He walked to the ladder as Tenzin bent near the rugs and the silks.
“Have you ever lost things?” he asked.
“Lost? No.” She picked up one silk carpet that was only ragged on one edge. “I always find things eventually. Had things stolen? Yes.”
“Who stole from you?”
“Remember that earth vampire I mentioned?”
“Oh.”
She looked up. “I left him in his element.”
Realizing she must have killed the vampire and left his body to disintegrate down in the cistern, he cringed.
“Ew.”
She shrugged and went back to sorting through the pile. “Dust to dust. One day, I will be air. Dissolve into nothing more than a whisper on the breeze.”
“No,” he said, not wanting to think about a world without Tenzin. “Forget the breeze, Tiny. We all know you’d be a hurricane.”
She laughed quietly, her eyes sparkling in the low glimmer of the flashlight he’d propped in the corner.
“I’ll go up and start,” Ben said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
It was hot dusty work, even if you were a vampire. Tenzin had a seemingly endless supply of energy, flying back and forth from the bottom to the mouth of the cistern, handing up a few rugs, porcelain bowls and vases, and brick after brick of gold. They worked silently for three hours until the majority of the cache was packed.
Ben distributed the gold evenly between ten crates so none would be too heavy to carry. He’d found a handcart that afternoon, so while Tenzin sorted through the last of the silks and porcelain, he went to get it from the truck, glad he’d remembered to bring the chalk he used for caving. He’d marked the path through the old neighborhood with surreptitious white tags at waist level, which allowed him to walk through the maze of old houses and back to the truck with ease. He retrieved the handcart and started back to the courtyard where Tenzin was finishing up.
He drew a few curious glances from windows, but it was three in the morning and most of the old city was asleep. Very few lights illuminated the alleyways or houses. Ben felt utterly alone. Alone was good. When you were transporting a bunch of priceless treasure, company was not a desirable thing.
The city was quiet. So quiet that, when he turned the last corner, the sound of shuffling feet in the courtyard brought him up short. Tenzin didn’t shuffle. Mostly, she floated.
Shit.
Ben didn’t hear her, but he did hear strange male voices speaking Uyghur. Someone was in the courtyard and he could hear them opening the crates he’d just nailed shut.
Bastards.
They laughed softly, then he heard one kick something metal. Then came the sound of wood breaking, and Ben knew they’d broken the ladder. More sound of metal on bricks, and he realized the heavy plate would be back over the cistern, trapping Tenzin under the earth.
Not good.
He peeked through the cracked gate and saw three vampires poking through the contents of the crates. One held up a vase as another dug through the straw.
“You’re poking through her stuff and tried to trap her underground,” he murmured. “You must really want to die.”
The moment the grate fell over the opening of the cistern, the shot of instinctive panic streaked through Tenzin. She could feel the press of the narrow walls around her and for just a second, the taste of earth was in her mouth.
Tenzin hated being underground.
She narrowed her eyes and eyed the lovely little treasure she’d just unearthed from the tangle of a crumbling tapestry.
It was a bone-handled pesh-kabz, a Persian blade she’d picked up in the eighteenth century from a trader on the Khyber Pass. Lovely. Still in excellent condition. And more than capable of taking care of the foolish vampires who’d tried to trap her.
Tenzin floated to the top of the cistern, peeking through the grate to see who was examining her gold.
Where was Ben? Hopefully, by the time he got back with the handcart, she’d have hidden all the bodies. He did get strangely upset when she had to kill people, even if they were vampires.
One of them was muttering and holding out a brick of gold with her mark on it. If they had any sense, they’d realize who it belonged to, drop it back in the crate, and run. If they did, she’d let them live. After all, she was done with this hiding place anyway.
The vampire showed the mark to the one who seemed to be in charge. He cocked his head like a spaniel, shrugged, and grabbed the brick, slipping it into his pocket.
Obviously, they were idiots and she was going to have to kill them. Vampires that stupid just made the rest of their race look bad.
Should he go in? Wait outside? Ben was fairly sure Tenzin didn’t need any help, and she might even get annoyed if he tried. It wasn’t as if the metal grate was that heavy. Maybe the vampires didn’t realize she could fly. While Ben debated how much carnage he wanted to witness, he saw the grate begin to move. While one vampire halted what he was doing to look at it, the others had disappeared from his sight.
Oh shit.
They ripped the door from its hinges and pulled Ben into the courtyard. He wasted no time, years of practice kicking in. It was all automatic reaction. As they tossed him into the air, he tucked and rolled, reaching down to the small sheaths strapped to his ankles. Pulling out his throwing knives as he landed, he immediately aimed at the nearest vampire, who was still coming forward, laughing at the silly human they’d caught.
The vampire’s scream when the knife caught his eye shattered the moonlit night. He pulled at the knife, covering his bleeding eye with one hand while the other curled into a fist. The bloody immortal bared his fangs and charged him, but tripped over a crate as he clutched his face. Ben could see the grate sliding open from the corner of his eye. Like a shadow, Tenzin rose from the earth, grabbing the vampire nearest the cistern by the hair. She cut his throat before he could make a sound. Then, still holding his head as the blood poured down his front, she drew back the dagger and hacked at the vampire’s spine. With two heavy thwacks, the body dropped.