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The images dissolved in the pleasure that he was feeling, the deep dark throbbing pleasure he reveled in as the blood was drawn out of him with greater and greater speed. It was as if a hand had ahold of his heart and was squeezing his heart and the pleasure washed out in waves from his heart, passing through all his limbs.
Finally he turned and pulled Benedict off and sank his teeth into his neck. Benedict cried out. Rhosh ground him against the velvet cover, drawing the blood with all his strength, deliberately sending spasm after spasm through Benedict. He caught the images again. He caught the sight of London below as Benedict had taken to the skies. He caught the roar and the scent of the wind. The blood was so thick, so pungent! The fact was every single blood drinker on this Earth had a distinct and unique flavor of blood. And Benedict's was luscious. It took all his determination to let go, to run his tongue over his lips and lie back on the pillow and stare up at the worm-eaten oak ceiling of the bed.
The crackling of the fire seemed hugely loud in the empty chamber. How red was the chamber, from the fire, from the dark red draperies. Such lurid and beautiful and soothing light. My world.
"You go down now to the cellar, as I told you," Rhosh said. He rose up on his elbow and kissed Benedict roughly. "You hear me? You listening to me?"
"Yes, yes, and yes." Benedict moaned. He was obviously weak all over from the pleasure of it, but Rhoshamandes had taken only what he'd given, passing the zinging red ribbon of his own blood through the younger one's veins before whipping it back into himself.
He climbed off the bed and, before the open armoire, pulled on a heavy cashmere sweater and woolen pants, then wool socks and boots. He chose his long Russian coat for this journey, the black velvet military coat of czarist days with the black fox collar. He pulled a watch cap down over his hair. And then took from the bottom drawer of the armoire all the papers and currency he might need, and put these securely into his inside pockets. Where were his gloves? He put them on, loving the way his long fingers looked in the sleek black kid leather.
"But where are you going?" asked Benedict. He sat up, mussed, rosy cheeked, and pretty. "Tell me."
"Stop being so anxious," said Rhoshamandes. "I'm going west into the night. I'm going to find the twins and get to the bottom of this. I know this Voice has to be coming from one of them."
"But Mekare's mindless and Maharet would never do such things. Everybody knows that. Even Benji says that."
"Yes, Benji, Benji, the great prophet of the blood drinkers."
"But it's true."
"Downstairs, Benedict, before I drag you there myself. I have to be off now."
It was a fine retreat, that cellar suite of rooms, hardly a dungeon what with its thick animal skins and abundant oil lamps, and of course the oak fire laid ready to be lighted. The television and computers down there were comparable to those up here, and a slender air shaft actually brought a steady bit of fresh ocean breeze in from a tiny opening in the rocky cliff.
As Benedict went out, Rhosh went to the eastern wall, lifted the heavy stag-hunt French tapestry that covered it, and pushed back the door to his secret office, one of those doors weighted so that no mortal alone could move it.
Familiar smell of beeswax, parchment, old leather, and ink. Hmmm. He always stopped a moment to savor it.
With the power of his mind, he quickly ignited a bank of candles on iron candelabra spikes.
The rock-cut chamber was lined with books to the ceiling, and on one wall hung a huge map of the world painted by Rhosh himself on canvas to feature the cities that he most loved in correct relationship to one another.
He stood there gazing at it, remembering all the reports of the Burnings. They'd started in Tokyo, moved to China, then, Mumbai, Kolkata, the Middle East. And then broken out madly all over South America, in Peru, Bolivia, and Honduras.
Then Europe had been stricken. Even Budapest which contained Rhosh's favorite opera house. Maddening.
It seemed there had been a plan at first; but the plan had broken down into utterly random attacks--except for one
thing. The Burnings in South America had occurred in an arc that had become a crude circle. Only there did such a pattern appear. And that's where the twins were, he was sure of it, deep within the Amazon. Those who knew for certain were clever indeed, and of course he was far too close to the twins in age to have a telepathic advantage with them. But he knew. They were in the Amazon.
The eccentric Maharet favored jungle locations, and always had since the Sacred Core had been taken into her sister. He had now and then caught some weak flashes of the twins in his dreams, emanating from other minds, conveyed to yet other minds and so forth. Yes, they were in the jungles of the Amazon, the ghastly pair who had stolen the Sacred Blood from Akasha's Egypt.
Rebels, heretics, blasphemers. He'd been nourished on those old tales. In fact they were reputedly the cause of it all, were they not? The twins had brought the evil spirit of Amel into Akasha's kingdom. He didn't really care about that old mythology but he did appreciate irony and patterns in human behavior just as he appreciated these elements in books.
Well, he had scant affection for Akasha, who'd been a raving tyrant by the time he'd been dragged into her presence and forced to drink from the Sacred Fount and pledge his eternal fidelity. Icy merciless goddess. She'd been reigning for a thousand years. Or so they said. How she had inspected him, running her hard thumbs over his head, his face, his shoulders, his chest. How her unctuous fawning priests had examined him in all his parts before he was pronounced perfect to be a blood god.
And what fate had awaited him as a blood god? It was either fight under Prince Nebamun's command with the Queen's defenders or be walled up in a mountain shrine, starving, dreaming, reading minds, passing judgment for peasants who brought him blood sacrifices on holy feasts and beseeched him with endless superstitious prayers.
He'd run away soon enough. He'd planned it early. A wanderer from the isle of Crete, a seagoing wanderer and merchant, he'd never bought the dark tangled beliefs of old Egypt.
But he'd refused to abandon Nebamun in the time of his worst trial, Nebamun who'd always been kind to him. And he was not going to run when Nebamun stood before the Queen accused of high treason and blasphemy for the frivolous and selfish making of a woman blood drinker.
Making women into blood drinkers was the decadent and foul practice of the First Brood rebels, and utterly forbidden to the Queens Blood. For the blood gods and the dedicated soldiers of the Queens Blood, there need be only one woman, the Queen. Why would anyone dare to make a blood drinker of a woman? True, it had happened a few times, but only with the Queen's reluctant blessing. Not even her own sister had she brought into the Blood. Nor her daughters.
He'd been sure that Nebamun and Sevraine, his bride, were going to be put to death when Rhosh had delayed his own escape. But it hadn't happened.
The all-powerful Queen who thought her smallest whim a reflection of the Divine Mind had "loved Sevraine" when she had looked upon her. And she had let Sevraine drink her powerful blood and called her handmaiden.
