He swept his arm across the table where the rancid meal still sat, untouched. The plates and garbage crashed to the floor, rotted meat and untouched wine splashed against the stone. Moving swiftly, he systematically ransacked the room. He removed a few valuables, a silver crucifix and several pieces of jewelry that spoke of an earlier time in Agnes’s life. They were dainty, the sort of trinkets that a doting father might bestow upon his daughter.
Brief memories stolen from her as her lifeblood drained into him flitted through Montrovant’s mind. An Agnes none of the sisters would recognize, dressed up for a party—waiting on the steps of a keep for her father’s return from war. He caught glimpses of her mother, brothers who’d watched over her. An old woman who’d read to her and taught her to be a lady. None of it mattered now. The father had lost a daughter, the old woman a pupil.
Now that daughter lay in a heap of ruined flesh, her life dedicated to pursuits that long-lost father would never have fully understood. Dedication such as hers was not a common human trait. Montrovant tucked the jewelry into a pouch on his belt and continued his destruction of the room. Somehow, he didn’t want to leave anything of Agnes behind. She’d made her escape.
When the room was a shambles, he turned away, putting Mother Agnes and her life behind him. He strode purposefully into the hall and made his way toward the next floor of the convent, where the sisters’ quarters lined two walls. The cells were small and severe, a single bunk for rest and a small table where each of the sisters could keep her personal effects. None was more elaborate than any other, and yet he knew from the experience of the past weeks that each had its own sensation. The flavor of the woman, her blood, her thoughts and her passions, seeped into the walls of cold stone.
Her name was Maria, a small pale woman, like a slender ghost with ringlets of blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. Her quarters had a delicate, frightened feel to them. Her thoughts were furtive, always seeking approval and fearing retribution. He’d spent one long evening just holding her, not feeding, not taking advantage, but pressing her trembling form tightly against his breast and letting the triphammer of her heartbeat flutter against him. She was possibly the most vulnerable human he’d ever encountered, and in her faith she sought an answer to that vulnerability, a protection that a cold, severe God would never grant her.
There were others, and Montrovant wished his time with them were not through. There was something new to be learned in each experience, and he’d built his strength considerably since he and le Duc had first appeared before the sisters.
An image of Eugenio rose unbidden to the forefront of his mind. For perhaps the first time since his sire had closeted himself away in a convent near Rome, he was beginning to understand the motivation behind that seclusion. The privacy and the security were temptations hard to resist in a world where one of his kind had to be constantly on their guard.
The last time Montrovant had visited Claudius, he’d left his sire standing on the ramparts of that monastery, staring off into the darkness. Montrovant had been in such a hurry to get away, to make a mark in the greater scheme of things and bring power and glory to their clan. It hardly seemed as if that clan still existed within the scope of his world. All his thoughts centered on the Brotherhood he sought, and the treasure they guarded…his treasure, the Grail. There had to be an end to it, and soon.
He turned a corner and le Duc was there, pulling one of the doors closed behind himself softly. He turned, smiling, and Montrovant found himself caught up in that smile.
“We must leave,” he said quickly, not wanting to waste time.
Jeanne only nodded in answer. They’d been on the road together for so long that most thoughts seemed shared. Montrovant turned away, and le Duc followed as the tall, gaunt vampire led the way toward the front of the building. There was only one entrance to the convent, and it was there that Montrovant was heading. The two had not slept their days within those walls, and it would take a bit of time to gather their possessions for a long ride from the mountains where they’d kept them stashed.
“I’ll go to the stables,” Jeanne offered.
“I will be waiting,” Montrovant answered. They moved through the huge wooden doors into the night, and Montrovant left those doors open wide.
The remaining sisters would recover eventually, and if they were lucky their supply train would arrive in time to nurse them back to health and to soothe their loss. Montrovant doubted that any of them would ever fully release his image, and the thought amused him. It was good to have left a mark on the world, however fleeting.
“Sleep well,” he called over his shoulder. “Sleep well my ladies, and farewell.”
Then he leaped into the air in one fluid motion and shifted to a smaller blur of darkness, spreading his arms as they collapsed into deeper darkness, a shadow, slipping among the shades. The night wind bore him upward toward the open face of the mountain, and his spirit soared. It was time to move on, and perhaps, with luck, their next stop would be the one.
TWO
Le Duc was making his way out of the stables leading two of the finest mounts the sisters had to offer when a soft, feminine voice drifted through the shadows to him.
“You are…leaving?” The voice was familiar, but it had a plaintive, whining tone to it that kept him from putting a face to it immediately. “Just as the other. You will go and never return.”
Sister Madeline. He knew her now, and he shifted his gaze to the left, picking her form from the darker shadows. She stood watching him, her hands clasped before her and her eyes open so wide that it seemed he could see to the very depths of her soul.
“Other?” he asked, moving closer and stopping to stand only a few feet from the trembling girl.
“Yes,” she said, breathing heavily. Her expression was the vacant, empty stare of one bereft of all hope. She did not seem concentrated on what she was saying, but instead let her words ramble wherever her thoughts carried her. Fascinated, le Duc did not interrupt.
“He came as you have come, in the hours of darkness. So beautiful. Sister Sarah said that he must be an angel, but to tell him so only made him laugh. His name was Owain. Will you follow him?”
“Owain?” Le Duc rolled the name about in his mind. Something was familiar about it, but he couldn’t place it exactly.
“Owain,” Madeline agreed. “You are not so tall as he,” she continued, moving closer, “but you are more beautiful.” She’d slid into his arms, drawn by some image created in her own mind…not truly seeing le Duc at all. Trembling with shame, she pressed her flesh wantonly against his and craned her neck as if to allow him easier access.
“I know what you want,” she continued, trembling. “It was the same when he came to me. I will give it to you freely, if you will not leave me. I want to go with you.”
He could see the battle waging beyond her eyes
…could sense the tension. Years of piety and faith warring with stolen moments of darkness… dreams of adventures and other places and wilder hearts.
“That is not possible, love,” le Duc said, pulling back slightly so he could meet her gaze. “Where we go, none may follow.”
She would have protested further, but he leaned in then, clamping onto the softness of her throat and letting her warm blood spill over his lips. She had offered, and he would accept, despite the fact that he had no intention of agreeing to her terms. He would need strength for the time to come, and the scent of her so near had wakened the hunger. He wasted no time, draining her as quickly and completely as he dared, then carried her inert form gently to where a mound of hay lay in one corner and set her down atop it. She would remember little, another angel come and gone in the night. It wouldn’t be until she saw Mother Agnes, or until the supply train arrived, that she would begin to realize the truth of what had become of her. Even then, Jeanne thought, she would remember him fondly. It was the way of his curse.
As he moved into the night with the horses in tow, he continued to wonder
over this Owain. Odd that none of the sisters had mentioned him before now, especially to Montrovant, whose powers of persuasion caused Jeanne’s own to pale to nothingness. He wondered if Owain could have anything to do with their search, or if it were just coincidence that another passing Cainite had made use of the readily available supply of blood in the convent. He had to hope that Montrovant would recognize the name as well, and that it would mean more to him than it did to le Duc himself.
He wound his way quickly up the mountainside toward the caves they’d shared these last weeks, deep in thought. He knew Montrovant would be ready, pacing before the doorway to the cave and fuming at the delay. He knew, also, that the scent of fresh blood would carry, and that the reasons for the delay would be clear. He was happy to have the news of another of the Damned with which to divert his sire’s anger.
Long years on the road had not softened his sire’s hard edges, but le Duc himself had matured considerably. He’d been an angry man, seeking something on which he couldn’t quite focus. Others had distrusted him, including Hugues de Payen, who’d taken him into the fold of the Knights Templar long years past. That distrust had been well-founded, not because le Duc didn’t respect de Payen, but because Montrovant was the stronger. There had been little choice in the decisions le Duc had made, but he regretted none of them. He was where he was because it was ordained to be so. That was what he believed. The fact that Montrovant scoffed at this logic deterred him not a whit from his belief.
Le Duc had been on his way to the Holy Land, part of a caravan. He and a few others, including his one-time ally Pierre, who’d been responsible in part for Jeanne’s own induction into the Templars.
Turkish bandits had descended upon their group, trapping them against an outcropping of stone in the desert. Jeanne had fought wildly, his mind given over to the red haze that had ruled his youth and his arm, never tiring, sending one after another of their Saracen attackers to meet Allah.
In those days Jeanne had cared nothing for anyone but himself, but he’d lived for battle. When de Payen and his knights had stormed up and rescued them, Jeanne and Pierre had been the only two still putting up much of a fight. Later, after realizing who and what had become their savior, both men had made the commitment to join the ranks of those knights, each for his own reasons.
Pierre had been sincere. He was the sort of man who needed structure and rules. De Payen’s order was nothing if not structured. Jeanne had wavered over the decision to go to de Payen when Montrovant had appeared to him from the shadows and all but coerced him into it. He’d become the man on the inside, Montrovant’s agent within the temple.
The two of them, Montrovant and le Duc himself, had left Jerusalem behind when Montrovant realized that the treasures he sought, foremost of them the Holy Grail, had eluded him. The ancient one known only to le Duc as Santos had been driven from the tunnels beneath the Temple of Solomon, and Kli Kodesh, the most ancient vampire that Jeanne had yet encountered, had sent the treasures away with a group of his own followers, luring Montrovant back to the Holy City just long enough for the trail to become cold.
They had been searching ever since. Le Duc’s own Embrace had come along the way, and it was that single experience he could reach back to in his mind and feel the completion of his destiny. He had always been a hunter, one who took what he needed from others without thought. Now that nature was realized more fully, his being centered on hunger and the hunt, and he owed that to Montrovant. Montrovant seemed to need something more, to seek completion. Jeanne had found himself in the Blood—he was content to follow Montrovant’s lead.
He rounded the last curve in the trail and saw his companion, pacing as Jeanne had known he would be, his eyes blazing. Hurrying his pace, Jeanne led the horses the last few yards, trying to keep a grin from washing over his features.
“You should not have stopped,” Montrovant said, his voice brittle with anger. “We have very little time to reach a place of safety—unless of course you’d like to take your chances with those who will find Mother Agnes’s corpse?”
Le Duc ignored the verbal assault. He handed over the reins of one of the mounts and turned to the other in silence, grabbing his packed belongings from where Montrovant had placed them outside the entrance of the small cavern.
“I was gathering information,” Jeanne said after a moment’s silence. “Does the name Owain mean anything to you?”
“Ventrue.” Montrovant’s one word answer was filled with a mixture of complex emotions. Foremost was hatred. “Owain is Ventrue—very old. Why do you ask?”
“Madeline, the sister I spent the past few minutes with, spoke of him. She told me that he came here before we did—how long before, she didn’t say. She said we were leaving her, just as Owain had done, like dark angels.”
“Owain was here?” Montrovant’s anger was sidetracked instantly by his curiosity. “Perhaps we aren’t as far off our trail as I was beginning to fear. Owain has been seeking the old Christian secrets longer than I, though for vastly different reasons. If he was here…”
“But we have no idea where he went from here,” le Duc pointed out, swinging into his saddle. “I wonder how the knowledge of his passing can help us?”
“It helps to be reminded of the world beyond our small circle,” Montrovant replied, leaping onto his own mount in a single, graceful motion and spurring it up the trail, away from the convent. “I get so wrapped up in my own thoughts that at times I forget we are not alone here.”
“I have not been alone a single night here,” le Duc said, chancing a grin.
“You know what I mean,” Montrovant replied. He tried to remain gruff, but for some reason his spirits had been buoyed by the news of Owain’s passing.
“I know of several places Owain might have been headed. There is an abbey where I heard he stayed at one time—at Glastonbury. Perhaps we can pick up our trail again there. If not, at least we might find a way to contact Eugenio—to see if any have reported sightings of the order.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” le Duc asked cautiously. “Were we not to remain apart from the others?”
He waited anxiously for this answer. Though Montrovant was his sire, he felt the pull of their clan, as well, and for most of his time among the Damned he’d been forced to ignore that call. His road was separate from theirs, but he longed to know them. It wasn’t something the two spoke of—not since the first time le Duc had brought it up.
Montrovant was usually an intriguing companion. His wit was honed by centuries of existence, and his mind was always questing after concepts and ideals beyond his present state. There were other times, when his innate cruelty shone through like a beacon and the bitter frustration of years on the road ripped away the veneer of control. Jeanne had broached the subject of the Clan Lasombra before. He wanted to travel among them, to meet others of his kind and to know the intrigues and emotions that drove them. It had seemed so natural, this urge, and he’d felt compelled to share that urge with Montrovant.
The elder vampire had gone into a rage. One moment Jeanne was standing, arms clasped behind his back and his brow furrowed in concentration as he sought the perfect words to convey his meaning. The next he was flying through the air, stunned. Before he’d even hit the ground Montrovant was upon him, one hand holding him prone by the throat as if he were a child, or a recalcitrant mongrel. No matter how he’d struggled, he could not move, and Montrovant had slowly begun to compress his fingers in a crushing grip.
Face scant inches from Jeanne’s own, Montrovant had spit his words like poison into his progeny’s face.
“You will wish for nothing, Jeanne, that I do not wish for you. You will seek no other without my blessing, and you will not receive that blessing. I am apart from them, and you are of me.”
There had been no way to answer with Montrovant’s hand clenched over his throat. No words would have sufficed. Le Duc felt his hold on his new existence hanging in the balance, tipping gently one way, then the other on
the fine point of Montrovant’s temper. Then the moment had passed. Jeanne had said no more, and within the hour it was as if nothing had taken place. At least it was thus for Montrovant. That moment of uncertainty, where death had stared him in the face a second time, lines of finality etched across his face, would remain with le Duc as long as he walked the Earth.
“We can chance contact,” Montrovant answered slowly, unaware of Jeanne’s musing, “but we will have to be discreet. The cities are not as they once were. I used to walk those streets without fear. The dangers were there, of course, but only for the unwary. We kept to ourselves, the others did the same. It has changed. Glastonbury is a Ventrue city—there are those of our kind present, but they are not in power, and it will do us well to remember that we are walking onto dangerous ground.”
“What would be the charm in a safe, boring existence?” le Duc asked, arching an eyebrow. To himself he wondered what advantage or disadvantage this new turn of events might prove to his own situation. He’d spent little enough time in the cities since his Embrace—even less in a city where they planned to stay for more than an hour or two. For Montrovant it would be old, but for Jeanne it was a new experience.
“Let us waste no more time,” Montrovant said with finality. Wheeling his mount, he spurred it up the trail.
The moon was nearly full, and the mountainside glowed with a luminescence that bordered on the brilliance of the day, though the colors were muted to silvers and grays. It was a good night to be on the road. It occurred to Jeanne that they had indeed spent too much time at the convent. Their focus had been lost, temporarily, but now it had been returned to them.
To Speak in Lifeless Tongues: Book 2 of the Grails Covenant Trilogy (The Grails Covenant Triloty) Page 2