One of the Guards down the hall did not heed the command. “Home,” he wailed, his voice as thin as a single wolf’s cry in the distance.
Sorin would have to adjust these Guards, inspect them and repair their shortcomings. It was an ongoing process. Live and learn, as the Master might say.
“Can they break out?” Galatea asked, inching away from the cell’s bars, clutching the bowl of blood to her chest.
Sorin inspected her, thinking he was close to feeling the same discomfort. Close, yes, but the vampiric years had worn off most emotion like rough wind smoothing the edges off rock.
“No,” he said. “They would not survive the attempt.”
She sighed, knowing he was right. “Yes, Master, you’d terminate the Guards before they would even get to the main area.”
True. Even though he wasn’t the real Master, Sorin alone controlled the Guards—they were subject to every whim of his sorcerer’s talents. Additionally, he maintained their strength at a Groupie’s level to ensure their inferiority—another precaution. Their strength was sufficient to kill a human, if need be, but not enough to overcome Sorin or the Master himself.
Galatea set down the bowl of cold blood. “Master, may I…?”
“Yes, you may leave.”
She wasted no time in doing so, leaving a trail of slight fear behind. It wet Sorin’s mouth, whet his hunger.
But then his gaze turned toward the Guard across the hall. The creature slunk back into the darkness of its home, its red eyes becoming the only pinpoints of light.
Home, the one Guard had said.
A terrible thought occurred to Sorin. The black of the Guard’s eyes, the mysterious and gaping space, the dull familiarity of it…
Humanity? he thought.
He mused over that. Yet…no. It could not be.
For the Guards, humanity had died with the first bite. It was unthinkable to leave them with memories, imaginations, reasons to return Above. They were the only members of the Underground taken against their will because no one would ever know or care that these particular individuals were gone. Sorin had infused them with the same thing he had used on his cat and other small animals during human life: thoughts of what he wished them to be.
He turned back to his new Guard. Due to the restlessness of the others, there would be no free wandering time for the group tonight. Usually, they were granted movement through the Underground tunnels, beneath the city, yet away from the vampire living area.
No more, Sorin thought. Not until the Guards were retuned.
He tested the straps on his new creation, again admiring his handiwork: years of study had allowed him to dally in physical manipulation as well as mental.
“You’ll be a Dr. Frankenstein,” the Master had once told Sorin over fifty years ago, shortly after he had triumphed over his fears and given in to Sorin’s great wish to begin a second Underground.
Sorin had smiled at that. “My powers are much stronger than they ever were in human form, so our Guards will be our saving grace, protecting our lesser vampires during the first minutes of an attack while alerting the more powerful to prepare. We will never be caught unawares again, Master.”
Now, keeping his promise, he held out a hand, then flattened his palm over the new Guard’s face. He closed his eyes and performed the final step in creation: a mind wipe.
It was unlike the one the Master had subjected Milton Crockett to. Where the humans generally lost all details related to personal vampiric activity, Guards traveled the opposite road: they would forfeit everything human, absorbing Sorin’s commands. In essence, they were “programmed” as the new age would say. Programmed to serve and to be vampire soldiers, willing to die for the higher ranks, brainwashed never to attack unless provoked.
He traveled inward, investing the new Guard, initiating him. His whispered demands threaded together, tangling into patterns for the creature’s brain to follow.
Ultimately, Sorin removed his touch and stepped back. “Awaken.”
When the Guard opened his red eyes, the older vampire saw only complete surrender, mindless obedience.
The perfect defender.
The type of warrior Sorin wished he and the Master had possessed when their original Underground had been decimated over eighty years ago.
THIRTEEN
BERKLEY SQUARE, LONDON, 1923
G ONE , Benedikte thought, huddling against the wall of an upstairs bedroom. It is…gone.
Night peered through the abandoned house’s filmy window, moonless and anesthetic. A rat’s footsteps scratched over the dusty wooden floor, reminding the vampire of how he had escaped, too.
Alone now. He was alone and, somewhere below the foundation of this old building, his Underground was in ruins.