61 A.D.

11

When Theron opened his eyes, he found himself tied to a wooden bench with a length of thick rope. Around him stood the bare stone walls of an empty cell. There were no windows, but a draft tickled his right cheek. The air smelled of mold, and he guessed he was in a basement somewhere. He tried to raise his shoulders and shift the rope aside, but it held fast. Under normal circumstances, he would have been able to break it, but his head felt odd and his muscles lacked their normal strength.

What had that bitch done to him?

A groan to his left caught his attention, and he noticed Taras hanging from a set of manacles. Not surprising, considering who he’d chosen as a new ally.

Serves you right, you bastard, he thought. That’s what you get for trusting the likes of her.

Theron thought about the female vampire from last night. He hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Not since the last time he’d had to hunt for her. That one time was enough. She’d almost killed him. If Ephraim hadn’t been there to stop her, he would surely have died. If she was in the city then he really needed to get away. Fast. He tried again to break the ropes, or at least the table under him, but it was no use.

“Where are we?” Taras asked, his voice a whisper. Theron ignored him. His mind whirred through the room, trying to think of a way out of this mess. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t escape the simple truth. He was tied to a table with rope almost as thick as his wrist, and he was too damned weak to rip a sheaf of papyrus.

“Is it getting colder in here?” Taras again. He was getting annoying.

Still, now that his attention had been drawn to it, he did notice the temperature in the room dropping. It didn’t affect him physically, since Bachiyr are immune to cold, but the sudden drop didn’t bode well. Only two things could account for it. A cold psalm from another Bachiyr, or the presence of a Lost One. Since Taras was the only other Bachiyr in the room, and he wasn’t whispering words of magic, Theron guessed it to be the second. But that was not possible, either.

A Lost One meant the Council. But the Council would not be working with Taras. They would have simply captured or killed him on sight. And they certainly wouldn’t be working with Taras’s new friend.

When the door to the room opened and a single, shrouded hand came into view, Theron knew the truth. A tattered Lost One stepped into the dim room.

“Damn,” Taras said. “I was hoping I’d never see one of those things again.”

“Me too,” Theron replied, forgetting in his surprise that he didn’t owe Taras any words.

The Lost One stood in the doorway, facing the two prisoners. It wore the tattered black robes of its station. Through the holes in the cloth, Theron could see the millions of insect larvae squirm and writhe as they feasted on the thing’s decaying body. The curse of the Lost One is that there will always be enough flesh to feed the parasites and keep the creature mobile, but no more. They literally rotted away while they were still alive. The sight of them made Theron’s insides churn, and not just for the obvious reasons. The situation was more ominous than he’d feared.

The thing’s presence meant the Council was here. But why? And why were they working with “Where is Lannis?” Taras asked. Theron assumed he was talking to the Lost One.

The creature turned its head toward the onetime Roman legionary. If Theron didn’t know better, he’d have sworn the thing smiled. It stepped slowly toward Taras, walking with an unholy grace, and pressed its larvae-covered right hand on the vampire’s forehead. Theron knew what would come next, he’d seen it hundreds of times.

Taras's scream filled the small chamber, bouncing off the walls in a high pitched wail that stung Theron's hypersensitive ears. Ordinarily, he would have enjoyed the other Bachiyr's pain, especially if he was the cause of it. But it was hard to smile when he knew he was probably next.

“Hello, Theron,” said a voice from the doorway. He didn’t have to turn his head to know who it belonged to. He’d heard that voice regularly for over nine hundred years. Of course, that had been in another lifetime, when he was the hunter and not the hunted.

“Hello Ramah,” he said, leaving off the customary Councilor. He turned his head to face the elder Bachiyr. “What brings you to Londinium?”

Ramah laughed, then his eyes flitted toward the Lost One, who was still working on Taras. The Roman’s screams had died down to a pathetic whimper. Having worked around the Lost Ones for centuries, Theron knew their capabilities as well as any. He could almost feel pity for his rogue progeny. Almost. But since it was pretty much Taras’s fault they were in this situation, he couldn’t quite manage it.

“I can’t believe I found both of you here. Together,” Ramah said. “This couldn’t have been any easier.”

“Go to hell.”

“Not today.” Ramah crossed the room and placed his hands on either side of Theron’s head. Theron winced as the elder’s claws elongated and dug into his skin. Ramah forced Theorn’s face up, probably so he could look him in the eye. Theron would have tried to resist, but he had no leverage and very little strength. “You will get to Hell long before I do,” Ramah promised. “But not before you beg me to send you there.”

With that, Ramah’s face hardened, and a sudden jolt of pain slammed into Theron’s body through his temples. All sight and sound vanished in an instant, leaving him in a world of bright red pain. He choked back a scream, certain his head had split open but determined not to give Ramah the satisfaction. The fire raged inside his head for what seemed like hours, though in truth it couldn’t have been that long.

When it finally eased, Ramah was laughing.

“No scream, Theron?”

Theron reiterated his earlier invitation.

“I am going to enjoy this,” Ramah said.

This time when the pain hit, it felt like a flaming boulder had been forced into Theron’s skull. He clenched his fists and his eyes shut, but the flames licked through the insides of his mind like a predator, clawing and eating away at his brain until all rational thought had fled. It didn’t take long for him to break his silence, giving Ramah the scream he desired.