Vampire Book - To Dream Of Dreamers Lost Part 6

"The Order were Nosferatu, before they left Kodesh. They are mostly Nosferatu now, though changed. They would have sensed those within the walls...might even have been aware of them all along. They would also know we might stop here.

It is not a sign that they did not come this way...if anything it is a sign that they suspected you might follow."

Montrovant considered his progeny's words. It was certainly possible that the Order had had him in mind and led him toward France, but the truth was it was only instinct that had guided him in that direction.

Every time he had been near to what he sought, the road had led him home. France.

"You may be right, my friend," he said softly, "but somehow I wonder if I am such an important thing to them? I do not see why they would wish to draw me after them. Kli Kodesh found me entertaining, but he is ancient, and mad. The Order is not so ancient, nor so powerful. I am nothing but a thorn in their side. That being the truth, why would they wish me to follow, unless it was a trap?"

Le Duc grinned. "A trap we will, of course, spring?"

"Of course," Montrovant's grin widened, and a flicker of light danced in his eyes. "How could I resist?"

They turned back to the table to find that the others had made short work of the meat and wine, and were packing away what remained for the road.

It seemed that Rachel and her followers had chosen not to be present to wish their guests a friendly good-bye, and that suited Montrovant fine. He sent du Puy and St. Fond for the horses and led the others out the front, letting the heavy wooden doors close behind them with finality. With the walls no longer surrounding him he drank in the freedom of the night, and the road.

They mounted, turning quickly back down the mountain, and were gone, the two scouts moving ahead to their point positions and the others gathering in a tight knot about him. They were one less, and so soon in the journey it was a poor omen, but Montrovant was not moved by omens. Too many bodies were strewn behind him, leaving him strong and free, for one more to make a difference. If he were the only one to reach his goal, the price would be small.

He spurred his horse down the curving road and onto the main trail, moving up the last leg toward the peak of the mountain pa.s.s.

_.

As they disappeared from the court, a lone figure appeared from the tree line. Abraham stood for a long moment, watching them ride down the trail.His mind whirled with thoughts of revenge, of anger and pain. His first instinct was to fly down the mountain in their wake.

His horse had been grazing casually where he'd left it. None had come near where he rested, and his pa.s.sage was unnoted by Montrovant, or those who might or might not still live within the walls of the monastery. Abraham hesitated. He needed to feed, and soon, but if the dark one had already entered, and departed, from the stone structure before him, then the odds were good that there were none left inside to breathe his name in their nightmares. The other possibility was that Montrovant had allies, and that was equally dangerous.

He opened his pack, glancing over the safe pa.s.sage and the other doc.u.ments with which Bishop Santorini had presented him, then closed the bag and moved to his mount. There would be others on the mountain, and it would not be the first time he was faced with the possibility of animals as his only sustenance. He would follow, remaining as close as he could without putting himself in danger of discovery.

Glancing over his shoulder as he turned down the mountain toward the trail beyond, he saw shadowed figures slipping over one wall, near the back.

Smooth, sinuous motion and the speed of shadows sliding past on the wind marked the pa.s.sing of these apparitions, and his eyes remained locked to that panorama as they bled into the deeper shadows of the night and were gone.

"d.a.m.ned," he breathed.

Turning he moved more quickly down the mountain and away.

There was no way now to know what Montrovant had done with or to those within the monastery's walls, but even if there was blood to be had there, it would be jealously guarded. There was nothing to gain and far too much to lose for Abraham to risk a visit within those walls.

His plans, from the beginning, had been nebulous and incomplete.

Santorini had ushered him out the door of Montrovant's keep, sent him on this "mission" without thought to how exactly it was to be accomplished.

Montrovant was old, powerful, and all that fueled Abraham was the fire of revenge and the hunger to find the Order of the Bitter Ashes once more and to confront them for abandoning him. He had served them long and well on the simple hope of joining. Of knowing for certain truths that he'd long suspected.

His own Embrace had stolen him from a family led by a father with a vision, a vision of religious fervor. Holy relics, and a church gone deaf, dumb, and blind to the heritage that had sp.a.w.ned it were the topics of conversation at their dinners. There were the precious handful of scrolls and books, works by learned men of other nations and times.There were maps, both fraudulent and true, all geared toward the same fixation.

Abraham's father would have understood Montrovant's obsession, but he would have insisted that the focus was off kilter. He had not, of course, felt the draw of the blood, nor had Abraham's father walked the roads or times the dark one had lived and seen. It was within his mind the old man had shone, the conviction of his words, and his thoughts, the things he'd pa.s.sed on to his adoring son.

"There are powers, Abraham," his father Joseph would say, late at night, a tankard of ale in his hand and an ancient tome of one sort or another open before him, "powers we cannot comprehend. The Church is not the only power in the world, nor the oldest, but it has brought a focus to those powers that others have not. That power is brought together, and hidden away, discovered only to be obscured more thoroughly, shared with a select few...so select, and so few, that even the priests of that faith do not know the complete truth.

"Among the Holy Fathers in Rome, there have been those who knew and those who merely suspected, even those with no notion of what went on between and beneath their own walls. Scrolls, artifacts, bits and pieces of the past, even pieces of the saints themselves, the cross, the Ark of the Covenant.

"These things, Abraham, are the keys to the power. The words in the Bible are cryptograms, hidden now even from those who created their coding. It is an uncertain guide, steeped in twisting roads that lead in endless circles."

It was at this point, usually after more than one of the tankards of ale, that Abraham's life would become clearest to him. The things his father had told him had sent him searching, seeking, seeing things that others did not, or that they ignored, reading the ancient texts with his father and seeing the magic that swirled through their words.

To Joseph, the secrets had been an obsession to be sought in tomes and the quiet sifting of the words and treasures of others. He was content with what he could find, and when the urge to move beyond this called out to him too strongly, he would himself call to the ale. That did not stop the fires from burning free of his eyes and infecting his son, who took that fire and placed it fully in his heart.

Twenty years of age, striking out on his own, Abraham had been filled to bursting with those dreams. The Holy Land, the mosques of the Muslims, the vaults of the Vatican. He'd sought them all, and found none. Not more than a week on the road he'd caught a rumor, a dropped word in a drunken conversation, and his life, and death, had been sealed.

He had been seeking anything that might lead him toward knowledge of the powers and secrets his father had hinted at, and fate had dumped him near a low valley. It was a place feared by all, a dark, shadowed story used to frighten children at night, and it called to him like a siren to those long lost at sea.

He'd entered that valley that very night, not even waiting for a good night's rest or common sense to point out to him that such stories rarely grew from nothing. They claimed that there was a place within that valley where strange men dwelled, a low-slung fortress cut into a bedrock of deep-set stone. Those who lived within were rarely seen, and never heard from, but had been seen abroad, always by night.

Those who entered the valley in search of them never returned. Very simply. No bodies, no horrible scenes of death or destruction, just nothing. It was as if those foolish enough to seek beyond the rim of that valley vanished from the Earth.

There was a road leading down the sloping trail, but it was overgrown from disuse. There were no ruts from wagon wheels, nor signs of pa.s.sing riders.

Although the valley was a natural bridge to the borders of the next village, the road all used wound around, skirting the valley carefully.

None of this had mattered. His father's dreams carefully tucked away in his heart, Abraham had entered that valley. He'd made his way to the bottom without incident, and through the line of trees toward the center, where he found and followed a clear, bubbling stream that coursed up from beneath the stone and wound into the distance.

Along that stream was another trail, this one more worn, and his heart had quickened. Someone did inhabit that valley, and they did move in and out, just not through the villages. The secrecy of it thrilled him, and he moved down that trail, heedless of the danger, until the structure he'd heard mentioned came into sight.

He'd had a single glimpse of that structure, one moment to impress its image in his mind, before he was grabbed roughly from behind, lifted from the ground like a child and carried screaming into the trees.

A powerful hand had slammed into his head then, silencing him, and the pain that followed was both exquisite and intense.

He felt himself dancing weakly in the grip that held him...his throat pierced by twin blades, transfixed, eyes s.h.i.+fting to black and mind fighting for control, for understanding. One thing flashed brightly through his mind. He had sought powers beyond his understanding, and they had found him.

"Please," he'd managed to beg, his breath slipping away, dying from his lips, "Please...show me?"

And for reasons that still itched at his mind, that still tore at his heart and raked through the remnant of his soul, his request had been granted. As he'd fallen, the life seeping from him swiftly, blood no longer his own and eyes going swiftly from bright blue and intense, to gray and dull, a drop of something had fallen, glittering in the bit of moonlight that filtered down through the trees hypnotically, splas.h.i.+ng into his lips and slipping within, winding down his parched throat like molten fire...and then another....a small stream.

Before he realized it was blood, he was latched to a slender, torn wrist, and feeding violently, drawing that sustenance into him, that power and sight, that amazing feeling of completion. An eternity pa.s.sed and he was cuffed again, knocked free as she sprang back, crouching and watching him with dark, feral eyes.

Her hair had swept back over her shoulders wildly, dark and windblown. What remained of her gown was nearly shredded, revealing white, smooth skin. She watched him, not speaking, for a long time.

He could not move, still, though he felt strength returning, surging through his veins...and things s.h.i.+fted, his sight blurred, then clear, thought lucid and incoherent in short bursts.

"Why?" he'd asked her. "Why?"

"You asked me," she replied, a soft lilt to her haunting voice. "None ever asked before."

And so it had begun. Lori, for that was her name, had taken him away, lifting him again as easily as she would a small sack of grain and carrying him over her shoulder to a narrow creva.s.se in the stone wall of the valley. Beyond that crack was a small cavern, and deeper still another, cool and damp, her steps echoing in his mind like the beating of a huge drum. She'd taken him deep inside, dumped him, and left him, not returning until he'd pa.s.sed into a deep darkness.

When he saw her again she did not speak immediately.

She took him by his hand, led him from the cavern into the valley beyond, and up the side of the valley furthest from the village from which he'd entered. They moved quietly, his own speed and agility nearly a match for hers, though he'd lain ready for death the night before.

That night, he had fed, a young man, out hunting too late and too close to the rim of the valley.

She'd been on him in seconds, dragging him down, and the hunger drove Abraham to join her before his mind could attach meaning to his motion. He had pierced the boy's throat and begun to drain that sweet blood, hands clutching hair and clothing, dragging the young, warm body closer, before the reality of his actions slammed home.

Not even looking back, she'd turned and left him there on that trail, the dying body of the boy in his arms, and moved into the shadows toward the village, her own hunger still to be sated. Abraham had watched, wanting to scream, to tear free, to turn and to run and run until his steps had carried him from the valley, through the village, and beyond...back to sanity, to his father, to the world he'd left behind. He did none of that. He held, and he fed, and he reached for tears that were beyond him, failing him as thoroughly as his humanity.

That was the beginning. He'd stayed with Lori for several years, feeding along the rim of the valley, watching those within, but never seeing them move, or leave. The fire within him for knowledge had not died with his heart. He craved even more strongly that which lay just beyond his reach, but those early years were years of learning. Lori was not a patient teacher, but she was fierce, and loyal, and had been too long in those trees and rocks alone.

At times they would talk, in the early morning, just before the sun would rise and press them to the earth with the weight of certain destruction, driving them to the caverns. She told him tales of those within the walls of that small keep, naming them the Order of the Bitter Ash. Great secrets, she said, were what they guarded, jealously and tirelessly, dragged into her valley many years before.

The structure had once lain empty. She could remember a time when the valley had been ruled by her own father, and the keep, not so strong, or secret, had been a place where weary travelers came for rest.

It had always been sheltered, and because of that was often overlooked in the violent feudal disputes that rocked France in those times. That seclusion had brought her own sire, seeking a respite from the trials of remaining hidden and active in the world.

He had killed them all, her family, slowly, her father first to go, leaving a wife and daughter to rule in his stead, and that dark presence seeping between the two of them, claiming both and setting them against one another. The tales were dark, and the images they brought softened the lines of Lori's face in Abraham's mind. He knew loneliness, as well, though he'd always had his father. His mother had died at an early age, giving birth to a brother that Abraham was never to know.

Mother and child had left as one, and only Abraham and his father had been left to share company, and life, and love.

The keep had been abandoned when her sire left, and he'd not offered to take Lori with him, though he'd Embraced her for the game of seeing her feed on her mother and kill her, whom she'd grown to hate for jealousy of his love. Games, endless, deathfilled games that had wiped clean the heritage of her village, her family, and a life she would never see again, and never forget.

The order had come much later. First had been men, small, dark men on whom she'd fed, but who'd remained, despite their fear, and their obvious understanding of who and what she was. They had brought great stones and tools, carting them into the valley by night, never using the main roads from the villages and avoiding outside contact when possible. The keep had been rebuilt, but it was not the structure of her childhood. Squat, pow- erful, walls thick enough to withstand nearly any a.s.sault, and empty.

Those odd, dark little men who'd built it had finished their work, sealed the keep, and departed, leaving few traces of ever having been there at all, and the structure itself, eerie and unopened. Lori had considered many times opening those doors and walking those halls, seeking the ghosts that still haunted her. She had ignored these impulses, at the same time creating the legend that would defend the valley from invasion until the eventual arrival of its owners.

The order had come by day. One moment the keep was empty, solitary and bleak, the next there were watches slinking along the upper walls, and wagon wheel ruts in the road, the sounds of animals and occasional voices filtering down through the ring of trees that she remained hidden behind, watching, listening, and wondering.

Lori had never gone to them. She had existed as always, feeding and remaining alone in the valley, watching. There was no remnant of her previous life to call her to that keep, and something in the aspect of those she caught glimpses of told her that there was no blood to be had by that road, either.

She wasn't certain who or what they were, but had sight enough to know they were beyond her power to control.

She also believed that they knew of her, and left her to herself, and she saw no reason to interrupt that silent partners.h.i.+p.

Abraham had seen it differently, and, eventually, had found his way to those gates. Lori had let him go. She'd claimed it was because the hunting had grown so much harder with him along, that the villagers were too restless providing sustenance to them both. The future had been a glimmer in the depths of her eyes.

She'd seen the truth that was Abraham's existence.

She'd known that, eventually, he would go to them. She'd seen that blood was not the only hunger that drove him, and that in the end, even the call of her own control would be challenged.

He had gone to the doors, early one evening, and he'd knocked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he visit them. The door had swung open reluctantly, at last, and he'd met Gustav for the first time. Very old, that one, very strong. His features bore the deformity and decadence Abraham now knew as Nosferatu, but there was something more.

Beyond those twisted features, sparkling from within, softening the effect and the imposition of that taint on once-mortal flesh, a light had shone. There was something magic in the man's motions, in his words.

Abraham knew in an instant that his secret was no secret at all in that one's presence, and so without knowing why, he spilled forth his story. His father, his dreams, his descent to the valley. He considered trying to leave Lori out of the tale, but Gustav knew. He smiled at the near insult of the attempted lie and a.s.sured Abraham that the Order had known of both of them for some time, and that her prowling of their borders provided them with a means of protecting their privacy without involving themselves personally, and that they approved.

Abraham never left those walls to hunt with Lori again. They accepted him as guest, helped to provide his sustenance as he studied, and continually spoke to him of other places and times, things he'd heard or read about, but never hoped to be near or a part of. All that while, he'd begged them to share with him their secret, the power that made them what he was, and more. The power that lessened the weight of the sun's bite on their soul and caused them such scant discomfort from their hunger that they seemed rarely, if ever, to feed.

They had smiled at his questions, feeding him knowledge, telling him legends of power, corruption, and wonder, and slowly indoctrinating him into their own purpose. The vaults remained sealed to him, but they let him know that those vaults contained secrets of the sort of which his father had spoken, and they drove him half mad with the desire to see them, to hold and experience them. He lived and breathed to become as they, and they used this to their advantage.

They sent him out as a spy. They used him to carry messages to other ancients, to other lands.

Each time promising a little more, each time seem- ing sincere, until that one day outside Rome when he'd returned to them, ready to beg, to prostrate himself before Gustav and plead for a single drop of that one's blood, and he'd found them gone.

Vanished.

The road ahead wound up the mountain slowly, and on that road was the only man, living, dead, or otherwise, that Abraham hated now more than Gustav. They all seemed drawn by destiny toward some single focal point ahead, and though the hunger was eating at his mind and his thoughts, he kept his mount steady and slow, moving into the mountain's shadow quietly and with patience.

It was his silence that brought the soft footfalls to his ears, his focus that whipped his head about and down the side of the mountain, beyond the trail. He was being followed, clumsily, and the scent of blood was in the air. Turning back to the trail with a soft smile, he slowed his mount further.

It was a beautiful night for an ambush.

SEVEN.

The footfalls Abraham heard were hurried and uneven, not at all stealthy. He quickly revised his initial image of ambush to one of flight and changed course, plunging his mount off the road on the upward slope of the mountain and moving into the trees...picking his way along parallel to the trail below him, stopping now and again to listen, and to speed or slow in tandem with the one below.

There were other sounds now, from further back, more footsteps, and voices. Whoever it was below was being followed, and they were desperate to escape.

Something in that pursuit dropped the temperature in the silent, still organ that was Abraham's heart. It was a relentless pursuit, neither gaining nor losing ground. Whoever was fleeing below was tiring quickly, but the pursuit only slowed. They were not trying to catch up, but to terrify.

The sounds of the pursuit themselves were calculated.

Each gave a new direction, a new distance between pursuit and prey.

There was no way to pinpoint how closely the others followed. Abraham stopped his mount, concentrating, reaching out with his mind, his senses, seeking those who hunted.

It took him only a moment's concentration to realize that one of those who followed was a vampire.

Two heartbeats, one thundering, the other easy and slow, relaxed, but one set of footsteps and two horses. The Cainite traveled with a companion, and that might be information that could be used. Perhaps the human knew the truth about his partner, perhaps he did not. From the terror in the heart and frantic pace of their prey, it seemed likely that, if the pursued did not know exactly what he faced, he knew the degree of danger.

Suddenly a figure crashed from the trees beneath the road, staggering onto the surface and whipping his head frantically up and down the trail. His clothing was tattered and torn, his hair matted with dirt and sweat, but it was easy to see that the man was n.o.ble. The torn s.h.i.+rt was fine, and the soft leather boots that flapped, ruined under his feet, torn by use they were never meant to see, were finer still. His eyes were wide, mad with fear, and without thought the man plunged off the other side of the trail and up the mountain toward where Abraham sat, obscured from view now by a large outcropping of stone.

Abraham stood his ground. Any sudden motion and he would become prey as well, and though he was not truly fearful of those who followed, neither was he foolish. He'd felt his freedom stolen from him once, and the memory of it was burned deeply into his mind. He did not want to feel that helplessness, that burning hunger eating away at him from the inside out, again.

The man pa.s.sed well beyond the far side of the stone, heedless of the eyes that marked his pa.s.sing.

Moments stretched to an eternity, and then the sounds of hoofbeats followed.

The two hors.e.m.e.n melted from the shadows, long cloaks stretched back behind them in the night breeze like the wings of giant bats. They rode smoothly and easily, slung low over the necks of their horses. They were dressed in black, head to toe, large black hats with wide brims that stretched to obscure their features further from view. A glint of silver shone on the breast of each, and as they pa.s.sed, Abraham got a closer look.

They wore crosses. They were ornate, silver crosses, like those worn by the clergy in Rome.

Priests. Those who pursued were priests, or agents of Rome. And he who fled? Abraham had meant to let them pa.s.s, to wait until they had moved beyond his sight and to return to the road, and his own task, but now his interest was piqued. It was not that uncommon for the d.a.m.ned to move among the clergy. For agents of the Church to hunt and terrify by night was a centuries-old custom. The two bound together was an altogether different and less likely situation.Moving very carefully, crossing around the far side of the stone from where the others had pa.s.sed, Abraham paralleled the pursuers' course. It would not be long, in any case, before their prey fell to exhaustion and the hunt came to an end. There was nothing to be gained by remaining too close behind Montrovant at this point except detection, and that was something Abraham was not yet prepared to face.