The second guard returned, murmuring something in archaic French to Gabriel before opening the gates and escorting them to the villa’s front entry, where they were met by a much bigger man.
“Welcome to
Ì Àrd
, Miss Jefferson.” The blond giant bowed, but Nick noticed he never took his hand from the hilt of his sword. He turned to Gabriel and repeated the bow. “Lord Seran. I hope your crossing was without incident. He expected you to arrive yesterday.”
“Richard often expects rather more than can be reasonably accomplished with such short notice.” Gabriel’s expression remained impassive. “Why did he summon us, Korvel?”
“My lord will explain the matter. This way, please.”
The captain led them through the front of the house to a long row of stained-glass doors depicting a series of kings on thrones.
“
Ì Àrd
,” Nick muttered. “What’s that mean? ‘I not soft’?”
“It’s Gaelic,” Gabriel told her. “It means ‘high island.’ ”
Korvel escorted them through the center pair of doors out into a courtyard garden filled with broad rose-bushes and jasmine-laden trellises.
“My lord,” the captain said. “Lord Seran and his
sygkenis
have arrived.”
A dark figure appeared. “Leave us, Korvel.”
The captain withdrew, and Nick glanced around. The fragrance of the thousands of blooming flowers colored the air, but didn’t quite mask a deeper, darker scent radiating from the cloaked man who came to stand beside the center fountain.
The last time Nick had met Richard Tremayne, high lord of the immortal Darkyn, his scent had been almost identical to that of cherry tobacco. That had been almost a year ago, under less than ideal circumstances that had changed her life forever, and (although she would never admit it) for the better. Now the most powerful immortal on the planet gave off a headier, sweeter scent, she thought, more like chocolate-covered cherries.
Nick approved of the change, but she didn’t let her guard down. Richard could be as unpredictable as he was dangerous, and the only time he wasn’t actively scheming was when he was unconscious.
The hood of the high lord’s cloak kept his face in shadow as he turned toward them, but Nick could see the gleam of his dark eyes as he inspected Gabriel and then her.
“My lord.” Gabriel bowed. “You sent for us?”
“Four days past I sent for you.” Richard’s voice, which he could use like a weapon on both humans and immortals, crackled with displeasure. “What kept you from attending me?”
“Oh, the usual,” Nick answered before her lover could reply. “Smuggling people across borders, dodging their killers, and trying not to get our asses fried in the process. You know.” She showed him her teeth. “Our little hobby.”
“You could not have left her in Aberdeen?” Richard asked Gabriel.
Her lover folded his arms. “Where I go, my lord, she goes.”
“And here we are,” Nick added. “So, Vampire King, where’s the goddamned fire?”
Nick knew she was pushing it, but she didn’t care. Richard wouldn’t have bothered sending for both of them if he didn’t need to use her as well as Gabriel. She was the only immortal who could sense hidden or captured Kyn, and Gabriel could track anything that breathed. Whatever her lover felt he did or didn’t owe to the high lord, she’d made it clear to Richard that she wouldn’t be used as his personal vampire GPS.
“We have a situation in America,” Richard said at last. “I need you to hunt down a Darkyn who has gone rogue.” When Nick started to speak, he held up one gloved hand. “While you are there, you cannot contact Michael Cyprien or make him aware of your presence or your purpose.”
Nick felt like spitting. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Gabriel rested his hand on her shoulder before addressing Richard. “My lord, Michael is the American seigneur. For Nicola and me to enter his territory without his permission or knowledge—”
“—is against our laws. I know, Gabriel. I wrote the damned law.” Richard sighed. “The situation is highly explosive. Were Michael to learn that this rogue was on his territory, he would have no choice but to conduct the hunt himself, alone. But I believe it is a trap, set to lure him into the hands of our enemies again. After what was done to Michael in Rome, I cannot take that risk.”
“But it’s fine with you if Gabriel and I get snatched instead and tortured to death?” Nick looked sideways. “Baby, we are
so
out of here.”
“Wait,
ma belle amie
.” Gabriel regarded the high lord. “You believe that Nicola and I can succeed where Cyprien would fail? Why?”
“It’s because I can pass as human,” Nick guessed. “Cyprien can’t.” She glared at Richard. “And neither can Gabriel, in case you forgot.”
“I have forgotten nothing,” Richard assured her. “But there are other reasons it must be the two of you. Very old reasons.” He shifted to gaze at the water cascading from the fountain top to the rippling pool in its wide basin. “I will tell you everything you wish to know, but you must swear to me never to speak of it to another soul.”
“We swear,” Nick said flatly. “Okay, now tell us what the deal is.”
“There have been many secret wars in which we have fought for our right to exist,” Richard said slowly. “Even now, our kind still struggle for survival—as you and Gabriel have witnessed yourselves. But not every warrior goes into battle to fight for life.” He pulled back his hood, revealing his part-human, part-changeling visage. “Some, my dear, go to war to die.”
PART TWO
Snow Moon
How the Ahnclann Came to Be
W
e have always lived on the mountain. We were here before the moon-skin, before the fur-thieves, before even the oldest of the dark-hair. We saw the first eagle, and the last river of ice. We were here before things were known and named by the two-leg. The elders say that when the Master of All Things brought the mountain itself from below, we sprang up with it.
The rivers who came from the ice called us the Chahanat, but we called ourselves nothing, for we knew what we were.
In the old times before the two-leg, we hunted through the trees and above the highest cliffs, in the darkness and in the storm. We made our homes in the deepest caves, and there mated, bore our young, and grew old. The dark-hair were the first to come to the mountain, but they named us for their fear. When they found our trails, they never followed them or tried to find us in the night. Nor did the fur-thieves who came later, once we had killed enough of them.
In the old times we were many, but the fur-thieves brought pestilence that ate at us, taking our young and our old. They killed many dark-hair with the same sickness. Soon the last of the dark-hair left for the flatlands, but we could not. We were as bound to the mountain as it was to us.
While our numbers dwindled, our males began fighting over our females, but it was for nothing, for many who survived the sickness became barren, and fewer and fewer young came. There was nothing that could be done, for there were no others like us. We had watched herds and packs and flocks of other creatures die out in such ways, and we knew that our end time was upon us.
That was when the moon-skin came with their wagons, with their females and their young, and settled on the mountain. They made their own caves of cut trees and piled stones, and grew things and kept herds instead of hunting. Some of the females seemed to sense us, and left offerings of burnt meat under the trees. Kind as it was, we never touched the food, and as lonely as we were, we did not leave our hiding places. Like the dark-hair, they were two-leg, not like us.
If we had come to know them, and to let them know of us, we might have somehow warned them about the Strange One. He looked as they did, but we knew from the first time he sullied our air with his scent that he was only wearing their pale skin. Inside he was the beast, mindless and crazed, voracious with hunger although he never ate or drank.
Our elders feared him, and said he was pestilence made two-leg, and for that reason his burden and fate had to be shouldered by the moon-skins, not us. Our scouts watched, and at first he seemed to do nothing more than take refuge among them to wait out the long winter months until the snows melted and he could travel on. Then the scouts saw the moon-skins carrying out dead ones and bury them under snow and stone.
The elders feared more sickness, and drove us from our watching places to retreat into the mountain, into the very deepest caves where it could not reach us. There we stayed until the last snow, when scouts were sent out to see how the two-leg had fared. They returned to say that nearly all the moon-skins had perished, and the last two females had gone down into the valley with the Strange One. But the scouts thought that the last would also soon die, for the Strange One drank of their blood and desecrated their bodies each night.
One of the females had been particularly dear to us. Bright of hair and fair of face, she had always left some offering of meat for us under the trees. Worse, when the Strange One had come, she had been heavy with child.
Ashamed of our cowardice, we came down through the darkness, following the Strange One’s unnatural scent until we found him preparing to ride out. The last of the moon-skin females lay dead and discarded by him, the pregnant bright-hair’s belly ripped open. When the Strange One saw us closing in, he laughed and taunted us, hoping perhaps to frighten us away. When he saw that he could not, he tried to flee.
We brought down the monster and gutted him and his mount, but even with his entrails spilling across the ground and the crushing weight of the dead horse atop him, he would not die.
The elders told us what had to be done. So we gathered one last time, first dragging away the corpse of the horse, and then each of us in turn striking and tearing and devouring the Strange One, rending his flesh and guts and bones until there was no more of him. When it was finished, and every part of him lay in our bellies, we licked his blood from the ground and returned to the caves. There we fell one by one into the deep sleep, assured that we had brought justice for the moon-skins.
But it was not the sleep of weariness; it was the sleep of our becoming. And when we awoke, the Fury first came over us, and we were no longer the Chahanat.
For this reason it can be said that, in truth, it was the Strange One who took his vengeance on us.
SEARCH CANCELED; LOCAL RESIDENT CHARGED
10/03/99
SCARVAVILLE, OR—The Curry County Sheriff’s Office has called off the search for an unknown victim of a cougar attack, and officials have charged local resident Reginald Boyce with public drunkenness and filing a false police report.
Boyce, an unemployed construction worker, phoned the sheriff’s office from a roadside emergency call box yesterday and reported witnessing a cougar dragging the body of an unidentified person into the Siskiyou National Forest. Boyce told deputies that he saw the incident from the road while driving to his brother-in-law’s home, and stopped to shoot at the animal several times before calling in the report.
A National Guard helicopter circled the area for several hours while forest rangers, deputies, and county S&R conducted a ground search. No evidence of the attack, the cougar, or the alleged victim was found.
Boyce, who reported to the CCS headquarters to make an official statement, was detained for questioning, and reportedly became verbally abusive with deputies when pressed for details. A source inside CCS who asked not to be named reported that Boyce insisted the cougar had been walking erect on its hind legs and had been carrying the body “like a baby.” These statements, along with Boyce’s adamant refusal to take a sobriety test, convinced deputies to charge him.
“I’m sorry to hear about his troubles, but Reggie likes his beers,” Boyce’s former wife, DeeDee, said during a phone interview. “They should have known he was drunk when he walked through the door; he always smells like an open kegger.”
After being arraigned and released on bail, a sober Boyce reluctantly admitted to reporters that he has experienced several similar episodes since the breakup of his marriage.
“It seemed so real this time,” he said upon leaving the city jail. “Honest to Moses, that cat walked like a man, and it was carrying the body in its arms. But it wasn’t human—the thing carrying the body, I mean. I was only a hundred yards away, and I could see it had fur, and paws, and no clothes. Not a stitch on. Maybe it was Bigfoot, but all the pictures I’ve seen of Bigfoot, he’s got dark fur. This thing was all light tan, with white on its front. Swear to God, that’s what I saw.”
Over the last fifty years three men have been killed by cougar attacks while hiking through the Siskiyou National Forest, according to forestry officials, with another twenty-four nonfatal attacks occurring during the same period. All the survivors of the attacks have been women hiking alone or who at the time were separated from their families; none has ever been able to give rangers any details on the incidents or the animal that attacked them.
Apparently CCS has taken at least part of Boyce’s false report seriously, as Sheriff Adkins has issued a request that anyone who has seen a cougar in the area contact his office at (514) 247-3432. To report an anonymous tip to CCS, text the keyword 514CCS, along with your message, to Tip3432; or call the CCS TipLine at (512) 247-9492.