Reginald’s sobbing ceased. “You took him?”
“Of course, I took him. You don’t have any idea what power resides in the remains of an elder. With what is going on, we may never know that power again. I certainly couldn’t leave him in your care.”
“Where is he, now?”
“You should not concern yourself with him, Reginald. I think you should be more concerned with the fact that you have murdered an elder of the Vampires. Do you have any idea what that means? Do you think that anyone will care if you say it was a mercy? He was an elder.”
“Do whatever you will with me.” Reginald was beaten without a single mark, but that was about to change. He knew the marks were coming soon.
“Oh, I intend to, you can be certain.”
∞∞∞
Gates had Reginald taken away for later questioning. But, right now, he had more pressing matters. He had just received word about three pregnant Vampires. He didn’t know how it could be possible, but he couldn’t have been more pleased and excited. He had obsessed from the beginning of all the trouble about the fact that they had been unable to make any Vampires. If reproduction now required raising Vampire babies, then he could learn to adapt. He had already requested the presence of two female Vampires residing in Syracuse so that he could try this evening to impregnate them. In the mean time, he had others securing the three pregnant Vampires he knew about with orders to bring them to Syracuse, as well.
He would have been blissfully happy if it weren’t for some troublesome elders that had recently arrived. They were not pleased that he had declared martial law, and they were putting themselves forward to become council members. They were also expressing doubts about Lake’s connection to the Were-wolf, McPherson. They wanted to talk to him before making any rash decisions about arresting him.
At least that would be one problem that should be solved imminently. The Chief left over a week ago to track and kill Alexander and Aurora. He should be returning at any time with the news of their demise.
Gates was going to have to allow other elders to take places of power on the council. Martial law would not last long without significant objections from other Vampires. He was going to have to risk the short trip to speak to Mother. The witch was close by, holed up behind the high fences of what used to be some kind of drug rehabilitation center. Mother Zhukov set up there after he brought her as far as Syracuse with him. He had tried to convince her to stay hidden but in town. His motives were entirely selfish of course. He wanted her close by if he needed something from her. Mother had been providing him with spells, potions and whatever else he needed to gain and secure power among the Vampires for centuries. She wouldn’t say, but he guessed that she was nearly as old as he was, but while he looked maybe thirty five or so, she looked like the ancient crone that she was. He never let that fool him, though, he knew she was immensely powerful, and he had a healthy respect.
That was why he had no choice in the matter when she decided to set up behind the security of the fences and razor wire at the rehab center. She said she had no intention of staying hidden in town, and the center was actually pretty luxurious even though it had been a secure, locked facility. It was also plenty spacious enough to house her large entourage. She had herb women, practitioners and their hoards of apprentices surrounding her all the time, not to mention the huge, silent bald men that he noticed were guarding her when he contacted her to bring her to safety. Gates didn’t care who she wanted to drag along with her as long as she continued to help him. For now, he intended to have her provide him with something that would allow him to influence, if not entirely control, the Vampires he would have to appoint to the council. He would arrange to make the eight mile trip outside of town in the morning. Tonight he had Vampires to impregnate.
During the night, he was awakened by a disturbance in the house outside his bedroom door. The two women sharing his bed were entwined together sleeping soundly. Gates arose and went to the door without bothering to cover his nudity. He was proud and vain when it came to his good looks and virile body. He yanked open the door and roared his displeasure at the two men in the hall arguing.
“I’m so sorry we disturbed you, sir. This man insisted on waking you, but I tried to tell him that you were not to be disturbed before morning.”
“Well now I’m disturbed, so what in the hell do you want?”
The second man looked scared but stepped up to address Gates anyway. “Sir, I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I don’t know if the Were will last until morning.”
“What Were?”Gates demanded, losing his patience quickly.
“The Chief, sir. He’s back, and he is badly injured. I’m not sure how he even made it here.”
“The Chief? Where is he?” Gates demanded already marching down the hall, not caring that he was naked.
“I put him in the guest quarters bed, sir,” the man said, hurrying to keep up.
Gates burst into the room, where two other guards were hovering around the bed. They parted when they saw him, and he strode into the room.
“Oh, Shit. What happened to him?” Gates was shocked at the severity of the injuries.
The Chief was lying on top of the coverlet, bleeding so badly from a dozen deep injuries that it was nearly impossible to tell where the actual wounds were through the blood and gore. From his scalp, across his face and down to his chest were four parallel claw marks, so deep that some of his skin was hanging in flaps and one eye was covered with a bloody piece of gauze that was wrapped around his head. From the path the claws raked down his face, Gates knew that underneath the bandage, the Chief no longer had that eye. His right ear was virtually missing and appeared to have been bitten through. He wheezed through his torn nose and lips and appeared to be nearly unconscious.
“We don’t know what happened to him, sir. Somehow he made it to the front gate in that condition. The gate messenger brought him in the pedi-cab. His injuries are so severe that he doesn’t seem to be able to heal on his own”
Gates leaned over the ruined face of the Chief. “Can you hear me?” he shouted as if talking to a person hard of hearing. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The Chief’s single eye rolled in the socket, and a rumble escaped his throat.
Gates straightened. “Just Great. Have someone get in here and heal him with Vampire blood, at least well enough to answer some questions. I may decide to let him die if I don’t like the answers.”
In the morning, Gates returned to the guest suite. The Chief was still in the bloody bed, but someone had wiped the worst of the blood from his hideously scarred face. The shreds of his lips were at least attached back together, the actual bleeding had stopped, and some of the wounds were trying to close and knit. His missing ear and eye would not come back, Gates knew. Even if, he was eventually able to heal his scars, those two things would still remind him of this day.
Gates paced around the bed and back. Somewhere deep in his obsessive/ compulsive mind he wanted to pull the head of the bed away from the wall so he could pace a full circle around the bed. He resisted the urge and continued to walk the horseshoe. The Chief watched him coldly with his single yellow/green eye.
“Did Lake do this to you?” Gates asked without looking at the man in the bed.
“After I passed him on the second day, I never saw him again.” The Chief voice was rough and gravelly, but he answered without any discernible emotion. He’d heard what Gates said about letting him die, and if that happened, so be it, he thought. But, if Gates left him alive, he might very well live to regret it. Either way, the Chief had no intention of cowering or begging for his life from this scheming Vampire who would betray his own kind.
Gates continued to pace. “Don’t tell me that Aurora did this.”
“She was long gone when I got to the cabin.” He remained cold and flat.
“Okay, I am over the guessing game. Why don’t you tell me who did this to you?” Gates sighed as if this was the most trying
thing he had ever had to endure.
“It was a Were, Wolf Clan.”
“A single wolf. One wolf. You consider yourself capable of assassinating a Vampire Elder, but you can’t deal with a single wolf.”
“Not that I need to justify myself to you, but it was an enormous Were with serious training and he may not have survived the day.”
“Well I do believe that you have failed in your assignment to take care of Alexander and Aurora Lake, which is going to cause me a lot of trouble when the other elders find out that I don’t really have any evidence against him, and, therefore, you should be trying to justify yourself to me as your employer.” Gates was still pacing, his voice growing louder with each step.
“I work for her, not you,” the Chief answered flatly.
“Her? As in Mother? Well she asked you to follow my wishes, so you do work for me and you have failed us both,” Gates said, but the Chiefs words were a sobering reminder, and he said, “ Since you were Mother’s pet before you came here, I think I will just send you back to her and let her decide your punishment.”
The Chief’s lips twitched at the corners as if he would have liked to smile if the effort had not been so painful. Gates was obviously scared of Mother or at least, he was unwilling to risk offending her. He also knew that Mother cared little for Vampire politics and was unlikely to punish him at all. Her only concern was preserving the alliances that benefited her at any given time.
Gates thought that he detected scorn in the Chief, and he swept out of the room as if he had passed sentence on the Were and the rest was beneath his notice. It didn’t occur to him to ask any questions about the wolf, about where the wolf came from or what he was doing at the Lake’s cabin.
These things did occur to the Chief even though he didn’t have the answers to the questions. Clearly, Lake had some connection to the wolves. The Chief had noticed the wolf that tailed him in Syracuse before Lake even left town. He knew where the sword collector had been because Gates is the one who arranged to send him to Lake in the first place. So when he started tailing Gates and the Chief, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Lake probably put him up to it, and the Chief let Gates know about it before he left. Gates used the information to have McPherson arrested and still he did not make the connection between Lake and the wolves. The Chief thought the whole thing was too convenient. A giant wolf showing up at Lake’s cabin just before Lake was due to arrive. It all seemed a little too coincidental to the Chief, but if Gates wanted to be ignorant, then the Chief would give his intelligence to Mother and Gates could rot for all he cared.
Twenty-eight
Gates had horses saddled for his trip to visit Mother. He didn’t dare take as many guards with him as he would have wished. He didn’t want anyone to know about Mother Zhukov, and he made up some story about inspecting the defenses that had been set up around the area to deter the Hunters. He took only the two guards who had helped him warn and fetch Mother to Syracuse in the first days. He didn’t have a separate horse saddled for the Chief, but instead made him ride double behind one of the guards. The Chief was sure, from the stiff posture of the guard he rode with, that this was making him very nervous.
It didn’t take too long to arrive at the rehab gate. A large, bald man held up a hand to halt them at the gate. He didn’t speak at all, but just waited, his face a blank mask. Gates was getting impatient and irritated when finally the man inexplicably went to the gate and opened it, manually of course as there was no power. Gates couldn’t begin to imagine what the monumental gate must weigh, but the man didn’t seem to notice at all. When they passed thru, the man closed them in, just as easily moving the gate in the opposite direction.
Since the man never spoke to them, Gates just rode directly to the main entrance where two more bald men, nearly indistinguishable from the first were waiting. One took the horses away when they dismounted, and the other turned and silently led them into the building, which seemed to have survived pretty well intact. He left them waiting in an echoing lobby with marble floors and high ceilings. When he returned, – or maybe it was a different man because Gates couldn’t tell them apart- he took them straight out the back of the lobby to a garden that was growing inside of a glass-roofed atrium at the center of the building, which they could all see, now, was some kind of hexagon. In the middle of the atrium was a fountain, which was actually just a pool now. The center statue in the fountain had been destroyed as if someone broke it to pieces with a sledge hammer. The pieces were scattered haphazardly in the grass and flower beds. The broken base sat just below the water level so that the surface of the pool was perfectly still and unbroken. The circumference was a marble ledge about eighteen inches high and about two feet wide, leaving plenty of space for people to sit on the edge comfortably. That was exactly what Mother was doing.
The crone sat on the far edge of the pool facing inward with her legs crossed in a position one would never think to see a woman of her age sitting in. Her hands rested on her knees, and she looked out over the surface of the water. Her features were so old that she had reached that stage where her age was indeterminable from her looks. If she were not a witch and probably close to one thousand years old, Gates would not have known whether to guess her age at 85 or 105. He knew better than to underestimate her based on her appearance, though; she was far from weak.
“Mother,” He said inclining his head in respect as they approached.
She looked up as they stopped next to the pool. “Samuel, it’s so nice to see you,” she let her gaze sweep over them all, and her eyes rested on the Chief. “My goodness. What has happened to Xavier?”
“Who?” Gates asked.
She ignored his question and continued to look straight at the Chief. “Would you wait inside for a moment?” He nodded and returned immediately to the building. “Perhaps the others should wait inside as well, Samuel.”
“Of course, Mother.” Samuel waved a dismissive hand at the guards, who followed the Chief back to the building.
Mother just looked at her silent bald man, never saying a word, but after a moment he nodded to her and left as if she had given him instructions that only he could hear.
Gates could not contain his curiosity any longer. “Mother, who are these men that you brought with you?”
“They are warlocks,” she said without further explanation.
“Do you mean warlocks as in male witches?” he pushed a little further.
“Not at all. A male witch is a witch, although there are not many. The warlocks are simply servants of the spirits.” Her voice took on an annoyed quality, and he wisely chose to drop the subject.
“Samuel, I will be keeping Xavier- pardon me, the Chief - here with me.”
Gates was glad he hadn’t killed the Chief for his failure. It sounded as if Mother had a fondness for him. “He has been of little use to me and, frankly, I have found him to be insubordinate and incompetent. But, as he is your hired man, I thought it best to let you deal with him. I leave him in your capable hands.”
“So what is it that you need from me, Samuel? You rarely visit me anymore without some kind of request,” she said. Her tone was unreadable, and Gates could not tell if she was admonishing him or just making an observation about the trying times.
“I am going to have to appoint some council members, but there are some complications and I need to be able to control them. I thought, perhaps a spell or a compound might help.” Gates uncharacteristically chewed on his lip while he waited for her to answer.
“I would need to know who these council members are and have personal mementos if you wish a spell on them.”
“Just a potion would be best then,” he said.
“It would not be as strong as an individual spell, but I can provide you with something that will allow you to influence the recipient. She tapped her chin with a bony finger. “There is something I need from you as well, Samuel.”
“What can I give you, Mother? I am happy to help.�
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“I would like you to leave one of those young men behind. I have a need for Vampire blood.” She looked at him, unblinking, waiting for his decision.
Gates felt no particular loyalty or responsibility for the guards he brought and he only hesitated because of the looming possibility of Vampire extinction. He was loath to part with one under the circumstances. He knew from past experience that he would not be getting the guard back, but he was desperate to control the Vampires who were questioning his condemnation of Lake. After the Chief’s failure to assassinate the Lakes, he was going to have to be able to control the council to maintain his authority.
“I will leave one of my men with you, Mother. I hope he can be of service to you.” Gates pretended not to know that the man would only serve Mother as a sacrifice.
“Thank you. I’m sure he will be. Now let’s see to your potion.”
She no more than finished saying that when one of the warlocks came back carrying a tray that he placed next to Mother. He nodded to her and left again. She fingered several of the objects on the tray. But, before she could do anything with them, a woman came rushing into the garden carrying a bloody infant, still trailing his umbilical cord.
“Mother, I am sorry to interrupt, but I didn’t think you would want to miss the opportunity,” she said excitedly.
“Quite right, child. Give me the boy.” She reached out for the infant, and the woman placed him in her arms.
Gates watched as Mother dipped the infant into the still pool in front of her, rinsing him of the birth fluids and blood. She handed the infant back to the woman and then checked the clamp on the umbilical. She lifted a small jeweled knife from the tray next to her and sliced off the length of cord above the clamp. She held the length of umbilical over the pool and used her fingers to squeeze the cord blood out of it and into the water. He nearly jumped when he saw that the water, which had been clear seconds ago, was now an inky black. The water remained calm, but he could see oily slicks of black fluid swirling under the surface, but it was hard to make out anything clearly as the swirls were like black slime in black water. Mother placed the empty cord on her tray of tools and ingredients and turned back to the woman and child. She put her hand on his forehead.
Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) Page 19