Blood Lines

him, he had never felt such raw power.
    He should have known it would not be so easy and he would not have even made the attempt had he not been blinded by the glory of the other's ka. This one had protections; not only personal strength but also strong ties to the one God who had swept the old ways down. Each alone might be enough to stop him from taking what he so deeply desired, together they were very nearly an impenetrable barrier.
    But I will have this ka. I must.
    He touched only the very outermost edges of the other's thoughts. In them, he could feel himself and he could feel fear.
    Both would give him, if not a way through, a way around. He probed for other weaknesses but saw only the blaze of unlimited potential.
    'What are you?"
    Henry, muscles twisted into knots across his shoulders, hands clenched so tightly into fists that his nails cut crescents into his palms, saw no reason not to answer. He pitched his voice so that it traveled across the distance between them but no further and threw it like a challenge.
    'I am Vampire."
    The ka he had absorbed since awakening gave him a confusing pastiche of images not many of which seemed to have much to do with the young man standing before him. He sifted through the information until he recognized what he faced. His people had called them by another name.
    No wonder the young man's ka burned so brightly; as long as the Night walkers fed on the blood of the living, they were immortal. As immortal as he was himself. Did his own ka burn like a beacon? A pity he would never know, for it was the one ka he could not see.
    What power would be his if he fed on the ka of an immortal being! It would no longer be necessary to work through pitiful human tools. He would rule from the beginning in his own name.
    Perhaps… perhaps a seat in the council of the gods would not be beyond him. He saw himself surrounded by glory, no longer the servant of a petty minor deity but a master in his own name. Quickly, as much as he thrilled to it, he buried the thought deep. It would not do for Akhekh to find it.
    But to devour an immortal ka-he had been so blinded by the life remaining, he had never even looked at the life lived, never even noticed it was far longer than the normal human span. He was, he discovered, the elder by a good many centuries, even discounting the millennia he had spent imprisoned. Still, he would have to move carefully, for if he was to finally feast, the Nightwalker's protections must be lowered. He did not have the power to break them down, even considering the fear woven through them.
    Why do you fear me, Nightwalker?

    Although it was an emotion he would use, it was a question he could not ask. So he asked another.
    'Why do you search me out, Nightwalker?"
    Why indeed?
    'You hunt in my territory."
    Ambiguous enough to hide a multitude of motives and also, Henry discovered as he spoke, the truth.
    Again he attempted to read the other's ka, to enter past the surface, but he got no further this time than he had before.
    'I would talk with you, Nightwalker. Shall we walk together for a time?"
    Henry wanted to say no, torn between a desire to run and a desire to rip out the creature's throat and drink deeply of the blood he could hear surging beneath the smooth column of throat. The first would bring him no closer to a solution.
    The second… well, even if he could get past the defenses all wizards wore, which he doubted, it was Sunday evening at a major intersection in downtown Toronto and committing a violent murder in front of hundreds of witnesses, while it would be a solution of sorts, would not be one he himself would likely survive.
    So, because it seemed the best, if not the only choice, he turned and fell into step at the other's side, trying to ignore the sun that continued to blaze in one corner of his mind.
    They walked south down Queen's Park Road and the power that walked with them turned more than a few heads as they went.
    'What shall I call you?" Henry asked at last.
    'I use the name Anwar Tawfik. You may call me that."
    'That's not the name you were born with."
    'Of course not." He laughed gently, an elder chiding an errant pupil. "I took the name upon awakening. I am not likely to give you the power of my birth name." He had not heard his birth name spoken since before the joining of Egypt into a single country. "And I am to call you…?"
    'Richmond." Although he had answered to it in the past it had been a title, not a name, and so should be