“I know you, Marius. I know you well. I know that you love your companion, Daniel. Do as I ask of you and he will never be in danger.”
Marius ignored the Voice, as certainly as a priest might ignore the small voice of Satan, calculating all the while: How does this creature get into my brain? How does he manage to speak to me in such a palpable warm way as if we were brothers?
“I am you, Marius, and you are me,” said the Voice. “Listen to what I say.”
Marius wouldn’t let Daniel out of his sight.
The handsome old coven house in Santa Teresa had been burned to the ground. If any of the young survived in Rio de Janeiro they were silent. Even the great country surrounding the city was silent. No sharp, tinny, and piercing cries out there anymore for help.
As they walked along the beach together near midnight, Daniel and Marius, side by side at the end of the waves, Marius listened. He was a beachcomber in khaki, with his sandals tied to his belt. And Daniel was easy in his polo shirt and dungarees, sneakers easily pushing against the hard sand.
Far off in the jungles to the north, Marius heard preternatural voices, faint but filled with rage. Maharet was there now, he knew it. In those Amazonian jungles. He recognized some faint pattern of speech, of telepathic eruption that even the great Maharet could not contain or control.
He and Daniel had to leave Brazil. This was a safe place no longer. Daniel said he understood. “Whither thou goest, I go,” he had said. It amazed Marius that Daniel seemed so indifferent to danger, that his zest for all he saw around him remained so strong. Having survived madness, he was now wise beyond his years in the Blood, accepting that another crisis had come, and that he might survive this one as he had survived the Akashan Massacre before. As he himself had put it earlier this evening, “I was Born to Darkness in the midst of a storm.”
Marius loved Daniel. He had salvaged Daniel from the aftermath of that storm, and never for one moment regretted it. Marius knew that Daniel had also salvaged him from the same chaos, becoming for Marius someone Marius could care for, someone Marius could personally love. It meant the world to Marius that he was not walking on this beach alone, that Daniel was walking at his side.
The night was magnificent as it so often was over Copacabana Bay, the silvery surf raging on the endless sand, mortals few and far between and keeping to themselves. The great city of Rio was never silent, and the din of traffic and machines, and the teeming mortal voices, blended for Marius with the sweet and incessant symphony of the waves.
All things under Heaven contain some blessing, and so it is with modern noise that it can become the gentle roar of a waterfall in our ears protecting us from disparate and ghastly sounds. Ah, but what is Heaven but a silent and indifferent void through which the shattering noise of explosions echo forever or are heard not at all? And men once spoke of the music of the spheres.
But we are blessed to be tiny beings in this universe. We are blessed to feel momentous because we are larger than these grains of sand.
Something intruded suddenly on his thoughts.
Far ahead in the darkness, he spied a lone figure coming towards them. Immortal. Powerful. Child of the Millennia. He drew Daniel close to him, putting his arm around Daniel as if Daniel were his son. Daniel too had sensed the presence perhaps, even heard the subtle heartbeat.
Who are you?
He could pick up no answer. The figure came on steadily, a slim delicate-boned male, in a soft ankle-length white Arabic robe, the robe flapping in the wind. His short white hair was mussed by the wind. The moonlight made an aureole out of it, and the steps came on as the steps of the ancient always do, with measured strength indifferent to the softness of the terrain.
Now is this how it is to happen? Had the Voice roused this rude instrument to smite them with fire?
There was nothing to do but move steadily towards this figure. What good would it do to flee? With one so old, flight might be impossible, for eyes such as these can follow an ascending body everywhere when there is nothing else to distract them.
Again, Marius identified himself silently, but there was no response, not the smallest inkling of a thought, an attitude, an emotion from the other, as he slowly came into full view.
They approached each other in silence, crunch of sand underfoot, sigh of the wind, and then the white-haired one extended his hand. Long almost spidery fingers.
“Marius,” he said. “My beloved, my savior of long ago, my friend.”
“I know you?” asked Marius politely. Even as he clasped the hand he divined nothing but what the agreeable and open face reflected: friendship. No danger.
But this one was far older than Marius, perhaps as much as a thousand years. His eyes were black and his unblemished skin the color of amber, which made his white hair all the more remarkable, a cloud of white light around his head.
“I’m Teskhamen,” said the older one. “And you, you are the one who gave me new life.”
“How did I ever do that?” asked Marius. “When and where did we ever meet?”
“Come, let’s find a quiet place where we can talk.”
“My rooms?” asked Marius.
“If you wish, or the bench up there at the boardwalk. This is a quiet night on the boardwalk. And the sea is like molten silver to my eyes. The breeze is fragrant and comforting. Let’s go there.”
They climbed the sands together, Daniel hanging slightly behind as if it were the respectful thing to do.
And when Marius and Teskhamen sat down together, Daniel chose another bench nearby. They were all three facing the distant waves, facing that writhing pearly surf. Beyond the mist the stars climbed forever. Great far-off mountains and rocks were purely dark.
Marius looked at Daniel anxiously. He didn’t want a divide from Daniel of even a few feet.
“Don’t be concerned for him now,” said Teskhamen. “We are more than adequate to protect him, and what stalks the young blood drinkers tonight is on the move in other cities. The young of this place have already been exterminated. It turned them against each other. It played on their distrust of one another and their escalating fear. It was not content merely with the burning of the house; it hunted them down one by one.”
“So that is how it is being done.”
“That is one way. There are others. It becomes more clever with every passing night.”
“I saw it,” said Marius. And indeed he had in images, those battles, images he would like very much to forget. “But please, tell who you are and what you want with me.” He had said this politely, but he was a little ashamed of himself. After all, obviously this old one was friendly and knowledgeable as to what was happening. This old one wanted to help.