“So there’s no problem?”
“Not now there isn’t.”
Julia had booked four rooms, two that connected. The interior of each motel room was globally unremarkable:
easy-clean furniture, a muted color scheme, the obligatory bad landscape on the wall above the king-size bed, a black TV set, a beige phone, and individually wrapped soap. They really could have been anywhere on the planet. Before separating to sleep, they gathered in one of the two connected rooms to unwind and generally review their situation. Destry switched the black television to CNN to see if anything more was emerging about the killings at Morton Downs, but the story didn’t seem to have penetrated that far north. Julia removed her hat, and Destry quickly turned from the TV. “Just one thing, please. Don’t throw your hat on the bed.”
“It spooks you?”
“We all have our foibles.”
She dropped her hat on top of her overnight bag and faced the troika. “I think there’s something I need to say before we go any further.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m getting the impression you all feel too much reliance is being placed on the invincibility of Lupo.”
Marieko was defensive. “None of us have said that.”
“But you’ve thought it?”
Marieko nodded. “I certainly have. The Lord Fenrior commands his own army.”
Destry added emphasis. “That’s really no exaggeration. There must be dozens of those undead Highlanders. All armed to the teeth.”
Marieko continued. “I do think we’d feel more confident if we had something even slightly similar behind us.”
“You believe we need an army?”
“Not an army, but I don’t know what the four of us can really achieve.”
“I could make some calls if you sincerely feel that way about reinforcements.”
“It’s pointless hiring humans.”
“There are some of our kind I could contact.”
Marieko liked that idea. “It might be worth at least
seeing how the land lay in terms of possible support.”
Julia shrugged. “There’s no time like the present, and since it’s not quite dawn here in Europe, most won’t have retired yet.”
She fished in her bag, produced a cell phone, dialed a thirteen-digit number, and spoke in rapid Italian. After some minutes of both talking and listening, she snapped the phone closed. “That was not good.”
“How not good?”
“You might say double plus ungood. It seems most of the Euro-clans would agree Victor being snatched by Fenrior was quite beyond the boundaries of good manners, but no one wants to get involved. They’d all prefer to see the show. It’s an event. They feel it could be the first great confrontation of the new century, and they all want to sit on the sidelines and watch it play out.”
Columbine snorted. “Selfish bastards.”
“That’s the undead for you. Spectacle before justice. We don’t get enough thrills in our lives these days.”
“I still think they’re selfish bastards.”
“Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“Of course, but that’s not the point.”
Destry shook her head. “There’s no sense in starting yet another bloody discussion. We have no backup, and that’s that. We’re right where we started. We can only confront Fenrior, and if he doesn’t decide to do the right thing and release Victor, we can only hope Lupo will pull our chestnuts out of the fire.”
Julia removed her duster and inspected the bed. “I was offered one piece of advice.”
“What was that?”
“As four females, we should make our demands of the Lady Gethsemany, and not Fenrior. If she refuses, any of us are quite within our rights to call her out in single combat.”
Destry nodded slowly. “I think I could take her.”
Marieko sighed. “I would have no problem facing her.”
Julia sat down on the bed and started pulling off her boots. “We can talk about that after we’ve slept.”
Columbine picked up her overnight things as a prelude to finding her room. “You should probably know Gethsemany hates me.”
Julia looked up at her with one boot on her foot and the other in her hand. “Now, I wonder why that might be.”
Fenrior and Renquist walked down a corridor lit by hundreds upon hundreds of candles. The place smelled of small flames, melting wax, and an elusive perfume. “It was Gethsemany’s idea. Pleasant, don’t you think?”
An armadillo scuttled under a low wax-crusted table as the two nosferatu approached. One thing in Fenrior was as it should be. Renquist nodded politely. “Very pleasant.”
“You recognize the perfume?”
“No.”
“It’s one of her own design. She has it made up by an old human in York. Still calls himself an apothecary.”
Renquist noticed, even in this soft gothic gloom, Fenrior didn’t remove his dark glasses. Could it be something was wrong with the lord’s eyes? Had they accidentally or deliberately been damaged at some time in the past, or were they perhaps strange and unsightly to look upon? Obviously it was something one didn’t inquire about, but he couldn’t help wonder.
“The Lady Gethsemany is constantly redesigning and making changes to the interior rooms of the castle. It passes the nights for her, but I must confess, there are times even I don’t know where I am.”
Fenrior’s joking admission confirmed something Renquist had already begun to realize. The Castle Fenrior was an absolute labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and, from what he’d seen earlier, a warren of subterranean tunnels. It was impossible to guess how far the structure might extend underground or stretch beneath the lake. Fenrior
had been able to work on the enlargement of his edifice for centuries, and Renquist couldn’t imagine he hadn’t put the time to good use. The idea of escaping became even more remote. Far from finding his way out of the Scottish Highlands before he was caught by the sun, he realized he’d actually be lucky to find his way out of the castle. Thought of escape moved very logically to thoughts on what Lupo might be doing. Lupo could go to ground for a month in place like this, suddenly appearing, destroying Highlanders when they were least expecting it, and then disappearing again.
“Now that we’re alone, there is something I need to ask you.”
Fenrior looked at Renquist a little warily. “That sounds ominous.”
“Why did you have Gallowglass take me the way he did? I had every intention of coming here.”
“I suppose you could say I grew impatient. I was no longer able to wait. And anyway, I had to know if I could trust you. I knew your reputation, but I had to check. You could have been as big a liar as that fool Saint Germaine.”
“But you trust me now?”
“I watched you feed, didn’t I?”
“I rather resented that.”
“That’s what I saw.”
Renquist waited a few moments before playing his last, what he hoped would be his trump card. “You are aware that Lupo, if he’s heard what’s happened, may well come and take your head?”
Fenrior nodded slowly like a man being apprised of something he’d overlooked. “Ah, Lupo. I suppose I should take that seriously.”
“If he arrived here, I would obviously dissuade him, but he might decide to finish you before he looked for me.”
“Or my lads might finish him.”
Renquist smiled coldly. “I very much doubt that.”
“Could you contact him?”
“I don’t know. If he’s left already, I can’t. Even I don’t know how Lupo travels. And if I could, what could I say to him? I don’t know what I’m doing here, or how long I’m going to be doing it.”
“I thought we had your status fully established.”
“That was for the clan. For Lupo, I would have to know the reality.”
Fenrior drew himself up to his full height. “I’m a vampire lord, Master Renquist, and you are pressing me hard.”
Fenrior was a little taller than Renquist, but Renquist refused to be intimidated. “And I am a thousand years old, my lord. I suspect time is pressing the both of us.”
“I wanted you here for when Taliesin wakes. And the Merlin is waking faster than I expected.”
“I didn’t have to be brought here for that. I would have come in an instant.”
“I may also need your help to destroy it.”
Renquist’s shock robbed him of caution. “What?”
“I said destroy it. My present intention for the Urshu is welcome it, study it, and having won its trust, kill it.”
“Kill it? Are you insane?”
“It takes a lot of courage to ask an absolute ruler if he’s insane.”
“The question stands.”
Fenrior laughed once, a soft, ironic bark. “You really are a thousand years old, aren’t you?”
Renquist nodded. “And not getting any younger. You talked earlier about your impatience to get me here. I have my own impatience.”
As Fenrior spoke, all Renquist could see was the candlelight reflected in his dark glasses. The steel frames were like sections of a black greenhouse, maybe for poisonous plants. “Don’t talk to me about impatience, Victor Renquist. I have been very patient. Infinitely patient, you might say. I have known about the Urshu sleeping in the barrow at Morton Downs for over a hundred years.
I was aware of its existence since before Columbine Dashwood so much as moved into Ravenkeep.”
When Marieko semi-predicted that Destry and Julia would be hunting together, she had neither imagined the peculiarity of the circumstances nor that she and Columbine would be hunting with them. They had decided before leaving Ravenkeep, aside from a dozen packs of whole blood in an ice-filled cooler for emergencies, they would live off the land as far as possible. They’d feed where they could, working on the assumption that, since they were moving fast and leaving as many false trails as possible, their depredations would be blamed on misadventure on the part of the victim or on some unknown human psychopath. Marieko had assumed, when the decision was taken, feeding would be a private and personal matter, with each female satisfying her needs as she felt fitting, and in her own way. She had certainly not expected Julia would both attempt and succeed to turn basic survival into a group social activity or that she would act as a kind of cheerleader for a collective blood-orgy.
Destry, as seemingly befitted their ongoing bonding, had elected to sleep in the room that connected with Julia’s, and Marieko and Columbine had gone to the other two single rooms, where they could depart from the day in undisturbed isolation. Certain preparations had to be made before they could enter the dreamstate, primarily the covering of all windows with tape and aluminum foil, but Marieko herself had made sure they’d come prepared with all the materials for that eventuality. Some, probably Victor among them, claimed the undead traveled fast. Others subscribed to the opposite. Like certain fine wines, nosferatu didn’t travel well at all. She felt the current outing conformed to the latter maxim. When finally alone in her room, Marieko had wondered if Destry and Julia might end up sharing the same bed. Neither could be truthfully described as masculine, but
they were both nosferatu females-of-action, and it looked to be a case of like attracting like. Marieko had noticed the unmistakable traces of a studied and mutual, quasi-sexual heat in their auras when they were together and thought they weren’t observed.
The arrangement had been, once sunset had come and all four had awakened, they would gather in Julia’s room to prepare for the coming night, and then journey on to the Highlands and Fenrior. Marieko woke with an automatic punctuality, and found that she was the first to arrive at Julia’s door. She knocked, and after a short delay, Julia answered. Marieko was surprised Julia was not dressed for the north of Scotland, but for cocktails and seduction. In the background, Destry was similarly in party rather than traveling mode. Marieko found herself at something of a loss and stood rooted until Julia hustled her inside. “Don’t just stand there in the corridor like a bellhop waiting for a tip.”
Marieko looked from Destry to Julia and back again. Behind Destry, the connecting door between the two rooms stood open. Marieko saw that Destry’s bed was unconvincingly messed up, as if in a last-minute attempt to make it appear slept in when, in fact, it wasn’t. Had the pair sidetracked each other already? Both showed signs of a definite dark-eyed, heavy-lidded satisfaction. Nosferatu could suffer from a shortness of attention span, but this was absurd. “What the hell do you two think you’re doing? We’ve got a long drive in front of us.”
“We also have to feed, my darling.”
“I though we’d attempt to pick up victims on the run.”
Julia shook her head. “First we feed. Then we travel. We have to be on top of our form for what we are about to do, and need all the fresh energy we can acquire.”
Julia’s white silk evening dress, which all but exposed her breasts each time she leaned forward, was a perfect match for her straight white-blond hair. Destry was wearing the same man’s dinner jacket she had worn to
greet Renquist. “The plan is that we hit the happy hour in the motel bar, glut ourselves, and then leave around nine. That should give us plenty of time to be at the gates of Fenrior well before dawn.”