Blood Eternal Read Free Page A

first made the dead Saloman visible to her. She’d mistaken him for a stone sarcophagus.
    Dante crouched down and delved into his bag to retrieve the vial of blood. It was a tiny amount, distilled from the stain of Saloman’s blood left on his shirt during their last violent encounter. He couldn’t afford to waste any. He was sure this room was enchanted, as the outer cave had been, to deter visitors. But simply staring wouldn’t break through this spell.
    Dante unscrewed the lid with great care.
    “What is that?” Mehmet, his Turkish guide, whispered.
    It’s the blood of the Ancient vampire Saloman, with which I hope to awaken his cousin and enemy Luk, whom Saloman killed over three hundred years ago. Would Mehmet run or laugh if he said such a thing aloud? Instinctively, Dante knew his need for Mehmet was almost over. But only almost. The Turk had one more purpose to fulfill.
    Dante crept around the dark chamber. The beam from his flashlight bobbed erratically around the rough stone floors and walls, barely penetrating the profound blackness more than a couple of feet beyond his unsteady fingers. He hoped that if he couldn’t see the body, at least he might feel it with his hands or feet. Even so, when his foot struck something it felt like stone, part of the floor’s uneven surface, and he almost paid it no attention. Then he paused and placed his finger over the vial’s opening before he shook it and removed his finger.
    Drawing in his breath with a quick, silent prayer to no one in particular that it would be enough, he shook his whole hand out in front of him. His finger tingled as the tiny spatter of blood sprayed downward. And there in the darkness, without suddenness or shock, was what he’d been looking for all these weeks.
    A stone table on which lay a sculpted body. Almost exactly as Elizabeth Silk had found the body of Saloman a year earlier.
    Mehmet’s breath sounded like a wheeze. “My God, I almost didn’t see it. I thought there was nothing. . . . Is this it? Is this your nobleman’s tomb?”
    “Almost certainly.” Dante felt dizzy. His whole body trembled, not just with reaction to his first glimpse of the deeply sinister figure illuminated by their flashlights, but with the enormity of what he was doing. He found it difficult to get the words out, and yet he had to concentrate, to ignore his sudden fears and stick to his plan. Mehmet had to continue to believe in the fiction that this was merely the lost tomb of a historic nobleman. And then, finally, Dante would reach his goal. Eternal life. Eternal power. Damnation, if it existed, was a small price to pay.
    With carefully judged casualness, he passed the vial to Mehmet. “Here. I want to photograph this.”
    Even shining his flashlight on the tiny drop of dark liquid, Mehmet could have no idea what it was. He seemed happy that Dante had found what he sought—even if only so that he could get back into the fresh air and climb down the mountain again.
    Dante produced his camera and pointed it at the tomb. “When I say ‘now,’ ” he directed, “pour the contents of the vial over the carving.”
    “Why, what is it?”
    “It’ll make the tomb stand out more in the picture.” Dante lied easily. He wasn’t a politician for nothing. “Okay . . . Now!”
    Dante held his breath as Mehmet shook the tiny drops of liquid over the carved face. This was it, the moment of greatest risk and greatest hope, on which all Dante’s ambitions rested. Religion, decency, nature itself—none of those things counted beside the huge power Dante was about to take. . . .
    At this point in the earlier awakening, Saloman had clamped his teeth into Elizabeth’s neck. Dante had been torn over this part of his plan. The blood used in the awakening had to be Saloman’s—Luk’s killer’s—or it wouldn’t work, but Dante didn’t know whether any of the mystical attributes of awakening would be bestowed on whoever did the pouring. No one had ever done it