Renquist nodded grimly. “I believe we have to take possession of it by any means necessary. It has to be moved to a place of safety.”
“Do you have any idea what will happen when Taliesin wakes?”
“Not even a theory, but we have to work on the assumption it’ll be spectacular. I’d like to find out more for myself, before the humans open the cocoon live on CNN.”
Marieko bumped the Range Rover out of the fields and onto a narrow country road. “Or MI6 or the NSA spirit it away to some mysterious Hangar Eighteen, and it vanishes in the alphabet soup of secret intrigue.”
Destry’s expression was as grim as Renquist’s. “Let me remind you, Victor—before we start talking ‘any means necessary’—Marieko, Columbine, and I have to live around here.”
“Eventually every Residence has to be abandoned. Too many of them have fallen victim to the curse of the castle and lingered fatally long in familiar surroundings.”
“It’s that serious?”
“All I know is a demigod will wake here in the twenty-first century after being asleep for fifteen hundred years. I don’t think human civilization is in any way equipped to deal with him or the power that he may well have at his disposal. I also doubt that he’ll be at all sympathetic to what human civilization has become.”
“And we are?”
“I believe so.”
“Don’t you feel that’s taking on one hell of a responsibility?”
“No.”
“No?”
Renquist was terse. Dawn was too close, and he was tired of answering questions. “Shall we ignore for the moment our innate superiority over humans as it’s defined by our relative positions in the food chain?”
Destry seemed equally weary. “Okay.”
“Then we, as nosfertatu, at least know something of Taliesin’s true history.”
“That’s true.”
“In all likelihood, he will go into fairly substantial culture shock when he first sees his surroundings.”
Marieko flicked on the headlights, not to help her see, but to warn other cars of their presence, and also to comply with the law. The last thing they needed was to be stopped for a rural traffic ticket. As usual she was able to project a number of possible scenarios at the same time. “And that shock could be disastrous if he should wake in a secret sub-basement of some CIA mental hospital, or in a Pay Per View TV studio.”
“From television to nuclear weapons, he will see many things he hasn’t known for not just fifteen hundred years, but fifteen thousand.”
Marieko glanced at Destry. “He went to sleep in the aftermath of the Roman Empire.”
Destry shook her head as if the facts were still hard to grasp. Renquist pressed home the point. He wanted them to be ready to get the cocoon at sunset. He knew it was dangerous, but was convinced to do otherwise would court far worse disaster. “I span nearly two-thirds of the time he’s been separated from the world.”
Destry still wasn’t sure. “We have to talk to Columbine about this.”
Renquist shook his head. “The time for Columbine’s games is long past.”
A new argument seemed about to commence over Columbine’s role in things as Marieko swung the Range Rover through the open gates of the Priory. Atop their granite columns, the le Corbeau ravens maintained their cast-iron silence.
“Wait.”
“What’?”
“There they are.”
A Range Rover was coming fast up the driveway, and the dawn was only short minutes away. Gallowglass dropped the shutter into place over the last drawing room window open to the light, and the room was in instant, daytime darkness.
“T’ y’ places lads.”
Now they had something to do, the Highlanders moved with prompt efficiency. They left the drawing room to take up assigned positions at as many of the obvious entrances to the Priory as could be covered by the seven. Gallowglass himself headed for the front door, and Columbine followed.
As they entered the hallway, the handle of the heavy wooden door turned as though one of the three was already trying to get inside, not knowing the door was already barred and bolted, and even a nosferatu couldn’t break it down in the time that was left. Without thinking, Columbine protested. “You can’t go through with this. You can’t leave them out there to burn.”
“It’s no up t’ me, lassie. Th’ choice is Master Renquist’s.”
“You said if I helped you, you would harm neither me nor my companions.”
“Perhaps they should be more careful o’ th’ company they keep.”
“I thought you were a creature of honor.”
“What was i’ ye said a while ago? ‘Honor is dictated by circumstance’?”
Marieko brought the Range Rover to a lurching halt. She didn’t even have to tell Destry and Victor to go straight to the house. Beams of sunlight would soon be shafting through the trees to the east of Ravenkeep. They could only leave the vehicle in the driveway and bolt for safety. As Marieko slammed the driver’s door closed, she saw Destry had reached the front door, and Renquist wasn’t far behind her, but then something seemed to be wrong. Destry was tugging at the handle as if the door was refusing to open. Renquist caught up with her, and he, too, tried with the same lack of avail. He quickly shouted to Marieko.
“Get back in the car!”
Renquist was right. The Range Rover, with its tinted windows, would provide at least temporary protection from the fast-coming sun, but no sooner had Marieko turned to retrace her steps than a missile flew from a second-floor window, as if by prearranged signal. Hurled with nosferatu strength, it described a soaring arc and then dropped with unpleasant accuracy on the Range Rover’s windshield, completely shattering it. The car was no use as a refuge. At the same time, Marieko could hear Destry screaming furiously for Columbine.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing, you demented psycho? Let us in this instant!”
Columbine’s voice came from inside the door. “It’s not me that’s doing this. It’s—”
A second voice interrupted her. “It’s Gallowglass, Master Renquist. Whether this door opens or no is entirely up t’ you.”
Destry continued to rave. “What the fuck are you talking about? We’re going to burn out here in a matter of seconds.”
“Th’ choice is Master Renquist’s.”
Renquist pushed Destry and Marieko into the corner
of the doorway that would be touched last by the sunlight. “I don’t understand. What choice?”
“Ye either give ye self up t’ the Lord Fenrior, or ye stay where y’are an’ perish.”
“Are you telling me to surrender to you or burn?”
“Aye. Tha’s th’ long an’ short o’ it.”
Destry and Marieko cowered in the corner of the doorway.
“Answer him, Victor. I really don’t want to carbonize out here like a damned fool.”
Renquist took a deep breath. “Very well. You have my word. I surrender to Fenrior. Now open the damned door.”
The sound of locks being turned and bolts being drawn back was followed by the door swinging inward. Renquist stepped back as Marieko and Destry fell inside; then he entered, and the door was slammed behind him. He was no sooner inside and out of the danger of the sun than a new threat made itself known. He found himself facing six undead Highlanders with five claymores and a broadsword pointed unerringly at his throat, while a seventh hefted an axe and measured the distance to his neck. Renquist eyed the points of the swords and then looked past them to Gallowglass. “Is this essential? I gave my word of surrender.”
“My instructions are t’ take no chances.”
“So what changed, Gallowglass? Just now you were bringing me prey and extending your laird’s cordial invitation to visit.”
Gallowglass showed no expression. “Since then, th’ situation ha’ changed an’ m’ lord’s invitation ha’ become more imperative.”
“What situation?”
“Th’ Lord Fenrior well kens ye burrowin’ i’ th’ hillside.” He looked round at the three females. “Aye, an’ wha’ ye found there, an’ all th’ rest o’ i’.”
A
light rain was falling as the two Hummers roared up the Ravenkeep driveway. Matte black and without markings or number plates, lights blazing in the overcast dusk, they approached the house like a paranoid fantasy on wheels, a conspiracy vision of New World Order covert operations. They came to a fast stop in front of the house, and Highlanders tumbled out of them, ready for anything. Plaid and old leather, dirks and claymores, one even carried a small circular shield—it was as though these modern vehicles had transported a crowd of passengers from another era. The Highlanders made no attempt to hide the high spirits of wild nosferatu who have just collectively fed, and Renquist looked askance at all that was wrong with the picture. Was Fenrior insane or did he feel so distant and invulnerable in his Scottish stronghold, he had no compunction about letting his men run bloody and unchecked in heavily populated southern England?
While Renquist speculated where and on whom these
new arrivals might have fed, Gallowglass hurried to hear a report from their apparent leader. “Duncanon?”
A young nosferatu with a swagger that should have been a warning to all who encountered him stepped from the self-congratulatory group. “Aye?”
“Did all go well, boy?”
“I’ aw went like clockwork.”
The object of Gallowglass’s questions was by no means the biggest of the new arrivals, but he had an instantly recognizable and untamed authority. He was the kind others would follow, even into situations their better judgment would normally cause them to avoid. If Fenrior had to guard himself against aspirants to his leadership—invariably the case in any nosferatu community—this young one certainly merited watching. Although still in the unruly sword-vassal mode, Duncanon was considerably more stylish and conscious of his appearance that his comrades. Cleaner and clean shaved, with his long and currently wet hair hanging almost to his waist, he sported rings and heavy bracelets of finely crafted silver. His sword was slung from the wide silver-studded belt at a high strutting angle, and he habitually kept one hand on the basketwork hilt. Renquist knew the pose well. He had adopted it himself in his younger days.
The relationship between the young Duncanon and the venerable Gallowglass was easy to read. The young one acted insolent and cocky with every movement of his body, striving for superiority, but was ultimately forced to defer to Gallowglass’s superior rank, age, and status. The meeting also told Renquist this operation had two simultaneous objectives, and with both accomplished, the two halves of the combined task force had just been reunited. Obviously the goal of the one led by Gallowglass had been to take Renquist alive and presumably bring him north to Fenrior. What the other party, the one apparently captained by Duncanon, had been assigned to do was yet to be seen, but the presence of the two Hummers
and the large number of armed undead retainers made it very clear the lord was taking something very seriously. Renquist could only assume that something was the phenomenon at Morton Downs. This operation was not, however, a mission undertaken on the spur of the moment or mounted in the space of a single day. Despite all Columbine’s cries of betrayal and treachery, Ravenkeep must have had been leaking information well before he had ever arrived in England.
The numbers of the Highlanders alone also came as a surprise to Renquist. He’d known Fenrior’s clan was large, but he’d never imagined it to be this large. Gallowglass had seven at his back, while Duncanon commanded another eight. Fifteen plus the two captains made a raiding party of seventeen. Projecting these figures—and even if Fenrior had sent every sword under his command on this strange raid—a certain number of females and noncombatants must have remained at the castle, which led Renquist to believe the entire clan numbered thirty or forty. If he was correct, Fenrior lorded over the largest community of the undead since the Theatre Raoul Privache in Paris had been quietly but forcibly dispersed by a confederation of nosferatu luminaries and a cabal of human secret societies. Over the centuries, Renquist had observed how, when a conclave of the undead grew too large, it sooner or later embarked on a self-destructive course that inevitably led to a violent and high-profile bloodbath that thoroughly unnerved the human bystanders. The seeds of trouble were usually sown when the leader or leadership of the overlarge clan or colony became too confident of the power he, she, or they believed was at their command. Perhaps it was an illusion of perceived power that had caused the laird to send what amounted to an armed expedition so far out of his accepted hunting grounds.
Being told everything went like clockwork hardly seemed to satisfy Gallowglass. “So wha’ happened at yon place? I wan’ t’ hear every detail, boy.”
Renquist was standing in the shelter of the main door of Ravenkeep, looking out into the rain. Two Highlanders stood behind him with drawn swords, but they appeared to have accepted that he had given his word of surrender and intended to stand by it. He could just about hear the conversation by Gallowglass and Duncanon, but the rain was growing heavier, and he feared he might miss crucial words. He casually stepped out of the door, doing his best to look as though he were simply stretching his legs after a cramped day of hardly sleeping. Instead of stopping him, his pair of Highlanders merely followed. Attempting to show no specific interest in anything but the general scene and the two black Hummers—the state-of-the-art American military vehicles had to be something of a rarity in England—Renquist ambled until he was in effective earshot. Duncanon was giving Gallowglass a report of his troops’ endeavors.
“We did i’ just as m’ lord ordered. By th’ time Renquist an’ th’ lassies left th’ tomb i’ were too close t’ dawn, so we retired t’ our body bags t’ wait out th’ day.”
This was an innovation Renquist had never come across before. To use rubber, military-style body bags as a means of protection from the sun was a wholly novel idea, but he supposed it must work.
“Come sunset w’ took th’ mound.”
“Humans?”
“Campion ha’ brought i’ a couple o’ security guards, but they were no trouble. And there was this Rastafarian.”
“Rastafarian?”
“Aye, but he ran off an’ we let him go. He was kinda likeable an’ wi‘out too much credibility goin’ f’ him anyway. Who’s gonna believe a ganja-smokin’ dread when he tells them he was chased off an ancient archeological site by blood-drinkin’ Scotsmen?”
Renquist knew this had to be Winston Shakespeare, the young man who had led Marieko to the mica fragment.
She had let him live in return, and Renquist imagined she’d be happy he’d escaped with his life a second time. Gallowglass continued to quiz Duncanon. “So wha’ happened next, after ye’d dealt wi’ th’ humans.”
“We went inside an’ brought oot th’ Merlin’s sarcophagus an’ th’ rest o’ th’ stuff. I’ was a bastard gettin’ i’ all down tha’ tunnel. Th’ fuckin’ thing turned oot t’ be covered i’ spikes like a bloody cactus, so we had t’ hack ’em off a’fore we moved i’.”
“Ye didna damage i’, did ye?”
“I’ seemed all right.”
“So where is it now?”
Duncanon gestured to the second of the Hummers. “Yon.”
“So we’re ready t’ move out?”
“No reason not. We’re gonna ha’ t’ motor t’ be back t’ home a’fore dawn.”
Gallowglass looked round for Renquist. “Master Renquist, would ye come over here?”
Renquist walked to where Gallowglass and Duncanon were standing. “You seem to have brought an entire army down here.”
“Th’ Lord Fenrior believes i’ safety i’ numbers.”
“It’s unfortunate the Lord Fenrior doesn’t believe in the very basic nosferatu protocols.”
“Jus’ followin’ ma orders, Master Renquist. Th’ niceties ye’ll have t’ bring up wi’ th’ laird himself.”
Duncanon’s smooth face curled into a sneer of contempt. “Th’ only thing he’ll be doin’ when he meets th’ laird will be grovelin’ f’ his head.”
Renquist’s eyes and aura became as hard and brittle as cold iron. “That’s what you believe, is it, young man?”
Duncanon seemed about to reply in kind, but Gallowglass cut him off, stepping between the fresh Highlander and Renquist. “Don’t show ye self up as more o’ a fool than ye really are, lad. This is Victor Renquist fra th’ Americas, an’ you’ll no see him grovelin’ t’ anyone.”
“He’s our prisoner, isn’t he?”
“Get about ye business, boy. Get ye lads on th’ truck an’ ready t’ travel.”
With a final sneer of postponed hostilities for Renquist, Duncanon swaggered off—and Gallowglass shook his head. “Full o’ piss an’ vinegar an’ more trouble than he’s worth.”
Renquist nodded, happy to play the seasoned veteran and give Gallowglass and himself a certain common ground. “I had one like him myself a few years ago. He went by the name of Carfax, and I had to push him out into the sun before he learned any manners.”
Gallowglass smiled wanly. “Sometimes yon’s th’ only remedy. Unfortunately tha’ one’s favored by m’ lord, so he’d be missed.”
“Did you say you have the cocoon in one of those trucks?”
It was the crucial question, but Renquist let it drop almost casually. Gallowglass looked at Renquist, disappointed at the ploy. “If tha’s wha’ ye heard, tha’s wha’ I said. It’s goin’ back t’ Fenrior where it belongs.”
“You know what it is?”
“Aye.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ye know as well as I, Master Renquist, it’s th’ old Merlin, fast asleep. M’ lord wants t’ be there when he wakes, as I believe d’ ye.”
“You knew all that?”
“Aye. An’ if y’r worried, it’s bein’ well protected, so if ye don’t ha’ any more questions, we need t’ get goin’. Are ye ready?”
“I just need my traveling bags.”
Gallowglass gestured toward the house.”
“Tha’s th’ lassies’ thrall bringin’ them now, I think.”
Marieko was stunned beyond any hope of fast recovery. Events had turned on them so quickly she was hard-pressed to accept she could go from elation to near destruction
in all but the blink of an eye, and then survive only to find herself a prisoner in her own Residence. She was equally amazed Victor should take the turnaround so calmly. Had Columbine sold her out to save her own miserable skin the way she had sold out Renquist to the Highlanders, she would have thrown herself on her and torn her apart. Victor, on the other hand, took the base betrayal in his stride and was talking with all cordiality to Gallowglass. The only positive aspect of the situation was that the Highlanders, after committing something perilously close to an act of war, were apparently pulling out. They were, however, taking not only Victor, but also the chrysalis of Taliesin the Merlin with them.
The worst part was her sense of impotency. Marieko could do nothing about what was happening around her. She might battle ninja in her dreams, but to take on fifteen armed Highlanders in the pouring rain of a real evening, even with Destry beside her, would be nothing short of suicidal. She could only watch the Scotsmen make their preparations to leave, glare at them, and suppress the need to snap, snarl, and hurt. She even reserved the right to make Columbine suffer for her perfidy at some later time. Columbine had wisely made herself scarce after the front door had opened, and they’d staggered in from the moment of dawn, and Renquist had, of course, found himself facing the half circle of sword points. Destry was also mute, glaring at the Highlanders. Since the moment they knew they were not going to be destroyed, she hadn’t uttered a word. The experience of coming close to losing all in the sunrise had a profound effect on any nosferatu, young or old.
Marieko stood in the hall of Ravenkeep, watching Victor and the males of Fenrior through the open door. She had thought all the action was outside and was thus surprised to hear a clumsy noise from behind her. She turned to find Bolingbroke, dried blood still on his face from where the Highlanders had mishandled him, laden down with Victor’s traveling bags and the fur rug on
which she and Victor had spent their memorable day. “Where do you think you’re going with those?”
“I am taking them to … Mr. Renquist. Mistress Columbine said … that I should—”
Marieko cut him off. She had no time for his slurred and halting explanation. “Yes, yes, just get along, and don’t take forever.”
It seemed Columbine wasn’t so upset it impaired her from giving orders to speed Victor’s departure. Marieko’s anger blazed afresh. She couldn’t see how the troika could continue under the present circumstances, and even if it did, the dynamics would have to be completely different. Destry came up behind her and grasped her hand. “We should say good-bye to Victor. We have no idea if and when we’ll see him again.”
Marieko collected herself. “Yes, it’s the least we can do.”
“For now.”
“For now?”
Destry nodded. “For now. You think this is at an end of it?”
Destry glanced around. A few of the Highlanders were paying a passing male-female attention, but most were ignoring them. Gallowglass seemed to have issued orders that the females were strictly off-limits to his wild men. This had come as welcome news. When Marieko and Destry had fallen through the door, skin already scoured by the coming sun, the sight of six Highlanders containing Victor in a ring of sharp steel had produced the logical projection that they might well be next, and instead of spending just a watchful, sleepless day waiting for nightfall and the return of Duncanon and his males, they might have been the principal entertainment of a roaring and bloody Clan Fenrior orgy of unnatural physical abuse.