By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Twenty-One

In the deeper darkness after moonset, Richard and Adrian worked their way, from bush to boulder to bush, closer to the crumbling fortress. Suddenly, Adrian reached out to seize Richard's arm. "Wait," he said, pitching his voice low, to reach only Richard. "I can sense them now ... and see some of them."

"Where?" Richard's voice was a soundless breath.

"On the left ... in the rubble below the broken tower ... there is a cleared space behind it, and a guard there. On the far right, where the rocks are piled, there is another there. Closer to the gate, there is one on each side, up above ... there must be a walkway of some sort up there on this side." They had seen, earlier, that the wooden walkway on the rear wall had fallen long ago.

"Are there more?" Richard asked.

"Yes. Inside. Four or five more. They're together; it's difficult to sense them separately."

Richard was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "There should be more."

Adrian turned to look at him. "Why?"

"Because, unless they are assigned twelve-hour shifts, which is unlikely, there would have to be at least twelve to man only those positions you can see from here. And they must be guarding the rear, even if only lightly."

That made sense. Adrian said, "I would not be able to sense mortals underground from here, Richard. There could well be more down there."

"We will worry about that when we must. I know it is difficult, but if it is possible, you should take the two up above first."

Adrian couldn't help it; the unspoken trust in Richard's voice was getting to him all over again. Impulsively, he said, "Richard, about the stupid remark last night … you were right; I shouldn't have doubted you." It wasn’t exactly an apology, but it was the best he could do.

Richard didn't answer right away. When he did, there was a note of infinite sadness in his voice that Adrian had not heard before. Richard said, "Adrian, I have regretted my behavior all day. It was not what you said that angered me, but my own failures that it brought back to my mind, and only I am responsible for those. I owe you my most profound apology."

If it was insane for them to be baring their souls to each other in whispers, with alert guards only a short distance away, Adrian was much too astonished to realize it. This man, whatever he was now, had been a king ... and he was humbly apologizing to Adrian Talbot, who had gone from whoreson to whore to actor to vampire, and who to this day had never been able to entirely free himself of the filth of the London gutters.

Richard was holding his hand out, smiling that small, almost shy smile Adrian had first seen in his house in the Annex. "Friends?" Richard said.

Adrian swallowed, with difficulty, glad of the covering darkness. He knew his eyes were swimming with scarlet tears. Adrian Talbot, player's boy, who had been casually and cruelly used by men of Richard's class throughout his childhood and youth, took the offered hand of a king and said, "Friends."

Adrian decided to take the guard on the far right, first. He was the easiest to approach, and with him out of the way, Adrian would be able to make his way through the gate to get at the two up above. When he explained, Richard agreed readily. "Take care," Richard said, gripping his shoulder for a minute, and Adrian nodded and slipped away to the right and vanished.

By the time Adrian returned, with three uniforms, Richard had brought Ed Perry and Jake up closer to the fortress. While the three of them stripped and donned the uniforms ... in Jake's case, a very tight fit, Adrian went after the last of the guards.

There was no way to get to this one without using his "you don't see me; I'm not here" whammy, but it worked very well and didn't seem to alert the vampires still wide awake and active below ground. Apparently, they remained unaware of Adrian's presence. As he had with the others, Adrian neatly broke the man's neck; they could not afford to be merciful tonight.

From his pocket, he took a small flashlight, aimed it out away from the fortress, and flicked it on and then off. Richard, Jake, and Ed Perry, now capped and uniformed, came running quickly across the open ground. Each of them was carrying a semi-automatic rifle, loaded with the silver-plated bullets. Each of them carried a holstered handgun and a silver-plated dagger.

Adrian was stripping off the dead guard's uniform. At Richard's questioning look, he said only, "You never know," and Richard nodded and said nothing. Jake and Ed were dispatched to the walkway above the gate and they tossed down the bodies of the two guards Adrian had killed up there. Richard and Adrian pulled them quickly into the crevice behind the rubble and piled them on top of the body already hidden there.

"You have to go," Richard said.

Adrian glanced quickly toward the east. The sky was paling rapidly, but he hated to leave. "There are two guards posted at the corners of the rear wall ... at the top of the steps on each side," he said quickly.

"Thank you. We can deal with it." But Adrian hesitated, and Richard said, "Go on, Adrian. I know. But you have already done more than enough. Will will take you to the cave, and we will come for you when we are done here."

It was surprisingly hard to go. Adrian said, "Richard, trust Jake. He's a better man than he's shown on this trip."

"I know."

Adrian nodded. Richard did know, or he wouldn't have brought Jake along tonight. "Take care," Adrian said, and Richard smiled.

Adrian turned away, bunching the spare uniform under his arm. Dammit. He only did heroes onstage.

Then why did he feel like such a miserable coward as he walked away?

With Adrian gone, Richard turned and went through the gate and hesitated, crouching in the shadows there, giving himself a moment to get oriented and to study the layout. The entire place appeared to be in ruins ... except for one building, backed up against the wall immediately to his left, inside the gate. This had clearly been restored, and there was no mistaking the small sounds coming from it. Men were snoring in there; men who were mortal humans if they were asleep during these hours before dawn.

The steps Adrian had mentioned were at either side of the wall, along the rear, and had been shored up just enough to allow a guard to climb to the top of the wall there at each corner. Richard could see them vaguely, khaki uniforms lounging idly against the parapet, men probably bored as they neared the end of a long, uneventful night of watching. They had to be the first item on the agenda.

He stepped out into the open and made a small, hissing sound that drew Ed Perry's and Jake's attention, from where they stood on the wooden walkway above the gate. Richard pointed to Ed and made a gesture indicating that Ed was to come down. The steps here were just beyond the restored building, and Richard went to meet him as he descended, wincing slightly at the ominous creaking noises of the old and poorly repaired wooden steps.

As soon as Ed reached the bottom, Richard spoke to him briefly, pointing, and they split up and headed for the stairs at the rear of the fort.

The guard at the top of the stairs on the left side turned as Richard climbed up to him, his expression questioning. It was apparently early for his replacement, but he couldn't see Richard's face clearly because of the shadow of the bill of Richard's borrowed cap, and he didn't appear to be alarmed. He said something in Farsi as Richard came up beside him, curious, but made no other sound as the knife sank into his body and wrenched upward. Richard tipped the body over the parapet and swung around to look across to where Ed was just swinging the butt of his rifle up to connect solidly with the head of the other guard. Ed bent down for a minute, knife flashing in the vague starlight, and then lifted the body over the wall, as Richard had, and turned to raise his hand to Richard. Together, they ran down the stairs to head for the building where the other guards were still sleeping peacefully.

Jake was looking down, watching them, and Richard made a beckoning gesture. Quickly but carefully, Jake ran down the rickety stairs and joined them.

"I will go in first," Richard said under his breath. "Follow immediately, but fan out behind me. Each of you watch only those guards on your side. Keep your rifles ready." All of this was for Jake's benefit; Ed Perry knew exactly what he was doing here.

The small building was a simple barracks, with stacked bunks along either side wall. Richard stepped inside the open door and paused for a moment. There were six bunks, each with a sleeping mortal guard, and none of them stirred as first Richard, and then Jake and Ed, came into the room. Richard motioned with one hand for Ed to cover the bunks on the right and turned his attention to those on the left.

The guard in the bottom bunk awoke as soon as Richard's rifle touched his throat, and was smart enough to understand what was happening, even in his dazed state. He didn't move as Richard stepped back and jerked his head, indicating that the man should get up. As the guard stood, he found himself staring into the business end of Jake's rifle.

The second guard Richard simply pulled from his bunk to the floor, and as the man realized what was happening and tried to resist, brought his rifle butt up sharply to the man's jaw. The guard collapsed neatly and silently.

One at a time, in almost total silence, Richard went from bunk to bunk. Only two of the six made any attempt to protest, and these were quickly rendered unconscious. The rest were grouped in the center of the room, with Ed Perry's rifle steady on them, and Richard said to Jake, "Tie them."

Jake looked around the room. "With what?"

"Tear the bedding," Richard said patiently.

Oh. Jake got out his knife and began to cut and rip long strips. He was a little annoyed that, when he had securely tied each of the four conscious guards, Richard came over to test their bonds. But Richard only pointed to the two who were still unconscious and said, "These, as well."

When all of the guards were tied, Richard proceeded to gag each of them, using more torn strips of their bedding. When only one still had the use of his mouth, Richard pulled out his dagger, rested its gleaming edge against the man's throat, and said, "Where is the entrance to the underground area?"

The man's eyes were glazed with fear, but he didn't understand. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down against the knife and blood began to flow in a thin stream down his chest. "Who speaks English?" Richard asked him.

That much, the man understood. His eyes swiveled wildly to another of the bound guards, and Richard pulled the knife back and gagged him. Then he turned to the guard indicated, removed his gag, and repeated his first question.

This one was tougher, and stared at him defiantly. Richard didn't hesitate. With one small motion, he sliced off the man's right ear, too quickly for the man to even yell as it happened. "If you believe in anything," Richard said calmly, "believe that I will take your eye next. Answer me."

The man did. The entrance was at the rear of the fort, concealed in the rubble there. He described the place, with a bit more urging.

"Are there more guards below?" Richard asked.

There were. Six more. There was a recreation room; they would probably be there.

"How many of the Exalted are here?"

The guard wasn't sure; they came and went as they pleased. He thought there were maybe twelve to sixteen here now.

"When will they be asleep?"

Always, soon after the sun rose. Only rarely did one of them stay awake longer.

"When are the guards replaced outside? Are you the next shift, or are those below?"

The man hesitated, and the point of Richard's dagger touched the inside corner of his right eye. The guard said quickly, "We take over at sunrise."

It was enough. Richard gagged the man again and took a moment to tear another few strips from the bedding to tie all six of them together. One man might work his way free, but not hampered with five others.

"Now what?" Jake said, as Richard finished and turned away.

"We wait until the sun is up," Richard said. He didn't have any particular inflection in his voice, but Jake had the feeling it was a stupid question anyway. Of course they would have to wait until the vampires below were out for the day.

There was a slight noise outside and Richard, cat-quick, slid past Jake to the door, his dagger ready. But it was Will Scrope, who took in the bound guards, grinning, and said nothing. Will never wasted words.

Richard spoke to them all. "When the sun rises, you, Jake, will go below with Will and me. T'beth knows you; she must see a familiar face. Ed, go back to the walk above the gate now and keep watch. Wait there for us unless you have something to report. There are but six human guards below, and they will be expecting no trouble. With the Exalted asleep, we should have no trouble subduing them."

Outside, daylight was coming quickly. Ed went, without saying anything, to take up his post above. Will settled on his heels against a wall to wait, and Richard wandered restlessly, looking outside frequently.

Jake was feeling a little sick, but he was also beginning to feel reasonably confident. It had been surprisingly easy to get this far; they'd taken out two-thirds of the human guards with amazing ease, thanks to Adrian and to Richard, and if their methods had about them an unexcited savagery that Jake was finding hard to deal with, you couldn't really argue with their results.

Jake really was beginning to think the rest of rescuing T'beth was gonna be a piece of cake.

Somebody should have reminded him about that line of Robert Burns' ... you know ... the "best laid plans," and so on?

Jake Fowler wished they hadn't had to wait for sunrise. Waiting gave him way too much time to think, and thinking gave him a by-now-familiar churning in his innards.

He wished he could be like Will. Will sat on his heels beside the big pack he'd brought with him and stared off into nothingness in perfect serenity. Will had seen it all, and worse, before.

The guards at Khelat had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether or not they were willingly serving the Exalted who ran this place wasn't really an issue. Jake knew that. And certainly they would have readily dispatched Jake, along with various and sundry kings and expatriate British vampires and CIA burnouts without hesitation. That was what they were here for.

But Adrian had been too worked up to be shielding his emotions from Jake, and Jake knew exactly what Adrian had done to four of the guards. He had seen, although vaguely and from a distance, what Richard and Ed Perry had done to two more. And he had watched Richard calmly slice an ear off another with a flick of his dagger and then rest the point of that dagger against the man's eye. Jake didn't for a minute believe, as the guard hadn't, that Richard was bluffing.

This was no kind of situation in which an anthropologist who was almost certainly no longer employed by the Royal Ontario Museum should find himself. This was no kind of situation in which any normal, sane, ordinary ex-jock should find himself. The body count was lower on an entire season of Buffy.

Oh, shit. Who the hell was he kidding? He hadn't been a normal, sane, ordinary anything since the night he met Adrian Talbot.

Things didn't improve when His Royal Bloodthirstiness decided the sun was high enough for them to venture underground.

There was a recreation room ... if you could call it that. The vampires of Khelat didn't believe, it seemed, in providing much in the way of creature comforts for their human servants. There was a dingy little room with a foldable card table, a ratty couch, a few ill-assorted chairs, and a small television set with a VCR attached. On the screen of the set was, incredibly, a Three Stooges film sub-titled in Farsi ... at least, Jake assumed it was Farsi. It squiggled around a lot. There were also enough empty beer bottles sitting around to indicate that, at least at Khelat, the Prophet's injunction against alcohol wasn't very strictly observed.

By the time Jake got a good look at all this, Richard and Will had already shown the three guards who were watching TV, the two who were playing cards, and the one who had been dozing on the couch with a girly magazine open on his chest the wisdom of standing quietly against the wall and doing very good impressions of statues. And Richard was being just as bloody-minded as ever.

He asked if any of the guards spoke English. They stared at him sullenly and said nothing. Richard said, reasonably, "We require the means with which to bind you. Lacking these, I will kill you all." He raised the semi-automatic rifle and his finger began to tighten on the trigger.

Not surprisingly, it turned out that a couple of them spoke elementary English ... and with some urgency. The means to bind them were quickly found ... by Jake, of course, who was sent to fetch rope from the supply room the guards couldn't point out quickly enough. At least, when he tied up this bunch, Richard didn't feel it was necessary to test their bonds.

"Where is the woman T'beth?" Richard asked.

There were detention cells, they said. At the rear of the underground complex. The woman had been kept there.

There was something about the way they said it, about the shiftiness of their eyes, that triggered something even in Jake. In Richard, it triggered, if possible, an increase in bloody-mindedness. In a very soft voice, which could have cut through any steel foolish enough to be in the way, he said, "What has been done to the woman? If what you say differs in the slightest degree from what she will say, you will die."

There was no misunderstanding the panic this brought on. From the number of the guards who began to jabber, it was clear that although only two might speak English, several others understood it. And what they were saying made Jake sicker still.

It wasn't their fault, they said. The Exalted had ordered it. They hadn't wanted to do it. They had to obey the Exalted Ones. They had no choice. It wasn't their doing. They weren't at fault. They hated to do it. They tried to be as merciful about it as they could...

But they did it. T'beth had been tortured with silver ... with chains, with beatings. It had only stopped when she became too weak, because the Exalted would not allow her to feed, and they feared she would fall into True Death. And they had allowed the human guards to use her. To prepare her, they said, for the Ayatollah's use, when she agreed to submit to him.

Richard turned to look at Jake. There was no expression on his face. "You are her friend. Do these vermin continue to live?"

If ever in his life Jake had wanted to kill, it was at that moment. He had only to say one word and Richard would do it. Hell, he could do it himself.

Except, he couldn't. He said, "Let's just get her the hell out of here." And he thought he saw something almost like compassion in Richard's eyes. Almost.

The guards had no idea where the keys to T'beth's cell were. The Exalted kept them, and they always watched when the guards were turned loose on her, and locked her in again, after. But the Exalted were all deep in their day sleep now.

"There's a crowbar in the supply room," Jake said, and Richard nodded.

They left the guards tied together, got the crowbar, and went looking for T'beth.

It wasn't Ed Perry's fault. It was because the fortress of Khelat had been built to protect against incursion from the north ... from the direction of the Pakistani border. Northward, there was a wide, empty, descending valley, visible for miles. To the south, the old road from Saravan turned almost immediately into a fold of the mountains ... and cut off even the sound of the straining engine of the jeep Ed had no idea was approaching until it came around the rocky pinnacle less than a quarter of a mile away.

Ed ran ... to get below, to warn Richard, and the fragile old wooden stairs gave way before he was half-way down them. Ed felt a dagger of splintered wood tear into his leg as he fell, and then landed hard in the broken rubble below. It was just bad luck that his head hit before his shoulders did ... just bad luck that he was still lying there, half-conscious, when the jeep roared through the unguarded gate and the alerted guards poured out of it.

He regained consciousness long enough to see the guards Jake had so carefully tied up come spilling out of their building as they were released, everyone jabbering at once ... the guy with the missing ear, one hand covering the place where it had been, loudest of all ... and pointing excitedly toward the rear of the fortress, toward the entrance to the underground area where Richard, Will, and Jake had gone. But that was about all he had time to see before the beating he was taking made him lose interest in anything at all for quite a while.

Jake Fowler couldn't believe it had all gone to hell so fast. They had everything under control ... all the guards either dead or tied up, all the vampires in deep daysleep, nothing left to do but find T'beth and get the hell out of there. But they had hardly taken half a dozen running steps down the corridor beyond the recreation room when they heard the excited voices from above ... from the entrance to the steps that led up to the crumbling fortress.

Richard stopped, his face turned suddenly to stone. He exchanged a quick glance with Will and jerked his head, indicating that Will ... and apparently, Jake ... were to continue down the corridor. Richard himself took a few quick steps back to the open door of the recreation room, stopped in the doorway, and opened fire on the helpless, tied-up guards they had left there.

Jake stared. He didn't even feel Will's quick grip on his arm, jerking him along down the corridor. Even while he struggled with mind-numbing shock, he understood what Richard had done and why. Enemies were coming; they had no idea how many. If they had left those six guards in the recreation room alive, in minutes they would be free to join the fight, and Richard had weighed the odds and decided to lower them. It was a command decision, and probably a correct one. It was also the most cold-bloodedly unfeeling thing Jake had ever seen a human being do.

He ran, because Will had a firm grip on him and where Will went, Jake went. When they came to a corridor that branched toward the right, Will turned into it and slowed, giving Richard time to catch up with them. Richard passed them, running like a deer, and Will shoved, sending Jake stumbling after him. "Run!" Will said, in a voice that was suddenly as commanding as Richard's. Jake ran.

They came to another corridor, this one a cross corridor. Richard stopped for a second, exchanged another hurried look with Will, and then stepped out and began to fire immediately ... to the right. Will grabbed Jake and ran to the left, with Richard close behind them again.

It dawned on Jake as they turned a couple more corners that Richard was taking them consistently toward what the guards had indicated was the rear of the complex ... where T'beth had been locked up. At each cross corridor, Richard stopped briefly to listen, and then stepped out, facing the direction from which they'd started while Will and Jake barreled off in the opposite direction. Sometimes, Richard opened up with his rifle; sometimes he didn't. Jake saw him once, as he darted past them, eject the spent magazine from the gun and slap a new one into place without slowing down. He had no idea if Richard was actually hitting anyone; there wasn't time to look. He couldn't tell, either, if Richard was doing all the shooting he could hear. He ran.

There was a lot of yelling back there, somewhere, though. Whatever the numbers of the guards who were coming after them, they weren't a bunch of happy campers.

Somewhere along in there, it occurred to Jake to wonder what had happened to Ed Perry. At almost the same time, he realized that he had a pretty good idea what had happened. By that time, Will wasn't having to drag him along.

It didn't take long to reach the area where, suddenly, the finished walls gave way to bare rock. Another side corridor ... branching only to their right, brought them to the open door of the generator room, which provided electricity for the complex, and just beyond it, the detention area ... and T'beth.

Jake got only a glimpse of her before Richard shoved him back toward the opening to the corridor they'd just left, and went with him. Behind them, Will already had the crowbar at work on the cell door ... a cell whose bars gleamed much too brightly to be steel. Richard wasn't the only one, it seemed, who had thought of silver plating.

Jake had never really thought of T'beth as beautiful. Maybe that was because he'd been in love when he met her ... or maybe it was because he had always been a little bit afraid of her. But in that one quick look before Richard turned him away, he thought he'd never seen anything more poignantly beautiful in his life. T'beth was naked, lying on her side on a narrow cot, one leg drawn up and her arms clenched tight against her waist. And every line of her was sculpted as if shaped by a master ... all lean, delicately defined muscle and sinew, a textbook illustration of perfect human, or vampire, anatomy. But what struck him most, idiotically, was her feet. There was something almost unbearably vulnerable about her bare feet, and Jake had never imagined that he could ever think of T'beth as vulnerable at all.

Richard was leaning out, looking down the corridor beyond, to the left. Jake figured he was supposed to look to the right, and did. He even remembered to make sure the safety was off on his rifle.

There was a godawful clanging, crunching noise behind them, and then Will was at Richard's shoulder. "It's open," he said, and then, in a different tone, "Your Grace, the woman awoke ... and she is ... strange."

Richard made an impatient sound. "How strange?"

Jake already knew. "Richard, if they've been starving her, the smell of Will ... of his blood ... would draw her. You know ... fangs and red eyes and all?"

"She must feed?"

"If she's awake, she'll attack anything she can reach. She can't help it."

The look on Richard's face should have set fire to anything his gaze touched. He sighed. "Can you give her enough to satisfy her ... or enough to make her understand why we are here?"

Oh, shit. How was he supposed to explain, now, about his blood? T'beth wouldn't take his blood ... it was infected with the same strain as hers. He shook his head miserably. "I don't have time to explain," he said, "but she can't drink my blood. Richard, you gotta believe me. She can't."

Jake shriveled under Richard's glare. Richard said, carefully, "She can drink mine?"

"Uh ... yeah. But she won't be able to stop herself ... I mean, she could kill you, or at least drain you pretty damned badly before she even knew what she was doing."

"Then you will have to stop her," Richard said simply. He looked at Will. "Shoot anyone who comes into the corridor. Anyone here is an enemy."

Will nodded, and Richard turned back toward T'beth's cell. Feeling even more miserable than scared, Jake went with him.

T'beth was awake. She was still lying flat on the cot, but on her back now, her eyes slitted and watchful ... and glowing. She wasn't aware of anything but her hunger; she gave no sign that she recognized Jake at all. Her skin, beneath the surface bronze, was gray, her lips dark blue. There were streaks of gray in her short black hair. Jake wouldn't have recognized her, either. He had never seen T'beth like this. She was a wild animal, relentlessly savage, in human form ... a monster.

He wanted to say something more, to warn Richard of how dangerous this was. He wasn't sure that anything would stop her if she tasted blood. But they had come halfway around the world to get to her, and they couldn't walk away. Hell, Richard wouldn't walk away ... no matter what Jake said.

Richard set his rifle down, leaning against the cot, and pulled his silver-plated dagger from its scabbard at his waist. T'beth's eyes narrowed even more and she hissed, her fangs visible. Richard ignored it. He used the point of his dagger to open the vein in his left wrist and lowered it to her mouth.

Jake wanted to turn his eyes away and couldn't. T'beth fastened onto Richard's wrist like a piranha, and after the first few times her throat moved, swallowing, her hands came up to seize his arm. Richard didn't try to pull away. Her eyes never left his as she sucked convulsively, until Richard raised the dagger and laid it against her throat and said, "Enough."

Her every muscle had gone taut when the silver touched her, but she didn't stop. Richard said, very calmly, "Lady, I will break the skin if I must." Her eyes flickered; she had heard him. But she didn't stop.

Jake grabbed her hands and tried to pull them from Richard's arm, but her strength was returning. He couldn't budge her. He yelled her name, but couldn't get her to look at him. She was watching Richard as if nothing in the world would break her away from him. Desperately, Jake shouted, "Will!" and Will was there, within seconds, adding his great strength to Jake's. Together, they got her hands down while Jake kept calling her name, over and over.

Whether it was the sound of his voice, or the pain of the silver against her skin, she finally broke away and Richard stepped back. He was breathing slowly and deeply, and Jake thought he looked pale ... but he was in full control of himself. "Get out the tent," he said to Will.

While Will shrugged the pack from his shoulders, Jake held on to T'beth's wrists, talking to her. She wouldn't attack him ... she could smell the taint in his blood. And, after a moment, she began to understand what he was saying. The glow faded from her eyes and her fangs retracted. In a voice impossibly frail, for T'beth, she whispered, "Jake?"

There was no time for anything else. With no one guarding the entrance to the corridor, the guards had taken advantage of their opportunity, and suddenly the cell was full of them. Jake saw T'beth's eyes close again as he fell under the weight of three guards. More were swarming all over Will, and Richard ... who seemed to have lost his dagger, was already on the floor.

Jake tried to curl his body away from the heavy boots slamming into him, and never saw the one that was aimed at his head. So much, he thought miserably as he lost consciousness, for rescuing the damsel in distress.

Richard paced.

The other three sat or slumped according to their natures, asking themselves how they could have been so stupid to have gotten themselves mixed up in this thing in the first place.

Richard paced.

Ed Perry nursed a serious gash on his leg from falling through the stairs, blood still oozing slowly, cursing himself and this whole damned expedition. If they ever got back to North America, he vowed, he was going into a nice, safe profession like school bus driver. No more leading lunatics into politically unstable countries.

Richard paced.

Will's eyes followed his liege lord back and forth, back and forth. The roughing-up they'd gotten at the hands of the human guards in the fortress had caused Will's wound to throb. He needed water, and there was none. He needed a Healer from the Refuge, and there were none. He needed Richard to sit down and stop measuring the floor in this damned dungeon, but the chances of that happening were probably less than his getting some water and a Healer.

Richard paced.

Jake, nursing a headache and a lot of bruises, lay glumly slumped in a corner. He had taken a brutal beating, and although he was healing far faster than a full human who had taken such punishment would, it still hurt like hell. But he hadn't been able to allow himself to be taken prisoner without putting up a fight. Maybe he could break open the door if he kicked hard enough? Nice plan, except he couldn't stand up...

Richard paced.

It was growing dark; the suddenness of the desert night would be upon them soon. And the advent of darkness meant the advent of the vampires of Khelat.

With the coming of the night, Jake's changed metabolism kicked in fully and he was able to draw himself to his feet. Richard stopped pacing at once and came to his side.

"It's night," Jake said to the king. "The vampires will be coming out. We're in deep shit."

"I'm not unaware of that, Jake," Richard said. "But Adrian will also be waking."

"He's only one," Jake answered, rubbing his ribs where the bruises were turning yellow and fading even as he spoke. Richard, he noticed, was gazing steadily (one couldn't call it staring, precisely) at his face. Shit, were the bruises there healing in front of the king's eyes? "We don't know how many of them there are."

"Adrian will think of something." Richard spoke with absolute confidence. "They will keep us alive, for a time," Richard stated with certainty. "They will want to know what we are doing here, and how much we know."

"They'll just read your mind," Jake sighed. He winced as his knee throbbed. The bastards had kicked it, sensing weakness there.

"Are you well?" Richard asked.

"They kicked my bad knee," Jake grunted. His head jerked up. "They're coming," he said in a voice Richard hadn't heard before.

They were, indeed. Two human guards plus three vampires, two of them male and one female. The fact that the guys wore turbans and all three of them were in burnooses didn't make them any less deadly. Three dark pairs of eyes with nice red highlights focussed unerringly on Jake of the four choices in the cell, as they looked through the barred door.

"So," said the smaller of the two males in passable English, "we have four fine birds for the larder."

"Fuck off," Jake growled at them.

They all laughed, recognizing the tone if not the words. "Oh, it is so much more fun when you show defiance," said the spokesvampire. "How could four mortals think they could possibly overcome the Exalted Ones?"

"You are not the true Exalted." Richard spoke to them now. "You're lackeys, groveling at the will of one perverted human monster."

"Uh, Richard ..." Jake was looking pale, not just because of physical pain. "It's probably not a good idea..." He dropped it, realizing that he was about to tell Richard not to do something. That wasn't a good idea, either.

"Look who speaks!" laughed the English-speaking vampire from Bahram's cadre. "The little half-blood." He drew closer to the bars, staring intently at Jake. "You speak of perversions," he said to Richard, but still focused on Jake, "and you harbor one amongst you."

Richard frowned. Jake went white.

"Half-blood," the vampire hissed at Jake. "Perversion. Are you in both worlds, or neither?" He turned to Richard. "You do not know? This overgrown mortal who looks so innocent, so bland … he is not human."

Richard looked at Jake. Courteously. The expression on Jake's face spoke entire encyclopedias.

"Not human?" Richard asked Jake. To Jake's surprise, Richard's tone was tired rather than angry. "Would you care to explain?"

"Yes, tell him," urged the vampire, taunting from the other side of the barred door. "Tell him what blood is in your veins."

Richard was waiting. Jake winced, wondering just how much he was going to get hurt for this. "Um," he said, looking at the floor. "I once swallowed some of Adrian's blood," he said softly, though he knew the vampires could hear him anyway. "I'm sort of half a vampire, except that I'm not dead. There just never seemed a good time to tell you," he added lamely.

Richard sighed. "This, Jake, is probably the poorest time you could have chosen."

The three vampires outside the cage door laughed. The woman spoke urgently in Farsi; both Jake and Richard heard the name "Bahram." The two men nodded, and the smaller one turned back to the prisoners.

"We will be back, half-blood," he promised. "We will be back."

Jake didn't think he liked the sound of that. At all.