Camdeboo Nights (21 page)

So many unanswered questions. Why had Timothy cracked? There was the irony that of their worst so-called “enemies” now lay in a refrigerated drawer at the undertakers, the funeral taking place on Saturday. What was the final proverbial last straw that pushed that boy to premeditate that attack? To think they’d tried to save him from bullying earlier that week. Maybe they could have done more to draw him out. It must have taken him hours to create the scarecrow mask with its mop of sisal hair, its wicked, stitched mouth. Helen shuddered as the thought of the swordsman paused before her, sending a shadow to obscure her vision.

Her father killed the call and regarded her, the sharpness draining from his features and his eyes softening. “You okay, mug-wump?”

“I’m as okay as I can be, Dad.”

“Good.”

Helen breathed deeply. “Do we have to go? It was just random. I’m sure everything will be okay in a month or so.”

“My dear, I’ve been a shit father for too long now.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “This made me realize that you two are more precious than–”

“Than spending time with your new girlfriend?” Helen kept her gaze leveled on the leaves of the willow scraping the windshield.

“Look, it’s not a serious– Ah, fuck it, Helen. Can’t I just try to make amends? Please? I’m only human.”

“First you throw us away out here in the middle of the Karoo. You send us to a boarding school so we only get to see Mom on weekends–shoved away in some stinking little Karoo hamlet. Now, you suddenly wonder why we’re less than enthusiastic to come away with you only once we could have been killed?” The depth of Helen’s anger surprised her. She’d been on a slow simmer for a very long time.

Brent gripped the steering wheel, the skin of his face reddening. Angering him more would not be a good thing. Damon interrupted by slipping onto the back seat, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Can we go now?”

Brent’s features pulled into the genial mask Helen had seen him use on waiters in restaurants, the smile vague, not reaching his eyes. “Glad to hear we’re ready to go. Buckle up, kids.”

As if they were still five. And she wasn’t sitting where Mom should be.

Helen hissed quietly. It would be better to say nothing now. She knew only too well what her brother could get like when he was pissed, the Ashfield temper matching the red hair.

Instead she kept her face turned to the window for the duration of the drive to Nieu Bethesda, then numbly went through the motions of saying her goodbyes to a grandmother with wooden features and a mother too far gone on tranquilizers to figure out her children were leaving her. Helen feigned sleep for the seven-hour journey to Gauteng. She curled onto her side and made a pillow of her jersey, which remained damp with her tears. How could everything become so completely screwed up in such a short time?

Chapter 25

The Black Pope

The chamber in which they’d locked Trystan was so dark he could not see his hand before his face. He hated this kind of dark that seemed as solid as the rock entombing him.

The night, when there were stars and gentle, sloping shadows, was another matter entirely. He had no idea how long he’d been kept here, either.

Pacing wasn’t an option. His prison didn’t offer enough space for him to stand, let alone walk, so he crouched, his muscles complaining as time passed.

Reaching
didn’t help. He came up against empty tunnels honeycombing the rock. Mine shafts? He’d heard stories about secret claims lost in the Knysna forest, an abrupt gold rush that had never quite lived up to expectations. He’d visited Millwood at its height, but this? This seemed far more extensive.

Mantis, no doubt, had already reached Graaff-Reinet. Helen would be dead, turned or on her way to Johannesburg now in Mantis’s company, to what purpose he daren’t guess. The possible outcomes were all equally grim.

They wouldn’t leave her alone, not when she blazed brighter than a magnesium flare.

A low growl built in his chest, more from the frustration at his inaction than anything else. All these years he’d been a right royal fool with his head stuck up his arse.

Well, at the time running away and hiding had seemed the better option. Now what? He’d be lucky if he got out of here with his hide intact.

His only escape had been barred with heavy wooden sleepers bound with steel. The door fit so snugly against its frame he could scarcely stick his fingers into the gap, nor could he gain leverage in order to try to force the door open. The steel panels had been bolted in, the bolts welded into the smooth, unyielding surface. When he hurled himself against the barrier, he only succeeded in hurting himself.

Trapped like a rat.

He’d tried calling out, tried
reaching
farther. Nothing. Trystan contented himself by singing, dredging up the songs he could remember and humming the tunes for the songs whose words he had forgotten.

Drip. Drip.
The moisture rolled off the walls to make small rivulets that trickled across the sloping floor. Perhaps they would lock him up forever, to slip into hibernation. He’d heard about those vamps doomed to a coma-like state of slow starvation. In his current situation, he could last two years before sleep claimed him. Two years of trying to deal with the growing hunger, the terminal boredom and the uncertainty of his fate. He should have made a dash for it before his captors forced him into this chamber. Damn. He should have made his escape when Mantis first waylaid him.

Dwelling on the could-have-beens and the should-have-beens was useless.

“Face it, old chum, you’re royally screwed. There’s nothing to it but wait.”

Trystan laughed then. If he already talked to himself now, what sort of chance would he have of holding onto his sanity after six months–a year or more?

For a while he sat, content to allow his limbs to settle into the most comfortable position he could muster, hands resting palm-down on his knees. With eyes wide and staring, he allowed his memories to surge to the fore, and wallowed in the pain that still throbbed like a deeply embedded knife.

Twist the blade, that’s right, lad. She was beautiful, wasn’t she? That one from so long ago. You loved the way the moon would make her hair shine with silver. Remember how she liked to dance? And, she loved the sea, loved leaping at the waves, letting them crash over her.

But, lad, how do you know if it wasn’t just her Essence that drew you? What a fine pair you made. Elders said you two would be destined for great things. What happened, boy? Was a simple co-mingling of your flesh not enough? You had to go destroy it all by taking physical affection further, didn’t you? You had to have her Essence as well.

Vampires couldn’t cry but his eyes still burned with tears that wouldn’t fall. The infatuation had started so innocently at first, a game, really. They’d taken small sips from each other.

“No one will know,” she’d whispered, a smile playing over her small, round mouth. “It will be our little secret.”

The others had whispered, but their illicit activities had not been discovered.

“It’s only an exchange of Essence. What harm can it do?” she’d said, her teeth grazing his chin.

Trystan had been past disagreeing by that stage. Small sips turned to frantic draughts as they’d started clutching at each other, biting and sucking as if locked in mortal combat.

The physical aspects of their relationship had been amazing but it had never been enough. They’d spent more and more time alone, together, rarely leaving their nest, even to hunt for more blood.

“It’s a closed circuit. We’re perfect together,” she’d whispered.

Their flesh grew shiny, tight and hard, outlining bones which protruded, crystalline against skin gone translucent. They knew a hunger that was only satisfied by their own salt-sweet blood, and eventually gave up on all activities save to latch onto one another and drink, one long continuous explosion of sensation that chafed on their senses like static.

Eventually this was no longer enough. The night came where Trystan’s need overcame his love for the fragile porcelain doll cradled in his arms–the release of allowing instinct to rule, to devour and assimilate his lover’s Essence in one pure rush brought both relief and regret.

As Antoinette’s last quivers ceased, her slack mouth had fallen from his neck to sever their connection, and she’d crumbled to ashes in his embrace, disintegrating as quickly as he tried to hold her form together.

This particular memory caused a roar to shudder through Trystan’s frame–ultimate loss, ultimate betrayal. Gathered from his gut, surging up and out of his throat, a wordless wail escaped his body. He screamed until the memory vanished, replaced by the noise so he could curl into himself, a fetal ball. Lost to the rest of existence, he lay still in the choking dark, conscious only of the wet cold of the stones pressing into his body. Small, many-legged creatures skittered over him, and he didn’t care.

The Renegades unbarred the door, heavy rods drawn back in an agony of metal on metal. The sound had the same effect on him as a shot of pure adrenalin to the heart. With a hiss, Trystan pulled himself into a crouch and pressed against the wall opposite the door, blinded in the sudden brightness.

He greeted his two guards with fangs extended and a low, sibilant sound escaped his lips.

“
Inja!
You think we scared?” one said as he flipped a mass of braids to the side.

The other flashed him a grin. The blue-green light of the gas lamp he held pushed back the dark. The lamp looked incongruous in the vampire’s hand. Old and new combined in a way that would be comical under a different set of circumstances.

“He see you now.” Lamp-bearer’s sharp teeth flashed luminescent, white.

Trystan dropped his defensive stance as much as his instincts would allow. A chance to escape might exist, after all. Or, he could talk his way out of the situation.

Short-stuff grunted, and poked at Trystan with his bone-shard spear.

“No funny business,” Trystan muttered as he shuffled out into the passage.

“No funny business.” Lamp-bearer gestured for Trystan to walk ahead of them. Their way sloped down, where ancient struts supported the mass of earth and stone above them.

“Where are we going?”

They did not reply, conversing quietly with each other in Xhosa. Trystan set each foot before the other, his toes gripping slick wet pebbles that crunched underfoot. The wobbling light threw a bright patch into the darkness that rushed in behind them as they went deeper.

The path eventually abandoned man-made spaces when they reached the end of the regular, square-hewn tunnel carved so many years ago. They made a right turn into a natural, shaped cave that bulbed and twisted in a completely different direction.

What had the miners thought when they had encountered this? Surely they hadn’t expected it. The ever-present
drip-drip
of water spoke of years of quiet erosion. Delicate calcite stalactites flashed when the lamplight struck them before being swallowed by blackness. A slight breeze on his face spoke of a hidden opening. A way out.

Or he could make a dash for it and spend the rest of his existence fumbling about, blind.

“
Mlungu
, stop,” Short-stuff said. “We’re here.”

Here
proved to be a dead end until Lamp-bearer lifted his lamp to illuminate the narrow slot to his left, a crack between two flowing ripples of stone.

Obedient, he slid through the slot and tried not to think of rock squashing him or him becoming wedged so tightly that he would never escape.

“The Black Pope must be chuffed that he has this little fortress.” Trystan grunted as he squeezed into the chamber beyond. Lamp-bearer and Short-stuff joined him, and brought the light with them into the chamber. Trystan gasped at the sight that greeted him.

Great columns descended from the barrel-vaulted ceiling, carved from living stone and inlaid with precious gems, gold and silver–more wealth than he’d ever imagined existed. Diamonds, tanzanite, ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, garnet, amethyst and tourmaline, carved and polished, millions of facets winking back.

Some of the shapes appeared abstract, at first, until Trystan’s vision resolved the forms of attenuated human and animal-headed figures dancing and weaving on the walls, pillars and ceiling. The floor had been inlaid with sheaths of mother-of-pearl. His bare feet and broken toenails looked mean and dirty by comparison.