again. Do not drink from her, nor make bargains with her, fool. Do not ask about those things you know are not meant for you, Daniel. I will not forgive you if this happens again.”

I watched as he flew off the ledge, upward toward the great rift in the mountain above, toward the open sky.

I returned to find Natalia clutching her neck. I took her into my arms, and whispered, “Don’t be afraid.” I touched the wound at her throat, sensing the warmth. “The healing has begun. You will need rest and food, I think, to recover your strength.”

I managed to close the wound, though two small pinprick marks were left to remind me of Daniel’s betrayal.

She held out her fist and opened it to reveal the wolf key in her palm.

“A thief,” I said. “I allow you access to the treasures here. I feed you well. My tribe would rather cut your throat than allow you these freedoms. I punish them for such thoughts. I guard against their worst intentions toward you. Is this how you repay my generosity?”

Natalia looked up at me, fear in her eyes. “I saw you put it in the urn once. Sometimes you keep it at your waist or at your neck. I was...curious. When I examined it more closely, I noticed a missing part to it, as if it were a puzzle. And this.” She drew the wolf tooth off the key, then set it back, nestling it along the carved ridge of the base of the key. “You had been waiting for me to bring this tooth. It had been put away for...”

“For centuries.”

She held the key to her eyes as if trying to read the tiny glyphs scrawled upon it.

“
Let she who finds, know
,”
I said. “It was engraved in the eighteenth century. A master craftsman in Florence who had a special magnifying lens that allowed him to write such tiny words.”

“Am I the ‘she’?”

“I can’t answer that for you.”

“What box does this open?”

“If I showed you what this key fit, you would not understand. Not yet,” I said.

“I’m sorry for taking it,” she said. She passed it back to me.

“As you took a key years ago and found a crushed dried flower and a wolf’s tooth among your mother’s possessions,” I said. I could not help smiling, thinking of all the things that had been passed down through the generations in her bloodline, secrets kept, promises held, oaths sworn. “Theft. It is what began my tribe of vampyres, for the priests of Myrryd stole immortality and more from Medhya. She in turn had stolen these secrets from the Great Serpent.”

“All power begins with a theft,” she said. “Prometheus stole fire from Heaven to bring to mankind.”

“By legend, he is punished eternally for it,” I said. “As we are, here, cursed by our Dark Mother to drink blood and never to cross the threshold of Death. Power itself is cursed. We must exist alongside such punishment.”

4

“You are not safe here anymore,” I said as we walked down the road that led to the gates of the city. “There is a place even these vampyres will not go. Within the city. A bedchamber fit for a mortal queen, untouched for hundreds of years.”

“It must be very dusty,” Natalia said, and I smiled at this show of good humor.

“We have protectors who take care of it,” I said.
 

“The human cattle,” she said.

“Protectors. They have their benefactors among our tribe.”
 

“And lovers,” she said. “So does the key fit the lock of this room?”
 

“No, not this bedchamber. But you will have your own key to it, and lock it from within so that no one may enter unless you wish it.”

The torches had been lit along the fields of bones—and among these dead, the flower of the Flesh of Medhya twisted and turned, grown over the years into a bramble of thick vine and blossom. The statues of the old gods seemed to shine gold and onyx in the wavering fires. The great statues of the bulls of the Mithrades had been brought long ago to the walls of the city, and stood as enormous guardians of the Dal-Bas Gate, the main entry to the Temple of Lemesharra.

Alkemara, abandoned after dusk, seemed new and fresh. I enjoyed the city like this, emptied.

I led her along the streets, through a vaulted doorway, beyond which was a courtyard with a marble floor. Slender columns rose to a terrace, and we climbed the stairs. Several apartments led from the terrace to an interior house of sorts, which was empty of feature and furnishing.

At the end of a hall, there was the silver door with designs of the second kingdom of Alkemara upon it. Beside it, two middle-aged women slept upon cushioned benches. “Inside, there are no windows, yet air enters through a system of slender pipes. The door is silver so that no vampyre may breach it.”

I called out to one of the women by name, and she awoke. When she saw me, she reached into the pockets of her shirt and brought me the key. I passed it to Natalia. “You must open it. None but you and these protectors may do so.”

I followed her to the door, feeling that vibrating pain of the silver aura as I drew close to the door. She unlocked it and pushed it open.

I heard her gasp as she glanced inside.

“Go on,” I said. “It’s for you. This way, you may come and go as you please. You won’t have to bribe a guard with your blood.”

5

Within, a great bedchamber meant for a noblewoman. It had exquisitely carved posts along the bed, and its light source was several candles in sconces. She went in and lit each one. Though it was kept clean and well attended, no one had slept in it for nearly a thousand years.

A toilet of an old kind as well as a rectangular bath—the size of a small swimming pool—was cut into the marble floor, and steam rose from its waters.

“You may bathe here, if you like. Rest. I will guard you tonight. I can entrust your care to no one but myself. My tribe is not good with matters of temptation.”

“It was my fault.” She looked about the sumptuous room, avoiding my gaze. “I wanted to explore. I couldn’t rest. I told him he could drink from me if I would be allowed the freedom to wander.”

“That is what you wish?”

“Yes. When you sleep, I...want to see Alkemara in the daylight. I want to go about without vampyres watching me. I want to see more than you show me each night. You know I won’t try to run from you. Look at me. You know this is the greatest treasure I could find. Right here. This is more than I ever hoped for in all my studies. All my
dreams
.”