Columbine rudely interrupted. “Fenrior is a barbarian. Do you expect us to bond with grotesques, savages, and brigands?”
Both Destry and Marieko looked hard at Columbine. “We think, Columbine, you need to explain the situation a little more fully to Victor.”
“I need to explain nothing to Victor.”
Renquist made his voice very soft. The violence had passed, but the potential remained. Columbine was delicately poised. “If there are things I have to know, one of you had better tell me now.”
“Or.?”
“Or I cannot continue. I must leave here and return to London. I will visit with Fenrior, and then arrange to fly back to California.”
Destry’s voice was as soft as Renquist’s. “We need
him here, Columbine. If only to find the source of your dreams.”
Columbine, for her part, actually seemed to be making an effort at control, something Renquist definitely welcomed. She was silent for a moment and then bought more time by walking to the side table and opening the art deco cigarette box. She took out a cigarette, placed it between her lips, and picked up the matching table lighter. At that point, she stopped and glanced at Destry. “Did Bolingbroke fill the lighters?”
Destry shrugged. “I hope so, for his sake.”
Columbine flicked, and a flame appeared. Again Renquist was grateful. The distraction of Columbine going into a snit over an unfilled table lighter was exactly what he didn’t need right then. She inhaled and blew a perfect smoke ring. Renquist was impressed but also prompted to a greater wariness. In the course of the modest piece of theater, her personality had undergone a radical transformation from the infantile hysteric to the cold and calculating. Even among European nosferatu, universally noted for their complex volatility, Renquist had to judge Columbine as exceptional in her capacity to shift moods, seemingly at will. She was a temperamental roller-coaster ride, and he could easily be unseated if he didn’t pay constant attention.
Renquist said nothing through the entire show, waiting to hear how the new Columbine was going to open this phase of the game. Her tone became brittle and defensive. “Very well. I do admit that I was perhaps a little overzealous, when, a few years ago, I thought a closer alliance between the House of Fenrior and the Ravenkeep Troika might be mutually advantageous. Since that time, relations have been strained.”
“Not to say strange.” Destry’s short but cynical postscript confirmed what Renquist could easily imagine. Columbine’s idea of an alliance almost certainly wouldn’t have been one of equitable partnership. As he read it, she had probably made a failed play to become
the Lady of Fenrior, and grudges were being nursed in the protracted and festering way that is only available to the functionally immoral. This introduced the Fenrior clan to the picture in a way he’d not anticipated, but before he could think through what this might mean to him—apart from regretting he’d ever come here in the first place—Columbine continued. Her act of contrition was over, and she turned back on Renquist. “So, Victor, you can perhaps see why anyone holding clandestine meetings with the Lord Fenrior’s henchman has to be suspect in this house?”
“I’ve already told you the encounter was random. I don’t intend to repeat myself all night. Either you accept that, or I’m about my business.”
Destry and Marieko both stared at Columbine as though willing her to accept reality. Renquist decided he would give her a little help. “If I were in your position, I’d get my input on this burial mound as quickly as possible. We’ve seen how my arrival has attracted Fenrior’s attention, and how he is making his own tentative moves. Speed would appear to be of the essence.”
Destry and Marieko were all but nodding agreement. Columbine surrendered to Marieko. “Very well. Take him there. See if he can be of any use to us.”
Destry quickly intervened. “I think maybe I should go with them.”
Columbine seemed torn. “I’d be left here on my own, but, on the other hand, it might be a good idea if you were there to keep an eye on Victor.”
Renquist noticed it was accepted, under no circumstances, would Columbine be going to Morton Downs. She assumed the leadership in most other things, and yet she appeared to be unable or unwilling to visit the mound. Could it be she was afraid of whatever they thought was there? He knew something was affecting Columbine’s dreaming, and he supposed the troika had decided it was somehow connected to the mound. This was another piece of speculation he filed away for future
thought. Right now he wanted to move. He wanted to get out of Ravenkeep and into the fresh air and the moonlight. He’d also come a long way to investigate this strangeness at the burial mound, and he was tired of waiting on the machinations of these females. “Could we do this now? I think we’ve argued long enough. It’s time for inquiry and action.”
Columbine looked at Destry. “You’d better go with them. I don’t trust Victor alone with Marieko.”
Marieko raised a perfectly drawn eyebrow. “Do you trust me alone with him?”
Before Columbine could reply, Renquist stepped in. “Before we start arguing who trusts who with whom, there’s one thing I should make clear.”
“And what might that be?”
“If indeed, by some chance, an confrontation should occur with the Clan Fenrior, I cannot take sides. I am a master of my own colony. I have to observe the traditional protocols.”
Columbine seemed about to dispute this, but Destry quickly closed the door on any further wrangling. “We understand, Victor. Everything will be done strictly according to tradition.”
Columbine glared at Destry but then prepared to make her exit. “I suppose, if I’m no longer needed—”
Renquist decided on a spur-of-the-moment test. “Why don’t you come with us?”
Columbine shook her head. “No.”
That seemed to be all she intended to say, but in the doorway she turned, in the classic manner, to deliver an exit line. “I love my condition, Victor, and I serve it always.”
The concepts of sanity and madness were highly relative among the nosferatu, verging on meaningless in terms applicable to humans, but Renquist couldn’t help concluding that, after two hundred years, Columbine might be redefining the definitions. Had she been human, she would have been declared, if not a psychopath, at
least dangerously neurotic, and even by the more lax nosferatu standards, she was decidedly rare.
Columbine was gone, and before Renquist could say anything, Marieko announced she, too, was going—in her case to dress for the outside world. Since Renquist and Destry were already fully attired from their ride, there was nothing to do but wait. The moment they were alone, Destry smiled knowingly at Renquist. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you just did.”
Renquist raised an amused eyebrow. “I just assisted a logical calm to prevail. Columbine doesn’t like reality coming at her unannounced, does she? I know she has no objection to creating mayhem on her own terms, but when it’s beyond her control, she can become highly vexed. Of course, that’s only my observation.”
“You’re pretty slick, Victor. Pretty damned slick, but don’t think divide and rule will work on us girls all the time. Charm only goes so far, sweetheart. Sisterhood has depths you might not appreciate.”
Marieko had turned the Range Rover off the road, and it was now bumping down a rutted track, lights out, running in complete darkness. Although Renquist very rarely drove a car, he was aware headlights really served only to impede nosferatu night vision. A deep silence settled on Destry and Renquist as the truck bounced up a low rise, and, cresting it, treated them to their first glimpse of the burial mound. From a distance, and to the normal vision, it was hardly impressive. Just an elongated hemisphere stretched to an elongated half ovoid, with barely enough symmetry to distinguish it from a natural formation. To the deep vision, however, it was a unique phenomenon. The tinted safety glass of the Range Rover’s windshield made the nosferatu deep vision foggy and less than precise, but the psychic radiation that drifted in approximate circles, like a miniature lazy nebula of microstars orbiting the earthworks, was
irrefutable proof that some great dormant power lay beneath the small man-made hill.
Destry let out a soft gasp. “Holy shit. Will you look at that?”
Renquist glanced sharply at Marieko. “Was it like this the other times you came here?”
Marieko shook her head. “Never so intense. The aura’s been growing, but this is quantum.”
Destry was still awed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Renquist also stared at the energy flow. “None of us have.”
Marieko brought the Range Rover to a halt, but all three nosferatu seemed reluctant to be first to open a door and exit the vehicle. Renquist was glad he had, right before leaving, ordered Bolingbroke to fetch his cane. He felt better advancing into the extreme unknown with weapon firmly grasped in his hand, even a symbolic one. Marieko was leaning forward, peering through the windshield. “Campion and his people have been busy.”
She pointed to a fairly deep trench dug into one end of the mound. The chosen spot was an educated guess, even for humans, as to where they might reasonably expect to find an entrance. Two small gushers of energy rose from each wall of the trench, shaped by its contours. “They’ve dug deep enough that it’s leaking power.”
Destry, who was sitting in the back, leaned between Renquist and Marieko. “Do you think they have any clue what they’re doing?”
Marieko shook her head. “None.”
“So? Shall we get out and take a closer look?”
Destry nodded. “That’s what we came here for.”
The moment Renquist opened the door, it was tumultuously apparent how sheltered they had been inside the Range Rover. The slow waltz of energy challenged the night-shine of the sky, and the very air shivered with a measureless potential. At the same time, an audio background boomed with a stately rhythm, well below the
lower extremes of human hearing. A sound like the deep somnolent breath of a huge and deeply slumbering reptile washed over Renquist. He knew this flow of power would not have diminished by day, and he failed to understand how mortal men and women could excavate in this place without sensing anything at all, even if the power they delved into manifested itself as nothing more than a seemingly groundless sense of fear. Maybe humans were becoming desensitized by their culture of horror, or maybe it was just that modern archaeologists had grown more stern in their calling. Less than a hundred years ago, such power flow would have been the foundation of tales of curses, maledictions, and enchantments.
With a firm grip on his silver-topped cane, Renquist advanced across the grass of Morton Downs toward the mound. The energy flowed around him like the mist created by Gallowglass, only less dense and substantial. He could feel a tapestry of images woven into the flow, but he brought under the tightest control the part of his mind that might give them form and fully realize them as conscious visions. The sound, imagery, and color didn’t seem to be either directed or even deliberately threatening, but he knew he must resist becoming a temporary part of it despite the inquiring temptation.
Temporary
could prove highly relative, and he might find it hard to disengage—and the chance of sunrise discovering him still wandering transfixed, oblivious to his imminent destruction was too great a risk.
He glanced behind. Destry and Marieko were following a few yards back, letting Renquist take the point and be the first to draw any fire, physical or metaphysical. Both had the effortless floating walk of the undead that once caused peasants to bar windows, flee for their lives, or clutch worthless crosses and equally worthless garlic flowers, as though their meager lives depended on one or the other for spurious protection. Destry and Marieko had instinctively adopted the formation of an advancing
patrol, and both were very definitely arrayed as implacable and unconventional warrior women of the undead, on a mission even more vital and challenging than the blood hunt. Still in her riding habit and still carrying her whip, Destry appeared ready for anything, and when Marieko had dressed for the expedition, she had done so with a vengeance. The laced-up Doc Martens left no prints in the turf, but the vinyl catsuit did make small plastic creaks as she moved, and her long leather duster flapped behind her, also audible. Formidable, maybe, but Renquist did notice, how, every so often, one of them would glance round as though startled. They, too, were encountering the apparitions of the energy stream. Should he warn them to exclude the visions entirely, or let them use their judgment? The latter seemed appropriate. He was on point, the offered target; that was more than enough of a contribution to the mutual good.
He wished Lupo were with him from the colony—not only because the broad, bullnecked nosferatu was a squat pillar of strength and could be counted on to make exactly the right move at exactly the right time, but also because his age gave him insights into the most outlandish and singular of situations. Ever since Renquist had become master of his colony, Lupo had been there, at his back. All he had at his back now, in this completely unpredictable situation, was a pair of unknown quantities. Marieko had proved herself capable when a dreamstate of her own devising was compromised from outside, but he had no idea how she might respond in the real world. Destry appeared to be able to handle herself, but appearances could be deceptive.