CHAPTER 35

 

 

They were an unlikely army: Ariadne had shed her blood- and gore-soaked bodysuit for an ill-fitting duty jumper from Saul’s stores, her sword hanging incongruously at her side. Roarke, the tattered Southern gentleman. Bourne in his baseball cap. Saul and his men in their SWAT uniforms. Refreshed from the Council’s blood supply, they emerged from the van and pushed past the fence thick with overgrowth at the foot of Eagle Hill.

“We tried the direct approach before,” Ariadne was saying as she led them to a sewage grate. It felt so natural, heading up a war party. “This time, we go in the back way.”

“I remember this entrance,” Roarke said as Ariadne stooped to tear the manhole cover loose. “I had it walled up as a security risk after that rogue lich wizard got in.”

“We reopened it,” said Ariadne, “after you rebelled.”

“In case you ever needed to make a quick escape?”

Ariadne rolled her eyes. “Hardly. It was my idea. If you tried a frontal attack, we would send an assault force out this way, double back, and make you fight on two fronts.”

“Not bad, little lady, not bad. I’m proud of you.”

She spun around. “Don’t you dare act fatherly.”

Saul put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off.

“No. We need to make one thing clear.” Ariadne pushed herself up in Roarke’s face. “I’m going to take care of Liliane because I want to, because this is personal. Not because I’m your childe. You are under my command here. I am the only reason the Council hasn’t killed you. Your job is to help me out and, when the time is right, to stay out of my way.”

Bourne held up a hand. “Um, let’s wait until after we’ve killed Liliane to start fighting amongst ourselves, okay?”

“You think she’s even here?” one of the soldiers asked.

“Yes.” Ariadne and Roarke spoke as one.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

They proceeded through the sewer tunnel. The passageway was narrow, crisscrossed by a dozen pipes and tangled in thickets of fiber-optic cable. They were constantly forced to duck, to step over, to contort. It was a marvelous security feature, certain to bottleneck a potential invasion. Ariadne knew all about it; she had helped oversee connecting this tunnel to the main catacombs.

“Here,” she said, lifting an unremarkable metal plate to reveal the turnoff into pure darkness.

Saul motioned, and two soldiers stepped inside, guns drawn, tiny stabs of laser sights sweeping into the indifferent black.

Ariadne and Roarke followed, shoulder to shoulder. Bourne was too bulky to go in with a partner. The remaining two soldiers were next, and Saul stalked alone behind them, bringing up the rear.

Other than the dripping of water, she heard nothing. That shouldn’t have been. She should have been able to smell and taste the quick life-pulses of rats and other sewer life, but all was silent. The animals had all fled, knowing something she didn’t.

Ariadne put up a hand, and the party stopped. She sent the two soldiers up, heard their footsteps recede and suddenly cease.

“What the hell is—?”

“Sssh!” she hissed to Bourne. Ariadne extended her senses, trying to map out heartbeats, footfalls, scrapes of cloth, something. But the silence was complete. Then she realized it wasn’t silence at all.

She was blanketed in the buzz of the Almavore’s call. It filled her head like white noise, rendering her senses useless.

She turned around to the pack, signed her frustration.

The look on their faces made her suddenly snap back around.

One of the soldiers was running back, something weighing down his arms. A body.

Ariadne looked it over. Male, young, average build, clothing torn and skin ripped open. She followed up the length of his form to his face. She couldn’t find it. It had been torn off.

Searching the body, Ariadne found a wallet, but her night vision did not afford her the ability to read the text on the license in complete darkness. Still, the feel of the charms strung around the wallet, the ankh and other symbols, told her what she needed to know.

“The wizards must have tried something,” she whispered. “It doesn’t look like this one succeeded. I think—”

She was cut off by a low growling. The remaining point guard backpedaled toward them. His rifle blasts echoed at deafening decibels in the closed space. The flash of his weapon’s muzzle briefly illuminated several low forms leaping forward. Then he screamed and fell.

Dogs.

The next second the dogs were upon them all, too fast to shoot. They slammed several of the party to the ground. Ariadne felt the wet mass of stinking fur flying toward her, grabbed it in mid-leap, used its momentum to flip it into the wall beside her. The crunch of bone was audible, as was its throat-rending yelp.

Silas’s pack, she realized. What was the elder up to?

Then it bucked in her grip. Its wet fur was slick enough to slip loose from her. Once free, it charged again. She ducked just in time for the snap of jaws to miss her face. She smelled the fetid breath, caught a quick flash of red in its eyes—the light of more gunfire.

One of the soldiers screamed. “Simone, watch your—” Then a growl, and he fell silent.

Ariadne realized the quarters were too close for guns, and the dog in her arms wasn’t giving her a moment even to draw her sword. She sensed another cur approaching, but as she swiveled she heard it shriek. Saul was diving forward, burying his blade deep into the dog’s gut. The dog fell writhing, its body shriveling rapidly.

“They’re ghouled,” he said, swiveling to stab another one.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” said Bourne, wrestling with one himself. “Now could you come over and kill it?”

Ariadne finally maneuvered her dog into a headlock and snapped its neck. It flopped to the ground, trying to attack even as it spasmed its last. This wasn’t feral rage. It was loyalty to a master. But was that master Silas or Liliane?

I am no dog, Prince. Ariadne strode forward, drew her blade, and in a clean stroke beheaded the dog atop Bourne. My leash is broken. And I am coming for you.

More footfalls. More growling.

“We can’t stay here,” said Saul. “Simone, Rafael, draw the dogs away. The rest of you, push forward.”

Ariadne leapt ahead, bounding atop one of the possessed curs and stomping it into the ground. Then she was gone, followed quickly by Roarke and Bourne, then Saul, and finally the remaining two soldiers, who sprayed automatic fire in their wake. The hounds snapped at their heels, but then turned around to face the greater threat: the rear guard. Simone and Rafael stood ready to confront them.

“Bad doggie,” Ariadne heard one of them say. Then she heard the sounds of a dozen legs rushing in unison, a pack leaping as one, and no more words. Ariadne did not look back.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

Ariadne felt the air thicken, become stuffier with each step. There was definitely a fire blazing somewhere close, although she couldn’t tell how much of the fear rising inside her stemmed from that and how much from the call of the statue. A pale red glow issued from any metal surface around them, and the paint on the walls as they ascended into the house’s sub-basement had already begun to run.

“This corridor will take us to Liliane’s study,” said Ariadne. Once again the soldiers took the lead. They rounded the corner up ahead, and she wondered if their unquestioning obedience was the result of mere loyalty to Saul or of a blood bond. In either case, she was grateful.

“All clear,” one called, and the party continued on.

The house on Eagle Hill now seemed from another universe, its halls the dimly remembered phantoms of old nightmares. Ariadne saw none of the familiar sights, but only a path to the heart of the din in her mind, the din of the Almavore’s call and of her own hatred for Liliane.

With all that noise, she almost didn’t hear the soldiers’ screams up ahead.

Their bodies came hurling back around the corner, crackling with fire.

Ariadne swept her blade up into defensive position, as did Saul beside her. The two crept forward, checking on the men at their feet. The soldiers’ mouths were contorted in agony as the skin crawled back across their faces, revealing muscle and bone.

“This isn’t any natural fire.”

In the time it took Saul to state the obvious, a figure stepped into the hall before them. The man’s clothes were shredded and soaked in blood that couldn’t have been just his own. Ariadne could not discern if his face was wrinkled or just twisted, and didn’t have time to look closer. Fire lighted in his palms and blazed forward at them.

Ariadne felt the rush of panic well within her. She clawed at the stone floor as the heat tore like the talons of an angry hawk at her hair and back. Bourne and Roarke were shouting at once, and she couldn’t hear them.

The wizard staggered back and forth across the hall, supporting himself against one wall or the other. Pain wracked his face as he hurled fireballs every which way. Ariadne glanced back to see Saul writhing in the corner beside the completely charred remnants of his men. Roarke was retreating down the corridor. Bourne was nowhere in sight.

With a snap of her arm, Ariadne sent her sword spinning out at her foe, the metal blade flashing in the light of the flames. It hit the corona surrounding the man and exploded. She heard the telltale snap of metal, a cry of material agony heralding the end of the sword that had served her so well.

Ariadne did not mourn. She was the weapon, not her blade.

The scream of the metal masked the wizard’s own shout as he collapsed. He fell forward to the ground, his flames flickering out. Face-first on the floor, the man revealed that his back had been torn open, was raw and putrefying. A coat of ants was devouring his flesh.

Ariadne backed away from the swarm, which for now seemed content to feast upon one victim at a time. Still, there would be no saving him. That left precious little time for an interrogation.

“You!” She made eye contact, pressed her will upon the gasping man. “How many of you are here? I know Marie. Tell me!”

The man let loose a tortured gasp. “All . . . dead,” he groaned. All around, the fires the wizard had started flickered and died.

“What were you trying to accomplish?”

“Couldn’t find the statue . . . were listening in on you, tried to move in ahead and take it ourselves . . . weren’t prepared—”

“Idiots! Instead of spying on us, you could have coordinated with us. Was Marie here?”

The wizard’s eyes rolled.

“Answer me!”

Too late. Ariadne could feel the life expire from him like a cool breeze washing over her senses. Then a scorching white blast of power streamed past her, whipping her clothes and hair. The dead man’s body and its coat of ants faded to powder.

She turned around to see Roarke, his hands raised in a casting mudra.

“Couldn’t let those varmints get near us,” said Roarke. “And he wasn’t gonna be no more use to us neither. Come on. Let’s survey our forces and move on.”

“You do that,” said Ariadne, walking forward into the swiftly cooling hall and testing the door before her. The room was bare, containing just a single slab. It was a slab she knew well. She had rested on it nearly every night since her death. It seemed smaller now.

Her room.

“Ariadne?”

She heard Bourne’s voice, light years away. She walked inside, pulled open the secret compartment in the floor. The album. The pictures of her and Andrei, purloined from her home, guarded even from Liliane all these years. Andrei was in the Council’s hands. For all she knew, he could be dead already. This book was her only link.

She could not be the girl in those photos, not here and now. She needed to be the Silent Knife. Wordlessly she picked the album up, fought the hunger to peer inside just once more. She brought it into the hall, found a still-flickering patch of fire, and tossed it on top. The chemicals in the photos made them burn quickly.

Roarke stared at her. “What was that all about?”

She ignored him, walked past him to where Bourne was trying to revive Saul.

“Ar . . . i . . . ad . . .” Saul gestured in frustration at his throat and mouth, which was fused into a mess of blackened flesh.

Ariadne shook her head. “I don’t have time to wait for you. I’m going ahead.”

“Well, don’t go ahead unarmed,” said Bourne. He reached behind Saul’s body and carefully handed Ariadne the Council agent’s blade. “Here’s a nice souvenir, eh?”

Saul shook a fist, and for the first time Ariadne saw emotion in his blue eyes: panic.

Ariadne stared at him.

“I could kill you, right now,” she said. “I could tell all your men that Liliane did it.”

She took Saul’s weapon gingerly from Bourne, testing its weight. She marveled at the electric shine of its blade, remembering Mister Rose showing her irs companion back at the parking garage, an event that now seemed like three lifetimes ago. She dipped it in a pool of the now-departed mage’s blood, watched the blade crackle with power, then raised it up again.

“One touch,” she said, bringing the tip toward Saul. Struggling while Bourne held him fast, Saul bellowed wordlessly.

The sword was elegantly forged but seemed ill-balanced. Swords were not guns, dumb tools that any wielder could use instantly. It would take time to acquaint herself with this one. In a fight, that unfamiliarity could prove a liability. Still, its soul-stealing properties weren’t to be underestimated.

“Remember,” she said, directing the tip to his mutilated nose. “Remember what I could have done—and didn’t. If we both survive, I’ll even give this blade back.”

She pulled away and motioned for Bourne to let go. Saul fell back to the ground, his tortured body healing at a snail’s pace.

Then she turned and walked down the hall, gesturing for Bourne and Roarke to fall in line.

Behind them, the album was swiftly turning to ash. Ariadne was shedding traces of herself with every step, shucking them off like the plaster melting from the superheated walls. But she was the Silent Knife. There was steel beneath, and fire did not harm steel. Fire tempered it.

“Bourne,” she said, “scout up ahead. Whatever’s up there is bad enough to kill a man who could toss flames from his hands. I want to be prepared.”

Bourne shot ahead. He returned a moment later, shaking his head.

“I don’t see any more wizards, just a whole boatload of creepy crawlies coming this way fast!”

A thin brown wave rounded the corner behind Bourne. Ariadne’s first thought was that the carpet was moving of its own volition, rolling and rearing up like some giant, flat snake to strike at the human forms around it.

But these halls had no carpet.

Ants. Billions and billions of ants. They moved as one, a great flowing sheet of them, waves that crested over the fallen debris in the hallway and lost no speed in doing so.

“Fall back!” Ariadne cried out.

Bourne needed no convincing, but Roarke remained. “Stop.”

Ariadne felt his voice inside her bones and slowed down instinctively before realizing that the command was not meant for her.

As one, the swirling brown horde milled in a holding pattern, seething with a helpless bottled energy.

Roarke stepped forward, concentration furrowing his brow.

“Damnation,” he said. “Liliane’s will’s too strong. I can’t hold these critters long.”

“Come on.” Ariadne tugged at Bourne. Before she could let herself think, she walked atop the stalled mass of ants, never looking down as she felt her boots crunch through their numbers as if they were semi-frozen snow.

Bourne, less gracefully, followed suit.

He adjusted his hunting cap when they made it to the other end of the swarm. “What about Roarke?

“He can take care of himself,” Ariadne said, not looking back.

“Wow.” Bourne trotted to keep up with her. “First Saul, then Roarke. You ain’t the sentimental type, eh?”

“Like I said, I’m here for myself.”

“Don’t we need his magic to destroy the statue?”

“I can take care of that,” said Ariadne, though she was uncertain how true that was. The music in her head was clear, but it was Roarke’s music. His, or perhaps that of some composer whose language hadn’t been spoken in millennia. A perfect way to record a spell! Words could be lost to time, but music was eternal. That didn’t mean it could be trusted.

“Assuming we can even reach the damned thing,” she added.

They were now standing before the door to Liliane’s study. There was a roar in Ariadne’s ears like the ocean.

“Last chance to turn back,” said Bourne.

“Feel free. With you or without you, I’m taking her down.”

Bourne drew himself up to his full height. Even though he was only an inch or two taller than Ariadne, he somehow seemed larger tonight. It was something in the way he was staring at her. Something was welling inside Bourne’s eyes that had nothing to do with either humor or rancor.

Ariadne met his gaze. “I will never love you.” She said the words slowly, in measured tones. “I hope you know that.”

“I know.” Bourne shrugged. “But hey, who says I’m doing this for you?”

“In your own twisted way, I suppose you think you’ve been helping me all these years.”

“Naw. I was just messing with you. I’m coming clean here in these final moments before the fur starts flying.”

Ariadne opened the door, half expecting another wave of ants or a secret squad of soldiers, but saw only the burned-out bookshelves and the wide-open secret passage.

She turned to Bourne again. “I’m not going to thank you. You’ve been too cruel for that. But . . .” She hesitated. “But I want you to know that at least I recognize it. Recognize you. Beneath all that flab and bluster.”

“I’ve got a heart of gold—is that what you think? You’re right, then. It’s hard and yellow.”

“You can’t stop joking for a second, can you?”

Bourne smiled, the grime on his teeth visible even in the dim glow. Did the man ever clean his fangs?

“Ha! You’re not totally changed. You still don’t get the joke, Ariadne, and that’s what I’ve always liked about you. Oh, you’re on the way. Sooner or later, you’ll either get it or you’ll die because you don’t. But I’m always going to remember you just like this.”

“If one of us lives through this,” said Ariadne, “it’s going to be me.”

“In that case,” said Bourne, stepping over the threshold into the passage, “remember me . . . as a peacemaker.”

He looked so ridiculous, with his jack-o’-lantern grin at a time when both could be facing certain destruction, that Ariadne could not entirely fight back a smile.

Bourne snapped his fingers. “There. That. That was worth all of it.”

“Shut up. Let’s get this over with.”

They proceeded down the tunnel in silence. In a sickening whirl of déjà vu, Ariadne once again lifted the veil over the storeroom, once again descended to the caverns below that housed the blood pool, now overflowing. Where had the fresh blood been coming from? Deliveries from the ants? There were small phalanxes of them here, living conveyor belts going to and fro. And there were other things. The ranks of the corpse army, larger than ever, lumbered in the candlelight.

Behind them, stranger, darker minions stirred. Corpses of dogs, of horses, of birds and beasts of all description, and some that defied reason. Giant beasts with jaws of crocodiles, armor of rhinoceri, tails of scorpions. Seemingly Liliane had played sculptor with all of the stolen flesh and fueled her creations with purloined soul-force.

“This is not good,” Bourne murmured.

Ariadne ignored him. She forced herself not to think of odds, not to think of strategy. She simply attacked.

The corpse soldiers rose to meet her. Ariadne made herself as relentless as they were, as mindless. She tore through their ranks, creating storms of severed limbs in her wake, of pulverized bone, as she headed for the Almavore.

Bourne was beside her, blasting a path as best he could with his Council-supplied rifle. The corpses fell upon them, but the giant beasts at the rear did not charge. They merely pawed the ground and circled as the two Kindred, hip deep in the blood pool, reached the Almavore statue.

Bourne kicked aside a skull only half-clothed in flesh. “That’s unsettling to the appetite. Not even any blood in ’em. I’m tempted to just take a drink right here from the pool.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Ariadne.

“Yeah. Liliane’s probably spiked the punch.” His eyes remained on the chimerical behemoths circling expectantly only a few meters away. “So why are the big uglies just sitting there?”

“Quiet.” The Almavore was screaming in Ariadne’s skull and in her veins. She reached for that feeling of magnetism, tried to recall how the blue lightning felt when she had first summoned it.

Roarke’s music began to play in her head, of its own volition. All it needed was her voice to give it life. She began, but her voice slurred and skewed. She shook her head, tried again, but the Almavore’s call was a harpoon in her heart, pulling her in. The sounds just wouldn’t form correctly on her lips. Everything was falling into a jumble, a mishmash of voices from present and past, visions of cities on fire and children pierced through on sword points.

“Ariadne? Hey, Ariadne! Snap out of it! Don’t you have a job to do?”

Bourne was calling to her from across a chasm as wide as the pool of blood, as wide as the Jordan River, swirling around the banks of New Jerusalem.

Bourne grabbed her, tugged her aside and dragged her out of the pool. Snorting breathless grunts, the beasts circled slowly around the pool’s edges and moved slowly toward them.

“Oh . . . damn . . .”

“Quite the opposite,” said a soft, airy voice. “Salvation is at hand.”

Ariadne and Bourne spun around to watch two figures walk into view.

One was a short, hunched form wearing an elegant tuxedo with all the trimmings. He held the arm of Prince Liliane, who was veiled and robed in a long white gown. A laurel of white lilies wreathed Prince Liliane’s head, completing the bridal image. “This is the night when I wed myself to the Almighty. I am pleased to have witnesses.”

Bourne swung his rifle around, trained it on her. His hand froze on the trigger as Liliane’s companion raised his head.

“Silas!”

It was Bourne’s sire. Or something that used to be him. Silas’s face, always seemingly on the verge of decay, looked as if it had finally lost that battle. His small red eyes were vacant, half-sunken into their sockets, revealing no intelligence or will of their own.

An unmistakable top hat crowned his head.

As Bourne hesitated, Liliane pursed her lips delicately and blew. A massive gust of wind slammed into Bourne, flinging him into the thick of the beasts, sending his weapon sailing beyond his reach. The creatures pounced.

Bourne’s screams snapped Ariadne’s world back into focus.

“No!” Ariadne charged at the monsters, swinging a sword that seemed smaller than ever.

Amazingly, the beasts backed away and withdrew into the shadows. Torn and brutalized, Bourne was at least still stirring.

“Daughter,” said Liliane, “I have been led down the aisle. It is time.”

Ariadne whirled around, brandishing Saul’s blade. “I am not your daughter.”

Liliane’s soft, delicately sculpted eyebrows raised. “Ah. I can smell Roarke’s stink upon your soul. He has claimed you at last?”

The Prince harrumphed gently. “What claim does he hold? That he sank his fangs into your veins, filled you with a dram of his blood? It is we who raised you, we who made you what you are, we to whom you owe everything.”

“No.” Ariadne stared the Prince down. “I no longer serve you.”

“A weapon needs a hand to wield it, a purpose to guide it. What are you, without us?”

Ariadne sliced her own wrist with a talon, felt but did not watch as her blood charged up the sword. Its power had already drained since the fight in the halls, but now it was ready again to claim a soul. “I’m not one of your zombies. I never will be.”

Liliane smiled. “You only see part of the plan, dear one. The mockeries around you?” She gestured to them, and then tapped Silas beside her. At her touch, part of his skull crumbled away. “They are not the denizens of New Jerusalem. They are merely husks, useful tools in this world. But their souls—their souls will delight in the paradise to come. They will live on, in that new world, that new city. In me.”

Ariadne didn’t think she could feel any more rage toward her former Prince. She had been wrong.

“You’re telling me your utopia—it’s just inside your own twisted head?”

Liliane was unperturbed. “Did God not say that the body and the blood transform inside the bearer? Ah, I do not expect you to understand yet. But you will, once you serve your part.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” cried Ariadne. “You’re done using me!”

“We are all made for use, all pieces in God’s plan.”

“Then He’s the next one I come after, when I’m through with you!”

Ariadne leapt forward, sword swinging. Silas, or what was left of him, stepped jerkily forward to block her. Ariadne tore through him; his desiccated flesh, deprived now even of the spark of unlife, crumbled without resistance. The top hat fluttered to the ground, capping the growing mound of ashes.

Ariadne did not pause to watch her vision of the elder’s demise come true. Smashing through Silas’s dissolving form, she advanced on Liliane. Her blade sang through the air. The Prince backed away at the last moment, her speed preternatural.

She was not fast enough.

Ariadne saw with triumph that the blade had nicked the Prince in the arm. A thin trickle of blood ran along that porcelain flesh. A nick was all she needed.

Ariadne waited.

Liliane stood, smiling regally.

“For shame, Daughter,” she said at last. “To think that we would have Mister Rose’s toy in our possession for all this time and not discover a way to counter its power. We are many things, but we are never idle.”

Ariadne tensed with rage. Fine. The sword’s magic wouldn’t work on Liliane. But a blade was a blade.

Ariadne charged forward again. This time Liliane’s hand moved in a blur, seizing Ariadne’s and tearing the sword hilt away along with a good chunk of Ariadne’s flesh. With a casual gesture the Prince hurled the sword far away. Ariadne could barely hear the distant plunk as it fell into the blood pool. She could barely hear anything above the sound of her own pain and the pounding of the Almavore’s call.

“Come,” said Liliane. She pressed forward, maneuvering Ariadne toward the edge of the pool. Ariadne tried and failed to arrest her backward motion, but managed to divert their path to the cavern wall beside the red waters. “All will be forgiven,” the Prince noted with deceptive calmness. “Join with us once again.”

Ariadne was drowning in three seas at once: the agony in her wrist, the Almavore’s cry, and Liliane’s presence. She retreated as far back as she could into her mind, flailed out with her good hand, felt it smack against the cavern wall.

Roarke’s music still played stubbornly in Ariadne’s mind. Summoning the remaining slivers of her consciousness, Ariadne reached to the cave wall, felt the cold magnetic buzz that was becoming more and more familiar. The Almavore’s power sang through her, its flesh-and-blood instrument.

Beneath her fingers Ariadne felt the cavern wall shiver, shimmer, and groan. At once, several stones pushed themselves out from their fellows in a cloud of dust and mortar. Like a child rousing from a deep slumber, the stone golem awakened.

A flash of fear sparked in Liliane’s eyes. Ariadne looked away, stared into her new creation’s eyeless, stony face, and whispered two words: “Kill her.”

The newly made golem lurched forward toward its ivory-clad prey.

The Prince dropped Ariadne to the ground. Ariande fell into a crouch and watched the scene unfold.

The golem threw a stony punch, but Liliane was already at its side. The creature pounded the stone floor with stone knuckles. The Prince’s claws extended, swiped, cut through the stone as easily as flesh. The fist remained on the floor, severed, as the homunculus pulled back.

Long, precious moments burned away before Ariadne could force herself to avert her gaze, to get up and back away. The golem was to be a distraction, nothing more. Ariadne turned to stare across the pool of blood to the bulbous, tumorous form of the Almavore statue. Its white pustules brimmed with dozens of faces she knew and hundreds she didn’t. Its welcoming song beckoned her, lapping at her hunger like the smell of freshly baked pastry cooling on a windowsill would have in her living days.

It would make her strong. Stronger than Roarke. Stronger than Liliane. No one would ever dare try to control her again. No one would ever dare reject her again. She could crush them with a thought, crush an entire city with a thought.

As Liliane contested with the golem, Ariadne jumped into the pool, waded up to the statue, and placed her hands on its skin. An electric charge jolted through her, arcing across her back and head. Ariadne cried out in a wordless scream of ecstasy. But something was wrong. Something is missing, the Almavore told her, not in words but in the language of raw sensation.

On the shore of the pool, the golem was clumsily telegraphing its moves in slow motion compared to Liliane’s graceful attacks. The Prince chopped off one limb, then another. When the golem was nothing more than a helpless trunk, Liliane thrust her hand within it and twisted. Stone shattered in all directions.

Lying nearby, Bourne weakly tried to cover his head as fragments pelted him.

Liliane turned, calm, a beatific smile twisting her face. She stepped into the pool and swept toward Ariadne, who was still fighting the Almavore’s call.

Bourne, barely able to draw himself up into a sitting position, cried out: “Ariadne! Look out!”

Somehow his voice pierced the din. Ariadne turned just in time to see Liliane’s outstretched hand flying toward her. She let go of the statue and dove to the side, but the Prince was faster, skewering Ariadne through the chest. Claws that moments ago pierced stone easily sliced through flesh and bone. Ariadne gasped.

Holding Ariadne aloft on her extended arm, Liliane swung Ariadne around and around as she stepped back out of the pool. Then the Prince rushed forward and smashed her back against the stone wall of the cavern.

Ariadne pounded, pushed, and kicked uselessly against Liliane’s form, looking to the world like a stubborn child being dragged unwillingly off to bed.

“Enough, Daughter,” the Prince said. “There is a carefully ordered plan at work here, and you cannot jump ahead. Fear not, though. It is time for you to play your role.”

 

 




 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

DAVID NURENBERG, PhD, is a teacher, freelance writer, and social activist who lives in the Boston area. His credits with White Wolf include writing for the Vampire: The Requiem, Scion, and Exalted lines. His nonfiction has appeared in the Boston Globe, Newsweek, USA Today, and Multicultural Review, as well as many lesser-known papers, ’zines, and blogs. Silent Knife is his first novel published by a major press. His favorite animal is the wombat.