Josh Reynolds - Neferata

‘Do you smell it?’ a soft voice asked. Neferata glanced at the woman rising from the snow nearby and blinked in momentary confusion. Then she tilted her head and tasted the wind. Her eyes widened.

‘Blood, freshly spilled,’ the former Queen of Lahmia breathed. No wonder she had been dreaming. She stretched, thrusting her hands towards the moon. She felt no soreness or stiffness, even hungry as she was, but old habits were wont to die hard. She luxuriated in the feeling of powerful muscles pulling against one another. As a mortal, she had never truly indulged the limits of her body, but in the centuries since the tainted blood of Arkhan the Black had mingled with an assassin’s poison in her veins, Neferata had come to derive a certain satisfaction from the raw physicality that immortality had conferred upon her.

She could run faster and longer than any beast and her strength was as that of the great saurians of the Southlands. She could follow the beat of a man’s heart and track the sweet scent of his blood for miles. And all she required in return was what any predator required. Blood. Dollop or deluge, the blood was the life, and Neferata wanted to live. She looked at the other woman and said, ‘Where?’

‘To the north, I think,’ the woman said, brushing snow from her shoulders. Like Neferata she wore heavy furs, though she no more felt the cold than her mistress. ‘The cold dulls my senses, however,’ she added hesitantly, with the wary modesty of a servant with a temperamental master.

‘It dulls all of our senses, Naaima,’ Neferata said, stroking the other immortal’s cheek. ‘But dulled or not, we will follow them. It has been too long since we last fed. Wake the others.’ Naaima caught her hand and held it for a moment. Then she nodded and set about thrusting her hands into the snow to dislodge it and reveal four more huddled shapes. One by one the vampires snapped alert as the smell of blood invigorated them.

Neferata watched them awaken, a familiar sense of possessiveness rising in her. Each of them was a part of her in some way. They were all blood of her blood, having been gifted with her blood-kiss in the centuries since Lahmia had fallen. There had been more once, but these were all that remained. Neferata grimaced and turned away, looking south once more. It had been weeks since they had seen any sign of their pursuers. Perhaps they had given up.

No. Not her, not the little hawk. Neferata repressed a growl. Nonetheless, they had been wandering in the mountains for weeks now. With the coming of winter, the hills were barren of sustenance, and it was only their inhuman vitality that had kept the little group moving. But now, there was blood on the air.

‘It smells like the greatest feast our father ever laid out, Khaled,’ one of the vampires squeaked, her eyes wide as she stripped the snow from her glossy hair. Anmar bin Muntasir had been young when Neferata had delivered her up into immortality, only seventeen at most. Sometimes, Neferata regretted having done so, though she couldn’t say why.

‘Hunger plays funny tricks, sister,’ Khaled al Muntasir replied. Anmar’s brother had been given the blood-kiss within moments of his sister. Older by a decade before he had ceased aging, he was slender and handsome, and he had taken to an immortal’s life with a relish that was almost unsettling. He sniffed the air and let his palm fall onto the pommel of the slim Arabyan blade hanging from his hip. His dark eyes found Neferata’s and he smiled. ‘My lady,’ he said, inclining his head with courtly grace.

Neferata smiled, amused. She glanced at the final two members of her small coterie. Rasha bin Wasim, like Khaled and Anmar, was Arabyan, though she was a daughter of the desert rather than the cities as the siblings were and taciturn where they were talkative. Lupa Stregga, in contrast, had been a native of Sartosa in life. Where the others were dark, she was fair, and where they were subtle, she was loud. Stregga inhaled the air with a snort and reached into the snow to retrieve her sword. It was a short-bladed chopping thing, favoured by the sailors of her native land. ‘Smells like durra to me,’ she said, looking at Neferata. ‘Then, it’s been a dog’s age since I’ve seen one.’

‘What do they taste like?’ Anmar said, looking at the taller woman. ‘And what’s a durra?’

‘The little under-men,’ Stregga said with a shrug. ‘And I never thought to try and take a bite.’

‘Probably wise,’ Naaima said. ‘The dawi are not men. There is stone in their blood.’ She looked at Neferata. ‘But it is not just dawi blood we smell, I think…’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Neferata said. She licked her lips. She looked at the black sun and then away. The others looked at her eagerly, waiting on her command. They trembled like hounds straining at the leash, and hunger made their facades slip slightly, revealing the beast beneath the skin. Neferata knew that she was no different. Her human beauty had been replaced by something altogether more feline.

‘We hunt,’ she hissed.

They bounded through the snow like flickering shadows, shaking off the sluggishness of daylight torpor. The scent of blood curled and splashed through the air, teasing them on. Neferata took the lead, running wolf-swift through the trees. As she ran, she drew the short, heavy blade that was sheathed at her side.

She had been taught the art of the blade by Abhorash himself. The champion of the City of the Dawn had been a man of few words, but he was an unparallelled swordsman and a warrior without peer. Neferata could not match him — she knew of none who could — but thanks to his teaching she was better with a blade than many hardened warriors walking the world today.

She had not thought of Abhorash in many years. Not since his betrayal in Araby. The thought still sent a flush of rage spurting through her. They had all betrayed her, Ushoran and W’soran and Abhorash.

Every man betrayed her, in the end. Lamashizzar had tried to take her power from her, and reduce her to an ornamental queen. Arkhan had given her immortality and then died, again, before he could share it with her. And Alcadizzar had turned on her, and turned the other great cities against Lahmia.

A throaty laugh caused her to glance aside. Khaled had his own blade out and he was keeping pace with her, his eyes glowing with a ravenous hunger. The only man she had given the blood-kiss since Bel Aliad. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it. Neferata leapt, her sandals scraping against bark as she ran up the trunk of the tree. The others followed. There were roads open to vampires that were denied to any other creature save birds or vermin.

She leapt from branch to branch, tasting the wind as she went. Sounds joined the smell. Weapons clashing and the screams of the dying rode the night-wind. Hairy shapes charged through the trees below, snorting and growling. Neferata stopped, perching in the crook of a branch. Her eyes narrowed.

She had encountered the twisted beast-men only once before, but she recognised them easily enough. They were hideous amalgamations of man and beast, with the worst traits of both. They stank of a dark corruption, though their blood was palatable enough.

The creatures spilled into a clearing, launching themselves with berserk abandon at their opponents. Neferata realised that they were seeing the final bloody moments of an ambush. She saw small, stocky forms littering the snow.

‘Dawi,’ Naaima hissed in answer to Neferata’s unasked question.

Neferata peered closer at the broad bodies, nodding shallowly. Where had they come from? The dawi were dwellers in the depths. They rarely trod the open earth, and only then when it was absolutely necessary. Whatever they had been doing, wherever they had been going, they weren’t going there any more. The ambush was done.