The sky was gray. The air was cool.
Lucian felt the rush of the wind around him, embracing him. He felt the truth of the image, and he came to the Isle of the Dead alone.
It was less populated now than it had been all those years ago. Lone farmhouses dotted the craggy landscape, and the sea still swept around the isle. The only way to reach the island was by ferry. A new church had been built over the remains of the old one by the sea, near the place where the old fisherman"s cottage with the fantastic carvings still remained, dilapidated and in ruins. Historians came sometimes, and students. The population on the isle was too small to create a booming tourist trade, and those who lived and worked in the wilds of the rugged hills and cairns of the windswept isle were fond of the privacy.
He came there and sat by her grave, and remembered an earlier time. A time so long ago, when he had been naive in a way he couldn"t even begin to imagine now. So much time gone by. So many years when he had been vicious and bitter. So many years of learning. And still, so much anguish, and so many times when he felt cursed and d.a.m.ned, and desperate to kill, to butcher, slaughter, tear into human veins and quench the thirst that burned in him, no matter how far he thought he had come, how civilized he might think himself...
There had been the wars for independence in Scotland. A time to kill and glut, and never be known, with enemies so brutal themselves that his deeds were not noted. Medieval Europe. Ah, and there a playground, with the righteous burning the innocent-again, a time when enemies were clearly seen, when it seemed his judgment was no less merciful than that of "goodly" men.
There had been his days in France. Many of them. A time of revolution-when a vampire was a.s.suredly in as great a danger as any mortal man. A time of great risk. Wars, more wars, and a new age, a new time. To think back, to come here ... so long ago. And yet, in all, this was the past strongest in his memory.
He hadn"t really come there. Not in the flesh. He dared not use that kind of energy, that much of his desperately needed strength.
Physically, rather, he had come to Saint Giles, and found an old entrance below, to a cache of buried dead from the early sixteen hundreds. He wondered if the corpses were even known in the church records. They were from a time of tremendous cruelty, when witches and heretics were burned in Scotland, when the powerful had the right of life or death over the weak-a time, indeed, when the cruel appet.i.tes of a monster were often no greater than those of the goodly men who ruled on earth. Rick slept near him; his travel was in his mind, in his sleep. Lucian did not shape-shift as he traveled now; he saw. With his mind"s eye. Saw the past, saw her grave. He grieved as if it were yesterday.
And he was ready to move into the future. Should there be one.
Suddenly his dream was broken. Black shadows, like the huge wings of a giant bat, fell over his vision.
Darian stood before him, a shadow of twilight, even in the darkness of his sleep.
I have her, Lucian. I have her again.
Worms seemed to gnaw at his flesh. The earth groaned.
I will kill you, destroy you, totally, utterly!
You think yourself so strong. You think that you are the lord of us all, that you govern the undead. You thought yourself safe today. Ah, the sun! To carry out our . . . dinner plans for the evening. Of course, you can change it all. Come to Sophia. Maybe we"ll let her go. Give yourself up; bow down to her again. She is your creator. Give her back the power. And perhaps we"ll let your mortal lover go.
The air shifted; a flapping of wings sounded.
Lucian"s eyes flew open; he bolted up. Rick did so, too. Unaccustomed to his position, Rick cracked his head hard against the church flooring above.
Far above him, a tourist shivered, certain that Saint Giles was indeed haunted.
"They have Jade," Lucian said.
Shanna had fallen asleep. Deeply.
She felt someone shaking her shoulder.
"Stop, stop, will you please stop!" She moaned. "I am finally getting some sleep."
"Shanna, where"s Jade?" It was Jack; he was standing over her, his face tense.
"It"s all right," Shanna said, yawning. "She just went for coffee."
"When?"
"I don"t know. I don"t think it was that early. Maybe around eleven ... ?"
"Shanna, it"s three o"clock. Nearly dark."
"Oh, my G.o.d!" Shanna leaped out of bed, horrified. "She didn"t come back then. We"ve got to go find her. Oh, my G.o.d, Jack, surely they had to rest! Sophia and Darian must have needed some rest. The sun was bright ... They would have known we were coming tonight.
They would have needed to heal. They would have needed strength...."
"Apparently they are preparing," Renate said from the other bed.
"They"re preparing to meet Lucian. They set out to get Jade because they know that he"ll come after her. What better preparation to bring Lucian down? It"s a trap. For him."
She awoke to sounds. Halloween, she thought. But it wasn"t little children she was hearing, and those who were shrieking and talking seemed to be doing so at a distance.
She smelled earth, dank and fetid. She felt a very cold hardness beneath her.
It was dark, but when she opened her eyes, she could see enough.
The tomb was lit by burning torches secured along the way by ancient iron brackets.
She tried to shift. She could not. There was a sc.r.a.ping sound, a clanking ... and she was shackled to ...
Her blood ran as cold as the stone slab to which they had secured her. She had been here before. She was deep in the tomb, incredibly deep in the tomb where she had been just a year ago, when she had watched Darian tear four young people to ribbons in a horrendous bloodbath...
She ached; the cold had seeped into her. Her head hurt, her throat hurt, her body hurt. She tried to wrench her wrist free from what seemed to be a centuries-old shackle.
She turned toward the skeletal face of a long-dead knight. The empty eye sockets glared at her. Some type of worm crawled out of one. She opened her mouth to shriek with horror....
Somehow she closed her eyes and swallowed the scream. He wasn"t that horrible. He was almost all bones. Fragments rested by the sword with which he had been buried. She wasn"t going to scream. Not yet. She had to take care. Get her bearings.
Free her hands.
They might be near. Sophia and Darian. They might be just waiting for her to wake up.
Then . . .
She heard Darian"s voice.
"So you want to be scared, eh? Really, really scared? Keep coming, my friends. Keep coming. Deep, deep, deep down into the bowels of earth, into h.e.l.l; do come, my friends, and I will do my very best to scare you."
She lay upon the outer rim of the burial shelves, next to the old knight. Corpses lay above her and below her. Coffins were also laid about the tomb. Sophia"s coffin was as it had been before. It was open.
Sophia was there, sleeping, resting, drawing strength.
And Darian was now leading a crew of Halloween partiers down.
Down, indeed, to the bowels of the earth.
Jade inhaled, and spiderwebs teased her mouth. She breathed the scent of death. She hadn"t been slain as yet, she knew, because tonight she was meant to be even more of the show than she had been before.
Her heart was thundering wickedly. Surely Darian could hear the beat.
Even in her coffin, Sophia must hear the frantic pulse.
It was dark in the tomb, but not dark enough. The ghostly torches cast their bloodred sheen over everything in the chamber of the dead. "Come, come, my pretty!"
Jade slitted her eyes open, twisting toward the coming group.
Darian was leading a girl dressed in a harem outfit. The girl giggled.
Her escort was wearing a Freddy Kreuger costume, looking fierce.
"Yes, scare us, Scotty, old boy. Go on. We"re waiting."
"You fools!" Jade shrieked suddenly, no longer trying to keep silent.
She couldn"t bear to think of anodier slaughter; they had to be warned.
She worked her wrists furiously, trying to swing out from the burial shelf. "Get out of here. Go on, tough guy, Jesus! Didn"t you idiots read about what happened here before-"
"Ah, the undead! There she rises. Igrainia, they called her. Wife of the ancient chieftain, Lucian. She was not of this world herself.
Mermaid, some men called her. Fish, others said. Alas, the beauty departed this world, and whatever she might have been, she became- dead!"
The kids started laughing. There were more of them behind the harem girl and the Freddy. "Get back, Igrainia! Get back for now!
We"re waiting for your lover, the mighty chieftain. Alas, he hasn"t come. So ... you"ll watch Sophia at work one more time-and then it is your turn. Fear not, my pretty Igrainia. You are always most coveted."
Darian"s hands were on her as he forced her back next to the dead knight. He smiled, meeting her panicked eyes. His grip was as powerful as pure steel. He touched her, and she could do nothing.
He slowly licked the length of her face. "Delicious!" he said softly.
"Absolutely delicious."
"Lucian will destroy you," she promised, furious, desperate-and totally impotent against him.
"He"d best hurry. I"m quite disappointed. I thought he"d be here by now."
Darian licked his lips, then ran his tongue along her flesh again. ...
"There is the question, my beauty. My friends! Will her avenging angel come quickly enough? Only time will tell!"
Jack walked determinedly in the lead. The girls followed on either side.
They carried their stakes at the ready. They all had vials of holy water tied at belts they had fashioned for the occasion. "Cool! It"s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and friends!" someone shouted in a thick low-country accent.
"Why, "Arry, look at those b.l.o.o.d.y blokes! You are Buffy and crew, right on? Americans, at that! That"s what you are, right?"
They were traveling the streets, walking by a pub. These particular happy Halloweeners were well into their beers. One witch wore a hat askew. A fake vampire had spinach between his fangs. An angel wore a halo that was far more than bent.
"Something like that!" Shanna called, and they hurried on. Jack was walking fast. Shanna had to run to keep up with him. They turned a corner around a shop into an alley.
"Jack!" she called out. "Are you sure you know where ... we"re going?" she finished lamely.
Yes, he had known where they were going. They were there.
An old church rose before her, cast in the moonlight, Gothic, spooky. There had been kids running around the cemetery. Some were just disappearing around the church, into the trees. A police car was just driving away. Had the cops come to make sure that no merrymakers met the same fate as before? Wild kids, intent on daring play, were escaping before the police could call their parents.
They arrived just as the car was disappearing.
And just as the other creatures among the living slipped away.
And there, in the silence, stillness, and darkness of the night, was the graveyard. Tombs and stones rising here, there, and everywhere. The moon shining down. Angels seeming to move, to pray with greater desperation. The wind rose, whispered, seemed to howl a low, banshee note.
"We"re here," Jack whispered.
"Why hasn"t Lucian shown up?" Shanna asked, very afraid.
"G.o.d knows what they"ve done to him. Or your sister. It"s up to us to find them. To get them back. Somehow. If we can."
"Lord, Jack, what do you think he"s done? Has he simply ripped out her throat to anger Lucian? Will I find her ... decapitated?"
Jack stopped to rea.s.sure her. "Look, if Lucian hasn"t appeared anywhere, it"s because he knows that if he just gives himself over to them, they"ll kill him and then Jade as well."
"But I thought they couldn"t just kill him?"
"Sophia doesn"t feel she has to follow rules. She has the talisman." "Where"s the tomb?" Shanna asked.
Renate suddenly pointed. "It"s that one straight ahead. De Brus."
Renate started forward. Jack looked at Shanna worriedly. "Maybe we"re . . . doing just what they want us to do. Coming here. Maybe Darian has more power than we ever suspected."
"We have to find your sister. Keep your stake ready to strike. You can"t falter. Use that holy water."
"Maybe we should get help, call the police."