“I have been making plans,” Monçada said, apparently satisfied that the topic of Fatima had been exhausted. “Now that you have returned to me, all is nearly ready.” Monçada casually reached out his fleshy hand and placed a finger atop the black queen—the likeness of Lucita that Vykos had crafted that horrible night years ago.
“You have done your part,” he continued, “and Vykos has done its. Vykos has done remarkably well, in fact. I’d expected its attention to wander long before now.”
Lucita listened but only partially comprehended. She was still too horrified by her betrayal of herself to offer any critique of her sire’s ramblings. For his part, Monçada seemed to enjoy the novelty of pontificating before a properly subservient childe.
“Borges is gone,” he said, “as you so cleverly saw to, and the princes in the American South are destroyed or chased away. They were so insular,” he shook his head in mock-shame. “Each one a petty ruler, so jealous of his city. No arrangements for mutual defense. Even when a warning went out, each prince thought the previous city would be the last to fall.” He contemptuously brushed the captured white pieces from the side of the table onto the floor.
“There has been the strength to do this for quite some time, but not the will,” he said, grinding the pieces on the floor beneath his large sandal. “The archbishops and the nomads merely needed a firm hand to guide them. And heaven knows the regent wasn’t about to lead. Why should she start now?” Lucita wanted to shrink back from his increasing fervor. She wanted nothing to do with his plans. She could not see that they had anything to do with her—but she feared that they did.
“The Camarilla strength in Washington is broken,” Monçada said. “Those that remain huddle in Baltimore but are not yet defeated. And then there is Po Ionia, the remaining archbishop of stature. Once the Camarilla fools have done their part…”
The moment that Lucita had feared came to pass, as Monçada’s gaze fell upon her. She wanted desperately to attack him and at the same time to flee from his presence, but she could do neither. She didn’t so much as protest as he reached out and took her hand.
“Once they have bloodied Polonia’s nose, then the New World will be ready,” Monçada said. He gazed at Lucita, but his vision was of a transformed world. “Ready for me to stand at the fore…with you at my side.”
He stroked a finger along Lucita’s arm—wrist to elbow to shoulder. She shuddered but did not pull away. His hands were quivering with excitement. His eyes bulged.
“In time, my daughter, our power will rival that of the regent. Where she lords over wild dogs, I will bend them to my will. And all that is mine will be yours.”
Lucita felt the sudden urge to run, to flee from her sire’s madness. But Monçada held her by the arm. She strangled a whimper. She’d not allow herself that, nor to cry. She’d not give him the satisfaction. She might have accepted Final Death, but to remain at his side and do his bidding… All that was left was laughter. Cold, hollow, maniacal laughter.
The sound of Lucita’s cruel despair slapped Monçada across the face, disturbed him from his triumphant reverie. He shook her roughly, but the laughter did not cease. Instead it grew louder, more forceful. It wracked her body and brought forth tears of blood from her eyes.
Monçada shook her again. They jostled the table and upset the board. The black queen tumbled to the floor and landed amidst the dust and the rubble of white.
Lucita could not stop the laughter. Her sire’s madness ripped it from her barren womb like a mangled, unborn child. He twisted her arm. The bone snapped, but still she could not stop. Not releasing her broken body, Monçada raised his hand against her, and the first blow fell.
The first, but not the last.
Wednesday, 6 October 1999, 12:20 AM
Calle del Sapo
Madrid, Spain
Anwar lunged away from a wisp of movement that might have been nothing at all. Or it might have been one of the streaks of shadow. From the corner of his eye, he saw the flash that was Mahmud, saw the silent snap of the whip and the patch of darkness ripped apart like shredded paper.
Now Anwar whirled and slashed with his katar at another shadow. The blade met resistance. The darkness jerked away from him momentarily. He followed Mahmud’s example and set himself in motion. The bodies were not a great obstacle. Anwar danced over and around them without losing even half a step. The shadows could not surround what they could not catch. But the darkness was everywhere.
The shooting in the church had gone so easily, as had the bombing that Mahmud had undertaken to gut one particular storage room at the opera. But when the two had met at the next point of diversion, as Fatima had instructed, the resistance had been swift and intense. The ghouls poured from the bar waving clubs and knives, firing guns. It was a less scenic portion of the city, where drunken street brawls were not uncommon, where the policia would not rush to intervene.
Anwar had felt some small relief after he and Mahmud had quickly dispatched the score of ghouls and the rest of the crowd had dispersed in panic.
Then the shadows had closed in.
The battle now was one of survival. Feeling that their diversionary task was done, he and Mahmud had attempted to withdraw from the field, but the shadows were everywhere. Supposedly only a half-dozen of Monçada’s legionnaires were in the city, but Anwar would have sworn it was a hundred. Every way he turned, darkness exercised will—lashed out at him, grabbed at his legs, his weapon, attempted to smother him from all sides. Every so often, a solid figure appeared, only long enough to attack, and then was gone when Anwar’s blade sang in the night.
His wounds so far were superficial, but they required attention, they required blood to heal. Mahmud was fighting as a man possessed. His whip, denied sound, still possessed its sting.
Anwar needed only a single opening to steal away through the night, but at every turn the shadows blocked him. Though the fight was not yet lost, neither was it won. Time and numbers would eventually tell the tale.
Wednesday, 6 October 1999, 12:22 AM
Catacombs, Iglesia de San Nicolás de las Servitas
Madrid, Spain
Fatima surrendered herself to helplessness. Darkness held her. Tendrils of shadow coiled around her, pinned her legs together and her arms to her body. A few minutes of struggle had proven the futility of that route. The darkness carried the weight of the earth, the force of stone. It surrounded her and bound her with inescapable malevolence.
The Leviathan.
Darkness was its strength, and as it pulled Fatima along the passage, the darkness was complete. Cold seeped into even her undead flesh. Screams sounded in her ears—trapped echoes of despair voiced long ago by tortured penitents. The shadow, so complete was its stranglehold on this place, kept the shrieks alive long after flesh and bone had crumbled to dust and faded from memory. Inquisition and confession were still here, and tears offered as final rite.
Surrounded by darkness, by shadows of memory, Fatima knew her own quiet despair. Not because she had gambled and failed, but because she had gambled wanting to fail. She was Fatima al-Faqadi, assassin among assassins. There had been a small chance, and she had deceived herself as to how small it was. Mahmud, Pilar, not even Anwar had questioned her. Perhaps they should have. To question her would have proven them not weak but wise.
But they had taken her word on faith. They had assumed she knew more than they did about this dark path, about the Leviathan. All she knew was speculation; all she had was a guess—enough so that she could leave them all and come here to perish in darkness, to have the sword removed from her hand. She had hoped to relinquish all and be left with Allah, but now—now that it was too late—she saw her error. Allah called her to faithfulness in all that she held dear. Consequences were not the shapers of faith—not for the worthy. Yet consequences had shaped her in this, and she had broken faith with her brethren, with Lucita. She had given in to despair and given up on all of them.
Had Fatima even rea
lly tried to avoid capture, to escape from this creature she’d known lurked somewhere? She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t manage to trust herself. It was too late now. Her doubts had led her here, and now they would drown her in darkness. She had expected, at the very least, relief from the gnawing guilt, but in this, too, she had been wrong. Now that action was beyond her, now that there was no longer any chance to make amends, regret was not banished. It was all that remained.
Perhaps the best she could hope for was oblivion. Once the Leviathan destroyed her, there would be peace. Even if the beast merely imprisoned her, there would be the pain and insanity of hunger, but eventually torpor and peace. And for no more a price than abandoning all she’d ever held dear.
The bargain stuck in Fatima’s throat. She thought of Lucita, of how she would reject such a compromise in no uncertain terms. Fatima felt that defiance in her blood—in Lucita’s blood that flowed in her own body. Fatima lashed out at the darkness, but she could barely move. Her will was not enough to part the darkness. The darkness welcomed Fatima. It pulled her in more completely, held her firmly. The Leviathan was all around—touching, smelling, tasting.
And then it was gone. The shadows were not so all-encompassing, and Fatima stood again on her own two feet. The screams faded into the past, and with them despair.
It knows the blood.
In Fatima’s veins flowed the blood of Haqim—and that of Lucita. Monçada’s blood once-removed.
It knows the blood.
Fatima had taken advantage of her lover, had fallen into her arms under false pretense. And now the false lover was given leave to make amends. The bargain was undone, and regret with it. Fatima moved quickly on into the lair of shadows, lest her reprieve prove fragile and the full weight of darkness return.
Wednesday, 6 October 1999, 12:41 AM
Catacombs, Iglesia de San Nicolás de las Servitas
Madrid, Spain
The tunnel of the Leviathan soon gave way to the labyrinthine passages of Monçada’s haven proper. Fatima pressed onward. At each turn and in every corridor, statues and Christian iconography confronted her. She could feel the faith, corrupted by shadow, that permeated Monçada’s lair. But Fatima, too, was a creature of faith. She feared neither heaven nor angels.
She found the twists and turns of the corridors themselves almost familiar. Never before had she set foot in the cardinal’s lair, but the Black Hand’s interrogation of Ibrahim had been thorough. The maps were burned into her memory. Thus far, they had proven accurate. She had not lost her way. Nor had anyone or anything else challenged her.
The cardinal jealously maintained his privacy. According to Ibrahim, few servants were allowed beneath the uppermost reaches of his lair, and tonight ghouls and legionnaires alike would be guarding the entrances, responding to the attacks in those places. Fatima felt the vibrations from her pocket, now that she was free of the smothering presence of the Leviathan. It was the signal that the diversions were underway…and that Lucita had returned to her sire.
There would not be merely Monçada to deal with.
In the end, Fatima’s search was much easier than she’d expected. Tracing in her mind the diagrams of winding corridors, she had thought to search room by room. But her ears discerned a familiar sound in the distance: the dull reverberation of flesh striking flesh.
Fatima hurried toward the sounds of strife, knowing that there she would find Lucita. She rushed through corridors that she knew but did not know, past the chapel, around a corner, past the scriptorium. She did not pause in the bathing chamber but continued through it, down the hall. She stepped through an open door.
Monçada was larger even than she’d imagined, powerful beyond what his girth would imply. He wore simple robes and sandals, and Fatima could smell the blood of his sweat. She watched his fist as it struck Lucita. Fatima flinched as if the blow landed on her own body.
He held Lucita aloft by a mangled arm. She was conscious, and a weak sound that might have once been laughter emanated from her beaten form.
Fatima, reaching for her scimitar, moved silently toward sire and childe. Whether Lucita glanced in her direction or Monçada was too attuned to the shadows of his haven, Fatima did not know, but he sensed her presence somehow, turned to face her. She decided against sword and drew the 226 Sig instead and pulled three quick shots.
Monçada twisted with amazing speed, and the rounds that would have taken off his head slammed instead into his shoulder and exploded. The large man staggered backward. He dropped Lucita and clutched the bloody tangle of flesh that had been his shoulder. His left arm hung useless at his side.
Suddenly his rage that had been focused against Lucita and her defiant, insane cackle shifted to Fatima. “Cease!” he commanded.
The shockwave of his voice filled the room like a tidal wave. Fatima’s finger trembled against the trigger—twelve explosive rounds remained to blow him into a bloody mass—but she could not pull it. She hesitated only an instant, but tendrils of shadow grabbed the weapon. She pulled the trigger. A portion of the ceiling exploded. Fragments of stone rained down upon them.
Rather than mire herself in a tug-of-war, Fatima abandoned the gun to the tendrils and sprang forward with her scimitar. But the shadows were rising against her. She slashed at them and dodged, but they forced her wide of Monçada. As she maneuvered, she took her jambia into her other hand with but a flick of her wrist. With one fluid motion, she slit her own arm so that she bled freely, and flung the blade.
A tendril of shadow blocked the path of flight, but the jambia, bathed in the blood of Haqim, rent the darkness and thudded into the chest of the surprised cardinal.
Monçada bellowed in pain.
Nearby, Lucita was crawling to her knees. Fatima ignored her and advanced against the sire.
But now truly all the shadows of hell answered Monçada’s call. The darkness converged from every corner and crevice of the room. Fatima could as well have turned night to day as avoided the onslaught, and as the blanket of tendrils entangled her legs, Fatima felt again the presence of the Leviathan, not bound to one distant tunnel but alive and spread throughout this underground deathtrap. The beast had spared her once—had recognized her blood—but now it obeyed the command of its master.
Fatima slashed at the shadow creature, but as the room became a lake of darkness, there was nowhere for her to elude its grasp. Her speed was useless as the darkness rose everywhere. It took hold of her again, and though this time she struggled unceasingly, the result was no more satisfactory. The tendrils squeezed her, not crushing her but giving her no opening to escape. Perhaps the Leviathan was too confused by the familiar blood to destroy her; perhaps Monçada’s wish was that she be a captive.
The cardinal was tending to his wounds. His shoulder was healed slightly. He had pulled the jambia from his chest and was pawing at the gash that would not respond to his blood, would not heal.
Moving through the shadow was Lucita, her dark hair like so many flowing tendrils. She’d climbed to her feet and retrieved a sword from some place. The Dark Rose of Aragon stood between Fatima and Monçada. Her arm, too, was partially recovered, though it obviously pained her still and she held the sword in her left hand.
Monçada smiled through his own pain. “You were quite right, my beautiful daughter. We seem to have captured one of the heathen Assamites.” His expression of triumph shifted to concern. “We must find out how she got this far,” he said, his confidence returning as he spoke. “But we will not be remaining in these halls much longer, regardless. We will make an even more wondrous—”
Monçada seemed surprised when Lucita’s sword slammed into his neck. The blade sliced muscle and tendon and dug into bone. Lucita had used her off hand, and her strength was failing. She swayed on her feet. Monçada looked quizzically from the sword protruding from his neck to his childe. His mouth remained open, but he seemed at a loss for words.
“My daughter…” he managed at last, but still the words to exp
ress his obvious shock eluded him. With a pained look, he wrenched the embedded sword, now chipped, from his body and tossed it away. The clatter of steel against stone seemed to revive him, or at least to release the great rage that welled up within him. Within seconds, his face was dark red, his hands balled tightly into large fists.
He lashed out at Lucita and the back of his hand sent her airborne across the room. Self-control was a distant memory for the cardinal. He stood trembling with rage, eyes squeezed shut.
“May the gates of hell swing wide for you!” he shouted at last, and with that pronouncement, the shadows swarmed over Lucita.
The Leviathan still held Fatima tightly. The creature was more than massive enough to overwhelm two people. As tendrils of darkness snaked around the cardinal’s childe, however, Fatima could feel the indecision of the shadow beast. For Monçada ordered it not to incapacitate Lucita, not to bind her but to destroy her, to crush her body until there was nothing left. Fatima felt this through the shadow, or perhaps it was the common blood—from her to Lucita to Monçada—that gained her insight.
It knows the blood.
The black tide of the Leviathan washed Lucita before it like helpless driftwood. Great tentacles rose from the pool to encircle her. They constricted with the force of ages. Joints popped. Bones began to snap.
But still the Leviathan hesitated to crush her completely, to destroy the vessel of the blood. Fatima, so familiar with despair, felt that of the creature—ordered now to destroy the blood that it was created to protect.
It knows the blood.
For a few seconds, the shadow beast’s resolve wavered…and then it decided.
The bands of darkness that imprisoned Fatima began to squeeze more forcefully; the tentacles holding Lucita tightened once again—and great snakes of shadow sprang forth to ensnare Monçada himself.
Clan Novel Assamite - Book 7 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 19