The Rift Walker (42 page)

General Anhalt moved steadily closer to Lord Kelvin. The former prime minister had virtually disappeared since Adele's return several weeks before. “Your Lordship, this is a rather peculiar place for a man such as yourself.”

The politician smiled nervously. “Gentlemen, I can surmise why you are here since that passage leads only to the imperial crypt. However, if you allow me to explain, I believe you will understand the overwhelming danger to the Empire that we are facing.”

Lord Kelvin reached for a desk drawer, causing pistols to click with thumbed hammers, while Mamoru moved like lightning to the desk, halting only a few feet from the man, his katana raised at throat level.

The wide-eyed politician froze. “Please, I am not drawing a weapon. I'm not an idiot. I fully realize my difficult situation here. I can tell you that I only did what was necessary to protect Equatoria, but I worry that the princess will not look so favorably on my efforts. I am, of course, willing to make you three very rich. All I require in return is for you to turn your backs for a few moments.”

“Kill him,” Greyfriar said.

Anhalt's eyes narrowed to slits. “Your Lordship, did you have a role in the attempted assassination of Princess Adele?”

Mamoru asked Lord Kelvin, without lowering his sword, “What is your connection to Selkirk?”

“Who?” Kelvin snapped his fingers. “Ah. That rather drab fellow with the knife and the blank stare.” The politician tugged on the cuffs of his coat with remarkable placidity, given his predicament. “Selkirk was the choice of my partner.”

“Your partner?” Mamoru snapped. “Who is that?”

Kelvin suddenly smiled with raised eyebrows. “Why, here she is.”

A blur swept through the chamber, and General Anhalt was slammed off his feet. A slender figure whirled, and Kelvin's massive desk rose into the air and smashed against Mamoru. The samurai yelled in surprise and pain as his katana pirouetted through the air and he crashed into a wooden sarcophagus against the wall.

“Flay!” Greyfriar shouted as the war chief streaked for him. He threw his pistol aside and engaged her with his blade, blocking her claws just inches from his throat.

She hissed in the ecstasy of battle as she dropped and swiped again and again. Greyfriar parried her strikes with his sword and furious kicks to her wrists and forearms. Then Flay sprang, spun, and landed behind him. He barely turned in time to keep his spine from being shredded. Flay darted about, dodging and attacking. She was fresh and well fed; Gareth had not eaten fully in weeks. Her claws hit faster and deeper as he weakened, ripping his tunic and gouging his flesh with bloody slashes. Then she stopped dead and stared at him. She smelled the air. She smelled his blood and her eyes widened.

“Gareth?” she said with disbelief.

Greyfriar found the strength to lunge and send the rapier toward her heart. But even stunned by the most unbelievable of realizations, she twisted slightly so the long blade penetrated just under her arm. Flay ignored the sword and seized Greyfriar by the wrist and elbow and, with a scream of fury, broke his arm. His fingers numbed on the sword's pommel and his arm dropped.

Flay clawed the cloth from Greyfriar's head and gasped at Gareth's exposed face. “What are you doing? What are you playing at?”

“Not playing.” Gareth buried his teeth in her throat.

Flay shrieked and reached around his back with both hands to tear viciously across his shoulders, nearly laying bone bare. Gareth still ripped into her throat, using his sound hand to seize her long braid and pull her head back. She dug her claws into his face and pushed him away, losing flesh and tendons from her throat in the process.

Flay staggered back, glaring at the prince's savage face smeared with blood. It was a Gareth she hadn't seen since the Great Killing, when he was one of their people's greatest warriors.

Flay rasped, “Why, Gareth? Why are you pretending to be the Greyfriar?”

“I am Greyfriar.” He dropped to one knee as blood dripped from him.

“I don't understand.”

“Give me a second and I'll enlighten you.”

Lord Kelvin came out of a shadowy alcove where he had taken refuge. “Don't talk to him! Kill him!” He grabbed Flay by the arm, indicating the battered Anhalt and Mamoru, who both struggled to rise to their feet. “Finish them all. They know everything.”

Flay shrugged off Kelvin's grip and, with a growl, plunged her clawed hand into his abdomen. He looked at the vampire as she pulled out a chunk of dripping flesh. The former prime minister made a palsied attempt to button his jacket properly over his bleeding, open gut before falling over dead.

She kicked his twitching body. “Prince Cesare has no further need of your services, Mr. Prime Minister.” She pulled Greyfriar's sword from her side and tossed it aside.

“Come.” Gareth rose unsteadily to his feet, gripping a sarcophagus for support. “Let's finish this.”

“I'm already finished here, Gareth.” Flay pressed a hand against her bleeding, savaged throat. She wasn't standing as straight as she had before.

“Do you really think Cesare will believe you? That the worthless Prince Gareth is the Greyfriar?”

Flay edged toward the passage. “I've learned much from your brother. I'm playing a different game now. And you've just become part of it. When I call you, Gareth, I advise you to come. Otherwise, I will slaughter your precious herd in Edinburgh.”

“You don't dare.”

“If Cesare finds out that you are the Greyfriar, I won't be able to stop him. You will be the greatest traitor to our kind in history.”

“What would you have of me?” Gareth staggered forward, trying to impress Flay with how brutalized he was and how incapable he was of continuing with combat. Flay was an unpredictable mass of savagery and emotion, and he could not let her leave this chamber.

“In due time.” Flay smiled. “When it suits me.”

He prepared to strike. Suddenly, a burst of heat pierced him. His immediate thought was that Adele was present, but then he saw the bleeding Mamoru crouched in darkness next to a desiccated mummy. The priest hunched over several crystals in an intricate pattern in the dust, waving his hands over them.

Flay hissed and streaked for the open doorway.

“No!” Gareth yelled. He started to pursue her, but a scorching wave slammed against his raw back and sent him toppling against the wall with a scream of pain. Flay slipped from sight while Gareth burned helplessly. He looked back at Mamoru, furious at the teacher's ill-timed attempt on Flay.

The samurai's intense eyes were locked on him, and Gareth realized it had not been an attempt on Flay.

A booted foot swept in front of Mamoru, sending the crystals flying, and Gareth felt an instant drop in the wave of heat. A battered General Anhalt lowered his Fahrenheit saber in front of Mamoru, its glow deepening the lines and deadly intent on both of their faces.

“I warn you,” the general said to the samurai. “Stop what you're doing.”

Mamoru glared up at Anhalt, contemplating how fast he could move. Finally, he exhaled and slumped to the floor. “Dear God, General, if only you knew what you've done.”

V
OICES AWAKENED
A
DELE
from a drowsy slumber. She should have felt terrible, but pain-killing drugs left her pleasantly numb instead. By the time she dragged her eyes fully open, Greyfriar stood inside the door, cowled behind his scarf but clearly agitated. Adele cautiously raised herself up farther on the mountain of pillows behind her head and asked groggily, “Trouble?”

“No,” Greyfriar assured her immediately, raising an arm that was encased in a splint. “Everything is fine.”

“I know that's impossible.” A drug-induced laugh that bubbled up made Adele wince, which bought Greyfriar rushing forward. “I'm fine. Just a twinge. Dr. Randolph said laughter is the best medicine, but he's a lying son of a…” She curbed her language with a groan as she thought she noticed something moving under Greyfriar's cloak.

His brow furrowed with concern. “That does seem like foolish advice given your chest is a patchwork of stitches. No wonder everyone believes such an acclaimed anatomist to be a crackpot.”

Adele gasped, and that made her cough. Gareth brought a glass of water and lifted her up so that she could drink. After a few swallows she nodded.

“Do you need me to get the crackpot?” Greyfriar asked, easing her back down, using one arm.

“Where on earth did you hear that about Dr. Randolph?”

He shrugged. “Around. People were talking in the hallways.” He sat on the edge of her bed. “You do look remarkably better, however.”

“Well then, thank heaven for crackpots.”

“I am eternally grateful to him.” His cloak rippled again, and Adele noticed the flurry.

“Why is that moving?” Adele asked. “Or am I hallucinating?”

“No.” Greyfriar threw back his cloak and held out a grey cat.

“Pet!” Adele exclaimed and tried to raise her arms, without success. She hissed as stitches pulled at her.

He set the animal on the bed near her shoulder, and she winced as the cat nudged her arm and sniffed her face. She could feel the tickle of whiskers on her cheek and smiled through the pain. Pet shoved his face against her neck and commenced purring.

“Thank you,” Adele slurred, resting her chin against the warm cat. Her eyelids drooped and the call of slumber beckoned, but she rebelled against it. Her hand lifted and tugged weakly at the headgear wound around his face. She asked softly, “Take off your scarf and glasses. I want to talk to Gareth.” He complied and she saw his anxious expression beneath. His cheeks held fading scars from Flay's attack.

Adele shifted, vainly attempting to find a position that didn't wake all her aches and pains. Her struggles were not made any easier by the tube attached to her arm that went to a unit of blood hanging from a metal pole. A yank of her arm sent it teetering, so Gareth reached out to steady it.

“Hands off. That's mine,” she warned. “Well, for now.”

“Are you being funny? I can't tell.” They shared a wry smile; then he studied the bottle of blood. “What is this? What is it supposed to do?”

“They're giving me blood. Apparently I lost a lot.”

“Giving you blood? They can do that?”

“Yes. It helps me heal.” Adele giggled foolishly. “I guess we're not that different after all.”

Gareth was sniffing the air, but trying to be subtle about it. “Whose blood is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Will it change you? Does it give you that person's feelings and thoughts?”

Adele closed her eyes. “No. It doesn't work that way. I don't know how it works, actually. But I need it, so they're giving it to me.” Suddenly she had a thought. “Could you use this blood? Is it viable for you as a food source while you're here?”

Gareth gingerly took the bottle and smelled it with a wrinkled nose. “No. It has already lost most of its value. It is hours out of the human.”

She leaned back, already weary from that small activity.

He hung the bottle again. “Don't worry about my diet. You're lucky to be alive.”

“Yes.” Adele saw the deep gouges in his skin by his neck. “We really should travel with our own surgeon.”

“Perhaps you should just be thinking about yourself.”

“You know me.” She was too exhausted to fight the yawn that snuck up on her.

“I know you think about everyone else more than you do yourself.”

The fear Gareth had held for her these past few days showed plainly in his voice. Adele's hand covered his. She knew all too well how close to death she had come, so she deflected the subject. “I heard Flay was here again.” Her expression did not change, but the barest of dark shadows crossed her pale face.

“Yes. And I failed to kill her. Again.”

“We'll get her. Together.” Adele's teeth ground together as she started formulating battle plans. “We will need to survey the city for every catacomb and cistern and then post guards to ensure vampires can't use them.”

“I'll see to it with your Anhalt.”

Adele smiled with relief that her two trusted allies were finally on speaking terms. That was one thing, at least, she didn't have to worry about. The list of other worries, however, seemed monumental, including why one of Mamoru's most trusted acolytes had tried to kill her. Her mouth quickly drew into a hard line. “And what about Flay knowing that Gareth and Greyfriar are one and the same?”

“You are amazingly well informed for an invalid.”

“I am a future empress, remember? I have other sources of information besides you. Colonel Anhalt…General Anhalt tells me everything.”

Gareth didn't know if Adele knew anything of what had happened between Mamoru and himself in the catacombs. Perhaps Anhalt had told her; certainly Gareth had not. She needed peace to recover before he informed her that her beloved mentor had tried to murder him.

He continued, “Flay said there was another game to play.”

“Do you know what she meant?”

“Not at all.”

“What can you do to stop her?” Not that she wanted him going alone into the hands of those who despised him for what his alter ego had done over the years. The idea of Cesare's hatred for his brother being magnified chilled her even more.

“Whatever Flay might have planned is already in motion by now. I'm only thinking of those left behind in Edinburgh.”

Adele's stomach fell at the thought, and her chest tightened, wakening the ache of her wound.

“All of my people.” There was such pain in his voice.

She took his hand. “Promise me you won't go alone to face this. Wait for me. We'll handle this together.” She sat up and gasped at the pain it brought, but she didn't care. Pet mewed plaintively as he tumbled from her shoulder.

Gareth held her and eased her back against the pillows. “I seriously doubt I'll be taking you back into my brother's territory. You are soon to be empress.”

“And I'll have a bloody army at my back!”

He shook his head. “I fear we'll both have to wait for Flay to make her next move before we do anything.”

“But think of it, Gareth! If I can get a grasp on this power of mine I could defend Edinburgh from her or anyone.”

“Your mentor will just love that.”

“Protecting the humans of the north has been my intent from the beginning. I don't care what my father or Mamoru or Senator Clark intended with this war or this power. This is what I am, and this is what I intend to do.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Then Gareth kissed her, putting an end to further conversation.

Prince Cesare stood next to his father's throne in Buckingham Palace. Lady Hallow waited quietly to one side. General Montrose and Goronwy posed before the prince like dutiful servants. A line of Cesare's Pale stretched behind them.

Cesare's quiet voice resonated in the empty chamber. “Witchfinder, I have reports from Flay in Alexandria that your man has failed. Princess Adele is still alive. Plus, I have lost one of my greatest contacts among the Equatorians. This is not pleasant news.”

“Interesting.” Goronwy considered the information like a scholar. “What happened to Dr. Selkirk?”

“You are not here to ask questions.” Vampire eyes narrowed. “You are here to answer them, and likely to die.”

“Oh. Well, that would be a shame, my lord. Before you sent Dr. Selkirk back to Alexandria, a bit prematurely I felt, he told me a great deal about the very exciting research being done on geomancy in institutions across the south. Even beyond what he revealed to me about the princess.”

“He told you she was some sort of weapon that could destroy us. What could be more important than that?”

The old Welshman casually shoved his hands in his pockets. “Perhaps a way to disarm that weapon, my prince. He left many notes that I've yet to decipher. But I shall, never fear.”

Hallow started toward Cesare, but he signaled her to keep her distance. He wasn't about to share the stage in front of his human underlings. All information and decisions must pass through him alone.

The prince drummed his fingers on the back of the throne. “You have a month to tell me more, Witchfinder.” He then glanced at General Montrose. “And you? What is the state of your Undead?”

“We are prepared to move immediately, my lord. We do not need a month.” Montrose cut a brief glance at Goronwy. “We have airships heading south as we speak. We will take Marseilles unaware, as you command. And I have nearly a battalion of infantry ready for action.”

“Good. Marseilles must burn. King Ashkenazy has taken my lead and created his own Undead forces, which he is aiming at Constantinople. We will smash the major port cities within reach of the Equatorians. General, have your numbers rebounded after the attack on Gibraltar?”

Montrose's chest swelled with pride. “Indeed. Recruitment surges. The Undead movement is sweeping the north. There is no shortage of humans who want to die in your service so they may be reborn.”

“We welcome them to our ranks.” Cesare smiled, then turned. “Anything to add, Lady Hallow?”

The elegant female said, “Will Flay return to assume command…of the humans?”

“Flay has further business in the heat of Equatoria. When she returns to London, I will name her clan war chief again.”

Hallow stiffened with surprise. “You will?”

“Yes,” Cesare hissed to stifle argument. Then he continued pleasantly, “But you will be named seneschal. You will have the considerable responsibility of coordinating all alliance matters, including our clan forces. You will be my right hand during this war.”

Now the alabaster face of Lady Hallow softened with satisfaction. “Thank you, Prince Cesare. I welcome the challenge.”

“Very well.” Cesare nodded and smirked. Hallow had no idea what a challenge it would be, particularly once Flay returned to the north. “I am satisfied, for now. General, let our offensive begin. Witchfinder, one month. I must inform the king of these details.”

With that, Cesare turned and strode away.

King Dmitri lay on his bed with half-closed eyes, his mouth gaping for ragged breath. He was immobile except for the occasional twitching of his hands clutched together on his chest.

Cesare kept his distance from his father to avoid staining his clothes with filth. He paced, alone in the disgusting room with the horrible spectacle wheezing before him. Anger welled up in the prince at the weak, pathetic thing his father had become.