Kingmakers, The (Vampire Empire Book 3) (41 page)

G
ARETH FOCUSED ON
squeezing every sliver of speed from the cold blasting winds. He knew he couldn't reach Edinburgh before Cesare, but he didn't think about that. Reach Adele. That was his goal. Then he would deal with whatever he found. It seemed like months had passed since he left Baudoin and Flay dead in London when he finally saw the grey spires of Edinburgh.

From the air, buffeted by the harsh northern winds and the grey clouds obscuring the morning sun, the city looked deserted. There was no layer of smoke and no sign of movement. As Gareth descended, the castle looked normal.

Surely Adele would have had a fire if she were there.

Gareth dropped into the courtyard like a stone, leaving a heavy indentation in his wake, and he raced for the palace entrance. He shoved the door open and was overwashed with the smell of blood. His wounds were healing slowly, but his head swam with exhaustion. He couldn't make sense of the stench. It didn't have Adele's scent, but it was clearly blood.

He raced up the stairs, caution lost to fear. The door to her room was open, and Gareth ran inside.

“Adele!”

The room was empty. The hearth was warm, but unattended for some time. Her scent was faint.

He noticed with alarm that the bedcovers were thrown about. There had been a struggle of some sort here. His heart pounded and his breath grew thin.

A shadow shifted along the wall, and Gareth dropped into a crouch with claws out. He saw two small eyes reflecting near the floor. A cat. The animal hissed at him, arching its back.

“Pet.” Gareth extended his hand. “Where is your mistress?”

The grey cat pressed himself against the floor, ears pricked forward. He growled low in his belly. Gareth quickly snatched the animal and stood. Pet snarled and clawed, but the vampire didn't feel it.

He left Adele's room and returned to the outer courtyard. He stood listening and scenting the air. The wind roared in his ears and carried hints of blood, but he couldn't pinpoint her. He moved toward the great hall and pushed open the doors.

“Adele!”

He saw the corpses of his cats strewn across the floor.

All the animals that had once charged out to meet him when he returned home now lay motionless at his feet. Pet struggled wildly in Gareth's arms, no longer growling with anger but howling in terror. He dropped the frenzied animal, who scurried into a dark corner.

Gareth knelt over a mound of stiff bodies. He saw one that he recognized and reached down to lift the small white kitten that gazed up with round sightless eyes. He stroked the cold matted fur. This was the small refugee he had named after Adele. Pet trilled from the corner, and Gareth turned to see the poor animal nudging a motionless companion with an uncomprehending paw.

Then Gareth heard the sound of paper tearing.

At the far end of the hall, he saw a figure seated in a chair.

Cesare.

His brother had his feet on a trunk. Gareth's library. In Cesare's hand was a book, and in the other hand was a page, freshly torn out. The younger prince smiled as he dropped the loose leaf onto a pile of pages beside the chair. He looked up pointedly at Gareth as he slowly ripped another page from the book.

“Hello, Gareth,” Cesare said. “I must say I'm surprised to see you.”

“Where's Adele?”

Rip. Another page went into the pile. “From your dreadful appearance, I'd say it wasn't an easy escape at least. I assume Flay is dead?”

“Where. Is. Adele?”

Cesare held up the mutilated book and tossed it aside. “Please tell me you just have these things as an affectation. You haven't sunk so low as to try to read?”

Gareth remained silent, gathering his strength.

The king-to-be reached down and lifted objects from behind the trunk, a rapier and one of Greyfriar's scarves. It was the one Gareth had given to Adele. Cesare took an exaggerated sniff of the scarf with a smile, and then he spread it out to conceal his lower face. His cold blue eyes shone over the edge of the cloth. “Does this make me look human?”

Gareth laid the little cat's body aside with a gentleness that belied the rage he felt. “I'm going to ask you one more time before I kill you. Where is Adele?”

“You won't be killing anyone. You can barely stand.” Cesare inspected the sword curiously. “It's too bad Greyfriar wasn't here to save her, because I drank her blood and threw her onto the rocks.”

“You're lying.”

Cesare shook his head. “If only I had gutted her when I first saw her last year. Ah well, life would be tedious if I always made the right decisions.”

Gareth leaned on a chair, gripping the wood until it cracked, imagining it was Cesare's neck. “And I should have killed you on your airship.”

“Yes. That was stupid of you.” Cesare chuckled at his brother's frailty and dropped the sword and cloth to the floor. He sat forward lazily, eyeing something in the back of the room. “Hm. I missed one.”

Gareth glanced over his shoulder to see Pet hunched at the door. He moved to block the cat from Cesare's sight.

The younger prince came to his feet. “Well, I had hoped you would see my coronation before you died, but that isn't possible now. I'm afraid, my prince, I must execute you here before the eyes of your last remaining subject. And then I'll kill it too.” Cesare raised his snarling
face slowly to his brother. “Just like I killed our father as he lay in his own filth.”

Gareth charged, fueled by sudden flaring wrath. He impacted Cesare, who fell back against the chair, throwing up his arms in defense. Gareth's claws struck home on his brother's face and chest. Cesare grunted from the force.

Gareth screamed, “Tell me Adele is alive! Tell me!”

Cesare managed a callous sneer even while taking savage blows, but stayed silent. This enraged Gareth further, and he seized his brother by the throat to crush the breath out of him.

“You couldn't have killed her,” Gareth growled. “You're no match for her.”

“Then where is she, Greyfriar?” Cesare whispered. “Where is she?”

Gareth threw his brother against the wall. Cesare slammed into a polished shield and dropped to the floor. Gareth was on him, claws deep in his neck.

Then Gareth felt pressure against his wrist, and watched in shock as his hand was pulled away in the grip of Cesare's claws. The younger prince laughed as he stared at his own remarkable feat. He was besting Gareth in strength, something that would've been unthinkable before. Gareth knew with desperation that this was no fluke. Cesare had calculated it. The young king-to-be would never have allowed himself to fall into combat with Gareth if he didn't know he could beat his battered older brother. Cesare kicked Gareth in the stomach and threw him across the room.

Gareth struggled to his knees and started to rise, but he felt Cesare fall on him like a terrier, plunging claws into his head.

Cesare's triumphant voice came close to Gareth's ear. “I've dreamed of this moment so long I almost don't want it to come. But it must. Now there will be nothing to stop me from becoming the greatest ruler our kind has ever seen. No Dmitri. No Gareth. No Greyfriar. No Adele.”

Gareth tried to hold himself up. His arms trembled with effort. His legs quivered. He saw a stream of his blood striking the floor and pooling beneath him.

“Stop struggling,” Cesare crowed. “It's all over, Greyfriar.”

Gareth's mind drifted away to thoughts of Dmitri as a young father, so brave and wise. The sounds of the wind across the Highlands and the smell of heather. The pure pleasure of battle. Watching Adele make tea in a bronze helmet in the British Museum, her delicate fingers moving together in ways he could never master. Her contrary eyebrow raised. The vision of her dancing in the colored sunlight of this very room. Her laughter. Her distant touch as he lay wounded. Her welcoming smile before the fire.

Cesare's voice wafted into his visions. “Never fear. I'll tell Adele how you died.”

Gareth now felt the claws in his back. His gaze slipped around the great hall. He heard the wind howling outside. His right hand inched forward through his own blood until his fingers touched a blunt shape and curled around it.

With a desperate heave, Gareth pushed up, catching Cesare by surprise and throwing him back. The Scottish prince whirled with steel flashing, and Greyfriar's rapier sliced clean across his brother's throat. Cesare started to mock, then realized with alarm that he couldn't speak. His hands went to the deep gash under his chin.

Cesare staggered back a few steps before he bared his sharp teeth and flashed his bloody claws. He gurgled the pronouncement, “I'm the king.”

“I'm the Greyfriar.” Gareth drove home the rapier through his brother's heart and twisted the blade.

The younger prince's eyes went blank.

“And now, I am the king.” Gareth released the pommel of the sword and watched it topple back with Cesare's body.

He staggered to a seat and collapsed. For a long time, he stared at his motionless brother, soaked in blood. After so long, it was finally over. He whispered, “Damn you, Cesare.”

Now to find Adele. She had to be alive. Perhaps she had gone off with her soldiers when Baudoin came to London. He felt a pang at the thought of his lifelong friend lying cold. Baudoin deserved better for his sacrifices.

Gareth felt a buzzing in his head. He blinked and doubled over. He
was weak and needed to feed, but there were probably no humans left in Edinburgh. He had to keep moving. If he stopped, he might never rise. He pushed himself to his feet, and the throbbing behind his eyes grew worse. Suddenly a wall of heat slammed him to one knee. He smelled silvery fire in the air, and a bubbling heat rolled beneath his feet.

“Adele,” he moaned.

Gareth crawled to Cesare's inert body. He needed the witchfinder's talisman; something that might weaken the brutal energy surging around him. He pulled back Cesare's blood-soaked shirt. Nothing. Gareth ran his shaking hands over the inert body with his brother's dead eyes staring at him. Finally he felt something sharp in the pocket of Cesare's once-immaculate coat and reached inside. The minute he touched it, a wave of cool air washed over him and he was able to draw a deep breath.

Gareth stepped over his brother and used the wall to keep himself upright. He reached the door and stumbled out into the blustery courtyard. The air shimmered around him. He dragged himself up the stone wall to reach the roof of the great hall. He squinted his eyes.

A geyser of argent fire blasted up from the trees south of Castle Hill. Gareth knew it was Adele's doing, but there was something different about it. It tasted odd in his mouth. It was wild and unrestrained.

He concentrated on standing. When he tried to lift into the air, the cyclonic fire slammed him off the northern edge of the castle mount. He crawled up the wall back onto the ramparts and took flight, shuddering as new waves of heat cascaded over him.

He tacked back, sliding along the gales, using the fiery waves to push him. Even with the talisman the brewing energies crushed him. He struggled forward, taking punishment for every foot he gained. He could only imagine how bad it would be without the talisman. The energies slipped across his flesh and burned his lungs with every breath. Gareth didn't stop. Adele was at the center of the eruption.

And she was in Greyfriar's Kirk.

T
HE FIRES OF
the Earth rose in front of Gareth's eyes as he plummeted toward Greyfriar's Kirk. The sheer weight of it pushed back against his body. His muscles strained to continue even though he knew the suffering it would bring. All he wanted was to sink to the ground and curl up into a ball, and let the weight and the heat finish him. Every agonizing second brought him closer to the eye of the maelstrom.

Through the haze of pain, he saw two figures in the trees below him. Adele was laid out on a crypt of stone next to the kirk. She was as still as any of the dead in the churchyard. A stone image of a skeleton with a book, frozen on the kirk's wall, looked down on her. Mamoru stood over her supine form. The traitor had found his student again. Crystals lay around her like candles for mourning, but Gareth knew they were for a much more deadly purpose.

He dove, but Mamoru sensed him and glanced up. The priest made an adjustment with the crystals, his lips moving ever so slightly. The Earth flinched, and Gareth screamed as a burst of silver fire erupted, sweeping up and over him. He slammed hard to the ground. The impact drove the air from his lungs. It felt as if a searing anvil sat upon his shoulders. The ground beneath him boiled, blistering his chest and face. The smell of his burnt flesh filled his nostrils.

He struggled to rise, even just to his hands and knees. In his fingers, he still clutched the talisman. A hoarse shout slipped from his lips at the effort. Mamoru ignored him, calmly continuing his ministrations.

Adele remained oblivious, lying deathly still on the stone. Her eyes were wide open, her face to the sky, but only the barest rise and fall of her chest indicated she was alive, bathed in a sheen of sweat. Tendrils of smoke slithered over her still form.

“Adele!” Gareth's voice came out as a desperate cry.

With each adjustment Mamoru made to the crystals around the empress, the heat increased tenfold and her breathing labored. Gareth crawled toward her. His hands crackled and burned, pale flesh transforming to black.

The ground around him was a violent thing to see. Torrents of silver magma pushed up from cracks in the surface. Tombs were shuddering as the smoke coiled around them. The stone skeletal faces on the headstones watched him in silent judgment, their hollow eyes cold and black. Shoving himself upright with one final effort, his shoulders hunched over against the pain, he dragged himself the last few feet. His gaze remained fixated on Adele.

He was mere paces away when Mamoru looked at him. The priest narrowed his eyes and aligned the final crystal. Gareth's world exploded. A wall of liquid heat rained down on him. He screamed as it engulfed him. He was going to die, but he would do so at Adele's side.

The eye of the Earth opened and pierced Adele with its stare. She was lost. The air around her formed intricate patterns, colors swirling like a cocoon, hot and constricting. They were carrying her someplace, as if she were trapped in a turbulent river. The water was sparkling silver, washing over her, although she never got wet.

Everything screamed, and she couldn't shut her ears to it. Such power could transform the world if only it was free, but she knew it wasn't right. Her chest constricted, again and again. Her heart convulsed and then beat once more, wildly, painfully. Her body flushed as if she were ill. Heat was building beneath her.

A different scream cut through the chaos. She jerked violently, and the kirkyard snapped back into focus. She recognized the anguished voice and tried to turn to see, but she couldn't will herself to move. She let her rage fill her, and her attempts to escape from the rift's hunger intensified. Finally her head flopped to the side and the kaleidoscope of energy faded from the corner of her vision. She saw two figures. One she recognized as Mamoru, his back toward her. Her Fahrenheit dagger was shoved into his silken sash. Then beyond him, she saw Gareth, his skin half burnt black. His body was shuddering and shimmering as if the colors were bleeding out of him.

Adele strained to sit up. Her fury welled up inside her. She managed to roll to her side. Her limbs were heavy, her head spinning and her body flushed nauseatingly with the power. The rift beneath her was wide open; its energies screaming through her, flooding into the lines of the Earth, spreading out into the distance.

Adele shoved herself upright and weaved precariously onto her feet. She took a palsied step toward where Mamoru stood over the figure of Gareth writhing in the grass.

“There is no pain too excruciating for you.” The samurai placed a foot on the vampire's chest. “If I could prolong your agony for my lifetime, for
your
lifetime, I would do it.”

Gareth reached feebly for Mamoru's leg, barely strong enough to tighten his fingers around the cloth of the samurai's robe.

Mamoru slapped Gareth's weak hand away. “You thought you had beaten me, hadn't you? You were so proud of how you twisted her against me. Where's your pride now? You're nothing but a filthy animal rolling in the dirt. And soon you'll be nothing but a pile of ashes. All your kind will be gone. Forever.”

“Adele,” Gareth gasped.

“You can stop pretending you care for her.” Mamoru stomped down onto the vampire's chest, nearly crushing his rib cage with the pressure. “You've won one small victory, if that satisfies you. You've killed her. Did you want to force me to do it? Is that why you didn't just murder her when you first saw her? You thought I wouldn't do it. You were wrong. There is no sacrifice I wouldn't make to destroy you. Even Adele.”

The sight of Gareth's agonized face tore at Adele as she staggered in reach of Mamoru. She grabbed for the khukri in his belt. As she pulled the dagger free, the samurai looked down and then back at her. Shock filled his eyes as if he was seeing the person he had least expected in the world.

“Adele?” Mamoru reacted in strange academic curiosity. “How—?”

She struck out with the blade and stabbed Mamoru deep into his heart. The knife went in easily and her mentor shouted, arching back. He merely continued to stare at her with a look of wonder, even admiration. The samurai staggered past Adele and dropped heavily onto the slab, his arms scattering the crystals.

Then he rolled over and smiled. He mouthed the word, “Tomiko.”

Mamoru slumped dead.

Even with the ritual shattered, the flow of the energy didn't stop roaring around Adele. It was free now, and she had no idea how to stop it.

Gareth fell against her and she held him. He was a terrible sight. His hair aflame and his skin burning and blistering, but his eyes were open and fixed on her, at peace, ready to die.

“No!” Adele screamed.

She looked back into the cold glare of the rift. Adele refused to be just some mote in God's eye. She would do anything to save Gareth, to protect him from herself.

Silver smoke covered her, boiling forth from every pore, touching her, pulling her, forceful and vulgar in its demands. It was consuming her from the inside out as if someone had opened a valve to the molten core of the Earth and all the energies were gushing through one tiny funnel—her. The power was too great, stretching her to the point of agony. The glow of the bubbling energies blinded her.

When at last Adele's vision cleared, the world looked suddenly different. The earth was no longer green. It was immersed in a furnace of white, and she stood alone upon a pillar of rock set in a silvery, molten sea. The wisps of flame danced all around her. She bit back a shriek of terror.

Adele's hands reached out tentatively and shoved against the shimmering heat. It undulated and darted from her will, celebrating its
freedom. She let out a wail of frustration and then remembered what she had been taught. She concentrated, and went back to her first lesson. She came en garde in five.

If the Earth consumed her, so be it, but it would not consume Gareth.

She knelt before the rampaging Earth and flung her hands into the white lava at her feet, ignorant of any harm to herself. Every nerve within her came alive. She saw the entire world. The infinitely complex web of lines spread through every rock, every tree to form shapes and structures. Her body sang with its power. She tasted the sand in Alexandria, hundreds of miles to the south. She smelled the ice of the Arctic. She languished in the molten core at the world's center. The maelstrom had joined with her, and she reveled in it.

Her arms tingled and she looked down. The liquid coating her hands was turning to what seemed to be crystal at first, but she perceived it on a deeper level. She saw millions of threads of life. The effect cascaded to the far horizon and slowly began to crawl up her arms. With a panicked shout, she struggled to pull her arms out, but they were held fast. She grew frantic.

Then Adele remembered how easily she had shaped the facets inside her mother's crystal. Perhaps this was no different, just on a more massive scale. Swallowing her fear, she stopped fighting and embraced it, staring into the grasping, thriving fibers. She could feel them, touching and pushing.

The lines were fraying with excess energy, like something far too large was thrashing in the delicate strands of a web. Soon it would fly apart, completely unrestrained and unguided. This, she realized, is what her mother had dreamed about in her journal. Adele needed to be the spider weaving new silk lines into a web. Healing. Strengthening. Changing. The revelation that her mother's faith was with her, even now, brought new power. Her determination swelled.

Adele seized one strand that was heaving this way and that in a chaotic motion. It shivered violently, but then subsided at her touch. With a gasp of effort, she blended it together with a more stable line. The manipulation produced a new pleasing pitch.

She continued to weave, her fingers fluttering over countless channels of life. The unrestrained torrent that Mamoru had unleashed was slowly brought under her hand, unified into recognizable flowing dragon spines. The wild escape of power from the rift had been slowed, but now it had to be stopped.

Adele arced the lines back toward her. The shattering tones of the Earth wailed with power returning on itself. Sounds and colors stormed around Adele, threatening to break loose again. The new web she had spun could not long contain the energies piling up around her. The lines trembled and showed signs of unwinding as they surged with unspeakable heat.

So Adele herself absorbed the excess, preventing it from escaping into the world. Her body writhed with pain, but she didn't care. She felt as if her flesh was flying apart. Her bones shattered. Still, she calmed her mind, listening to the tones she was making. She gathered the energy within her, and though her first instinct was to cast it out, regardless of direction, in order to save herself, she steeled her resolve and forced it back into the well of the rift, placing each ley line carefully, one by one, so the screeching became merely a hum.

The eye of the Earth stared at Adele and for the first time recognized her. She was no longer just a speck of dust. The world shifted and the eye blinked. The power came to a complete stop.

Adele felt beaten and worn thin. Every nerve in her body pulsed and throbbed against her skin. She wanted to collapse, but the silvery wisps caressed her, easing her pain. They murmured to her now, reminding her of what she could do. Her body relaxed, and the glow of the world brightened. The Earth held her fast in its warm grasp, supporting her. Power still arced from her fingertips, sparking the air in front of her. She watched the wisps dance among the energies of the Earth. With a whim, she wondered if she could make the deserts bloom and erode mountain peaks with a violent nudge. The strands stretched to the horizon like an enticing distant road. She longed to follow it.

Something soft and unintelligible kept calling to her from somewhere distant and vague—calling her name. Over and over. She stopped looking out into the vastness of the rift and looked back at herself.

Adele focused on the noise speaking softly in her ear. She rallied her strength and struggled to wade out of the rift, ignoring its pleas to stay. Her arms slowly pulled out of the resilient mire. It took such effort. She stood swaying, staring at her feet. Beneath her, the great eye closed, asleep at last, content, but the darkness dragged her with it.