Brothers to the Death (The Saga of Larten Crepsley) Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t sure how long the Nazis would dog their trail. Mika thought they would hound him for years. Larten doubted they were patient enough to follow him for that long, but so far they’d shown no sign of quitting. They had doubled their numbers, then doubled them again, even following the pair when they crossed the border into lands where Germans were far from welcome. Larten could have revealed the Nazis’ presence to the local authorities,but his task was to lead them on, not have them locked up.
    The only real downside was Gavner’s snoring. It truly was as bad as Larten claimed. Some days he made more noise than one of the polar bears that Larten had wrestled with years earlier during their trek across the plains of Greenland.
    “Perhaps if I cut off your nose…” Larten muttered, only half-joking.
    “You go anywhere near my nose and I’ll slice off your ears,” Gavner retorted.
    “You were not this bad when you were a child.”
    “How do you know? You never checked on me when I was asleep.”
    “Yes, I did,” Larten protested.
    “Don’t lie,” Gavner tutted. “Alicia always tucked me in and looked after me if I stirred in the night. She told me I was a terrible snorer from the start.”
    “Then you admit it!” Larten pounced.
    “Maybe I snore a
little
,” Gavner grinned.
    The younger vampire moved to the mouth of the crypt and stared at the rows of headstones and crosses. It was almost dusk, but the light still hurt his eyes and he had to shield them with a hand.
    “How come you don’t mind the sun so much?” he asked Larten.
    “Your eyes adjust after fifty or sixty years,” Larten told him.
    Gavner grimaced. “I hate the way you make the decades sound so casual. Fifty years is a long time.”
    “I thought so too, once,” Larten said, although honestly he couldn’t remember when fifty years had seemed like an age. Like most vampires who had been around for more than a century, he had the impression that he’d always been offhand about the passage of time. He had forgotten the impatience of his youth, the way years had dragged. He no longer regarded the future with unease, wondering how he’d fill so many long nights. As a General of good standing, he had more things to worry about than killing time.
    “You must get bored,” Gavner said. “There must be nights when you feel like you’ve been alive forever, and the thought of enduring more drives you insane.”
    Larten cocked an eyebrow at Gavner. “You sound like a Cub. Perhaps you need to spend some time with vampires your own age.”
    “That lot of losers?” Gavner snorted. “No chance!”
    They had run into a pack of Cubs several years earlier. There weren’t as many as there had been in Larten’s youth. Vampires only rarely blooded children now, and new recruits were given more time to adjust to the ways of the clan before being asked to commit themselves. As a result, few felt as restless as Larten once had. Most were not inclined to break away from the clan for a decade or two.
    But some young vampires still gathered in different parts of the globe every so often, to mix with humans and lead a free and easy life before giving themselves over completely to the vampire cause. When Gavner had been introduced to a pack, he reacted with scorn. The high-living, dandyish members reminded him of Tanish Eul and he felt nothing but contempt for them. His response delighted Larten, although he did feel a pang of shame when he considered how low an opinion Gavner would have had of
him
if they had met back when he went by the name of Quicksilver.
    “Are there any exercises I can do to make my eyes stronger?” Gavner asked.
    “Try focusing on far-off objects,” Larten said. “Fix on something in the distance and hold on it with your eyes almost shut. Slowly widen them. When thepain goes away, take a break, then focus on something else and repeat.”
    “That will help?” Gavner asked dubiously.
    “You will start to notice a