Nonplussed, Neferata hesitated. She brushed a lock of the girl’s hair out of her face. ‘It is too late. I cannot save her,’ she said.
‘You can.’
Neferata met Naaima’s eyes and the former Queen of Lahmia was the first to look away. ‘What is her name?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘Layla,’ Naaima reminded her. ‘Her father was killed by the orcs. She used to work in the kitchens of Ushoran’s palace. The other girls accused her of putting on airs, and the cook beat her for being disrespectful. She does not know her place, and she does not fear the dark. That is why I took her.’
‘More fool she,’ Neferata said. Tenderly, she took the girl from Naaima and tilted her, so that her head lolled against Neferata’s shoulder. Then, with a sigh, she sank her fangs into the girl’s throat, drinking deeply and stabbing to the root of the girl’s life.
The blood-kiss was a sacred thing. It was a gift from Neferata to her chosen followers. As much as she took, she gave as well. It was a bond, forever linking her to them and vice-versa. Holding the girl, she extended her arm and Naaima took her wrist and forearm and bent her head. Her lips brushed the inside of Neferata’s wrist and then, with a sharp, bright flash of sweet pain, she opened her mistress’s veins. Neferata raised her bloody mouth from Layla’s throat and pressed her wrist to the girl’s slack lips. Her fingers curled as her hand flexed and blood rushed out, black and thick, into the girl’s mouth. ‘Drink, Layla,’ Neferata crooned. ‘Drink, scullery maid, or die.’
‘Drink,’ Naaima said, stroking the girl’s throat with light fingers. ‘Drink,’ they said together, quietly. And Layla coughed and gasped and began to drink. Weakly at first, and then desperately, clutching Neferata’s wrist tightly. She began to shudder and jerk, and a black, noisome fluid began to weep from her wounds as Neferata’s blood began to circulate through her veins.
‘What is happening to her?’ Naaima said, looking horrified. Neferata had no answer for her. Layla jerked and groaned as her skin lost what little colour it had and her hair turned silver. Finally, the girl lay quiet in her arms, almost as if asleep. Neferata could see the cold darkness in the centre of her that marked her as a vampire.
Layla was not the first vampire she had made within the city, nor would she be the last, but nonetheless this time had seemingly awakened something — something which spoke to her out of that darkness, startling her. The voice used no words, but memories. Crashing, slashing images of times long past.
Alcadizzar’s breath, harsh in his lungs, washing over her as they crashed into one another. He was her child, though she had not borne him. He was of her blood. And now he yearned for her end. His dagger pierced her chest, seeking her heart with deadly intent.
She screamed, more from the agony of betrayal, of dreams hammered to dust, than from the pain. But as she crouched, bent over the blade jutting from her chest, Alcadizzar stared at her sadly as the wind wiped him away, one grain of flesh at a time. His eyes were the last to go, pain-ridden orbs that begged, even as they condemned.
A shape that was as black as the spaces between the stars stood in his place, its outline writ in green balefire. A voice that seemed to echo in the marrow of her bones rattled across her ears, speaking deplorable words, and inflicting a nightmare cancer of alien sound on the world. Around her, the sands shifted and slid, revealing spear-points and sword-tips and the curved, flayed-smooth skull caps of the tomb-legions.
A hundred generations rose from the howling sands and began to march on clattering, fleshless feet. Kings and queens and priests and nobles and peasants marched without complaint or identity forever through the darkness, drawn on by the needle-on-bone voice of the black shape.
THEY ARE MINE. NOW AND FOREVER, THEY ARE MINE, it said. EVEN AS YOU ARE MINE, QUEEN OF THE CITY OF THE DAWN. COME TO ME. COME—
‘No!’ Neferata shrieked, clutching at her head. Naaima darted forwards, grabbing Layla as she slid from Neferata’s grip.
‘Neferata, what is it?’ the other woman said.
Neferata’s claws dug into her scalp and black blood rolled down into her face. She turned away from her handmaiden, and fought to control the emotions that raged across her normally serene features. Something tugged and tore at the back of her mind, but with brutal, practised effort, she forced it back and deep.
Blood coated her hands — hers, Layla’s — and it seemed to form the features of a man, proud and arrogant in her cupped palms. The human face rippled and melted, becoming something else entirely. Something that was not human in the least, and it gazed up at her as if looking through a gauzy sheet. A name seemed to swim to the surface of her thoughts, but she could not see it, not clearly, and the unfamiliar syllables died on the base of her tongue before she could even utter a breath. Swiftly she brought her palms together and wiped the blood across her robes.
‘Neferata,’ Naaima said.
‘Nothing,’ Neferata said. ‘It was nothing.’
And in her head, something laughed.
SEVEN
In the months that she languished in captivity, Neferata learned much about those gifts that she had wrested from the sinister brew flowing in her veins. While she had always been able to control the minds of others, she now had a more precise control over lesser minds. She amused herself by bringing insects to the sarcophagus. Beetles and worms and spiders now clustered around her in the dark, crawling through her hair and sliding every so often into her mouth, where her fangs closed on them like a trap and extinguished their tiny lives. Each of these provided her with the briefest surge of strength, which was quickly sapped away by the wood piercing her heart.
She needed something larger than spiders and flies. It was a pity that there were no rats. Her flesh had tightened over her bones, becoming dry and hard like leather, and her hair, what she could see of it, had turned a filthy white. A long time ago, such changes might have tormented her. Now, however, she knew that flesh was much like a set of robes, changing to fit circumstance.
Besides bugs, she made the acquaintance of Khaled’s sister, Anmar. She was a pretty girl, still gangly and in the dawn of womanhood. Like her brother, she was a child of the harem, and he doted on her. And she, in turn, looked up to him. Even as Khalida had looked up to her cousin Neferata, before—
The thought brought pain. Neferata shoved the errant memory aside. Khalida was dead, as Naaima never failed to remind her. Dead and entombed for over a century, after refusing the gift Neferata had offered her, the foolish, stupid girl.
But Anmar was more receptive to the whispers of Neferata’s voice. The girl had taken to sneaking into her brother’s secret chambers. Mere curiosity became something else as Neferata’s psychic hooks sank into her mind.
Until, finally…
‘What are you doing in here?’ Khaled roared, grabbing his sister by the arm and wrenching her away from the sarcophagus. If she had been able to, Neferata would have hissed in frustration. The girl had been moments away from opening the sarcophagus and freeing her.
‘I was just looking—’ Anmar began, trying to yank her arm free of her brother’s grip.
‘Don’t!’ Khaled snarled, hurling her against the wall. The girl cried out and Khaled’s rage evaporated. He stared at his hands for a moment, and then rushed to her side. ‘I’m sorry little sister, I did not mean to hurt you,’ he said, helping her to her feet.