“Proceed,” the synthesizer said.
Ahmare stepped through and stopped where she was as she was closed in. Up ahead, on a raised dais, an oak throne faced away from her, its high back carved with twisted figures being tortured.
“Right on time,” a thin voice said. “Punctuality is so important.”
The dais began to turn with a grind, the throne coming around slowly, and Ahmare tightened her grip on the duffel’s straps. Chalen had come out of the Bloodletter’s war camp centuries before, honed by that sadistic fighter into a killing machine who was efficient only when he had to be. Otherwise, it was well-known that he preferred agony over any manner of quick dispatch—
Ahmare’s breath caught. And then exhaled in a rush.
“Not what you expected?” the murderer said as the dais bumped to a stop.
Beneath a cockeyed crown that was missing its head stone in the front, the contorted and pockmarked corpse slouched on the hardwood was in the final stages of dying. Vampires were not like humans when it came to the aging process. Rather than a slow descent into an elderly state, the species went through the transition to maturity at around twenty-five, and following that, their bodies stayed in a state of prime physical condition until the very end of their lives. At that point, a rapid degeneration took place, faculties failing in a tumble that led quickly into the grave.
Chalen the Conqueror had a matter of weeks. If not less.
A skeletal hand extended out of his black robe and cranked a hold onto the throne’s arm. There was a grunt as he repositioned himself, and as the wrinkled and decaying face grimaced, she imagined what he must have looked like when he’d been in his prime. She had heard the stories of a massive male whose brute strength was surpassed only by his taste for cruelty.
It was hard to get there from where he was now.
“Old age is not for the faint of heart.” The smile revealed many missing teeth, only one broken fang on the left remaining. “I will caution you of its approach when it comes for you.”
“I have what you asked for.”
“Do you. Clever female. Let me see.”
Ahmare dropped the duffel and unzipped it, making sure that none of her reactions showed. Reaching in, she unknotted the Glad trash bag and put her hand into the black plastic. Gripping matted, blood-soaked hair, she pulled out a severed head, the scent of fresh, raw meat wafting up.
Chalen’s laugh was the kind of thing that was going to stay with her. Low, satisfied . . . and nostalgic. As if he wished he’d been the one to do the killing.
“Clever, clever female,” he whispered.
That bony hand released its grip and pointed at the cold hearth. “Place it there. I have a spot for him.”
Ahmare walked over to a spear that been inserted into a hole drilled in the stone floor. Lifting the head, she positioned the sharp tip at the base of the skull and shoved down. As she forced the impaling, she had to stare into the face of what she had killed: The eyes were open but sightless, the skin gray, the mouth loose and gruesome. Tendrils of tendons and ligaments, like the skirts of a jellyfish, hung down from where she had crudely severed the spinal column.
It had been a hack job. She had never killed before. Never beheaded before. And the effort required to pop the top off the dandelion, so to speak, had been a sweaty, messy, horrific revelation.
As she turned back around, she wanted to vomit. But the human had been a piece of shit, a drug dealer with no morals who had sold bad shit to children. Who had contaminated her brother with a false promise of financial gain. Who made the colossal mistake of setting up and operationalizing a plan to cheat their supplier.
Why did you make me do this, she thought at her brother.
“Tell me what it was like to kill him,” Chalen ordered.
There was a rapacious edge to the command, a hunger that needed feeding, a pilot light that burned within the wasted shell that would never, ever bring a pot to boil again.
“Give me my brother,” she said grimly. “And I’ll take you through it step-by-step.”
2
YOUR BROTHER IS FINE.”
As Chalen spoke, it was a throwaway, a bunch of mushy syllables he didn’t bother to enunciate well. Like their deal had been forgotten or perhaps never a priority in the first place.
Ahmare narrowed her eyes. “Where is Ahlan.”
Chalen stared at the mounted head, the wilted flesh over his eyes an awning of age that must have narrowed his visual field. “What was it like? What did it feel like as you put your shoulder into the hilt and the blade went in between the vertebrae—”
“Bring my brother to me now. That was our agreement. I deliver proof that I killed Rollie, you give me my brother.”
“Old age is a thief the likes even I cannot best.”