“Your predecessor? You mean—”
He nodded. “He wanted anyone who moved against him to know what they risked. That there would be no swift end for them, no easy death. Indeed, no death at all.”
“No death? Then what . . .”
I trailed off, taking a closer look at the nearest “prisoner.”
He was just inside the rock cut door, propped against the wall, but not in the way that a human would stand. He was as rigid as a block of wood and pretty much the same color. Old, leather like skin had desiccated and the flesh underneath withered to the point that it looked like a thick coating on a bunch of old bones. As if a skeleton had been dipped into a vat of brownish-yellow lacquer that had adhered to the frame, covering but not hiding it.
I could see every rib, every bone. Even the skull, with a few, dusty strands of hair still clinging to the surface, looked more like a leather mask. Only the dim, flickering lamplight gave the body any semblance of life at all.
And yet, there was something there. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was certainly nothing like the flood of power coming off the consul. It wasn’t something I would normally have noticed at all, like the faint, background hum of a lightbulb, which in a crowded room can be almost inaudible. But on a basement staircase at night, with your heart thrumming in your ears because something is down there—
It’s as loud as a dropped cymbal.
And I was suddenly hearing crashes everywhere.
Eyelashes still visible on a corpse in a corner quivered slightly, although there was no breeze to move them; a few tiny scratches on another’s thigh, from long, overgrown nails, looked fresh; the tell-tale throb of a vein in a third’s temple was almost invisible, but still moving something along . . .
“Vampires do not die of starvation, you see?” Hassani told me quietly, his hand catching my arm again, before I even realized that I’d stepped back. “They go mad, if deprivation continues long enough, then wither as these have done. After a very long time, they become inert, incapable of movement, of feeding themselves—of anything.”
“How,” I felt my tongue flicker out to wet my lips. “How long?”
“Over seven hundred years, in this case They tried a rebellion. It did not succeed.”
No shit. And then what he’d said registered. “Seven hundred?”
I gazed at the closest prisoner again. There were eyes in those deeply pitted sockets, small, pebble-like and dark, like two of the dried figs they sold in the marketplace. There was no sheen to them after so long, and no movement. I couldn’t tell if he could see me.
God, I hoped not. I hoped that he, whoever he’d been, was in a deep, restful sleep. Not staring at the backside of a door for centuries. Just the thought . . .
I dug my nails into my palm to stop a full body shudder.
“We believe that that may have been where the mummy’s curse foolishness began,” Hassani said. “Some humans stumbled across a desiccated vampire who had a little mobility left. And who then pursued them, driven mad by hunger, but failed to catch them due to the rigidity of the muscles.”
“And they mistook him for a mummy due to—” I waved a hand at the withered forms.
“Just so. It is one reason we left these down here, to avoid any . . . unfortunate encounters.”
I stared at the face of the still living creature. I couldn’t seem to look away, although my lips felt numb. I’d seen plenty of bodies in my time, but this . . .
“Why keep them at all?” I asked roughly. “Is it just to torture them?”
Hassani looked surprised at the question. “Torture them? No. They are quite mad, and know nothing of what is happening to them. Indeed, they are not even conscious unless fed.”
Uh huh, I thought, staring at that vein again. That’s what people used to think about coma patients, too. Turned out, plenty of them heard every word.
“Then why not just end this?” I asked harshly.
His eyes became distant. “They were warriors once. Good men; brave men. Some were my friends. What was done to them was shameful, but giving them a coward’s death, the same one reserved for lawbreakers and evildoers . . .” he shook his head. “I could never countenance it. I keep them here as I found them, for they are beyond pain at this point, hoping that Allah will someday show me a way to end their days with dignity. Although that day has yet to come.”
I had a sudden, vivid recall of the first time I’d seen Hassani, at a party given by the North American consul. She’d had anti-glamourie charms layered all over her court, in case any fey tried to gate crash, I supposed. Therefore, my first look at him had been more than a little disturbing.
I’d had no idea what was wrong with him at the time. But based on what I’d just been told, I assumed that he and his elder Children had been given the prisoner treatment at some point. Maybe by his predecessor, after a failed coup? Not that they had looked this bad. But they had been gaunt and haggard, with sunken, leathery cheeks and hollow eyes. It was bad enough for me to guess that they’d been well on their way to starvation when they . . . fought their way out? Were released after having learned their lesson? Were rescued?
I didn’t know, and it seemed impossible to ask. But it gave me a new respect for the African consul, which was only heightened after we passed through another room that must have once held the prisoners, or ones like them. There were deep scratches on the walls, ceiling, and floor, thousands of them. As if, in their madness, they had tried to claw their way through solid rock.
Even more disturbing was the fact that they hadn’t managed it.