“My name is Teskhamen,” said this ancient one who was looking at him with such mild, gracious eyes. “I come from old Egypt. I was a servant of the Mother.”
“Doesn’t everyone say that these days, since the publication of the Vampire Chronicles?” asked Everard angrily before he could stop himself. “Do any of you ever cop to having been a renegade or some clever menace who wheedled the Blood from a Gypsy blood drinker in a ragged caravan?”
The ancient one laughed out loud. But it was a good-natured laugh. “Well, I see I have indeed put you at your ease,” he said. “And that didn’t prove to be hard after all.” His face grew serious. “Do you have any idea who the Voice might be?”
“You’re asking me?” Everard scoffed. “You must have two thousand years in the Blood. Look at you.” He glared at the two ghosts. “Don’t you know who he is?” He flashed back on Teskhamen. “That little monster’s driving me crazy. I can’t shut him out.”
Teskhamen nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that, but it is possible to ignore him. It takes patience and skill, but it can be done.”
“Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH!” said Everard. “He sticks his invisible needle through my temple. He must be in the vicinity.”
He glared again at the two ghosts. They didn’t even shiver. Sometimes ghosts did that when you glared directly at them. The apparitions shivered or quivered, but not these two.
The one who appeared to be an older man extended his ghostly hand.
Everard took it, discovering it felt entirely human and that it was warm and soft.
“Raymond Gallant,” said the ghost in English. “If you’ll allow it, I’m your friend.”
“Magnus,” said the younger male ghost. His was a marvelous face for anyone, ghost or blood drinker, or mortal, for that matter. His eyes crinkled again agreeably as he smiled and he did indeed have a particularly beautiful mouth, what people call a generous mouth, as well formed as the Apollo Belvedere. His forehead was beautiful, and his hair moving back from it in waves of ashen blond was handsome.
Those names rang a bell, but Everard couldn’t place them. Raymond Gallant. Magnus.
“I don’t think the Voice is in the vicinity,” said Teskhamen. “I think he can be anyplace that he wants to be, anywhere in the world, but it does seem he can only be in one place at a time and of course that ‘place’ is inside a blood drinker’s mind.”
“Which means what, exactly?” demanded Everard. “How’s he doing it? Who is he?”
“That is what we would like to know,” said Raymond Gallant. Again he spoke in British English.
Everard switched into English immediately. He liked the brashness of English, and he had become entirely used to it as the language of the world today. But Everard’s English was American.
“What are you, a blood drinker, doing with two ghosts?” he asked Teskhamen. “No offense intended, believe me. It’s only that I’ve never seen a blood drinker keep company with ghosts.”
“Well, we do keep company,” said the iron-haired apparition, the one who appeared to be an older man. “We have for a long time. But I assure you, we have no evil designs on you or anyone.”
“Then why are you here and asking me questions about this Voice?”
“He’s inciting violence all over the world right now,” said Teskhamen. “Young blood drinkers are being slain in small towns and cities everywhere. This happened once before but we know the cause of that massacre. We don’t know the cause of what’s going on now. And blood drinkers are being quietly annihilated in out-of-the-way places and even in their private sanctuaries without anyone taking notice.”
“Then how did you notice?” asked Everard.
“We hear things,” said the ghost named Magnus. Deep, smooth voice.
Everard nodded.
“There’s an American vampire out of New York broadcasting about it,” said Everard with a faint sneer. There was something insufferably vulgar about those words, and he was mortified suddenly to have spoken them, but at once the three beings all confirmed agreeably that they already knew.
“Benji Mahmoud,” said Teskhamen.
“He’s as addle-brained as the Voice,” said Everard. “The little numbskull thinks we’re a tribe.”
“Well, we are, aren’t we?” asked the ancient one gently. “I always thought we were. We were in olden times.”
“Well, not now,” said Everard. “Listen, this Voice thing promised to destroy me if I didn’t do its bidding. Do you think it has the power to do that? Can it do that?”
“It appears to work in a fairly simply way,” said Teskhamen. “It rouses old ones to burn others, and young ones to burn their lairs. And I suspect it depends entirely on finding gullible and susceptible servants. It seems to have no other plan.”
“Then it can rouse some gullible or susceptible one to stamp out me.”
“We’ll tell you what we can to prevent that,” said Teskhamen.
“Why would you bother?” asked Everard.
“We truly are all one tribe,” said the iron-haired ghost softly. “Human, vampire, spirit, ghost—we’re all sentient creatures bound to this planet. Why can’t we work together in the face of something like this?”
“And to what end?” asked Everard.
“To stop the Voice,” said Teskhamen with just a trace of impatience. “To prevent it from hurting others.”
“But we deserve to be hurt,” said Everard. “Don’t we?” He was surprised to hear this come out of his mouth.
“No, I don’t think that we do,” said Teskhamen. “That’s the kind of thinking that has to change. That’s the kind of thinking that will change.”
“Oh, wait, don’t tell me!” Everard declared. And in a mock-American voice he said, “ ‘We are the change that we seek’! No? Tell me you believe that, and I’m going to fall off this chair and roll into the street laughing.”
The three smiled at him, but he could sense that, polite as they were, they did not like being mocked, and he was suddenly sorry. It penetrated to him with amazing sharpness that these three had been nothing but kind and courteous and that he was behaving crossly and stupidly, wasting these moments, and for what?
“Why can’t we come together,” asked the younger male ghost, “to achieve some kind of peace for the realm we share?”