The smoke died away.
The soft breeze of early fall caressed him and comforted him.
The silent garden glittered with fragments of broken glass on the tender grass. The blood had cleared his head, sharpened his vision, warmed him, and made the dark morning miraculous. Like jewels, this broken glass. Like stars.
He breathed in the scent of the lemon trees. All the night was empty around him. No dirges to be sung for this anonymous pair, these beings who might have survived for a thousand years if only they had not pitted themselves against one they could not hope to vanquish.
"Ah, so Voice," Everard said with contempt. "You won't leave me alone, will you? You haven't hurt me, you contemptible monster. You sent these two to their deaths."
But there was no answer.
With the spade he buried the pair, carefully smoothing down the earth, scraping the clods off the stepping-stones, off the path.
He was shaken. He was disgusted.
But one thing was certain. His gift for making fire was now stronger than ever. He had never actually ever used it against another blood drinker. But this had taught him what he could do if he had to do it.
Small consolation.
Then the Voice sighed. Ah, such a sigh. "That was my intention, Everard," said the Voice. "I told you I wanted you to kill them, the riffraff. And now you have made a start."
Everard made no reply.
He leaned on the handle of the spade and thought.
The Voice had gone.
Quiet the sleeping countryside. Not so much as a car moving on a country road. Only this clean breeze and the glistening leaves of the fruit trees around him, and the white calla lilies glowing against the walls of the villa, the walls of the garden. Fragrance of lilies. Miracle of lilies.
Across the sea, Benji Mahmoud was still talking....
His voice suddenly drove a sword through Everard's heart.
"Elders of the tribe," Benji was appealing. "We need you. Come back to us. Come back to your lost children. Hear my cry on high, a mourning and a bitter weeping, I am Benji weeping for my lost brothers and sisters because they are no more."
11
Gremt Stryker Knollys
IT WAS an old colonial mansion, red with white trim, a sprawling building with deep verandas and peaked roofs, covered with soft fluttering green vines and invisible from the winding road on account of the massive bamboo and mango trees surrounding it. A lovely place with palms swaying ever so gracefully in the breeze. It appeared abandoned but it had never been. Mortal servants maintained it by day.
And this vampire Arjun had been sleeping beneath it for centuries.
Now he was weeping. He sat at the table, his face in his hands.
"In my time I was a prince," he said. He wasn't boasting. He was merely reflecting. "And among the Undead I was a prince for so long. I do not know how I came to this."
"I know all this is true," Gremt said.
The blood drinker was undeniably beautiful, with light golden-brown skin so flawless it appeared unreal now, and large fierce black eyes. He had a wea
lth of jet-black hair worthy of a lion. Made by the wandering blood drinker Pandora in the days of the Chola dynasty of southern India, he had indeed been a prince, and much darker of skin than he was now and just as comely. The Blood had lightened his skin, but not his hair, which was sometimes the case, though no one knew why.
"I have always known who you were," said Gremt. "I knew you when you traveled Europe with Pandora. I beg you, for both of us, tell me simply in your own words what happened."
He withdrew a small white visiting card from his pocket, on which was written his full name in golden script: GREMT STRYKER KNOLLYS. Beneath it was his e-mail address and the numbers of his mobile phone.
But this blood drinker didn't even acknowledge this human gesture. He could not. And Gremt moved the card discreetly to the center of the teak table and put it halfway under the brass base of the small shaded candle that was flickering there, giving a little bit of light to their faces. A soft golden light also came from the open doors along this deep porch.