As a child looking on the wonder of it, the Great Abbey had reminded him once--and still did--of the pictures of Camelot he'd seen in some storybooks, a richness of tapestries and brass and weeping mortar in flagstone. He found the high grisaille panels in the stonework ceiling immediately, two to each side over the narrow side chapels, and each with a gem of colored citrine stone in its scored center. He stepped inside the nave and was bathed in the hellfire of those precious skylights, the only source of light here save the pylons of lighted candles on iron sconces on the walls. The cobbled promenade rushed down and away to the center of the nave and was flanked on either side by spired Corinthian columns, slender stone giants that rose inexorably upward to meet an ancient bedrock dome where clans of bats regularly roosted, raised and suckled their young and flexed their silent bronze wings in the dark. Below, where he stood, the nave littered out to where the Coventable was set in the shadow of the dais.
Alek moved toward it. Smooth, seamless rosewood, unnailed and unsanctified. In the Great Abbey there were no mosaic puns on the Bible, no stations of the cross crowding the walls, no odor of myrrh or palm leaves or Eucharist to be found, nothing to make an unholy jeer of their violent crusade. The only attempt at comforting the empty spaces were the various swords enshrined in the blood of their masters. And the tapestry art: those lovely, wonderful portraits enshrined in silk, a mythology of figures who had in their toils and talents entered the histories of the Coven and became a part of their eternal making. They looked down on him out of their banners as if to weigh their lives against his own, all of their faces stern, mouths brutal slashes and set under the fierce mad glitter of ancient eyes, eyes so like those in the portraits which still hung in many New England houses, eyes which followed you everywhere you went in the room.
How small and insignificant he felt in their presence. His sword arm was a passable thing, but hardly the stuff of legend. And his own particular psi talent was a cringe in the face of so many of the others' accomplishments--Booker's laborious achievement in controlled pyrokinesis was almost an art in itself, and Takara, well, some of the things he had seen her do went without explanation, almost without description. Alek was not so colorful as all that and he seriously doubted he would ever accomplish anything so illustrious as to win him a tapestry out of which he might silently weigh another.
The promenade took him to the foot of the raised altar, and there he began to climb the altar stairwell, his dread momentarily blotted out by the wonder and reverence he never failed to feel here. >From a distance the altar bore the illusion of a meandering honeycomb. Close up, however, it was a leviathan. He had to squint and crane his neck all the way back to take in the more than eleven thousand vampire skulls fitted abstractly together, as if with a gifted child's artistry of architecture: sunken, irregular cavities and cultured pyramids, in some places a thin attempt at geometry, at others tight, unteetering towers. But the configuration of the Coven altars were not important; only that they exist to hold the remains of all these deviants. The golgotha's vastness invariably dwarfed even the greatest of slayers into humbleness as they approached her. But New York was an old city, his Coven one of the first of the Vatican's New World Foundings. There had been time for this grand creation, he reminded himself.
On the little altar table he lit a votive candle, felt its small, uncertain warmth grow on his face and hands. Most slayers pilgrimaged little, preferring to harvest and amass their offerings to the golgotha. But he was not most slayers. The impressions the others gained from the harvests were only a vague dream of things, a nagging they forgot within moments of the slay. He worked the skull from the sack and peeled away the residual flakes of skin and stubborn straw-dry strands of hair still clinging to it. And with it in hand he filled a cavity between two tiny childlike skulls. Then he stepped back, scrubbing his hands on the breast of his coat. The impression this time was ugly. He saw curious things--skeletal men and women dancing, their limbs jerked by wires like some kind of marionette-like torture while a mountainous landslide of blood flowed like paint in the background and covered everything in a simmering Pompeii-inspired burial. The last thought to flicker through Empirius's mind before the final darkness took him. A memory or rumination.
Alek shivered, cowering from the feeling, and regarded the altar instead of the image, her aged splendor. Thousands of empty eyes containing almost half of a millennium of darkness stared sightlessly back at him. Innumerable lifetimes. History. He had a fantasy of himself sliding down through a pair of those eyes, of becoming the leviathan itself, and then being slain by the sword wielded by his own hand.
"Shit," he whispered, "no more Vermouth for you, old man."
He shivered once more, but helplessly this time. He'd feared the altar once, the way a child would. But then Amadeus, ever patient and curious of his child's mind, his fears, had taken him before her one day, his voice soft and wise in Alek's ear. Fear her, my acolyte? Why she is the symbol of our great Covenant with the children of men, that the horror and slaughter of our brethren during the Crusades shall not be repeated. The altar--do you see?--is that supplication, the tower who crawls ever upward together with her sisters all over the skin of this world, working towards that final pinnacle where one day at last the glorious face of Peter's church will not be denied us and absolution for our many heinous sins will be ours
Are you now so afraid of her, my best child?
He never feared her again after that, only what she contained. He'd never feared anything, if he wanted to be honest with himself, except the Father's disappointment. He'd read the books of the Covenant and he had taken upon himself its bitter truth and its ordinance and priestly vows of celibacy and obedience. A good student, he memorized every word of the diatribe and fought the secularism which had threatened the core of the Coven in the early seventies. Faith had been lost, and found. But some things, like ceremony, preserved. Many slayers said the New York City Coven was old-fashioned, its Covenmaster too static to push his acolytes through the tribulations of the new millennium--and yet their enclave was more successful statistically than all of the Covens in all of the states put together. So perhaps there was something to be said for being old-fashioned.
He genuflected, once, briefly, and sent up a short prayer for Empirius's soul, then turned and descended the steps to the nave.
And there he stopped.
Father Amadeus sat in the shadows at the head of the Coventable, his hands pinnacled under his chin, his eyes cast downward upon an ancient jade chessboard crowded with tiny figures shaped in silver or bronze as animals. Horses for knights and mice for pawns. The kings and queens were cats with sparkling amber eyes. They'd played such games in the past, he and the Father, yet never with this antiquated set. For a moment the little board intrigued Alek, frightened him, and stopped his concentration.
The Father looked up as Alek approached. His appearance was that of a man of thirty-three or -five, the same as Alek. Yet his face and hands and his flood of wintry hair was bleached to the whiteness of bone, his unevolved skin almost translucent over a vast blue webwork of veins and arteries that contrasted like marble against the blackness of his habit. So much so, in fact, that most of him seemed suspended in the dark, ephemeral, unnatural. And old. He lifted his pale lapis blue eyes and Alek felt the mental tug binding his thoughts to something far vaster, far older than his own mind.
These are bad times, Amadeus said.
In deference Alek remained where he was. He frowned. Yes, there was something wrong, terribly, horribly wrong. This silence, the chessboard with its unfamiliar army--
"Peace," said Amadeus. His silk habit shivered as though alive as he rose from his seat. Standing now as he was, no creature that Alek knew, including himself, could help but be awed by the Covenmaster's presence, his erect, aristocratic form rising like a statue of stone and obsidian from the floor, immovable, fearful in its Giovanni-touched beauty. Alek frowned, his mind engaged in memory and loss so deep and profound he fou
nd he had to cast about for a suitable reason. Finding none, he finally fixed on the disappointment of the Braxton show earlier that evening.
The Covenmaster moved toward him with hypnotic grace and touched the back of his long clawlike fingers to Alek's cheek, dispelling those thoughts. The feeling was ash, a freezing burn that emanated like an aura of light from the tips of Amadeus's fingers. Alek found it impossible to turn away, frozen as he was in the glare of those silver eyes, the glitter of such bone-hard fingernails on his flesh. Amadeus smiled knowingly and Alek felt the blood rush to his face, his heart pounding in his ears with a foreign rhythm that he realized after a moment was mimicking that of his master.
"Beautiful," the Covenmaster said as his misshapen talons whisked across Alek's cheek. Then he dropped his hand. Alek managed to turn away, mortified by the simple word, and instead fixed his attention on his master's back as Amadeus went to the edge of the nave and began lowering the rutted wagon wheel chandelier on its rusted orange chain. It fell in painfully rusted increments until it hung like a wreath before the altar. And now, free of enchantment, Alek couldn't help but wonder where that wagon wheel had roamed, what lands it might have covered before it had come to reside here. How had it come to be here, of all places?
"Questions. Always questions," Amadeus answered his thoughts. He produced a tinder wand and rasped it against a bedrock wall. "Like Socrates, Alek, the gadfly, the flea in the ear of the magistrates. It is both your blessing and your curse. To thirst for knowledge is like to open oneself up for the addiction of blood." It wasn't quite a reprimand; the Father's voice was too amused for that. He lit the candles in the black brassy arms of the wheel, a quick certain touch of the wand like a dishonest kiss, turning the wheel as he worked. Those hands--they were like birds in a ritualistic dance, and Alek found it nearly impossible to believe that this man, Amadeus, the teacher to so many slayers, had never seen a day in his whole long life.
"Something's wrong," Alek said. "Something is wrong. You've summoned me. Why?"
"The others--they have told you this?"
"Yes, but--"
"You knew before that. You always know, nein?" Amadeus's wand guttered to white smoke. He dropped it to the Coventable. He swayed like a white medusa toward Alek, stopped only when they were eye to eye, their shoulders nearly touching. Some great sorrow clung to the man like a rank aura.
What must they look like? Alek wondered. Two versions of the same man, perhaps, but that one mirrored the other negatively. And that other younger and darker and less perfect one? His thoughts enfeebled by a nameless terror clinging to the inside of his mind like the bats to the walls of this abbey. Two men who were so alike and yet so unforgivably separated for the moment. Alek reached, imperfect mind and imperfect soul, for the cloister he knew so intimately and found only a somber place unpeopled by memories. For a moment he panicked in his isolation. Never had it been like this between them, never--
"Father?" Alek ventured. "What's wrong?"
"You were always my best disciple."
The thought made Alek want to collapse, vomiting. He wanted to ask more questions, demand answers and reassurances, but he felt Amadeus's hands again on his face, seeing it more completely now, melting to the flesh and form so that they were like two marble statues seeking reconnection. Those long skilled hands moved slowly over his cheekbones and down into the hollowed valleys of his cheeks, fluttered over his lids and eyelashes so gently he did not blink or turn away. "Alek. My Alek," Amadeus said. "My beautiful eternal one. My magnum opus."
Usually he loved to hear his name on Amadeus's tongue, the harsh tenderness of it, the way the Father's Old World accent accentuated the last syllable and carried the hard last letter down into a click. But not like this. Not with weariness. Not with regret. He did not want to be called a magnum opus as though he were a finale of sorts.
Alek closed his eyes as Amadeus's mind brushed lightly, deftly, against his own. This was old magic. As a child he'd lain across the Father's lap after their exhaustive daily sparring matches, and with his brow slicked with diamond sweat, Amadeus had touched him like this, seeming to worship his face and the sharpness that had come into it too quickly in his youth. Alek had felt the old Covenmaster's mind then, those terrible first needling which had ached hours afterward, making his mind a swollen cavity filled with the things of Amadeus. But after so many years they were old links now, moving inside each other with all the deftness of ancient lovers.
I speak to you now of secrets.
Father?
Of dark things. Dark times. We must prepare. I shall not be with you much longer, my most beloved.
Alek's heart fluttered against his ribs like a frantic bird battering itself senseless against the iron bars of its cage. For a desperate moment he tried to break the link, to turn away his mind so the Covenmaster would not see his childlike sorrow, but inside this strange private world there were no doors so easy to find. He was trapped, ashamed.
Peace. I have had a vision...
But Alek's mind broke down into a helpless confusion and he felt Amadeus pull back in response, unable to settle in that sudden hornet's nest of fear. Alek blinked against his stinging eyes, pulled away physically and mentally from his master's touch. "I don't understand. What's going on? What are you saying?"
Amadeus shrugged, the gesture horrid, accepting. "You can do nothing to stop this now, nothing at all. I have seen the things to come and they will not be thwarted. The curse of the Seer. It was said in the old world that the Cyclopses of ancient Athens traded one of their eyes to see the future, but the gods cheated them and all they saw were the time of their own deaths--"
"Goddamnit, don't tell me stories!" Alek said angrily, leaning against the table. "Just tell me what you saw!"
The Father's dead white eyes floated upward to a point just beyond Alek, as if he was seeing a vision being played out on the pale body of the golgotha. "I saw as always I do in visions: I walked in a familiar place I did not know the name of. I saw--light and shadows and animals weeping in their cages and music and heat and blackened crimson. And I saw a figure in black, his eyes wild with the bloodlust. And then a midnight sun rose upon my eye, deadly in its brilliance, and I did not know another day. I knew only the dark that is alien to us all."
Alek shook his head. Amadeus spoke of death. "I...I don't understand."
"Nor do I. But when has that mattered to prophecy?" And with that he simply returned to the table and his seat and his game. Just like that. Fertig. The end.
But no. This, all of this, was stupid. They were immortal, or nearly so. They were chosen by some dark hand of fate to watch from the accursed circle of their kind as the earth devoured the sons and daughters of Eve all around them. Friends, family--time took them all and left behind only cavities. While they, the spawn of the Lilith, went on and on without respite into the deep, uncertain tunnel of the future. And Father Amadeus, who had fought perhaps longer than any of them, would be there among them, for them. Amadeus was always there. He had to be. If he was not, Alek and the rest of the converted vampires would probably all go mad without his direction.
Amadeus's hand rested atop a little silver horse. "If only that were so, my beloved. If only I could be at one with my brethren forever. But I know now that the map of my life has been marked. I have been selected to pursue the greatest mystery of all."
Alek wanted to scream at the bullshit of all this metaphysical hocus-pocus and noble double-talk. Death was death. And death without absolution was damnation. The Father was wrong. Wrong. Because if Amadeus was to die, it meant that his head was going to be taken. And nothing had the power to take him unaware, no human, no vampire--
But a Judas?
Amadeus glanced up as if hearing the thought.
Alek felt an urge to go over to him. Instead he went to the other side of the board and looked more closely at the little animals. His mind was numb.
"Perhaps," said Amadeus, moving the horse forward, "Someone among us t
his day may be a Judas." He shook his head. "Strange, but the face is not known to me. There is a curious force afoot, Alek. It hides it from me. My path is chosen, that is all I can say."
Alek shuddered. Was he a fool to feel this? He was no longer a child, he did not want to fear like one, and yet he was. As afraid as an orphan child. How old they were, he thought, and yet how young they remained.
"We have a young one to welcome tomorrow," he heard Amadeus whisper. "A promising kinetic. Intriguing. His name is Sean Stone and I want you with him. Watch him. Your eyes will be mine. I have informed him that he will be apprenticed to you," Amadeus looked up, "for the experience."
Alek toyed with the hilt of his sword, running his fingers up and down the engravings. "Is he some kind of agent?" Suddenly it was all too obvious. A new recruit--some sniper from one of the more liberal hives--let him walk into the trap of his own free will. One false step and he would be prey. If he raked a hand over the altar, Alek could find the heated presence of over a dozen assassins executed in the last twenty-some-odd years by his hand. And now perhaps it was this one's turn to join the altar he was supposedly helping to build.
"I must know for certain," Amadeus explained, abandoning the game a second time, this time to sit back and nod solemnly. "We are, after all, something of a dying breed, are we not?"
He nodded obediently.
"Now, I must know: will you do this for me, mein Sohn?"
"You know I will."
"Very good." With the slightest ghost of a smile, Amadeus stood and put his thumb under Alek's chin, urged his face up to the level of his blind gaze. He smile grew both in sorrow and wonder, as if, like his acolyte's reverence for his master, so was the master's for his acolyte. No, but that was impossible. Nothing so great as Amadeus could look upon anything else and not feel as close to omnipotence as an earthbound god. "Now, no more ruminations on grief, child. I must know if you are prepared to take my place in the event that you are needed. I have to know if you will be strong for me."
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