Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) (27 page)

“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.”

“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.