Atlantis Rising

Chapter 7

Some hundreds of miles away, the Lord High Vampire Barrabas raised his head, scenting the air. Something—what! Just for an instant, he'd felt a disturbance in the elements beyond anything…

"But, Senator Barnes, as leader of the Primus, you must—" the human said, cringing.

Barrabas hissed at him, hating the false name. Barnes. A pathetic excuse for a name.

He knew, however, the ill-advised nature of claiming his legacy. Many still remembered his history-cursed name, and the events that Pontius Pilate had set in motion that day.

Soon. Soon he would come into his own, and then the name of Barrabas would be hated and feared with such magnitude as to make what went before seem as nothing to these sheep.

The sheep in front of him prostrated himself right there on the concrete floor of the Primus's central underground chamber.

"As leader of the Primus, I must do whatever I want to do," he sneered. "The other two houses of Congress will do exactly what I tell them, won't they?"

The human groveled and crawled backward out of the room, probably considering himself lucky, given what he'd witnessed.

The vampire's gaze flicked to the congressman from Iowa and the senator from Michigan who had been causing such problems. They dangled, feet off the floor, arms threaded through the shackles bolted into the wall.

The females of his blood pride flitted around them, slicing delicately into the skin of the chained men and sucking at the blood running down their naked forms. The Iowan still moaned, though the other had long since gone silent.

Barrabas considered and discarded conclusions regarding the relative strength of their party affiliations based upon their stamina, and then he flung himself into his thronelike chair. Eyes narrowing, he focused on the disturbance he'd felt in the elements.

"What could have such power?" he muttered, fingers drumming on the arm of the chair.

The door to the chamber slammed open and his second, Drakos, soared into the room. "Did you feel it, Barrabas?"

Barrabas nodded, a nearly imperceptible movement of his head. "I felt it. What was it?"

Drakos floated down to the ground, silvery hair settling around his shoulders. Barrabas was not unaware of more than a few of his women sneaking avid gazes at his general.

Something will have to be done about Drakos. He grows nearly powerful enough to challenge me. Perhaps it is time for a new second.

But aloud he only replied to the spoken question. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Send out the vanguard. We cannot afford to be distracted now."

"Anubisa?"

Barely, just barely, Barrabas contained the shudder. "She has been… unavailable as of late. Not that she ever tells us anything of what she knows."

"Still, if we defy her—" Drakos clenched his jaw.

"Enough," Barrabas roared. "Do as I say."

"As you command, so it will be done," Drakos responded, averting his gaze and bowing low. "I will lead them."

"No. I need you here," Barrabas said. "Send another. Send Terminus."

Drakos raised one eyebrow, but otherwise his face was entirely unreadable. Unsurprising for a more than nine-hundred-year-old vampire, but inconvenient nonetheless.

Barrabas stood up in a movement of pure blurred speed that might have terrified the chained Iowan, if one of the women hadn't just sliced through his jugular.

"Good politicians are so hard to find these days," Barrabas observed. "They all lack a certain endurance."

Stepping around the spray of blood and inhaling the thick, coppery smell with pleasure, Barrabas waved a hand to his general. "I have a more important task for you, my second. I need another telepath. I was, perhaps, oversolicitous in my affections with my last one."

He thought back to the lump of inanimate flesh he'd left on the floor of his bedchamber, with more than a little regret.

Drakos spoke emotionlessly. "Telepaths are few and far between, my lord, and growing ever more difficult to locate. I had hoped this one would—"

Barrabas cut him off. "You question me, Drakos?"

Though he had been unusually hard on telepaths this past year. His lusts for blood and flesh were rising, not abating, as he grew older and stronger, and something about hearing his victim's tormented thoughts through the telepathic link was unbearably succulent.

If only empaths still existed. To actually feel the sheep's pain as he inflicted it… he shuddered in simple ecstasy at the thought.

No other had survived as long as he—there was none Barrabas could ask to learn if he would face even more ravenous hungers as more time passed. Perhaps he was destined to become more of an animal than the shape-shifters he planned to destroy.

Shaking off his black thoughts, he led Drakos out of the chamber, glancing back at his women, who were frantically lapping at the congressional fountain of blood. "And get my secretary. I have a new proposal to make in regard to that last bill that got filibustered. I think the rest of the Congress may find it more… palatable… now."

He stopped at the door and jerked his head toward the remains of his most determined opponents on the Hill. "Then get someone to take out the trash."