Fan Fiction ❯ The Vampire Hunter II: Bloodlines ❯ Chapter 10

Clark opened her eyes and looked around the room. It took her a moment to remember where she was.

Egypt.

She'd always wanted to visit the pyramids and see the sphinx. There were other supposedly mystical places she hoped to visit someday, like Stonehenge, but she'd been too busy hunting vampires to ever take a vacation.

With her chosen profession in mind, Clark got up and started her day. She took a shower to wake herself up and then ordered room service, as she got dressed. While she waited for her food to arrive, Clark checked for new reservations by Gabrielle's entourage, but there were none.

Clark sat down at her computer and began the standard routine she'd established while stuck in Melbourne. She researched the owners of the building she'd tracked Gabrielle to and then transferred the information directly into a new report. The file remained much smaller than most of the others Clark had prepared, as she came across fewer and fewer leads to follow.

The owner of the land was apparently totally unconnected to the owners of the buildings that were built on it. Each of the buildings, which were listed as a warehouse, a three-family dwelling, and two businesses, had different owners, and none of them could be connected to one another. At least, nothing beyond the fact that all the buildings had been built on the same piece of land and the owners were leasing their part of it.

Clark took down addresses for all of the owners and printed out maps to each of their homes to check out later. She also found their places of work and checked on their employers to see if she could pick up any more leads, but she only found more dead ends. There was nothing that seemed strange or out of the ordinary. No one seemed to have large amounts of money or strong political influences or unusual family histories.

But Gabrielle was there, so there had to be other vampires involved. And not just any vampires, but powerful ones, the upper echelons. This was where Gabrielle and her siblings had begun their reign as gods and goddesses, according to Gabrielle. Her father had been the center of Egyptian worship.

Clark pushed away from the computer and stood up, so she could pace. It helped her think sometimes.

From the very beginning, vampires would have ruled the land. They would have been everywhere. But then Christianity came and the vampires went underground, as the religion they'd created was overshadowed by the new monotheism sweeping the known world. But the framework would have remained and they would have continued to use it to stay hidden.

Clark snapped her fingers.

"That's it."

Worshipping the vampires, doing their bidding, everything involving them would be as common as going to work. In their homeland, they were completely invisible because they had never existed in the system. Their servants did, but the web was so vast, there were no obvious common denominators.

In a land where they'd existed before the written word, where they'd essentially always existed, they'd had centuries in which to become accustom to living that way. Why would they suddenly change simply because technology had in the past few hundred years?

Clark sat back down at her desk and realized she probably wouldn't be finding any written records of the vampires she was attempting to track. In New York, it was easy to rely on computer records to follow the movements of various vampires. When a human was converted in this day and age, they were already in the system and usually chose to stay in it. Passing as human had its advantages in her society. But for these vampires, there was no new starting point. They had existed before the system and there were probably very few rewards in comparison to non-existence within the human world. It was certainly making Clark's job a lot more difficult.

Clark rubbed at her eyes and looked at the open window. It was only a few hours before dusk. She glanced at her empty plate of food, and sighed when her stomach growled.

"All right, give me a minute," she told the loud beast.

She added a few more notes and saved the report. Then she sent it to her server and closed her connection before shutting down the laptop. It didn't take long for her to decide to go out to eat. That way, she could ride out to the pyramids and see them at sunset. Dinner and the Giza Plateau sounded perfect after staring at a computer screen for the past few hours.

~\/^^^\/~

Gabrielle felt the sun move below the horizon and sat up. The tomb she'd chosen as her sleeping quarters was cool and musty and reminded her of the many places she'd slept in when she was still seen as a living goddess.

There had never really been a time when she'd accepted her place in her father's house as a deity. She had received sacrifices the same as her siblings, but she'd never been comfortable with it. After a few hundred years, she'd moved out of the palace that had been built in her honor and begun sleeping in tombs dug in the earth. Her followers had readily accepted this, since she was a goddess of the earth. Her siblings had simply ignored her, and her father had acted as though it were a phase she would grow out of someday.

But she hadn't. She'd stopped receiving sacrifices and had started hunting among the dregs of society. Had she known she was acting as a role model for her younger siblings and their progeny, she might have continued accepting the sacrifices instead. Unfortunately, her brethren had only taken her surface actions into account and had started hunting humans indiscriminately.

Gabrielle left her tomb and took the short walk to the surface. She didn't want to think about the past and that was all she'd done since arriving. Now she knew why she'd stayed away for as long as she had; too many memories.

Gabrielle made her way through the city and started looking for breakfast. It wasn't hard to find. Every land had its undesirable citizens and Egypt was no different. She drained her prey, hid the body, and began a new search. After three more kills, she decided she was finished with her hunt and wandered around the city for another hour, getting to know all the changes that had taken place while she was away.

But she soon grew tired of wandering aimlessly. She looked up and saw the three points of the Giza pyramids rising in the distance and decided they would make an interesting diversion. She hadn't seen them up close in a very long time.

Gabrielle remembered when each of the pyramids had been built. Her father's control had been at its peak and the pharaohs had used their authority as human-born gods to force the people into building them. The manipulation was so complete that most slaves, if asked, were entirely willing to give their blood and sweat, and even their very lives, to create the great monuments for their kings' afterlives. Most of them felt they were getting a chance to touch a god in some small way, something that was so far out of their reach it was unthinkable.

She stopped walking and looked up at the Great Pyramid. Moonlight illuminated the gigantic structure and Gabrielle was once again lost in memories of previous lifetimes. But as she studied the triangular face of the monument, Gabrielle became aware of a new presence, as it entered her peripheral senses. She realized it was the same presence she'd felt the night before in the courtyard at Subira's.

And it was coming closer.

~\/^^^\/~

Clark slipped passed the security surrounding the Sphinx to get a better look. She'd sat through the three light shows that detailed the history of Egypt and the building of the great monuments at Giza, but after the last one, the crowds had left and the lights had been extinguished.

But Clark wasn't ready to go back to her hotel room for more research yet. It hadn't been a conscious decision at the time, but she'd needed a break and so she'd left the GPS locator in the room and only taken her most basic tools with her. She decided she would return in a few hours and check up on Gabrielle then.

Right now, Clark was busy taking in the Sphinx. It wasn't as large as some pictures she'd seen had tried to make it appear, but it certainly wasn't small. The front paws alone were taller than Clark, and standing between those giant limbs and looking up at the head of the Sphinx was thrilling.

Clark dodged a security patrol before quietly beginning the trek over to the pyramids and took a sip of water from the canteen at her hip. She'd read that the arid desert had a way of sucking the water out of you, so she'd brought plenty with her. She headed for the Great Pyramid, which happened to be the closest. Judging the distance in the moonlight, she estimated it wouldn't take her very long to get there.

~\/^^^\/~

Gabrielle stood completely still and waited. The presence was very familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. It was like something she'd known all her life, but had never thought about consciously, like the air passing over her skin.

"Good evening."

Gabrielle didn't jump, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She turned towards the feminine voice, still hidden in shadow, and waited.

"You're not going to greet me in return? I wouldn't have expected such an appalling lack of manners from someone in your position. But maybe you think I'm beneath you, not worthy of your respect?"

The voice came from a hooded figure and Gabrielle was sure she'd never heard it before, but it still sounded familiar somehow.

"Maybe if you could see me it would make you feel better?" the voice had a tinge of laughter to it.

The cloaked figure took two steps forward and entered the moonlight. She peeled back the hood of her cloak and stood openly in the light.

Gabrielle took an involuntary step back. She blinked and squinted her eyes to focus more clearly on the person standing in front of her, even though her preternatural sight was perfect. Except for the long, wavy hair, the woman looked exactly like her.

"Who are you?" Gabrielle whispered, as she studied her duplicate, looking for any possible flaws that might give her away as an imposter.

"Ah, now there's a question for the ages. My contemporary name is Cynthia, Sin-Thea, the sin of the goddess." She shrugged at the non-recognition on Gabrielle's face. "I thought it was fitting, anyway. But you may remember me better as Apophis."

Gabrielle shook her head.

"Apophis was a myth. The evil twin of my father to explain the blood ceremonies he participated in."

"Well, I don't know about the evil part, but I am a twin, just not of our father."

Gabrielle continued to shake her head. This simply wasn't possible.

"This isn't possible. My mother died soon after I was born."

"Yes, I know. You killed her while I was still inside her belly. I remember hearing her heart stop. And her screams, as you ate her alive. But I'm sure you remember those events as well."

Gabrielle did. She'd been fully conscious in her mother's womb. She'd been unable to see, and sounds had been very muffled, but she'd been aware since shortly after her brain had formed its most rudimentary pathways. She'd learned later that her father had come from a species that passed down their memories genetically. However, in her and her siblings, that particular trait had simply been an early consciousness of self, rather than actual knowledge of their parent's ancestral line.

Gabrielle had been born in the normal way, but instead of suckling milk at her human mother's breast, she'd bit into it and begun feeding on her blood. As far as Gabrielle knew, her mother hadn't shown any signs that she still had a second child inside her womb, while the servants cleaned up the afterbirth and then returned Gabrielle to her. Then again, there had been very little known about her kind, considering she was the first.

"I had to claw my way out of our mother's lifeless body because of you," Cynthia informed her. "Luckily, the servant that was sent to clean up your mess was a simple enough prey for me to handle in my weakened state."

Gabrielle gave up on the idea that the vampire was lying. All her vampiric senses assured her that Cynthia was telling the truth. So, Gabrielle did something she was very good at; she accepted it and moved on. With acceptance came curiosity.

"Did Father know about you?" Gabrielle asked.

"Oh, we have much more important things to discuss than daddy. Like your recent exploits. You know, this is a nice little empire you've built for yourself. But it's so wasted on you."

Gabrielle's curiosity was quickly replaced by her more usual stony expression, as she realized Cynthia wasn't interested in a family reunion.

"That's your opinion."

"Yes. Yes, it is my opinion, and it's a good opinion, a very accurate opinion."

"If you say so," Gabrielle shrugged in feigned indifference.

"I do."

Cynthia walked around Gabrielle as though she were trying to get a better angle of attack. But Gabrielle could feel the strength of the vampire and it was far below her own vampire-blood enhanced abilities. Cynthia had never fed on a high Order vampire, so even though she was First Order, she was nowhere near Gabrielle's level.

"Why are you here? Why reveal yourself to me now?" Gabrielle questioned in a bored tone, though she couldn't quite hide her interest.

Cynthia smiled.

"Because you've become too powerful for your own good and you're going to doom the Order, if you continue with your plans."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, don't try to play dumb with me. I've been watching you for a very long time. You've given them our father's technology and you're trying to prepare them for even more. You've already given them far too much as it is. They should still be using torches to light their homes. Instead, they're planning missions to Mars."

"They would have gotten there eventually. I only speeded things up a little," Gabrielle defended herself.

"Yes, and now they have nuclear bombs. How wonderful for them," Cynthia mocked.

"They took the knowledge in a direction I didn't think possible at the time."

"Exactly. What do you think they'll do with your next gifts?"

"They won't receive any more gifts until they're truly ready," Gabrielle vowed.

"Ah, here we go again. You do enjoy playing a god, don't you?"

"I'm not a god," Gabrielle spat the word out.

"Then what is it? Why do you want to help the humans so much? They're our food."

"No, that was never our father's intention."

"Yeah? Well, daddy isn't here anymore, now is he? You made sure of that."

Gabrielle shook her head.

"He wasn't sane. He'd forgotten who he was. He had to be stopped."

"Hmm. Didn't you say the same thing about Blake? At least, that's what I heard, anyway. Funny how you keep killing anyone who's a threat to your power."

"It's not like that."

"Really? Then what's it like? You killed all of our siblings' children and our father. I'm sure you would have killed me, if you'd known about me. And most recently, you've killed the former head of our Order, along with his most powerful supporters, and taken his place as our illustrious leader. Now, if I did something like that, wouldn't you try to stop me, no matter what my reasons?"

Gabrielle didn't answer.

"You know, just because your 'vision' for humans is nicer than mine doesn't excuse what you've done. You're just as ruthless and power hungry as the rest of us. You just hide it behind pretty goals and lofty ideals. I don't want to hurt the humans. I just like my food 'free range,' so to speak. I don't think we should interfere in their progress. Let them fend for themselves. They don't want our help, anyway. In fact, if they knew what you were planning, you'd be dead by morning."

Gabrielle glanced away for only a second, but when she looked back, Cynthia was gone.