"Richard is not invincible." Michael brought down his left blade, knocking the sword from Locksley"s right. "I am not Lucan."
"Richard has long been our liege lord-"
"No one takes what is mine." He drove the suzerain to his knees and held him there by holding one razor-sharp sword tip at his throat, and the other under his nose. "No one."
Turquoise eyes burned into violet. Blood brightened the blade, and the smell of bergamot grew heavy.
"Easy, lad." A big man stepped out of the shadows, from where he had been observing the bout. A definite note of heather mingled with the bergamot and roses in the air, and had a curious but immediate calming effect. "Rob, if you"re fond of that beak of yours, shut your mouth and drop your weapon."
The other sword in Locksley"s hand clattered as it hit the stone floor. Byrne"s talent and the sound combined dispelled enough of Michael"s killing rage for him to step back and allow the suzerain to rise and retreat from the sparring circle. He blinked the haze from his eyes and saw the red stain on his blade, and a thin ribbon of the same streaming down the front of Locksley"s wide, pale chest.
"I beg your pardon." He handed his blades to Byrne. "I have not been myself."
"A Kyn lord separated from his sygkenis rarely is." The Scotsman inspected him. "If this is what I can expect from taking a life companion, I think I will keep to my bachelor life."
"Aye, so shall I," Scarlet, Locksley"s seneschal, muttered. "And perhaps borrow some of Lord Byrne"s armor when next you spar."
"You worry like an old woman, Will. Bring us some wine, will you?" As his seneschal left, Locksley gingerly touched the rapidly healing wound under his chin before glancing at Byrne"s tattooed face. "I could use the armor, I daresay.""Stay out of the circle, Rob; you"ll live longer. Seigneur." Byrne turned to Michael. "I would feel better about this siege of Dundellan if you would have me to serve as your second. "Twould not be the first time I took back a castle from a b.l.o.o.d.y Englishman."
Michael rubbed his eyes. "This is not Bothwell, and I do not have fourteen months."
"Or seven thousand men," Locksley added.
As the three blending fragrances radiating from the male Kyn receded, Jayr, Byrne"s seneschal, came from the other side of the room to join them. She moved without sound, and handed a red towel to Locksley without comment. Her unusual scent, like that of tansy flowers, always reminded Michael of the spiced cider he had often enjoyed during his human life. It seemed odd that the remote, reserved girl invoked such happy memories. She was the least friendly Kyn he had ever encountered.
"I appreciate your loyalty, but I need you both here," Michael said as he watched Rob wipe the blood and sweat from his chest.
"If I do not return, Jaus will be my successor."
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," Byrne said.
"What my large friend means is, you won"t return," Rob said. "Valentin is worthy, but he cannot rule as seigneur in your place for long. This John Keller can do nothing but become another weapon in Richard"s hands. The high lord can destroy his mind with a single whisper. Byrne"s seneschal has seen it done."
Jayr glanced briefly at Locksley and her master but said nothing. Michael had noticed over these last days of preparation that she would not speak unless addressed directly, and only then with a bare minimum of words. Many of the Kyn preferred females to be seen and not heard, but Michael had not known Byrne was one of them.
"The high lord will not harm anyone but me," Michael said, "and he will not use his voice to do so."
"Richard does as he pleases." Byrne studied his face for a moment, and his stoic expression darkened. "Mother of G.o.d, I see it now. You cannot mean to challenge him over a woman, lad."
"He took what is mine," Michael said simply. "It is my right."
His statement made the two suzerain fall silent. Jayr stepped into the circle, picked up Locksley"s blades, wiped them clean, and returned them to the wall rack.
Rob cleared his throat. "Even so, I would not take the human to Dundellan. The high lord issued orders for his head. Whatever the outcome of your challenge, it is unlikely that the human will leave the castle alive. Leave him here and we will look after him."
Michael thought of John Keller"s determination, and his own promise to let Alexandra"s brother help him take her back. He needed a human to do what the Kyn could not, and he doubted he could have persuaded Keller to remain behind unless he had clapped him in irons. "I vowed I would take him, and if I did not he would go anyway. With us, he has a chance."
"A chance to displease the most powerful Kyn in existence," Byrne said, his disgust plain. "Who, if you have forgotten, has never been challenged. If you will not use me, seigneur, at least summon Lucan."
Michael had already considered it. Richard could kill anything living with his voice, but Lucan could do the same with a touch.
Lucan had been poorly used by Richard and the Kyn over the years, until the killing had driven him to abandon his position as the high lord"s chief a.s.sa.s.sin. Michael had offered Lucan a jardin only to keep him from creating havoc in America.
But his old enemy had changed. Now Lucan no longer walked alone, but had taken Samantha Brown, a human female changed by Alexandra"s blood into Kyn, as his sygkenis. With his life companion"s help, he had begun to thrive as suzerain.Doubtless Michael could use Lucan"s reluctant grat.i.tude to persuade him to act as his second, but he no longer wished to kill.
Michael knew if he was not successful at Dundellan, Lucan might be the only Kyn left with talent powerful enough to stop Richard.
"I will not ask this of him," Michael said. "Lucan has earned the right to live in peace." Unless I fail.
Jayr stiffened and drew a dagger, turning toward the door. A heartbeat later it opened, but not to Will bringing in wine.
"As you say, suzerain." A tall, black-haired woman came in, the full skirt of her dark gray silk gown embroidered with arcane symbols in heavy silver thread. She did not bow or curtsy, but regarded Michael with unblinking dark eyes. "It seems that some of us have yet to earn such a gift."
Byrne"s seneschal sheathed her dagger.
"Cella." Michael went to her and took her hands in his as he kissed her cheeks. "I did not think you would come."
"You have never summoned me until now." Marcella Evareaux looked past him at Jayr for several moments before she produced an empty smile. "Your sygkenis has repaired my brother"s wounds many times. She offered me friendship, although I would not take it. The Evareaux are in her debt. I will serve."
Michael knew Alexandra had treated Marcella"s brother, Arnaud, for shotgun wounds on more than one occasion. "You know that she would not ask this of you."
"She did not summon me. You did." Her smile tightened. "I will serve, my lord, if you will hold me in reserve until the last." She looked at Jayr again, nodded to the other Kyn, and left the room, taking with her the elegant scent of wisteria.
"Evareaux"s sister is lovelier than I remember," Rob murmured. "I have not laid eyes on her since King George"s redcoats ran tail between their legs back to the homeland. Why does she not walk among the Kyn?"
"I cannot say." Michael dragged a hand through his hair. "Cella keeps to herself."
"She does it well; I had thought her long dead." Byrne eyed his seneschal, who stared at the door. "What is it, Jayr?"
The girl didn"t answer immediately. "Nothing, my lord."
"It is decided." Michael shrugged into his shirt. "Thierry and Jamys will remain here with Jaus to protect our interests. Marcella serves as my second. We leave for London within the hour."
"Aye," Byrne muttered. "G.o.d help us all."
Gabriel"s dream maiden would not come to him, and he had no desire to remain in the thin, pain-racked darkness without her.
He brought himself out of the strange state that provided rest for the Darkyn but only mimicked human sleep, and forced his sluggish senses to do the same. Benait may have locked him in an eternal night, but a familiar lethargy in Gabriel"s muscles told him that the sun still burned in the sky.
Will I ever see it again?
Gabriel remembered how in the dreams she had often turned her face up, as if to bathe it in sunlight. Unlike him, she was human, a creature of the day. Were she real, she would be awake now, working and thinking and being with those for whom she cared.
Doubtless she took delight in such things.
He envied her that, the ability to thrive in the true light of the world. Of all the simple pleasures of mortal life, he missed those waking hours, riding across the fields, walking through his mother"s gardens, following the track of deer through the dappled green mansion of the forest.
The night played thief, stealing all the color from the world, until it became a haunted house of strange shapes and frightening shadows.
Think of her, in the sunlight. Where she walks in splendor.
Gabriel might have blamed his wistful regrets for her recurring presence in his dreams, but his pale maiden seemed too real to be an invention of his guilt and sadness. Nor could he recall a time when he had met a female like her. Her appearance sometimes changed-the curls of her hair, like wisps of moonlight, would stream down past her shoulders one night, then cl.u.s.ter around her ears the next-but the contours of her face and eyes remained constant.
She felt more real than he did.
Other things tugged at his reason. At times she seemed very young, with the wayward curiosity of a child, but she held herself with an alertness that belied her surface appearance and actions. Gabriel sensed that if she were real, she had not strayed innocently into the nightlands. Some purpose had caused their paths to cross, one that had nothing to do with him or finding him.
She never came into the dreams seeking him; that much he had sensed from the beginning. Yet after the first encounters she had begun greeting him with obvious pleasure and affection. She might be the only comfort left in his dark world, but he might be nothing more to her than a pleasant fantasy.
He had tried to speak of it to her. Have you lost your way again?
Just dreaming.
A strange sound roused Gabriel from thoughts of her. He lifted his head and listened. He knew it was likely to be only Claudio, the elderly human male whom he had occasionally smelled. Gabriel knew his name only because Benait had spoken it before he had departed. Claudio had been left behind to serve as a sentry, perhaps, to keep other humans away and a.s.sure that Gabriel would not escape this, the last of their prisons. The old man never came into the bas.e.m.e.nt level or near the narrow stairwell leading to it.
He never will.
Gabriel"s open wounds had ceased bleeding, but blood starvation now sapped his strength. What little he could do about it dwindled by the hour. Soon his talent would fail him, and then his body would begin to feed upon itself.
There were stories among his kind of Kyn trapped in prisons or other places from which they could not escape. They were much stronger than humans, so it often took a year or more for them to die. When the end finally came, they left behind skeletons so desiccated that a touch caused them to disintegrate.
No one spoke of the agony of withering away to dust, but some part of Gabriel knew it would surpa.s.s everything the Brethren had inflicted upon him.
I am not dust yet.
The sound came again, distant and m.u.f.fled-a high-pitched, mechanical sound-and then it slowed and stopped.
A small vehicle, Gabriel guessed. Not a car; the engine was too small. He looped the memory of the sound in his mind until he identified it: that of a motorcycle. No vehicle had driven near the property since Benait had left, and Claudio traveled about on foot, so Gabriel had guessed that the roads around the chateau were seldom used.
A tourist, stopping by the road to picnic? Or to explore?Minutes ticked away in silence. The engine did not start again. When Gabriel heard the soft weight of footsteps crossing the ground, he almost did not believe his ears. But no, the newcomer walked with purpose, almost hurrying toward him.
Gabriel wondered if his mind was inventing the footsteps as some new form of self-torture, until ancient wood creaked, and the temperature of the air seeping into his chamber changed minutely. The sound of hard-soled shoes on the stone above his head confirmed the reality of the visitor.
Someone had entered the chapel. Not the old man; the steps sounded too quick, too light. Someone else.
Benait had intended the chamber to be airtight, but long months and other things had eaten away at the mortar between the bricks. Gabriel breathed in, filling his lungs with as much air as possible, identifying every change in it until he tasted...
Woman.
Gabriel had once been the best hunter and tracker among the Kyn, and nothing the Brethren had done had damaged his senses.
The scent of the human, like that of any animal"s, told him many things. She was young, healthy, and clean. She wore leather and cotton, and had recently walked through damp moss and rich soil. Perfume did not mask the natural fragrance of her body, which came into his head like cool, pure water from a stream. Her body was not cold, however. Her pa.s.sage colored the air with radiant human warmth.
Gabriel"s dents acerees, which had not extruded into his mouth since his capture, slowly emerged from the shriveled s.p.a.ces in his palate, tearing through the thin layer of flesh that had grown over them. As they extended, his hands curled against the need that came with them, the need to take her, his teeth in her flesh, her veins pulsing, her heart beating steadily as she gave him life.
I will have her.
He ignored the slavering hunger surging inside him and turned his focus within. He could not use his talent to bring her to him; unless she were bespelled his appearance would terrify her. He could not control her mind at all unless she came close enough to smell him.
When she did, she would do whatever he wished-or so he hoped.
Before Gabriel had been imprisoned, using l"attrait to attract humans to him had been effortless and usually involuntary.
Starvation had at first made his scent stronger, but years of deprivation had made it as weak as his limbs. In his condition, he would have to draw on his last reserve of strength and force his body to produce enough scent to permeate the closed chamber and perhaps lure her to him. Before he did, he had to wait to see if she would venture down the stairs.
He would not waste this, perhaps his only chance to escape.
She did not move down the center of the chapel, as Benait and Claudio had. She skirted the edges of it, as if keeping close to the walls. His sensitive ears heard her touching things here and there, the brush of her palms light but lingering. He could taste the heat of sunlight; she was not feeling her way through darkness. No, the woman sought something-something in the very walls themselves-with slow, careful fingers.
If only her quest would lead her to him.
Gabriel tracked the sounds of her movements as she made a complete circuit of the chapel. The sounds not only told him of her location but gave him the first approximation of the area of the chapel itself. Small and narrow, it must have been built to serve a n.o.ble family of modest means.
Throughout the ages, great families had made a show of their devotion to G.o.d by build enormous chapels and churches on their property. The government of modern France had spent billions buying, restoring, and turning such places into visitor attractions.
Wherever they had brought him, it would not be a site that commanded historic restoration. That, combined with the direction and distance the truck had traveled from Paris, meant that the Brethren had brought him south, perhaps only a short distance east of his estate in Toulouse.
Temerleone, Gabriel thought, recalling remote properties that had been left to rot in the Bordelais region. Or St. Valereye.
Given the respective populations around both of the chateaux, it was more likely that the latter served as his prison. She will tell me. She will tell me everything I must know, and then her flesh will yield to mine, and I will know all of her tastes.
Denial made his perpetual hunger swell, causing his dents acerees to throb and his exhausted limbs to tighten. At the same time his heart shriveled. Since learning to control his appet.i.te for human blood, Gabriel had never fallen into thrall, or caused a human to die by draining her body of blood while within the corresponding state of rapture.
That did not mean he had forgotten what it felt like, and it felt like this. The woman searching the chapel now might be his savior, but the moment she released him, he would be her killer.
The beast inside him that demanded feeding did not care. It is her life, or mine. So did that part of his soul, rendered unfeeling by his talent. She will not be made to suffer, as I have been- No.
Gabriel had once been human, like the woman. He remembered the vows he had taken during that life, and the G.o.d he had worshiped. He had been a warrior, and had fought for the Holy Land, but he had never thirsted for blood. He had obeyed his Templar master, and guarded well the secrets of their order, but he had never put his own needs before those of others.
He no longer walked the earth as a human, but he had not forgotten how it felt to brave the world in a fragile form, undaunted, unafraid.
I cannot take her life to save my own.
Even as that knowledge scalded him, the old man"s voice wrenched him out of his snarled thoughts. "What are you doing here, boy?"
Boy? Gabriel inhaled again. The old man"s sweat, acrid with his fear, added a sour top note to the air, but it did not disguise or alter the taste of the female.
"I wanted to take photos." She spoke in low, somewhat stilted French, but it was the timbre of her voice that shocked Gabriel.
"This place is very old. Are you fixing it up for someone?"
It cannot be her.
"It is too old to be fixed, boy. No one is allowed here." Claudio"s voice moved to the center of the chapel. "You see that beam?
It came down only yesterday. The rest of the roof could fall in at any moment. Go back to the village. Take your pictures of the church there."