by Graham Brown
“Your lawyers keep late nights too?” Billy Ray said.
“No,” Drake replied arrogantly. “They wake up when I call them.”
Kate had heard it all before a hundred times. As if the Bureau wanted warm and fuzzy agents interested in giving a great customer service experience instead of solving crimes. Still, as Drake’s eyes bore into her, she had an uneasy feeling.
She looked back at Vivian, who finally turned and allowed Kate to cuff her. A minute later, they were marching her out through the office to the astonishment of those working the floor. She wondered if it would do any good.
By the time they reached the elevator, the woman was no longer nervous; she was as cold as ice. Strange emotional flips were a dangerous sign in anyone, let alone a murder suspect. Standing in the elevator with her, Kate got a vibe that this woman was capable of anything. She began to feel they were on the right path.
Billy Ray pressed the button for the lobby floor, and the doors slowly closed. As the elevator dropped, a chill ran down Kate’s spine. A thought seemed to form in her head spontaneously. It was like a whisper.
You’re making a very big mistake.
She’d been thinking that was a possibility all night. But for reasons she couldn’t explain, this thought seemed to come from somewhere else.
CHAPTER 23
CHRISTIAN STOOD at the edge of a brooding swamp on a rickety wooden dock. Out in the distance, the cypress trees sprouted from the green waters, standing guard over the deeper darkness with their drooping arms and Spanish moss.
The energy of life pulsed in the great swamp. It was vibrant and powerful and all encompassing. But something else lay out there, something brighter and sharper than the smooth energy of the trees and plants. It was waiting for him.
“You sho you want to go in there?” a cautious voice asked. “Nothing out there dats good fo’ ya. Just water moccasins and gators. Some of them done growed big enough to eat ya whole.”
An elderly Cajun man—part white, part black, part Seminole Indian—had led him down to the water’s edge. He was scratching his belly through a pair of dirty overalls and a white T-shirt.
“I have business out there,” Christian said.
“Business?” the Cajun man said, slipping a canoe into the water. “What the hell kinda business you got out there at dis time of night?”
Christian stared into the darkness. “The kind that’s waited too long already.”
The Cajun pulled the grease-stained cap off his head, ran his hand along his scalp, and then tucked the hat back down again. “Dey say an old witch live out dere. Dat any man who done see her, he ain’t never been the same.”
As the old Cajun spoke, he shook himself like a dog shaking off water. “Probably better to get eat up by a gator, I’d guess.”
Christian didn’t respond. His mind was on Elsa. She was out there; she was still alive. He could feel it. Had she become a witch, the very thing the Inquisition had accused her of? He couldn’t imagine her kindness twisted in such a way, but time did strange things to damaged souls of this earth.
He climbed in the canoe, pushed off, and began paddling. The canoe was soon gliding through the still waters, splitting the surface and trailing a wake of silent ripples out behind it. As he reached the soaring trees, the canoe entered the mist. It drifted past his eyes in waves of white and gray. It reminded him of smoke, and he could almost taste the ashes on his tongue—ashes from a fire four hundred years past.
He paddled deeper and deeper into the wetlands until an hour had gone by. He could sense Elsa’s presence and her pain more brightly with each passing moment.
Finally, he spotted an old shack built on stilts out in the distance. The wooden boards were gray-white in the moonlight. They reminded him of old bones. As he grew closer, he could see they were splitting and faded, broken in places and dark in sections where the rot had set in.
A wooden rocking chair sat motionless on the front porch. Bird droppings covered the sagging roof where a giant tree loomed over it, its wide arms and curtains of Spanish moss encircling and protecting the lonely structure.
The house was dark except for a single candle that burned and flickered through a small window. Christian paddled toward it, wondering what he would find inside after all these years.
He bumped up against the short dock that jutted from the weathered shack and climbed out of the canoe, tying the narrow bowline to a rusted cleat. As he walked toward the house, the floorboards creaked beneath his boots. By the time he made it to the porch, he sensed movement. He caught sight of a shape in the window. Fingers with long, curving nails touched the wick of the candle and put it out. A wisp of smoke hung in the air.
“You’ve no right to come here,” a voice whispered. “You promised to leave me in peace.”
The voice was familiar to him, but the tone was so different.
“I’ve broken every vow in my life except this one,” he said. “I don’t come here lightly.”
A dark shape, half-lit by the moonlight, appeared just inside the doorway.
“Is it courage or fear that brings you to my door?”
“Both,” he said. “But what do the reasons matter?”
“They always matter,” the voice replied. “More than anything else. Will you never understand this?”
A new candle came to life, held in the curled and withered fingers of an old woman. The candlelight spilled upward, illuminating a face covered with the horrific scars of burned and melted flesh.
Christian’s dead soul grieved for his love. He stared, his guilt a thousand times deeper than he ever could have imagined.
“Have you no decency?” she said.
“I see only that which I love.”
For a second, her face softened. “The beauty is long gone.”
Christian could feel the effect she’d always had on him. It burned almost as it once had—the feeling of love and light, but tainted by what he’d done.
Elsa had been burned at the stake by the murderers of the Inquisition. Christian had tried to rescue her with Drake’s belated help, only to discover that Drake was the one who’d betrayed them, passing information to a murderer named Lagos, who held the position of high inquisitor.
During the battle to save her, Christian killed a dozen who had tried to stop him, but he reached Elsa too late. She was thrown on the fire and doused with oil. By the time Christian pulled her free, half her body had been charred.
“I know you hate me,” he said. “And perhaps you should. I had no right to try turning you into what I am against your will. I was mad with pain. I couldn’t bear to see you in agony, and I was too weak to let you go. If you had only accepted the gift—”
“The curse,” she insisted. “Never lie to yourself. You know what it is. I was made to bring you to life. But instead, you tried to drag me into death.”
She’d begged to die, but he’d stopped her pain by trying to transform her into one of the Nosferatu. She’d rejected his offer and thus became trapped as she was, burned and scared, aging slowly, but feeling with every second of her life.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said once again. “If my death would heal you or change what happened, I would give it to you, even right here and now.”
She shook her head. “Your death can purchase nothing, my love, for you are already dead. Only your life can change the world.”
The candle flickered, as if sprits had now gathered around them, also waiting for the answers to come.
“I know what brought you here,” she added. “Drake has returned to haunt you. You have discovered the truth about him—where he came from, who he is.”
“I have,” Christian said. “We fought in Cologne. I found records in the cathedral there. They speak of the curse, but the caretaker mentioned something else, something more important than the beginning. He said the punishment would end ‘when shadows are seen beneath the Midnight Sun.’ I heard you speak these same words in a dream, before Drake betraye
d us and turned you over to Lagos and the inquisitors.”
“Yes,” she said. “Drake discovered them by searching your mind.”
Christian knew this to be true. It only made it worse. “The caretaker spoke of an angel that brings forgiveness to the Nosferatu. Is that what you saw?”
“Not at first,” she said. “But over time, the image became clearer to me.”
“Drake intends to destroy this angel.”
“Yes,” she said. “He has been waiting an eternity to do so.”
“Can he? Does he have the power?”
“It’s difficult to say,” she insisted. “It may depend on the manner of their meeting.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You have the gift. Can’t you tell me what will happen?”
She tried to smile, but the scars prevented it. She tried to explain. “The unseeing, like you, visualize the future as one thing, the way a blind man grasps a long, straight wall as the only path he knows—a line to be followed. But there are many futures, many paths. Each choice begets other choices, and the farther out one goes, the hazier things become.”
She looked right at him, her pupils dilated in the dark, her eyes like black orbs in white porcelain. “There is no destiny for you or for any other,” she explained. “There is no future that must be. Only the turning points. Only the possibilities. Each step is like a crossroads of its own. In one future, I was not supposed to be as I am, but once you made your choice, it could be no other way. In another, Drake was not supposed to have the power that he does. He was a miserable creature, a rat in the sewer, until he sought repentance. But when the Church refused to grant it, that was a sin of their own. Drake’s powers stem from that moment, not from the original curse. He is the thorn in their side, which they can always feel but never see.”
“But the prophecy tells of forgiveness.”
“Yes,” she said. “Another opportunity approaches. Another set of crossroads. What looms ahead is the end of the war between your kind and the Church, but the possibilities of victory and defeat come hand in hand. Only one will occur, and once it does, it will seem as if it were destined from the beginning.”
His mind whirled, trying to follow her. He understood the concept, but he needed some way to use it for guidance.
“Drake betrayed us,” he said, “because you had the vision of the Midnight Sun. He’s afraid of it. I need to know why. Is it something that will kill him? The sun weakens us. Daylight in the night would give us no place to hide. Is that what you saw?”
She shook her head. “If it were so simple, what good would killing me have done? If you kill the rooster, the sun still rises.”
“Then what, Elsa? Please.”
She sighed and looked down before speaking. “If Drake took my life, you might have sensed it or felt it from him, but if the Inquisition murdered me, you’d walk in his dark crusade for all eternity. He is powerful, he is dangerous, but always remember, his greatest art is that of a deceiver, even of himself.”
Christian remembered the fury in his heart as he attacked the executioners who’d cast the oil on her. If he could have, he’d have killed those men a thousand times over.
“I fear there isn’t much time,” he said.
“Far less than you know.”
“So why not speak to me straight?” he asked, growing angry with her for the first time in his life.
“Because there is a price to be paid for the gift I hold.”
“I’ll pay it,” he said. “Anything. Just tell me.”
“It will fall on others,” she said.
He paused. He didn’t want to cause any more pain. He’d done enough of that. But he had to act. “I can’t allow Drake to continue. Not when the stakes are this high.”
She nodded, seeming pleased. “Then the fear does not control you completely,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
She reached out for him. As Christian grabbed her scared hand, a soft glow appeared around her. The mass of scars, the withered skin, and the straggly gray hair vanished, leaving only the young and beautiful woman he remembered. Her skin was perfect, her hair jet-black, her eyes beautiful and radiant. For a moment, he felt alive again. For a moment, he felt forgiven.
“Even the most powerful Nosferatu cannot know what will happen to their offspring,” she began. “For Drake, a great surprise came when one of his chosen swore off all violence, even against the Church, even to defend himself. He was blessed for his virtue with the prophecy. He told Drake of it. And Drake murdered him.”
“But why?”
“Drake was shunned,” she reminded him. “And the shunned must protect themselves somehow. One way is to despise what is withheld from them, to reject that which rejects them. As you know, Drake no longer wants forgiveness. He begged for it once, and they threw it in his face. Now he wants revenge. That’s why he builds his army.”
Christian understood. “But if the Nosferatu are forgiven and released from the curse…”
“Drake loses his soldiers,” she said. “And he is alone once again.”
Christian could understand Drake’s actions now. “But what of the Church? Why would the Church want to keep such a thing secret?”
“The prophecy came from one of your kind,” she said. “They don’t trust it. They fear it may be a trick to weaken their resolve, or worse yet, a trap of some kind. They will not rise to the angel’s aid, though they might pretend to.”
A breeze swept in and threatened to douse the candle. It flickered sideways, as if it would go out, much like the fragile hope Christian sensed on the horizon.
“I will stop Drake,” he said. “But I need you to tell me how.”
She gazed at him in silence, as if measuring him one last time. The moment seemed to draw itself out, suspended in time. Finally, she spoke.
“You are potent,” she said, “the greatest of all the Nosferatu besides Drake himself, but you cannot destroy him with any power that he gave to you. If you fight fire with fire, you are the one who will get burned. You must find another way.”
Christian felt lost in her words. He was more confused now than he had been before arriving.
“How?” he asked. “You must tell me.”
Elsa shifted her gaze. Outside the door, the mist had grown thick.
“It’s time for you to leave.”
She let go of his hand, and her twisted form returned. His heart grieved once again.
She stood and moved to the porch. Christian had no choice but to follow her. She looked out over the still waters as if searching for something. When she finally spoke, she wasn’t looking at him.
“It will begin with the Midnight Sun,” she said. “And then you and the others shall hear a calling. The calling will test you and tempt you and try to break your will as nothing before ever has. But you must resist it until the sky goes dark again. If you chase the moment you seek, it will hide. But if you wait, if you lie quiet and still, it will come to you.”
As she spoke this final riddle, Christian glanced toward the bayou in the direction of her gaze. A hooded figure stood in the shallow waters, a gray ghost up against the trees and darkness. No features could be seen, just a shape in a dark cloak. Like death itself.
Christian sensed Drake’s presence, and his hand went to his sword. The figure vanished.
“What you see is a vision, nothing more,” she said. “A fragment of the future passed to you through your bond with me.”
“I feel danger for you.”
“My end approaches,” she said. “By your coming here, you have made it inevitable.”
“No,” he said, growing angry, sensing that Drake would somehow seek her out and torture her further. “I won’t allow it.”
“You cannot stop it,” she said bluntly. “Not unless you wish to give up the future for all mankind.”
He stared at her, thinking he would do that if necessary. He would trade everything, all of the world, to keep her safe, to undo what he’d done, but she w
ould just hate him for it all the more.
“Now, leave me,” she begged. “Leave me at long last to die in peace.”
He reached for her hand, but she backed away into the shadows of the doorway and the candle went out.
For a moment, Christian did not move; he stood there as still as stone. He could hear no sound nor see any movement inside the house, as if she were already gone. Finally, he turned and made his way to the canoe. He climbed in, untied it, and pushed off.
As he guided the canoe across the water, he turned back once again, but the shack remained dark and Elsa was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER 24
Pacific Hospital, Los Angeles, California
LEROY ATHERTON woke up in a hospital bed. He was strapped down by tight nylon restraints. He could barely move his arms or legs. He felt disoriented and confused, and his throat was so dry it felt like it was closing up.
To Leroy’s surprise, he wasn’t alone. A white man he’d never seen before sat in a chair in the corner, watching over him.
The man wore a tweed sport coat and a V-neck sweater. A stethoscope lay draped over his shoulders.
“Welcome back to the living, Mr. Atherton. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been wandering in the desert.”
“Are you angry?”
Leroy thought about that. “No,” he said. Truth be told, he wasn’t anything, not angry or sad or happy. He was just there. Blank and thirsty.
“Are you suicidal?”
“No.”
“Good,” the man said. “Then we can take these restraints off you.”
He came over and began to undo the straps, massaging Leroy’s wrists where the bands had left a mark. Next, he handed Leroy a cup of water. “For your thirst.”
Leroy took the cup and drank from it. “Who are you?” he asked suspiciously.