Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (7 page)

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ing rapidly and painfully in the bright morning light, heads turning to and fro as if in search of their immediate future. Priests went to work, dipping leather straps in buckets of water and wrapping them around the limbs, working from the hands and feet inward. Each strap was an inch wide and spaced about two inches apart, leaving pale white flesh exposed between. The priests slowly continued until the arms and legs were encased up to the armpits and groin in strips of wet leather.

When they were done, once more the high priest chanted. "Behold the price of rebellion. Behold the price of betrayal. Behold the price of disobedience."

Then there was silence.

"What are they doing?" Vampyr demanded.

"I do not know," Kajilil said. He had taken the looking device back and was peering through it. "I have never seen this before."

The sun was rising behind them and had just struck the top of the Sphinx and the captives. Nosferatu narrowed the open strip in the cloth around his head. He shifted his gaze from Chatha and Lilith to Nekhbet. He could see how close she was to death. They had drained her even after he had taken his fill the previous night. And she had lost much blood from her wrist.

A moan escaped Chatha's lips, carrying through the dry air. At first Nosferatu could not tell what caused her to cry out in pain. He assumed it was the sun striking skin and eyes that had not known daylight in many, many years. He took the looking device from Kajilil and peered through it. He noticed that the fingers on Chatha's right hand were twitching uncontrollably. She cried out once more. The other hand was also twitching. Then Nosferatu saw the devilment the Gods had concocted and he cursed them. The leather was drying, and in doing so, contracting,

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pressing into the flesh. The straps were drying in the order they had been put on, from the outer ends of the limbs inward. Cutting off circulation, and pressing into the skin.

Nosferatu realized it was also the most devious and terrible torture that could have been devised for the state the two half-breeds were in, the bands forcing what little blood they had left into the centers of their bodies and keeping them alive, stopping the flow to the limbs bit by bit, while cutting into the flesh with inexorable pain.

Both were crying out by then, the screams forced from them by the waves of pain reverberating through their bodies.

"We must do something," Vampyr hissed.

Nosferatu agreed with the emotion but he knew Kajilil was right. "There is nothing we can do."

"My sister," Vampyr whispered in despair. "They will pay. The Gods and the humans. They will pay for this."

Vampyr rose and began to run forward toward the Black Sphinx. Nosferatu leapt up and chased him down, covering the distance between them in an instant. He wrapped his arms around the younger Undead, dragging him to the ground. Vampyr thrashed to and fro in his grasp. The fight was over when Kajilil rapped a stone on the side of Vampyr's head, knocking him unconscious. They dragged Vampyr back to their observation post. Nosferatu tied Vampyr's hands behind his back and bound his legs tightly together, then returned his attention to the top of the Black Sphinx.

The high priest stepped between the two crosses, spreading his arms to encompass both. "Behold the price of rebellion. Behold the price of betrayal.

Behold the price of disobedience."

The torture went on to the point where even watching was practically unbearable. Both women's bodies were vi-

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brating so violently that the sound of their backs hitting the wood as they spasmed in pain was clearly audible despite the screams. The bones in their legs and arms snapped, the sounds echoing across the gathered crowd. The humans gathered round looked on with perverted fascination.

Chatha died first, at least an hour after the last bands cut off all blood flow to her crushed limbs. The sun was nearly vertical overhead indicating she had lived for almost five hours under the torture. And Lilith was still alive, although her screams were more muted, her throat parched and worn from the effort.

What would they do to Nekhbet? Nosferatu wondered. There was not a third cross on the Sphinx's head, only the empty black tube.

Lilith finally raised her head and blindly looked to the sky as she cried out,

"My brother. Avenge me." Then at last she died with a whimper.

At her voice Vampyr rose out of his unconscious stupor, eyes blinking, great pain etched on his face. "My sister." Vampyr hunched over in pain for his twin, bound fists clenched as he felt her death to the core of his being.

One of the Gods gestured and the high priest went over and leaned close to the God, listening. Then the high priest went between the two bodies. "There are two others like these out there. Two who have betrayed the Gods. If they do not make themselves known, a worse fate will be their last companion's fate throughout the ages." At that, the high priest pointed at Nekhbet.

Two priests grabbed her arms and pulled her back, placing her inside the open black sarcophagus. A belt was placed around her waist and she was chained to the interior. One of the Gods went over to her, placing the bands with leads around her arms and legs. The God reached in

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and took the crown out of its slot, settling it on top of Nekhbet's head.

Peering through the cylinder, Nosferatu could see that there were also wires running from the crown back to the tube. Done, the God stepped away.

Over a hundred years. That was how long Nekhbet and Nosferatu had shared the same cell and fate. They had talked at every opportunity. At first of reality, but then they had begun inventing new worlds, imaginary places to which they could disappear together.

"She will suffer the living sleep," the high priest called out. "Trapped in this, unable to die, unable to sleep, unable to move. Aware all the time. Unless you show yourself."

Kajilil placed a hand on Nosferatu's shoulder. "If you show yourself, both of you will suffer the same fate as your two comrades. And they will kill her too.

She is only alive because you and your comrade are free."

Nosferatu stared through the looking tube, focusing on Nekhbet's face. He had been alone for a hundred years before they brought her in. What they were condemning her to was even more cruel than the past had been. They were keeping her alive to draw him in. He knew that and he knew it would work. But not then.

And not on their terms.

Patience. It was the one thing that Gods had forced upon him.

Nekhbet turned her head slightly so that her eyes were dead on with his, as if she could know where he was and could see him. She smiled and shook her head ever so slightly.

The top of the tube was swung shut, enclosing Nekhbet. Nosferatu stared through the looking tube as the God went to the panel and long fingers tapped on it. Through his despair, Nosferatu tried to memorize the pattern.

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Before returning to his place at the front, the high priest again went to one of the Gods and listened. "Hear this, traitors and murderers. You will be tracked down. And you will suffer an even more horrible fate."

A phalanx of guards surrounded the tube, which remained on top of the Black Sphinx, a beacon to draw Nosferatu in. The high priests followed by the Gods, slowly walked down the ramp and into the darkness of the Roads of Rostau.

Vampyr twisted his head toward Nosferatu. "I will never forgive you for today."

"You would be dead if you had gone down there," Nosferatu argued.

"I would rather have died trying to save her," Vampyr said.

To that Nosferatu had no answer. For a long time they sat in the dark shadows, stunned and overwhelmed by what they had witnessed.

Kajilil's voice broke the silence. "Perhaps, when things have changed, as they will with time, you may return. But for now, I think it is best that you both leave Egypt and go as far away as possible." He took two large leather pouches that jingled slightly and handed one each to Nosferatu and Vampyr. "Take this gold. Go across the sands to the east until you reach the Red Sea. There you will be able to hire a boat to take you far away."

"There is no 'perhaps,'" Nosferatu said. "I will be back."

"But not soon," Kajilil said, the words both a statement and a warning.

Nosferatu knew Kajilil's words were true. It would be a long time before he could come back to claim Nekhbet.

"Can you get me into the Roads this evening?" "You cannot rescue her,"

Kajilil said. "She will be

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guarded. You saw one of the creatures the Gods use to guard the Roads. There are others."

"I know that," Nosferatu said. "Can you get me back to the chamber in which I was held? It is empty now. The Gods will not expect me to return."

Kajilil frowned. "Why?"

"If I am to wait a long time, I need to do to myself as they have done to her.

I will need my own black tube so I can use the deep sleep."

"Mine too," Vampyr said. "I will bide my time. But I swear revenge for my sister." Vampyr stared at Nosferatu with half-lidded eyes, his lips still covered with the dried blood they had tasted on the Roads of Rostau.

Kajilil considered their request and nodded. "Tonight. Then you both must leave. They will be looking for you."

Nosferatu's eyes were on the Black Sphinx. "There will come a day when they will no longer rule." He tapped his chest. "Then I will be back for my love."

Vampyr glared down at the site of his sister's death. "This is the Third Age.

The Age of Man." He tapped his chest. "Someday it will be our age. The Fourth Age. The time of the Undead."

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THE RED SEA: 8000 B.C.

The reed ship was at the mercy of the winds and Nosferatu could not help but give a cold smile as the sailors prayed out loud each morning to the Gods of Egypt to help them in their travels. He did not think the Airlia Gods would help, even if it were in their power to do so. However, most days the prayers seemed to work, as a steady wind blew from the north, pushing the forty-foot boat southward, the coast always visible to the right. In two days' time they made it out of the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Aden. Another three days saw them round the horn of Somalia and sail into the Indian Ocean, still staying close to the coast of Africa.

Nosferatu spent his days inside the black tube that Kajilil had helped him steal from the Roads of Rostau. It was covered by a small thatch hut he had had the sailors construct in the middle of the boat. He had examined the crown but made no use of it. The same with the glowing panel of hexagonals. He had no clue what powered it, but there was writing in the Runic language of the Gods on each hex. When they had gone down into the tunnels, they'd found the three cells empty except for the tubes. Lifting one, they found the metal surprisingly light. Kajilil had given them gray cloaks that he said would hide them from the metal spider/but the creature had not appeared.

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As Nosferatu had speculated, no one would have expected them to return to the scene of their imprisonment.

Vampyr and he wordlessly parted near the Watcher's hut, on the edge of the Nile. Vampyr slipped off into the dark, moving north along the west bank of the Nile, while Nosferatu climbed on board a raft provided by Kajilil and forded the river. Nosferatu knew that the other Undead was full of rage at both the Airlia and their human subjects and he feared for what Vampyr might do. He thought it highly possible that Vampyr would be captured by the Airlia in his quest for vengeance and be killed as horribly as his sister had been.

Once across the Nile Nosferatu had to wrap the tube in heavy cloths and have it dragged behind a pair of camels to cross the desert from the Nile to the Red Sea. The desert people—the Bedu—who had done this for him had asked no questions and made no protest about traveling only at night. They'd taken the gold payment Nosferatu had offered and disappeared into the desert as soon as he reached the coast. When he reached the Red Sea, Nosferatu had hired his boat. The crew worshipped the Egyptian Gods for lack of anything else, but they were from a tribe that lived along the coast of the Red Sea and knew nothing of the Airlia or the high priests along the Nile.

Nosferatu's thoughts swirled around Nekhbet and his last sight of her as the lid of the tube had closed. She had smiled and shaken her head. The high priest had said she would stay awake and alive forever in her metal prison. He knew that as long as the Gods ruled in Egypt he would not be able to save her. His last vision of the Black Sphinx confirmed that her tube was still resting on top of the large lion head, the bait for the Airlia trap for him. He 59

wondered how long they would keep her there before taking her back underground.

He would have to wait. Even the Watcher Kajilil had said change would come. When it did, Nosferatu knew he would return and rescue her. Until then he had to stay alive.

On the third day on board they all saw a golden disk flying low over the sands to the west. The crew threw themselves to the deck and prayed loudly. Nosferatu knew the Airlia were searching for him and Vampyr. He stayed inside the tube, hidden from sight as the disk flew overhead, hovering for a few moments before moving on.

Twice more in the following week they saw the disk in the distance, and each time Nosferatu crawled into the tube.

At night he paced along the deck, stepping over the sleeping forms of the half dozen men he had paid to take him away from Egypt. They tied up to shore every evening and occasionally Nosferatu ventured inland. The hunger grew in him and he knew that he would have to feed in order to maintain his age and strength.

He took his first kill after almost a month and a half at sea when he could hold the hunger at bay no longer and feared he would lose control and attack one of the crew. As they went south the shoreline had changed from desert to lush jungle. They had tied up to a tree near the mouth of a small river. The crew had refilled the water caskets by traveling up the river just before darkness fell, hurrying back, frightened of the strange noises that roared and bellowed out of the lush greenness. Nosferatu found the sounds intriguing—a siren's song of violence and death beckoning him to its darkness.