“I’m afraid I really must apologize for Simmons,” the man across from me said.
This was the Chairman
, I thought. It could be no one else.
“A useful enough servant, but overzealous in his duties sometimes.
The matter is being looked into. It may even be that you will be able to render us some assistance before it is done.”
He shifted his head then, cocking it the way a bird does when it considers the best way to remove a worm from the ground. He raised one hand, a gesture that encompassed the other vampires at the table.
“Do you know who we are?”
His voice was like nothing I had ever heard before. It seemed to me that it reverberated through the room, inside my head.
A single voice, but so much more.
He had the most extraordinary face I had ever seen. I have never used this word to describe a man, but he was beautiful. His features were high and finely etched, but he had a full and sensuous mouth. And his eyes seemed to hold every secret in the world.
Changeable as the sea, fathomless as the deepest well.
Ancient and filled with inexorable purpose.
His hair was long, falling to his shoulders in golden waves.
Fallen angel
, I thought. For surely Lucifer had been beautiful as well. Beauty and evil so bound up together no power in Heaven or on earth could have pulled them apart. Only one thing marred his features. Below his right eye was a mark, like a single teardrop of blood. I knew what it was, what it had to be: It was the Mark of
Thoth
.
I have seen many things in my long existence. Fury, delight, agony, passion—I have seen them all. I believe there are only two things I have not seen with my own eyes: joy so great that not even the fear of its loss can cause it to dim, and evil incarnate. The second was before me now.
“I am waiting for an answer,” the Chairman said, and I discovered that I still possessed a voice.
“I do not
know
,” I said, careful to stress the final word. I saw the flicker of what might have been a smile.
“But if you had to hazard a guess,” he said.
“If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that you are the Board.”
A ripple passed through the room then, a soft sibilance that might have been a sigh.
“And what is the Board, can you tell me that?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “Not entirely.”
“Then say what you do know.”
I could feel the excitement, the tension rise within me.
Never had I been so close to such unmitigated, ancient power.
“The Board is an ancient organization,” I said.
And you were their leader, even then
, I thought.
That is why you bear the Mark upon your face. You were branded by the god
Thoth
himself
.
“Originally, they were priests—followers of the Egyptian god
Thoth
.
Second in power only to the great god Ra.
Thoth
, giver of speech and
weigher
of dead souls.
Thoth
of strong magic, even the power to become immortal.
He wrote this and many other spells in the Book of
Thoth
.”
“How poetic,” the Chairman murmured. “Go on.”
“The god’s followers desired immortality, so they performed the ritual that would complete the spell. But
Thoth
was aware of them. He cursed their tongues. Instead of becoming immortal, they became unclean, undead.
Drinkers of living blood.
And so the first vampires were born.”
The Chairman smiled. “Well done. You know the basic history. What don’t you know?”
I made a split-second decision. If the Board had wanted to put an end to me, they would have done so before now. There was no sense in lying. The Chairman would see right through that. I could feel his power,
their
power, beating at the edges of my mind.
“I do not know why I have been brought here,” I answered honestly. “I do not know what you want.”
“And yet you do not ask,” the Chairman said.
“Because I assume that you act with purpose.
That I will be informed.”
Again, a sigh seemed to pass through the vampires assembled in the room. The question was, was my response right or wrong?
“The questions you do not ask are about to be answered,” the Chairman said. “You will rise.”
I did so.
The Chairman raised his voice ever so slightly, as if speaking to unseen servants. “Bring in Sloane.”
A door to my right opened, and a second vampire was brought in. He bowed deeply before the Chairman,
then
moved to stand at my side. Sloane was dark-haired, slightly shorter than I am, with a tight, muscular build.
Mean in close quarters
, I thought. And that’s precisely where we would end up, sooner or later. I know an adversary when I see one.
“Parker Sloane, Ashford Donahue, you two have been summoned before the Board for the same purpose, the same cause. To be tested, that we may know your strength, determine which of you is most fit to join us, to become part of the great quest to restore our true power and be granted immortality.”
The empty chair
, I thought. There should be seven Board members, not six.
Seven—ancient number of power.
There was a vacancy on the Board.
“What sort of tests?” Sloane asked.
“Patience,” the Chairman counseled.
“All in good time.”
I felt a surge of satisfaction, swiftly controlled. I had been right about Sloane. He would fight like a junkyard dog when cornered. But he was impatient. Impatience makes one do stupid things.
The Chairman tilted his head once more, and the Mark of
Thoth
caught the light.
Head of an ibis, a bird with a beak great and curving as a scimitar.
Body of a man.
On his head, a full moon rising from a crescent.
In one hand,
Thoth
holds a papyrus, to remind mortal men of the gift of speech that he bestows.
In the other, a set of scales to weigh the hearts of dead humans.
There would be another such tattoo on his body
, I thought.
Directly in the center of his chest, where he had once possessed a beating heart.
All those who became true followers of the Board, vampire or human, are so marked. But only the Board’s original members would have born the god’s mark directly on their faces. Once, there would have been seven. Now, there was only one.
The others had been used up in the long centuries of their existence
, I thought, as the Chairman drew on their powers to help him continue his own existence, continue the great quest of the Board.
I had been collecting information on the Board for many years, drawn by the tales of unimaginable power matched with almost unimaginable frustration. According to the texts that I had read, after
Thoth
had shattered their ritual, he had shattered his own power, as well—taken the Book of
Thoth
out of the world,
then
split his power into three parts called the Emblems of
Thoth
: the Heart, the Body, and the Tongue of
Thoth
. Only by reuniting them could the Board complete its ancient ritual and obtain the immortality they had desired for so long.
“How do you know the tests haven’t started already?” the Chairman asked now. “There are many ways of judging worthiness, some of them quite subtle.”
Once again he raised his voice. “Simmons!” he snapped.
The door through which Sloane had entered opened. Simmons, the vampire who had captured me, staggered in. His shirt was in tatters, his pants ripped and bloody.
“Approach,” the Chairman commanded. “Stand between the supplicants.”
Simmons obeyed at once. I watched the way his eyes flickered over Sloane. He didn’t look at me at all. And in that moment, I understood. He had been punished because of the way he treated me. I was the cause of his humiliation.
“Between you stands a problem, gentlemen,” the Chairman said, his voice melodic and low. “A problem one of you will now solve. Simmons is a tool who is no longer of any use. His judgment has become flawed.”
A fine trembling seized Simmons’s limbs. He seemed powerless to stop it.
“What would you do with such a tool?” the Chairman asked. “How should it be…disposed of?”
“End him, Chairman,” Sloane spoke at once. As if pulled by a string, Simmons’s head jerked toward him.
He had hoped for some redemption there
, I thought. The Chairman was right. Simmons’s judgment was flawed. Sloane would redeem no one but himself.
“What cannot be relied upon cannot be used,” Sloane went on. “He should be destroyed.”
The Chairman’s ancient, unreadable eyes rested on Sloane, then turned to me. “Would this be your solution also?”
“No,” I said. “It would not. He may still be useful, Chairman.”
“How?”
Sloane broke in, his tone derisive. “You heard the Chairman. The tool is flawed.”
“But not broken,” I said at once. “This man seeks to please you above all else, Chairman.
You and only you.
He has forgotten that even you serve a greater cause. That is his lapse in judgment, his flaw. Instead of destroying him, withdraw your favor. Send him away. Cast him out. If you destroy him, he will be forgotten. But if he survives, he will be an example to all.”
“No!” Simmons pleaded. “Do not listen, Chairman. Don’t send me away.”
The Chairman raised a hand and Simmons’s voice choked off.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to speak.”
Tears began to track slowly down Simmons’s cheeks, but he did not make another sound.
“An elegant and painful solution,” the Chairman remarked. “I admit you interest me, Donahue. You show compassion for a human drone but none for your own kind.”
“That one is not my kind, Chairman,” I replied. “He is more drone than the human was. He has given up his will. That is an act I will never perform.”
“Then you will lose,” Sloane said at once. “For that is precisely what the Board requires.”
I turned my head to look at him. “You think so?”
“Enough,” the Chairman said. “Your solution is accepted, Ashford Donahue.” As one, the members of the Board rose, as if the Chairman’s words had been some sort of signal. “Show me the mark of your allegiance,” the Chairman commanded Simmons.
The vampire’s face had gone a sickly yellow. With trembling fingers, he drew away the remains of his tattered shirt to reveal the tattoo in the center of his chest.
The Chairman lifted his hands in a simple gesture, palms up. The other Board members mirrored it, their palms facing down. I felt a sudden current lance through the room, potent as an electrical charge. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted, the way they do when prey knows the predator is watching. Then the other Board members clasped their hands together, the sound echoing throughout the chamber. The Chairman held his, palms facing out, straight out before him.
“What was bestowed, I now take away.”
Simmons’s eyes went wide. His body twitched. He gave a great shuddering gasp. And then he simply began to scream as the power the Chairman directed at him stripped away the Mark of
Thoth
. The skin on his chest blackened, then peeled back, and still the power flowed. My hair was wild about my head now, the light from the power emanating from the Chairman’s hands all but blinding.