‘You are a dangerous one, Sebina,’ said Luca, before kissing her hard on the lips.
Sebina lifted herself off Luca’s chest, brushed his hair from his face. ‘Luca, my angel,’ she purred. ‘I had everything under control.’
4.
FATES BE DAMNED
‘You should take your leave, scutese. My fate is sealed, but you do not need to be locked in it with me.’
The stab wound in Caravaggio’s side wept, blood staining his tattered tunic. The skin under his eyes looked like pellets of dough and the slash wound across his face had opened. It, too, was weeping.
‘Fates be damned,’ said the Highlander.
The carriage was hurtling north as fast as its horses could manage. Each time a wheel caught the edge of a rut, pain exploded through every bone in Caravaggio’s body. He didn’t have much time left.
‘If I had been thinking rationally,’ he gasped, ‘I would have done things differently.’
‘Regrets are like scorned lovers,’ said the Highlander. ‘To revisit them is dangerous.’
The cobbler let out a loud belch, scratched his balls and rolled on to his side. He would have tumbled out of the carriage if the Highlander hadn’t gripped him by his collar and hauled him back inside.
‘You’re lucky the Moor was in Calais when he contacted us,’ said the Highlander, settling the cobbler more securely. ‘Otherwise, it would have been impossible for me to reach Rome in time.’
Caravaggio picked up the folio containing his rolled canvases, wrapping his arms around them. They did nothing to staunch the bleeding. His spirit was weakening, resistance seeping out through his pores. Sweat dripped down his back, yet he was shivering. The Highlander reached over and took his hand.
‘Your skin is cold,’ he said gently. ‘And your pulse faint. You must rest, my friend. You must sleep.’
At the Highlander’s touch, the artist’s pulse steadied and his eyelids fluttered. The Highlander caressed the artist’s bruised knuckles in rhythm to the smack of the carriage’s wheels on the steep mountain pass. Caravaggio lifted his battered head in a last bid for consciousness, bits of peach flesh still caught between his teeth.
‘Scutese, my friend, my saviour,’ he whispered. ‘I never asked your name.’
The Highlander smiled. ‘Mason Renard Calder, the fourth Duke of Albion and Knight of the Order of Era Mina, at your service.’
5.
FALSE CRUSADERS
The Duke of Albion closed Caravaggio’s sketchbook and slipped it into his sporran. Then he laid the artist on his back on the lumpy straw and attempted to loosen his grip on the canvases. The artist groaned, embracing the folio like a long-lost lover.
The carriage began to slow, the climb stretching the limits of the horses. A flash of light cut into the duke’s mind. He parted the carriage curtain just enough to see three riders approaching on two horses, cresting the hill behind them. All of them wore the military dress of the Camarilla, its golden herald emblazoned on their cloaks.
They had caught up faster than the duke had hoped. These false crusaders would drag the artist back to Rome, where his fate would be sealed with the stroke of an axe or flames at the stake. Either way, death would greet him in the morning.
Unless.
‘Up, my friend,’ said the duke, shaking the artist as hard as he dared.
Caravaggio’s head lolled back on his chest. The wagon lurched. The riders bounded closer. The duke cursed the strength of his own magic. His inspiriting had put the artist in too deep a sleep, and neither he nor the cobbler would rouse.
The duke finally pried the canvases from Caravaggio’s arms and slipped the folio strap over his head. He lifted the artist to his knees and propped him against the door. Frantically, he flipped through the canvases until he found the one he had been sent to seize and protect. He gazed at the painting for a moment, marvelling at the artist’s skill. Tucking it safely away inside his shirt, he poured his remaining ale over the rest, heartsick as the rush of liquid ruined the glory of these final works.
The carriage struggled on up the rocky pass.
‘Halt! In the name of the Holy Father!’
‘Do not heed them,’ yelled the duke to the driver. ‘I’ll triple the fee we promised.’
The driver struck his horses and the carriage speeded up, but the duke knew it would not be enough. He looked out of the carriage window again.
The lead rider was clearly a squire, his sword raised as he charged ahead of his master. But it was the two riders sharing the black stallion behind that drew the duke’s interest most. The sun glinted off the knight’s blond hair and his cloak flared out behind him, almost engulfing one of the most beautiful women the Highlander had ever seen. A hand gripped his heart and a knot twisted in his gut.
Sebina.
He recognized her from sketches locked in the vault at the Abbey in Scotland. If Sebina was in the world, then the knight with her had to be the Imperial Commander of the Camarilla, Sebina’s lover, much more and much worse. The duke cursed. Of course the Camarilla would call forth the best. Whatever Caravaggio had hidden in the canvas now nestling against his heart was worth releasing Lucius Ferrante into this world. The duke could not let the painting get into their hands.
Not ever.
6.
APOLOGIES, MY FRIEND
The duke kicked open the carriage door. He waited until it thundered through some trees and alongside a steep ravine, below which lay a thin line of blue.
‘Forgive me, friend,’ he whispered.
He hefted the artist out of the carriage and watched as the limp body crashed through the brush and disappeared down the ravine. The duke hurled the sodden leather folio after him, and heard it splash.
The carriage raced on. The duke sliced the sleeping cobbler’s throat with a grimace. It was unfortunate, but the Camarilla would do worse to the man if they thought he was a witness.
The riders were on the carriage’s tail now.
‘Halt!’
The duke pulled straw from the seat and spread it across the other bench. Then he climbed into the resulting nest and, with all his upper-body strength, pulled the dead cobbler on top of him. The man’s blood and stink seeped into the straw. The duke burrowed deeper, adjusting his position to let the blood fill the spaces. Finally, he tore a piece of cloth from the back of the cobbler’s jacket and covered his face with it. It reeked of sweat and iron.
The carriage hit a rock and almost flipped before skidding to a halt, the horses bucking.
‘Step down, curse you!’
From his coffin in the straw, the duke heard the telltale swoosh of a sword sliding from its scabbard. He noted the snap of fallen branches as someone walked towards the carriage. He cringed as a blade sliced through the driver’s neck and a body thudded to the ground outside the door.
He held his breath.
He silenced his thoughts.
He believed in magic, not miracles, but he found himself praying for the prophecy. Now would be an excellent time for the promised Conjuror to make himself known.
7.
A LINGERING SEDUCTION
As casually as tearing a page from a manuscript, Luca ripped the carriage door from its hinges and leaned into the stench of blood and shit. He ducked his head and climbed inside, stabbed his sword into the seat where Caravaggio had been and sat down. He poked the dead man’s belly with the silver tip of his snakeskin boot. The body belched.
He faced the stinking corpse with a sense of disquiet. There was something strange and slightly seductive lingering in the carriage, like a hint of perfume on a lover’s pillow or the scent of terror in the air before a battle. Luca inhaled desperation and disgust, fear and dread.
Sebina floated into view at the broken carriage door, a sodden leather folio in her hands.
‘It seems that he jumped from the carriage and drowned. There’s a visible trail through the brush, ending at the shore, but the undertow is strong and the tide has dispatched a
ny real evidence.’ She stepped delicately inside the carriage. ‘Corso has ridden on to the Jesuit church, in the event that he did escape.’
‘He had help,’ said Luca. His blue eyes narrowed. ‘Someone else was attending to him in this carriage. I can feel the presence of a Guardian. A powerful one.’
‘Him?’ asked Sebina in amusement, prodding at the body.
‘Not this fool.’
‘The Moor, then?’
‘My spies tell me the Moor has found sanctuary in the north. We will deal with him … eventually.’
Sebina sat, stretching her legs out to rest on Luca’s lap. He caressed her bare feet. She moaned and leaned back against the torn upholstery. Loosening a bloody stalk from the straw beneath her, she held it against her throat and traced a line down her breastbone. The moment the blood touched her skin, her neck became translucent, absorbing the whisper of life like a drop of water on fine silk.
‘How long must we hunt the Animare?’ she asked. ‘This place, this time, bores me.’
Luca watched the throbbing pulse at the curve of Sebina’s long neck as her skin darkened again to its natural bronze. ‘As long as it takes. Time, after all, is a mere mortal construct.’
He slipped his sword into its sheath at his side and stepped down from the carriage, holding his hand out to Sebina. As she reached to take it, she paused and looked at the saturated bench of hay beneath the corpse.
‘What is it?’ asked Luca.
Sebina uncovered a brooch caught in the straw. She held it up to the light streaming in through the rear of the carriage.
‘Beautiful,’ she said, dropping it into Luca’s cupped hand, before stepping into the midday sun.
The brooch was shaped like a flying stag, the detail so delicate it made the feathering of its wings look real. It had been carved from a piece of polished green stone flecked with drops of red. Bloodstone. Luca’s own bloodlust rose.
‘Bloodstone,’ he said. ‘One of the most powerful elements in an alchemist’s inventory.’ He leaped back into the carriage, his sword pointing at the cobbler. The corpse stiffened at his touch. Luca sniffed the air once more, quashed the fear suddenly rising in his breast. ‘And this beast is the symbol of the Knights of Era Mina,’ he said, forcing out the words. ‘I must report to Rome immediately. They will not be pleased that Era Mina is involved.’
Sebina pouted. ‘What about Corso?’
‘He will follow.’
‘And me?’
Luca jumped lightly out of the carriage again. ‘My love, you will remain at my side.’
The ground beneath their feet cracked and shuddered as Sebina put her lips on his and kissed him deeply. Luca’s body rose off the ground, his flesh melting, becoming thicker, darker, scalier. Double black wings infused with silver light unfolded around Sebina as Luca tipped back his head, his thick curls flaming out behind him. Sebina melted against his muscular, bestial form.
We will endure.
8.
A CELESTIAL SINGULARITY
PRESENT DAY
Before dawn on the summer solstice, an alarming apparition appeared above a tiny, medieval church deep in the Scottish highlands. The flickering phantasm curled and coiled and curved around the church’s ancient spire like a silent banshee.
Minutes later, the neon-green spectre was stretching across the fields towards the nearest hamlet, Kentigern, on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park and tucked beneath the ruins of St Mungo’s Castle.
Standing at her kitchen window, Collyn Lambert was pouring milk on her four-year-old daughter’s cereal when she noticed the ghostly stream coming from the church on the hillside and looping over her neighbours’ roofs. She put the bowl and a slice of jammy toast in front of Mabel, went out to the cottage’s narrow hall, and yelled upstairs to her husband.
‘Do you see that weird light outside, Alex?’
‘Ah’m changing Ben in the bathroom!’ her husband called back. ‘All ah can see is shite. This wee man can fill a diaper.’
‘It looks like a UFO!’
‘Mummy,’ piped up Mabel. ‘I want to see.’
It was not yet six o’clock, but the sky was ablaze with light. Collyn could hear the wind brushing the trees, and in the distance one or two cars heading out to the main road. Just like every morning since they’d moved here from Fife. Except for that peculiar light.
She carried Mabel to the middle of the lawn and watched in awe as the ribbons of light rippled over the roofs towards the castle, where they were gathering in a halo around the ruins.
‘Why would aliens want to land up here?’ asked Alex from the doorstep, Ben nestled on his hip.
‘For our whisky?’ Collyn carried Mabel back inside, pinching her husband’s bottom as she passed him. ‘For our men?’
‘Ha,’ said Alex, closing the back door and setting Ben on the floor next to a line of toy police cars and fire engines. ‘If they take our whisky, then they might as well take me too, right, Ben?’
‘Nee naw, nee naw,’ replied Ben, whizzing a police car between the legs of the kitchen table and crashing it into the dishwasher on the other side.
‘What do you think the light really is?’ Collyn said, an anxious flutter in her words, a knot tightening in her stomach. ‘It’s beginnin’ tae creep me out.’
Mabel said something, but neither of her parents heard her. Because all at once the landline rang, both their mobiles vibrated angrily on the butcher’s-block table, someone thumped menacingly on their front door, and Ben began to cry.
‘Too loud!’ he sobbed, holding his hands to his ears. ‘Too loud!’
Collyn silenced the shrill on the landline and reached for her mobile, noticing a long thread of texts from her neighbours. The mobile pulsed in her clammy hand.
‘Don’t answer the door,’ she said, looking up. ‘Something bad’s happening.’
‘Ach, rubbish,’ replied Alex as he went to open it.
Ben stopped screaming abruptly.
‘Sweetie,’ said Collyn, tugging at the Cheerios caught in the tugs of Mabel’s reddish-blond hair, ‘what did you just say to Mummy a wee minute ago?’
Mabel pointed at the glow outside the window. ‘I think the light sounds really nice.’
‘Me too,’ said Ben, driving a fire truck into his mum’s hip.
9.
HOOLIGANS AND HIPPIES
‘I think those bloody hippies up in the auld kirk are up tae somethin’,’ said Gordon Cross, marching into the kitchen. ‘I’ve always said a cult bought the church and a’ that land.’ He mussed Mabel’s hair as he headed to the window. ‘Or maybe it’s a sex-trafficking ring?’
Alex rolled his eyes and grabbed his overcoat from the hook in the mudroom.
‘Gordon,’ said Collyn. ‘The kids…’
‘You’ve seen how young those new recruits are,’ continued Gordon, tapping his fingers aggressively on the sink as he watched the light dance across the trees outside. ‘Not much older than my Morag.’
‘Your Morag’s eighteen, she’s an adult, and so are those kids up there,’ said Alex, kissing the top of Mabel’s head and Ben’s sticky cheek. ‘It’s not a cult.’
‘Aye, well, yer being too trusting. In my day we would’ve marched right up there…’
‘Torches in hand...’ added Alex.
Gordon snorted. ‘That’s no’ natural, that light. If you ask me, it’s witchcraft. Dark magic.’
Collyn pulled out a chair at the table, brushing crumbs from it. ‘Gordon, sit,’ she instructed. ‘You’ll work yourself up to a stroke if you don’t calm down. You know right well it’s not a cult. They train art restorers for museums, and they’ve been good to the village. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have the swing park or the football fields.’
‘They’re pagans,’ grumbled Gordon. ‘Or hippies.’ He leaned over and zoomed the toy police car back under the table to Ben. ‘And ma mind’s no’ that addled yet, is it, wee man?’
‘Says you,’ replied Alex, filling
a flask with coffee.
‘Wheesht the both of you.’ Collyn absently registered the way Mabel’s hand was cupped conspiratorially against Ben’s ear, whispering to him. ‘The auld kirk hasn’t been a real church in centuries, and I’d rather have artists up there than drunk grammar-school students, that’s for sure.’
‘All ah’m saying is that someone should report it,’ said Gordon.
‘I’ll do it on my way to work,’ said Alex, lifting his briefcase from the bottom of the stairs beneath a pile of dirty laundry.
Collyn followed her husband to the door. ‘If you call it in, love,’ she said as Alex kissed her goodbye, ‘make sure it’s someone other than Constable Bill. Honestly, that man’s a clown.’
It was still dark outside, and the glow from the eerie light was bathing everything in a kind of phosphorescent yellow. Collyn decided she’d call one of the scientists at the university herself once she got rid of Gordon and settled the kids in front of Peppa Pig for twenty minutes. There must be a scientific reason for the light. The aurora borealis, or something like that.
On her way back down the hall, she picked up two toys and random pieces of clothing from the floor. But when she stepped back into the kitchen, she dropped them all.
Gordon was lying on his back on the tiles, blood oozing from a bad cut on his forehead.
‘The weans,’ he whispered, pointing to the back gate. ‘Sorry … I … I tried to stop them...’
Panic clutching at her chest, Collyn scanned the cluttered garden. ‘Mabel? Ben?’ she called. Above her head, the ribbons of light were dimming as the sun was rising over the distant Cairngorms. ‘Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU?’
10.
DON’T BLAME ME
Inside the church tower, Em woke with a start and a horrible taste in her mouth. The air in her room crackled with a peculiar energy. She didn’t need to look outside the arched window to know something weird was happening. She could feel the bizarre in her bones, taste the trouble on her tongue. Like sour milk and vinegar.
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