"Are you insane," said the Voice to him. "Are you simply out of your mind? You do that and they'll destroy you. What in the world would prompt them to have the slightest mercy? Since when do blood drinkers have honor?"
"Well, they had better have some or this plan simply isn't going to work," said Rhosh.
Benedict knew Rhosh was talking aloud to the Voice. But he remained attentive, desperate to know what was happening.
"I'll tell you this much on my honor," said Rhosh aloud for the benefit of Benedict as well as the Voice. "The very first thing I will do when I have the power is destroy that little Bedouin! I'm going to take that noisy, impudent little monster in my hands and squeeze the life and the blood and brains out of him. I'm going to drain him dry, and tear his remains into shreds. And I'll do that in the presence of his blessed Sybelle and his blessed Armand and his blessed maker, Marius."
"And just how," asked Benedict gently, "are you going to seize and maintain power?"
"It's pointless bothering with that question," said the Voice. "I've explained myself to your starry-eyed acolyte over and over. When you have me inside you, no one can harm you! You will be as untouchable as Mekare is now."
Mekare.
Without Benedict, would Rhosh have ever dared to attempt moving her? Again Benedict had taken the lead.
The night after the killing of Maharet, as Rhosh called his mortal agents to arrange for a domicile in North America, Benedict had gone off into the jungle to find Mekare a tender young female victim from one of the naked tribes. Benedict had put this frightened and utterly malleable woman into Mekare's arms, the whole while whispering softly to Mekare that she should drink, that she needed the strength, that they had a journey to take, and he'd sat there patiently waiting till the silent monster had slowly wakened to the smell of the blood, slowly lifted her left hand as though it were an unbearable weight and laid it on the breast of the prone victim.
With lightning speed, she'd closed her teeth on the sweet little girl's neck, drinking slowly until the heart was stopped, and could pump no more blood into her. Even after that she drank, her powerful heart drawing the blood until the victim was pale and shriveling. Then she'd sat back, eyes empty as always, her pink tongue licking her pretty lips slowly and efficiently. There wasn't the tiniest spark of reason in her.
And it was Benedict who suggested that they wrap her, that they find the finest coverings or garments that they could and that they wrap her as if she were a mummy in those garments and then they might carry her north safely to accomplish their purpose. "Remember, Marius wrapped the King and Queen," he'd said, "before he moved them from Egypt." Yes, well, if Marius had been telling the truth in that old story.
It had worked. Her fine green robe of interwoven silk and cotton with its trimming of gold and jewels had been spotless, no need to change it. Only wrap her gently in fresh-washed sheets and blankets, slowly, slowly, binding her gently, whispering to her the whole while. It seemed she'd welcomed the soft silk scarf blindfold. Or she hadn't cared. She hadn't cared anymore about anything. She was way past caring. Way past sensing that anything around her was amiss. Oh, that we become such monsters, it was unthinkable. It made Rhosh shudder.
Only once had there been a bad moment, an alarming moment. Benedict after binding her head securely in silk had backed off suddenly, almost stumbling in his haste to get away from her. He stood staring at her.
"What is it!" Rhosh had demanded. The panic was contagious. "Tell me."
"I saw something," Benedict whispered. "I saw something I think that she is seeing."
"You're imagining it," said Rhosh. "She sees nothing. Go on, finish."
What had that been, that thing that Benedict had seen?
Rhosh didn't want to know, didn't dare to want to know. But he couldn't stop wondering.
When they'd had her securely bound like a dead one in a shroud, it had been possible then to leave that horrid place, that awful place that had been Maharet's hearth and sanctum. Rhosh had had enough of looking through the storerooms, of looking at books and parchments and ancient keepsakes, enough, the desks, the computers, all of it. It was tainted with death. He would have taken the jewels perhaps and the gold, but he didn't need these things, and he couldn't bear to touch them.
It was sacrilege somehow, stealing the personal treasures of the dead. He'd been unable to reason himself out of it.
When they were at the edge of the garden enclosure, he'd turned back, pulled the pin from the grenade he'd brought with him, and hurled it into the lighted doorway. The explosion was immediate. The flames raged through the buildings.
Then they had brought the silent burden to these shores, to a planned location obtained through the mortal attorneys with the least amount of delay, and put her to rest in a cool darkened cellar with its small windows soon boarded up by the ever-resourceful Benedict. Only the heartbeat of that bundled body gave evidence of life.
Benedict stood beside him at the railing of the deck. The wind off the Atlantic was deliciously cold, not as fierce as the winds of the northern seas, but bracing, clean and good.
"Well, I understand, you'll be untouchable, but how can you maintain power over them, enough, say, to kill Benji Mahmoud before their very eyes?"
"What are they going to do about it?" asked Rhosh. "And suppose I threaten them that I'll lie in the sun at dawn, as does happen to be my custom, by the way, and can be no more--unless I and they want the younger ones to be devoured by fire when my body, the Source Body, suffers that insult?"
"Would I die," asked Benedict, "if you did that? I mean once you have the Sacred Core?"
"Yes, but I'd never do it!" Rhosh whispered. "Don't you see?"
"Then what good is the threat? If they know you love me--?"
"But they don't know," said the Voice. "That's the thing. They don't know. They know almost nothing about you!" The Voice was fuming again. "And you can strengthen your friend with your blood, strengthen him to where he suffers from such a burning but not fatally! Why have you not given him more of your blood over the centuries? And then of course your blood will be the Source Blood and the strongest that there is, and you will feel the engines of power grinding in you with a new efficiency and fury--."
"Leave this in my hands," said Rhosh to Benedict. "And no, you might not at all die, were I to make good on my threat. Burn yes, but die no. And I will give you my blood." He felt like a fool suddenly obeying the Voice's orders.