22

IMMORTAL

The ground shook. Ashley and Joe stumbled, lunging for the rough wall opposite as rock and dust consumed them from above. The stones beneath their feet bounced like popcorn, wildly smashing against their ankles. Joe yelped, boot rolling – pitching him sharply to one side.

"Quick!" Ashley grabbed Joe by the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him into a cramped alcove several feet above the floor. They sandwiched themselves into it, staying above most of the debris.

Cracks tore through the volcanic bedrock with a thunderous boom. Water gushed out through the fresh fissures and froze into jagged outcrops of ice. The daggers sheered off instantly joining the rubble on the floor.

"The whole place is coming down!" Joe squeezed himself deeper into the alcove to avoid a freezing spray of glacier water.

Nikola held his hands up innocently.

"It wasn't me!" he insisted, despite the dubious glares from both Helen and Apries.

The earthquake may have subsided but the passageway was not left unscathed. The Throat of Thoth continued to rumble overhead, boulders the size of cars slamming into the floor making Helen glance warily up the the ceiling. Eventually they stopped falling and she resumed her glare.

"At least not on purpose," Nikola amended, shifting under Helen's sharp gaze. That woman terrified him far more than the brooding vampire.

"Idiot!" the vampire raged. "You nearly brought the entire mountain down on our heads," Apries looked flustered, his claws covered in an unappealing film of dust. His sand creatures were crawling around in a daze on the floor, licking their wounds or dragging themselves out form the rubble. Some had been swatted like flies beneath falling boulders, their innards dragged over the stone. Agonised screeches suggested some were still alive.

"Hey it was a guess," Nikola's ego out-stripped his instinctual fear of the general. "And a darn sight better than anything you've come up with so far. It was a result, perhaps not a particularly desirable one but..."

"If you're going to tell me this is like your earthquake machine," Helen joined into the chorus of disapproval, "I'm going to shoot you in the leg just like New York!"

"Aw come on... that was only one iddy-bitty city block. They barely noticed!"

"So help me Nikola!" Helen glowered, hair full of bits of cave.

When he first entered the tunnel, Nikola had noticed that the smooth boulders positioned in a semi-circle in front of the door were not granite. Despite the dull gleam of their polished surfaces, they were carved out of meteorite which in its own right was an incredible technical feat by the ancient builders. Nikola was beginning to hatch a theory that all the meteorite fragments passed on the way in were also deliberately placed – even if they hadn't been tidied up to look pretty.

There was something special about this outer space corpse. Nikola didn't claim to be a professor of geology but the magnetic and electric fields on the surface were odd. On closer inspection of the giant door he discovered the imperfections running through the granite to be the remains of the asteroid. It was probably melted together and fused by half-hearted mountain building geology. It still carried an electric charge after thousands of years. Tens of thousands... The important question was why?

Nikola had a theory about that too.

"How much do you know about these 'beings before time'?" Nikola asked Apries. "The Egyptian vampires portrayed them as gods. Were they a particularly advanced race for the ancient world or was it all just a bit of wishful myth-building?"

Apries frowned. "You should ask the Immortal. They are her ancestors, not mine."

Helen shrugged. "Don't look at me, Nikola. Your Egyptian mythology was always better than mine. I was too busy chasing werewolves."

Which was totally true. Nikola sighed and carefully looked around the cave again. The only way any of them were getting through that door was if he worked how to open it. Ancient race – how hard could it be? They probably didn't even have a refined version of the wheel...

Refusing to be outsmarted, Nikola clambered up onto a fresh outcrop caused by the earthquake. He nudged a few dazed sand creatures away as he emerged on the flat top of granite. He had a perfect view of the door and the fragments of meteorite curving around it like a series of crescent moons. They instantly reminded him of a bar magnet hungrily sucking in a storm of iron filings. The fragments of meteor where more densely clustered towards the edges of the door and every single one of them had a slight tilt to their left. No doubt they were only half the picture with a mirror image on the other side of the door.

"This tunnel is a lock," he said, standing on his large, makeshift platform. He pointed out the main rock markers for the two below. "And it has a primitive power source drawn directly from the meteorite fragments. They're scattered all the way through." He pointed them out.

"It doesn't look very electric," Helen shouted up at him.

He rolled his eyes in her direction. "The circuit is open. We have to find out where it's been broken then fix it."

"And the door will open?" Apries stepped forward.

"Well – I presume so. They wouldn't be a very clever ancient people if their doors don't work."

"Hey – hey, no one's meant to be takin' the trucks 'til they're cleaned and – hey!"

One of the security guards that Helen had left in charge of their temporary base thumped his hand on the solid window of the SUV. The driver ignored him, the young man hunting for keys.

"I'm talkin' to you!" he continued, moving his hand down to open the door. It was locked. The guard swore and lifted the but of his automatic rifle. He slammed it against the side of the car with an almighty clang. "You hear me in there, kiddo?!"

Amasis had left his vow of human abstinence in tatters. The moment that glorious blood touched his lips he'd felt life returning to his tortured limbs. It welled through his body, reversing the thousands of years of decay that had taken root in his bones. Now he looked more like a young prince.

The vampire turned at the banging and snarled, a full row of jagged fangs shining back at the security guard.

"What the f-" the security guard started to say, lifting his gun and fumbling for his radio. The car door opened, hitting him before he could make the call. The guard flew backwards into a fire extinguisher with a dull thud. The brackets connecting it to the wall collapsed. It and the guard met the floor together before the red cylinder rolled away.

Amasis stepped carefully over it. He considered the human, one of his fangs dripping sticky venom. "I am a future king. Will you serve me?"

The guard lifted his head up in equal measures pain and amusement. "You're 'ff your 'ead, mate," he replied. "Off your bleedin'-"

Two silenced gunshots thwapped into the guard's chest. The vampire reached forward, taking the unused weapon from the guard's hands while he desperately tried to gargle out his last words. They never came.

Amasis steered the truck out of its metal cage and launched it onto the snow-covered road. He'd driven plenty of chariots and horses in his time but the car wiggled under his hold, slipping along the treacherous mountain road.

He was heading for the village nestled in the valley. Precious more than a litter of farms and houses, Amasis was interested in its airstrip and the plane that Magnus had brought them on. It was crucial that he return to her Sanctuary. While ever the Magoi lived, he could not outpace his brother. It had to be killed. Only then would he stand any chance of disappearing into the shadows.

The earthquake left the once rushing glacier torrent dividing the cave's tunnel a ruin of rock. Ashley and Joe inspected the freshly collapsed section of ceiling to their right, blocking the river's path entirely. The ice wall plugged its source, for the moment. At its thinnest, it was a sheet of blue-green sitting in stark contrast to its overall imposing presence of blue, white and black. It creaked eerily, tons of water quickly backing up behind the crude ice-plug leaking through only a few tiny crevices.

"That's not going to hold long," whispered Joe, starting over the rock-filled chasm. Their surfaces were extremely slippery, both of them fumbling for grip. Joe lost his, slid down the face of a curved boulder and landed on a fresh mound of ice. "Is this a bad time to mention my claustrophobia?"

Ashley vaulted over the rocks beside him. "Trust me, you're not. Found myself on a mission with a claustrophobic guy once – nightmare!" she drawled lightly, picking the detective off the floor on her way past. "Mind you, can't say I'm a fan of our lovely ice-dam," she shone her torch over it. Even the beam of light seemed to make it more unsteady.

"Let's just hope that if it breaks, it'll follow it's old path and not chase us down the tunnel."

"Least resistance..." A cursory glance between the river's two options didn't fill either of them with much confidence so they both returned to silence – until they heard it.

Ashley stopped, gun rising beneath her torch. She narrowed her eyes at the darkness in front, slowly tracking the halo of her torch across its breadth. Nothing.

"What?" Joe whispered, then frowned as he heard the rustle of claws against stone. "Oh shit! I've heard that before."

"So've I..."

The vampire lazily chucked another pebble into the depths of the tunnel, missing the mongrel by a foot or two. He and the Immortal were sat against the door, boredly watching Tesla hunt around another outcrop of meteorite. The initial flurry of excitement was over.

"If he's stalling for time, I'm going to turn him into an orderve," Apries hissed.

"I've never met a vampire that bored," Helen replied, letting her head rest against the stone. Now that it was clear their lives weren't in any immediate danger, she was starting to wonder what was behind this damn door that made so many ancient creatures hunt for it. "How long have you known about this place?"

Apries glanced at her but never for too long, his crystal eyes fixed on the half-breed. He didn't trust Tesla. "Since my imprisonment," he replied, his voice sounded as young as he looked, something which Helen found quite disconcerting. "There were vague references to it buried in the temple archives but very few gave it any credence in my father's reign."

"But before that?"

"There was a time when hunting the lost world of the Immortals was the favourite pastime of young Pharaohs."

"Bit like the Grand Tour then," Helen managed a smirk. She was watching Nikola too. He was laying his hands on various fragments of rock, no doubt trying to feel the electric current. He didn't look as though he was having any luck. Not yet. "And your brother?"

Apries risked returning his gaze to her. It wasn't just that he wanted to keep an eye on Tesla. It was that Magnus was enticing. She was genetically tailored to appeal to him and he was determined not to slip into that trap.

"You are keen to kill him," he pointed out, not revealing any emotion either way. "There is nowhere in this world that he can run where I won't find him. Don't worry, Immortal, you will have your vampire bounty before long."

"Good," she nodded, drawing her knees up. "I have this insatiable urge to kill something coming on again."

Both of them craned their heads and Tesla ducked down behind a particularly large hunk of meteorite almost centred to the door. It was roughly egg-shaped though little attempt had been made to polish it up. This particular rock had the faintest spider webs of gold tangled through it.

"There are stories that survive today," Helen continued, "of an ancient, advanced race – the Atlantians -" she was about to continue when Apries broke into a shrill laugh. "What?"

"Those Greek whores?" he seemed genuinely amused. "Vampires were well acquainted with them, some even unwisely married into their royal family. Believe me, they are not a particularly memorable part of this planet's history. The whole thing ended in tears and a bang."

"Serves them right for building their empire on a volcano..." Helen had to admit.

"Humans always think that nothing will happen to them, that the movements of the world and space are irrelevant but I have always supposed that is due to their tiny lifespans. They cannot see the world like you or I. It breathes."Magnus was staring at him. "You believe that I am a simple warrior? I am the son of the Pharaoh, raised to rule," he purred, eyes shifting back to their natural black for a moment.

She was momentarily caught by them. For a moment she saw a flicker of who he truly was, an emperor of the ancient world and she was way out of her depth. "You cannot rule over humans any more – those days are dead."

"You're wrong," Apries made her shiver. "Humanity is born to be ruled. They cannot exist without hierarchy. I may never sit on a throne but I sure as hell will rule them."

Helen sighed. We were vampires so god damn preoccupied with ruling the Earth?

"Jesus motherfukin' christ!" Joe leapt back in terror as the sand creature fell form the roof and landed in a heap at his feet. It was alive, barely, writhing in agony. It flickered between visible and invisible, desperately clutching a bloody stump where its foreleg was missing.

Ashley lowered her gun.

"Jeeze..." she whispered, considering the creature. "Must have been hit by a rock during the earthquake."

It was whining, huddling against the wall only partially aware of the humans in front of it. Somehow in its pain the deeply buried seeds of its humanity crept through. Once that had been a person, just like Will.

Ashley lifted her gun to kill it but found Joe's hand on her arm. "Why not?" she asked.

"If that were me, would you still shoot?"

The fact that she didn't answer straight away made Joe frown and turn his attention back to the cave in front of them. Every now and then the earth shook again, the belly of the mountain clearly suffering indigestion from the people disturbing its slumber. "Leave it alone," Joe repeated softly, as the creature's wails grew softer. "We need to get to your mother. Whatever those vampires are after, they're not going to keep her alive once they have it."

Every tunnel was in a worse state than the next. Rubble, ice and running water obstructed their path and more than once the pair of them had to shift boulders the size of tables to get through. "I think we're getting closer to the source of the quake..."

Joe raised his eyebrow but said nothing.

Finally, the narrow passageway ended – albeit in a sheer drop into a vast cavern. The walls and ceiling constantly shifted with the camouflaged bodies of sand creatures, their scarlet bodies picking up the firelight from below. Two jets of flame framed a giant door and in front of it were three people in the midst of a heated discussion.

"I'm not wrong, Helen..." Nikola pleaded, gesturing back at the rock behind him. "I know I've had my fair share of daft ideas but most of them are right even if they're not in the best interests of humanity."

"Why do I get the feeling that this is one of those times?" she hissed. "Well come on, you better show us what you mean."

Nikola led them over to the back of the meteorite chunk. He'd been digging away at the rubble around its base, going down several feet. "These things are a lot bigger than I thought. The tunnel has filled up with debris over the years – a lot, actually. It's a bit damaged but I don't think that matters."

He'd uncovered a trio of indents in the rock, egg shaped depressions with metal clasps set into their bases. Very unusual, especially as they showed no sign of deterioration.

"I never thought I'd say it, Nikola – but you might actually be right for once..." Helen whispered.

Nikola tried not to look put out as the vampire knelt down, taking a closer look. "Keystones," he said, brushing his claws over the indents. "So much for the myths. Those ancient quacks were right all along."

"You know what these are?"

Apries nodded at Helen. "I even know where one of them is provided the tomb hasn't been raided. What...?" he lowered his voice when the Immortal shifted uncomfortably.

"Most Egyptian tombs have been ransacked," she admitted. "If you hadn't built such huge monuments to your egos more of your civilisation might have survived."

He was put out but not put off. "Surely humans kept some of the treasures they stole?"

"The British Museum," Nikola interrupted. "It was a long time ago but I swear I saw a strange smooth stone with indecipherable markings on it."

Apries looked at the door, then to the room full of sand creatures. "You'd help me open this door?"

Nikola and Helen looked at each other. "You know what, I think we might on the proviso you stop snacking on humans for the time being."

Apries was about to agree to the irritating terms when he heard crack in the distance, then a small landslide of rocks followed by a surprised yelp that certainly didn't belong to a sand creature.

"You are not here alone?"

"We brought another man with us, a snack for your brother. He must have woken up and come looking for us." Helen looked nervously up to the dark end of the tunnel where they'd emerged.

Ashley dragged Joe frantically back from the edge when the ground had given way under his weight. They froze, eyes locked on the trio beneath them who'd stop talking and turned to face them. So much for sneaking to the rescue.

"Wait – what's that?" Ashley whispered, her arms still around Joe's waist.

There was a fourth figure in the cave now. At first she thought it was just a shadow against the wall but it had crept closer to the door. It was tall, slender and nearly inhumane in the way it moved. "MUM!" Ashley yelled, instantly giving away her position.

Helen was startled, flashing her torch toward the end of the cave but unable to see anything. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"There's something else down here!" she continued, as the shadow ducked out of view.

"What's it doing?" Will collapsed into the couch with a beer and tray of hot chips. It was nearly nightfall and he was drained from cleaning up the Sanctuary. Bigfoot was baby sitting the Magoi while Henry got all the security systems back to full strength. Druitt – well, he was doing bugger all as usual.

"Nothing..." came Bigfoot's reply over the radio.

Will leaned forward, turning on the monitor to confirm it. Nothing. Hours and hours of nothing since they'd knocked it out with gas.

"Nothing is what I like to hear. Come on up, have some dinner. It's not going anywhere."

The lack of reply suggested that Biggie agreed.

Will tapped on the keyboard lazily, switching to another screen. He logged into the archives, trailing through folders until he came to one marked, 'Tesla'. Curious, he clicked only to be confronted by a password prompt. None of his worked.

"Typical," he muttered. Magnus trusted him but obviously not completely. Not when it came to her past or anything to do with the true history of vampires. He made a mental note to berate her about that when she came back. Speaking of which, she was supposed to check in around now.

Henry strolled into the room. "Hey dude," he said, not looking up from his ipad.

"Has Magnus checked in yet?"

"Nope. Helicopter returned to base on schedule and she left a few text messages before going into the mountains. Nothing since then but that's hardly surprising considering she ended up in the mountain. Ashley checked in though."

"Where the hell is she?"

"Where do you think?" Henry sighed, turning the ipad around so that Will could see the snow-laden world of the Pensi La Mountain Pass.

"Great. Magnus is going to kill us either way now."

"Nah," Henry assured. "You need to stop worrying about Ashley. She can take care of herself. I'd worry about Helen before Ashley. Hate to say it but that girl has more than a share of her father's stubbornness speaking of-"

"In his room, sharpening his knives."

Henry shifted uncomfortably. "Really?"

Will shrugged.

"Creepy. Well, I'm off for a nap – don't let the place fall down around us, eh?" Henry slinked out. It was full moon tonight, maybe he'd go for a bit of a howl.

Apries was okay with a few more stray humans but not uninvited guests.

"Not me..." Helen whispered to both Nikola and the general. "Maybe someone else followed you here?" she asked the vampire, but he shook his head as well. "Everyone back to the door. Can I have my gun now?"

Apries rolled his eyes and handed her the weapon. It wasn't much good against him anyway. He flexed his claws, narrowing his eyes at the tunnel. "I didn't hear anything – it's not Amasis."

Nikola, armed with only his half-sized claws, looked especially uncomfortable, raising his torch defensibly. "Can't you sic your sand creatures on them or something?"

"I already have," he replied smoothly.

It would do them no good. The creature hunting them could make itself undetectable to anything with vampire DNA. The Immortal professor rested against a large boulder, watching the tunnel with black eyes. One vampire had to go.

"Can you see it?" Joe craned his head.

"Nah," she whispered back. "If it ain't one of ours then it's bad news." There was a nasty creak behind them. They turned, listening for a sudden rush of water but it didn't come. "I don't like this. Not one bit."