by Joey W. Hill
What happened next was almost too fast for Uthe to follow, even with his vampire senses. When he reached the wolf’s side, Cai began to move past him, then pivoted instead. He seized the wolf around the middle. The shifter was so large, it wasn’t an easy feat. Though a vampire was stronger than a wolf shifter, the wolf was as large as one of Lyssa’s Irish wolfhounds, with three times the massive bulk in shoulders and chest. Rand’s head whipped around, his teeth coming close to taking a chunk out of Cai’s shoulder, but by then Cai had a steel collar latched around his throat, attached to a chain embedded in the stone floor. The wolf snarled, lunged, and this time made contact, sinking his teeth into Cai’s arm.
Keldwyn was on his feet, as was Uthe, but Cai, instead of yanking away, banded both arms around the wolf’s neck, pressing against him so his captured and bleeding arm put a strain on the hinge of the wolf’s jaw. When the wolf began to struggle, Cai made a shushing noise. “Going to stop being an asshole about this? I’m not going to lose you to a couple jerks getting lucky, just because you don’t think I should hunt without you at my back.”
His blood was dripping on the floor before the wolf subsided, though the one eye Uthe could see was fiery blue. Cai had cut off enough of his wind that, when the vampire released his grip, he had to ease the wolf to a reclining position on the floor. “There you go. You don’t have to make this a fight every damn night, you know. And lick that shit up. Blood’s all over our floor.”
The wolf’s expression said exactly what he could do with his suggestions. Cai turned to Uthe. “I trust the sorceress’s opinion of you, my lord. She said you were a Templar Knight. One of the true ones, who never abandoned your oath.”
Hearing it was humbling. The sorceress had always treated him like something that crawled over her threshold with six legs, though in time he’d learned that was what passed for affection from her. Rising, Uthe gave the vampire a half bow. “I was and am a Templar Knight. It is not something one leaves behind. Though I have not been able to observe all the tenets of our Rule, I have never stopped honoring them however I can.”
“I can vouch for that,” Keldwyn spoke, surprising him. The Fae’s tone was neutral, though Uthe detected the sardonic edge. “He is tedious about it.”
“All right, then.” Cai’s mouth curved. “This wolf is my family. He can do you serious harm if you get close to him, but since I expect you would still prevail, I need your word you’ll watch over him and do him no harm.”
“For your hospitality and coffee, it is a small thing to ask,” Uthe agreed. “He will come to no harm from us, and we will protect him from any harm that comes this way.”
Cai gave him a searching look. “I wouldn’t leave him at all, except we did promise to help you, and cutting those numbers is a way to do that.”
“Then I will go with you and help you hunt them.”
“No thanks. Like most of us, I hunt better alone.” He flashed fangs. “I’d also prefer not leaving him bound like that without someone to watch over him. He won’t be any trouble to you. I have a way of letting him shift back to human for short periods, but the sorceress gave him something that’s keeping him a wolf pretty much full time until he heals. Which means you don’t have to worry he’ll shift and use thumbs to get out of the collar. You can sleep. Though if he does, best plug your ears. He snores like a freight train.”
The wolf snapped, growling menacingly once more. Cai ignored him, though Uthe detected some effort in the indifference. When he left the cave, the wolf lunged against the chain, letting out a short, piercing howl. Up until now, Uthe had detected human awareness in the wolf, but as his distress increased, the animal took over. Both eyes became gold, the blue disappearing.
“Here,” Keldwyn said, in a commanding way that jerked the beast’s attention to him. The Fae raised a hand. When the wolf’s gaze followed the movement, his eyes glazed and his legs gave out beneath him, letting him sink to the floor. A moment later a rumbling snore filled the cave.
Keldwyn’s magic always left a lingering heat and scent, like a blown out candle with a tart cranberry scent. Uthe resisted the urge to draw it deeply into his lungs. “He’s protective of his vampire,” he said.
“As are many servants, like your Mariela,” Keldwyn noted. “He’ll sleep until his Master’s return. I am sorry about your sorceress. You were fond of her. It was in your face when he revealed her death so baldly.”
Uthe grimaced. “She was the last of her line, unless she had time to train another. I have been in contact with the family as the magic was passed from woman to woman, all dedicated to this one task. She was the one to find the answer we sought. But beyond that…she was a unique soul.”
“What was the task she solved?”
Uthe shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we’re in her home.” He glanced meaningfully toward the wolf. Even if the creature was unconscious, he was a fully marked servant and Cai could listen to their conversation through him. Understanding, Keldwyn nodded, though Uthe saw his frustration. Understandable, since Uthe didn’t care for being outside an information loop either, but sometimes one had to be patient.
The bigger question was who were these men who sought what Uthe was after? Though even that question was less important than who was directing them. He’d know the answer when he confronted them. Like Cai, Uthe expected that to happen as soon as they approached their destination. While he appreciated Cai’s help, it chafed to be here while another vampire handled the hunting. But he expected there would be plenty of bodies to go around before dawn came.
“He’s a peculiar vampire,” Keldwyn commented. “Do you have many like him that don’t fall within the reach of an overlord?”
“A few, mostly in the mountain or desert regions like this. Lord Mason was outside the purview of the vampire world for the many years he spent in the Sahara, not that I think that would have made much difference to him. Especially with how powerful he is now. Our census of approximately five thousand vampires in the world assumes a certain percentage haven’t been counted because they’re loners, operating outside areas where we wouldn’t cross paths with them. Like Cai, they also take precautions to ensure they are not noticed by humans, one of the biggest flags to put them on the Council’s radar. As Cai said, he is not a Trad, but he exhibits some of their tendencies to protect his autonomy. We don’t know how many Trads there are beyond those we’ve included in the five thousand, but their number unfortunately seems to be growing.”
“You think the Council should be more concerned about them than they are,” Keldwyn recalled the discussions. “Though some on the Council admire them, consider them purists.”
“Because they’ve never met one,” Uthe said flatly. “It makes it easy to romanticize them. We are much like animal predators in our instincts and impulses, my lord.” He looked toward the wolf. “We have that in common with him. Yet we have a very distinctly humanoid trait. Our sadism. A Trad may consider himself a far more natural version of vampire, but their version is the monster depicted in human horror films. Conscienceless, driven by bloodlust and the pure pleasure of indulging it. The struggles of the victims only fuel the appetite.”
Blood throbbed in his temples, his pulse beating strongly in his throat. Damnation, he’d left this behind. That this damn disease would bring all of it back so clearly, so painfully… Truth, there was a cruelty in the design of the world that could stir hopelessness about what lay beyond its making. He understood Cai’s feelings on that all too well.
“It sounds as if you will not run out of stories to tell me on our trek. But why don’t you take your ease before we proceed to the sorceress’s home?” Keldwyn slid down to the ground so his back was against the rock. He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Put your head in my lap. There are no eyes watching us here, and now that we know for sure those eyes are our foes, I could give a fuck about their opinion on man-love.”
It was unexpected, Kel offering his lap for a pillow while he slept. When Uthe hesitat
ed, Keldwyn lifted a brow. “Do I need to make it a condition of our agreement?”
Uthe snorted. “If I say yes, you will make everything part of it.” What had him hesitating wasn’t that, but how appealing it seemed. When Kel extended an imperious hand, his gaze fastening on Uthe’s, he decided not to argue further. He lay down, stretching out so his head was propped on Kel’s thigh. He emitted an uncertain sigh as Keldwyn’s hand fell on his brow and began to soothe. Uthe inhaled the smells of the desert and the earth scent of the Fae Lord: a hint of cool stone, spring flowers waiting below the winter ground, and snow clinging to mountain tops.
“That’s new,” he observed. “I smell winter on you, my lord.”
“The Fae have an affinity for a particular season, but there is some overlap, especially as one ages. I have a far greater connection to winter now than I did earlier in my life.”
“Does that mean a miracle might eventually happen and your ice queen will discover the lighter touch of spring flowers?”
“Do not be disrespectful of her, vampire. She would say that is my job.”
Uthe smiled as Keldwyn flicked his ear. “Yes, she would.” Then the humor died away as he thought of the sorceress once more. “God be with you, Fatima,” he muttered. Closing his eyes, he began to say the paternosters that took the place of compline. He could say them on her behalf, and the rhythm of it would soothe him into a short sleep to replenish him. Keldwyn’s fingers wrapped around his shoulder, a light hold. It occurred to Uthe that Keldwyn had stood as his protector before Cai, staying watchful of both strange vampire and wolf as Uthe questioned them and learned their mettle.
“You know, I can take care of myself,” he said tiredly. At least for now.
“You are more than capable of it,” Keldwyn agreed. “I never said you weren’t, my lord. I simply have a vested interested in contributing to that intention.”
“Hmm.”
“Your father was a Trad, wasn’t he?”
Uthe’s fingers dug into Kel’s leg, a jerk of reaction. “Don’t.”
Kel’s hand paused on his shoulder. He’d been tracing the roundness of it, fingers slipping over the bunched curve of Uthe’s biceps, testing their resilience with firm, caressing pressure. “You do not wish to speak of it.”
“No. Not before sleep. It brings nightmares.”
“Then we will speak no more of it. Will you tell me a story of your sorceress, though? It may help you sleep, and celebrate her life.”
“You owe me a story before I give you another. I want more of your life, Keldwyn.”
“Information is power. You intend to keep the playing field level between us.”
A statement laden with meaning. The warning beneath it was a drawn sword, the slip of steel out of supple leather, an erotic threat. Keldwyn’s touch had moved from his shoulder to the side of Uthe’s throat. His fingers slid up Uthe’s carotid to the hinge of his jaw, and then back down, tracing the pulsing arteries and veins, moving around to the jugular. He slowly wrapped his hand over it, then released Uthe to start over. It wasn’t an idle touch. Keldwyn was even now gathering knowledge, absorbing Uthe’s reaction to the contact. Uthe put his hand up over Keldwyn’s, curving his fingers into the spaces between the Fae’s. It stilled the movement, holding pressure on his throat so he felt the beating of the blood beneath their combined touch. “And if I said yes to that?”
“When a chessboard is tipped over, all the pieces scattered, the game is over. All that is left are the two players, facing one another with nothing between them.” Keldwyn bent so his breath slid along Uthe’s temple. He didn’t look up, but he knew if he did, the Fae’s dark gaze would be close and large as a full moon at early twilight, tempting the viewer to think it could be touched. “I relish showing you how pleasurable a tipped playing field can be, my lord. I will give you a story eventually, on my own terms. But tonight let us honor the dead. Tell me of your sorceress.”
Uthe suppressed a sigh. “To do that, I go back to the beginning. To Haris, Fatima’s ancestor.”
Haris had been built strong, with masculine features. She was quick, lissome as an eel with a blade. In hand to hand, she was almost a match for Uthe’s vampire powers. He’d discovered that on their initial meeting, an ambush where Haris and her companions had been sent to assassinate King Louis III. It was during the Second Crusade, when the Templars had been charged with guarding the king and his army as they headed for Damascus. Louis’s commanders had little knowledge of how best to navigate the Holy Land terrain or the dangers there.
It was one of their earliest encounters with the Saracen version of the Templars—the Assassins, a sect who served Allah and the Old Man of the Mountain. They would have succeeded, except for Uthe’s vampire senses. He’d detected their infiltration into the camp, around the king’s tent. He remembered the shadows against the fabric, the clash of steel as they’d engaged in that small area, the king’s personal guard getting the monarch out of harm’s way. Two of his brethren slew two of the assassins, and then the third had ducked free of the tent, cutting the cords as he rolled free.
Uthe was quick enough to slip out of the potential net. He’d pursued the assassin outside the camp, on foot, which meant he should have gained on him, but the short male stayed an impressive length ahead of him, until Uthe boxed him in among the more rocky terrain. Then the assassin turned, drew his curved blade, and waited for him.
That was when Uthe caught her full scent and knew he faced a woman. Then she was on him, her blade flashing like a serpent’s tooth. When he finally made full contact with her weapon, the power that sang up through his arm, practically dislocating it from the shoulder, told him her already considerable abilities had been augmented by magic. He backed off and stared at her. She was doing the same, as if she’d expected the magic to end him.
“Vampire,” she breathed, startling him.
He tipped his head to her, his sword still raised and ready. “Sorceress.”
“Not a sorceress, no. Protected by one. As well as by my skill with a blade. Almost enough to take you out, vampire.” She had a rough, masculine voice. She sheathed the blade, surprising him. “We will meet again. This is not our day to die.”
She bolted, running lithely through the rocks like a wild cat. He could have continued to chase her, should have. But he had not.
“You recognized her as something more like yourself,” Keldwyn mused.
“Yes. That was part of it. In war, strange bonds can form. You remain enemies on the battlefield, but sometimes a respect is born between those who fight.” Uthe paused. “I told you why I went to Jerusalem. When I joined Hugh’s company, I discovered hope and purpose in faith. Protecting pilgrims from raiders, protecting those who sought that same hope and purpose, was what drove us. We had no fight with Muslims or Jews. For a short time, despite what had happened in the First Crusade, we were able to find that balance with them that had existed before it, no matter how uneasy at times. It was only later, when the Templars began to be tangled up in the ambitions of kings and popes, that purpose was lost.”
He closed his eyes, seeing printed script. ‘Each should remain in the vocation to which he was called.’ There was an anonymous letter written to the Order early in its life, as if the author knew what would happen to us. They discounted the idea that Hugh wrote it, but I think he may have done so. He was the type of man who realized an anonymous letter might be considered more for its content than the author, if they had no author whose motives they could dissect. It spoke with the voice of someone within our ranks, someone who had more foresight and divine guidance than those who eventually led us. He said the devil tries to persuade men to desert their true role to chase the ‘phantom of the higher good’. ‘This is a delusion, for God desires a patient acceptance of the gifts which one has received.’ In hindsight, I think that letter may have also been Hugh’s penance, for he started the Order on the road to material success and power, though with the best of intentions.”
U
the opened his eyes, though in his mind he still saw the complicated tapestry of battles, decisions and multiple paths that could have been, against those that had been chosen. “Bernard saw the same possibility: ‘The temporal glory of the earthly city does not demolish its heavenly rewards, but demonstrates them—so long as we remember that the one is the figure of the other, and that it is the heavenly which is our mother.’”
While he kept worn copies of the Rule and Bernard's De Laude, lately it was as if he was hearing them in his head as they’d first been spoken to him, rather than as an echo of what he'd read repeatedly and recently from his bedside. Since most Templars weren’t able to read then, he’d sat in on oral readings of them often enough.
He brought himself back to the story at hand. “At the time I met Haris, we were starting to lose that vocation and our understanding of the gifts and the charge we were given. So I didn’t kill her.”
Collecting his thoughts, he returned the story back to the original point. “Haris was a male name. I never could get her to tell me what her birth circumstances were. Perhaps she’d been born to a family who’d wanted a boy or who’d had to conceal her gender and raise her as a male. Or she’d assumed the disguise herself because she wanted more freedom in a male-dominated society. Or, though she’d been born a woman, she felt more comfortable embracing a man’s identity.”
“We have those among the Fae. So you saw her again?”
“Yes. I often had separate tasks to handle alone, related to the quest we are on now. It was during one of those that she and I met again. We startled one another at an isolated oasis. Purely for form, we did our best to each kill the other. Then we sat down and spoke through most of the night. Her beliefs were strong and pure and, though she saw me as an infidel, she also had a touch of the Sight and the mystic influences of her aunt. Her aunt was the sorceress who’d given her the magical shield. When I met Shahnaz, she was quick to tell me that Haris’s fighting skills were her own. The magic she’d bound to her simply kept her safe and augmented her strength when facing a preternatural threat like myself.”