Free The Rift Walker by Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith Page B

bookshelves. Tables were covered with books and oddities, large crystals, busts, unidentifiable pieces of creatures, Egyptian washabti, and Chinese porcelain. There was a sumptuous buffet laid along one wall, with several servants standing by. A string quartet in a shadowy corner began to play Mozart.
    Mamoru asked, “Would you care for a bite to eat, Highness? Or would you rather get down to business, and then relax later?”
    Sensing her mentor's anxiety, Adele said, “If the food will keep, I'd prefer to get to it, gentlemen.”
    “Excellent.” Mamoru turned to Sir Godfrey. “Shall we repair to the operating theater?”
    Operating theater , Adele thought with unnerved excitement. An anatomy lesson, perhaps? How gothic. And what to think of a man with an operating theater in his own home?
    Sir Godfrey took a deep breath and extended his arm. Leaving the soft strings behind, they went through a door and down a staircase. With each creaking wooden step, Adele felt a gruesome chill. She pictured the taxidermied scenes she might see below with glass-eyed vampires frozen in permanent, terrible melodramas. Another door led to an open room, this one with high ceilings and hissing gas jet flames in sconces that provided light. Two chairs stood against the wall. Adele felt hot, but there was something strange about the heat. Her heart began to flutter and she flexed her hands.
    Mamoru said, “Are you unwell, Highness?”
    “No.” Adele shook her head and breathed out heavily. The warmth piled up inside her. It was reminiscent of Canterbury. She smiled at the comforting throb in her chest. “It's the…the heat. I'm fine.”
    Mamoru and Sir Godfrey exchanged glances, and the teacher nodded to his old colleague before the surgeon moved to the middle of the room where there was a long table covered with a sheet. Without fanfare, he reached out and yanked the sheet away to reveal a vampire strapped to the table. The creature gnashed his teeth at Sir Godfrey, who immediately stepped back.
    Adele reached for the hilt of her Fahrenheit dagger beneath her robe. Mamoru stepped in front of her.
    “No, Highness. The creature is quite secure.”
    Adele stared at the growling vampire and felt the cold of London stiffen her joints. She could smell the stink of the Thames River lapping over piles of bodies and saw the fresh wash of blood spreading across the floors of Buckingham Palace. She heard the screams of the people of Reiz as Flay's packs descended on them in the dark.
    Then a calming warmth spread through her again, forcing the darkness aside. She took a deep breath, inhaling the saltiness of the desert around them. Her feet were firmly planted on the floor, with the sensation that they were almost sinking into sand. Her heartbeat slowed.
    The two men stared at Adele. She nodded for the program to continue and asked, “Where did this thing come from?”
    “Oh, we occasionally run across them,” Sir Godfrey began casually. “Blown off course. Lost. Weak. I believe this particular chap came from a friend in Constantinople.”
    Adele added, “Fortunately, he does look weak. And the heat is making him sluggish. Otherwise, I'm not sure your bindings would hold him.” She studied the wide-eyed beast. It was naked, but it wasn't one of the ferals that civilized vampires used as trackers and killers, those fearsome beasts called hunters. The creature's helplessness was pathetic, but Adele had seen too much vampire brutality to feel a great deal of sympathy. The thing hissed, and Adele understood it on some level. She had the uncanny ability to decipher vampires' incomprehensible language, through no special study of her own, a fact she had told Mamoru, but no other, upon her return from the north.
    Her teacher asked, “Can you understand what it's saying?”
    “He's angry.” Adele stated the obvious. Perhaps that was the reason for this impromptu visit—a test of her language skills.
    “Is that all?”
    “Technically, no. He's