Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (14 page)

Vampyr spread his arms and legs wide, pressing against the walls of the tunnel. His left hand slipped into a side opening and his fingers clawed at the edge, grabbing hold and bringing him to a halt. It took all of his strength to pull himself into the side opening against the force of the current. He was in another tunnel, one where the water was still. Lungs bursting, Vampyr swam forward, not sure at all what direction he was going in.

He popped to the surface, gasping for air, looking about. There was a ledge about two feet above his head where the tunnel he was in opened up. He realized he had diverted into a shaft that went upward and he must have achieved the surface level of the Nile. He reached up and pulled himself into the chamber.

There was a minute bit of light given off by a thin strip that ran around the top edge of the chamber, not enough for a

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human to pick up, but enough for Vampyr's half-alien eyes to see his surroundings. The chamber was twenty feet square with a door in one wall.

Dripping, Vampyr went to the door and walked into a corridor. He sniffed and picked up the faint scent of humans. He turned in their direction.

He found the Watcher and his family camped inside the Great Pyramid entrance to the roads, a stone guarding the outside opening. They were huddled in the darkness and did not see or hear him approaching. He saw an old man, an old woman, and two grown sons. He had no desire to negotiate. He walked right up to the family, grabbed the old man, and tore his throat out.

Screams echoed in the darkness as one of the sons tried to light a torch and the mother and other son yelled for the father. When the torch came alive, it revealed Vampyr holding the eldest male in his arms, drained of blood and life.

Vampyr threw the body to the floor and glared at the three survivors.

"I will kill all of you unless you take me where I want to go."

The son with the torch had a dagger in his other hand and charged Vampyr with a yell. Moving faster than the young man could have anticipated, Vampyr snatched the dagger from his attacker's hand. Vampyr hit the young man in the chest with an open palm, sending him tumbling back, the torch flying from his hand. In the flickering light, Vampyr took a threatening step forward. He pointed at the one who had held the torch.

The young man got to his feet. "You are one of the creatures. The Undead." He looked at his father's body. "He warned me about you." He turned to his mother and brother. "Stay here. I will be back."

The old woman took no notice, throwing herself on

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the body of her slain husband and letting loose with an ululating wail that echoed down the tunnel. The younger brother went to console his mother.

"Your name?" Vampyr asked as he nudged the older brother away from the spectacle and into the Roads.

"Kajin of the line of Kaji the Watcher."

"You people are like rats," Vampyr said, as they continued, the mother's cries chasing them.

"And what do you consider yourself?" Kajin demanded.

Vampyr did not answer. "I want to know where the Gods sleep. And where the Grail is kept."

"You cannot get to the Grail," Kajin said. "The key was taken away from here a long time ago. And where the Gods • sleep is guarded by a terrible creature. You cannot enter."

"Take me to the Grail first anyway."

Kajin shrugged. They wove their way deeper into the rock, Kajin counting steps and intersections to himself. Finally, he halted and turned to what appeared to be a blank wall. He placed a medallion that hung around his neck against a point on the wall. The outline of a doorway appeared and the door slid open.

Kajin and Vampyr walked in. Vampyr halted on a narrow ledge overlooking a huge cavern. Light that hurt Vampyr's eyes reflected down from a five-meter orb overhead. The far end of the cavern was a half mile away and the walls, which Vampyr recognized, were curved. When last he had seen them, they had been open to the light of the sun and stars. A hundred feet below was something else Vampyr had last seen under an open sky: the Black Sphinx.

"The Hall of Records," Kajin said. "The Grail is within. The Ark and sword, though, are gone."

"The Ark? What sword? Who took them?"

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"When the Israelites rebelled, a woman and man came here. They knew the tunnels. They were able to get into the Black Sphinx, as they had their own key with them. They took the Ark and the Grail, and the great sword Excalibur, and left, joining the Israelites in their Exodus. Forty years later, one of my order came here with the Grail and put it back inside. Then he left with the key and went far away. I do not know any more than that."

Vampyr had never heard of this Ark or the sword Excalibur. He suspected the man and woman who had come here were the same that had freed him so many years ago—Donnchadh and Gwalcmai. Troublemakers. Trying to upset the order of things, something Vampyr could understand quite well. The woman had said she hated the Airlia Gods, and that was also something Vampyr felt a kinship to.

Stairs cut out of the rock itself led down to the floor on which the Sphinx rested. Its paws extended almost sixty feet in front of the head, which rose seventy feet above the floor. The body stretched one hundred and eighty feet back from the head, making the whole thing almost three hundred feet long.

Between the paws was a statue about three yards tall, which Vampyr recognized—a statue of Horus, one of the six original Airlia.

"You have no idea where your order hid the key?" To have the Grail so close yet be unable to get to it grated on him.

"None. He who took it never returned."

Vampyr cursed. He believed the Watcher, as it was what he would have done.

"Take me to where they sleep."

"It is guarded."

"Take me there."

"You will not—"

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"Now."

Kajin's shoulders slumped in resignation. He led the way, moving through the tunnels. Three times he opened hidden doors. They were going deeper into the Roads than Vampyr had ever been.

Kajin paused. "The way beyond is guarded by the golden spider. We can use the cloaks to hide from it, but if we move, it will come to us."

"How far is it to where they sleep?" Vampyr asked.

"The corridor beyond goes straight for twenty feet, then splits into two branches. The Gods sleep to the right. To the left is another duat, directly underneath the Great Pyramid."

"What is in that duat?"

"A horrible weapon that my father said could destroy the entire plateau."

"Is there another door to the chamber where the Gods sleep?"

"No. This is the last door."

"You will open this door, then you will go to the left, toward the weapon,"

Vampyr said. "If you do that, I will let your brother and mother live."

Comprehension came over Kajin's face in a cascade of emotion. Fear, anger, then resignation. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because you have no choice."

Kajin put the medallion to the wall and another hidden door appeared and slid open.

"Go," Vampyr ordered.

Kajin took a deep breath, pulled his gray cloak tight about his body, then entered. Vampyr watched him as he went straight, then turned left. Vampyr remained perfectly still, and his patience was rewarded as the strange glowing gold creature with black metal legs

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appeared, scuttling across the intersection from right to left.

Vampyr then sprinted into the lowest level. He turned right and the tunnel descended. He saw a red glow ahead and skidded to a halt when he came into a large chamber. There were six platforms on which rested black tubes. Vampyr ran to the closest. The lights on the control panel were dark. He realized this tube had been either Isis's or Osiris's and was empty. He moved to the next. Also dark.

The third was lit. Vampyr tapped in the commands shutting the tube down. The screen went dark. He moved to the next three, doing the same thing.

A scream echoed into the chamber from the corridor outside.

Vampyr saw a rack of six spears, the ones the Gods had used against him and the others so long ago. He grabbed one on his way out of the chamber. He ran up the tunnel but just before he reached the intersection the golden spider appeared, blood dripping from two of its metal legs. Vampyr leveled the spear and slid his finger into an indentation on the grip. He pressed it and a golden bolt came out of the end of the spear and hit the orb. The creature was knocked back several feet and Vampyr fired again, smashing it against the walls. The legs gave way and it fell to the ground, inert.

Vampyr stepped over it to the intersection. He paused. Kajin had said there was a powerful weapon in the other duat. Vampyr knew there were other Gods, sleeping in other places. The high priests had been certain of that and Aspasia's Shadow had confirmed it. A powerful weapon could be useful.

It could also be dangerous.

Time was pressing. Vampyr headed for the surface, arriving at the place where he had left the Watcher family, not

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surprised to find they had fled and left the outer door open. He exited onto the side of the Great Pyramid. Dawn was not far off and he had a feeling Aspasia's Shadow wasn't either.

Turning to the west, Vampyr fled into the desert, heading for the spot where he had left his tube.

MOUNT SINAI, ARABIAN

PENINSULA: 671 B.C.

It wasn't the tallest peak in the region, a mountain to the southeast being a few hundred feet taller, but it dominated the terrain all around. The locals called it Jabal Mosa for the Hebrew leader who had brought his people here on their Exodus from captivity in Egypt on the way to Israel. Of course, if one drew a straight line from Egypt to Israel, Jabal Mosa was not anywhere close to being on that line.

Even before the Israelites came to the foot of the mountain, the place was one of reverence for the people of the desert. They worshipped the moon God, Sin, for whom the entire peninsula was named, but the mountain was one they feared and avoided. There was always a cloud around the top of the peak, even on the clearest day, a most unnatural thing.

There was rumor of a creature, who might be a god but looked like a man, named Al-Iblis, who haunted the mountain and the surrounding area and who traveled to Egypt and other distant lands on occasion. This legend stretched so far back in time, that none had heard of a time when the shadow of Al-Iblis did not stretch over the desert.

Deep inside Jabal Mosa, which the Christians would not rename Mount Sinai for several centuries, Aspasia's Shadow had cultivated his persona as Al-Iblis among the

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people of the desert for centuries. He had no Airlia blood running through his veins and thus was required every normal life span to return to Mount Sinai to have a new body regenerated and his memories and personality implanted into the new clone, much as he had been "born" with Aspasia's memory and personality so many years before.

He carried these memories in a small device that hung on a chain around his neck in the form of two hands outstretched in prayer. It was called a ka and he kept it as updated as possible. Against the unlikely event he died while away from Mount Sinai, a fresh body was always ready in the regeneration tube and the memories through his last visit were in the Guardian computer. If he did not return by a specified year, the memories would be implanted, the body brought up to speed, and Aspasia's Shadow would live once more, lacking only the most recent memories since the last update.

As alarms sounded and the Guardian informed him of the trouble in Egypt—that someone had penetrated the Roads of Rostau—Aspasia's Shadow had other matters on his mind. He had just returned from a foray into the Mediterranean to assess the burgeoning civilization in Greece. He was impressed with what the humans were accomplishing, but they were millennia away from being a threat to Aspasia, who was his charge. However, the journey had taken a toll on his body and a fall from a horse while traversing Anatolia, which would later become Turkey, had wrenched his back, leaving him in agonizing pain.

Aspasia's Shadow walked up to the Guardian computer—a golden pyramid buried deep in a chamber inside the mountain—and sat in a chair just in front of the ten-foot-high object. A golden glow came out of the

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Guardian and encompassed him. His body hurt, not only from the bad back but also from the arthritis that often plagued a human body beginning to succumb to age.

He was immediately updated on the situation in Egypt from the various surveillance devices hidden there by the Airlia.

Great changes had occurred while he had been away and Aspasia's Shadow slowly reviewed them.

The Assyrians had overthrown the Pharaoh and held sway in the land. And Vampyr had infiltrated the Roads and shut down the tubes of the four remaining Airlia.

Aspasia's Shadow was not surprised by that. He knew the power of vengeance and he had let Vampyr live this long, expecting such an outcome sooner or later. The six Airlia who had been left in Egypt had overstepped the mandate given them by Aspasia prior to his departure to Mars with the rest of his followers to go into the deep sleep. They were supposed to set up a civilization with instructions to get the Great Pyramid built as a signal into space, not set themselves up as Gods. The last four had finally gone into the deep sleep—following two thousand years of rule— after the Undead had rebelled and killed Isis and Osiris.

The pyramid plan had failed. It had been built by one of the Pharaohs according to the plans passed down, but rather than signaling more Airlia, it had drawn in the Ancient Enemy of the Airlia, a spacefaring race known as the Swarm. The Airlia had immediately ordered the smooth limestone facing of the massive pyramid—which sent a massive radar signature out into space—to be torn off and the plan abandoned. Thus there was no longer a need for the four Airlia who slept beneath Giza and Aspasia's Shadow felt no great loss at their deaths.

Aspasia's Shadow had been imprinted with Aspasia's memories and personalities, but layered on top of them

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were millennia of his own experience as a human on Earth. He was no longer that which he had been set up to be. He had awareness, a dangerous thing to give to something that is just supposed to be a tool. He knew that he existed simply to serve a purpose and that once that purpose was fulfilled and Aspasia came out of the deep sleep on Mars and returned—or Artad came out of his deep sleep under Qian-Ling in China—that the war would be renewed, one side would win, and he would no longer be needed regardless of which side won.