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"Your lady does me great honor," Uthe said, inclining his head in return. "She does not often spare you from her side."
"I'm not sure she's even aware I'm gone. I was there, now I'm here." Jacob offered a dry smile. "If this twisted world doesn't return me a blink later in the same condition, I have a feeling she'll make everyone involved feel her displeasure."
Uthe chuckled. "Do not give us reason to throw ourselves on the mercy of the devil." The intensity of the emotion he'd felt at their appearance had not vanished, but it was settling into something he knew like the sword in his grip. The calm before battle. It was what he and these others had been born to do.
They gathered around him now. They all had questions in their eyes, but whatever had prepared them to be here made their primary focus this battle, the foe they faced. It saved him unnecessary explanation. Nexus stood at his back, his breath short puffs of heat against Uthe's spine. Keldwyn was silent at his side, but Uthe felt the weight of Kel's mind linked with his like a chain they'd forged together, and perhaps they had, with every step they'd taken toward this moment. The shouts of whatever the demon had summoned were getting closer, the vibration beneath their feet increasing, but Uthe knew any distance was illusion. The moment he moved toward the head on the altar, the foe would appear.
"I must reach the relics behind me and banish the demon trapped in the head," he said. "Whoever the demon sends to prevent me from doing that, he controls their minds and souls, pulling them to him from some foul magic." He thought of the Saracens in the desert of Syria. "To kill them is to release their souls back to where they belong or let them meet redemption. Do not hesitate, for it is a mercy you do them."
He swept a gaze over all of them. "Fight until you know it is no longer necessary and then return from whence you came, with my thanks and the blessings of the Lord."
Manfred stepped forward, his green eyes sharp and flat. He had a handsomely trimmed dark beard and moustache they'd teased him about, suggesting a doe-eyed Saracen woman with generous thighs would eventually steal him away from the Order and have her way with him. "I have your flank as always, my lord. We made an oath. The sorceress called us back from the dead and gave us this choice, to remain frozen here until you had need of us."
Keldwyn touched his mind. The statues, my lord. They're gone.
Uthe looked beyond them. Now that the dust was not obscuring his view, he saw that the statues were gone from the lower bailey. His gaze snapped back to Manfred, Jacques, all of them.
"We could not enter Heaven after Hattin, my lord," Leonard said. "Not because the gate was closed to us, but because the gates in our hearts were. We lost our faith in our Grand Master and the Order. But our faith was never supposed to be in either of those things." He had a wicked scar across his face, and it pulled now as he gave Uthe an amused look and glanced at Jean-Claude. The two men had been so close, they'd often finished one another's thoughts, as Jean-Claude did now.
Jean-Claude was as pretty as only a Frenchman could be, and he spoke in the assertive, clipped tone that commanded attention on the battlefield as well as off. "We serve the Will of the Lord by serving the spirit of the Order. That spirit, it is beyond the Rule or anything else, non? Men and time, they confuse our minds, but hearts and souls, they are clear. Life, love and honor."
"We were not there when our Order was begun, my lord," Manfred added. "Not as you were, when the only charge was to protect God's faithful so they could visit the Holy Lands. By the end, the only thing I knew without question was I would protect the man fighting next to me to the death. That was how I served the Will of the Lord. I am glad He has given me that opportunity once more."
Life, love and honor. Uthe clasped the man's shoulder, hard. He felt Keldwyn's hand on his hip. He put his other hand over his forearm and gripped him, meeting the Fae's understanding gaze. Having him in his head fully, confirming everything he was feeling and seeing, provided a sense of ease and balance he hadn't had in some time.
His brethren saw the exchange, but Uthe wasn't going to conceal his feelings. This moment was beyond all that. Manfred met the issue head on with a snort. His teeth flashed in a sharp grin. "Always knew you were looking at my beard with lust in your heart, my lord."
"No, it was my lovely French arse, you bearded curse of your father's loins," Jean-Claude rejoined.
"Least I knew my father."
Jacques snickered and Manfred cuffed him good-naturedly.
A menacing snarl vibrated through the chamber. It came from no creature of earth, snapping their attention back to more serious matters. The blood-curdling blast of cold energy told Uthe it was the demon itself. Manfred drew his sword as the others fanned out. "Reunion over. Time to do your task, my lord. We will make sure you can serve His Will, or die trying."
"When I reach those gates this time," Leonard told Jean-Claude, "I'm going in for a cup of wine."
"I'd settle for a few of those virgins the Assassins are supposed to get."
"I'll settle for an experienced wench who can ease the ache of a thousand years of chastity."
Uthe seized Nexus's mane and swung himself up. Daegan shifted to one side of the horse's head and Keldwyn to the other. At Uthe's look, Keldwyn shot him a no-argument look. "We are the best choice of an advance guard, to ensure you reach the demon."
Jacob and Gideon had moved up next to Daegan, the other soldiers arrayed in a line on either side of Uthe. Nexus threw back his head and gave a shrill screech, stomping his feet on the stone like a drum beat.
"Yeah. What he said," Gideon said. "Let's go kick some ass."
Uthe had been right. Though he'd known their time to dally was limited, the moment he set his heels to Nexus was the catalyst. All hell broke loose.
With a roar, the wall behind the altar shattered. Out of that tornado of dirt and sand burst forth an army. As they streamed around the table, making the force field around it flicker with energy, Uthe glimpsed dark eyes and bearded faces, and rage stirred within him. He'd been wrong about the demon only calling marked men to his aid. These were the fighting elite, a unit of Assassins and Saracen fighters. Their faces were frozen in expressions of permanent aggression, the result of the demon's spell upon them. Uthe remembered them as his opponents in battles and skirmishes, honorable men fighting for a cause in which they had believed. To kill them is to release their souls back to where they belong. Do not hesitate, for it is a mercy you do them. He was glad he'd told his brethren that.
They were charging across the bailey, screaming their battle cries, metal clanking and feet pounding across the stone. Nexus leaped forward like a launched rocket. Even so, Daegan stayed ahead, the katana unsheathed, a dagger in the other hand. Jacob and Gideon had fanned out with Manfred, Leonard and Jean-Claude. As if they'd been comrades in arms all their lives, the men hit the wall of deadly Saracens without flinching. Daegan cut a swath before him that reminded Uthe of a bolt of red silk being cut in the air. His own blade found flesh, foes that grabbed at his legs, tried to unhorse him. The heat of Keldwyn's magic washed over him, and the reinforcements who flung themselves at him fell away. Uthe caught a quick glimpse of the Fae Lord, using the long daggers to channel and funnel his magic, energy to supplement his already formidable strength. Watching him and Daegan work on either side, just ahead of Nexus, was like watching the Hand of God part a sea.
The others were holding their own, pulling in their opponents as if they were magnets, drawing them away from Uthe. There was blood, screaming, noise. Steel clanging against steel, thuds, the splatter of blood. Noise on a battlefield was overwhelming. With a vampire's enhanced senses, it was an indescribable cacophony. It had been so many years since he'd experienced that, but he remembered it all so very vividly. The first time it had nearly drowned him, with his sensitive hearing, smell and vision. Now it was as familiar as sitting in Council meetings, and perhaps more welcome.
Plunging through the opening his brethren had provided, he thundered toward the table. The demon's dead
eyes were fixed upon him. Was he afraid? Uthe surely hoped so.
He had a fleeting thought as to why the demon hadn't held back some of his army for his own protection, and then all of the red flame he'd assumed was part of Shahnaz's magic spiked like an eruption, spinning and tangling into a tight ball. He tried to change Nexus's path, but it was too late. The projectile of flame hit them in mid-charge, so swiftly it filled and obliterated his vision. The impact was like a cannonball. The horse screamed and went down beneath him. Uthe was flung free, back into the ranks of the fighting men. He felt hands upon him, thrusting him to his feet, shoving him forward, and then he was out of the fray again.
Nexus was still. He hoped the horse had been knocked senseless, not killed. Blocking out the noise behind him, trusting his allies to keep the area clear to do what needed to be done, he pulled the Templar seal from his neck and clasped its heat in one hand. As he stalked to the altar, he stayed wary for other magical traps, and hoped the humming energy that had built to a dull roar in his hand would provide some protection. Perhaps it already had. Perhaps the fire ball had been far more lethal.
Though from a distance their arrangement had seemed haphazard, the Grail and the Spear were placed so a line could have been drawn between them and the Cross to form an equilateral triangle. The Trinity, the most powerful number in the universe. The demon's serpent eyes were blood red, the slack mouth twisted in a sneer. "This will not be as easy as you think, Templar," he spat. "You will lose yourself. We will go to Hell together."
"So be it." The binding Shahnaz had originally imposed around the demon shouldn't hinder him as long as the sorceress's magic was in his hand, but he was prepared for anything when he extended it into that silver blue field. The power shuddered through him, the shape of it impressing him and giving him a sense of the woman who'd crafted it. Her small, secretive smile, the scent of French coffee that lingered on her hands.
He missed her, though he'd visited her less than a dozen times during her mortal life span. He missed all of them, from Haris at the beginning to Fatima at the end. A noble, worthy, female line.
His fingers trembled, the power countered by an energy surge from the head itself. When the red-flamed magic passed over his skin and burned, he fought the instinct to recoil. He dared the sun to burn him every dawn; he would not retreat from fire now. Seizing the jaw of the disembodied head, he thrust the Templar pendant between the lips. The skin was eerily supple and alive, yet cold as death. He shut the mouth and held it fast with both hands, one clamped under the chin and one on the bridge of the nose. The eyes flickered wildly, then rolled up to stare at him with the promise of Hell. A smell like hundreds of rotting bodies filled his nose, made his eyes water and his stomach heave. Blackness boiled from between the lips and out of the nose. When black tears started to pour from the eyes, he heard an earsplitting howl inside his own head, followed by pleading. John, begging for mercy.
No, stop...take it out...please, for the love of... Please...Uthe.
Every man had a line beyond which no more pain could be borne, but if whom Uthe was hearing was truly the Baptist, John would have said God's name. Instead, the plea trailed off like a frayed rope from a snapped tether. The blackness oozed over Uthe's hand, hot as boiling oil. His flesh screamed, the agony insisting he let go. He refused, all his muscles taut, his chest squeezing in on itself in the effort to hold fast. The eyes were changing. Serpent, pure white, wild brown. And they kept changing, faster and faster, with a sound like a shuttle moving across a loom. It was like listening to the Fates accelerating their weaving, change happening so swiftly they were hastening to keep up. Else they'd all fall off the end of the earth, no tapestry to catch them all.
Hold...hold... The din behind him was receding. His knees were trembling. The jaw was straining against him, trying to open the mouth and rid it of the pendant. He wasn't a magic user, but he could detect the energy of the sorceress's magic oozing into the head and attaching like leeches to everything contained within the skull. As he felt that progress, his mind swam, and he could see the chambers inside the head, an endless maze. The demon's area was a pulsing, deep blood red. John's, the color of earth and gold. Then the final one, the innocent's. This was the soul he knew the least about, except that it had been the essential ingredient for the dark magic used to bind the demon and John in the same head.
The innocent's area of the maze was solid gray, like the Shattered World itself. He was being drawn deeper into that endless fog. He'd never find his way out. There'd be no Nexus or Keldwyn to help him, no spirits from the past. He would be truly alone, caught there forever. He tried to back pedal, to resist its pull. He could pull free, he could. He had the strength. Yet as he started to successfully back out of that trap, he felt a shift inside the head. The demon's anticipation was growing, John's silence a portent as loud as a shouted prophecy. He could feel the innocent soul, all the unrealized potential, yearning. Screaming without sound.
This was his Fate, what he'd been facing all along. He'd always known God's Will was mysterious but just. The Ennui was preparation to face his destiny. He would lose his mind here, wander in this amorphous gray world where he forgot who he was and those he cared about. He'd have no feeling for any of them; it didn't matter if he knew them or not. But with the Ennui, the violent need to destroy all he once cared about might possess him. There was no chance of that here. Here he would save an innocent. And this was all clouds. Gray storm clouds that stayed heavy with rain but never broke, never changed.
He turned. He had no sense of anything anymore. He wasn't standing before the head, holding its jaw clamped shut. He looked down at his arms. No boiling black liquid stained him or his tunic. He was naked, barefoot, in a foggy gray world, with no defenses of any kind. Helpless.
No, he wasn't helpless. As long as he had his mind, he had his greatest weapon with him.
But you don't have your mind, do you? It's floating away like a balloon, a child's toy.
Bastard. He knew that voice. It was... He paused, fought the panic. He should know that sibilant voice. Before he could identify it, he saw Keldwyn. The Fae was a few feet away, sitting at a chess board, facing a fully dressed Uthe. It was a memory. They were in Uthe's rooms in Savannah.
How many times had Keldwyn risen to take his leave near dawn? How often had he paused at the door, unfathomable things in his eyes? Uthe wondered what the Fae Lord would have done if Uthe had asked him to stay, to share his bed far sooner. Or what if Keldwyn himself had closed the door, latched them both in? What if he'd pushed Uthe against the wall, closing his hand over the front of his shirt to hold him still as he took his mouth, conveying his intention to take far more than that? How much more time would they have had to explore the feelings between them?
Back to the chess game. That particular night, they'd been discussing vengeance. Hate.
"Hate is a very insular, compartmentalized emotion," Uthe pointed out.
"Hate is different from anger," Keldwyn responded. "Anger is often needed to serve the cause of justice. Righteous anger. Think of Jesus and the money changers in a house of prayer. He was ultimately enlightened, beyond ego, but he could feel anger, act upon it."
"Agreed."
The chessboard and Keldwyn vanished, and Uthe was alone in the fog again. Was there anything as disturbing as being cut adrift in a void, no one to call for help, no company to keep?
"Boy, come hold him for me. I hate it when they whine and squirm."
No. He'd endure an eternity of solitude before he'd long for the company of his sire. Yet here he was, standing at his father's side as blood ran off the table, as the child screamed and struggled. Uthe comforted him. "It's all right. Just lie still and it will feel better soon. I promise."
He was the liar of all liars. He'd wanted to believe in an afterlife, had needed to do so, because that meant the promise had not been entirely false.
Liar, liar, liar. You know nothing.
He focused on his hand. No calluses yet
. The hand of a fledgling, not a mature vampire responsible for his own life. He groped for his sword and found none, but that didn't matter. He took his father to the floor in one swift move that had them crashing to the boards. Last time he'd done this by stealth, staked his father in the back when he was feeding, for he couldn't have stood against his strength then. He could now.
He had his hands on his sire's throat, was beating his head against the floor, cracking wood, cracking bone. He broke a chair, ripped it apart so the jagged remains of one leg was in his clenched fist. His father's eyes were enraged, frightened. Frightened, because some part of him was caught in the gray fog. He didn't know what he'd become, what the Ennui had made him.
The child was crying. Or was that his father? Uthe put a bloodstained, unsteady hand on his father's face. "It's all right. Just lie still and it will feel better soon. I promise. I should have done this for you long, long ago."
His father gripped his wrist, holding his gaze. Now his expression held a child's trust. Uthe could gain the trust of the innocent, of the fearful, of the lost, because he meant what he said and was sure of his faith when he said it. Or rather, he'd made himself sure of his faith, because to do otherwise was to be completely lost, and he couldn't handle being lost.
But that was what he faced. Being lost in that fog for the rest of his life, once it closed in and never let up again.
He shoved the wooden stake into his father's heart. His sire's hand clenched on his wrist, then slackened. His expression lost awareness, the soul slipping away. Everything slipping away.
Uthe was bent over, cut adrift in nothingness, floating in fog once again. The blood and his father were both gone, but the weeping continued.
Where was he? The innocent's mind. A blank slate. Was that why there was endless fog here? Like an empty vessel, yet something did exist. He could feel it, like the distant voice of a child. An uncharted soul. John would argue this one deserved to be freed even more than himself, for it was a story as yet unwritten. It had been trapped with him all this time, but if this was the world it had always known, had that made it less frightening? Would this be so bad, especially if he could relive memories like the one he'd just relived with Keldwyn? Keldwyn had teased Uthe about playing chess and debating philosophy in the Shattered World. Uthe could create any world he wished here, and eventually his mind might be so duped he would believe it was real, that he wasn't truly, forever alone.
