TEXT: G H E R B O D  F L E M I N G
  
  White Wolf Publishing
  735 Park North Blvd.
  Suite 128
  Clarkston, GA 30021
  www.white-wolf.com
  Dark Prophecy
  ©1998 White Wolf Publishing.
  All rights reserved.
  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part
  without the written permission of the publisher,
  except for the purpose of reviews.
  The characters and events described in this book are fictional.
  Any resemblance between the characters and any person,
  living or dead, is purely coincidental.
  The mention of or reference to any
  companies or products in these pages is not a challenge
  to the trademarks or copyrights concerned.
  Because of the mature themes presented within,
  reader discretion is advised.
  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  First edition October 1998.
  Printed in Canada.
  
  One
  6
  Two
  22
  Three
  55
  Four
  72
  Five
  92
  Six
  111
  Seven
  132
  Eight
  151
  Nine
  181
  Ten
  215
  Eleven
  237
  Twelve
  265
  Thirteen
  285
  Epilogue
  303
  CONTENTS
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4
  
  5
  Dark Prophecy
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  Special thanks must, first and foremost, go to
  Stewart Wieck, a man of vision and will, without
  whom neither these books nor White Wolf Pub-
  lishing would be.
  I cannot properly express my gratitude to Eric
  Griffin, doom-monger extraordinaire and a writer
  of immense talent. He has emerged relatively un-
  scathed from tempest and flame (or at least smoke),
  and his contributions to this trilogy have been im-
  measurable.
  Bligh Conway deserves recognition. His spur-of-
  the-moment germ of an idea blossomed into a
  full-fledged plague. We’ll be contacting you about
  the Russian translations.
  Editors Ed Hall and Anna Branscome have
  proven themselves insightful and astute, and these
  books are far stronger for their attentions. Vam-
  pire: The Masquerade developer Justin Achilli has
  been ever-helpful. Many thanks to Kathleen Ryan
  for her consistently fine work, and to Rich Tho-
  mas and William O’Connor.
  Congratulations, also, to Brian and Eva…er,
  Sara. And to Jens. Because he talks funny.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6
  ONE
  Nicholas raised his face from the collection of
  sinew and fleshy matter that had been a Spanish
  sheep-herder. A crimson strand of spittle dangling
  from the corner of Nicholas’s mouth caught on the
  breeze and fluttered over the evening’s prey. Nicho-
  las sniffed the air. He stood to his full height and
  sniffed again.
  The now-unattended sheep had scattered when
  Nicholas pounced on the small, old man. The shep-
  herd had had no time to struggle or even to call
  out. With his neck broken and his throat ripped
  open, his blood stained the land of his fathers.
  Nicholas smelled nothing threatening on the
  wind, and the snowcapped Pyrenees were, aside
  
  7
  Dark Prophecy
  from the occasional anxious bleating of sheep, si-
  lent. The hunter felt little in the way of relief,
  however.
  The body at his feet was a silent accusation.
  Nicholas had not intended to kill, merely to feed.
  He did not require so much blood that he couldn’t
  have left the wrinkled shepherd asleep and clutch-
  ing his jug of vino. There was no need for Nicholas
  to have killed.
  His concern was not for the Masquerade, cow-
  ardly concession to the mortal world that it was,
  foisted upon the Camarilla clans by the Ventrue.
  Rather, he was disturbed by the recklessness of his
  hunt. As a Gangrel, Nicholas did not mimic the
  ineffectual niceties of mortal society but existed,
  instead, as a solitary predator. He was accustomed
  to survival by instinct. But this kill…it had strayed
  far from the instinctual to a rage that lay buried
  more deeply within Nicholas.
  The blood curse. He knew that was the answer.
  The ancestors—Ragnar and Blaidd, old, power-
  ful, and long gone—who had increasingly been
  asserting their claim to his blood, had deserted him
  as suddenly as they’d reappeared, and in their place
  was a fury so ancient and pure that Nicholas lost
  himself in it. Gone were thoughts of his pressing
  quest for vengeance against Owain Evans; gone was
  all that Nicholas’s friend Blackfeather had taught
  him. There was only bloodlust—driving, consum-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8
  ing. The mutilated shepherd was damning proof of
  it. Just remembering the attack, Nicholas could feel
  the rage again rising like bile to be vomited onto
  the earth. And it struck fear into him.
  Not since the night at Evans’s estate in Atlanta
  had Nicholas lost himself so completely. His insides
  burned; the gnawing hunger took hold despite the
  presence of the freshly ravaged corpse on the
  ground. Nicholas felt his own mind, his will, re-
  ceding, sinking beneath the upwelling fury. He
  watched himself, as if a stranger, leap upon a nearby
  sheep. Claws struck deep, and the lifeblood of the
  pathetic beast poured forth. Nicholas drank, then,
  as the animal ceased to struggle, he let the blood
  spill over his legs and feet. He stood over his kill
  and roared triumphantly to the night.
  Nicholas felt his claws rip through fleece and
  flesh. He tasted the blood that gushed into his
  mouth. Yet he was merely a spectator to the slaugh-
  ter. Unable to intercede, he watched, as if from
  farther and farther away, while he tracked one hap-
  less sheep after another. With each liter of blood
  that flowed, Nicholas came closer to drowning be-
  neath the fury, beneath the hunger.
  And still the blood flowed.
  The branches of the living tree, malevolent ten-
  drils, latched onto Owain and wrapped tightly
  
  9
  Dark Prophecy
  around his arms and torso. He struggled, but his
  preternatural might availed him nothing. The
  branches held fast, wooden manacles and chains
  that dug into him the more fiercely he fought.
  Lightning illuminated the figure standing along-
  side Owain at the crest of the knoll—an old man
  whose dark beard and white robes tugged at him
  in the gusting wind. Thunder shook the hillside.
  The old man held a wooden staff but did not lean
  upon it for support. Rather, he brandished it at
  Owain, shook it in the face of the imprisoned vam-
  pire.
  Owain was helpless. The branches wound around
  his neck, snaked down around his legs to his knees.
  He strained against the wooden bonds, but it was
  no use. He was the captive object of the old man’s
  anger. Again, the old man shook his staff at Owain
  and, above the rumbling of sky and hill, spoke:
  “Hoard the nights that have fallen unto you.” The old
  man’s cheeks and balding pate were flushed; red
  splotches marked his ire. “I, Joseph the Lesser, tell
  you, it avails you nothing.”
  The familiar words assaulted Owain. The
  branches, tightening their grip, seemingly shared
  the old man’s anger. Owain had no breath to
  hinder, but his bones and joints were beginning to
  grind and pop under the relentless pressure. Despite
  the mounting agony, he couldn’t shift his gaze from
  the blue-gray eyes that watched him with such fury.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  1 0
  “The shadow of Time is not so long that you might
  shelter beneath it,” said the old man. His words rang
  in Owain’s ears, even over the roar of the wind and
  the incessant rattle of the leaves whirring violently
  in small vortices along the ground, only to jerk sud-
  denly into the air and sail into the darkness.
  As the old man spoke, one of the branches of
  the living tree uncoiled from Owain. It withdrew
  somewhat, though its tip still pressed against his
  chest.
  The old man’s anger having reached a crescendo,
  he took his staff in both hands and raised it to the
  heavens and shouted above the storm: “This is the
  Endtime!”
  Suddenly the branch against Owain’s chest
  pulled back. The tip was now a giant thorn, sharp
  as any blade. It glinted for an instant in the flash
  of lightning, then struck with blurring speed. The
  thorn splintered the ribs that momentarily blocked
  it from Owain’s heart. Living wood ripped into the
  vulnerable organ.
  In his final seconds of mobility, Owain threw his
  head back, an agonized scream strangled upon his
  lips—
  “Sir? Sir…!”
  Owain’s mouth and eyes strained agape. His back
  arched in pain as every muscle tensed.
  “Sir…!”
  The branches shook Owain. No—not the
  
  1 1
  Dark Prophecy
  branches, not the tree. A woman stood over Owain,
  was gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him.
  “Sir! Are you all right?”
  Owain clutched his chest with both hands. No
  wooden appendage pierced his flesh. A moan of
  mixed fear and relief belatedly escaped his lips as
  he collapsed into his seat.
  Kendall Jackson still held Owain by the shoul-
  ders. Her dark hair hung in her face as she leaned
  over him. “Sir?”
  Owain struck her a blow that sent her reeling
  backward across the small room. “Don’t touch me!”
  he snapped.
  She slammed into the far wall and slid to the
  floor with a grimace. She remained where she sat,
  watching in pained confusion as Owain took stock
  of his surroundings—a long, narrow compartment;
  leather-upholstered, high-backed benches; lush ori-
  ental carpet; mahogany tables on the other side of
  the two-foot aisle.
  His disorientation was heightened by the fact
  that the props surrounding him were a collection
  of lies. The scene, ostensibly the interior of a nine-
  teenth-century railroad luxury car, was not what it
  purported to be. Not that the carpet wasn’t an ex-
  act duplicate of what would have been found on
  the long-defunct Osgood Luxury Line between
  New York and Boston, and not that the seats
  weren’t actual refurbished benches from the decom-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  1 2
  missioned cars of the prestigious Wroughton Ser-
  vice out of London, but the various elements had
  been acquired purely for effect.
  Owain slid his hand along the buttery, tufted
  leather of his seat. Each button was engraved with
  a Textura “G.” There were many Cainites, Owain
  knew, who were even less comfortable with mod-
  ern methods of transport than he was. Some elders,
  long past the need or desire to travel widely, would
  not deign to set foot in or on a contraption pow-
  ered by internal combustion. Others refused,
  understandably, in Owain’s opinion, to entrust their
  safety to mechanized flight.
  This compartment was an attempt on the part
  of the Giovanni to accommodate the latter—those
  Cainites who, through some necessity, had to
  traverse the Atlantic but lacked the wherewithal
  to arrange a more civilized cruise. With a little
  imagination, they might possibly convince them-
  selves that they were carried along by rail rather
  than by the grace of God and modern technology.
  Though Owain possessed a keen skepticism re-
  garding flight, he also knew unequivocally that he
  was currently thousands of feet above the ocean. The
  railbaron trappings were coincidental. He had
  needed to depart Spain with some haste, and this
  small jet had been available; never mind that he had
  agreed to pay the Giovanni a sum sufficient to pur-
  chase a plane. Such was the price of expediency.
  
  1 3
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain should have been able to rest easily. He
  and his retainer Kendall had escaped the death-
  trap that Toledo had become—the deathtrap that
  Owain had made it.
  For decades, Owain had existed as a Camarilla
  elder and kept his Sabbat connections hidden. Yet
  when, at the request of his former friend El Greco,
  he had attempted to pose as a Camarilla elder to
  infiltrate a rival Sabbat faction, Owain had, within
  a handful of nights, failed miserably.
  Irony never ceases. Owain thought.
  He pondered the weighty repercussions that had
  accompanied this particular irony. Owain had
  watched from a nearby rooftop as Carlos, El Greco’s
  Sabbat rival, burned the hacienda of Owain’s one-
  time ally and annihilated the aged Toreador and
  his handful of servants, among them the sniveling
  Miguel. A shame, that, Owain thought—that
  Miguel should perish at someone else’s hand. What’s
  the good of carrying a centuries-long grudge if you’re
  not able to finish it personally?
  The whole affair in Toledo might have played
  out differently had El Greco more accurately ap-
  prised Owain of the situation there. Instead, the
  old Toreador had kept from Owain the fact that
  Carlos had long ago wrested control of the city from
  El Greco—a detail of some importance. Misin-
  formed and chafing under the compulsory nature
  of the assignment, Owain had proceeded clumsily.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  1 4
  He could see that in retrospect, even mere hours
  after his escape. Becoming aware of the volatility
  of the situation only later, Owain had blundered
  ahead, and in the end, it was El Greco who had
  paid the price.
  El Greco’s demise evoked in Owain more am-
  bivalent emotions than did Miguel’s, but only
  slightly so. Owain and El Greco had been friends
  several hundred years earlier, but among Cainites,
  friendship was less an enduring bond and more an
  infrequent accident of circumstance, one that in-
  evitably twisted itself into an emotionally
  incestuous, manipulative entanglement. Owain
  and El Greco’s relationship had certainly followed
  this path. When El Greco coerced Owain into par-
  ticipating in the plot against Carlos, Owain’s
  apprehensions had become reality, and any warmer
  sentiments that might have lingered in Owain’s
  breast withered. El Greco had survived not much
  longer.
  Not that Owain regarded the resolved drama as
  a morality play of some sort—the scheming Torea-
  dor undone by his own treacherous plot—with El
  Greco’s death as divine judgement. Quite the con-
  trary. Owain held no illusions concerning his own
  heroism. In his time, he had contrived plots of
  greater vileness. He had been the oppressor of the
  downtrodden and the vanquished. The only dif-
  ference between him and El Greco was that El
  
  1 5
  Dark Prophecy
  Greco was now a soon-to-be-forgotten pile of ash,
  while Owain still walked the earth.
  Owain regarded El Greco’s death rather as a com-
  edy of errors. The Toreador’s own derangement had
  rendered him incapable of accepting reality, of rec-
  ognizing that he was no longer the great power he
  had once been. Not insanity, Owain decided. Van-
  ity. And now El Greco was no more.
  Over the centuries, Owain had not only learned
  but had also, at different times, exploited and been
  trodden underfoot by the primary lesson of history:
  There is no divine justice. The spiteful Divinity ob-
  served His creation with cold, uncaring eyes, and
  was divine only in the sense that His callousness
  and vengefulness far surpassed that of any mortal.
  A jostling patch of turbulence distracted Owain
  from his philosophizing and put the torch to the
  paper-thin illusion of a nineteenth-century rail car.
  As the plane, as well as its contents and passen-
  gers, bounced, he noticed there were no windows
  behind the lowered shades on the cabin walls—a
  functional precaution, amidst the diversionary
  scenery, to protect the specific clientele of the
  Giovanni clan. No Cainite wanted to fall victim
  to a delayed departure or landing only to find him-
  self greeting the morning sun as a result.
  In fact, Owain realized, the sun’s rays were un-
  doubtedly beating down upon the aircraft at that
  very moment. He and Kendall had reached Madrid
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  1 6
  only shortly before dawn, and they could not have
  been in the air for more than a few hours. That
  partially explained the extreme mental lethargy he
  had been mired in upon first awaking from the vi-
  sions.
  The visions. Owain involuntarily shuddered. On-
  set of madness? First sign of the blood curse? He
  had been vigilantly attempting to put them out of
  his mind since they began several weeks ago, and
  now was not the time to change tack. He felt al-
  most drugged as his daytime slumber called to him.
  He closed his eyes, until the plane suddenly jerked
  again and rattled beneath him.
  At this point, Owain realized that his servant,
  watching him intently, still sat on the floor at the
  base of the opposite wall. He’d hit her solely by
  reflex, not intentionally. Owain had never struck
  her before, but such was the life of a ghoul, con-
  stantly subject to the whims and fancies and angry
  outbursts of her domitor, upon whom she was de-
  pendent for the blood that elevated her above mere
  mortals and extended her life. There were certainly
  worse masters than Owain. He did not make a
  habit of abusing his servants. There was Randal,
  whom Owain had dispatched rather unceremoni-
  ously not long ago, but Owain felt that he’d been
  sufficiently provoked in that case. Discipline must
  be maintained.
  “Come,” Owain gestured to Kendall. “Sit.”
  
  1 7
  Dark Prophecy
  She paused only momentarily before complying,
  obedience overcoming any hesitancy she felt. The
  way it should be, Owain thought, admiring his re-
  tainer and congratulating himself on his choice.
  Kendall took her seat beside him. Owain leaned
  his head back and closed his eyes as he spoke to
  her. “We will arrive in Atlanta before long, I sus-
  pect. See that I am not disturbed until after sunset.”
  He sensed the motion of her silent nod.
  Bone weary as he was from the calamities of the
  previous night, true rest eluded Owain. He
  unclenched his fists, forced himself to spread his
  fingers on his lap and to try to relax. Slumber was
  an anxious affair, carrying with it, as it always did
  these days, the potential of disturbing visions. They
  were not Owain’s only or even most pressing worry,
  however.
  Though it was true that his personal connection
  to the Sabbat had died with El Greco, Carlos would
  not need indisputable evidence to pursue Owain.
  The testimony of the treacherous Javier, along with
  Owain’s flight, would be proof enough for Carlos
  to want to even the score with Owain. After all,
  Owain had voiced his knowledge that Carlos was
  responsible for unleashing the blood curse upon
  Cainite society. That alone might goad Carlos into
  striking from across the Atlantic. And because that
  fool Gangrel, Nicholas, descendent of Blaidd—and
  wasn’t that a complication from unforeseen quarters?
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  1 8
  Owain thought—had managed to reveal Owain’s
  identity, there was no mist of anonymity into which
  he could disappear. Or, Owain wondered, would
  Carlos sit back, watch and wait for year after year
  until the perfect moment presented itself? Regard-
  less, Owain’s estate would, by necessity, become a
  fortress, one even more secure than the castles that
  had protected him from threats during his mortal
  days.
  Beyond the actual dangers that he would un-
  doubtedly face, a weariness of spirit plagued Owain.
  It brought down upon him with crushing force the
  weight of all of his years. Here I am again fleeing
  Europe, he thought. Fleeing somewhere. Fleeing
  someone.
  Nearly seven hundred years ago, he had fled his
  homeland of Wales—after better than two hundred
  years of struggle and disappointment, granted, but
  nonetheless, he had fled. His subsequent stay in
  France had propitiously concluded after a much
  shorter interval. Leaving had been quite the pru-
  dent move, and Owain didn’t consider abandoning
  permanently the obdurate French and their ways
  much of a hardship. But later, in Spain, he’d fled
  unlife itself by retreating into prolonged torpor, and
  not since he’d at last emerged had he been able to
  rekindle the passion and fervor of his mortal exist-
  ence. Something about that extended slumber had
  sapped the fire from his soul, had left him a para-
  
  1 9
  Dark Prophecy
  sitic automaton. Migration again had seemed a
  plausible remedy, but it had resulted in little more
  than a change of venue for the familiar emptiness.
  In the past months, however, his numb existence
  had been broken open, and again he had been ex-
  posed to the tumultuous emotions of the living:
  anger, pain, disappointment. As chilling as those
  years of emptiness had been, Owain was ready to
  return to them. The dull ache of ennui was prefer-
  able to the renewed, hammering agony of hopes
  unfulfilled, of dreams torn to pieces.
  The visions only heightened the pain.
  Their onset had coincided with Owain’s discov-
  ery of the siren. As with the creatures of myth, her
  entrancing voice had drawn Owain in, had be-
  guiled him with visions of his homeland. And even
  more miraculous than evoking images of home in
  Owain’s mind, the innocence and the depth of
  emotion enshrined within the siren’s notes enabled
  Owain once again, for the first time in centuries,
  to feel passion for the hills of Wales, to experience
  love for the one who had been forbidden to him
  in life, and whose memory he had held close to his
  heart all these years. Angharad.
  Damnation, man! Owain cursed himself. He
  could not escape her name.
  He dreaded the visions not so much because of
  the menacing figures and apocalyptic voices that
  assaulted him, but because he could not stand to
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  2 0
  behold again the beautiful lands and enduring love
  from his first years. For with the return of passion
  and love came greater awareness of loss and pain.
  Better to be numb. Damn her. In one night, the si-
  ren had destroyed the walls that Owain had
  struggled for centuries to build. She deserved her fate.
  Why, then, Owain asked himself, did he so vio-
  lently resent Prince Benison, who ordered her
  destruction? Could it be because Owain would bear
  any torture to hear that song again?
  Owain’s eyes snapped open. This line of thought,
  he decided, was getting him nowhere. Kendall, sit-
  ting next to him, observed his agitation with
  concern. “Is this chamber so small,” Owain
  snapped, “that you must sit practically on top of
  me?”
  Without protest, Kendall moved to a seat farther
  away.
  Still, true rest eluded Owain. Though the visions
  kept their distance, his mind was full of images of
  Toledo: of stooped El Greco; of Miguel and his infu-
  riating sneer; of Carlos, smug in his victory; of that
  damnable Gangrel; of the flames spreading
  throughout El Greco’s abode. The entire episode
  had been a journey of loss. And, again, Angharad’s
  name had been dangled before Owain like a cruel
  trickster’s carrot. Project Angharad. How had her
  name become connected to the curse? Coinci-
  dence? Owain didn’t believe in coincidence—not
  
  2 1
  Dark Prophecy
  while the cruel trickster wore the trappings of the
  divine Creator.
  A long sigh escaped Owain. He had lived so long,
  but lived so little. “Peace,” he mumbled as the day
  finally took him in its clutches. When was the last
  time, he wondered, that he had known a moment
  of peace? If only I could have died a mortal death in
  Wales…
  But, indeed, he had not.
  And now the visions returned for him.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  2 2
  TWO
  The ringing phone jarred William Nen awake.
  He clumsily reached for it and grabbed the receiver
  just as the second ring sounded. “Hello?”
  “Dr. Nen?”
  “Yes?”
  “The bodies that you examined—where did they
  come from?”
  “What?” Bodies?
  “How long do you estimate before this new hem-
  orrhagic fever sweeps across the country? What do
  you estimate the death toll will be?”
  Not altogether awake and completely unsure of
  what was going on, William hung up the phone.
  It rang again almost immediately. Instead of an-
  
  2 3
  Dark Prophecy
  swering, he turned off the ringer and stumbled out
  of bed to do the same to the other phone. Half-
  listening to the reporter’s voice as it was recorded
  by the answering machine, William retrieved the
  newspaper from the front porch and was greeted
  by the flabbergasting headline: CDC FEARS
  WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC.
  In total shock, he read the Atlanta Journal-Con-
  stitution article, which quoted facts and figures from
  the report that he had just completed the night
  before! The same report that Nen remembered
  having left on his desk when he rushed home to
  be with his wife after a full Saturday of double-
  checking data and summarizing his findings. The
  report that he had planned to deliver personally
  to the director of the Centers for Disease Control
  and Prevention first thing on Monday morning.
  How could the report, barely finished, have made
  it into the papers? Nen had worked in near isola-
  tion for weeks. His supervisor, Maureen Blake, had
  advised him to let the matter drop. She probably
  assumed that he had done so. But Nen had perse-
  vered. He could not forget the faces of the people
  he’d failed to save over the years—mothers and chil-
  dren in the Sudan and in Zaire. They visited his
  dreams, accused him of not caring, not trying. And
  so, despite Blake’s advice, Nen had pushed ahead.
  He could not ‘let drop’ a potential hemorrhagic fe-
  ver that might kill hundreds or thousands—fatalities
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  2 4
  mostly preventable if only the word got out in time.
  He stared dumbfounded at the newspaper. This
  was never how he had intended for word to get out.
  Calm, rational, public-education campaigns and
  timely quarantines when necessary—those were
  the responsible strategies that could stave off an
  epidemic. This headline, on the other hand,
  smacked of tabloid sensationalism. It could spark
  mass hysteria.
  My God. William covered his face. How did this
  happen?
  He had sought the help of his pathologist friend
  Martin Raimes in analyzing some of the blood
  samples, but Martin had never been privy to the
  scope of Nen’s hypothesis. Even had someone
  known every detail of his work and gotten access
  to the report on his desk, why would anyone be
  inclined to give the information to the media? And
  how could the AJC have printed the article so
  quickly? There couldn’t have been time for a re-
  porter to have confirmed the data or even to have
  checked with another expert. There were, in fact,
  no corroborating views in the article—only the
  information and conclusions of Nen’s report.
  The phone was still ringing. The answering ma-
  chine picked up call after call from different
  reporters wanting to speak with William. Though
  his name didn’t appear in the article, they had fer-
  reted him out somehow.
  
  2 5
  Dark Prophecy
  Leigh shuffled into the kitchen, heading straight
  for the coffee maker. “What in God’s name is go-
  ing on?”
  Nen held up the newspaper for her to see.
  “Oh.”
  The rest of the morning and that afternoon were
  more of the same. The answering machine filled
  up. Eventually Leigh unplugged the phones. By
  that evening, several reporters had found their way
  to the house. William stood in the doorway speech-
  less, flashbulbs blinding him, questions shouted at
  him, until Leigh had stepped in. “This is our
  home,” she snapped. “You all will have to wait un-
  til tomorrow to have your questions answered at
  CDC.”
  That night when the doorbell rang after 10 PM,
  Leigh was primed for blood. “I am going to shoot
  those parasites!” She stomped to the front door.
  From inside the house, William heard her tone sud-
  denly change. “Dr. Blake…I thought you were a
  reporter.”
  William joined his wife at the door. “Maureen,
  hello.”
  Dr. Blake nodded her greeting. She was dressed
  as she would have been at work—slacks, attractive
  sweater, flats. She always struck William as very
  professional, even-tempered. Tonight was no ex-
  ception. “It sounds like you’ve had a long day.”
  “You could say that,” said Leigh.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  2 6
  “I tried to call earlier, but there was no answer.”
  “We…uh…took the phone off the hook,” Will-
  iam explained, now feeling as if he had done
  something wrong. “Reporters were calling all day.
  Maureen, I have no idea how that story…”
  Dr. Blake held up a hand to stop him. “I wouldn’t
  worry about it, William. We think we know what
  happened. But I would like to take a little of your
  time and discuss how we plan to handle the press,
  so you’ll know before you show up tomorrow. Can
  you come with me?”
  William looked over Maureen’s shoulder. A long,
  black limousine idled at the curb.
  “Concerned citizen,” Dr. Blake offered by way of
  explanation.
  “Oh.” It was all very strange to William. But
  what part of the day hadn’t been? “Come on in
  while I put on my shoes.”
  Within a few minutes, Maureen and William were
  heading down the sidewalk toward the limo.
  Maureen opened the back door and stepped aside
  for Nen to climb in. He slid onto the seat and found
  himself to the right of a large, bearded man in a dark
  and somewhat old-fashioned suit that smelled
  strongly of mothballs. “Hello,” said William ner-
  vously. The man, his light-green eyes very intense
  even in the shadows, merely stared back at Nen. Dr.
  Blake climbed into the car to Nen’s right and closed
  the door. The limousine pulled away from the curb.
  
  2 7
  Dark Prophecy
  “William,” Dr. Blake said, “this is J. Benison
  Hodge.”
  Nen nodded at the man again, not sure what the
  stranger had to do with CDC or the press. Must be
  a lawyer, William thought.
  “Dr. Nen,” said Hodge. His deep, rumbling voice
  carried a stiffly formal edge. Nen got the feeling
  that the man was angry with him and only partially
  restraining his emotion. “Did you present your re-
  port to the news media?”
  “No, of course not.” William was caught having
  to look back and forth between Hodge and Blake.
  “I have no idea how they…someone must have
  taken…the reporter, we have to check with—”
  “The reporter,” Hodge interrupted him, “has
  been dealt with. Why did you not, when ordered
  to by your superior, abandon the research you were
  conducting?”
  Nen’s mouth dropped open. After a surreal day,
  to be whisked away at night in a limousine and ag-
  gressively questioned by this lawyer… “Ordered?
  It wasn’t exactly—”
  “Mr. Hodge,” said Maureen, “it was more a sug-
  gestion than an actual order.”
  Hodge glared at Maureen with a ferocity that
  surprised William, who pressed himself back into
  the seat so as not to fall under that stare. Maureen
  quickly lapsed into silence.
  “Did you not understand,” Hodge asked Nen,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  2 8
  “that it was the wish of your superior that you dis-
  continue your research?”
  William could now feel Hodge’s stare boring into
  him. Those light eyes flashed cold fire.
  “I…well…yes, I…did realize. That. I did realize
  that.”
  “Yet you continued,” said Hodge. “Why?” There
  was a hard edge to the question, an accusation.
  Nen shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He looked
  to Maureen for support, but she was staring down
  at her lap. “I thought we were going to talk about
  the press and—”
  “Why?” Hodge demanded.
  William’s face whipped around to the burly law-
  yer. Those eyes. Hodge’s gaze took hold of William,
  kept him from turning away. A fit of trembling
  wracked Nen’s body. For a long moment, he was
  unable to speak as coherent thought fled him. Wil-
  liam stared into those eyes with mounting fear.
  Dear God. I’m going to die. Dear God. No threat
  had been spoken, yet there was no doubt in Nen’s
  mind that his physical well-being, his very life, de-
  pended on his answer. Suddenly he felt nauseated,
  and with no other warning, he leaned over and
  vomited onto the floor of the limousine. “Oh, God.
  I’m sorry…please don’t…I didn’t—”
  “Answer,” said Hodge.
  Nen sat up, wiped his mouth. He began hesi-
  tantly, but his words quickly gained the strength
  
  2 9
  Dark Prophecy
  of his conviction. “I didn’t understand why she sug-
  gested I stop the investigation. I thought the
  potential danger warranted more research. Even
  though it wasn’t ebola. Whatever it was, whatever
  it is, it’s something we haven’t seen before.” He
  paused and swallowed. “I didn’t give the report to
  the papers…but I think it’s accurate.”
  “I see.” Hodge sat quietly but did not shift his
  gaze from William.
  Having answered the question, Nen quickly
  looked away. Maureen, he noticed, had not moved
  from her previous position, staring down at her lap.
  They rode in silence for some time. William was
  still frightened, and slightly embarrassed at having
  thrown up in the car. This lawyer was intimidat-
  ing beyond reason, and William could not explain
  why. But still his fingers quivered.
  “Look at me,” said Hodge.
  Against his better judgement, almost against his
  will, Nen turned to face the imposing lawyer again.
  Hodge’s eyes were alive with barely controlled an-
  ger. Within that boundless sea of green, William
  was lost. He was falling…falling….
  “Your research is flawed,” said Hodge. “You will
  find errors in your work. Many errors and illogical con-
  clusions. You will renounce your findings and destroy
  the data samples. The entire project has been compro-
  mised, tainted. Do you understand, Dr. Nen?”
  Falling…falling… “Yes. I understand.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  3 0
  Hodge nodded, pleased. “Afterward, you will take
  a long vacation. Take your wife wherever it is she would
  most like to go. You work too hard, Dr. Nen. You must
  learn to relax. Do you understand?”
  “I understand….” Nen was standing at the curb
  in front of his house. Maureen stood by the open
  door of the limousine. Leaning toward William
  from within the car was Mr. Hodge. “I understand
  that you’re a lawyer,” said Nen, suddenly not quite
  sure what he was talking about.
  “Very good,” said Hodge. “You have been most
  helpful, Dr. Nen.”
  “And remember,” added Maureen, “you say noth-
  ing to the press but ‘no comment.’”
  William nodded. That he could remember.
  Owain stepped off the plane in foul temper. By
  flying westward, they had landed in mid-morning
  despite having left Madrid shortly after dawn.
  Physiologically, no Cainite was affected by incon-
  veniences such as jetlag, but Owain, unaccustomed
  as he was to far-reaching, high-speed travel, was
  nonetheless disturbed by sudden time shifts even
  in the best of situations. This was not the best of
  situations.
  Upon landing, Kendall informed Lorenzo
  Giovanni, who had come aboard to greet them,
  that her master did not wish to be roused until
  
  3 1
  Dark Prophecy
  shortly after sunset. Lorenzo graciously conceded
  and retreated back down the stairs. He made sure
  that the private hangar the jet had taxied into re-
  mained silent for the remainder of the day. No
  mechanics or work crews attended the plane. Re-
  fueling would wait.
  This courtesy allowed Owain ten more hours of
  uninterrupted, vision-plagued slumber. By the time
  the sun set, he was prepared never to close his eyes
  again. He had not been subjected, thankfully, to
  images of his homeland or of his beloved Angharad.
  He had, however, been dogged by the ominous words
  of the angered Joseph, and always the living tree
  ensnared Owain with crushing force, finally to draw
  back, snakelike, and strike savagely at his heart.
  Owain distractedly rubbed his chest as he disem-
  barked. The thickly carpeted stairs muffled his
  footsteps. Kendall followed, silent in her panther-
  like grace.
  Lorenzo waited at the bottom of the stairs with
  his ever-present bodyguard, Alonzo. Their impec-
  cably kept suits and immaculate grooming were in
  stark contrast to Owain’s torn and bloodstained
  shirt. Owain reminded himself not to fidget with
  the captured revolver tucked in his belt, lest he
  alarm the mammoth Alonzo.
  If Lorenzo noticed the firearm, he made no in-
  dication. He grasped Owain by the shoulders as the
  sullen Ventrue stepped onto the hangar floor.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  3 2
  “Owain, my friend, had I known you were return-
  ing, I could have sent a plane for you.” Lorenzo
  lightly kissed Owain, first on one cheek, then the
  other, but Owain felt nothing of genuine warmth
  in the gesture. “My associates in Madrid—I am sure
  they charge you too much, especially on short no-
  tice. Is it not so?”
  Associates. Those associates, Owain suspected,
  were most likely actual relatives of Lorenzo’s, along
  some convoluted, incestuous branch of the
  Giovanni family tree. Even family were merely as-
  sociates, rivals, to the Giovanni. How much less
  consequential is a ‘friend?’ Owain wondered.
  “With me,” said Lorenzo, “there is no charge for
  your travel.” He waved his hand dismissively as if
  brushing away the fee.
  Owain nodded, knowing that Lorenzo spoke
  half-truths at best. Though the Giovanni ghoul
  might not require Owain to write a check of the
  type he would send to Madrid, there was always a
  price. The Giovanni were not a clan of travel
  agents. Every relationship cultivated, every favor
  tendered, happened in order someday to be ex-
  ploited to the benefit of the clan. Owain was
  completely aware of the snares he danced around
  in dealing with Lorenzo.
  “Come,” Lorenzo said, ushering Owain toward
  an office attached to the hangar. “What news do
  you bring from Madrid?”
  
  3 3
  Dark Prophecy
  “All is very quiet there,” said Owain, his blood-
  stained and disheveled clothing bearing witness to
  his blatant lie.
  Lorenzo smiled genuinely this time.
  They filed into the office, a small room that barely
  accommodated four people. The furnishings were
  spartan and generic enough to confirm that Lorenzo
  did not frequent this facility. Giovanni banking in-
  terests in Atlanta undoubtedly commanded most of
  his attention. Owain sat, while Kendall stood just
  behind him. Their positions virtually mirrored those
  of Lorenzo and Alonzo behind the desk.
  “Unlike Madrid, Atlanta has been far from quiet
  while you were gone,” Lorenzo said, his genial tone
  suddenly turning more serious.
  Owain did not reply.
  “There is much unrest concerning Prince
  Benison’s decrees,” Lorenzo continued. “He is cor-
  rect, of course, that the anarchs do not know their
  place. Yet trying to impose discipline on them so
  forcefully…” he paused, grimacing as if in pain, “it
  causes many problems.”
  “Indeed?” Owain’s response encouraged Lorenzo
  to reveal more details, while at the same time not
  committing Owain to agreement with the
  Giovanni. Lorenzo, for his part, was ostensibly do-
  ing nothing beyond relating events, yet his
  implication that Benison was at fault was almost
  certainly an overture to Owain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  3 4
  “Oh, yes,” Lorenzo assured him. “Some anarchs
  flee the city, as is their right, but others go into
  hiding rather than accept Benison’s decree. They
  will not choose a clan. They will not sacrifice in
  the least their freedom.” Lorenzo covered himself
  nicely, Owain noticed. Deriding the anarchs’ wan-
  tonness was de facto support for the
  prince—significant, should this conversation be
  overheard, or reported later.
  “The prince cannot be pleased,” commented
  Owain. He didn’t know more than what Lorenzo
  had told him about what was happening in the city,
  but Owain had predicted trouble when Benison
  had announced his decrees back at New Year’s.
  Owain thought he could see where Lorenzo was
  leading with these oblique statements.
  “He does not suffer dissent gracefully,” said
  Lorenzo. “He will exile or…persuade the anarchs
  one or two at a time, but that could take a great
  while.”
  Owain nodded. And how long will he have before
  the Camarilla Inner Circle steps in to settle the unrest?
  That was the unspoken question. The justicars
  would not risk another Anarch Revolt. Not with
  the instability the blood curse had already left in
  its wake. “Indeed,” said Owain. He and Lorenzo
  regarded one another in silence for several mo-
  ments. “The situation bears close scrutiny,” said
  Owain at last.
  
  3 5
  Dark Prophecy
  “Indeed,” Lorenzo echoed. With that, his bear-
  ing immediately resumed its earlier, more convivial
  manner. “I have delayed you too long already,” said
  Lorenzo, “and you returning from a lengthy jour-
  ney. Forgive me.” Rising from his seat, he bowed
  respectfully to Owain.
  “Not at all,” Owain said, also rising. Pleasant-
  ries were exchanged, then Owain and Kendall
  proceeded to the Rolls Royce that they had left in
  the hangar upon their departure several weeks be-
  fore.
  The situation must be truly precarious, Owain
  thought as they drove toward home, for Lorenzo to
  have been as forthright as he was. Owain could tell
  what the Giovanni was thinking—that Benison
  might very well run out of time in quashing the
  anarch resistance, that he might attract the un-
  wanted attention of the Camarilla powers-that-be
  and be removed from his position.
  And who would take his place?
  Eleanor? She was more than competent, but
  competence was a far lesser consideration in these
  matters than were the effects of politics and in-
  trigue. No, in marrying Benison, Eleanor had slit
  her own political throat. She had displeased her
  justicar sire, Baylor. Without his endorsement, the
  Inner Circle would never support her as a candi-
  date to serve as prince in one of the more important
  East Coast cities.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  3 6
  The Inner Circle could bring in an outsider, but
  just as likely the mantle of leadership could fall to
  Owain. The Ventrue were always willing and able
  to make such sacrifices to serve their fellow
  Cainites.
  That scenario was the eventuality for which
  Lorenzo Giovanni was preparing. He was most cer-
  tainly hedging his bets, testing the waters. His
  verbal sparring with Owain had been an attempt
  to feel out the Ventrue’s position and tentatively
  offer Giovanni support, but in a manner that left
  the Giovanni uncompromised should Benison so-
  lidify his position, or should Owain stumble.
  Owain had played his part in the charade out of
  habit more than ambition. There were countless
  variables and numerous potential resolutions to the
  current political uncertainty, but even should tem-
  poral control of Atlanta fall into Owain’s lap, he
  was not sure that he would accept the burden. Such
  prominence would increase the motivation and the
  opportunity for Carlos to seek revenge.
  More importantly, however, Owain simply didn’t
  care any more. He harbored a personal grudge
  against Benison for the destruction of the siren, but
  toppling a prince was far different from taking his
  place. After his sojourn in Spain, Owain desired
  nothing so much as to withdraw, both within his
  estate and within himself, and to heal his wounds.
  He wanted to blunt the pain and the loss that had
  
  3 7
  Dark Prophecy
  been thrown in his face all too often of late. Per-
  haps an opportunity to strike at Benison would
  present itself, but lacking that, time and isolation
  would be Owain’s elixirs.
  He stared out the tinted windows of the Rolls as
  Kendall followed the most direct route home.
  Adref, Owain thought. Homeward. The buildings
  and streets that they passed—they meant nothing
  to Owain. He did not resent this new home. Home
  at least in the sense that he had spent most of the
  past seventy-odd years here, but upon returning
  from Spain, Owain realized that he felt less of a
  connection to Atlanta than he had to Toledo. This
  city was a safe haven, of sorts, more so than some
  places but no more so than many others. He gazed
  more intently at the downtown skyline, the mod-
  ern city interlaced with interstates, the arteries of
  mortal life that pulsed around him and from which
  he was completely separate.
  And as Owain looked out over the city, he be-
  came lost. He could pick his way among the
  landmarks; he could find whatever he needed to
  find, but to what end? He was returning home to
  lick his wounds and bide his time—until what?
  Until another century had passed? And then an-
  other?
  Eventually, he slumped down into the seat and
  ignored the progression of scenes filing past the
  window. What, he wondered, were his prospects?
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  3 8
  To have anyone and anything he cared about torn
  from him? The siren, after awakening painful
  memories in him with her beautiful song, had been
  destroyed. Owain’s oldest surviving friend had, one
  night ago, been destroyed. Now back in Atlanta,
  Owain remembered Albert, a source of occasional
  entertainment if not an actual friend—slain. How
  many more links could be added to the chain?
  Finally, Kendall turned onto King Road. The
  governor’s mansion was only a few blocks away.
  Most of the venerable members of the King Road
  Club lived within ten or fifteen minutes’ drive.
  Owain thought of Franklin West, the near-octo-
  genarian and rare mortal whose company Owain
  valued. The last time Owain had fed from Franklin,
  the old man’s blood had tasted sweetly of absinthe.
  Owain sighed. Franklin would not last much
  longer. He would pass on like all the others. Owain
  could make a ghoul of him, but that would create
  many complications and most likely would only
  delay the inevitable. As with Gwilym.
  The approach to Owain’s estate was, as always,
  quiet. The car paused momentarily as the wrought-
  iron gates swung mechanically open. Then the
  Rolls continued up the twisting driveway.
  Adref.
  Homeward.
  
  3 9
  Dark Prophecy
  Ron watched from his hiding place across the
  street as the Rolls Royce pulled to the gate, waited
  for it to open, and then headed up the driveway.
  Hot damn! He couldn’t believe his luck. I’m gonna
  be in for sooome kind of reward, he thought. Kline,
  Prince Benison—everybody was going to love Ron.
  He pulled his .38 special from his jacket pocket
  and checked the cylinder. Satisfied, he returned the
  gun to his pocket and pulled out, instead, his cell
  phone. As he dialed, another thought came to him:
  They want this guy dead or unalive. If I pop him, and
  he’s an elder, there’s some high-octane blood just wait-
  ing to be had. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.
  Ron ran his tongue over his fangs in anticipa-
  tion. He could taste blood already.
  The Rolls stopped at the front door of the main
  house. The sky was clear as Owain stepped out of
  the car into the brisk March night. Crickets and
  night birds serenaded him, but otherwise there was
  no greeting party waiting. Not that he was expect-
  ing a celebration upon his return, but normally
  Arden and Mike, Owain’s fairly reliable security
  team, would have at least acknowledged his pres-
  ence. On the drive up, Owain had seen no lights
  on at the carriage house where the two stayed, so
  he had assumed they would be in evidence at the
  main house. Owain could tell by her expression
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4 0
  that Kendall, too, noticed the lack of a reception.
  The front door was unlocked—another oddity.
  Owain and Kendall stepped into the foyer. The
  lights that were connected to the computer timer
  were on, but none of the others seemed to be. The
  house was deathly silent.
  “Señora Rodriguez!” Owain called out. There was
  no reply. He glanced back at Kendall whose head
  was cocked in puzzlement as she scanned the foyer
  and attached hallways. “Check around,” said Owain.
  Kendall nodded and slipped silently toward the
  sitting room.
  Owain opened the door to the study. He crossed
  the darkened room to his desk lamp and clicked it
  on, bathing the black-walnut desk in light. Much
  of the rest of the room remained in shadows, but
  that was no impediment to Owain. He removed
  the uncomfortable revolver from his belt and set
  the firearm on the desk as he quickly took a men-
  tal survey of the room. Everything seemed to be as
  he had left it: the few papers on his desk, the chess
  board still set with Owain’s stunning defeat, books
  undisturbed on the shelves—
  Owain’s gaze froze on the books, on one book in
  particular—his commonplace book. Instantly, ev-
  ery muscle in his body tensed. The vision. His
  thoughts, much to Owain’s chagrin, were never far
  removed from the unrelenting phantasms. One spe-
  cific image sprang to his mind. Had it really been
  
  4 1
  Dark Prophecy
  only one night, Owain wondered, since he had
  been trapped in his former tomb by Carlos and his
  minions? He looked down at his clothes, at the
  dried blood of the nameless woman, the Sabbat
  neonate who had tried to stop him. Already, it
  seemed as if years had passed.
  As Owain had fled along the passage that only
  he had known of, he had been confronted by two
  strangers, one after the other. In the unnatural
  darkness of the tunnel, they had seemed very real,
  but their words had been ones from Owain’s vi-
  sions. The chess master and the knight must have
  been a vision. How else could they have come and
  gone completely unnoticed by an elder Cainite?
  But then again, that frantic night had been full of
  specters and interlopers who disappeared without
  a trace before Owain’s eyes.
  The knight had held a book that Owain recog-
  nized—his commonplace book. Not as it appeared
  before him on the shelf at present, but adorned
  with the original cover that Angharad had embroi-
  dered with the crest of House Rhufoniog, Welsh
  grouse trussed. The knight had opened the book
  and had read prophetic words.
  This is the Endtime.
  The words of Owain’s visions.
  Owain stared at the commonplace book. For the
  briefest of moments, his sight wavered. He thought
  he saw the embroidered cover on the book…but
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4 2
  it was not so. That cover had been dust for many
  centuries, as had the loving hands that crafted it.
  The book before Owain was covered in fine, un-
  marked leather.
  Ever so slowly, Owain raised a quivering hand
  toward the book. He touched it lightly, ran his fin-
  gertip down the supple spine—
  “Sir!”
  Owain wheeled about to find Kendall standing
  in the doorway of the study.
  “I think you’d better come take a look at this,
  sir,” she said with an expression of urgency that
  Owain had never seen on her face before.
  He looked at the commonplace book on the shelf
  and then at Kendall again. The anxiety in her eyes
  carried much weight with Owain. Reluctantly, he
  turned away from the bookcase.
  She led him back through the sitting room to
  the stairs leading down to the wine cellar. Owain,
  of course, no longer partook of wine, not directly
  at any rate, but he felt compelled to play the proper
  host for his occasional mortal guests, and toward
  that end, his cellar was well stocked. At the foot
  of the stairs, Kendall led him past the locked door
  behind which Owain’s safe was secured. There were
  no signs of tampering on the door. Kendall was tak-
  ing him to see something else. Exactly what became
  quite obvious as soon as they entered the wine cel-
  lar proper.
  
  4 3
  Dark Prophecy
  Kendall stopped just inside the door. Owain
  stepped past her. The dim lighting was more than
  enough illumination for him to make out the scene
  that awaited. At the far end of the cellar, wine racks
  had been pulled from the wall and tossed carelessly
  to the side. Shattered bottles of cabernet and
  merlot littered the floor. Along the cleared portion
  of wall stood Señor Rodriguez, Señora Rodriguez,
  and Arden—each held aloft by railroad spikes
  pounded through the right wrist, through the left
  wrist, and into the mouth through the back of the
  throat. Leaning against the wall was a sledgeham-
  mer, its business end resting on the floor in a large
  pool of tacky, drying blood.
  Owain stepped closer to the bodies. Even sev-
  eral yards away, his shoes crunched down on
  fragments of teeth scattered about on the floor
  amidst the broken glass, but he continued until he
  was within a few feet of the wall.
  The hands had been spiked first, he imagined.
  One, and then the other. Owain could almost hear
  the metallic strike of sledgehammer against spike,
  and then a second blow, and maybe a third to make
  sure that the spike, after being driven through the
  flesh and splintered bone, dug into the brick and
  mortar behind.
  It looked as if each victim’s mouth was stuffed
  full of rags to make sure the spike could not be spit
  out, though whoever struck the blows had not
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4 4
  taken great pride in accuracy. The remnants of the
  ghouls’ faces were largely shapeless masses of split
  skin and protruding bone fragments flattened
  against the wall.
  Owain couldn’t think of anything useful the
  ghouls could have revealed. He informed them of
  very little regarding his activities—a precaution
  against just this type of occurrence, although
  Owain had always thought of his precautions as
  merely that. Precautions. He never thought they
  would come into play.
  Slowly, carefully, Owain studied the broken bod-
  ies from where he stood. The sheer brutality of the
  mutilations was obvious. The attacker may well
  have been after information, but he or she had en-
  joyed the work.
  “And Mike?” Owain asked without turning from
  the bodies.
  “No sign,” answered Kendall.
  Owain heard her shifting weight from one foot
  to the other as he continued staring at the bodies.
  “Are you glad you weren’t here?” He wasn’t sure
  why he asked the question at first, but then real-
  ized that he was prodding her, seeing what she was
  made of.
  Her weight shifted back to the other foot. “If I’d
  been here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
  Kendall’s answer brought half a smile to Owain’s
  face, but he did not turn to share it with his ghoul.
  
  4 5
  Dark Prophecy
  “Finish checking the house. And outside.” Her
  footsteps receded out of the wine cellar and up the
  stairs.
  Owain stood there motionless for several min-
  utes. Four bulging eyes stared back at him through
  the murky confines of the cellar—four because one
  eyeball each of Arden’s and Señor Rodriguez’s had
  been ruptured. Owain could read pain, and some
  fear, in the twisted contortions of their faces. As
  he looked at them, he tried to imagine what it was
  like, what they had felt, what had run through
  Señor Rodriguez’s heart and mind seeing his wife
  of a century and a half spiked to the wall beside
  him, knowing there was nothing he could do to
  keep her from a tortured death.
  Owain was unable to summon the first ounce of
  empathy. He felt nothing.
  For a moment he closed his eyes. He pictured
  himself, wrists spiked to brick, a third spike held
  between his teeth, awaiting the blow of the sledge-
  hammer, and he felt…relief. Relief at the thought
  of final death, of release from his miserable earthly
  existence. An instant of agony to end centuries of
  suffering.
  Standing there before a jury of his three stricken
  ghouls, Owain tilted back his head and laughed,
  but the sound was merely a cruel mockery of laugh-
  ter, an utterance of pure self-loathing. “If that’s
  what you’ve wanted all this time,” he asked him-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4 6
  self aloud, “why haven’t you greeted the sun any
  of the mornings these past nine hundred years?
  Why not greet it today?”
  He waited. But the jury did not speak. The bro-
  ken bodies faced him in silence unbroken. Coward!
  he wanted them to say. He wished they would rip
  their pierced limbs from the wall and point bloody,
  accusing fingers at him. Coward!
  Then he might prove them wrong. Then he
  might walk outside to an open field and await the
  sun to refute the accusations of the jurymen. But
  they stared blankly at him, and Owain was left to
  laugh again, more quietly this time, derisively.
  Perhaps he was a coward. Or perhaps the beast
  within his soul that drove him throughout his ex-
  istence would not allow him such an easy escape.
  Survival was as much a part of him as suffering.
  His instinct for each was honed to near perfection.
  And surely the Almighty above has not finished His
  sport with me yet, Owain thought.
  That was when he heard a gun being cocked be-
  hind him.
  Slowly, Owain turned around.
  “Stay right there or I’ll blow your brains out,
  man,” said the Cainite at the other end of the wine
  cellar. He wore black leather and ripped jeans, the
  uniform of the unenlightened neonate. “I don’t
  need a stake to toast your ass.”
  Owain sighed. He thought he recalled having
  
  4 7
  Dark Prophecy
  seen this impudent childe at some official function
  or another. Brujah? Owain tried to remember. That
  seemed most likely. The Ventrue elder couldn’t
  help wondering if the blood of Caine had, indeed,
  been spread too thin.
  Despite the gun aimed at his head, Owain ab-
  sently wondered at his own lack of anger, all things
  considered. His haven had been violated, was at
  present being violated again, his ghouls had been
  tortured and murdered, and a foolhardy, not to
  mention disrespectful, Brujah whelp was threaten-
  ing him. Owain felt that he should be in a rage,
  yet he was experiencing barely a tickle of annoy-
  ance.
  “Did you do this?” Owain asked, turning his head
  to indicate the ghouls behind him.
  The Brujah chuckled. “You should be worrying
  about your own neck.”
  Their gazes locked, and Owain did not let go.
  “Why is that?” His voice took hold of the young
  Cainite’s thoughts, not attempting to take control,
  but beginning to push them in the direction that
  Owain wanted them to go.
  The Brujah, having no idea that Owain had
  brought his powers to bear, maintained his smug
  overconfidence as well as his aim at Owain’s face.
  “Because the prince knows what you’re up to, man.
  Your gig is up.”
  Prince Benison. The Kindred who was responsible
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  4 8
  for the destruction of the siren, for the death of
  Albert.
  “We just do the prince’s dirty work, but it’s a liv-
  ing, and hell…” the Brujah shrugged, “it’s fun.”
  The knowledge that the prince had set all this
  in motion started heating within Owain a calm
  fury, the first pangs of the rage that had been
  strangely absent until now. Or maybe it was the
  sneer of this neonate, who took such obvious plea-
  sure in having deprived Owain of the usefulness of
  his household ghouls, that engendered Owain’s ire.
  Either way, the simmering rage quickly rose to a
  furious boil. No outward sign, however, betrayed
  Owain’s anger. He held the emotion within, sa-
  vored it.
  Owain took a step forward, not for an instant re-
  leasing the gaze of the younger Kindred. “You must
  have enjoyed breaking into my haven, into my
  home.”
  The Brujah watched Owain but seemed uncon-
  cerned that he was moving closer.
  Owain took another step. “Murdering my
  ghouls—that must have provided no end of enter-
  tainment.”
  Owain continued forward. He was within a foot
  or two of the weapon still pointed directly at his
  face. He made no effort to move out of the line of
  fire. The Brujah saw each step, heard every word,
  but such was the force of Owain’s voice and of his
  
  4 9
  Dark Prophecy
  gaze that the neonate saw no need to respond.
  “Invading the haven of an elder,” said Owain.
  “Not an opportunity that presents itself every
  night, is it? Normally, every level of Kindred soci-
  ety would rain vengeance down upon your head,
  but if the crime is at the prince’s behest…” Owain
  shrugged. His visage took on a sudden sternness.
  “There are other reasons this type of social miscar-
  riage does not happen.”
  The Brujah’s expression indicated nothing out
  of the ordinary. He still watched Owain closely, lis-
  tened intently. Even when Owain reached over to
  one of the intact wine racks, took a bottle, and
  smashed it so that he held the jagged remnant like
  a knife, even then the neonate did not react.
  Not until, with a quick and powerful flick of
  Owain’s wrist, the Brujah’s entrails spilled out onto
  the floor at his feet did any true surprise register
  on his face. He dropped his weapon, staggered back
  a few steps and collapsed, the string of his atrophied
  intestines marking his path.
  Owain looked upon his handiwork. The quiet
  rage still burned within him. The Brujah quivered
  on the floor as blood poured from the gaping wound
  in his abdomen. It was not a killing blow, Owain
  knew. Not to a vampire. Blood could heal such a
  wound.
  Turning away, Owain returned to his ghouls and
  took in hand the sledgehammer that leaned against
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  5 0
  the wall. He felt its weight—the weight that would
  begin to set aright the scale of justice.
  Owain returned to the whimpering Brujah. The
  first blow ended it. The dull thud. The brain was
  the other organ essential to a vampire, along with
  the heart. He raised the hammer again.
  Benison.
  The name rang in Owain’s mind with the im-
  pact of the second blow. But there were others, he
  was certain. He lifted the sledgehammer again….
  Kline.
  Owain could see the bullish Brujah’s handiwork
  here. This former Kindred on the cellar floor had
  not acted alone nor of his own accord. Owain
  raised the sledgehammer once more.
  Benison.
  The raving architect of destruction.
  Kline.
  As surely as his axe had ripped apart the siren.
  Benison.
  Kline.
  “Sir!”
  Owain paused with the sledgehammer raised
  above his head. Kendall faced him from the door-
  way of the cellar, bewilderment apparent on her
  face.
  “We had a visitor,” said Owain. He lowered the
  sledgehammer to the floor and laid the implement
  to rest beside the remains of the uninvited guest.
  
  5 1
  Dark Prophecy
  As Owain stepped past Kendall, his fury was un-
  abated. The attack on the Brujah was a slow,
  deliberate venting, but still the images of the dead
  that Benison had claimed surfaced, one after an-
  other, in Owain’s mind: the Rodriguezes and
  Arden, spikes pounded through the backs of their
  mouths into the wall; the siren, cleft in twain by a
  maniac’s axe; Albert, staked by his clansman the
  prince and left out for the sun.
  Still unexplained were Albert’s final words: What
  would Angharad think? The lingering enigma only
  added to Owain’s fury. How many ways would the
  name of his lost love be tarnished?
  His thoughts occupied by the mystery unleashed
  by Albert, Owain stopped in front of the door at
  the base of the stairs. Allowing himself another
  brief surrender to rage, he kicked in the door. The
  deadbolt held but the rest of the door splintered,
  the pieces scattering into the small room beyond.
  The safe, aside from the wooden bits of door lying
  all around, stood undisturbed.
  “Ms. Jackson.”
  “Yes, sir?” Leaving behind, for the moment, the
  carnage in the wine cellar, Kendall quickly caught
  up to him.
  “You know the combination to the safe.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  One pained step at a time, Owain began up the
  stairs as he instructed his surviving ghoul. “There
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  5 2
  is a ceramic…creature. Bring it to the study.”
  “Yes, sir. And, sir…”
  Owain paused.
  “I might have found Mike. There’s a fresh grave
  out back,” said Kendall, “Next to the old kitchen
  outbuilding…what used to be the outbuilding,” she
  corrected herself. “It’s been knocked down, col-
  lapsed.”
  Owain said nothing and continued on his way.
  At the top of the stairs, he stepped into the sitting
  room. He walked through, then stopped and came
  back. Moving to the far wall, he took from its rest-
  ing place his sword. Even after all this time, the
  blade felt perfectly balanced in his hand, very much
  a part of him. Owain smiled grimly. Firearms might
  be the weapons of the modern age, and a broken
  wine bottle was certainly efficient in a pinch, but
  this sword, this was the weapon of a true nobleman.
  Returning to the study, Owain felt that he was
  being denied in totality the calm isolation for
  which he had been longing. At his desk again, he
  closed his eyes, tried to put out of his mind for the
  time being the grisly scene in the cellar. He at-
  tempted to suppress his rage, which lurked in
  ever-increasing strength just below the surface. He
  took a deep breath but felt little in the way of calm-
  ing effect.
  Owain opened his eyes, placed his sword upon
  the desk, then took from the shelf the common-
  
  5 3
  Dark Prophecy
  place book. Just as he opened the aged tome,
  Kendall entered bearing the ceramic armadillo that
  Albert had entrusted to Owain’s care.
  “This is what you wanted?”
  “Yes. Put it here.”
  She set it on the desk.
  Owain looked back down at the book. To his
  horror, a large drop of fresh blood marred the page
  where seconds ago it had not. He jumped up from
  the desk and realized that his hands and clothes
  were covered with blood and extraneous bits from
  the Brujah. Owain himself had dripped blood on
  his most treasured book.
  “Damnation!” He wiped his hands on his pants,
  but his clothes were so blood-soaked, and that on
  top of the dried blood from the Sabbat vampire in
  Spain, it did little good. “Go upstairs and bring me
  fresh clothes,” he told Kendall, who hurried to
  comply.
  Owain wanted very badly to turn through the
  pages of the commonplace book, to search for the
  words that the knight had read in the vision. But
  Owain could not take the chance of marring the
  book further. It was the one physical reminder of
  Angharad that he possessed. She had given him the
  book. She had written some of the entries. Though
  none were of a highly personal nature, it was her
  handwriting. She had put quill to this paper centu-
  ries ago. Owain forced himself to be patient.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  5 4
  He turned instead to the physical reminder of
  Albert, the ceramic armadillo, which mattered less
  to Owain. After all, Albert would not need it back.
  Owain picked it up, his fingers leaving bloody
  marks wherever he touched it. He shook it, as he
  had the night that Albert had presented it to him.
  Nothing.
  Owain looked at the bloody armadillo again,
  then smashed it to the floor. At that same moment,
  the front doors of the mansion slammed open. Sec-
  onds later, Xavier Kline, axe in hand, came striding
  into the study. He wore a long jacket over his tight
  shirt and jeans. Behind him, his Vietnamese un-
  derling took up a position in the doorway. She held
  a shotgun perched against her shoulder.
  Kline took two large steps into the room and
  unlimbered his axe. “Hiya, Owain. Long time no
  see.”
  
  5 5
  Dark Prophecy
  THREE
  Owain and Kline were separated by the heavy,
  black-walnut desk. On the right of it lay Owain’s
  sword, on the left the captured revolver from Spain.
  Kline, holding his axe in front of him, poised to
  strike, watched Owain’s eyes.
  “What is the meaning of this?” asked Owain, us-
  ing both voice and mind to subtly direct Kline’s
  thoughts. Owain suspected that the blood of Caine
  was not so weak in this brute as it had been in the
  other pathetic Brujah. Trickery would need to be
  more indirect to be effective, but it still might al-
  low Owain to survive this encounter.
  “The meaning of this,” Kline scoffed, “is that
  your ass is mine. The prince says so.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  5 6
  Thu, Kline’s underling, stood in the doorway
  with her shotgun. She seemed content to observe
  for the moment, but no doubt would lend Kline a
  hand should he somehow have trouble with a lone
  Ventrue.
  “Leave now and I shall spare you,” said Owain.
  Kline turned his head slightly to the side. “Come
  again?”
  “Leave now and I shall spare you,” Owain said
  again.
  “Huh.” Kline scratched his chin. “That’s what I
  thought you said.” He chuckled for a moment, then
  burst into laughter. Thu shared his amusement.
  “Right,” said Kline. “Pick your weapon, richboy.”
  “This is your last warning,” said Owain.
  Kline was finished with toying. His mocking
  smile shifted to a snarl. With surprising speed, he
  raised the axe into the air.
  Owain dove for his sword just as the axe crashed
  down into the desk…by the gun. Had Owain gone
  for that weapon, he would have lost a hand, or
  more.
  Even with his inhuman strength, Kline struggled
  for a second to pull his axe free of the hard walnut.
  Owain rolled and leapt to his feet. He had no way
  of knowing if his mental proddings had influenced
  Kline, or if the hulking Brujah would have struck
  toward the handgun regardless. Either way, Owain
  was now armed and more than ready for a fight.
  
  5 7
  Dark Prophecy
  Kline apparently was more interested in collect-
  ing his reward from the prince as quickly as
  possible. He smiled at Owain and stepped far to
  his left. “Okay, Thu, let him have it.”
  Thu seemed pleased to get to take part. She was
  all giggles as she cocked the shotgun and pointed
  it at Owain. At that instant, the top of Thu’s head
  exploded, blasted from behind.
  She looked very surprised, even raising one hand
  halfway toward her face. Then she collapsed to the
  floor.
  Kendall, her .45 magnum still smoking, quickly
  stepped into the room and retrieved the shotgun,
  which she promptly leveled at Kline.
  Kline, suddenly on his own, looked back and
  forth between Owain and Kendall. Owain could
  virtually see the wheels turning in the Brujah’s
  mind as he most likely tried to determine if he
  could launch his axe at Kendall—the same way he
  had attacked the siren—dodge most of a shotgun
  blast, and still recover a weapon quickly enough
  to confront Owain. The room was probably too
  small for Kline to throw the large axe, but Owain
  rendered the question moot. He raised a hand to
  Kendall.
  “Ms. Jackson, I shall handle this duel, thank
  you,” said Owain.
  Kline seemed more surprised than Kendall. She
  nodded and stepped back out of the room to allow
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  5 8
  the combatants more space. Kline smiled, pleased
  with this unexpected reprieve. He bowed. “Well
  thank you, your Ventrue lordship. I’ll only have to
  kill you one at a time.” He shook off his long jacket
  and let it fall to the floor behind him.
  Owain didn’t waste his time with taunts. He
  stepped toward the Brujah, who stood nearly a foot
  taller. Kline swung his axe almost immediately.
  Owain deftly sidestepped the blow and slashed
  at Kline’s exposed right side. Steel met flesh. It was
  not a telling blow, but Owain pulled back his blade
  decorated with first blood.
  Kline did not cry out. In fact, he paid no atten-
  tion to the small gash, though it bled freely.
  Watching Owain more warily, the Brujah kicked
  two chairs out of the way. Otherwise, the desk was
  the only real obstacle in the room. The table that
  the chess board rested on was in an alcove out of
  the way.
  The opponents slowly began to circle. Kline
  feinted and watched closely as Owain started to
  dodge. Again Kline feinted, and then he swung.
  Owain avoided the blow and opened a second gash
  just below the first. This time Kline did growl, but
  more from frustration and anger than from pain.
  Owain was growing more confident with each
  strike. It had been more than one hundred years
  since he had been in a duel, but he was satisfied
  with his performance thus far. He did realize, how-
  
  5 9
  Dark Prophecy
  ever, that gnat-like, irritating wounds would not
  carry the day against Kline.
  With little warning, Kline swung his axe again.
  Again Owain eluded the blow, and the blade sailed
  harmlessly past his face. But somehow, at the last
  second, Kline managed to shift the direction of his
  axe’s momentum. The blade that had passed arced
  around and dug into the side of Owain’s calf just
  below the knee.
  Unexpected pain shot up Owain’s entire right
  side. As his leg buckled, the axe came free. Kline
  jerked it into the air for another blow.
  With only the strength of his left leg, Owain
  hurled himself over the desk. He needed space, or
  else the behemoth would follow his success with
  smothering attacks and the affair would be over.
  Kline reacted quickly and struck at the moving
  target. Owain skidded over the desk as the axe
  crashed down. The head of the axe again bit into
  solid black walnut. Owain slammed onto the floor
  in the corner. He expended a precious second to
  assess his leg. The wound was deep and painful and
  sprayed blood into the air, but when Owain
  climbed to his feet, the leg supported his weight.
  Kline had freed his axe from the desk and was
  charging straight at Owain. Owain feinted left then
  right then dodged to the left. Kline’s attack fell to
  the right. The axe missed and chewed up the hard-
  wood floor instead of Owain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6 0
  Kline, with all of his force behind the charge,
  and Owain’s blood on the floor sabotaging his foot-
  ing, could not stop. The Brujah slammed into
  Owain with the force of a truck, just as Owain
  swung his sword with all of his might.
  The terrible impact of the Brujah snapped
  Owain’s head back and wrenched the sword from
  his grasp. The charging, falling Kline slammed
  Owain into the wall, crushing him back into the
  drywall. Bones cracked. Lights danced before his
  eyes.
  All was blackness for a moment.
  Owain’s eyes fluttered open. Kline was dragging
  himself to his feet. Embedded into the left side of
  his massive neck virtually down to the spine was
  Owain’s sword, the end of the blade jutting out
  behind Kline, hilt and pommel to the front.
  Kline screamed in pain. He waved his arms
  around frantically, his left hand interrupting the
  spraying arc of blood from his neck. He grabbed at
  the sword but was not clear-headed enough through
  the pain to pull the weapon free. The blade cut
  deeply into his fingers as he took hold of it.
  Owain, showered by the constant fountain of
  blood from the Brujah, climbed groggily to his
  knees. He reached down to clamp a hand over his
  own wounded leg, but with the movement, a burst
  of pain drew his attention to his left shoulder. That
  arm hung at an awkward angle from his body. A
  
  6 1
  Dark Prophecy
  small, sharp bone poked though Owain’s blood-
  drenched shirt. Caught off-guard by the sudden,
  on-rushing pain, he slumped back against the
  crumpled wall.
  Still Kline bellowed in unendurable agony. He
  grabbed the sword so angrily that the blade cut
  through the tip of his middle finger, which bounced
  onto the floor. His right arm waved as he staggered
  and tried to keep his balance.
  Through a haze of pain and blood, Owain saw
  the axe next to a deeply hewn divot on the floor.
  With his good arm, he took hold of the handle.
  Kline, occupied by the sword lodged in his neck,
  offered no resistance.
  Owain swung, but the blade-heavy weapon was
  awkward in his single hand. The axe dug into
  Kline’s side just below his left arm, but not so deeply
  as to cause great damage.
  The attack did, however, get his attention. And
  further stoked his pain-driven rage.
  Kline momentarily forgot the sword, or at least
  ignored it. With both hands, he grasped Owain by
  the neck and, with a mighty roar, lifted him into
  the air.
  Time seemed to freeze for Owain as he was held
  airborne, but all too soon he came crashing down,
  head and shoulders first, onto the desktop. The
  searing pain again visited dancing lights upon
  Owain. His left shoulder and arm went suddenly
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6 2
  numb, as if they had been severed and were no
  longer part of him.
  Kline collapsed on top of Owain. Blood still
  spurted from the Brujah’s neck, but not as force-
  fully now. His strength was fading but far from
  gone. He gripped Owain’s neck more tightly, be-
  gan twisting to the left.
  Pinned beneath the massive weight of his oppo-
  nent, Owain could not even press his mangled
  shoulder against the desk for leverage. His verte-
  brae and neck muscles were strained to the
  breaking point.
  Owain reached up with his right hand and
  gouged at Kline’s eye. A quickly formed claw dug
  into flesh, raked the eyeball itself. With a growl,
  Kline bit savagely into Owain’s wrist. Owain pulled
  back his hand but left gouged chunks of skin and
  tissue between Kline’s fangs.
  Owain felt something in his neck pop. Kline
  twisted his victim’s head with renewed vigor.
  Casting about for any source of aid, Owain no-
  ticed something on the desktop jabbing him in the
  back. Desk lamp? Surely that had been knocked off
  earlier. He frantically slid his bleeding hand under
  his back and felt the crumpled pages of the com-
  monplace book.
  He slid his hand. More to the side…and felt the
  hard metal of the revolver.
  Owain pulled the weapon from beneath him.
  
  6 3
  Dark Prophecy
  With his head twisted the other way, he couldn’t
  really see what he was doing. He tried to press the
  barrel against Kline’s temple and could only hope
  he wasn’t about to shoot himself.
  He squeezed the trigger.
  The blast at close range was deafening. He pulled
  the trigger again. Another blast.
  The pressure against Owain’s neck ceased. Kline
  slid backward off the desk and crashed to the floor.
  Owain knew he needed to get up, to make sure
  that the fight was over, that there was no way Kline
  could ever recuperate no matter how much blood
  was available. But lying there on the desk, Owain
  lacked the will to force his battered body to move.
  Even over the ringing in his ears from the gun-
  shots, Owain heard the footsteps approaching.
  Thankfully, they were the familiar footsteps of
  Kendall Jackson. She paused over Kline, then
  placed a gentle hand on Owain’s good shoulder.
  “You almost shot yourself, sir.”
  Painfully, Owain turned his face toward her. He
  had almost forgotten about her observing the duel,
  not interfering, as per his instructions. “You don’t
  have to be so damned obedient next time,” he
  mumbled. Owain gestured weakly toward Kline.
  “Make sure.”
  Kendall understood. She stepped back from
  Owain, and the roar of the shotgun put the revolver
  to shame. “If the prince okayed this,” she pointed
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6 4
  out, “there may be others on the way.”
  Owain sighed. Peace. Isolation. That was all he
  wanted. To nurse his hatreds in private for a de-
  cade or two. Instead, he returned home to find his
  haven violated, his servants mutilated and mur-
  dered, and then to be, himself, beaten to a bloody
  pulp.
  “Do you need help getting up?” Kendall asked.
  “My shoulder. You have to pop it back into the
  socket.”
  Again, Kendall went efficiently about her task.
  She set down the shotgun and circled around the
  desk. “Here.” She placed a spongy roll of fabric in
  Owain’s mouth. Without further delay, she straight-
  ened his arm out at an angle to his body. That in
  itself pained Owain considerably, but was minor in
  comparison to the agony that ripped through him
  as she jerked his arm upward.
  Owain clamped down on the material between
  his teeth. The fabric also served to muffle slightly
  his throaty yowl of pain.
  “Nope,” she said. “One more.”
  The pain shot through Owain’s left side again,
  but instantly lessened as the arm popped back into
  the joint. Owain lay on the desk panting reflex-
  ively against the pain.
  “Your collarbone is broken too,” said Kendall.
  “Compound fracture. Is that something you can
  heal with blood?”
  
  6 5
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain managed a nod and spit the fabric from
  his mouth. “After it is set. Yes.” Feeling like he was
  bruised and lacerated from one end of his body to
  the other, he laid his head back and closed his eyes
  again. He wanted rest; he wanted blood to heal his
  wounds, his physical wounds at least. But Kendall
  was correct. If Prince Benison had authorized these
  attacks, then there might well be other assailants
  on the way. That did not even begin to address a
  question profoundly puzzling to Owain: Why? Why
  would Benison send Kline and his cronies after
  Owain?
  The Sabbat? Owain wondered. Had the prince
  somehow discovered Owain’s connection—former
  connection now? Wouldn’t that be a great irony,
  Owain mused, for his ties to the Sabbat to be ex-
  posed just after he had managed to sever them?
  Someone in Atlanta could conceivably have recog-
  nized Miguel several weeks back. Or Carlos might
  have wasted no time in spreading news of what had
  happened in Toledo, though that seemed doubtful.
  Carlos would probably wish, as did Owain, for the
  entire matter to die quickly and quietly.
  Owain was confounded by the turn of events, but
  there was no time to ponder the numerous ques-
  tions. He and Kendall needed to be away from
  there. While he had been thinking, she had been
  wrapping his injured leg, but that was not going to
  be enough.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6 6
  “I need your blood,” Owain said.
  She did not hesitate in the least but rolled up
  her sleeve and offered her arm to him. Owain could
  sense, could smell, the blood flowing just below the
  surface of her skin. He bit into the flesh of her soft
  forearm.
  At once, blood from the precisely tapped artery
  filled his mouth. In his weakened state, Owain
  could not restrain a moan of pleasure. He played
  the part of the thirsting man in the desert led to
  an oasis. He felt Kendall’s heart beating true and
  strong, and as he drank, the power that he had im-
  parted to her returned in part to him. He also felt
  the gash on his leg, other minor wounds, all be-
  ginning to knit together, to regain health.
  Kendall dropped her head to his chest. She
  writhed in the pain and the ecstasy of the Kiss.
  Owain wanted to keep drinking of her, to take
  as much blood as he could, to feel her soul mingle
  with his own…but he needed her physically strong.
  Even all her blood would not be enough to heal
  him completely, and he needed her help. Also,
  unless his shoulder were treated properly, his col-
  larbone set, the power of the blood would serve
  only to fuse misaligned bone, muscle, and tendon,
  possibly crippling him. Even as he tried to will the
  healing vitae away from that area, he could feel his
  body beginning to mend.
  Owain withdrew from her arm, more whole than
  
  6 7
  Dark Prophecy
  he had been, if not fully recovered. Kendall, draped
  across his body, held on to him. Her legs would not
  support her full weight.
  “Help me up,” he instructed her.
  Somewhat shakily, she lifted herself from on top
  of him. After steadying herself for a moment, she
  helped him rise to a sitting position on the desk.
  Still favoring his broken shoulder, Owain was
  stronger but far from well. He was no longer bleed-
  ing, but he was still weak. The gauze bandage on
  his leg, he noticed, was no longer necessary. Then
  something struck him as odd about what he saw.
  “Where did you get fresh bandages?” he asked.
  “There.” Kendall pointed to a mass of both rolled
  and unrolled bandages mixed among the broken
  fragments of the ceramic armadillo on the floor. In
  addition to Owain’s bloody fingerprints from before,
  the ceramic pieces and bandages had been sprayed
  with Kline’s blood. The armadillo must have been
  packed so tightly, and then the hole sealed, that
  there had been no sound of contents shifting when
  Owain shook it. Again the obvious question: Why?
  Owain staggered to his feet. He made his way
  around his poor desk, marred by axe and bullet
  holes, splattered with blood and unidentifiable
  gore. Gently and carefully, he knelt among the ar-
  madillo parts and sifted through the bandages. Only
  one roll attracted his interest; he felt something
  wrapped within the gauze.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  6 8
  The press of time was weighing heavily on
  Owain. He glanced at Kendall who was now strug-
  gling to her feet. Obviously, they were not going
  to make a lightning-quick escape; they needed ev-
  ery minute. Reluctantly, he stuffed the roll of gauze
  into a pocket. “Let’s go.”
  Kendall nodded relieved assent. She helped
  Owain to his feet. He took the revolver, that
  weapon of modern cowardice, from where he had
  left it on the desk. “This came in handy after all,”
  he admitted and tucked it in the waistband of his
  pants. “My sword.” He leaned against the desk
  while Kendall retrieved his weapon of choice. She
  had to brace her foot against Kline’s body and work
  the sword back and forth with both hands before
  it finally came free. Owain wiped the sword on a
  strip of gauze and then slid the blade under his belt.
  Kendall carried the shotgun in addition to her pis-
  tol. Fully armed, they helped each other to the
  door.
  “Wait!” Owain staggered back to the desk. On
  top lay his open commonplace book. The top cor-
  ner had been sliced off by Kline’s axe. Several pages
  were torn loose. Practically all the leaves were
  crumpled or ripped; many were covered, or at least
  speckled with, smeared and drying blood. Owain’s
  heart ached at the sight of his most prized posses-
  sion, which he had safeguarded for hundreds of
  years, in such a lowly state. He felt that blow even
  
  6 9
  Dark Prophecy
  more keenly than he had Kline’s axe. Long gone
  was the cover that Angharad had embroidered for
  the book, and now the contents were a step away
  from complete obliteration.
  Owain reached out for a pressed leaf that, some-
  how, had survived so long intact in the pages, but
  when his fingers only lightly touched it, the leaf
  crumbled away to dust and was carried away by a
  draft. Suddenly stricken with grief for that which
  he would never recover, Owain lifted the page to
  which the leaf had been attached. Written in
  Angharad’s hand was whitethorn, and beneath the
  word a space lighter than the surrounding, yellowed
  parchment was visible, and in the space the leaf
  had covered, written in the same hand, were the
  words, Let it be thus. Thy will be done.
  “Sir?” Kendall, patient but clearly not wanting
  Owain to slip into an extended reverie, waited in
  the doorway. She had retrieved the suit that she’d
  fetched for him before the latest intrusion.
  Owain’s shock at the state of his book and pres-
  ence of the long-hidden words was complete, but
  there was little for him to do except gather the
  loose pages and carry the sad bundle in his one
  good hand. He glanced longingly once more at his
  nearby chess board. Something distant, some germ
  of a thought, began to tug at Owain’s mind, but
  there was no time. They needed to leave, if they
  hadn’t lingered too long already. He rejoined
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  7 0
  Kendall and, at last, they departed.
  The front door was still open from Kline’s indeli-
  cate entry. The night air struck Owain as
  particularly crisp after the heat and blood of battle
  within the demolished study. Kendall led him to
  the back door of the Rolls.
  “Where should we go, sir?”
  “Away from here,” was Owain’s only reply. What
  else could he tell her? So secure had he always
  been, he had never established alternate havens
  within the city. Who could threaten an elder of
  his status and resources?
  As if he needed an answer to that unvoiced ques-
  tion of old, Owain saw, through the trees,
  headlights racing up the driveway from the direc-
  tion of King Road.
  Kendall saw the lights at the same instant. She
  slammed Owain’s door and sprinted for the driver’s
  side, her physical weakness overcome for the mo-
  ment by the rush of adrenaline.
  The other car screeched around the final curve
  as it cleared the woods without slowing. The black
  limousine was not made for such high-speed ma-
  neuvers, but the unseen driver handled the vehicle
  skillfully.
  Kendall jumped into the driver’s seat and had the
  engine gunning before her door was closed.
  The limo, still at top speed, swerved into the
  driveway loop that circled the fountain and headed
  
  7 1
  Dark Prophecy
  straight for the front of the Rolls.
  Kendall threw the Rolls into reverse and hit the
  accelerator. They began to race backward out of
  the loop.
  But the limo was moving too quickly. It cut the
  circle sharply and rammed into the front of the
  Rolls. Owain’s car spun out of control. It smashed
  backward into the wall of the fountain and came
  to a halt with sickening finality.
  The double impacts propelled Owain from one
  side the Rolls to the other in rapid succession. He
  landed roughly on his broken shoulder. It was all
  he could do to fight off the dancing lights that
  again filled the blackness. He forced himself to hold
  onto the pain, to maintain consciousness, though
  the lure of peaceful oblivion was enticing indeed.
  “Owain Evans!”
  He heard his name being called but could not
  summon the will to peel his face from the leather
  seat. Even when the rear door was ripped from its
  hinges, he didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. He
  recognized the voice.
  “Owain Evans! Your prince would speak with
  you!” shouted J. Benison Hodge, prince of Atlanta.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  7 2
  FOUR
  And lo, the Earth shall open her womb and the Beast
  shall crawl forth…. The Undoing of the Children of
  Caine is at hand.
  Kli Kodesh allowed the emptiness to wash over
  and through him. He imagined himself free of the
  mirror arcs of his prison—space and time—the
  walls of which had long eluded him. He had once
  spent a century counting his footsteps, calculating
  the yards that he’d traversed, yet never had he ap-
  proached any boundary of his enclosure. Likewise,
  the vagaries of time had long since ceased to hold
  meaning for him. Seconds stretched into years,
  while conversely decades might pass more quickly
  than the single beat of a human heart.
  
  7 3
  Dark Prophecy
  But now the walls were within sight. The mortar
  that held stone to stone chipped and fell away. Soon
  the prophecies of Joseph the Lesser would breach
  the ramparts, and Kli Kodesh would be free. How
  generous of the Arimathean, thought Kli Kodesh,
  though he well knew that generosity had nothing
  to do with the besiegement of the Damned.
  A nearby sound, however, put the lie to Kli
  Kodesh’s oblivion. Footsteps. The soft brushing of
  feet across the stone slabs of the vault floor.
  Countless stacked boxes, crates, and chests
  formed corridors within the vast chamber, the ex-
  istence of which was known only to a handful who
  walked the sanctified halls far above. In the dark-
  ness, Kli Kodesh held his place among the arcane
  flotsam of centuries.
  The shuffling footsteps came closer, until a robed
  figure emerged from behind a nearby stack. The
  hood of his cloak concealed his features. The
  keeper of the vault paused only briefly, then con-
  tinued on his way, his methodical steps again
  scraping through the tomb-like silence of the
  chamber, which rose to invisible heights. Kli
  Kodesh watched the Capuchin recede into the
  darkness. The keeper knew many of the secrets of
  this place, but fewer than Kli Kodesh.
  Kli Kodesh placed his hand on the crate for
  which he had traveled to this crypt beneath the
  Accursed City.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  7 4
  The Beast walks the Earth. The Undoing of the Chil-
  dren of Caine is at hand.
  The shifting of protruding bone was almost more
  than Owain could stand as Benison laid hands upon
  him and dragged him from the wrecked car. Owain’s
  growl of pain through clenched teeth did nothing to
  dissuade the prince. Owain, from the corner of his eye,
  saw Kendall pressed against her seat by the airbag that
  had deployed when the Rolls struck the fountain.
  Fortunately, though of small consolation,
  Benison had Owain by the right arm, so the sear-
  ing pain from Owain’s jostled left shoulder was less
  than it might have been. Unfortunately, the prince
  was plainly working himself into one of his legend-
  ary murderous rages.
  Benison lifted Owain to his feet, then shoved
  him backward against the side of the car. “Leaving
  again so soon?” snarled the prince. “I think not!
  We have much to discuss.” The prince took a step
  back and drew the Civil War officer’s saber that
  hung at his side.
  Owain was collapsed in pain against the car. As
  he hugged his left arm to his body in an unsuccess-
  ful attempt to alleviate the throbbing, he noticed
  that Benison’s ghoul Vermeil had propped a ma-
  chine gun of some sort with a small bipod on the
  hood of the limo. The gun was, of course, trained
  
  7 5
  Dark Prophecy
  on Owain. Through the constant tremors of pain,
  he began to laugh quietly.
  Benison was taken aback by this strange behav-
  ior. He stood, sword drawn, and watched Owain.
  “This is no laughing matter,” the prince said with
  grim determination.
  A new wave of pain brought Owain up short.
  After a moment he was able to speak. “Is that to
  aid discussion?” He nodded toward Vermeil and the
  machine gun.
  “I will have justice.” There was no hint of com-
  promise in the prince’s voice, nor of mercy.
  “And Kline?” Owain scoffed. “That was for dis-
  cussion too. I guess you sent him to ask me some
  question.”
  “I will have justice!” Benison repeated. His wide
  eyes shone with anticipation of battle.
  Justice? This wasn’t making sense to Owain. “Jus-
  tice for what?”
  Benison’s eyes, Owain could tell, were tinged not
  just with battle lust but with madness. His bushy,
  auburn beard added to the formidable impression
  of his muscled girth. With trembling hand, the
  prince reached into the pocket of his suit jacket
  and pulled out a bundled white cloth. Without
  compromising his sword hand, he began to unwrap
  the cloth, then let it fall to the ground. Benison
  held Owain’s dagger, gilded hilt glittering in the
  light of the nearby gas lamp.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  7 6
  The dagger was a surprise to Owain, and not a
  pleasant one. He had slammed the dagger into the
  floor at the church the night the siren had been
  killed, the night the siren had been murdered. With
  the memory of her broken body, the smoldering
  rage within Owain began rising to match his pain.
  An axe had flown end over end through the air
  and struck her full in the face and neck. Owain
  could still hear that final instant of beautiful song,
  cut off as the axe split open her esophagus.
  And here, standing before Owain, was the archi-
  tect of that senseless destruction. Benison, with his
  messianic delusions, had ordered her murdered.
  Owain began to will freshly consumed blood to his
  injured shoulder. He would not be defenseless in
  the presence of this madman.
  “Justice,” said Owain quietly, echoing Benison.
  The agent of the siren’s destruction, Owain thought
  with satisfaction, lay inside less than one hundred
  yards away—lacking most of a head.
  Owain and Benison turned as one as the driver’s
  door to the Rolls creaked open. Kendall slowly ex-
  tracted herself from the deflating airbag and
  stepped out of the car. Owain could not see from
  his vantage point if she concealed behind her the
  shotgun. She was in plain view of Vermeil, directly
  in his commanding field of fire. The collision had
  certainly done nothing to steady her after the blood
  loss of Owain feeding.
  
  7 7
  Dark Prophecy
  “What words of defense do you offer for your-
  self?” asked Benison, distracted from the object of
  his righteous indignation for only an instant. “This
  is your dagger.”
  “If it is?” asked Owain. He had little hope of talk-
  ing his way out of this confrontation, but with each
  minute he delayed, his vitae exerted its power. A
  thin veneer of flesh was already forming around the
  protruding collarbone. The bone itself was begin-
  ning to fuse together, though not in the proper
  location. Still, he would be better able to meet im-
  mediate danger if he could use his left arm and
  move with less pain. The prince didn’t seem to
  notice Owain’s injured shoulder or its increasing
  recovery. Or Benison, in his rage and confidence,
  did not care.
  “There is no ‘if,’” said Benison, brandishing the
  dagger at Owain. “This is your dagger. You were at
  that damnable, demonic chapel the night the witch
  burned!”
  Owain stared at the dagger. Was there any point
  in denying it was his? he wondered. Benison didn’t
  seem to be in a reasoning mood, but arguing might
  buy more time for Owain’s shoulder to stabilize.
  “Who says it’s mine?” Owain demanded.
  “It is yours,” said Benison. His eyes narrowed to
  a hateful glare. “You were there. You saw the witch
  die!”
  Owain tensed. In his mind, he saw again the be-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  7 8
  ginning of the final blow. He watched helplessly
  as Kline raised his axe for the coup de grâce. Benison
  stood only feet away. Owain wanted to scream at
  the prince, to expose his petty, ignorant piety. But
  more than that, Owain wanted blood. He clenched
  his fists in anger, both fists. His shoulder was mend-
  ing, but he needed a few more minutes. Owain kept
  his rage in check, letting it burn slowly.
  “You have been lied to,” said Owain. He wracked
  his brain for ideas. Who could have told him? Had
  Albert, during pre-execution torture perhaps, told
  the prince of Owain’s presence at the rites? Owain
  thought that Albert had seen him at the church
  one night.
  “I have seen with my own eyes,” said Benison,
  shifting his grip on his sword. His eyes and nostrils
  flared. Owain thought that the prince might snap
  and attack at any moment. But Owain, facing this
  tyrannical destroyer of beauty, felt himself capable
  of doing the same.
  “I doubted the Tremere magic at first,” Benison
  continued. “But she used my sword,” he raised it
  before him, as if to make his point, “to show me
  my past. Just as she used your dagger to show me
  your past. You were there.” The prince pointed his
  blade at Owain, then hurled the dagger to the
  ground.
  “You’ve been tricked,” Owain insisted. “You be-
  lieve a Tremere?”
  
  7 9
  Dark Prophecy
  “I believe my wife,” said Benison, a sudden, calm
  reverence taking hold of him.
  Owain felt his own sword hanging from his belt.
  He was in no mood to argue with the maniac prince
  any longer. “Eleanor,” said Owain. “The lying
  whore.”
  The prince’s face reddened almost instantly. He
  drew in a deep breath and seemed suddenly taller.
  With a deafening roar, he charged Owain.
  Owain drew his sword as he dove to the right.
  His movements felt awkward with his misaligned
  shoulder. Rolling and jumping to his feet was pain-
  ful but possible.
  Benison was on him at once, raining blow after
  blow down upon Owain. Owain managed to block
  the attacks but just barely. The prince was com-
  pletely in the grip of battle rage. Each powerful
  blow of steel on steel reverberated through Owain’s
  body. He retreated step after step. Luckily, there
  was much room for maneuver. Otherwise, Benison’s
  superior strength would have been overwhelming.
  After the first flurry of attacks, Owain began to
  hold his own. Though weakened from injuries and
  the healing expenditure of blood, he was a skilled
  swordsman and, fortunately, did not rely on raw
  power. One after another, he turned aside the force-
  ful strikes of the prince.
  Still Benison pressed the attack. Fueled by rage
  and brute force, one blow striking true could end
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8 0
  the duel. There was little of finesse about Benison’s
  style with the sword. He needed none. His saber
  carried the force of thunder. Relentlessly, he at-
  tacked, blow after blow. Madness and righteous
  indignation glinted in his eyes.
  Owain deflected each attack, but his defense was
  growing steadily less flashy, less precise. Gone were
  any stylistic flourishes of the blade. He had lost too
  much blood, been through too much tonight al-
  ready. Benison’s attacks were coming increasingly
  closer to finding their mark.
  Benison swung again. Owain parried, and the
  two blades, upright and crossed, locked between the
  two combatants.
  “Righteousness will triumph,” muttered the
  prince. “The devil has taken you in. The city must
  be cleansed.”
  Owain was occupied trying to keep his blade up
  as Benison pressed the locked swords with his fear-
  ful might. Devil. Demon. The words stuck in
  Owain’s mind. The prince spoke of the siren. Never
  having heard her song, he had decided she was
  some demonic creature—more so than any of the
  rest of them—and had her killed.
  “Cleansed,” said Owain with a pained sneer. “Of
  beauty?”
  Benison leaned more heavily against the crossed
  swords. “Primus will not be destroyed!”
  Primus? Owain was too busy trying to survive to
  
  8 1
  Dark Prophecy
  put much thought into deciphering the meaning
  of Benison’s words. But even as Owain strained
  against his overpowering foe, memory of the siren
  was ever-present. Benison’s religious drivel re-
  treated as if into the distance. The fountain was
  suddenly silenced behind him. The delicate strands
  of the siren’s song were all that Owain heard. He
  wasn’t sure if the notes came from his mind or on
  the night breeze, but what did it matter? As the
  swords edged closer to his face and he faded in this
  contest of wills, at least he would die with the
  sound of that lilting melody filling his ears.
  Owain dropped to one knee. The swords were
  inches from his face now. The prince pressed down
  with all of his considerable might.
  “Satan’s bitch had to die,” Owain heard Benison
  say.
  Satan’s bitch.
  Owain remembered how he’d first seen her in the
  sanctuary—her ethereal white gown, her gentle
  face turned upward, eyes closed in humble suppli-
  cation. Satan’s bitch? She had returned beauty to
  him. If that was the work of a demon, then so be
  it. God had never seen fit to send an angel to com-
  fort Owain.
  Owain raised his face to the crossed swords. He
  stared into Benison’s face from merely inches away.
  “If she was evil, then God will damn her soul. But
  that is not your prerogative.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8 2
  For much of the night a cold anger had been
  burning within Owain. Gaining strength from each
  injurious attack he sustained—the Brujah in the
  cellar, Kline, Benison—the fire had begun to reach
  into the past, drawing fuel from insults both real
  and imagined. Carlos, El Greco, Miguel—all had
  wronged Owain in various ways. The prince’s talk
  of the siren not only added another abuse against
  Owain, it reawakened her song, and those notes
  that touched Owain’s very soul took him back,
  opening even the pages of history to Owain and
  his fury.
  With renewed strength, Owain braced himself
  against Benison’s attack. Glaring into the prince’s
  murderous eyes, Owain let the flames of hatred
  sweep over him. Slowly, the crossed blades began
  to recede from his face.
  Benison grimaced and snarled as the swords were
  pushed, an interminable fraction of an inch at a
  time, closer and closer to him.
  A low growl of pure hatred and fury began within
  Owain’s belly. It gained force and volume as he
  pushed Benison back, as Owain stood again to his
  feet. The briefest flicker of doubt creased Benison’s
  evangelical zeal. Owain had seen that expression
  on others—the confusion of the hunter who has
  become the hunted.
  With an explosion of primal rage, Owain
  knocked Benison backward and off balance. The
  
  8 3
  Dark Prophecy
  prince stumbled several steps, then caught himself.
  He faced Owain more warily now, but with no less
  determination. Confidence and surety born of di-
  vine sanction still shone in his eyes.
  “If it is a reckoning you want,” said Owain, “a
  reckoning you will have. And you have no idea of
  the justice that I deserve!”
  Now it was Owain who launched himself at the
  prince. From how many battles had Owain emerged
  victorious? How many lives, both mortal and
  Cainite, had he cut short with his blade? With each
  crash of the swords, he could picture another. The
  years had left much blood on his hands. And he
  wanted more.
  Owain attacked mercilessly. Benison was not
  unskilled with the sword, but both his temperament
  and his unrefined strength lent themselves more
  to the driving frontal assault than to prolonged
  defense. His parries were functional if not grace-
  ful, and even in the face of Owain’s breadth of
  experience and innate talent, the prince gave up
  ground grudgingly.
  “Primus will not be destroyed,” Benison muttered
  over and over. After each of Owain’s blows, the
  prince repeated his mantra: “Primus will not be
  destroyed.” He seemed to draw renewed vigor from
  the words.
  Owain feinted low then struck upward. Benison
  blocked the thrust, but Owain’s blade careened off
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8 4
  the prince’s and caught Benison across the face. A
  gash opened from near his left ear to his nose.
  Blood began to flow into the auburn of his beard.
  An inch or two higher and Owain would have had
  the prince’s eye.
  But the wound was not serious, and the embar-
  rassment of first blood seemed to bolster the prince.
  He began to press the attack after parrying Owain’s
  blows. Benison held his ground, began to move for-
  ward again. His sword no longer carried the
  redoubled force of unchecked madness as he settled
  into a calmer rhythm of blows, but his untiring
  strength began to drive Owain back again.
  Owain had come close. A half-blinded prince
  might likely have made the difference. But the tri-
  als of the night, as well as of the past nights, were
  taking their toll. He had lost much blood to Kline
  and had been forced to use more in healing him-
  self just to stand a chance of surviving this duel.
  Now, the emotional force of rage mostly spent for
  both Owain and Benison, the prince was driving
  before him the weakened Ventrue.
  For the first time since the fight began, Owain
  risked a quick glance around. Where, he wondered,
  was Kendall? Was she sneaking around for a sur-
  prise shot? But then he saw her, pale and leaning
  against the car. Vermeil still watched her. Kendall’s
  strength and much of her blood, too, were already
  expended. No help from that quarter.
  
  8 5
  Dark Prophecy
  What strength remained was rapidly deserting
  Owain. Only his years of experience were saving
  him at this point, and as his reflexes slowed, each
  of Benison’s blows came closer to landing.
  The prince could sense impending victory. The
  pacing of his attacks slowed slightly, but he struck
  each blow with focused determination and force.
  Owain’s wrist and arm began to ache from the re-
  peated impacts. Soon, he knew, the prince’s blade
  would slide past his weakened defense. Owain was
  giving up ground. He was back nearly to the wall
  of the fountain now.
  Then, from the woods down the hill, came the
  roar of a car engine. Several cars, from the sound
  of them. Benison heard the noise as well. He
  slowed but did not suspend his attacks. Owain
  fought fatigue and distraction, watching closely in
  case the prince lowered his guard, but Benison had
  not forgotten his opponent.
  First one car, then a second, and a third, tore
  around the curve from the woods. Owain’s back was
  mostly to the glaring headlights. Benison shielded
  his eyes and, still, pressed the attack. From the cor-
  ner of his eye, Owain could see Vermeil looking
  back and forth between the duel and Kendall on
  one side, the approaching cars on the other.
  In rapid succession, the cars, headlights trained
  on Owain and the prince, slid to a halt on the far
  side of the fountain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8 6
  “Benison, stop!”
  One more blow crashed against Owain’s blade,
  but then the prince took a step back. Benison
  maintained his guard and squinted into the head-
  lights. Owain was not sure if he could have
  summoned the strength to attack even had Benison
  completely ignored him. Edging away from the
  prince, Owain glanced across the fountain as well.
  At least a half-dozen vehicles were lined as far
  back as the edge of the trees. By the fountain, and
  concealed by the blinding light, stood the figures
  of numerous individuals. Lighting and movement
  made it impossible to tell exactly how many.
  “Listen to our demands!”
  This time Owain recognized the voice of
  Thelonious, Brujah primogen of Atlanta. Benison
  recognized Thelonious as well. The prince’s
  bearded jaw jutted forward in renewed anger.
  “I do not bargain with traitors!” Benison called
  back.
  Owain stepped back a little farther, his sword
  lowered at his side. The blade felt as if it weighed
  hundreds of pounds. This exchange between
  Benison and Thelonious was surprising to Owain.
  He knew from what Lorenzo Giovanni had said
  that the anarchs were displeased with the prince.
  Apparently, Thelonious had thrown in his lot with
  the rabble. Not too surprising, Owain decided on
  second thought. Almost every Brujah he had
  
  8 7
  Dark Prophecy
  known was either a romantic utopian like
  Thelonious, who wanted to right the injustices of
  the world, or a thug like Kline whose perfect world
  consisted of license to abuse whomever he pleased.
  “You are the one who has betrayed the Cainite
  race,” said Thelonious to the prince.
  Benison tightened his grip on his sword. “I? I
  have betrayed our race?” He was shocked by the
  accusation. “I offer salvation to this city. To the
  world!” The fanatical glint returned to Benison’s
  eyes as he spoke his gospel. “It is you who are the
  traitor. The duty of the primogen is to assist the
  prince in ruling.”
  “The duty of the primogen is to guard against the
  abuses of the prince,” Thelonious countered.
  Benison was known among the Kindred as an
  orator and debater of some skill, but this night his
  often shallow reserve of patience was completely
  dry. He stepped toward the fountain and raised his
  sword. “You will surrender at once, or there will
  be no mercy.”
  Owain heard the click of various firearms being
  cocked or loaded among Thelonious’s troop. The
  prince seemed to take no notice of such ominous
  portent. Owain eased farther away from Benison.
  A shot rang out from somewhere in the crowd.
  The bullet zinged between Owain and Benison.
  Owain dove to the side. Benison, however, charged
  ahead. He leapt the low wall of the fountain and
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  8 8
  splashed forward through the knee-deep water.
  At the same instant, Vermeil opened fire on the
  gathering with his machine gun. Bodies dove in
  every direction for cover. The blinding headlights,
  one after another, burst in showers of sparks and
  glass. Screams and the hiss of air escaping punc-
  tured tires filled the night.
  Yet amidst the chaos, Benison charged forward.
  He didn’t care that he would soon block Vermeil’s
  field of fire. The prince existed solely to assail those
  who would oppose him and his holy vision.
  Owain scrabbled on hands and knees away from
  the circular drive. Kendall, having dropped to the
  ground at the first sound of gunfire, was hot on his
  heels. From the side of the swirling mass of bodies,
  Owain had a clearer picture of the scene. He could
  see now that Thelonious had brought with him a sig-
  nificant number of supporters, at least ten, maybe
  fifteen. Among them, Owain caught a glimpse of Ben-
  jamin, suspected lover of the prince’s wife Eleanor.
  That should make for an interesting dynamic, Owain
  mused, when a stray bullet pierced a nearby tree
  and reminded him that this was not, perhaps, the
  best place for spectators.
  Kendall had caught up with him now. For the
  moment, at least, they were completely forgotten,
  Benison and Vermeil focusing on the anarchs and
  vice versa. Owain was not inclined to test how long
  that would last.
  
  8 9
  Dark Prophecy
  “I thought you probably wanted this,” said
  Kendall, as she pulled from the wad of his dress
  clothes she’d tucked beneath her shirt the tattered
  commonplace book, which Owain had undoubt-
  edly dropped when the limo slammed into the
  Rolls. Somehow, she had managed to salvage the
  treasure that Owain had forgotten.
  Meanwhile, Benison waded across the pool and
  into battle. He ignored the bullets flying wild as
  well as those that ripped into his body. Among
  Thelonious and the anarchs at last, the prince
  wielded his blade with deadly intent. Cainites, and
  parts of Cainites, flew in every direction. Never
  mind that they outnumbered Benison better than
  ten to one. Neither the odds nor the anarchs’ mis-
  matched collection of clubs, stakes, and handguns
  slowed Benison in the least.
  “Let’s go,” said Owain. He was far from con-
  vinced that the prince would fall, even against so
  many. It was just this type of head-on confronta-
  tion that Benison thrived upon. Even thronged
  tightly around him, the anarchs appeared to be no
  match for his sword.
  Even if Thelonious managed to prevail, Owain,
  in his weakened state, didn’t want to confront any
  Cainite, especially a mob of anarchs incited to vio-
  lence. That was an equally unhealthy scenario for
  an elder such as himself.
  He and Kendall rose to a low crouch and dashed
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  9 0
  for the tree line. Amidst the carnage by the foun-
  tain, no one noticed them. Just within the cover
  of the woods, the two skirted the driveway and
  circled behind the melee. An anarch floated face-
  down in the fountain, blood turning the water a
  sickly, light red.
  Still Benison hacked away, while the anarchs as-
  sailed him on every side. How the prince had
  avoided having his head blown off, Owain couldn’t
  fathom.
  Several of the anarchs’ cars, doors open, lights
  on, had been left partway down the drive, away
  from the current bloodshed. Normally Owain could
  have ensured with the slightest concentration that
  he and Kendall would not be seen as they raced
  for the last car, but he was doing well to keep mov-
  ing. He had no energy to spare.
  The intensity of the battle, however, served to
  shield them as Owain could not. The second car
  they checked, a battered dark sedan, still had the
  key in the ignition. They jumped in, Kendall be-
  hind the wheel. Owain could drive if pressed, but
  she was far more versed in the operation of these
  modern vehicles.
  Away from the fight, exhaustion swept over
  Owain. He was thrown back against the seat as
  Kendall gunned the engine and the car sped away
  from the main house—from what had passed as his
  most recent home. Owain didn’t look over his
  
  9 1
  Dark Prophecy
  shoulder to see if anyone noticed their escape. He
  didn’t care. He let his sword drop from his hand.
  It fell against the door, and then there was only
  the sound of the engine, and the ground passing
  beneath them.
  Owain expected Kendall to ask him where they
  should go, but she drove in silence. He did not have
  an answer for her, at any rate. Perhaps she knew
  that already. She had grown fairly adept at reading
  his moods and intentions—a valuable, and poten-
  tially dangerous, asset for a ghoul.
  The wind blowing in the open window was
  merely cold, not refreshing. Owain pulled his
  blood-stiffened hair away from his face. He needed
  to think, to decide what to do next. Several hours
  of darkness remained. For the moment, he simply
  closed his eyes and laid his head back. Owain al-
  lowed himself the luxury of losing himself in the
  sound of the engine as he and his one surviving
  ghoul sped away from the haven that had never
  truly been his home.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  9 2
  FIVE
  The stolen car pulled up to the private hangar
  that was owned by an obscure import-export com-
  pany, the subsidiary of some branch of a division
  of some larger subsidiary. In front of the hangar
  stood the current acting manager, Lorenzo
  Giovanni, and his bodyguard, Alonzo.
  Owain stepped out of the car. He was not im-
  pressed with the decrepit vehicle. It lacked much
  of the comfort that he had grown accustomed to
  with the Rolls. The dented sedan with the odd-
  colored rear panel had possessed the paramount
  advantage of accessibility, however, and it had got-
  ten Owain and Kendall where they needed to go.
  
  9 3
  Dark Prophecy
  For the second time that night, Owain greeted
  Lorenzo.
  “I did not expect to see you again so soon,” said
  Lorenzo. Polite to a fault, he still had to have no-
  ticed Owain’s rather wrinkled attire. Owain’s
  subterfuge of carrying his sword wrapped in his suit
  jacket was thin as well.
  “I apologize for bringing you out here again,” said
  Owain, as he and Lorenzo exchanged kisses on each
  cheek. “I know you have more important duties.”
  “Nonsense,” said Lorenzo, gripping Owain firmly
  by the shoulders. “I came as soon as I received your
  call. What else would I do for a friend?”
  That was exactly what Owain was wondering—
  what else would Lorenzo do?—and was the reason
  Owain wanted to waste no time.
  As he and Kendall had rushed away from the es-
  tate, he had felt that Benison was on the verge of
  scattering the anarchs. They had the advantage of
  numbers, but Benison was a born warrior. Owain
  had seen the type before. They had to be brought
  down with guile, not naked force.
  At any rate, if the prince chased off the anarchs,
  he might pursue them, or he might return his at-
  tention to Owain. And Owain was most definitely
  not ready for another fight. He needed time to rest
  and recuperate. Already he had deformed his own
  shoulder by forcing it to heal before the bone was
  set, but he’d had no choice.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  9 4
  Owain was less concerned that Benison would
  catch up with him than he was that Lorenzo, seek-
  ing political advantage, would delay Owain’s
  departure. Owain and Giovanni were on favorable
  turns, true, but a fledgling alliance could turn
  quickly should one side be able to realize unparal-
  leled advantage over the other.
  Lorenzo smiled reassuringly at Owain.
  Owain knew with what little regard the prince
  held the Giovanni. That was the primary reason
  that Lorenzo had made subtle overtures to Owain.
  Who but a Ventrue was a more natural candidate
  to usurp the title of prince from Benison? In At-
  lanta, no one. And as the political situation
  unraveled around Benison, with the anarchs revolt-
  ing and the possibility of intervention by the
  Camarilla Inner Circle, Lorenzo had proven in-
  creasingly friendly.
  But what if, Owain wondered, the prince were
  able to solidify his position, perhaps by single-
  handedly defeating much of the anarch faction?
  The Camarilla would be far less likely to interfere
  if order was restored, and then any enemies of the
  prince would be not rival claimants but outlaws.
  How much more favorably would Benison view the
  Giovanni if the clan’s representative in the city
  were to hand over to the prince a criminal and a
  heretic?
  “The plane is ready?” Owain asked.
  
  9 5
  Dark Prophecy
  “It is being prepared,” said Lorenzo.
  Owain could not read the ghoul. How much of
  what had transpired did Lorenzo know? Was the
  prince’s desire to see Owain dead common knowl-
  edge? Owain had no way to know. Benison could
  have offered a reward, for all Owain knew. But then
  why would Lorenzo have proven helpful earlier in
  the evening? Perhaps he was playing a waiting
  game, watching to see if the balance of power
  would shift for or against the prince. If that were
  the case, then Owain’s fate could well depend on
  the outcome of Benison’s battle with the anarchs,
  and how soon the Giovanni learned of it. There
  was no time to be lost.
  “You would be more comfortable waiting on
  board.” Lorenzo gestured to the small jet nearby.
  A ground crew of three checked various pieces of
  equipment and fueled the plane.
  More comfortable…or trapped, Owain thought.
  Could Lorenzo be so relaxed if he were leading the fly
  into the web? Owain did not like the idea of shut-
  ting himself in the plane before it was ready, but
  neither did he want to alert Lorenzo that anything
  was amiss—more than the phone call, or the bat-
  tered sedan, or Owain’s peculiar garb had already
  alerted the ghoul.
  “How soon will we be able to depart?” Owain
  asked.
  “Within the half hour,” said Lorenzo.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  9 6
  “You’re too kind.” Owain nodded to Kendall. She
  had left the shotgun in the car. The weapon was
  all but impossible to conceal and, again, Owain
  wanted to avoid alarming Lorenzo.
  The four began walking toward the plane. Owain
  watched carefully for any sign of ambush or trick-
  ery. The ground crew, Owain sensed, were all mortal.
  Each seemed to be engaged in some technical ac-
  tivity, not that Owain could have distinguished a
  legitimate maintenance task from a ruse.
  Owain, Kendall, and both Giovanni paused at
  the foot of the stairs to the plane. “I wish you a
  peaceful journey,” said Lorenzo. “I am pleased that
  I have been able to help you.”
  Owain was not sure if it was the nuances of the
  Giovanni’s slight Italian accent or the particular
  phrasing Lorenzo chose that froze the Ventrue, one
  foot on the first of the stairs. He looked at the open
  portal at the top of the stairs, and it seemed to him
  the gaping maw of some ravenous beast. A chilly
  sense of foreboding welled up within Owain. He
  gripped the handrails on either side of the stairs
  with such force that, were it not for his weakened
  state, his fingers would have dug into the soft metal.
  “Are you all right?” Lorenzo asked from behind.
  Owain could feel their eyes turned to him, their
  gazes boring into his back. He knows, Owain
  thought. He knows, and I am climbing to my doom. It
  was not too late for Owain to turn and flee. The car
  
  9 7
  Dark Prophecy
  was not far. Lorenzo, Alonzo, the ground crew—
  none of them could stop Owain. But he had already,
  after unceremoniously fleeing his own estate, deter-
  mined the only course of action that was acceptable
  to him. He would not remain in Atlanta in hiding,
  nor would he flee to some other American city to
  become entangled in the machinations of some
  other group of scheming Kindred. Eleanor had
  beaten him. She had joined forces with the Tremere
  and, with the aid of their magic, had revealed a por-
  tion of Owain’s disloyalty to the prince. Owain’s
  place in the city was already destroyed, and he did
  not care enough for Atlanta to fight for a new place.
  His dislike, rapidly blooming into unqualified ha-
  tred, for Eleanor, he would hoard. For now, he would
  leave the city, the continent, and pursue a plan that
  would redress at least some of the wrongs that had
  been perpetrated against him. Perhaps at some point
  in the future, he would see Eleanor again….
  Currently, however, his path led him away, and
  the first step of that path lay directly before him.
  “Owain?” said Lorenzo, concern in his voice.
  Slowly, Owain turned. Is your concern for me, dear
  Lorenzo? Owain wanted to say, or for your treacher-
  ous designs, that I might walk away and ruin them?
  But Owain held his tongue.
  Lorenzo and Alonzo regarded their guest with
  mild confusion. Kendall watched her master
  closely.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  9 8
  “It has been quite some time, Lorenzo,” said
  Owain, “since you came into the service of your
  family.”
  The seeming non sequitur puzzled Lorenzo. “I
  have seen my share of nights spent in honorable
  duty,” he said.
  “And do not these vehicles,” Owain gestured to
  the jet behind him, “make you uneasy in the least?”
  Lorenzo smiled despite himself, convinced now,
  just as Owain intended, that the Ventrue’s hesi-
  tancy was a result of skepticism in the face of
  modern technology, a common enough affliction,
  as the Giovanni well knew, among elder Cainites.
  “I assure you,” said Lorenzo, “no detail has been
  overlooked.”
  The words struck Owain like a physical blow. No
  detail has been overlooked. He glanced around be-
  hind his host. Probably the hangar is full of assassins
  hired by the Giovanni to chase me down should I try
  to flee, Owain thought.
  No detail has been overlooked.
  “Indeed.” Owain turned reluctantly and began
  to ascend the stairs. He would take the chance that
  Lorenzo, if not necessarily trustworthy, was at the
  least not informed of the prince’s whereabouts and
  activities that night. If Owain was wrong, he real-
  ized, he was climbing into his final tomb. He was
  playing Jonah to this metallic whale, without the
  benefit of a loving God to act as guardian and pro-
  
  9 9
  Dark Prophecy
  tector. Owain heard Kendall’s footsteps as she
  climbed the stairs behind him. He did not look
  back as he stepped through the door.
  The interior of this plane provided no fantasy
  diversion for the wary traveler but was instead a
  luxurious suite furnished with thick, leather
  couches and chairs. Owain collapsed into one of
  the chairs. Kendall, ever vigilant, investigated the
  rear bedroom before returning and giving in to her
  exhaustion.
  The door to the plane slammed closed. The
  sound echoed in Owain’s mind like the grating of
  a stone lid slid shut atop a great sarcophagus.
  Within the half hour. That was when Lorenzo had
  said the plane would be ready to depart. Thirty
  minutes—short enough to sound imminent, long
  enough that a delay of fifteen to thirty minutes—
  time aplenty to arrange an attack—would not
  arouse undue suspicion. Owain laid his head back
  on the chair. The fight was beaten out of him. He
  had given in not to despair but to resignation. If
  treachery is to occur, he thought, let it happen now,
  and we will be done with it. He and Kendall sat in
  silence. There was nothing to say. Either hired kill-
  ers of the Giovanni or maybe the prince himself
  would rush on board, or the plane would take off
  shortly. Owain did not care which. Betrayal would
  bring an end to struggle, an option that sounded
  more attractive with each passing moment. For
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  100
  nearly a millennium, he had known nothing but
  struggle, and accompanying many of those struggles
  was defeat. What was one more defeat that would
  bring unending rest? Rest that, in his weakness and
  cowardice, Owain had lacked the will to visit upon
  himself. The opportunity had presented itself to
  him with every sunrise, year after year after year.
  Despite the seductive promise of release, however,
  Owain had lacked the courage for suicide. He had
  failed night after night. Each sunset was, for him,
  another stamp of defeat.
  The slamming sound of metal on metal distracted
  Owain. The entire plane shook slightly. Kendall
  was out of her seat instantly, .45 drawn and aimed
  forward, prepared should either the door to the
  cockpit or to the outside open. Owain merely sat
  and waited. A moment passed.
  “Closing a compartment beneath the plane?”
  Kendall guessed.
  “Perhaps,” said Owain.
  Kendall sat, and for some time they remained
  there without speaking. Undoubtedly the cabin was
  bugged, and besides, what was there to say? As the
  ground crew ostensibly completed preparations,
  every routine sound from outside the plane con-
  jured some imminent menace. Kendall kept a hand
  on her weapon. Owain closed his eyes and tried to
  find again the comfort of numbness, the emotional
  emptiness that had been his only refuge for so many
  
  101
  Dark Prophecy
  years. But the siren, with her gift of song, had in
  return taken from Owain the capacity to lose him-
  self in nothingness.
  He greeted almost with disappointment the
  sound of the engines firing to life. The plane moved
  slowly at first as it taxied to the runway, then
  Owain was pressed into his chair as they picked
  up speed and lifted off. He sighed audibly. You had
  your chance, Lorenzo, Owain thought. The journey
  would continue.
  There were, of course, no windows in the cabin.
  Owain could not see Atlanta falling away below
  the plane, but already he could feel the separation.
  He would never return to this place, he felt. There
  were many arrangements to be made. His lawyers
  would have to wire him funds, to oversee the sale
  of the estate. Beyond that, there was nothing to
  hold him there.
  Owain might have felt liberated at this turn of
  events. He had access to virtually unlimited finan-
  cial resources and the opportunity to begin anew
  almost anywhere he chose. Instead, he felt what
  he had felt, in varying degrees but without fail,
  since he’d first left his native Wales hundreds of
  years ago—adrift, rudderless, subject to the fickle
  winds of change. There had been various ports of
  call over the years—France, Toledo, Atlanta—but
  always Owain had known in his heart that these
  places were merely markers upon his journey, never
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  102
  the destination. Always he had desired to move
  homeward. Adref. But always that had been denied
  him. So now, his existence in Atlanta destroyed,
  himself chased away by the prince’s wife as surely
  as the Normans had chased him from Wales,
  Owain was again adrift.
  Lorenzo Giovanni had not relieved Owain of the
  burden of continuing his journey, so Owain would
  pursue his own plans. He would not look to a new
  beginning, but to the wrongs of the past. For the
  time being, there was only one betrayal that he
  could address, and the desire to do so led him to
  his next destination—Berlin.
  As he and Kendall had escaped from Owain’s es-
  tate, Owain had had no idea where he should turn,
  neither for the long term nor in the next few hours
  when the sun would begin to rise. He’d pondered the
  possibility of calling on one of his mortal acquain-
  tances from the King Road Club. He could
  commandeer a windowless basement or some other
  such accommodations. In fact, he’d realized, he could
  force his way into practically any mortal dwelling to
  wait out the daylight hours, but mortals could be so
  unpredictable, and one never could be sure who
  might drop by or what complications might arise.
  Owain’s concentration had been hampered, how-
  ever, by fatigue and by his consternation at being
  chased from his haven. Even thoughts of vital,
  practical considerations had given way to reflec-
  
  103
  Dark Prophecy
  tion on the losses he had suffered. Changing
  clothes in the backseat of the dilapidated stolen
  car, he’d thought about the few material items that
  held any meaning for him. His fingers had caressed
  the commonplace book that he held against his
  chest. The damage to the book distressed him, but
  the keepsake survived. Owain’s sword, as well, he
  had to admit, carried as much sentimental as prac-
  tical value.
  These two items, however, were the extent of
  what had been salvaged. Owain closed his eyes at
  the thought of Kline’s axe digging into the black-
  walnut desk that had been a treasure for years.
  There was the chess set also—the board fash-
  ioned of the finest cherry wood, the pieces carved
  by an artisan who’d witnessed with his own eyes
  the fateful Battle of Hastings and had crafted from
  memory the likenesses of Harold Godwin and Wil-
  liam the Bastard. Owain had cared for the set for
  nearly nine hundred years, yet it was another ca-
  sualty tonight. Another casualty that Benison will one
  day pay for with his lifeblood! thought Owain.
  As he’d savored the pain of loss, drinking of it
  deeply to firm his resolve against all who had
  wronged him, against Benison, against God Him-
  self, Owain had been struck by what a pious man
  might claim as epiphany. A nagging, unrecognized
  thought from earlier in the evening had come back
  to him.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  104
  Before Owain had left his study that last time,
  he’d looked around the room. His gaze had come
  to rest on the now lost chess set, but there had been
  no time to reflect upon what, in the car an hour
  later, had become so painfully obvious.
  The board was still set with the game that was
  Owain’s great humiliation. His long-time opponent
  El Greco had, with one move—Rook to King’s
  Knight five—taken advantage of Owain’s overcon-
  fidence to transform seemingly inescapable and
  total defeat into sudden victory. El Greco’s porous
  defense had been a ruse, a trap of the grandest mag-
  nitude, a trap that Owain had charged headlong
  into with much gusto.
  But Owain remembered what he’d seen in To-
  ledo—the game that was displayed by El Greco’s
  desk. The old Toreador had pointed at the board,
  the board that was set with an endgame in which
  white was on the verge of defeat. You have bested
  me on that field of battle, El Greco had said, as if
  that game was the same one that Owain would
  have set upon his board in Atlanta. Owain had at-
  tributed the comment to dementia at the time, but
  now he did not think so.
  In addition to the unexplained remark, there was
  the letter that Owain had discovered, the letter
  that supposedly he had written, the letter in his
  own handwriting that could not be his handwrit-
  ing. My luck is holding in matters more weighty even
  
  105
  Dark Prophecy
  than chess, so do not condemn your own abilities overly
  much, the letter read.
  El Greco thought that Owain had bested him at
  chess. In the forged letter, the faux-Owain had
  claimed victory. Meanwhile, Owain had believed
  that El Greco had beaten him. Coincidence?
  Of course not.
  It was this realization that had led Owain in
  search of aid from the Giovanni yet again. This was
  the discovery that pointed him to Berlin. For there,
  in the once-divided city, was a small inn to which
  both he and El Greco had long directed their cor-
  respondences, their chess moves. The two Cainites,
  one a priscus of the Sabbat, the other ostensibly a
  Camarilla elder, had not wanted their interactions
  discovered. With the chess moves years, if not de-
  cades, apart, a mere misdirection of the couriers to
  a third point had seemed ample precaution.
  Apparently not, thought Owain.
  El Greco had made the arrangements. Owain had
  always sent his couriers to the inn. The arrange-
  ment had proceeded smoothly, or so Owain, and
  apparently El Greco, had believed. Someone at the
  inn, however, had played each of the elder Cainites
  as a fool. Letters had been replaced, and the de-
  ception had been carried out flawlessly. Owain had
  been unable to find fault with the forgery of his
  own writing. How long has it been, he wondered,
  since I received an unaltered letter from El Greco?
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  106
  What was doubly insulting was that whoever had
  carried out this charade had maintained two sepa-
  rate chess games, one against Owain, one against
  El Greco, and had soundly beaten each of them.
  As Owain rested on the Giovanni jet speeding
  across the Atlantic, he seethed with the knowledge
  that not only had he been outmaneuvered and
  forced by Eleanor to abandon his haven, he had
  also been duped by an unknown.
  But why? Owain wondered. What was the point
  of stealing a game? For that was what had happened.
  What did this someone have to gain? The answer to
  that question, Owain believed, awaited in Berlin.
  He already had quite definite ideas about what the
  mystery chess master had to lose.
  Kli Kodesh traveled through a haze of violence,
  betrayal and death. The images swirled around him
  like a maelstrom, assailing him from all sides. It was
  his legacy, a curse visited upon him long ago, in
  the days when the legions of Rome still occupied
  the Holy Land.
  He was much changed from the young firebrand
  who had raged against Caesar’s yoke and sold all
  his possessions to feed those starving in the streets
  of Jerusalem. That young man had died centuries
  ago—not on a Roman spearpoint, but crushed be-
  neath the weight of thousands of hurled stones,
  
  107
  Dark Prophecy
  stealthy knife thrusts, creaking nooses.
  Time had turned his two consuming passions—
  his hatred of all things Roman and his struggle to
  redeem the poor—inward. Kli Kodesh no longer
  looked up to see the unspoken accusation on the
  faces of those surrounding him. All were lit by the
  same inhuman fire—rage, vengeance, cunning, suf-
  fering. All were the same to him now.
  If he could not shut out the unending proces-
  sion of violent acts, at least he could avoid any
  awareness of individual depravity and suffering. He
  would not meet their eyes, but kept his gaze low,
  focused on their hands. The clenched fists, the
  hands raised in supplication, the wrists opened and
  spilling life, these were his go-betweens, his points
  of contact with his fellow man.
  Kli Kodesh reached out hesitantly to brush one
  of the hands that came to him through the mael-
  strom. He saw the fingers curl, jerk, clench. Kli
  Kodesh felt the chill before his fingers closed on
  the swollen, blue flesh—a living hand no longer.
  Defeated, he released his grip, watched the cold
  hand spiral outward into the storm. Already there
  were dozens of others slapping, clutching, clamor-
  ing for attention. He brushed them aside with a
  sweep of his arm and with his free hand took up
  his burden once again.
  The long oaken box dragged behind him. The
  wood was ancient and faded. It creaked ominously
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  108
  and threatened to splinter apart at each new bump
  or gap in the road.
  Through the cracks, it was possible to catch a
  glimpse of the box’s contents—a patch of faded fin-
  ery, a curl of midnight-black hair, a hint of
  bloodless and ghostly pale flesh. A handful of cen-
  turies had crept past since last the light of the moon
  had played upon the wood grain and metal bands.
  The box and its contents were not heavy, but Kli
  Kodesh found them a great burden. He suddenly
  felt very old and very tired. His two-thousand-year
  exile was, at last, drawing to its close. Surely the
  final release was at hand. This was the Endtime.
  This was the Ravening. These were the days of
  Burning Blood.
  What had begun with the first Kinslaying out-
  side the gates of Eden would be undone. The
  benighted fellowship that Kli Kodesh had joined
  with a betrayal in another garden outside the walls
  of Jerusalem, would be broken. The Earth would
  shrug off its plague of the Damned, and those who
  hungered for blood would no longer stalk wretched
  man.
  Kli Kodesh had gathered and hoarded scraps of
  prophecy, saga and lore. For two millennia he had
  sifted shards of the future from the uncertain sands
  of time. Kli Kodesh followed the treacherous lines
  of prophecy as easily as most men trace a route on
  a map.
  
  109
  Dark Prophecy
  Many uncertainties still remained in his mind,
  however. Too many uncertainties.
  He had first glimpsed the Final Pattern taking
  form as he emerged dripping from the sea and
  stumbled into the City of Angels. Kli Kodesh
  tracked the elusive pattern across the Atlantic and
  back to its lair in the City of the Scar. There, at
  the center of the vast web of prophecy, he saw be-
  fore him a shining path stretching away towards
  the City of the Sword and a meeting with the one
  whom the ancient tales named the Kinslayer.
  Kli Kodesh could feel the very fabric of time be-
  ginning to unravel. The Grand Alignment that
  would bring about the promised release was close
  at hand. Kli Kodesh was intent upon hastening that
  end.
  No lesser quest would have brought him back to
  the Accursed City, to the nest of the hated Golden
  Eagle, to Rome. He had seen seven angels perched
  upon the Seven Hills, each bearing a golden trum-
  pet and a flaming sword.
  He’d known it was time. Time to descend upon
  the City of the Adversary with wailing and gnash-
  ing of teeth. Time to harrow the catacombs of the
  Bishop of Rome and loose what had been bound
  after Jacques de Molay and the last Templar Mas-
  ters were put to the torch. Time to retrieve the
  ancient box, the repository sealed with the Power
  of Three—the triple ward of ancient sigils, holy
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  110
  blood and the secret name of Baphomet.
  Kli Kodesh had slipped secretly past the keeper
  of the vaults to claim his treasure, the final frag-
  ment of the converging Triad.
  Yes, surely a great reckoning was at hand. Even
  now he could make out, from somewhere inside the
  decaying wooden box, the faint scratching of
  bloodied fingernails, the rising howl of the Rav-
  ening Beast straining against its tether.
  
  111
  Dark Prophecy
  SIX
  Nicholas lay naked in a tight ball on the ground
  as a light dusting of snow fell upon him. As the
  burning spread throughout his body, he wished for
  death, for an end to the pain, for peace.
  Why? he wondered. Why? Most of the Cainites
  he had seen or heard of with the blood curse had
  died within days, weeks at the longest. Yet
  Nicholas’s suffering had continued for months. Not
  only continued, but grown far worse. The curse
  would not relinquish its hold on him, would not
  abandon him to death.
  The Gangrel tried to restrain his whimpering.
  His eyes squeezed tightly shut, he tried to listen to
  his surroundings, to the sound of each snowflake
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  112
  that landed around him on the mountain, to the
  cold breeze that caressed the Alps. Nicholas did not
  know if he was still in France or if he had crossed
  into Switzerland. He did not care.
  Again the burning shot through him.
  He pulled his knees more tightly to his face, bit
  into his forearm until he could taste the blood—
  the cursed blood that was his tormentor. He could
  barely feel the snow against his naked back and
  hips.
  How often had he fed the past few nights? He
  could not remember. How many mortals, how
  many animals, had failed to slake his thirst?
  Death, he pleaded. Let it come for me.
  But what came for Nicholas was the hunger, and
  inevitably the unrelenting pain.
  He wished for Blackfeather, his friend. The
  strange Cherokee Gangrel, with his spraypainted
  circle and his Zippo and crumpled cigarettes, had
  somehow kept the pain at arm’s length. Neither
  gone nor forgotten, but imperceptible. Blackfeather
  had seemed to see so much that, for Nicholas, was
  beyond perception.
  Forces rising from beyond the Veil, Nicholas
  thought. He had felt them. They had tasted of him.
  There is more at work here than the curse.
  But then the pain washed over him again, and
  all semblance of thought fled, chased by the imag-
  ined odor of searing flesh. The burning was born
  
  113
  Dark Prophecy
  in his belly, but so quickly it spread. It tore upward
  through his chest and heart, tasting the blood that
  flowed within him, wanting only more. The pain
  ripped into his head, forced screams from his throat,
  pounded at his temples. He covered his eyes lest
  they explode into the night.
  And then it was gone. For the moment.
  Nicholas sobbed tears of blood onto the fresh
  snow. He was falling again. As surely as if he had
  leapt from an alpine peak, he was falling, and some-
  thing far older was rising for him.
  Owain stood near the crest of the green hill. A
  short distance ahead of him was a lone hawthorn
  tree, its branches bearing leaves but no flowers.
  Heavy fog encircled the hill, but Owain was not
  concerned by his isolation. He eyed the hawthorn
  warily. Vague remembrances tugged at him; half-
  formed images danced through his mind like so
  many spectral interlopers, revealed momentarily in
  his peripheral vision but gone if he tried to con-
  front them directly.
  Inexplicably, he was drawn through the night
  toward the tree. As surely as a moth investigates
  the open flame, Owain climbed the slope. He knew
  that this scene had been played out many times in
  other worlds, in other times, yet that knowledge
  did not stay his advance. In his mind’s eye, he
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  114
  glimpsed that same hawthorn, willful and animate,
  its branches reaching for him, violently taking hold
  of him.
  Owain found himself clutching at his chest. Was
  it through memory or premonition that he felt
  thirsting tendrils of wood penetrating his flesh as
  easily as roots spread through the soil? But, no, he
  saw again. It was merely a tree that stood before
  him. These irrational fears, impossible flights of
  fancy, could not come to pass. No more so than
  that a man, once mortal but denied true death,
  could walk the earth for hundreds of years.
  As Owain stood with his hand upon his chest,
  he was distracted from his fears by an oddity that
  only slowly dawned upon him. He took away his
  hand, then slowly returned it to his breast. Again,
  he felt the strange sensation of a rhythmic pulse, a
  heartbeat—the beating of his mortal heart.
  Owain jerked his hand away from his chest,
  afraid that he might be mistaken. He looked at his
  fingers, and they were the fleshy digits of a mortal,
  not the drawn, white fingers of a Cainite. Blood
  coursed through arteries and veins. He breathed in
  deeply and felt air fill his lungs. Above Owain, the
  clouds began to part. The night had turned into
  glorious daybreak, and the rays of the sun were
  burning away the engulfing fog. Owain incredu-
  lously raised his hands toward the sun that, for so
  long, had been forbidden him.
  
  115
  Dark Prophecy
  He realized then that he was no longer alone atop
  the hill.
  Stepping from the receding fog on the far side
  of the hilltop was the form of a woman. She stood
  tall, her bearing as proud as her stride was graceful
  and confident. Her shimmering dark hair, hanging
  loose to her shoulders, framed her gently rounded
  face. She approached the hawthorn, then stopped,
  the hem of her gown flowing about her and rus-
  tling the grass.
  “Angharad,” Owain said her name, not quite
  believing.
  She stood resplendent in the dawning light.
  Owain took a step toward her. His heart pounded
  thunderously now. He felt the long-forgotten beat-
  ing at his temples, in his neck, in his wrists. She
  stood waiting for him.
  Throughout his brief mortal life, she had been
  his one true desire. Yet he had denied himself her,
  and she him. All out of loyalty to a brother who’d
  then had Owain murdered, who had inadvertently
  perpetuated Owain’s unfulfilled longing through-
  out eternity.
  But Owain’s mortal heart was restored to him.
  Angharad was restored to him.
  She stood, waiting, smiling calmly, before the
  hawthorn tree. The curve of her lips, her gentle
  eyes, beckoned Owain forward. Each step brought
  him closer to the desire of so many centuries—to
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  116
  take her in his arms, to revel in the knowledge that
  they would never again be parted, to join with her
  in the most spiritual union born of precious mor-
  tality.
  “Angharad.” He knelt before her, and as he took
  her hands in his, tears of joy streamed down his
  face—not the bloody tears of the eternally damned,
  but the salty pearldrops of love fulfilled, of human-
  ity. Owain buried his face in her gown. He felt
  beneath his cheek the gentle curve of the belly that
  would never bear child.
  “Owain.”
  For centuries, he had tried to recall exactly the
  tone of her voice, the sound of his name upon her
  lips. After so long, her mere speech unsteadied him
  more than any lover’s caress. Owain kissed her hand
  tenderly just once, and she drew away from him.
  “Owain.”
  He looked up into her eyes. They were soft, still,
  but suddenly black, black as…black as Owain’s
  own. Black as his eyes; black as his soul after so
  many years of longing and hatred.
  Angharad reached into the folds of her gown and
  brought forth a gilded dagger, Owain’s dagger. She
  held it across her upturned palms for him to see.
  Again, as with the hawthorn tree behind
  Angharad, distant memories struggled to make
  their way to the surface, but they were mere frag-
  ments of thoughts, stone with no mortar or
  
  117
  Dark Prophecy
  foundation. Owain did not want to lend form to
  them. He did not want to see the dagger, the gift
  to his nephew Morgan, whom Owain had sent to
  certain doom. Owain did not want to see the dag-
  ger that he knew more recently had cost him a
  haven of long standing.
  He wanted to reclaim his love as lover. He
  wanted to reclaim his humanity.
  “Owain,” she said his name again. He gazed into
  the eyes, black upon black, that were mirrors of his
  own. And she named him.
  “Kinslayer.”
  Owain recoiled from his love, and as he knelt
  before her and before the hawthorn, the rays of the
  emerging sun burned him. His flesh began to sizzle
  and pop, and in only a moment was fairly boiling,
  as if it were liquid. He cowered from the sun, but
  there was no shade to protect him.
  “Kinslayer,” she named him again, and only then
  did he see the upraised dagger in her hand. She
  plunged the blade down into his chest, into his
  beating heart.
  Owain grasped the gilded hilt protruding from
  his breast. His blood flowed freely onto the earth,
  and as he slumped over to the ground, he could
  see the hawthorn tree behind Angharad. It was
  blooming. Before his eyes, as his vision faded, flow-
  ers were opening, and like so many snowflakes, the
  petals drifted silently to the earth.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  118
  The sheet and blankets were ripped loose from
  the bed. Owain held them bunched at his chest,
  his fingers clenched in a deathgrip. Come back! He
  moaned as the images of the vision quickly receded
  into that hazy realm of dream. But they had been
  so real. She had been so real.
  But as the seconds passed, her reality was re-
  vealed as mere illusion, her snow-fresh skin as
  ethereal phantasm, that stuff of the mind that
  served to heighten anticipation and desire, yet
  rarely fulfilled. Owain was not atop a grassy hill-
  side. There was no hawthorn, no fog. No
  Angharad.
  Owain let his head loll back on the pillows. He
  was alone in the spacious bedroom. Beyond the
  closed double doors lay the rest of the palatial ho-
  tel suite. In every city where brokers of power and
  influence came into contact with one another, and
  Berlin was certainly one of those cities, there were
  guests who preferred security to a view. Owain was
  interested in a different security than most, and
  though interior suites, devoid of windows and lim-
  ited in access, were not inexpensive, he was not a
  victim of budgetary constraints.
  Kendall had secured the room, and Owain, ex-
  pelled from his haven and suffering debilitating
  physical weakness, had thankfully collapsed onto
  
  119
  Dark Prophecy
  the king-sized bed, his body demanding long-de-
  nied rest. That was three nights ago.
  Three nights and days of unending visions, one
  scene blurring into the next and the next. Always,
  there were similarities—hill, staff, tree, tower—but
  always there were differences as well. The shadowy
  chess master might beguile Owain, or the stranger
  Joseph might rail against him. Or, Owain recalled
  with pained heart, he might glimpse his beloved.
  The most recent vision was the worst. He had
  not seen her through a distant window, nor had
  he, as a specter incapable of speech or touch,
  watched her helplessly. Those past visions had been
  tantalizingly painful in their own right. This time,
  however, he had been there with her. He had
  touched her hands, pressed his face against her
  body in a gesture more intimate than ever he had
  dared in mortal life. Owain closed his eyes again.
  He wanted so desperately to see her, to be with her
  again. He had been with her, and she had known
  him. And she had accused him.
  Kinslayer.
  Owain winced. He opened his eyes slowly. He
  was still so tired.
  Kinslayer.
  He could not deny the charge. After forty years
  of unlife, Owain had returned to his homeland
  Wales. He had snapped his brother Rhys’s neck and
  tossed the stinking carcass down a staircase. Within
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  120
  a matter of nights, Owain had orchestrated the
  death of his brother’s eldest son and had enthralled
  the other. Morgan. How naïve and ambitious he
  had been. How much like Owain himself. How ut-
  terly human.
  In attempts to crush that human spirit, Owain
  had pushed and goaded Morgan to atrocities nearly
  as foul as those committed by Owain himself. But
  in that regard, Morgan was strong. The fire of re-
  bellion burned ever brightly within him, and soon
  Owain, frustrated, grew tired of his game and sent
  his nephew to his doom.
  Kinslayer.
  Truer words had never been spoken.
  But why did Angharad name Owain thus? That
  question bothered him more than any nonexistent
  vanities he might have harbored regarding his own
  moral character. She had never known of those
  deeds. The last time Owain had visited her, old and
  blind, tucked away in the Abbey of Holywell, Rhys
  and Iorwerth were already dead, but Morgan still
  lived. She had known of none of it. Then how did
  she name him?
  “She is of the visions,” Owain reminded himself.
  “A phantasm of your mind. Nothing more.” He
  winced again, for these spoken words robbed him
  of this recent memory of her. “It was not her.” The
  white skin he had touched was not her. The gentle
  eyes that had gazed down upon him were not her.
  
  121
  Dark Prophecy
  Neither the harsh accusation nor the hand plung-
  ing the dagger into his chest were her. But Owain
  would have had it all real, even the dagger. So
  much would he endure for love.
  Owain shook his head forcefully. Such thoughts
  were too painful. He resolved to banish them from
  his mind.
  Searching for any distraction, he heard from be-
  yond the double doors the sound of the cardkey
  placed in its slot in the hallway. The door to the
  suite opened, and Owain heard the familiar foot-
  falls of Kendall Jackson, returned from her day’s
  errands.
  Slowly, he rose from the bed. Enough time had
  passed in rest, and there was not so much blood at
  hand that his body could effectively use another
  night of idleness. He started toward the doors, but
  an item on a table by the wall caught his attention—
  the roll of gauze that he had discovered among the
  innards of the smashed armadillo. He had felt some-
  thing within the roll, but events had not allowed
  time for inspection at his estate, and since then, he
  had done little other than rest. And dream.
  Owain forced away thoughts of the visions. He
  turned his full attention to the roll of gauze, which
  he began painstakingly to unwrap. He was prepared
  for anything. The armadillo had belonged to
  Albert, after all, who even in death had managed
  to shock Owain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  122
  What would Angharad say?
  Kinslayer.
  Owain was prepared for anything—anything ex-
  cept, perhaps, a beautifully crafted golden locket.
  It was unmarred by time or rough treatment. The
  design was stately, elegant, free of the busy orna-
  mentation that might have come from Victorian
  influences. The unadorned beauty was not what he
  had expected of Albert, but when had the
  Malkavian ever proven predictable?
  Ever so carefully, Owain opened the locket. He
  was greeted by a tiny picture, a crude, ink drawing
  of a young woman. Owain turned on a lamp and
  held the picture in the light. On closer inspection,
  he decided that his first impression was not com-
  pletely accurate. The sketch was not so much crude
  as it was, like the locket itself, simple, and that sim-
  plicity managed to convey a depth of caring
  emotion. The woman’s brow, nose, and mouth were
  rendered with only a few light lines, yet a strength
  of features, and of character as well, was conveyed.
  Her chin and her unbound hair were soft curves.
  They suggested a gentleness of spirit. Even the eyes,
  although only the slightest of marks, were full of con-
  cern and caring. This woman was no person that
  Owain had ever met, but in a way, he realized, she
  was a composite of many women—patient, nurtur-
  ing, comforting—who toiled daily for their families.
  This woman, depicted with but a few strokes of pen
  
  123
  Dark Prophecy
  and ink, was more real, Owain realized, than the
  phantasms of his visions, was more alive than he or
  any of his kind. Could Albert, trapped in his mad-
  ness, have drawn this?
  Owain could look upon the soulful eyes no
  longer. He flipped over the picture, which was loose
  in the locket, and on the back of the paper he saw
  a scribbled word in a hand that he did recognize as
  Albert’s: Mother.
  For a moment, Owain replayed in his mind the
  image of Benison driving the stake into Albert’s
  heart. The impact, the dull thud, had echoed
  throughout the abandoned warehouse. Owain
  looked again at the picture, and the eyes held a
  deep and profound sorrow that, moments before,
  he had not seen, that had not been there.
  Owain snapped closed the locket. He gripped it
  tightly in his fist.
  Albert has visited his madness upon me, thought
  Owain, but he knew that he had more than his
  share of madness to contend with already. He gen-
  tly placed the locket atop the unwound roll of gauze
  and left it on the table.
  Owain pushed open the double doors from his
  room. In the large sitting room, Kendall was lay-
  ing out on the conference table her purchases of
  that day. She looked businesslike in a tightly fit-
  ting dress cut high above the knees. A mauve
  jacket and heels, as well as her hair pulled back
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  124
  and styled, lent a fairly executive slant to her
  slightly provocative attire. She was very pale, and
  Owain could see that her movements were laced
  with fatigue. He’d fed on her twice more since they
  had arrived in Berlin. In a strange city with no con-
  tacts, he was rather limited by his proclivities in
  feeding. He felt that merely flipping through the
  social register and selecting nourishment at random
  might draw unwanted attention, and he needed
  still more blood after his close escape from Atlanta.
  “Good evening, sir,” said Kendall, noticing that
  her master was up and about for the first time in
  several nights.
  “Ms. Jackson…Kendall, you may call me
  Owain,” he said, as surprised as she at his own
  words. Owain had never encouraged familiarity on
  the part of his ghouls. Not since Gwilym, he real-
  ized.
  “As you like,” she responded after a brief, per-
  plexed pause. “I did as you asked.”
  Owain looked over the items she was laying out
  on the table: a three-piece suit, charcoal gray, con-
  servatively cut; tie, belt, shoes, and socks to match;
  dark overcoat; more casual attire; pocket watch and
  chain; a few other odds and ends, among them a
  money belt.
  “Good. Very good.”
  Shortly after arriving in Berlin, Owain had called
  one of his lawyers in the States and arranged for
  
  125
  Dark Prophecy
  the transfer of several hundred thousand dollars.
  Kendall had played courier and retrieved a portion
  of the funds. Alongside the clothes, she laid out
  the money belt and then placed on the table a
  briefcase, which she opened.
  “Of the money your lawyer wired,” she reported,
  “I took out ten thousand dollars, as you requested.
  Half in American dollars, half in deutsche marks.”
  Owain nodded his approval. All was as he had
  instructed. He had come to expect no less from
  Kendall. “Good,” he said again. “I’ll be ready to
  leave within the hour.”
  He took several of the items from the table and
  returned to his room. First on the agenda was a
  shave and a shower. He quickly disposed of the two
  days’ growth of stubble that greeted him every sun-
  set. Next, he spent longer than he’d intended
  beneath the nearly scalding shower. Owain no
  longer perspired or produced appreciable body odor,
  but he had accumulated the dust of three cities and
  the grime of two bloody duels.
  Afterward, looking in the mirror, he could see
  that most of his wounds had healed. Only light
  scars remained as tell-tale signs of the bloodletting.
  Except for his shoulder, of course. His left collar-
  bone, though covered now with healed-over skin,
  bulged out in a peculiar and painful-looking way.
  It did cause Owain some discomfort, and he tended
  to move stiffly, attempting to favor it. Not for sev-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  126
  eral centuries had he found himself in as desperate
  a situation as in the duel with Benison. At some
  point in the future, Owain would have to have the
  shoulder rebroken and set properly. At least he pos-
  sessed the financial wherewithal to hire an actual
  surgeon and have the job done properly, unlike
  many Kindred who would have been forced to rely
  on some unskilled companion and most likely to
  rebreak the bone several times before getting it
  right. For now, however, Owain would have to
  make do with his deformity.
  He dressed quickly. This was a night for the suit.
  He wrapped the money belt around his waist be-
  neath the shirt and filled the compartments with
  bills. He was not trusting enough of any hotel or
  its employees to leave large sums of money lying
  around. After attaching the pocket watch and
  chain, Owain had second thoughts. For no particu-
  lar reason aside from the fact that he was not a
  strong devotee of carrying a timepiece, he removed
  the watch and attached to the chain instead the
  golden locket. He did not open it again and look
  upon the picture, but merely the feel of the locket,
  as he pressed against his vest pocket, he found
  strangely comforting. There was another item that
  Owain refused to leave behind, even though the
  hotel management had instructions that under no
  circumstances was any member of its staff to enter
  the luxury suite. He took the tattered common-
  
  127
  Dark Prophecy
  place book and placed it in the inner pocket of his
  overcoat, which he pulled on over his suit, then
  pulled back his hair and tied it smartly behind his
  head. Finally, Owain hooked his sword onto the
  leather straps that Kendall had instructed a tailor
  to attach on the inside of the overcoat.
  Poking his head into Kendall’s room on the other
  side of the sitting room, he found her cross-legged
  on the floor, hands upon her knees, eyes closed in
  meditation. She had changed from her banking
  attire into more loose-fitting slacks, and a black,
  sleeveless sweater. Sensing his presence almost im-
  mediately, she joined him in the front room and
  pulled on the jacket she had worn earlier.
  “You found the address?” he asked.
  “Yes.”
  “Very good. Then let us go.”
  It was nearly midnight when they left the hotel.
  In addition to the other acquisitions, Kendall had
  rented a car, a sparkling Mercedes, smaller and
  more modern-looking than Owain would have pre-
  ferred, but it would do. Throughout the half-hour
  drive to Hasenheide Park, Owain remained atten-
  tive. He had heard stories over the past few years
  about the feuding princes of Berlin, and of how
  they guarded their territories jealously, accosting
  any and all visitors. Owain, however, could see no
  sign of being followed. In fact, he saw no sign of
  Kindred activity whatsoever. Except for a few small
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  128
  knots of roving mortals, the streets of Berlin were
  fairly deserted. Not surprising, he thought, if the
  curse swept through here as it did elsewhere. Ventur-
  ing out into public could prove deadly for Cainites
  at present. There was also the possibility that the
  Hasenheide was not a main attraction for the Kin-
  dred of Berlin. Especially at night, the sprawling
  parkland was devoid of mortals. No mortals, no
  excitement, no food.
  The park itself was not Owain’s destination.
  Kendall skirted Hasenheide, keeping to the older
  residential areas that surrounded it. She had recon-
  noitered the route earlier that day. When at last
  they reached their destination, she pulled over and
  parked opposite a quaint inn that lay across the
  street from Hasenheide. The inn, having survived
  the massive destruction visited upon much of the
  city during the second world war, was older than
  the other houses around it and was predominately
  a retreat for German honeymooners of scarce
  means. Despite the lateness of the hour, a light
  burned in the front hallway.
  Owain stepped out of the car and turned back
  to Kendall. “Watch closely. If you see anything sus-
  picious, don’t hesitate to join me.” He patted the
  sword beneath his overcoat. “Understood?”
  “Understood.”
  Owain knew exactly what to do. He had given
  instructions to the couriers bringing his chess
  
  129
  Dark Prophecy
  moves to this very building for decades. Silently,
  he approached the inn. The shadows from the
  edges of the road reached out to conceal his pass-
  ing. As he crossed the street, Owain absently took
  from his vest pocket Albert’s golden locket and
  began to pass it between his fingers, over and un-
  der, over and under, then a quick tug on the chain
  and back to the beginning. He slipped the small
  piece back into his pocket as he climbed the steps
  to the front porch. The front door to the inn was
  opened and closed before even the slightest breeze
  was able to steal inside. The small bell on the door
  did not sound.
  The front hallway was deep and narrow. The de-
  cor was as quaint as the preserved facade of the
  building. The inn obviously catered to those in
  search of a charming getaway. There was little evi-
  dence of luxury or, in Owain’s mind, of taste.
  Several doors leading to other rooms and corridors
  were all closed. A single lamp illuminated the re-
  cessed counter to the left of the foyer, and behind
  the counter sat a gnarled old woman.
  Owain doubted that she heard him approach the
  counter, but she did not jump when he spoke. “You
  are Frau Schneider?”
  She looked up from her book with eyes that were
  nearly hidden by rows of deep wrinkles both above
  and below, so much so that her face seemed to be
  frozen in a perpetual squint. She answered him in
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  130
  careful but understandable English. “You must ring
  the bell.”
  Owain looked at her, puzzled. There was, indeed,
  a bell on the counter, but he saw no need to use it.
  “Frau Schneider,” he said again, “I have a message
  for Herr Schneider. I would speak with him. He
  would do best not to disappoint me.”
  She squinted unblinking at him. She was mor-
  tal, this woman. Her face was like a map of the
  years she had witnessed. A stranger in the middle
  of the night was nothing new to her. She was not
  about to make allowances. “You must ring the bell.”
  For the first time in many nights, Owain smiled.
  He found amusing the idea that this small, hunched
  woman would make demands of a Ventrue elder.
  She obviously had no idea who he was, what he
  was. Either that, or she thought that her age pro-
  tected her. But Owain was ten times older than she.
  He knew how little protection the years afforded.
  He again took from his vest pocket the locket and
  passed it through his fingers. With exaggerated
  motions, he raised his other hand and rang the bell.
  Instantly, the lights went out. Total darkness con-
  sumed Owain.
  Watching. Waiting. Kendall felt like she spent
  nine-tenths of her time being ready to do her job,
  but then again, being ready was her job, as much
  
  131
  Dark Prophecy
  as taking care of a problem when it arose. Kendall
  could see clearly the inn across the street. During
  the day, she had taken a break from banking and
  shopping to scout out the location. And now, here
  she was. Waiting. Watching. Owain had been gone
  for several minutes.
  Owain. She was still getting used to calling him
  that instead of “sir.” That had come out of the
  blue—him asking her to call him by his first
  name—and Kendall was just as happy not to be
  “Ms. Jackson.” Kendall’s boss had acted unpredict-
  ably in the past, but always with a hidden motive,
  it had seemed to Kendall. Recently, however, he
  seemed to be pulled in a lot more directions than
  she had seen before. He didn’t seem to be acting
  as much as re-acting. The trip to Spain with that
  bastard, Miguel, for instance, had been a near-di-
  saster. And now they were in Germany. She
  couldn’t remember Owain even having left Atlanta
  before.
  Of course, Kendall reminded herself, she’d only
  worked for Owain for a few years, and he’d been
  around a lot longer. Anyway, it wasn’t her job to
  advise her employer. Just wait, and watch, and if
  need be, act. For now, the inn looked perfectly nor-
  mal from the outside.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  132
  SEVEN
  He could feel them watching him from the cover
  of the thick underbrush. He could not see them—
  they were not so careless—but their agitation filled
  his nostrils; their threatening growls carried farther
  on the night air than they realized.
  Yet Nicholas was not fearful. He was no longer
  capable of fear. It had fled him not long after hope.
  He rolled among the bushes as if the crackling
  leaves and the pinpricks of the brambles might ease
  the burning within him. The others kept their dis-
  tance. They did not know what to make of him.
  Or else they had seen others stricken by the curse,
  and the watchers merely waited for him to perish.
  If only he could.
  
  133
  Dark Prophecy
  But a merciful death was denied Nicholas.
  For the past few nights he had stumbled north-
  ward, half-blinded as if in a dream, a nightmare
  without end. He saw with one eye the world of
  man, with the other the world of spirit. Neither
  realm was real to him. He could make sense for no
  more than seconds at a time of anything he saw—
  brief, static slices of eternity.
  One moment he traversed the rugged hills of
  Germany, while legions of chittering wraiths, dead
  but deathless children to his Piper of Hamelin,
  streamed after him. Then the shades would take
  on blacker substance as the countryside faded away,
  leaving Nicholas to stumble along—to where, he
  did not know. He knew only that the hunger drove
  him before it, ever denying him rest or solace.
  For nights he had continued northward—how
  many nights, he did not know—until, finally, he
  had staggered headlong into the River Havel. The
  shades had not so much as paused. They’d forged
  ahead, transforming the calm waters into a churn-
  ing cauldron of undeath. When Nicholas crawled
  out onto the western bank, they were with him still.
  If anything, he attracted more of the restless dead
  wherever he went.
  Nicholas had charged blindly into Grunewald
  Forest, wanting desperately to escape the clinging
  hordes of the dead. But one thing Nicholas had
  learned, one thing that he doubted even wizened
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  134
  Blackfeather had realized—Nicholas hadn’t
  stumbled upon a rent in the Veil back at Evans’s
  estate. Nicholas was the rent. He had become a
  disruption between the worlds that drew like moths
  to the flame the blindly gibbering dead. They
  swarmed after him, crawled over him when he fell
  to the ground. He could not be rid of them. And
  throughout the heartland of the Holocaust, they
  were ever-present.
  Thankfully, his vision began to shift from the
  world of Oblivion. Then it was that the burning
  took hold of him again. A world of pain, a world
  of death. Two sides of the same coin.
  Nicholas rolled spasmodically among the foliage,
  his naked body scarred and bleeding. They watched
  him still from the cover of nearby underbrush. Not
  the dead of that world but the predators of this one.
  Let them come, Nicholas thought, Nicholas
  pleaded. They would do me a mercy.
  But they did not come that night. Nicholas was
  alone. Alone with the slavering legions of the dead
  who crawled over him and through him like mag-
  gots upon a rotting carcass.
  Owain jumped to the side and dropped to a de-
  fensive crouch. Just as quickly, his trusted sword
  was in his hand. He did not hear Frau Schneider
  moving for cover, nor did he hear any other move-
  
  135
  Dark Prophecy
  ment. Aside from the ticking of a clock behind the
  counter, Owain felt completely isolated, as if he
  were the only one in the inn—but he knew he
  couldn’t be that lucky. He wondered if there were
  mortals upstairs, if the sounds of an attack would
  alert them, but that concern was very much sec-
  ondary to survival.
  After a few brief seconds of blindness, Owain’s
  eyes began to adjust to the darkness. In a moment,
  he would be able to see as well as if there were light.
  But just then, a light came back on, and then off
  again. On and off. On and off it blinked rapidly,
  playing havoc with Owain’s potent night vision.
  The light was different from the usual illumination
  in the hall. Rather than the warm glow of the foyer
  lamp, this blinking light was tinted cold blue.
  Owain quickly threw his back against the wall.
  His eyes darted from point to point as he scanned
  the room around him. The strange, bluish light—
  he couldn’t tell where it was coming from—still
  flashed, but not at regular intervals. The periods
  of light and dark followed one another in rapid suc-
  cession, but the length of each flash and of the
  space between them was seemingly random. The
  difference in the intervals was only fractions of a
  second but was enough to keep Owain’s vision from
  adjusting as much as it could have with consistent
  timing. The room about Owain took on the dis-
  concerting and jerky look of an old silent
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  136
  film—and Owain found himself playing a part.
  Suddenly, there was a man standing before
  Owain, only feet away. But with the next flash of
  the light, Owain was again alone. A moment later,
  the stranger was back but several feet from where
  he had stood a second before.
  Owain held his sword before him, not yet attack-
  ing, but trying to assure that anyone who
  approached him too quickly would be impaled.
  But the strange figure came no closer. One mo-
  ment it was straight ahead. A few flashes later it
  was off to the left. Then on the other side of the
  narrow hall. Then back before Owain again.
  Another change in his surroundings caught
  Owain’s wary eye. The four doors that he could see
  around the hall were all open now, and watching
  him from the darkness beyond the foyer were many
  pairs of eyes. Somehow, the flashes of light failed
  to illuminate beyond the main hallway. All he
  could see beyond the room were the eyes, and they
  changed positions as frequently and unpredictably
  as the stranger before Owain.
  Satisfied that, for the moment at least, he was
  not being attacked, Owain attempted to study the
  shifting stranger more closely. He was tall but
  hunched over, and the glimpses Owain caught of
  his face showed it to be terribly disfigured by warts
  or growths of some sort. Perhaps it was an effect of
  the flashing light, but Owain could not tell for cer-
  
  137
  Dark Prophecy
  tain that the stranger was looking at him. The eyes
  seemed to shimmy slightly, or maybe they were
  misaligned. The stranger was never visible long
  enough at once for Owain to be sure of much of
  anything.
  “Who are you?” Owain called out, his sword still
  poised.
  The stranger may have grinned, but Owain was
  not certain. The eyes hovered and shifted positions
  in the background. How many creatures inhabited
  that darkness—five, ten, more?—Owain could not
  ascertain. Attempts to count were futile.
  “I’m here for Herr Schneider,” said Owain. “To
  talk with him.”
  At once, the flashing lights stopped. Darkness
  returned. Owain braced himself, expecting attack
  during the seconds his eyes needed to adjust. But
  no attack came. Neither were the eyes or the
  stranger visible any longer. No matter what Owain’s
  eyes revealed or failed to reveal, however, he could
  feel the presence of the others.
  “Show yourself,” he commanded but to no avail.
  “You would speak with me,” said a voice that
  Owain could not pinpoint. “I would do best not to
  disappoint you.”
  Owain forced a laugh. His words of moments
  before smacked of foolish bravado, but they seemed
  to have served their purpose. “I would face Herr
  Schneider.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  138
  “You would not,” the voice replied. Owain
  thought he heard claws scuttling in the darkness
  beyond the doorways, or perhaps it was the sound
  of chittery laughter.
  Owain tried to follow the sound of the voice, but
  it seemed to come from nowhere in particular.
  Owain had played this trick upon the Sabbat neo-
  nates in Toledo, but the stranger played it more
  deftly than Owain could. He would not see this
  creature unless the stranger wished to be seen. Rec-
  ognizing his handicap, Owain put away his sword,
  fastening it beneath his overcoat.
  “You trust us?” the voice asked, puzzled or maybe
  only amused.
  “I trust that I offer you no harm,” said Owain,
  “and so you have no reason to harm me.”
  “We will see,” said the disembodied voice.
  Owain marveled at the lack of success he was
  having tracking the voice. He was in the presence
  of a master. Free of his weapon, Owain slid his hand
  down the dangling chain to the locket. “You are
  Herr Schneider?”
  “There is no Herr Schneider,” said the voice.
  Of course there is no real Herr Schneider, Owain
  thought. What does this creature take me for, a fool?
  So far, the stranger had deflected every statement.
  Perhaps, Owain decided, a more direct tact would
  yield more substantive answers. “I am Owain
  Evans, also known as Owain ap Ieuan. You are the
  
  139
  Dark Prophecy
  one who, in the name of Herr Schneider, received
  my chess orders?”
  A long pause followed. Owain could feel all those
  eyes watching him from the darkness even if he
  could not see them. His eyes were well adjusted to
  the dark now, but still he could not see beyond the
  shadowy doorways that lined the foyer. Those he
  faced were skilled at deceiving the eyes of even one
  of Owain’s age, whose eyes were trained over the
  centuries in the ways of darkness. Nosferatu, Owain
  suspected. Who else could hide so easily from him?
  “Why do you come to Berlin?” the voice asked
  at last.
  The change of subject was not lost upon Owain.
  “To answer these questions.”
  “Then answer them.” More chittery laughter
  from the shadows.
  “To find answers to my questions,” Owain chose
  his words more carefully. He passed the locket along
  through his fingers, back and forth.
  “Do you seek answers, or do you seek ven-
  geance?”
  The question surprised Owain. He was also sur-
  prised to find that he could not answer it. Back in
  Atlanta, his desire for vengeance, had been stoked
  to a fever pitch. His hatred had been his sustenance
  against Kline, against Benison. But since the com-
  bats, his fire had drained away, much the way it
  had so slowly over the preceding centuries. Hatred
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  140
  could sustain him for only so long.
  Then he had been driven by necessity—to flee
  Benison, to flee Atlanta, to secure shelter in Berlin.
  Having escaped immediate danger, he had pro-
  ceeded with his current course of action
  because…because it was all that was available to
  him. He could do nothing, which meant subjecting
  himself to the increasingly frequent visions, or he
  could seek answers to the mysteries that dogged him.
  But why seek the answers if not for vengeance?
  Knowledge or vengeance? Owain could not dis-
  tinguish the two any longer. One led inescapably
  to the other. He could not separate them.
  “I do not know,” he said at last.
  Owain restrained a start as before him suddenly
  stood, where a moment before there had been no
  one, the stranger. Owain’s guess of Nosferatu rang
  true. Now that the stranger stood revealed in the
  shadows of the room, the odor of sewer refuse,
  which until then had been masked, became appar-
  ent. The warts that Owain had glimpsed were
  sprinkled among crusty boils and lesions that
  seeped pus onto the stranger’s ragged clothes. His
  left arm hung limp at his side.
  The Nosferatu limped toward Owain. Owain
  thought that perhaps he preferred seeing the crea-
  ture only in the limited glimpses of the flashing
  light, or not at all. But slowly the stranger ap-
  proached. Owain restrained the impulse to reach
  
  141
  Dark Prophecy
  for his sword, to ward off this monstrosity. The
  Ventrue suspected that the stranger’s brethren were
  not far away, that they would be upon Owain in
  seconds, like so many rats upon a carcass, were he
  to threaten their representative.
  The Nosferatu raised a misshapen hand to
  Owain. Closer. Closer.
  If it touches my sword, Owain thought, I will leave
  the monster’s head lying at its feet.
  But the stranger reached instead for Owain’s left
  hand, for the locket that he held. The thick, clumsy
  fingers touched Owain’s own, rested atop the locket.
  “I am Ellison,” said the Nosferatu. “You search
  for answers of a lost love.”
  Owain blinked, uncomprehending. He could not
  be hearing what he thought he was. A hint of ten-
  derness in the raspy voice of this monster? Concern
  from this creature which, until now, had only frus-
  trated Owain with word games?
  Owain jerked back his hand, stuffed the locket
  back into his pocket. Ellison, too, pulled back his
  hand as if bitten.
  The darkness of the back rooms suddenly shot
  forward to within a few feet of Ellison. Many sets
  of eyes were again visible. An ominous mixture of
  growling and hissing filled the room.
  Owain slowly raised his hands to show he meant
  no harm. Ellison seemed unconvinced. He eased
  back a step from Owain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  142
  “It would be best that you left this city,” said the
  Nosferatu, all hint of compassion gone from his
  voice, replaced instead by the earlier, mocking
  tone. “You have presented yourself to neither
  prince. Such is the way of a spy, and they see spies
  in every shadow.”
  Owain’s throat tightened in near-panic. The
  Nosferatu seemingly had been willing to help him
  but was offended somehow. This avenue could not
  turn out to be a dead end. Owain had nowhere else
  to turn. The messages had come to this inn. The
  Nosferatu’s own question, answers or vengeance?,
  proved that he knew there was something done to
  Owain for which he might seek vengeance. Owain
  could not leave empty-handed.
  “You must tell me of the letters,” he said.
  The growling and hissing that surrounded Ellison
  grew louder. “You must go.”
  The specter of failure loomed more imminent.
  Owain bristled at the thought of being summarily
  dismissed by a sewer-dwelling caricature of human-
  ity, yet there appeared little hope of forcing answers
  from Ellison and however many others of his kind
  were with him.
  You must go. The words flooded Owain’s heart
  with despair. “But where?” he asked himself, not
  quite realizing that he had spoken the question
  aloud.
  A second time, Ellison stepped close to Owain.
  
  143
  Dark Prophecy
  Always cautious were the Nosferatu’s movements,
  always wary. Slowly, he raised his good hand. He
  touched his own chest, took hold of something be-
  neath his filthy rags. Then, with what Owain could
  only interpret as timidity or perhaps reverence,
  Ellison reached over and gently touched Owain’s
  side, his vest pocket where the locket rested.
  “You must go,” Ellison said again, but then he
  added in a whisper, “to England, to Glastonbury.”
  The Nosferatu gently patted Owain’s pocket a sec-
  ond time. And then was gone.
  Owain faced an empty room. The doors that had
  been open, forming a gallery of eyes, were now
  closed. Ellison, his mysterious companions, Frau
  Schneider—all were gone. Owain stood alone. He
  took the golden locket from his pocket. Relieved
  by its touch, he clutched it in his hand.
  England. Glastonbury.
  Owain wondered if he could trust the Nosferatu.
  Ellison could have disappeared whenever he’d
  liked. There was no reason to distract Owain, to
  offer him diversionary information. No obvious rea-
  son, at any rate. The workings of the Nosferatu
  mind were nearly as alien to Owain as those of the
  Malkavian.
  Owain glanced around the darkened foyer. What
  had become of Frau Schneider? Had she disap-
  peared with the Nosferatu? Had she been one of
  them, her true nature hidden from Owain? He al-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  144
  most wished that he would see her again—I’ll ring
  her damned bell—but to no avail.
  Owain slipped from the inn as silently as he had
  entered, but he felt far less impressed with his own
  mastery of stealth and cunning.
  Ellison left without conversing with the lesser
  Nosferatu who had accompanied him to the inn.
  He was too shaken by what he had seen. So shaken,
  in fact, that he had offered information without
  extracting any price whatsoever in return. Cer-
  tainly the slip was not lost upon his clansmen.
  Would one of them take his failing as a sign of
  weakness and challenge him? He doubted so. And
  regardless, there was not a one of them he feared.
  Still, it had been a careless error.
  But the locket…
  He climbed downward, more deeply beneath the
  city, the entire time clutching the locket that hung
  from a string around his neck. The brash Ventrue
  possessed just such a locket. Ellison had been
  shocked to see it, had been doubly shocked that
  the foreigner would flaunt it so. I should not have
  been surprised, Ellison chastised himself. Isabella
  never promised that she would make no others. Why
  would I think that?
  A more disturbing fear struck him as he contin-
  ued to descend. Did any of the others notice? he
  
  145
  Dark Prophecy
  wondered. What if they guess at my secret, learn of
  my treasure? The thought was too awful to contem-
  plate. He would listen carefully in the coming
  nights, and if he heard from his brethren the slight-
  est rumor, he would strike quickly and without
  mercy. I will rid Berlin of every other Nosferatu be-
  fore I sacrifice my treasure!
  Ellison came to a dead end in the tunnel. He
  knelt in the half-foot of squalid liquid that lined
  the passage and pulled aside a stone from the wall,
  then, after replacing the stone, crawled on, chin-
  deep in the refuse and excrement.
  But what of the Ventrue? Did he pose a threat?
  Ellison and the others could, most likely, have de-
  stroyed the stranger. Then he would have posed no
  threat. But with open confrontation, Ellison re-
  minded himself, battle can always turn against you.
  He thanked his good fortune that neither of his
  princes seemed destined to learn that particular les-
  son. He preferred that they struggle against one
  another, that each desperately required the services
  of the Nosferatu.
  The crawlspace opened into a small, cozy lair,
  lined with rat fur and warm mud. No, Ellison de-
  cided, better to have sent the Ventrue on, to have him
  gone from my city. Isabella would deal with him as
  she saw fit. The Ventrue carried one of the lock-
  ets. He had obviously dealt with her before.
  Convinced that he had decided correctly, Ellison
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  146
  curled into a ball in the narrowest corner of the
  tiny chamber. Above him were tons upon tons of
  earth and rock. Not even one of his brethren would
  track him here. As he held his locket to his chest,
  he felt himself drawn once again into the presence
  of his beloved Melitta. She rested safely still, and
  one day soon she would return to him.
  The scrabbling sounds from within the large box
  were louder and more constant now. Kli Kodesh
  sat motionless. He had not moved, had not blinked,
  in hours. The motes of dust that drifted through
  the air in the remote farmhouse settled onto his
  statue-like form.
  The moment of victory was rapidly approaching,
  the long-awaited hour of release. Never could he
  remember his breast being so filled with savored
  anticipation. He hated for the feeling to pass. He
  hoarded the seconds, plucked each one from the
  future and turned it over in his hand for as long as
  he could before allowing it to proceed into the past.
  Always before, time had refused to hurry, refused
  to ease the boredom that was Kli Kodesh’s constant
  companion. Now, neither would time slow to ex-
  tend his pleasure.
  After so many years, the strands of prophecy were
  drawing together, entwining with one another so
  that the tapestry of time might be made whole. Kli
  
  147
  Dark Prophecy
  Kodesh had followed the strands with the skill of
  a master weaver—skill born of centuries of obser-
  vation and contemplation. He had traced the
  strands from the City of Angels and descended into
  vaults beneath the City of the Adversary to retrieve
  the coffin-sized box which now rested before him.
  He had played Demeter to the imprisoned
  Persephone so that the seasons might progress, so
  that history could be fulfilled.
  Slowly, reluctantly, Kli Kodesh stood. From
  within the box wafted the sounds of futile struggle
  that he had ignored since leaving the Accursed
  City. But he could see that the appointed time was
  at hand.
  And lo, the earth shall open her womb and the Beast
  shall crawl forth seeking the blood to slake its thirst.
  The metal bands that had held the box closed
  lay already broken on the floor. Kli Kodesh reached
  out, and with the flick of one finger, the wooden
  lid fell away. Inside the confines of the box lay a
  Cainite whom Kli Kodesh had not set eyes upon
  for hundreds of years, not since the night that
  Montrovant, slave to his obsessive quest, had been
  rendered a slave to metal and wood as well.
  Montrovant squinted against the forgotten
  brightness of light. Though the crate was open, he
  still lay bound within bands similar to those that
  Kli Kodesh had removed from the exterior of the
  box. Montrovant was smaller than Kli Kodesh re-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  148
  membered, hunched over, his skin drawn and pale
  from lack of blood. He struggled against the metal
  bands, but he lacked any strength to effect his es-
  cape.
  Kli Kodesh raised his arms above his head. “Re-
  turn to the surface world, lovely Persephone,” he
  intoned in lofty fashion, yet Montrovant only
  struggled more violently against his bonds. Kli
  Kodesh frowned, but then remembered that
  Montrovant could not see the part he was to play
  in this, the eschatological drama. Montrovant al-
  ways had been rather short-sighted. Thus his
  current predicament.
  Kli Kodesh placed a finger over his own lips.
  “Hush, hush,” he said as if cooing to a restless in-
  fant, but the gesture had no more calming effect
  on Montrovant than had the previous statement.
  Again, Kli Kodesh frowned. He raised a thumb and
  finger to scratch the hair of his chin. In the City
  of the Sword, he had tempted the prophecy and
  spoken briefly with the Kinslayer, but otherwise,
  many years had intervened since he had last inter-
  acted with any living or undead. The social
  niceties, so fickle from era to era, were foggy memo-
  ries.
  “The time has come for your quest to continue,”
  said Kli Kodesh. Still, Montrovant tossed his head
  feebly from side to side. His eyes rolled up into his
  head. “Hmph,” Kli Kodesh snorted. Growing weary
  
  149
  Dark Prophecy
  of unrequited conversation, he reached for the large
  pot that he had placed beside the crate. “Perhaps
  this first.” He easily lifted the pot above
  Montrovant and then tipped it just enough that a
  trickle of blood began to run onto Montrovant’s
  face.
  The captive vampire blinked as the blood splat-
  tered on his face but then, almost instantly, opened
  his mouth. Soon he began snapping at the thin
  stream of blood. Eventually, however, he lay qui-
  etly and drank. A spasm of ecstasy periodically
  passed through his body.
  Kli Kodesh relished his role as nursemaid. He
  continued the steady stream of blood from the pot.
  The farmer and his wife had been so cooperative.
  And the children—he mustn’t forget the children.
  Or perhaps Kli Kodesh had come, over the years,
  not to notice the protestations of mortals. As with
  a fish drawn from the Sea of Galilee, there was a
  certain amount of flopping about, but never much
  of a struggle.
  At last, Montrovant lay quietly exhausted, his
  body only beginning to recover from over six hun-
  dred years of torpor. Almost as an afterthought, Kli
  Kodesh snapped the last metal bonds. He had noth-
  ing to fear from Montrovant. There was nothing
  even one as old as the recent captive could do to
  harm Kli Kodesh.
  “The time has come for your quest to continue,”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  150
  said Kli Kodesh a second time. “Listen carefully,
  and I will tell you of the Kinslayer and of the relic
  you seek.”
  
  151
  Dark Prophecy
  EIGHT
  The interdependent, interlocked, incestuous
  world of international finance was truly a blessing.
  With a few phone calls out and a few favors called
  in, Owain was able to arrange transport for him-
  self and Kendall from Germany to England. He did
  not wish to push his luck with the Giovanni. Cer-
  tainly by now Prince Benison had raised a hue and
  cry and offered a bounty for Owain’s head. Owain
  did not deceive himself into thinking that Lorenzo,
  even if the ghoul proved cooperative, held enough
  sway within his family to protect Owain. Instead,
  Kendall packed Owain’s meager possessions, and
  the two drove through the night to Hamburg.
  There at the waterfront, they located La Sirène,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  152
  a merchant ship of questionable seaworthiness, sail-
  ing under a Dutch flag, commanded by an
  inebriated French captain. Everything about the
  man irritated Owain—his loud, disingenuous
  laugh; the odor of sweat, salt, and cheap whiskey
  that clung to him like a second shadow; the too-
  obvious leer he directed at Kendall. But the small
  boat was available to Owain without delay. Allow-
  ances had to be made.
  Owain’s brusque, compelling voice, utilizing the
  dark powers he had mastered over the centuries,
  penetrated the captain’s fog of alcohol and visited
  upon him a rather abrupt sobriety. Owain gave or-
  ders that, unless some emergency arose, he and his
  assistant were not to be disturbed until the ship
  reached the southern coast of England past
  Bournemouth.
  The captain demurely acknowledged his instruc-
  tions and then showed Owain and Kendall below
  to their cabin—more accurately described, Owain
  thought, as a large closet. But there was enough
  room for both him and Kendall to stretch out, and,
  again, allowances had to be made.
  The following days and nights blended one into
  the next without clear division, a hellish montage
  of motion, noise, and heat. Apparently the
  cramped cabin was adjacent to the ship’s engine
  room, for as soon as the small vessel was under way,
  its swaying and bucking on choppy seas was accom-
  
  153
  Dark Prophecy
  panied by the sounds of mechanical cacophony, the
  roar and ominous rattling of strained machinery.
  More noticeable than the pungent odor of diesel
  fuel or the continuous din, however, was the sharp
  jump in temperature. At first the wall connecting
  to the engine room, then the floor, grew hot to the
  touch. Within half an hour of departure, the heat
  generated by the clamoring engine pervaded ev-
  ery inch of the cramped cabin.
  Owain noted the various unpleasantries without
  comment, without visible reaction of any sort. The
  heat and the noise were to him a wall, a surreal
  buffer against the harsh realities of the outside
  world, which had intruded upon his settled unlife
  in the past months with such a vengeance. He had
  no need for fresh air and no desire to stroll about
  on deck and take in the view. There was nothing
  and no one Owain wished to see, and the fewer
  sailors who saw him the better. So he and Kendall
  kept to themselves. They remained within the
  rocking compartment surrounded by the heat and
  dissonant whine of machinery.
  For much of the journey, Owain passed in and
  out of fitful slumber. There was still much healing
  for his body to accomplish as he regained his
  strength. He fed again from Kendall and could tell
  that she was still weak. Feeding from her so often
  was dangerous—for Kendall because of the physi-
  cal threat, for Owain because it robbed him of the
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  154
  services of a skilled and vigorous retainer—but des-
  perate measures were in order, and once Owain was
  fully recovered, he could easily restore her to the
  height of her endurance.
  Owain awoke frequently, during daylight hours
  as well as night, driven from rest by the ferocity of
  his visions. Often the distinction was subtle and
  without meaning—waking or dreaming? Was his
  hair, plastered to his face and neck, wet from the
  moisture of the thick mist blanketing the hill where
  the ominous tree awaited or from the condensa-
  tion that coated every surface in the steamy cabin?
  Did the hillside rumble beneath his feet, or had the
  ship passed into rougher water? Was the taste at
  his lips his own blood as the tree crushed the life
  out of him or the salty presence of the North Sea?
  One world was as oppressive as the other, but
  while the domain of flesh and blood made no de-
  mands of Owain, his visions were peopled by those
  who held him responsible for acts known and un-
  known.
  “Hoard the nights that have fallen unto you.” The
  old man fairly spat the words at Owain. “I, Joseph
  the Lesser, tell you, it avails you nothing.”
  Joseph. The name tugged at Owain’s memory. Jo-
  seph…
  But the old man, enraged, frothy saliva catching
  in his thick beard, raised his staff above Owain.
  The scene on the hillside whirled before Owain.
  
  155
  Dark Prophecy
  Joseph…the staff…the staff that had shifted and
  changed, transformed before Owain’s eyes into the
  infernal hawthorn. Always grasping, clutching,
  crushing Owain’s bones, piercing his flesh to drink
  of his unholy blood. Owain could not free himself,
  could not move. His struggles availed him noth-
  ing.
  Before Joseph could hurl more invective at
  Owain, however, before the hawthorn could plunge
  like a diablerist’s stake into Owain’s heart, the ever-
  present mist rolled across the hillside. Gone was
  the shouting; gone was the old man, the tree. The
  fog obscured from Owain all sight, all sound, all
  sensation save the vague impression of motion—
  swirling mist, rolling sea…
  The passage of time also grew vague, stretching
  out into the blanketing mist until the pause be-
  tween two beats of a heart could be mere seconds
  or perhaps decades of silence and stagnation. It was
  the heartbeat, his own heartbeat, that drove Owain
  onward, for the mist did part, and he found him-
  self still upon the hillside—or perhaps again upon
  the hillside, the same hillside, yet worlds apart from
  that which he had last experienced.
  The hawthorn stood serenely, innocently, not
  writhing and twisting, not stained by blood, and
  there beside it stood Angharad, her white gown
  shimmering against the darkness. It may have been
  the tears welling up in Owain’s eyes that lent the
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  156
  radiance to her raiment. He stumbled forward half-
  blinded, full of wonder at the miracle of his
  furiously pounding heart, his mortal heart. And
  there, not a dozen yards away, awaited his only love.
  His feet moved agonizingly slowly. They could
  not keep pace with the feverish anticipation that
  pulsed with mortal blood through his body. Cen-
  turies of stale death had served merely to mask, not
  to destroy, his desire. With each ponderous step,
  he moved closer, never allowing his gaze to wan-
  der from her for fear that she might again be stolen
  away.
  Finally, Owain fell to his knees before her. He
  raised her hands to his lips, and his tears fell upon
  her pale skin. He let the touch of the woman he’d
  abandoned hope of ever seeing again wash over
  him. His eyes closed against the streaming tears,
  Owain reached upward with tremulous hand,
  slowly, until his fingers came to rest on Angharad’s
  breast. Her skin was smooth beneath the gossamer
  fabric of her gown. A shudder ran through her body
  at his touch, and she called his name with the pain
  of regret. “Owain…”
  He kissed the curve of her belly and held her
  tightly. Her knees buckled, but he supported her,
  kept her upright, but when Owain looked up, he
  saw that it was not a lover’s swoon that she suf-
  fered.
  Protruding from Angharad’s chest was a gilded
  
  157
  Dark Prophecy
  dagger, and grasping the hilt was Owain’s own
  hand.
  “Owain…” she called him again. But then
  Owain saw that her eyes were darker than the
  blackest stormclouds, and her pain transformed to
  anger. “Kinslayer,” she named him.
  And then Owain was falling away from her,
  down the hillside, into the consuming mist. He
  tried to protest, to proclaim his innocence, but his
  hands were covered with blood. It ran down his
  wrists and forearms, soaked into the cloth of his
  shirt. Angharad was far in the distance now, swal-
  lowed as was Owain by the mist. He thought he
  could still see her, but perhaps he was merely see-
  ing what he wanted to see. There was only the mist,
  but Owain, helpless and alone, felt no despair at
  his renewed loss. He was enveloped by something
  much worse—the hollowness that long ago had
  told him he would never see her again, the empti-
  ness that was the death of hope.
  For some time—minutes? hours?—there was only
  emptiness, the void and the swirling mist. Desire,
  longing, anticipation, fulfillment, frustration—all
  were miles away, years long past, and in their place,
  nothing. Owain emerged only slowly from the fog.
  He found himself in what at first seemed to be a
  new place—the stuffy, cramped cabin. He felt the
  stringy grain of the coiled rope beneath him, the
  rough texture of the canvas sacks he leaned against.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  158
  The engine still strained and coughed in the next
  room, and the acrid smell of diesel permeated ev-
  ery inch of Owain’s surroundings, clung to his
  clothes and body.
  Several feet from Owain sat Kendall, eyes closed
  in meditation, legs folded beneath her. Stripped to
  her T-shirt, she was nonetheless covered with
  sweat. As Owain looked at her, faint vestiges of
  feeling tugged at him from the other side of the
  mist. He remembered the beating of his heart, the
  mortal tears, and for a moment, he looked at her
  as a mortal man might have. Grimy and dishev-
  eled, she was still an image of sculptured beauty.
  Her arms and legs were visibly muscled, the expres-
  sion on her face calm, quiet, contemplative. Her
  shirt, nearly saturated with moisture, clung to her
  shoulders, her back, her chest.
  Owain felt himself reaching out to touch her, to
  place his fingers upon her warm, moist skin, but as
  he did so, he caught sight of his own hand, his un-
  naturally pale fingers, blue veins visible near the
  surface. His skin, he knew, was dry despite the hu-
  midity, and cold to the touch. He could will blood
  to the limb if he wished. The flesh would grow
  ruddy and warm, yet it would remain merely an il-
  lusion of life. The tissue, his hand, would remain
  as lifeless as ever it had been for the past centu-
  ries. Owain himself would remain a mockery of the
  living, no more than a facade of humanity.
  
  159
  Dark Prophecy
  He raised his hand to his face. Cold, dead fin-
  gers met equally lifeless flesh. He felt the stubble
  along his jaw—a further mockery of life. The whis-
  kers would never grow longer. If he shaved them
  away, they would reappear the next night in iden-
  tical fashion. Owain absently traced the line of his
  nose, remembering how, as a mortal, he had rev-
  eled in the fresh scents of spring, the heady perfume
  of a beautiful woman. Now he could smell blood
  running through the veins of a mortal yards away,
  but most other odors, both pleasant and foul, were
  generally wan and listless if they managed to catch
  his notice at all. His fingers touched the lips that,
  long ago, had tasted the kisses of young women but
  now served only as a gateway for fresh blood. The
  visions had allowed him a glimpse of his lost hu-
  manity, had afforded him the briefest memories of
  mortal passions, then had snatched them away. For
  as the mist faded, so too did the emotions they en-
  gendered. Owain might know anger. He might
  kindle the hatred and disgust that had always been
  his lot, but of more tender feelings he was as empty
  as he had ever been, and more painfully aware of
  his lacking.
  Kendall, silent, still, sat before Owain. She was
  his ghoul, yes. His unholy blood ran through her
  veins. But the spark of life still flamed within her.
  She was still human, and in that way, Owain real-
  ized, she was his better. Her life was superior to the
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  160
  hollow charade that was his existence. She can feel
  what I hardly remember.
  In that instant, as he gazed upon her beautiful,
  human form, Owain saw the trap he was leading
  her into, the familiar damnation that awaited her.
  He had never stated that he would one night fully
  Embrace Kendall; there existed between them no
  inherent agreement to that end. Yet there was,
  Owain realized, an unspoken assumption on both
  their parts, the expectation that loyal servitude
  would eventually be rewarded, though whether the
  term of that servitude might be years, decades, or
  centuries had never been made explicit.
  Reward, thought Owain, the irony only too ap-
  parent to him. Is that truly how she thinks of it? This
  curse that, had I but the courage to face the morning
  sun, I would gladly end? He recognized, too, the dis-
  ingenuous nature of his own question. Although
  Owain had never spoken to Kendall of her desires
  or motivations, he could not feign ignorance of that
  which compelled her. The beacon of seeming im-
  mortality attracted humans more assuredly than
  flies to a three-day rotting corpse.
  And it most certainly was a trap he had laid for
  her, that he had laid for all the mortals who had
  served him over the centuries, for Owain needed
  them desperately. The particular faces might be
  insignificant, but he unquestionably needed the
  link that his servant ghouls provided him to the
  
  161
  Dark Prophecy
  modern world, the world of constant change to
  which Owain had long since ceased truly to be-
  long. One after another, he had used the mortals,
  and one after another each had perished. Whether
  death had come at the hands of some enemy of
  Owain’s, as with Gwilym captured by the Inquisi-
  tion, or at the hands of Owain himself, tired of
  ineptitude or presumption, as with Randal, death
  had always come. And so, eventually, death would
  come for Kendall.
  Owain watched her intently. Even in such in-
  hospitable environs, an air of serenity clung to her,
  surrounded her as completely as the veil of hatred
  and loss surrounded Owain. What peace is it that she
  finds in meditation? he wondered. What release? Does
  she bide her time waiting for her “reward?”
  If that were the case, she would be, Owain knew,
  sorely disappointed. He had indeed taken many a
  ghoul over the centuries, but never had he ex-
  tended the curse of the Dark Father, never had he
  bestowed that reward. Nor would he.
  Shutting his eyes against the sight of her, Owain
  turned away from Kendall, aware that he was the
  worst type of charlatan. He extracted her service,
  her loyalty, tacitly dangling before her the prospect
  of vulgar immortality, knowing full well that he
  would never allow that to pass. And more than just
  her service, Owain extracted her very soul, for in
  partaking of the unholy blood, there was a price
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  162
  to be paid to the vengeful God who, after all, had
  set the curse in motion. Kendall would perish in
  service to Owain, or perhaps she would outlive her
  usefulness, and he would withhold from her the
  transformative vitae, which by that time would
  have extended her existence long beyond her natu-
  ral time. She would wither. She would die.
  No. Owain opened his eyes. It will not be so. Owain
  would save Kendall from her predetermined fate—
  not, he told himself, because she deserved any
  dispensation. For what mortal was truly innocent?
  And not as an attempt to lessen the stain of corrup-
  tion upon his own black soul. Instead, by saving her,
  Owain would manage to do on behalf of another
  what he had failed to accomplish in centuries of
  unlife—evade the judgement of the wrathful Deity
  who allowed, who had caused, Owain’s lingering,
  nightly damnation. Owain would release Kendall
  from service to him. He would free her before it was
  too late for her to lead the rest of her mortal life,
  before her time, like his, had passed.
  They watched Nicholas for several more nights
  but came no closer. Ever so often, he would catch
  a glimpse of glaring eyes, and the snarling wafted
  in and out of his awareness. They kept him under
  constant scrutiny, and at times Nicholas heard the
  voices of their minds.
  
  163
  Dark Prophecy
  Outsider. Intruder. Our forest. Outsider.
  Or were those the voices from the other side of
  the Veil? He couldn’t always be sure. One world
  wrapped around the other, fused, shifted, disap-
  peared only to emerge again.
  The watchers, for the most part, stayed out of
  sight. Less hesitant were the legions of restless dead.
  They tromped carelessly through the forest and
  brought Grunewald to life with scrabbling, erratic
  motion, like the flight of hundreds and thousands
  of black leaves upon the breeze. Nicholas lay ex-
  hausted as the shades crawled atop him. They
  slithered past one another, jostled one another
  aside, to come close to him, to touch him. They
  lifted his limp arm and cackled with glee as it fell
  again to the earth, ten times, twenty times. They
  suckled and slavered at the cuts and scrapes upon
  his body. The more daring forced open his mouth,
  pressed their amorphous corpora down his throat
  in search of that which drew them.
  Nicholas balanced precariously between the
  world of the watchers and the world of the wraiths.
  During the day, he found the slightest release as
  his shade-bloated body sank into the earth. For a
  few, far too brief hours, he was swallowed by the
  silence of the grave, but then when he emerged af-
  ter sunset, it all began again, and every night more
  of the legions of the restless dead found their way
  to him.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  164
  They came in awkward, obscene gaggles of pitch
  black. Unused to the hint of corporeal form that
  contained them, they stumbled over one another,
  lashed out at one another in their frustration to
  touch Nicholas. They climbed over one another,
  scraping and clawing mercilessly in pursuit of their
  goal. Here, a wraith was swallowed beneath the ris-
  ing tide of his brethren; there, another took
  umbrage at the aggressive advance of a rival and
  ripped an arm-like appendage from the offender,
  who howled and jabbered in pain. A pack of
  shades, like dogs beneath the butcher’s table,
  pounced upon the discarded limb.
  All the while, Nicholas lay helpless, poked and
  prodded, overwhelmed by the immensity of the
  shadow brood that engulfed him. The Rent was
  growing ever-larger, ever-brighter, around him. Less
  and less frequently did he see the trees of
  Grunewald; seldom did he hear the rush of the
  river. These sights and sounds were distant and
  vague, one-dimensional remnants of a world he was
  being pulled away from. They were subsumed by
  the hungering, gibbering dead.
  Nicholas fought off the weight of the dead and
  climbed to his feet. Squirming shades tried to latch
  onto him, to hook their claws into him. A few
  managed to hold their places. The rest slid down
  his leg and immediately began to scramble up
  again. Nicholas stood atop a precipice. Behind him
  
  165
  Dark Prophecy
  lay the increasingly insubstantial world of the body.
  Before him gaped a huge chasm, the bottom and
  the far side obscured by the light flooding through
  the Rent. The tear in the Veil was growing. It
  pressed toward the edges of the chasm, reached for
  Nicholas, and just as the restless dead in the physi-
  cal world clamored after him, the shades streamed
  through the Veil. Their forms passing through the
  Rent were packed as thickly as a plague of locusts,
  and the brilliant, blinding light appeared to flicker.
  Nicholas was drawn to the light. It called to him,
  found reflection within his soul.
  Why are you still here?
  Countless hands caressed Nicholas’s bare chest,
  sifted through his hair. They urged him forward,
  toward the consuming light.
  Why are you still here?
  The light beckoned. The shades smelled blood,
  real blood, as Nicholas leaned over the edge of the
  cliff. But the voice…it came from another
  source…from behind him.
  Leave us now or die.
  The blinding light was a part of Nicholas. It not
  only washed over him but emanated from within
  him as well. He could not for long keep it at bay.
  But there was a voice, a challenge from…from that
  other world.
  Slowly, Nicholas turned away from the chasm.
  A thousand furious shades bayed at him like wolves
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  166
  at the moon, but he did not pause, and as he
  turned, the light dimmed. The otherworld receded.
  The din of the shades spiraled away, water down a
  drain. The shades, too, were sucked back to the
  otherworld. They dug in their claws and teeth and
  voiced piteous wails, but faster and faster they dis-
  appeared, until finally Nicholas stood firmly amidst
  the world of the flesh, face to face with another of
  his kind.
  “Leave us now or die,” said the other Cainite.
  Nicholas, not yet fully comprehending the words,
  stared blankly at the stranger. Gangrel. Through the
  echoes of the otherworld, Nicholas could feel the
  connection of blood. He could feel the blood flow-
  ing through this Gangrel, back through his sire and
  his sire’s sire and his before him, back through the
  eons to a common source. Nicholas was suddenly
  growing warm. He tried to tear at his clothes but
  realized they were long since gone. The light was
  rising within him again, the fire of ages. He heard,
  as if from a great distance, the screeching of the
  shades.
  Nicholas’s attention shifted back to this world,
  to the stranger standing before him—a wild-haired
  man with bloodlust in his eyes. Nicholas raised a
  finger to the air and, from their common source,
  traced the stranger’s blood—thrice-great grandsire,
  sire’s grandsire, sire…. Nicholas concluded his ci-
  pher with a name upon his lips. “Lutz.”
  
  167
  Dark Prophecy
  The stranger opened his mouth to speak but
  came up short. A throaty growl rumbled to the sur-
  face.
  “Lutz,” said Nicholas again.
  “This is our forest,” said Lutz. “You are not wel-
  come here.”
  Our forest. Nicholas remembered the watchers.
  They remained just out of sight, but their snarls
  echoed through the trees. This Lutz, Nicholas re-
  alized, would test their Gangrel blood. Very well.
  The light was very near the surface again.
  Nicholas’s vision grew dim as the illumination from
  the Rent beamed from his sockets. With each
  breath, light poured from his mouth, but Lutz
  seemed to take no notice.
  From deep within Nicholas rose ancient words
  of challenge.
  “I am the flood: bringer of life.
  “I am the ship: pulled by current.”
  Lutz growled and crouched low. “Take your
  cursed blood elsewhere. Leave our forest or die.”
  Nicholas did not struggle as the light of the Rent
  washed over him, covered him like a rising tide.
  He saw the watchers as they leapt at him from their
  cover. The others were not of the blood. They were
  driven by rage. Claws and fangs flashed.
  From beneath the surface of the light, Nicholas
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  168
  gazed up as his body, light and fire streaming from
  every pore, responded to the onslaught.
  “I am the wave: scourging shore.
  “I am fire: scourging bone.”
  The smell of burning fur and scalded flesh filled
  the forest, as did screams of pain. The restless dead,
  again unleashed, poured forth from Nicholas. They
  climbed from his mouth, pulled themselves from
  his chest, his eyes. Chittering with mindless joy,
  they swarmed over newly found sustenance, un-
  moving piles of smoldering flesh.
  Hovering on the precipice between the worlds,
  Nicholas smelled not the conflagration in his midst
  but the blood of his ancestors, and memory tugged
  at him—memory of wrongs to his blood still to be
  redressed, memory of the slayer of his kin. Like the
  shades, Nicholas was driven by the scent of blood,
  the blood he would reclaim.
  He turned west and began with unsteady strides.
  Wraiths clung to his ankles, his back, but they fell
  away and he gained momentum. One great stride
  carried him over the river and he left the forest
  behind.
  The shades were left to their meal in the
  scorched glade. Some, satiated, stumbled away.
  Others sniffed their way along, tracing the path of
  Nicholas’s footsteps as they chased after the light.
  
  169
  Dark Prophecy
  The first sensation that Kendall noticed, as she
  drifted back to the surface from her meditative
  trance, was a bead of sweat running down her back.
  The droplet began between her shoulder blades,
  then made its way down to the small of her back
  before soaking into a fold of nearly saturated T-
  shirt. Even this sensation, however, was less
  unpleasant than the sweltering heat in the cabin,
  or the musty stench.
  The things I do for that man, she thought, although
  she realized at once that “man” might not be the
  proper word.
  Owain, she knew even without opening her eyes,
  still lay nearby. Kendall had heard him turning and
  muttering in his restless sleep. Nightmares—correc-
  tion, daymares. Whatever. She knew better, after
  seeing him act similarly on the plane and experi-
  encing his violent reaction to her well-intentioned
  intervention, than to attend to him. She could still
  feel the soreness in her jaw, though his blow hadn’t
  left noticeable bruises.
  Oh well, she thought. Occupational hazard. She’d
  realized full and well when she signed on for this
  job that it wasn’t normal punch-the-timecard-and-
  go-home employment, and if a paycheck every two
  weeks were all she was getting, it wouldn’t be worth
  it. But how many people got to work for someone
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  170
  who’d been around for hundreds of years? How
  many people might have a chance to become like
  him? It wasn’t exactly what she’d expected when
  she’d quit divinity school. She’d never really fit in
  there anyway, and though the other students had
  appreciated the self-defense classes she’d taught,
  her penchant for firearms had definitely set her
  apart from the crowd. But if she hadn’t found the
  eternal, at least she’d stumbled across the immor-
  tal.
  So she put up with the insane hours—Hell, no
  worse than med school would’ve been—and with
  Owain’s occasional burst of temper. And with this
  shithole boat, she reminded herself, as if she could
  forget.
  The din of the engine, the shifting of the boat
  upon the undulating waters, had become so much
  background noise to Owain over the course of the
  journey, but the clomp of footsteps approaching the
  cabin was like the roar of thunderous, crashing
  waves to him. The instant bare knuckles rapped
  against door, Kendall, a vision of quietude the mo-
  ment before, was in full motion. Her magnum,
  never far away, was in her hand and ready as she
  pressed her back against the bulkhead by the door.
  “Yes?” Owain called loudly enough to be heard
  in the hall.
  
  171
  Dark Prophecy
  “We’re well past Southampton.” Owain recog-
  nized the captain’s voice rising over the churn of
  the engine. “We’ll be to Weymouth shortly.”
  “Very well.”
  The captain’s footsteps, Owain noticed, retreated
  more quickly than they had approached the cabin.
  He’s a wiser man than I gave him credit for being,
  Owain thought.
  Within a few minutes, Owain and Kendall were
  up on deck. They traveled with few encumbrances.
  Owain had eschewed the suit he’d worn in Berlin
  in favor of sweater, slacks, and the long overcoat,
  which served moderately well to conceal his sword.
  He shifted constantly among his fingers the locket,
  Albert’s locket, as the captain nervously pointed
  out the most promising spot on the shore to make
  a landing. Kendall, wearing black jeans and a dark
  polar fleece against the early April chill, carried a
  small bag over her shoulder with a change of
  clothes and a few odds and ends for each of them.
  They climbed aboard a dinghy, along with one
  of the merchant sailors to man the oars, and were
  lowered from La Sirène to the water. Twenty min-
  utes later, the dinghy scraped aground. Owain
  stepped into the surf and then onto the shore of
  England, land of his Embrace. The sailor, relieved
  to be rid of these pale, mysterious passengers,
  shoved off without a word.
  Owain allowed himself only a brief moment to
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  172
  survey the rocky shoreline. Literally centuries had
  passed since he had set foot on English soil. The
  land held equally as much pain as nostalgia for him.
  Standing on the rough beach, the waters of the
  Channel lapping not far behind him, Owain felt a
  certain affinity for Cornwall, this portion of Brit-
  ain that, throughout history, had played the role
  of disfavored stepchild to England proper almost
  as much as had his native Wales.
  Wales. Owain raised his face and took in the sea
  fragrances that were so similar, yet not quite iden-
  tical, to those of his homeland, which lay less than
  two hundred miles distant. He could feel its pull
  upon him.
  And why shouldn’t I return? he wondered. A blood
  hunt had been called against him all those years
  ago, and in the world of the Kindred that meant
  he would never again be tolerated in the lands of
  his forefathers. Though the Ventrue he had
  struggled against had moved on or perished, the
  condemnation would be upheld by whomever ruled
  these modern nights. Owain had long since lost
  track of the political maneuverings and upheavals
  in his former home. But blood hunt or no, he rea-
  soned, I could keep to myself. I would prefer solitude
  to the petty bickering of our kind. Besides, he shrugged,
  the Camarilla, and probably the Sabbat as well, will
  be searching for me, would welcome my final death.
  What difference could an ages-old blood hunt make?
  
  173
  Dark Prophecy
  There was no time at the moment, however, to
  ponder such possibilities. A mission of vengeance
  remained unresolved. Someone had duped Owain,
  had intercepted his correspondences to El Greco
  and replaced them with forgeries—with perfect
  forgeries. The letter that Owain had seen in To-
  ledo, the letter that supposedly he had written, the
  script supposedly rendered by his own hand, was a
  creation of such perfection that Owain could have
  believed the words for his own. He admired, yet at
  the same time was enraged by, the audacity of the
  falsehood, but such deception, directed at Owain
  as it was, could not stand. A galanas, an honor-
  price, was due. And Owain was determined that it
  would be paid in blood.
  You must go to England, the Nosferatu in Berlin
  had said. To Glastonbury.
  Glastonbury. Perhaps when this debt was recti-
  fied, he could turn his thoughts to insinuating
  himself quietly into some obscure corner of Wales.
  Perhaps then he could afford to release Kendall
  from her service to him. Once he established a ha-
  ven and secured a reliable herd so that he might
  feed in peace and safety, then he could release her
  to live the rest of her mortal life.
  For the moment, however, he required her vari-
  ous skills. With a nod, she turned and jogged
  toward town to carry out Owain’s unspoken com-
  mand. Within the hour, she returned in a small,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  174
  puttering automobile, procured from the streets of
  Weymouth. Owain climbed into the compact ve-
  hicle, which made the cabin aboard the ship, in
  retrospect, seem quite spacious. Without delay, they
  headed north along the twisting English byways.
  Kendall appeared to have no trouble shifting
  gears with her left hand instead of her right. Back
  in Berlin, she had purchased a map of Britain while
  Owain had made arrangements for their sea travel.
  Glastonbury was not far distant from Weymouth,
  less than two hours’ drive, and Kendall pushed the
  little car to what definitely sounded like the limits
  of its capabilities. All the while, Owain stared si-
  lently out the window, taking in every
  night-shrouded detail of the quilt-work country-
  side.
  They abandoned the car just beyond the town
  of Street and covered the final two or three miles
  to Glastonbury on foot. The landscape was too flat
  for Owain truly to feel at home, but he and Kendall
  made good time. As they drew close to the village,
  the dark silhouettes of small groupings of hills be-
  came visible against the backdrop of the cloudless
  night sky. One silhouette in particular, the largest
  of the hills, attracted Owain’s interest. This hill
  stood well above the others, but what captivated
  Owain was the lone tower occupying its crest.
  Kendall continued on several yards before she
  realized that Owain had stopped. “Sir…? Owain?”
  
  175
  Dark Prophecy
  “The tower,” he said almost inaudibly. It was a
  haunting vision that Owain had seen many times,
  though he had never set foot here before. The hill
  upon which the tower stood, Glastonbury Tor, was
  the object of legends. Owain was familiar with
  some of the tales—gateway to the underworld, or
  the otherworld; hillfort to the Bretons and then
  the Romans; place of power for the most ancient
  druids; there were as many stories as storytellers—
  flotsam of the mind accumulated over the years.
  Yet strangely enough, the visions had not dredged
  these bits of arcane trivia from the depths of his
  mind. He had failed even to recognize the tor un-
  til he saw it in person.
  Owain, and Kendall beside him, began to climb.
  They traversed level after level of the terraced
  slope, long overgrown with grass. As Owain ap-
  proached the crest of the tor, the tower loomed
  increasingly taller. It rose forty or fifty feet above
  this, the tallest of the hillocks. The stonework was
  exactly as he recalled from the visions. The open
  doorway seemed to Owain the maw of a beast that
  hungered for his undead flesh. He halted atop the
  final terrace.
  Kendall ventured on to the tower. She disap-
  peared through the open doorway only to
  re-emerge a few moments later. “It’s a chapel to St.
  Michael,” she said.
  Owain nodded. Michael the archangel.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  176
  The tower was only yards away, but Owain’s
  thoughts were occupied by another hill, which he
  knew would be nearby. “Stay back from me,” he
  said to Kendall, as he forced himself to turn away
  from the tower. There were some demons, he knew,
  that he must face alone.
  Owain descended the tor and crossed the low-
  land between the hills. To the north lay the small
  village of Glastonbury, its buildings and streets
  much the same as they had been for hundreds of
  years. This was a land of tradition, of antiquity,
  unlike the upstart former colonies across the At-
  lantic. If he concentrated, Owain could hear from
  the village a half mile away the voices of mortals,
  contented souls in a pub that had not yet closed.
  Owain’s footsteps seemed to him to cover too
  little distance. He felt the weight of the sky, of the
  heavens, pressing down on him as if to crush him.
  Again he began to climb, as the hill he recognized
  oh so well rose before him. He walked among the
  same disturbing images that he’d tried for weeks
  to ignore. Owain drew the locket and chain from
  his pocket, let them slide through his fingers again
  and again as he climbed. There was no question
  that he had closed himself to the message of the
  visions. He’d had no stomach for the evocative
  images of the past, for the mysterious condemna-
  tions heaped upon him by stranger and loved one
  alike.
  
  177
  Dark Prophecy
  And there’d been no time, he tried to convince
  himself. All hell had broken loose in the past few
  months. Patterns he’d established over spans of
  decades had unraveled before his eyes in a matter
  of nights and weeks. The incomparable beauty and
  truth of the siren’s song had shattered the wall of
  comfortable disinterest that had enveloped him;
  she had exposed the nearly forgotten yearnings, the
  tiny remnant of humanity, that dwelled within his
  otherwise hollow soul. El Greco had thundered
  back into Owain’s unlife to bring a storm of deceit
  and destruction, and now Owain found himself
  branded a traitor by an erratic Malkavian prince.
  At the same time, Owain had earned the enmity
  of a bishop within the Sabbat.
  So much change so quickly. It did not rest well
  with a creature who had walked the earth for nearly
  a millennium. Ironically enough, it was this isle
  where Owain’s thoughts had most often lingered,
  and it was here that, despite his recalcitrance to-
  ward the visions, they had led him. But to what
  end?
  He continued to climb until, as he approached
  the shoulder of the hill, he saw before him that
  which he knew he must find, that which struck ter-
  ror into his heart. A score of yards up the slope
  from where he halted stood the hawthorn tree of
  his visions. Owain hesitated to move closer to the
  tree that had grasped him and sought his blood,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  178
  his destruction. The tree that was real. He felt he
  had wandered again into one of the visions. A chill
  shot down the length of his spine. Only the ab-
  sence of the obscuring mist comforted him at all.
  The differences from his visions, however, served
  only to make more vague the foreboding that
  gripped him, to render it more enigmatic, more dis-
  turbing. He might actually have been less ill at ease
  had the tree, in fact, become animate and attacked
  him.
  Owain wanted to turn and run. He had come to
  Glastonbury to confront whomever had violated
  his privacy, not to be cast into the torturous world
  of his dreams. Yet he did not turn away from the
  tree, for though it didn’t touch him, it held him to
  that spot just as surely. In the few visions where
  the hawthorn hadn’t taken on monstrous form,
  another figure had appeared. As the mists receded,
  she would emerge into the clearing—Angharad.
  Owain waited, he realized, for his one love to join
  him. He hoped against hope that in just one more
  minute she would appear and beckon to him. But
  this night, this hillside, was not a vision. The vi-
  sions could have been no more cruel than to whet
  his appetite with a desire never to be fulfilled.
  “In ancient days,” said a low, feminine voice be-
  hind him, “the surrounding lowlands remained
  flooded for much of the year. These hills stood as
  islands upon an island.”
  
  179
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain stiffened. The voice was not Kendall’s.
  With great trepidation, he turned. The woman he
  saw was not tall; she stood half a head shorter than
  he. The rich brown hue of her long and elegantly
  simple dress complemented her well-tanned fea-
  tures. Owain was both relieved and saddened
  beyond measure that she was not Angharad.
  “The Holy Thorn.” She nodded toward the haw-
  thorn. “According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea,
  protector of the sangrail, who founded the Abbey
  of Glastonbury, drove his staff into the ground here
  on Wearyall Hill, and the staff took root. Branches
  grew, then blossomed and flowered.”
  In the words she spoke, Owain heard traces of a
  faint Spanish accent, mostly overpowered by the
  more formal tones of perhaps an English education.
  More important, however, were the words them-
  selves. They struck Owain like lightning from the
  heavens.
  Joseph of Arimathea.
  Hoard the nights that have fallen unto you. I, Jo-
  seph the Lesser, tell you, it avails you nothing.
  The old man. The staff. The tree.
  Owain stared at her dumbfounded.
  Joseph of Arimathea. This is the Endtime! Predic-
  tions of Gehenna. But what did the keeper of the
  grail have to do with the return of the Dark Fa-
  ther?
  “Who are you?” Owain’s words seemed very
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  180
  small, as if they were swallowed by the vastness of
  the night.
  “Owain!” Kendall was running up the hill. She
  had her weapon drawn. She, too, had been slow
  to notice the presence of the stranger.
  “You have traveled far to see me,” the woman
  said calmly. “I’ve been expecting you. Will you
  come?” She indicated the village below.
  Thoughts of anger and vengeance were driven
  from Owain’s mind by bewilderment. For a split
  second, he’d expected to turn and see Angharad.
  His impossible hope of centuries had been piqued
  and then crushed. Now, this woman—she spoke
  simply of legends, but her words hinted at Owain’s
  torment.
  Kendall, red-faced from exertion and the embar-
  rassment of protection not provided, reached
  Owain and the woman. The ghoul breathed
  heavily, and held her gun by her side, as there was
  no apparent danger.
  “Will you come?” the woman asked again.
  Owain nodded. He followed her as she started
  down the hill and left Kendall, perplexed, to trail
  after them.
  
  181
  Dark Prophecy
  NINE
  “You’ve been expecting me,” Owain said to the
  woman. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too
  long.”
  She led him and Kendall down into town, to a
  brick house with dormer windows and a slate roof
  similar to most of the other homes in the bucolic
  village. Unlike its neighbors, however, a light still
  burned inside despite the lateness of the hour. The
  house was on the southern edge of Glastonbury,
  within view of the ruins of the old abbey.
  The woman smiled graciously, either missing or
  choosing to ignore Owain’s sarcasm. “Oh…I’ve
  been waiting for quite a while.”
  As they approached the house, the fog of déjà vu
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  182
  and bewilderment that had afflicted Owain was
  fading. Simultaneously, the realization sank in that
  he had found the person the Nosferatu had sent
  him to meet. Owain held his hands down by his
  side. A conscious effort was required to prevent his
  fingers from stretching into razor-claws. This was
  the woman who had deceived both him and El
  Greco. Owain did not abide being trifled with, did
  not ignore being bested.
  “You do not fear me?” he asked as they reached
  the front door.
  The woman’s smile waned. Her expression grew
  serious, though not worried. She opened the door.
  “I know who you are. I know what you are. But,
  no, I do not fear you.”
  “Perhaps you should,” said Owain.
  Again his rancor was lost upon her. “Perhaps you
  and your…companion,” she looked at Kendall with
  a studied eye, “would care to come inside. The day
  begins early in a small town, and I suspect none of
  us would profit from the dairyman or a neighbor
  spying you on the front walk.”
  Owain hesitated. He had been driving himself
  to this point, to this confrontation, with little
  thought for contingencies. Whether he tried to
  unravel the secrets of this mysterious woman or
  merely ripped her throat open as compensation for
  her meddling, either way he shortly would need to
  seek shelter from the morning sun. She stood with
  
  183
  Dark Prophecy
  one arm outstretched toward the open door. After
  another moment, Owain relented and stepped in-
  side the house. Kendall followed. The interior was
  what Owain would have expected from any of the
  dwellings in the village. A small front hall opened
  into sitting and dining rooms and also led back to
  a kitchen and pantry. To the right of the hall, stairs
  led upward.
  “You seem to know of me,” said Owain. “I am at
  something of a disadvantage, I’m afraid.”
  The woman closed the door behind them. “My
  name is Isabella.”
  “Isabella…?”
  “My family name would mean nothing to you. I
  prefer to let my ancestors rest undisturbed.” Isabella
  fastened the deadbolt on the door, then turned to
  Owain and Kendall. “May I take your coat? Your
  sword?”
  Owain smiled but otherwise ignored her ques-
  tion. “I didn’t know your name until now, Isabella,”
  he began. She nodded as if in acknowledgment.
  “But I do know something about you. You’re a bit
  of a chess player, I believe.”
  “It’s such a wonderfully intricate game, isn’t it?”
  Isabella leaned her back against the door and crossed
  her arms before her. Her eyes were dark but sparkled
  with life, took in every detail, missed nothing.
  “You are also fairly skilled with pen and paper,”
  he added.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  184
  “Penmanship is so dreadfully neglected by most
  these days,” she tsked. “Quite the shame.”
  Owain stared at her. He was perplexed by her
  flippancy, which was so at odds with her solemn
  demeanor earlier on Wearyall Hill. If she knew
  what he was, as she claimed, then she knew also
  what he was capable of. Was she incredibly fool-
  ish, or did she somehow truly have nothing to fear?
  “Sir…” Kendall directed his attention to the win-
  dow near the door. The morning sky was growing
  dangerously light.
  “The hours do slip by, don’t they, Owain?” said
  Isabella. “We will have much to discuss, no doubt,
  but perhaps we should delay until a later time.”
  Owain studied her intently. His impression was
  that there was much to learn about her. He could
  almost certainly reach out and snap her neck where
  she stood—she seemed nothing more than a mor-
  tal to him—but that would leave many questions
  unanswered. “Agreed.” He would, he decided, hu-
  mor her, for the time being.
  “Then come this way.” Isabella stepped past
  Owain and Kendall and led them through the back
  hall to the kitchen. She opened a door that re-
  vealed stairs descending to a cellar and gestured for
  them to proceed downward. “The accommodations
  are far from luxurious, but they should fulfill your
  needs.”
  Owain stood before her at the top of the stairs.
  
  185
  Dark Prophecy
  He had no reason to trust her. All he knew of her
  was that she dealt in lies and trickery, yet here he
  was blindly accepting her hospitality. But he had
  left himself few alternatives. Owain chided him-
  self for racing heedlessly about like a New World
  neonate.
  Isabella saw his hesitation and, again in tones of
  complete seriousness, said, “I vouch for your safety
  beneath this roof, Owain ap Ieuan.”
  Their gazes locked. Owain was unsure of what
  he saw in her deep soulful eyes, but he spied no
  betrayal there. Slowly, he began down the stairs.
  “There is a lock on your side of the door,” Isabella
  said, “if that will ease your rest.” Her words were
  half reassurance, half goading jest.
  Kendall pulled the door shut behind them, and
  Owain heard as his faithful ghoul pulled the bolt
  across. He also heard footsteps from above as
  Isabella moved away from the door.
  Owain was angry with himself. He had expected
  in Glastonbury to find the culprit responsible for
  the forgeries and then, after beating an explana-
  tion from the individual, to be on his way—to
  Wales perhaps, to establish a new haven and pos-
  sibly to set Kendall free. Stumbling across the
  scenes of his visions, however, had quite fundamen-
  tally shaken him, and he had regained only a
  portion of his composure before encountering
  Isabella who, in turn, had been expecting him and
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  186
  seemed not the least daunted to meet one of the
  Damned. He felt as if he were being pulled along
  by the tide of events.
  At the bottom of the stone stairs, Owain turned
  the corner and staggered. Struck by the shock of
  disorientation only possible for a creature who’d
  seen hundreds of years drift past, he stumbled back
  into Kendall, who had come down behind him.
  “Sir?”
  Owain extended a hand against the doorframe
  to steady himself. He looked again at the room be-
  fore him. The contents were unremarkable of
  themselves—rustic bed with hand-quilted cover
  and feather pillows; a tall wardrobe of oakwood; a
  stuffed boar’s head trophy mounted on the wall—
  unremarkable except that they were the same
  furnishings that had adorned Owain’s room hun-
  dreds of years earlier during his mortal days.
  Owain glanced back at Kendall. With her black
  jeans, the pistol beneath her jacket, she was his
  anchor holding him to the modern world. She be-
  gan to speak, but Owain raised a hand for silence.
  The most violent of his disorientation having
  passed, he stepped carefully into the room.
  How could she?
  He moved to the center of the room and slowly
  turned in a full circle. The stone walls and floor,
  the size of the room… How…? Owain looked over
  at Kendall and reminded himself that it was this
  
  187
  Dark Prophecy
  room, not her, that was out of place. She watched
  him as he moved about the room checking, in turn,
  each item of the spartan furnishings.
  He opened the wardrobe and found it empty.
  Running his hand along the fine oak, he realized
  that the grain was a better quality, the piece as a
  whole in better condition, than the wardrobe he
  had used as a boy and young man. Owain closed
  the door and stepped around to the side of the
  wardrobe, where he squatted down low, again run-
  ning his fingers along the wood.
  “Ha!”
  Alarmed by his outburst, Kendall rushed into the
  room, hand on her gun.
  Owain grinned up at her from beside the ward-
  robe. “When I was a boy,” he explained, “I was
  horseplaying with my sword in my room—strictly
  forbidden by my father. At any rate, I swung a bit
  too wildly once and tore a gash in my wardrobe.”
  He turned back to the piece of furniture before him.
  “I scoured the spot and then stained it—not per-
  fect, just good enough not to attract notice.” Owain
  resumed rubbing the side of the wardrobe. “But I
  could always find it if I looked.” He smiled again
  at Kendall, who had very little idea of what he was
  talking about. “Not here. And these stones…” He
  stood and crossed to the wall over the bed. “They’re
  the right color and shape for the most part, but the
  pattern is not quite…it was more like…” He
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  188
  marked with his fingers where the different stones
  should have been located.
  For easily half an hour, Owain examined every
  detail of the room and explained to Kendall what
  was not quite a match to the room he had known
  in his youth. He pointed out every flaw, every mis-
  take that Isabella had made. The weave of the wool
  blanket was too fine, the grains of the stand for the
  wash basin too coarse. Owain took strange com-
  fort in the fact that the entire room was merely a
  simulation, not an exact replica, of his one-time
  chamber. But as his limbs grew heavy and his con-
  centration wavered—sure signs that the sun had
  risen above the horizon outside and that slumber
  called to him—he came again to the significant
  questions: how, and more importantly, why? How
  could Isabella have gotten so close to the details
  of Owain’s mortal life? How could she have known
  that he would come to this place? Why should she
  take any interest in him in the first place?
  But day was well underway, and Owain began to
  lose focus. His thoughts wandered. Grudgingly, he
  took off his overcoat and kept it wrapped around
  his sword as he placed them in the wardrobe. He
  felt, too, in the pocket of his coat the tattered re-
  mains of his commonplace book. There had been
  no free time to inspect it further or to attempt to
  repair it.
  There was time for little else this morning. Strug-
  
  189
  Dark Prophecy
  gling to keep his eyes open, Owain lay down on
  the bed. Noticing that there was no rug or chair
  in the room, he slid over and made room for
  Kendall. She nodded appreciation but did not join
  him.
  As the last of consciousness fled and his emo-
  tional guard lowered, Owain remembered the brief
  second of hope beside the Holy Thorn before he
  had turned and seen Isabella….
  Ah, hope is cruel.
  As he closed his eyes, the day claimed him. As
  did the visions.
  The next evening, even after waking, Owain did
  not feel that he had stepped completely from the
  visions. The places he had seen—Wearyall Hill,
  the tor overlooking Glastonbury—were uncomfort-
  ably nearby. If he walked a few hundred yards out
  of this house, phantasm and reality would merge.
  Kendall was already up, though the rumpled
  blankets beside Owain told him that she had rested
  at least part of the day. He watched her watching
  him as he sat up. She was still very pale. He should
  feed her again soon. But what of his desire to set
  her free? Why not begin now the painful process
  she would undergo—withdrawal from the lack of
  vampiric vitae, which currently imbued her with
  preternatural strength and stamina? Owain ratio-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  190
  nalized that he still needed her, but procrastina-
  tion, he knew, would only provide excuses for
  further delay in freeing her. She nodded good
  evening to him, and he knew he could not release
  her yet. His current surroundings were too strange,
  too unpredictable. He might need her at any sec-
  ond, and without her he would feel completely
  devoid of anything or anyone familiar. So much
  had changed so quickly.
  Soon, he silently promised. Soon.
  Sitting in bed, Owain glanced around the room,
  at the cool stones and the hand-crafted furniture.
  How many mortal mornings had he greeted simi-
  larly? Except it was night now beyond these walls.
  He could tell by the degree of responsiveness re-
  turning to his limbs, his mind. The time of day was
  another detail that Isabella could not control, just
  as she could not exactly reproduce the room of
  Owain’s youth. Now to find out what she is all about,
  he told himself.
  He rose from the bed and washed his face with
  the water in the basin. Kendall, seated on the bot-
  tom step just outside the doorway, was situated so
  that she had been able to watch Owain resting and
  see the door at the top of the steps at the same time.
  “How much sleep did you get?” he asked.
  She seemed caught off guard by the question but
  hesitated only briefly. “Couple of hours.”
  “You sleep now, then.” This definitely surprised
  
  191
  Dark Prophecy
  Kendall. By way of explanation he added, “You may
  be up all day tomorrow.”
  But that’s what I do, her slightly puzzled expres-
  sion seemed to say. “Are you sure?” she asked at last.
  Owain nodded. “You’ll know if I need you,” he
  said, as he hooked his sword onto his belt, then
  stepped past her and began up the stairs. She’s con-
  ditioned to go days and nights on end with little or no
  sleep, he reminded himself with a certain amount
  of irritation. But he recognized his own motiva-
  tions. If he couldn’t bring himself to release her yet,
  perhaps he could shield her from harm.
  He slid free the bolt and opened the door to find
  Isabella seated at her kitchen table. Her hands were
  wrapped around the cup of tea she sipped while she
  waited. “Good evening, Owain.”
  He could not restrain a smile at her audacity. “We
  have much to discuss.”
  “I agree.” Her eyes sparkled, but every once in a
  while her gaze carried a hard edge as well. “Do you
  require sustenance?”
  “Sustenance…” he repeated. “Such a sterile
  word, don’t you think?” He stepped closer to her.
  “Do I require sustenance? Must I feed? Do I thirst
  for mortal blood? Do I desire a human sacrifice?”
  He placed both hands on the table, leaned forward
  very close to her until the steam from her cup
  drifted only inches from his face. “Let’s not mince
  words. Is that what you ask?”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  192
  Isabella’s expression changed not at all. Nor did
  she flinch or draw back from him. Very slowly, de-
  liberately, she nodded once. “Yes.”
  Owain stood upright again. “At present, I do
  not.” He could, of course, use more blood—not for
  many years had he exerted himself, or been injured,
  to the extent that he had recently—but he did not
  require it, and he did not choose to reveal details
  of his feeding habits to this enigmatic woman.
  Again, she nodded. “Then let us go upstairs. We
  can sit in more comfort and, as you said, we have
  much to discuss.”
  She rose, and Owain followed to the front of the
  house and up the stairs. “Do you live here alone?”
  he asked as they climbed the steps.
  “I do.”
  “No servants? No husband? No lover?”
  She paused at the top of the stairs and turned
  back to him. “Boorishness does not suit you,
  Owain.”
  “Whereas forgery and fraud are so much more
  attractive?” he replied at once.
  Isabella continued without comment into one of
  the three rooms off the upstairs hall. The room was
  simple and functional—unadorned brick on the
  exterior wall, white plaster lined with wooden
  shelves on the others. The shelves were filled with
  various items: small clay urns; glass vases holding
  dried flowers; decorative containers of different
  
  193
  Dark Prophecy
  sizes and types. The items, though numerous, were
  not crammed onto the shelves. Rather, each piece
  was situated as if in a precise spot. Owain felt that
  he could be viewing a museum exhibit, or gazing
  upon the worldly effects, the personal trinkets, of
  a dowager in her declining years.
  Isabella sat in one of two plain, wooden chairs
  at a table near the left wall and indicated that
  Owain should take the other seat directly across
  from her. On the table between them was an in-
  teresting array of objects: a tall candle in a dark,
  wooden holder; a box of wooden matches; at the
  center of the table, a shallow bowl that appeared
  to be made of gold; and an earthenware pitcher.
  Owain waited while Isabella struck a match and
  lit the candle, which sputtered to life. Sickly sweet
  smoke drifted lazily toward the ceiling.
  “Owain ap Ieuan,” said Isabella, “you have many
  questions for me, and I for you. You do not know
  me, and you have no reason to trust me. You may
  even have reason to distrust me,” she added, cut-
  ting off Owain, who had opened his mouth to say
  just that. “But let me tell you this: what I will re-
  veal to you is quite worth your while, and those
  questions that I will not answer or that are irrel-
  evant, I will respond to as such.”
  “So you would answer some of my questions but
  not others?” Owain asked, somewhat incredulously.
  He summoned his iron will and let it snake across
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  194
  the table upon the sound of his voice. “I prefer that
  you answer all my questions.”
  Isabella’s eyes were caught in his gaze. She stared
  directly back at him. Her mouth slowly opened.
  “Life—and unlife as well—is a series of disappoint-
  ments.”
  Owain shot up from the table. His chair clattered
  to the floor behind him. He drew back a hand to
  smash across the table and scatter the collected
  items, but he held his blow. “You toy with me,
  woman!” He seethed with anger. “I do not think
  you recognize the fragility of your situation.”
  She looked up at him with complete calmness,
  as if nothing he could do could surprise or alarm
  her. “I quite disagree. I recognize perfectly my ‘fra-
  gility.’ I recognize that, with one blow of your hand,
  you could crush my skull. Or you could take me in
  your hands and drain every ounce of blood from
  my body. But do you know if I am highborn enough
  for you to stomach my blood?”
  The question staggered Owain—another secret
  that should be unknown….
  “You could destroy my body,” Isabella continued,
  “but my spirit would roam free. You might have
  your satisfaction, or even your blood, but you would
  never learn what I have to teach.”
  Owain lowered his hand.
  “You see,” she said, “I do not hold you here against
  your will. You are here for knowledge. As am I.”
  
  195
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain’s flash of anger gave way to amazement.
  How does she…? Speechless, he sat back down.
  “You would ask questions of me,” Isabella prompted.
  Owain took a moment to collect himself. There
  was no way he could have been prepared for this.
  Never in all his years had he come across anyone
  so infuriatingly arrogant but with the power—
  knowledge being power—to justify her bearing. He
  would play her game for now, but once he had dis-
  covered what he wanted to know, she would no
  longer have that power over him, and he would
  stay his hand no further.
  “I have recently seen a letter,” said Owain at last,
  “a letter that was supposedly written by my own
  hand. And looking at the letter, reading the words,
  I could not detect even a mark that was not my
  script. There was no word that sounded as if I had
  not chosen it. Only, I did not write the letter.”
  Owain watched her carefully as he spoke, but
  Isabella betrayed no reaction.
  “I traced the route of the letter,” he explained,
  “the route of many of my correspondences, and it
  led me here.”
  “And you accuse me of this duplicity?” Isabella
  asked, stonefaced.
  “Do you deny it?”
  “Deny it? After your flattering description of my
  handiwork? Heavens no.”
  Her frank and cheerful disclosure surprised
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  196
  Owain. Did she want to reveal her secrets to him?
  What, then, of her bargaining power? Of her life?
  “How did I do it?” she anticipated his next ques-
  tion. “The details would bore you—years of refining
  my skill, a certain blend of esoterica….”
  “Magic?” Owain asked suspiciously.
  She weighed the term momentarily, then ac-
  ceded. “To the uninitiated, perhaps.”
  They faced each other silently. Owain tried to
  take stock of the questions, both asked and un-
  asked, that she had answered, and he wondered if
  there was anything he could reveal about himself
  that she did not already know.
  “I have not seen a chess board,” he said, chang-
  ing tack somewhat.
  “I do not own one.”
  “Yet—”
  “Yet I bested both you and your friend,” she fin-
  ished his sentence. “Chess is a game of the
  intellect.”
  “You kept both games only in your mind?”
  “Tsk, tsk, Owain. It is not such an unlikely feat.
  There are doubtless hundreds of mortals who could
  have done the same and beaten you in fewer
  moves. The only difficulty was the tedious length
  between moves.” She rolled her eyes slightly. “You
  and your friend certainly do like to mull over the
  possibilities, even when the end is clearly in sight—
  especially when the end is clearly in sight.”
  
  197
  Dark Prophecy
  “El Greco is dead,” Owain said flatly.
  Isabella did not flinch in the least. “Unfortu-
  nate.”
  “Your doing?”
  “No,” she said. “And save your righteous indig-
  nation for someone else. I doubt you were so
  grief-stricken to see him go.”
  This time Owain laughed aloud at her brazen
  audacity. “You truly know no fear—or tact.”
  “It comes from living alone,” she said. “No ser-
  vants. No husband. No lover.”
  Owain, rebuked by his own words, sat back in
  his chair and crossed his arms.
  “May I speak plainly?” Isabella asked after a mo-
  ment.
  “You have not, up until now?”
  “There is too much to learn, too much for each
  of us to learn, for us to waste time with this verbal
  sparring. Already, midnight is upon us.” Her wry
  humor was completely absent now. “I can answer
  the majority of your questions—who am I? how did
  I do this? how did I do that?—with four words: I
  am a spy. I am a gatherer of knowledge, a learner
  of the unknown. The ‘how’ of what I do is unim-
  portant. You are not here to learn my trade, and
  even if you were, I would not teach you.”
  “Then why am I here?” he asked. “If you would
  cease the gameplaying, then tell me what I want
  to know.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  198
  “Why do you think you are here?” she asked, ir-
  ritation rising in her voice.
  “A question for a question. It is an odd way that
  you ‘speak plainly.”
  “Why do you think you are here?” she repeated.
  Owain was near the end of his patience with this
  bickering and opted for brutal honesty. “I came here
  to find the person who violated my privacy, and to
  have my revenge upon that person.”
  “And to find out why that person—why I—did
  so?” she asked.
  “Yes,” Owain snapped.
  “Well, let me tell you why.” Her tone was sharp,
  as if she were speaking to an ignorant schoolboy, a
  fact not lost upon Owain. “There was only one rea-
  son I had the messages redirected, one reason that
  I interfered in your correspondence with the dear,
  departed El Greco. It wasn’t for the entertainment
  of the game. You’ll be glad to know that you were
  the better player of the two, but neither of you were
  particularly challenging. Lords of night, indeed.
  No, I stole the games, I wrote the letter about
  Carlos, because I knew that eventually you would
  catch on. Eventually you would come here. So
  whyever it is you think you are here, Owain ap
  Ieuan, know that you are here because I wanted
  you to be here.”
  Owain latched onto the edge of the table. Of
  course it was true. She was so prepared for him be-
  
  199
  Dark Prophecy
  cause she had expected nothing less than his pres-
  ence from the beginning, whenever that might
  have been. His fingers dug into the wood, gouged
  deep furrows in the grain. He was seconds from
  reaching across and taking Isabella by the chin,
  twisting her head around until her eyes bulged and
  her neck snapped.
  She leaned over the table toward him—practi-
  cally placing her fragile skull in Owain’s
  hands—and she whispered to him. Her words were
  like the hiss of a snake. “And would you like to
  know why I wanted you here?”
  Owain imperceptibly slid his chair back from the
  table. Tell me, you heathen bitch. Tell me and then
  you die.
  Isabella sat back again in her chair. “I wanted
  you here so that I could learn of your visions. And
  interpret them for you.”
  The hatred that was coiled within him, the
  mounting violence, all dissipated in shock. The vi-
  sions… But how…? Owain again found himself
  dumbfounded. She knew at least something of his
  mortal days. She had interposed herself between
  him and El Greco. And she knew of the visions—
  the visions he had spoken of with no one. I should
  kill her and be done with it, he thought. No matter
  what knowledge dies with her…. But then he pon-
  dered what that knowledge might entail. If she
  knows of the visions…
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  200
  “I can ease the pain of the visions, Owain,” she
  said. “I can make them stop.”
  Owain’s face snapped upward; his gaze met hers.
  Gone were all thoughts of violence, or even deny-
  ing what she said. “Who are you? How do you
  know?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
  “I know.”
  Owain pushed his chair farther back from the
  table. He stood and began pacing. His steps were
  slow and ponderous, in a random direction until
  he reached a wall. Then he turned and walked
  slowly in a different direction. For a moment,
  Owain thought he heard the faint lilt of the siren’s
  haunting melody. That song had begun all this by
  flaunting before him images of a home he could
  never return to—adref. For Owain realized now,
  close as he was to Wales, that even if he returned,
  almost all of what had made home home would be
  gone. The same hills would be there, and the sea-
  shore. But so would mortals of this modern day with
  their automobiles and paved roads and televisions.
  There would be no hearth of family, no days stalk-
  ing boar through the forests…no Angharad. The
  visions reminded him of that which he would never
  again have. Never.
  I want to forget! What release that would bring—
  to slip back into forgetful numbness. It was the
  nearest semblance of peace he would ever achieve.
  Owain put one hand on either side of the window
  
  201
  Dark Prophecy
  and placed his forehead lightly against the glass.
  Outside, not far away, the tor loomed.
  The shadow of Time is not so long that you might
  shelter beneath it. Those were the words of his vi-
  sions. The shadow of Time. Nor is it short enough,
  or forgiving enough, that I might escape it, Owain
  thought.
  There remained, however, the question of
  Isabella. Owain had many doubts, and she had
  proven little except her wiles.
  “Words,” said Owain, his back to his host. “Only
  words.” He turned to face her. “You speak knowl-
  edgeably of much, yet you have done nothing but
  talk since I arrived.”
  “How do you think I have learned that of which
  I speak?” Isabella asked as if his questioning of her
  was little better than asinine.
  “That,” Owain said, returning to his seat, “is ex-
  actly my question. The ‘how’ of what you do is
  unimportant, or so you say. But perhaps I have no
  further use for you unless I know something about
  what you do and how you do it.”
  Isabella sighed. A grim frown wrinkled her nor-
  mally smooth features. “Very well,” she said. She
  rose from the table and turned to a small box on
  the nearby shelf. “What is that you have in your
  hand?” she asked, still sifting through the box. Sev-
  eral seconds passed before Owain realized that he
  had, in fact, taken from his pocket the golden
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  202
  locket and was sliding it and the chain through his
  fingers. “Place it on the table,” she told him.
  After a moment of indecision, Owain did so re-
  luctantly.
  Almost at the same instant, Isabella turned from
  the shelf. She held in her hands a golden locket
  dangling from a chain. Owain’s surprise quickly
  gave way to cynicism. Parlor tricks, he thought.
  Obviously, he had absentmindedly exposed the
  locket, habitually fiddling with it as he had just
  then, at some point earlier during their conversa-
  tion. But then Owain saw that the locket she held
  was exactly the same as the one he had acquired
  from Albert in Atlanta.
  Isabella sat down opposite Owain and laid her
  locket on the table as well. Then she took the clay
  pitcher and began to pour what appeared to be
  water into the shallow bowl. When the bowl was
  full to the rim, she returned the pitcher to its place
  on the table and again took in her hands the sec-
  ond locket. She opened it to expose a small,
  hand-drawn picture—a woman of striking beauty
  with a long, slender nose and doe-round eyes of
  deep soulfulness. The style of the artwork was fa-
  miliar to Owain. The lines, at first glance, appeared
  crudely sketched, but then one noticed how the
  few sparse markings somehow conveyed a sense of
  the person more emphatically than could any pho-
  tograph. As with Albert’s picture, the eyes were
  
  203
  Dark Prophecy
  captivating. Owain found himself wishing that he
  could speak with this woman, that she could com-
  municate to him whatever it was her eyes so
  desperately wanted to say.
  Without warning, Isabella slid the picture from
  the locket and let the slip of paper fall into the bowl
  of water. Instinctively, Owain reached up to stop
  her—the picture would be ruined!—but it had al-
  ready sunk just below the surface of the water.
  Strangely enough, the ink did not run, the paper
  did not curl at the edges. It hovered placidly just
  beneath the surface, and the woman’s eyes stared
  up at Owain.
  Isabella interposed her open hand, palm down,
  above the bowl. Then, focusing very intently on
  the picture, she began to mutter under her breath.
  Owain almost asked her to repeat herself but then
  realized that the words were not directed at him—
  if words they were. Owain possessed at least a
  passing familiarity with the Romance languages
  and could identify Arabic and several Middle East-
  ern dialects, but Isabella’s utterances, now falling
  into a pattern of soft, rhythmic chant, were from a
  land—or a time—beyond his experiences. He
  watched the calm movement of her lips; he tried
  to note which sounds were made by the pressing
  of her tongue against the roof of her mouth or
  against the back of her teeth. Any clue might help
  him connect the words to a pattern he recognized,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  204
  and from a pattern he could potentially derive a
  language group, a geographical area, a hint to what
  she was doing here.
  Isabella, ignoring Owain’s scrutiny, slowly with-
  drew her hand from above the bowl. Owain was
  only slightly distracted from his investigation by
  her movement, but all thoughts of speech patterns
  and language families were driven from his mind
  when he saw the contents of the bowl. The pic-
  ture of the woman was no longer there, or at least
  no longer visible. The water was not clear but dark,
  cloudy as if mixed with ink, and though the sur-
  face was placid, free of ripples or waves, the clouds
  were churning. They looked impossibly deep for the
  shallow bowl, but before Owain could begin to un-
  ravel this new mystery, the churning of the clouds
  resolved into a shape.
  At first, Owain could make out only a dark mass,
  but as he looked more closely—or perhaps the
  clouds receded somewhat and the image grew
  clearer—he distinguished a hand, and then an-
  other, except the second lay to the side at the end
  of what appeared to be a limp, malformed arm.
  Owain leaned closer to the bowl. The first hand
  clutched something tightly, but Owain could dis-
  cern little else. Then suddenly the rest of the murky
  image made sense to Owain. He saw the face that,
  before, he had not recognized as a face because it
  was misshapen and warted. The distortion was not
  
  205
  Dark Prophecy
  of the image but of the subject itself. The creature
  lay huddled, its good hand clutched to its chest.
  Now that Owain saw the face for what it was, he
  recognized the deformed visage.
  Ellison. The Nosferatu from Berlin.
  No sooner had Owain formed the name in his
  mind than other words interjected themselves as
  well—words that seemed to be spoken in Ellison’s
  voice, yet the gnarled lips of the image did not
  move.
  “Melitta, my love, come back to me. Soon.”
  Owain was surprised by the depth of pain and
  loss conveyed by the voice. Was it possible that
  such a monstrous creature had suffered disappoint-
  ment and sorrow to rival Owain’s own? Owain
  instantly discarded such an absurd notion, yet he
  was uncomfortable playing the emotional voyeur,
  hearing, feeling the thoughts of the Nosferatu.
  Owain did not feel so guilty, however, as to turn
  away.
  “My dearest love, my Melitta, how much longer
  must I go on without you?”
  The image grew increasingly clear. Ellison lay in
  some tiny, dark cave where he was curled amidst
  mud and filth like a misformed fetus in a corrupted
  womb. For an instant, however, he opened his
  clenched fist, and Owain saw in the creature’s hand
  a flash of sparkling gold—a locket that Owain
  needed to see for only a second to know that it
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  206
  matched those on the table before him.
  But then the image was gone. Owain saw Isabella
  lifting the picture from the water, though he had
  not noticed her reaching into the bowl. Neither
  had he been aware when she had ceased chanting,
  but the absence of the rhythmic cadence was pal-
  pable between them.
  Owain stared at his locket—at Albert’s locket.
  I am a spy.
  Isabella was far more than a spy, he realized. She
  was a witch, and it was her magic that served her
  as well as electronic gadgets might serve a modern
  spy.
  Owain picked up Albert’s locket and crushed the
  soft gold in his hand.
  Isabella frowned. “I don’t believe that was nec-
  essary.”
  Owain let the lump of gold that had been the
  locket fall into the bowl. Water splashed onto the
  table.
  “There is your proof,” said Isabella. “I can inter-
  pret your visions, Owain. I can rid you of them.”
  He stared at her grimly. Having seen something
  of her power, he believed her. Yet he distrusted her
  more intensely. “You have used his pain,” said
  Owain nodding toward the bowl and the vanished
  image of Ellison.
  Isabella shot him a sideways glance. “Really,
  Owain. Scruples? At this late date? Would you tell
  
  207
  Dark Prophecy
  me that you have never used to your advantage the
  knowledge of a rival’s illicit love, or the aspirations
  of a mortal who, in exchange for mastery over the
  night, would serve you as ghoul? Are you so arro-
  gant, or merely ignorant?”
  Owain repressed a shudder at hearing his own
  thoughts divulged so crassly. He stared for several
  moments into the water in the bowl then again
  faced Isabella. “I would be rid of the visions,” he
  said. “I am not so naïve as to think that you do
  not harbor your own reasons for wanting to learn
  of my visions. I doubt you undertake this from the
  goodness of your heart. I am not without leverage
  in the matter, so know this….”
  He leaned forward over the table. “You seem to
  know much about me. You should know, then, that
  I hail from a noble family, a proud family. That
  which you name arrogance, I name pride.” He
  leaned even closer to Isabella. “I, too, believe that
  we can help each other, but I do not need you so
  much that I will abide insults or aspersions.” He
  punctuated his statement with a long, clawed fin-
  ger that he held inches from her face. “I would
  rather suffer visions throughout eternity. Mind your
  sharp tongue, woman, or you will find it plucked
  from your mouth.”
  Isabella regarded him dispassionately. “Then let
  us begin.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  208
  Owain sat alone at the table. The candle, tall at
  the beginning of the night, was burned down to a
  nub. Trails of wax streamed down to form a cold,
  hard lump on the table. From the flame, thick
  smoke rose only to hang heavy in the air and ob-
  scure vision. Owain could barely see the far walls
  of the room. He shifted his gaze to the table be-
  fore him, to the golden bowl and the image that
  faced him from it.
  Again the water was perfectly still, and again the
  flat surface reflected a scene that it could not pos-
  sibly reflect. Gentle white clouds passed tranquilly
  across a blue sky—a daytime sky. Owain instinc-
  tively recoiled from the rays of light emanating
  from the scene, but to his surprise, he found that
  the light did not cause him pain, did not burn the
  undead flesh from his bones. Hesitantly, he leaned
  forward again.
  Materializing in the midst of the sky and the lazy
  clouds was the shape of a face he knew well.
  Angharad appeared faintly at first, then slowly be-
  came more distinguishable from the surrounding
  scene. It was not, however, her face as Owain was
  used to seeing her. Instead, her reflected visage was
  a crude collection of drawn lines, as if someone had
  sketched her among the clouds. Nevertheless, her
  eyes seemed to Owain very much alive, as deep as
  the sky itself.
  Without meaning to at first, Owain reached a
  
  209
  Dark Prophecy
  hand toward the bowl. He caught himself and
  stopped. What if he touched the water and her
  image was dispelled? Even with the longing evoked
  by the sight of her, Owain experienced a certain
  peace when he gazed upon her. He owned no pic-
  ture of Angharad, and over the years he had found
  himself, on occasion, unable to recall exactly the
  curve of her cheek, the set of her brow. He was
  loath, now, to disturb the image that eased his cen-
  turies of pain.
  A tremor crossed the surface of the water, and
  Owain nearly despaired. Don’t leave me. Not again.
  Not yet. But the tremor was the effect of Angharad’s
  movement. Slowly, she opened her mouth.
  “Owain.”
  Hearing her call his name, hearing the perfect
  pitch of her voice, he was wracked by desire for
  she who was denied him. Again, he lifted his hand,
  and as he reached closer to the bowl, her image
  became more lifelike—less a sketch and more the
  smooth face he wished to caress.
  His hand moved closer. Each fraction of an inch
  was equal to years of torment. Her lovely, pale skin
  lay just beneath the surface.
  “Owain,” she called again.
  His fingers broke the surface of the water, and she
  did not flee. He reached deeper, fearing each mo-
  ment that she would disappear, but finally his
  fingertips touched not the golden surface of the bot-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  210
  tom of the bowl, but soft, perfect skin, the skin of
  his beloved. As the ripples on the water died away,
  Owain saw his fingertips resting against Angharad’s
  cheek. She closed her eyes, and Owain could feel as
  well as see as her hand came to rest upon his own.
  Owain had no idea how this strange magic
  worked, how it was that he could reach into a shal-
  low vessel and touch his love. He did not know,
  and he did not care. To be so close to her after cen-
  turies of separation was almost more than he could
  bear. Owain’s vision began to cloud. So moved was
  he by this meeting of flesh that a single tear of
  blood fell from his eye into the water.
  The teardrop landed, and Angharad’s eyes shot
  open. She glared up at Owain and again opened
  her mouth to speak:
  “Kinslayer.”
  Owain couldn’t bring himself to take his hand
  away. He could not let go of her. The touch of her
  cheek, of her hand, was so much more than he had
  hoped for.
  “Kinslayer.”
  But now the image beneath the surface of the
  water was growing stormy. The clouds that had
  been white turned dark and threatening.
  Angharad’s countenance conveyed loathing, con-
  tempt. She took hold of his hand, but her skin was
  no longer soft. It was grown hard and dark, like
  wood—like the fine grains of a hawthorn tree.
  
  211
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain tried to pull away his hand, but he could
  not move it. With his free hand, he grabbed his fore-
  arm and pulled. It did him no good. The surface of
  the water remained calm, though the image beneath
  was of swirling clouds in the midst of a terrible gale.
  Angharad was barely visible. Owain pulled with all
  his might but could not free his hand.
  Suddenly, rising from the water sprang more
  hardened, wooden hands. They latched forcefully
  onto Owain, to his arms, his hair. They grabbed
  him by the back of the neck and with unrivaled
  strength pulled him down toward the water.
  Owain was surrounded by the tempest. He fell
  through the raging clouds. The wind tore at him.
  Lightning flashed all about as he fell ever down-
  ward.
  He crashed to the ground with the sound of
  cracking ribs and vertebrae. Beneath the raging
  storm, he lay immobile on the hillside, and above
  him stood the old man, Joseph, staff in hand.
  “The shadow of Time is not so long that you might
  shelter beneath it,” said Joseph. “And by these signs,
  you shall know I speak the Truth which abides no dark-
  ness. I have seen the Isle of Angels trembling as if struck
  a great blow. Michael, most exalted of that Glorious
  Company—he that cast the Dark One from on high—
  is himself thrown to the Earth. Men look up without
  understanding at the darkened sky and the Children of
  Caine waken at dawn.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  212
  Joseph stepped closer to Owain. The old man
  held his staff before him with outstretched arms as
  if a ward against the evil he confronted. Owain
  could see standing behind Joseph the chapel to St.
  Michael, a fortress against the storm. Joseph leaned
  closer still, righteous indignation welling up as he
  spoke:
  “I have seen a Cross, steeped in the blood of our
  Lord, burst forth into new life. I have seen it ring itself
  in Holy Thorns, lest the impure approach and taste of
  that forbidden fruit. I have seen a great white Eagle
  perched in its branches. It opens its mouth and lo it
  speaks with the hidden voice of mountains. Words of
  Undoing it speaks for the Children of Caine.”
  Owain’s crumpled body would not respond to his
  wishes. As he watched helplessly, Joseph raised his
  staff overhead. He held it in both hands like a great
  wooden stake and, with a final bellow and all the
  strength he could muster, brought it crashing down
  on Owain’s chest. The staff crushed bone and rent
  flesh as it plunged into Owain’s heart.
  Pain flooding his vision, Owain saw the tower,
  the Isle of Angels, trembling as if from the blow.
  Suddenly, the scene before Owain blurred and
  swirled. The crashing of thunder was all about.
  Owain imagined he heard the tower crumbling,
  falling to the earth, brought down upon his head,
  no doubt.
  But slowly, Owain’s vision began to clear. The
  
  213
  Dark Prophecy
  swirling chaos gave way to stability. There was no
  tower tumbling toward earth to crush him. There
  was no Joseph, no staff, no hillside.
  Owain sat at the table. Before him, the candle
  was burned down to near nothingness. The bowl
  of water rested undisturbed, and next to it the vial
  containing whatever elixir Isabella had given him
  to induce the visions. Isabella was present as well,
  seated across from him, but her attention was di-
  rected elsewhere. An expression of genuine
  puzzlement and concern creased her brow.
  “What was—?”
  Another crash sounded from downstairs—the
  sound of wood splintering.
  Owain, extracting himself from the fog of his vi-
  sions, was not as quick as Isabella. She was up and
  heading for the stairs. He fumbled after her. Even
  now his body responded only lethargically to his
  commands. He almost stumbled over Isabella, who
  had stopped partway down.
  The front door of the cottage was smashed open
  and partially ripped from its hinges. Standing in
  the doorway, half-crouched and ready to spring, was
  a pale, wiry figure. His unnatural pallor and the
  exaggerated sunkenness of his gaunt, hawkish fea-
  tures suggested that he was one of the Damned, and
  Owain sensed that such was the case.
  Kendall stood back in the hallway toward the
  kitchen. She held her gun leveled at the intruder,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  214
  daring him to advance farther. The Cainite’s wild
  eyes darted back and forth and he shifted his gaze
  rapidly from Isabella and Owain to Kendall.
  The intruder blurted out something in a hiss. The
  words escaped Owain at first. Then he realized that
  the intruder was speaking French, but not the lan-
  guage as Owain had come to recognize it in modern
  times. The accent was very strange. No, not the ac-
  cent, Owain thought as he recognized more fully
  what he was hearing. The pronunciation in general—
  word stress, not much elision… The intruder’s words
  were Old French, the language as Owain had origi-
  nally learned it hundreds of years ago.
  “The Kinslayer!” growled the intruder. “I am here
  for the Kinslayer!”
  
  215
  Dark Prophecy
  TEN
  The intruder took a step toward Kendall. She
  cocked her pistol. He seemed unsure about the
  weapon and hesitated.
  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded Isabella,
  who remarkably had shifted into Old French. Her
  authoritative manner gave the intruder pause. He
  also seemed calmed somewhat by the fact that his
  arrival had not been greeted by instantaneous attack.
  “The Kinslayer,” he repeated. “He is here. He
  possesses the relic.” With the last word, his eyes
  flashed madness. His newly established control
  wavered, and a shudder ran through his entire body.
  He glared at Kendall but held his ground. “I seek
  the relic. I seek the blood.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  216
  Owain stepped past Isabella. “I am the Kinslayer,”
  he said. The visions had been clear enough on that
  point. Owain would not deny his heritage, nor did
  he fear this lunatic.
  The intruder’s eyes flared. His hand shot toward
  Owain’s throat.
  The deafening blast of a gunshot thundered in
  the hallway. The intruder’s hand, partway to
  Owain, exploded in a shower of blood and shat-
  tered bone. The force of the bullet knocked him
  against the wall, and he yowled in pain.
  “Merciful gods!” said Isabella as she shoved past
  Owain. “Put that thing away,” she told Kendall in
  English, “before the entire village is pounding on
  the door.”
  “A bit late for that,” Owain said dryly, nodding
  toward the splintered remnants of the front door.
  Isabella shot him an irate glance. She stepped
  to the stranger, who sat huddled against the wall
  clutching his ruined hand against his chest. He
  watched in shock as she ripped the sleeve from his
  shirt and wrapped it tightly around the wound.
  “Who are you?” she demanded as she worked.
  “My name is Montrovant,” he answered, con-
  fused that she was aiding him. “I seek the relic.”
  “So you said.” She pulled the knot tight, evok-
  ing a wince of pain from Montrovant. “Go in
  there.” She pointed toward the sitting room. “Keep
  your head, and no one will hurt you. Can you do
  
  217
  Dark Prophecy
  that?” Montrovant nodded dumbly. “And try not
  to bleed on everything.” He climbed to his feet,
  leaving a bloody smear on the wall, then sidled into
  the sitting room. He kept close watch on Kendall
  as he did so.
  Montrovant. Owain tried to remember if he knew
  the name, but over the years he had forgotten more
  than most mortals would ever know in a lifetime.
  Still, the name tugged at his memory. Montrovant.
  Owain thought back to his days in France, to the
  time he had spent toying with the Knights
  Templar….
  “Step aside.” Isabella elbowed her way past him
  up the stairs.
  “Where are you going?” he asked.
  She answered but did not take time to stop.
  “There are rituals that I must perform if we are to
  avoid being discovered. I can make sure that no
  one traces the sound of the gunshot to this house,
  and that no one notices the door, but I must begin
  at once.” With no further explanation, she disap-
  peared upstairs.
  Owain and Kendall watched Montrovant until
  Isabella returned half an hour later, by which time,
  Montrovant’s hand had almost completely healed.
  He clenched and opened his fingers stiffly, only
  occasionally glaring in Kendall’s or Owain’s direc-
  tion. Any doubts of Owain’s that Montrovant was
  a Cainite quickly vanished. Owain could tell by
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  218
  the distasteful curve of Kendall’s lips, as she
  watched Montrovant, that she disliked the new-
  comer even more than he did. Why, Owain
  wondered, was Isabella being so accommodating?
  Could she not see how unstable, how close to
  frenzy, he was? Did her insight only extend to those
  she’d had ample opportunity to spy upon, and not
  to an unexpected visitor?
  Owain was tempted to summarily execute the
  intruder. He attacked me. What other cause do I re-
  quire? But would doing so preclude further
  cooperation—halting and grudged as it was—from
  Isabella? Owain decided to bide his time.
  Presently, Isabella descended. “No one has dis-
  covered us,” she assured him. “The proper wards
  are in place. Innocent bystanders will remain just
  that.”
  Her pronouncement did little to put Montrovant
  at ease. He stalked around the sitting room mut-
  tering in French and tugging occasionally at the
  oversized shirt that hung from his shoulders. Dirty
  workpants were tucked into his boots, which, al-
  though old and weathered, were the only item of
  his apparel that seemed to fit him properly.
  “Now, tell us, Montrovant,” Isabella said, slip-
  ping smoothly again into Old French, “about this
  relic that causes you such anxiety.”
  Montrovant ceased pacing at the sound of his
  name, but his eyes were never still. They shifted
  
  219
  Dark Prophecy
  about constantly, his gaze scanning every corner of
  the room and each of its occupants in turn. “I seek
  the cup of Christ,” said Montrovant. When he be-
  gan speaking, his gaze locked onto Owain. “The
  sangrail. And you have it, or know of its where-
  abouts.”
  “The sangrail?” Owain was not sure what exactly
  he had expected to hear, but this was not it. “I have
  the Holy Grail?” He tossed his head back and
  laughed loudly.
  Owain’s laughter served only to provoke
  Montrovant. His eyes glazed with pure hatred. He
  snarled and took several steps toward Owain.
  Kendall reached behind her, but before she could
  draw her gun, Owain’s sword was in his hand and
  the tip pointed directly at Montrovant’s throat.
  “Hold your place,” said Owain.
  Montrovant halted. Some semblance of aware-
  ness of his surroundings returned to him. The
  madness that had seized him receded, but not far.
  “Why do we suffer this lunatic?” Owain asked
  Isabella.
  For a moment, she surveyed the scene before
  her—Owain with sword drawn, the more darkly
  complected Montrovant ready to spring—and
  when she spoke, her tone was that of a teacher who
  knew the answers to all of her own questions and
  was merely waiting for the pupils to catch up. “Ac-
  cording to legend, Owain, who was the bearer of
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  220
  the grail? Who brought it to Britain?”
  “What difference…?” Owain wanted to glance
  over at Isabella to see if she was joking, to see if
  perhaps there were more lunatics in the room than
  he had at first suspected, but he did not shift his
  gaze from Montrovant.
  “Who brought it to Britain?” she asked again.
  Owain could see the point she was making, but
  he didn’t care for it. “Joseph of Arimathea,” he ad-
  mitted.
  “There is nothing that happens that is not for a
  reason,” said Isabella.
  Owain did not argue with her. Not because he
  agreed, necessarily, but because the visions were
  intensely personal, and though he had agreed to
  share them with Isabella in hopes that she could
  rid him of them, they were not something he
  wished to discuss in front of the psychopath
  Montrovant.
  Suddenly Owain went stiff. He kept his sword
  between himself and Montrovant but looked over
  at Isabella. The true weight of her words landed
  squarely upon him. With her question, Isabella had
  drawn the connection between Montrovant, with
  his ramblings about the grail, and one of the prin-
  cipal figures of Owain’s visions, Joseph. The
  connection was tenuous, but Owain could not deny
  the possibility. The realization that struck him so
  forcefully, however, was that Isabella had drawn
  
  221
  Dark Prophecy
  that connection though Owain had not yet told her
  about Joseph.
  She watched Owain patiently, and he knew with
  a sick certainty that she was aware of the realiza-
  tion just visited upon him.
  “Montrovant,” said Isabella, changing tack com-
  pletely. “I have given Owain my assurance of safety
  in my home. I would offer the same to you, but I
  must first have your word that there will be no fur-
  ther confrontations. I believe there is much that
  we all can learn from one another,” she shot a
  pointed glance at Owain, “but not while fearing
  for our safety.”
  Montrovant looked at the sword pointed at him
  and then at Kendall, who had nearly blown off his
  hand. His eyes shone with a fanatical gleam. Would
  his word, Owain wondered, outweigh that fanati-
  cism? Finally, Montrovant turned to Isabella. “I
  agree,” he said.
  “Very well,” she said, apparently satisfied with his
  response. “Owain, put away your sword.”
  Owain hesitated. He was rapidly coming to the
  conclusion that being freed of the visions was no
  longer worth the risks involved. Dealing with
  Isabella was one thing, but exposing himself to this
  crazed Cainite, who spouted gibberish about the
  sangrail and had already threatened violence
  against Owain more than once…that was some-
  thing completely different. He was bothered also
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  222
  by Isabella’s knowing questions. She revealed, in-
  tentionally, no doubt, things she should not know,
  yet she did so without admitting anything. Perhaps
  he would be better off simply to kill her and then
  destroy the lunatic as well. He suspended judge-
  ment for the time being.
  Slowly, Owain lowered his sword and this time
  pointed his finger at Montrovant. “Know this. You
  have raised your hand against me twice. If you do
  so again, my sword will not be stayed.”
  “Please, gentlemen,” said Isabella, but neither
  Cainite looked at her. Their eyes were locked.
  “Sit.” Again, they both ignored her. She sighed but
  then pressed on. “Montrovant, Owain is under-
  standably skeptical regarding this rather wild claim
  of yours. Why do you think he has the grail, or
  knows where it is? Montrovant…?” She snapped
  her finger until he blinked and turned to face her.
  “I was sent by an ancient known as Kli Kodesh,”
  said Montrovant. “He told me that the Kinslayer
  could lead me to the relic, that the Kinslayer would
  go by the name Owain ap Ieuan.” Montrovant
  paused and glared at Owain.
  Owain, for his part, glared back. He had spent
  centuries largely keeping to himself, trying not to
  draw undue attention, and yet now his name
  seemed to be known far and wide by individuals
  he’d never met.
  “Owain ap Ieuan,” Montrovant repeated. “It was
  
  223
  Dark Prophecy
  a name I remembered from before…from my nights
  with the Templars.”
  “The Templars…” Owain had almost remem-
  bered this earlier. “Montrovant. The dark one.”
  Montrovant nodded solemnly. “You knew the
  Templars as well, Kinslayer. And you sought the
  grail.”
  Isabella, her chin propped contemplatively upon
  her knuckles, watched Owain.
  “I spent several years among the Templars when
  I first left Wales,” Owain explained. “They were
  so self-righteous—the ones who weren’t corrupt
  and stealing from, or for, the order. But none of
  them, not even the devout, were beyond tempta-
  tion.”
  “So you did know each other?” asked Isabella.
  “No,” said Owain. “I heard stories of the dark
  one, but I never met him.”
  “And I heard stories of you,” said Montrovant
  to Owain. “On my journeys searching for the relic,
  I often heard your name. You were so often ahead
  of me, it seemed. I did not know you had suc-
  ceeded.” The madness again glistened in
  Montrovant’s eyes, as if the very thought of some-
  one having achieved his goal was enough to drive
  him to frenzied violence.
  “I never searched for the grail,” said Owain, hand
  on hilt. “You’re mad.”
  “And you said an ancient called Kli Kodesh told
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  224
  you this?” Isabella asked Montrovant. He nodded.
  “What do you know of this Kli Kodesh?” she asked.
  A grim smile crept across Montrovant’s lips. “He
  is as old as time, and I have been a part of his games
  too often.”
  “Then why do you believe what he says?” asked
  Isabella.
  Montrovant chuckled at her question. “He plays
  his games for sport. Life, death, hours, centuries—
  they are all the same to him. There is enough sport
  in the truth. He does not need lies. He sets me upon
  my quest to provide entertainment for him.”
  “And you play along?” Owain was disgusted.
  “This time I will succeed!” Montrovant raised his
  fists before him. He hissed and bared his fangs.
  Owain was an instant from drawing his blade.
  Kendall held her pistol aimed at the dark one. She
  had been watching intently, ready for the first sign
  of aggression from Montrovant, though the con-
  versation in French was meaningless to her.
  “Montrovant.” Isabella’s soothing voice cut
  through the air and restored a facade of calm to
  the room. Montrovant regained control of himself
  and eased back a step. Owain, in turn, lightened
  his grip upon the hilt of his sword as Kendall low-
  ered her weapon.
  “You must tell me more of this Kli Kodesh and
  what he has told you,” said Isabella.
  Owain scoffed. “The dark one is not only a mad-
  
  225
  Dark Prophecy
  man but also an idiot. You can put stock in his in-
  sane drivel if you like, but I do not.” He turned
  and stalked out of the room, secure in the knowl-
  edge that Kendall would watch his back should
  Montrovant decide to take advantage of the op-
  portunity. Also, as Owain passed, he flashed an
  unobtrusive hand signal to his trusted ghoul for her
  to hold her position. She would know to keep a
  watch on Montrovant. Isabella seemed to trust this
  lunatic, but Owain was not about to share her folly.
  Ignoring Isabella’s calls for him to return, Owain
  stomped outside past the propped front door and
  hoped, as he did so, he that he would not trigger
  whatever magical wards the witch had set. Despite
  the bit of arcane trickery he had witnessed from
  Isabella, Owain was still skeptical that she could
  bring any power to bear that might harm him.
  When he turned back toward the house from the
  front walk, however, he saw a front door that had
  not been broken to pieces. There was nothing un-
  usual about the house, nothing to distinguish it
  from its neighbors. Owain was impressed, but even
  this illusion gave him no pause to fear for his own
  safety.
  The streets of the village were not as deserted as
  Owain had seen them before. Here and there, mor-
  tals passed on the street with friendly words of
  welcome to one another. Owain was not reliant on
  Isabella to remain unnoticed by mortals. The shad-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  226
  ows stretched to welcome him, and as he stood in
  relatively open ground, not even the nearest mor-
  tal saw him.
  Not wishing to tempt fate, however, Owain
  slipped alongside the house. He stood beside the
  building and looked off to the west at the impos-
  ing tower atop Glastonbury Tor. To the east, he
  knew, stood the Holy Thorn, waiting for his next
  vision so that it might terrorize him again. Owain
  had no desire to travel to either landmark. He had
  seen more than enough of each. Instead, he looked
  up and found the window he sought.
  As silently as a shadow, he scaled the twenty or
  so feet to the window. His fingers dug easily into
  the bricks and mortar. The slightest concentration
  saw the latch click open, and after just a few more
  seconds, Owain stood inside. The shelves were set
  the same as they had been last night. The same
  items sat atop the small table against the wall—
  candle, golden bowl, pitcher of water. A wave of
  equal parts relief and trepidation washed over
  Owain as he stepped closer and saw also the small,
  stoppered vial beside the pitcher—the vial hold-
  ing the elixir that had launched him into the most
  vivid dreamings he had experienced, the elixir that
  had allowed him to touch Angharad and to feel
  her at the tips of his fingers.
  Owain waited by the window as he listened. He
  could make out the voices from downstairs—the
  
  227
  Dark Prophecy
  infuriatingly composed Isabella, the considerably
  less composed maniac Montrovant. Isabella con-
  tinued with her questions, no doubt, leading
  Montrovant to say what she wanted him to say. It
  was unfortunate, Owain thought, that Kendall did
  not understand Old French so that she could re-
  port back to him more fully.
  Quickly but silently, Owain took his seat at the
  table. His gaze fell immediately upon the tiny vial,
  and he thought back several hours. Isabella had
  offered him a dram, though the thimble-like cup
  was now nowhere to be seen. She had intoned no
  incantations and made no gestures as she had when
  they viewed Ellison. Was the elixir, then, all that
  was required? Owain looked at the sad little wick
  protruding from the glob of wax that had been a
  candle. It had been lit before, but was that a nec-
  essary component of what had happened? He could
  light the burned-down nub, but the aroma might
  well alert his host, so he decided against.
  Owain lifted the vial from the table. He had as-
  sumed that he and Isabella would discuss what he
  had seen, what he’d experienced. His expectation
  had been that she could provide some insight as
  to why the visions plagued him. She claimed that
  she could make them stop. Yet Owain knew that
  to be rid of the visions was no longer his most po-
  tent desire. There were other considerations to take
  into account.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  228
  Angharad.
  When the songs of the now-destroyed siren had
  first brought images of Angharad back into Owain’s
  mind, he had seen her from a distance, through a
  window of his ancestral home. Shortly thereafter
  when the visions had begun, he had seen her as a
  dream—oh so real at the moment, but quickly fad-
  ing into vague recollection upon waking. Earlier
  tonight—a shudder ran down Owain’s spine at the
  mere thought—he had touched her face, had felt
  her hand upon his, and now, hours later, he still be-
  lieved that he had touched her. Despite what his
  rational mind told him, Owain’s memory was not
  of a dream that had been snatched away from him.
  His fingertips, the palm of his hand, had caressed
  the softest of skin. Angharad, not some shade of
  his mind, had spoken to him. He had been in her
  presence as surely as he had sat across the table
  from Isabella. He could rationalize to eternity the
  possibilities of being rid of the visions, Owain knew,
  but he had the opportunity—he possessed by way
  of the tiny vial that he held in his hand the
  means—to see Angharad again. To touch her. To
  hear her voice. And he could no more pass up that
  chance than he could summon the courage to greet
  the rising sun and put an end to his lonely exist-
  ence.
  Owain took the stopper from the vial and raised
  the container to his lips. He felt the sweet burn-
  
  229
  Dark Prophecy
  ing of the elixir passing over his lips and tongue,
  down his throat. There was not much left, so he
  tilted back his head and drained the vial.
  He had no idea what was in the elixir. He had
  not asked Isabella. She undoubtedly would have
  skirted the question. As he waited for something,
  anything, to happen, Owain’s thoughts turned to
  his enigmatic host. He knew little more of her than
  he had when he had arrived. He had thought him-
  self quite clever tracing the route of the chess
  moves. Confront her and punish her for her inter-
  ference—that was what he’d planned to do. But
  everything he discovered about her, beginning with
  his finding her in the first place, was what she
  wanted him to discover. The interference with the
  chess game that had led him here had been de-
  signed to do just that. Or so she said.
  She could have foreseen that he would go to the
  drop-off point for the chess moves, to Berlin, but
  how could she have known that Ellison would send
  Owain here? There was too much coincidence, and
  Owain knew better than to trust coincidence. Was
  Ellison an accomplice in the scheme? After view-
  ing him via Isabella’s magics, Owain doubted
  somehow that the Nosferatu was knowingly a con-
  spirator. Looking back on the encounter, Owain
  could see that Ellison had changed once he had
  seen the locket that Owain carried, the locket that
  was so similar to Ellison’s own. Perhaps he thought I
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  230
  threatened his secret treasure, Owain thought, re-
  membering how desperately the Nosferatu had
  clutched his locket, how he pined after his Melitta,
  whoever that might be. But how could Isabella have
  known that it would happen that way? Owain won-
  dered.
  Again, there was no certain answer.
  Owain shifted in the chair. The problem was that
  he could not be sure of anything he learned about
  Isabella. Was any fact a true discovery, or did he
  learn only and exactly what she wanted him to
  learn?
  She was not Kindred. Of that he was sure. He
  had always been able to recognize others of his
  kind. It was a skill that not all Cainites possessed,
  and one that Owain had never been able to ex-
  plain completely. She was not Kindred, but she was
  older than a mortal had right to be. Otherwise, she
  could never have derailed a chess game that some-
  times went decades between moves.
  She was also an adept gatherer of knowledge, a
  spy, in her own words. She had written the false
  letter to El Greco, which meant she had garnered
  information from deep within Carlos’s faction of
  the Sabbat. The experimentation that had brought
  the blood curse crashing down upon the Cainite
  world was far from common knowledge, and Carlos
  would kill to keep it that way. Some of this knowl-
  edge Isabella could have gleamed from her
  
  231
  Dark Prophecy
  eavesdropping on the Nosferatu, those capable traf-
  fickers of secrets, but would even they know so
  much about the inner workings of the Sabbat?
  She knows of my early life, Owain reminded him-
  self. Enough to practically reconstruct his chambers
  from mortal days. How could she learn such things?
  How?
  The questions burned in Owain’s mind, and as
  he pondered the various riddles, his eyelids grew
  gradually heavier and heavier. How quickly the
  night had passed, he thought, for the call of the
  rising sun already to be summoning him to slum-
  ber. The night, however, had not passed. Darkness
  still blanketed the countryside beyond the window
  and was not nearly ready to surrender its domain.
  Upon the tor, the tower stood monolithic in the
  moonlight.
  Owain’s eyes fluttered. They could not have been
  closed for more than a few seconds. Strange, he
  thought, that I should feel so tired when sunrise is still
  hours away. He turned his attention back to Joseph,
  who had been speaking to him.
  “You seek the grail as proof that God exists?” the
  old man asked. His dark beard was cut short,
  trimmed neatly close to his jaw, which jutted
  slightly as if throwing forth the question as a chal-
  lenge.
  “No,” said Owain. “I know He exists. I know only
  too well.” He rose to his feet from where he had
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  232
  sat cross-legged on the ground. The grassy hillside
  was empty except for the two men. “For years I
  have heard His voice.” Joseph cocked his head, in-
  terested by the notion. “Yes,” said Owain.
  “Whenever I pass a babbling brook, or when I hear
  the roar of a waterfall, I hear His laughter. He
  laughs at my pain, at my loss. When I hear the
  shriveled leaves of fall rustling along the breeze of
  their final journey, I hear Him mocking the sor-
  rows that He has heaped upon me!”
  Joseph’s face saddened. He leaned heavily upon
  his staff. “Then why, Owain? Why have you come
  seeking the sangrail? Do you wish to make of it a
  mockery?”
  Owain’s cruel laugh rolled over the hillside. “I
  would hold in my hand that most holy vessel, the
  chalice that held the blood of the Christ. Not be-
  cause I discount the power of the relic. Far from it.
  I, more than most, believe in the power, and the
  glory, and the life everlasting.” Owain stepped
  closer to Joseph. “I may be the most devout Chris-
  tian you have ever met.”
  Owain turned away from the old man and could
  see to the east the lone tower, the chapel to St.
  Michael. “I would hold the grail because it is the
  symbol of that which our God holds most dear—
  his beloved Son. I would hold the grail so that I
  might crush it in my own hands, so that I might
  obliterate that vestige of God and the Christ on
  
  233
  Dark Prophecy
  earth.” Owain turned around and, again, stepped
  closer to the old man. “And you, Joseph, will tell
  me where it is—if you value your life, and you
  would not have lived so long if you did not.”
  Joseph did not retreat before Owain but held his
  ground. “I have lived quite some time,” said the
  old man. “It is true. But I am not like you. The
  curse of Caine does not stain my forehead. I do not
  live in fear. I do not fear you.” His blue-gray eyes
  presented an open challenge to Owain. “I am not
  here out of fear but out of hope. Though the curse
  is upon you, it is not too late for you or your kind.”
  “Hope?” Owain scoffed at Joseph’s words. “You are
  a man of God, but do not tell me that you are a man
  of hope. I, as an infant, saw hope pass out of this
  world with my mother’s soul. As a man, I saw hope
  die as my brother married the woman I loved. Then,
  I felt hope flee my body as a monstrous beast took
  hold of me and made me his forever. I saw dying
  hope in the eyes of my decrepit brother before I
  snapped his neck. I saw hope die as I sent my nephew
  to his death. I watched hope die as I turned my back
  on my homeland.” Owain, as his fury mounted, had
  moved closer to Joseph until their faces were only
  inches apart. “Do you dare claim to offer me hope?”
  Still, Joseph held his ground. “I do.” A low growl
  began to form in Owain’s throat. “I offer hope. I
  offer you the hope of God the Father’s eternal love.
  I offer—”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  234
  His words were cut short as Owain grabbed away
  the staff. With a roar of pure outrage, Owain swung
  the shaft. It caught Joseph across the side of the
  face, and the old man, his cheek and jaw shattered,
  crumpled to the ground.
  Owain stood over the bloodied figure. “You of-
  fer me hope so that your God can snatch it from
  me yet again!” Owain raised the staff high above
  his head and brought it down, not with the arch-
  ing swing of a cudgel, but with the stabbing motion
  of a spear. The staff, though not carved to a point,
  struck with such force that its tip plunged into and
  through Joseph’s chest and dug nearly a foot into
  the ground.
  The old man did not cry out. His left eye was
  already obscured by swelling and shunted-aside
  bone from the first blow, but his right eye stared
  wide at Owain standing above him. Joseph would
  tell Owain nothing else about the grail, but Owain
  was too rabidly in the throes of frenzy to care. He
  dropped onto the impaled figure and sank his fangs
  into Joseph’s neck.
  As Owain fed, the body began to wither and draw
  up beneath him, while above, the staff underwent a
  miraculous transformation. Driven into the ground
  through Joseph’s broken body, numerous shoots be-
  gan to separate from the wooden shaft. Roots formed
  and bore down into the earth. Branches reached in
  every direction toward the heavens.
  
  235
  Dark Prophecy
  As Owain tasted the last of ancient blood,
  Joseph’s body completely crumbled to dust, lying
  in a pile at the foot of what had been the old man’s
  staff, but now was a full-grown hawthorn tree.
  Owain watched buds come forth within seconds
  and open into leaves. Blossoms also flowered,
  opened wide, then rained down a sprinkle of red
  and white petals on him.
  Suddenly the very ground quivered and Owain,
  trying to stand, was knocked from his feet. Atop
  the tor across the way, the tower to St. Michael
  trembled violently. Bricks broke free from its high-
  est reaches, and then the crowning statue of
  Michael tumbled to the ground as well. Owain
  watched as it tumbled, as if in slow motion, head
  over heels—an archangel taken to flight—and
  then was dashed to pieces on the ground.
  Then the wind swept in from nowhere and
  churned into the air the ashes that had been Jo-
  seph. Owain, half-blinded by the silty wind, heard
  and felt more than saw as the chapel tower col-
  lapsed in upon itself. From the village and the
  abbey, he could hear cries of panic as the earth
  rocked and shook.
  One voice, coming from closer by than the rest,
  stood out above the chaos. “The Kinslayer has
  killed the keeper of the grail!”
  Owain looked down at the shallow bowl on the
  table before him. The image of the collapsing tower
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  236
  was fading away into the expanding circlets of
  ripples. The sounds of destruction and the fury
  rushing through his veins were fading as well. That
  fateful night gave way to the present. Owain looked
  up and saw Isabella and Montrovant watching him
  from across the table. Kendall stood behind them
  by the door, her concern for her master apparent
  on her face.
  “He killed the keeper of the grail,” said
  Montrovant again, staring into the now clear wa-
  ter of the bowl. His eyes shifted, looking up from
  beneath sharp brows to take in Owain. “You must
  have found it.” Montrovant almost pleaded, but the
  awe in his face and voice turned instantly to some-
  thing far more deadly. “You must tell me!”
  The memories of the magnificent, flowering tree
  and the blue-gray eyes of the old man still clung
  in the fore of Owain’s mind. The resonance of the
  sound, of the vibration, of the staff tearing through
  flesh and into earth below held him apart from
  what he now saw and heard. He stared up at
  Isabella and Montrovant, but they seemed very dis-
  tant to him, as if the feet separating them were
  actually miles.
  Owain watched helplessly as Montrovant, his
  claws reaching for Owain’s throat, dove headlong
  across the table.
  
  237
  Dark Prophecy
  ELEVEN
  Montrovant scattered bowl, pitcher, and candle
  as he dove wildly over the table. Owain, still dis-
  oriented, could do little but watch as claws dug into
  his throat and the force of Montrovant’s lunge
  tumbled the chair over backward. They landed in
  a heap. The impact of the fall tore Montrovant’s
  claws from Owain’s throat. The burst of pain was
  instantaneous as Owain felt his larynx sliced from
  side to side, and the blood began to flow.
  Owain clasped one hand to his throat even as,
  with the other, he went for his attacker’s eyes.
  Montrovant jerked his face to the side. Only when
  Owain was not immediately pummeled or clawed
  by another blow did he realize that Montrovant’s
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  238
  hand was already on the hilt of the sword at
  Owain’s hip.
  Owain let go of his throat and with a bloody
  hand grabbed Montrovant’s wrist, sunk his claws
  deep into the dark one’s flesh, carving through
  muscle and tendon, scraping bone. Owain’s other
  hand dug into Montrovant’s face in search of an
  eye.
  Montrovant shifted his weight and brought his
  shoulder smashing into Owain’s chest. Owain fell
  back. The back of his head bounced hard against
  the floor. Any advantage in strength that he en-
  joyed, Montrovant’s leverage and unrelenting
  aggression recouped.
  Montrovant, despite his gouged wrist and fore-
  arm, ripped Owain’s sword from his belt. With a
  triumphant roar, the dark one rolled to his left and
  quickly rose on both knees. Blood streaming down
  his arm and face, he raised the sword for the coup
  de grâce.
  For the second time that night, an explosion
  rattled the walls of the cottage, and then a second
  blast. Kendall’s first shot slammed into
  Montrovant’s upraised arm between shoulder and
  elbow. The second ripped into his chest from the
  side, shattering ribs and exploding through what-
  ever internal organs he still possessed. The force
  of the blasts knocked Montrovant completely over
  Owain and into the wall.
  
  239
  Dark Prophecy
  Given a moment to regroup, Owain was quickly
  on his feet and ready for the next attack. His po-
  tent vitae was already speeding along the healing
  process as the gash in his throat scabbed over and
  the bleeding stopped.
  With the combatants separated, Kendall stood
  poised for another shot, which Owain felt sure
  would take off most of Montrovant’s head. Isabella
  stood back from the fray, her expression grim, but
  didn’t try to stop Kendall this time.
  Montrovant, staggered by the gunshot wounds,
  pressed against the wall and slid upward to his feet.
  His right arm, ripped open by the first shot, hung
  limp at his side, but still his fingers were wrapped
  in a death grip around the hilt of the sword. He
  glanced at Owain but spared more attention for
  Kendall. Fury and determination burned in
  Montrovant’s eyes yet, but the modern weapon that
  had so grievously injured him three times now gave
  him pause. He seemed unsure how to deal with it,
  confused by the thunder and awesome pain it un-
  leashed.
  Then Montrovant was in motion. His lunge was
  too fast for even Kendall’s reflexes. She had no
  chance to get off another shot.
  Owain was prepared to receive an attack or to
  defend Kendall if need be, but with one step,
  Montrovant shot across the room and dove through
  the window. The crash of glass and snap of panes
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  240
  was sharp and shrill after the reverberating boom
  of the gunshots that still rang in Owain’s ears.
  Before the shower of glass had completely fallen
  to the ground, Montrovant was gone, escaped into
  the night.
  The three who remained stood in shocked si-
  lence for a moment.
  “My thanks for your assurance of safety beneath
  your roof,” Owain said to Isabella.
  “I had not accounted for you provoking him,”
  she snapped.
  “Provoking…?” Owain began to protest but then
  followed her gaze to the overturned golden bowl
  on the floor and the puddle of water draining away.
  “You saw….”
  Isabella nodded. Her eyes met his. “Yes.”
  The sensations came rushing back to Owain—
  the tenor of Joseph’s voice, the visceral thrill of staff
  piercing flesh and earth, the taste of ancient blood
  upon his lips, the tremors of the tower collapsing—
  and he knew that this had been not vision, not
  prophecy, but memory.
  “You were there,” said Isabella. “You killed Jo-
  seph, ran him through with his own staff.”
  “Yes,” Owain whispered as much to himself as
  to her.
  “The prophecies speak of you, Owain. ‘Thence
  shall come the Kinslayer. His is the blood of sacrifice.
  His are the sorrows of the ages.’”
  
  241
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain stared at her, uncomprehending. The
  worlds of memory and present experience were diz-
  zyingly superimposed for him. Her words mingled
  with those of the dead, the murdered, Joseph.
  Thence shall come the Kinslayer…. I offer hope.
  Memories flooded over Owain—memories of the
  murder; memories of that forgotten trip to Britain,
  to Glastonbury; memories of his denied quest for
  the grail. Montrovant had spoken the truth.
  Owain stepped toward the door. Whether from
  loss of blood or from the weight of realization, his
  legs failed him and he stumbled. The golden bowl
  skittered off his foot and across the floor. Kendall
  rushed forward to catch her master as he faltered.
  Her strong arms held him upright.
  “There is still much to learn,” said Isabella. “But
  rest for now.”
  Kendall helped Owain down the stairs and to the
  cellar room. The rich smell of gunpowder clung to
  her like perfume. She laid Owain gently onto the
  bed.
  Montrovant spoke the truth, Owain recited over
  and over to himself. He picked at the memories
  like a half-torn scab. The visions loomed from a
  new perspective suddenly—equal parts fantasy and
  history. The shock of recognition as he’d stood be-
  fore the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill made sense
  now. I was there before. His strong sense of the place
  had not derived from legends and stories alone. I
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  242
  was there before. He had been there, and the
  memory had been hidden from him. But how? He
  knew the answer before he asked the question.
  Owain could taste again the blood of the ancient
  upon his tongue. The blood of Joseph of
  Arimathea—so completely human, yet so much
  more than mortal. The power of that blood had
  overwhelmed Owain, had buried deep within his
  mind the events of that night, of those years. His
  quest for the grail had not been a spur-of-the-mo-
  ment undertaking. Though he might have sought
  less compulsively for the relic than had
  Montrovant, Owain had expended considerable
  time and energy gathering the numerous stories,
  investigating the sightings both ancient and more
  current. Yet he had spoken the truth when he de-
  nied the search altogether—the truth as he had
  known it. Now, scant hours later, he knew differ-
  ently.
  How much else is hidden from me? Owain won-
  dered.
  He clutched his hands to his temples and pressed
  sharp nails into his scalp as if he could physically
  extract the obscured wisdom of the ages.
  “Owain?” Kendall’s voice intervened upon his
  self-mutilation.
  Owain saw the confusion and the concern for her
  master in her eyes. She was so pale, and though
  she had supported him earlier, he could see that
  
  243
  Dark Prophecy
  she was weakened as well, that she leaned against
  the wardrobe to remain upright. He had fed on her
  so often recently to recoup his own blood loss, and
  he had not replenished her strength as he should
  have. She cannot serve me and take on the burden of
  serving as my herd, he chided himself. But as he
  rubbed the small wounds at his temples, a pang of
  guilt pricked his conscience. Hadn’t he resolved to
  release her from her servitude? To cease the cha-
  rade of quid pro quo—her service for the gift of
  eternal unlife?
  He looked with pained eyes upon her. The
  strength of her slight form amazed him. She had
  proven herself dependable and lethal. Again to-
  night, she had saved him. In this world that was
  increasingly different from the one he had known,
  could he truly do without her? Could he, if he al-
  lowed her to walk away, survive?
  Owain motioned her to him. With the quick
  slice of one finger, he opened his wrist and offered
  it to her. She raised his hand to her lips and drank.
  Just one last time, he promised himself. There was
  too much going on for him to be blind and help-
  less during the day just now. Just one last time. When
  we are away from this place, I will release her. Owain
  tried to tell himself that she had never asked for
  her freedom, had never expressed the slightest ap-
  prehension about her condition. But she did not
  know the truth as he knew it. She could not know
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  244
  that he would never Embrace her, that he would
  never play God by spreading the curse to another.
  Just one last time.
  As she drew blood from his wound, Owain sa-
  vored the flow of the vitae. She was more than his
  connection to the mortal world, he realized. She
  was his connection to the world of humanity. Yet
  as she drank from him, as she became more like
  him, he took her humanity from her. Caught up
  in the ecstasy of this inverted Kiss, Owain could
  imagine that the items around him in the room
  were actually the props of his mortal days, of his
  days of unbridled vigor and complete humanity.
  In stark contrast was the vital, discovered
  memory of that night on Wearyall Hill, the night
  he had slain Joseph. That night was perhaps the
  farthest Owain had ever strayed from possessing any
  shred of recognizable humanity. He had given in
  not to hunger, to the Beast, but to evil. He had
  plummeted far beyond the ravening hunger that
  plagued the soul of all his kind. The Beast was more
  human than Owain at that moment long ago.
  He felt the flicker of Kendall’s tongue on his wrist
  as she eagerly accepted what he offered. Owain laid
  back his head on the feather pillow, just one of the
  trappings of his lost humanity. Suddenly, he felt
  that absence, the gaping nothingness within his
  soul, more keenly than he had in years. He had
  drunk the elixir in search of Angharad, in search
  
  245
  Dark Prophecy
  of mortal passion. Instead, he had found sure proof
  of his own utter damnation. Last night he had
  tasted of humanity. The apple had been dangled
  before him, but tonight it was revealed as the for-
  bidden fruit.
  I will not give up! he raged at the God who venge-
  fully had laid the curse upon Caine’s brow, who had
  stolen first love and then humanity from Owain. I
  will not give up!
  Kendall’s lips moved rhythmically against
  Owain’s skin. The sensation was one of excruciat-
  ing pleasure. Already in her veins, the blood flowed
  more forcefully—a mixture of Owain’s curse and
  her humanity. Some night, Owain knew, if he did
  not release her, his blood would win out, and there
  would be only the curse.
  Not withdrawing his tapped vein from her,
  Owain took hold of her hand. The scent of her
  blood was strong. He ran his tongue along the
  length of her forearm and was rewarded by the rise
  of goosebumps on her skin. In his mind, he saw
  Angharad’s face as he reached for her. He felt her
  delicate cheek, heard her moan in ecstasy as he
  pressed his fangs into the flesh of the arm before
  him.
  The blood came hot and fast. Owain drank
  deeply at first, but then tried not to imbibe more
  quickly than the flow of blood from his own wrist.
  It was a precarious balance.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  246
  Kendall panted against his wrist as she drank—
  for, yes, it was Kendall and not Angharad. Her body
  was taut against him, her leg wrapped around his.
  Amidst the surroundings of his mortal days, Owain
  tasted her humanity flowing into him. He grabbed
  the back of her head and forced her mouth more
  firmly against his wound. She drank greedily. His
  claws traced the vertebrae on the back of her neck.
  Then he was taking hold of her shirt, ripping away
  her clothing, and she his, neither one relinquish-
  ing the flow of blood.
  She slid her hand through the hair on his chest,
  sank her nails into his flesh when he drew more
  forcefully of her blood. Her heady aroma and tang
  filled Owain’s awareness. She was what he had lost,
  what he could no longer be. He pressed his fingers
  against her yielding breast, slid them down across
  the belly that might still one day bear a child to
  suckle. Her lingering humanity in the face of his
  curse enticed him beyond measure.
  Owain’s desire took hold of him. He careened
  toward the point where he would no longer be able
  to control himself. Raw bloodlust mingled with
  rampant longing. Hunger and passion were one.
  Kendall’s naked humanity enveloped him, took
  him in, beckoned him onward.
  His restraint fell away. Owain drank fully of her.
  Her heart pounded furiously, attempting to com-
  pensate for the volume of blood leaving her body.
  
  247
  Dark Prophecy
  She would not last long, but Owain did not care.
  He would have her. His mouth and throat were
  awash with her blood. He would possess her hu-
  manity, consume it. She was his completely.
  Kendall’s jaw slackened. Her hand fell limp
  across Owain’s thigh. The circle was broken as he
  feasted upon her sanguine essence, but she no
  longer drank of him. Her consciousness was fall-
  ing away. She was surrendering to him. She could
  do nothing else, confronted by the full force of his
  passion.
  Owain drank, but his hunger and his lust were
  merely primed for the consumption of Kendall’s
  very soul. Owain could feel as her frenetic heart,
  increasingly overburdened with each beat, weak-
  ened. A few more minutes and it would be over.
  Still, Owain hungered. Not even Kendall’s sacri-
  fice would satiate him. And she would be gone.
  Suddenly, Owain recoiled as if stung. He pulled
  away so quickly that Kendall’s siphoned blood
  stained the blanket beneath them a rich, dark red.
  Owain took her by the shoulders. Her eyes fluttered
  and rolled back in her head, but she still breathed.
  Her heart still beat. Owain clutched her to him, bur-
  ied his face against her breast. He fought down the
  hunger as he nuzzled her. She was his sole link to
  humanity, and not for centuries had he felt the spark
  of that fire engendered within him so powerfully. Yet
  he had almost destroyed her. For had he taken her
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  248
  much further, he would have had no choice but to
  lose her or to Embrace her—and even had he cho-
  sen the latter evil and not killed her, then she would
  have been like him. The spark of life, of humanity
  would have ceased to burn within her.
  Owain pressed his face more tightly against her.
  She was his font of humanity, and he had nearly
  destroyed her. He listened, thankfully, as her heart-
  beat grew stronger. He measured time, as he lay
  there against her, by the rhythm of her pulse, and
  he was not aware when the pull of daybreak over-
  took him and he surrendered to slumber.
  Evening came and Owain awoke alone in the
  bed. Kendall’s blood was dried black on the blan-
  ket, but she was gone. Her tattered shirt lay in a
  heap on the floor, but her change of clothes, also,
  was gone. Owain lay there for some while contem-
  plating the grave mistake he had come close to
  making. He had very nearly deprived himself of his
  most valuable resource. Of all the ghouls Owain
  had employed over the years, Kendall was quite
  possibly the most adaptable and self-reliant. For
  those very reasons, her absence did not concern
  him overly much. Probably she was assuring her-
  self that the area was secure, that the lunatic
  Montrovant had fled in earnest and was not lay-
  ing in wait for Owain nearby.
  
  249
  Dark Prophecy
  Montrovant. Owain’s thoughts turned to the dark
  one. He had fled with Owain’s sword, one of two
  items that still held a certain amount of sentimen-
  tal value for Owain. He would be wanting that
  back. Owain thought calmly of how he would track
  down the dark one and, for the trouble he had
  caused, destroy him.
  Other matters, however, required immediate at-
  tention—the vision that was not a vision;
  memories that, for centuries, had been hidden from
  Owain. There was more to unravel. Twice, he had
  utilized Isabella’s elixir, one tool of her mysterious
  trade, but neither time, thanks to intrusions from
  Montrovant, had Owain and Isabella been able to
  investigate further what he had seen—what they
  had seen, he reminded himself, for apparently the
  watery mirror of the golden bowl had reflected the
  images that otherwise existed only in Owain’s
  mind.
   Finally, he rose from the bed. I must find out what
  Isabella knows. He opened the wardrobe and from
  the pocket of his overcoat removed the one item
  he still possessed that carried any meaning from his
  mortal life—the tattered remnants of his common-
  place book. I will deal with Isabella, and then I will
  deal with Montrovant. The latter task, he realized,
  would require Kendall’s aid, if Owain were to be
  traveling abroad. The fulfillment of his pledge to
  release her would have to be delayed. First, he
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  250
  would settle scores with Montrovant. Then I will
  free her, he promised himself again.
  Owain found Isabella waiting for him in the sit-
  ting room. She held a large, leather-bound book
  open across her lap. “So, it is just us again,” he said.
  Isabella carefully closed the book. “Yes.”
  Owain was struck by the utter calmness of her
  manner. Despite all that had happened the past
  nights, she had remained very much in control—
  of herself and of the situation, for the most part.
  “If Montrovant comes back,” said Owain, “I’ll kill
  him.” Isabella watched him intently but did not
  respond. Damnation! Owain cursed her. Is there
  nothing I can do or say to fluster this woman? He stood
  silently for a moment more before trying again to
  catch her off guard. “You brought him here on pur-
  pose.”
  This accusation elicited a response from her,
  though it was not the reaction Owain had ex-
  pected. She smiled and laughed quietly to herself.
  “I did not know him,” she answered. “And I didn’t
  know he would come here, but…” she drew in a
  long breath as she searched for the proper words,
  “I cannot say that I was completely surprised.”
  “You speak nonsense.”
  “To some.” She set her book on the couch be-
  side her. “Please,” she gestured to the chair opposite
  her, “sit.” Then she waited until he had done so.
  “I did suspect that someone might arrive, and it ap-
  
  251
  Dark Prophecy
  pears that Montrovant was, in fact, that someone.
  The Unholy Triad complete.”
  Owain sat silently for a moment but could hold
  his tongue no longer. “You’re as insane as he is.”
  “What do you know of Kli Kodesh, the one
  Montrovant said sent him?” Isabella asked.
  “Nothing.”
  “Are you sure?” she prodded.
  What do you know? The answer to that question
  was, Owain realized, less straightforward than it
  would have been even twenty-four hours ago. A
  large block of time, several years that he hadn’t
  even known were missing, had been restored to
  him somehow. How could he be sure anymore of
  what he did or did not know? He thought for a
  while, as Isabella sat patiently, of those years that
  he had hunted for the Christian relic that might
  never have been more than myth. Owain had been
  driven by an icy determination to crush in his own
  hands that most potent symbol of the divine, to
  spite God as surely as God had spited him. The
  original notion had blossomed into compulsion and
  later crusade. Never since had Owain known such
  powerful motivation. Those years of the search,
  spent largely in France and Britain, he remembered
  now. Montrovant, who had likewise sought the
  grail, he remembered also. The confrontation with
  Joseph, the foul murder—Owain remembered that
  now as well. But Kli Kodesh…?
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  252
  “Nothing.”
  Isabella nodded. “I believe you.” But whether she
  meant that she believed Owain did not know or that
  she believed there was nothing to know, he was un-
  sure. “I have never met Kli Kodesh,” she said, “but I
  have heard of him. He is quite old, as Montrovant
  said. The ancient one’s name surfaces occasionally
  in stories of the grail. And that does seem to be the
  connection between you and Montrovant.”
  “Does this Kli Kodesh claim to know the where-
  abouts of the grail?” Owain asked.
  “He claims many things, and he has claimed to
  be many people,” said Isabella. “Some stories have
  him claiming to be Judas Iscariot, traitor among
  Christ’s disciples. Other stories reveal him as Mer-
  lin, advisor to Arthur who, some legends say,
  conquered Rome. Still other stories say that he is
  a madman for the ages, overcome by time and te-
  dium, that he believes all of the contradictory tales
  surrounding him. Myth? Legend? History?” Isabella
  shrugged. “All that is certain is that he is ancient,
  and that he is a keeper of the dark prophecies.”
  Dark prophecies.
  Owain’s thoughts whirled back to the stormy
  night in Toledo, to the alabaster stranger who had
  spoken and then vanished, another question mark
  in a book of questions that had neither beginning
  nor end. Owain thought back. He heard the words
  again and spoke them:
  
  253
  Dark Prophecy
  “The path ahead will take you to the center of
  the widow’s web. It will take you to the very foot
  of the holy thorn. It will take you into the hidden
  presence of the sacred vessel. It is there you must
  speak the words of undoing for the children of
  Caine. This is the task that has fallen to you. Let
  it be thus. Thy will be done.”
  For once, Isabella’s eyes widened with surprise.
  She recovered almost instantly, but Owain saw.
  ‘“The widow’s web?’” he said as he glanced around
  the room meaningfully. “No doubt, he spoke from
  madness.”
  “It seems as if you are not so completely
  uninvolved with Kli Kodesh as you thought,” said
  Isabella.
  “It seems so.” Owain’s surprise was less than it
  might have been before his earlier revelation about
  Joseph. The Ventrue elder was beginning to de-
  velop a sense of just how little he actually did know.
  Briefly, he described to Isabella the strange meet-
  ing on the streets of Toledo.
  “And some of what he said to you were the same
  words from your visions?” she asked.
  “Yes.” Owain held in his mind the brief glimpse
  of Isabella surprised as he recited the words Kli
  Kodesh had spoken. Owain thought, also, of that
  disturbing encounter, of his frustration at the
  stranger who spoke as if he knew secrets that in-
  volved Owain.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  254
  Isabella waited patiently for Owain to describe his
  visions, but looking at her, he made an interesting
  connection. She, like Kli Kodesh, treated Owain as
  if he should know more than he did. More precisely,
  he realized, they both treated him that way knowing
  that he did not know whatever they did, and they rel-
  ished that sense of power, lorded it over him.
  “You said he is a keeper of prophecy,” said Owain.
  “Prophecy of what?”
  “The knowledge is within you, Owain.”
  Owain leaned forward in his chair. “I have had
  enough of being led by the hand like a child. Ei-
  ther answer my question, or I will leave this house,
  and your game will be over. I can stand to leave
  your riddles unsolved. Can you?”
  Isabella considered his question thoughtfully.
  “The riddles will be solved,” she answered at last.
  “Perhaps this is not the appointed time, but they
  will be solved. And it will be you who solves them.”
  Commonplace book in hand, Owain rose from
  his chair and turned to leave the room, to leave
  the house and never return.
  “The prophecy,” said Isabella calmly, “is of your
  destruction.”
  Owain stopped, turned to face her again, and the
  words she spoke turned his blood to ice.
  “This is the Endtime. This is the fading of the Blood.”
  The words he had heard so often in the visions
  flowed from her mouth.
  
  255
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain thought back to the most recent visions,
  those induced by the elixir, those of Angharad and
  Joseph that Isabella had witnessed through her
  magic. This is the Endtime. This is the fading of the
  Blood. Those words had not been spoken!
  But Isabella was not finished:
  “This is the Winnowing.
  “And in the last days the master will once again take
  up his tools. The firmament will tremble and the earth
  itself will be split asunder. The secret places of the earth
  will be cast up into the air and the creatures of dark-
  ness will shriek in the light of day. For it is written that
  Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Caine a tiller of the
  ground.”
  The words took hold of Owain. They fit like a
  missing puzzle piece against the words of his visions.
  He stood helpless before them. Isabella’s voice took
  on a harsher tone. Her eyes blazed with righteous
  conviction.
  “The First-Born comes in fury. He harrows his chil-
  dren from their graves. His wrath is a hammer, an
  unhewn cudgel wet with the blood of the Kinslaying.
  He drives the lightning before him.
  “His voice is a dark wind scouring the plain. At his
  word, the sky opens, raining blood upon the furrows
  he has prepared. His children raise expectant faces to
  the Heavens, but they are choked and drowned in the
  torrent of spilling life. Such is the price of their hun-
  gers.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  256
  Isabella’s fierce gaze bore into Owain. She basked
  in the prophecy of doom.
  “Only then shall Caine unyoke his red-eyed ox,
  whose name is Gehenna, for none may abide its coun-
  tenance.”
  Memory of the egregious deed gave direction to
  Nicholas’s motion and to his hunger. He traveled
  westward along the precipice between the worlds.
  Neither was completely whole to him. In neither
  could he find solace from the pain and rage that
  drove him. To balance between this world and that
  was no longer such a struggle, and exhaustion had
  given way again to burning hunger. Hunger for
  blood, hunger for vengeance. With each step, not
  two worlds but three demanded his attention—
  here, there, then.
  There, he stood ever atop the cliff. The chasm
  was filled by the glowing and expanding Rent.
  Soon it would overflow the canyon and wash over
  the plateau of all the worlds. The restless dead, who
  tracked Nicholas still, had fallen behind, but not
  far. Now that he had stopped, their excited gib-
  bering and whuffling drew closer.
  Here, Nicholas had gone as far as he was able.
  The foam of the English Channel washed over the
  rocks at his bare feet, swelled around his naked
  ankles. The light of the Rent streamed from him
  
  257
  Dark Prophecy
  with every pant of rage, like the fiery breath of a
  stallion on a winter morning.
  Then, Nicholas saw, as he had so often, the foul
  deed through the eyes of Blaidd, except now
  Nicholas was the ancestor and Blaidd the progeny.
  The pain of the spear throbbed within Nicholas’s
  chest. The odor of his own fear and final death
  clogged his nostrils as the Kinslayer leaned closer,
  closer.
  Ancestral blood united all the worlds within
  Nicholas—the sound of it calling out to him, the
  rich smell of stolen vitae, the terrifying void as the
  blood was drained from him.
  Nicholas stalked back and forth along the shore
  while the uncaring waters lapped at his feet. The
  expectant cries of the shades were very close now.
  Many of the creatures had followed him from
  Grunewald. Such prolonged and focused action
  would normally have been beyond them, but the
  smell of ancient blood and the attraction of the
  shimmering Rent drew them onward. Their num-
  bers stretched back to the horizon like a black river,
  and their shrieks of mindless joy rose to a crescendo
  as they sensed the closeness of their prey.
  With a slavish devotion to instinct, they waded
  into the water after him. Nicholas was waiting. He
  took hold of the first shade and lifted it off the
  ground. It cried out, perhaps in pain, but only for
  a moment as he squeezed it in his powerful hands,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  258
  raised it to his open mouth, and devoured it whole.
  As he greeted the second shade similarly, he could
  feel the first sliding down his gullet to be consumed
  in the burning of the Rent it so desired to touch.
  The streaming light and fire from Nicholas’s
  mouth and fingertips only heightened the frenzy
  of the approaching dead. They could not see or did
  not care about the fate that met one and then an-
  other and another. They grabbed onto Nicholas’s
  legs, scrambled up his back, and always more
  marched on toward him.
  Soon Nicholas did not even need to raise a hand.
  The hapless dead crawled over one another for the
  chance to shove themselves down his throat. They
  came onward, one after another, and he consumed
  them in turn. For how many hours, he did not
  know, for time was liquid on the precipice and
  flowed like the Channel at his feet. They flocked
  to the Rent, which began to shine through him
  now. His skin took on a translucent quality as the
  fire within him grew. Still they came, and his feast
  continued, yet the hunger within him only grew.
  The corpora of the dead could not satisfy him,
  could not ease the burning that had begun so long
  ago. Should he turn and consume all the seas of
  the earth, still he would burn.
  Atop the precipice, Nicholas felt the Rent as it
  expanded and reached the edge of the chasm. The
  streaming light washed over his feet and knees, and
  
  259
  Dark Prophecy
  still it grew. The weight of the shades grew too
  much, and as he toppled with them over the cliff
  into the fiery chasm, he knew his journey was near
  its end.
  Several hours had passed since Kendall awakened
  dizzy and nauseated. She hadn’t needed to check
  her watch to know that the sun still shone out-
  side. The deep slumber that gripped Owain was
  enough to tell her that. For quite a while she lay
  there simply breathing, ignoring the pounding at
  her temples and the itching of the freshly healed
  scar on her forearm.
  Eventually, she was able to sit up. The damp air
  of the cellar was stifling, and while that was not a
  problem for her master, she needed to breathe. At
  least it’s not as bad as the cabin on the damn ship was,
  she thought. She dressed slowly. Each button on
  her shirt was an effort. She laboriously slid one foot
  and then the other into the pants legs. She would
  have to see about more clothes soon, she decided,
  looking at the torn remnants of what both she and
  Owain had worn last night. She stood and looked
  at his naked body for several moments—unnatu-
  rally pale coloring, no movement of breathing or
  beating heart. He didn’t really resemble a person
  sleeping so much as a cadaver. But, then, that was
  much closer to the truth, she reminded herself.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  260
  As she watched him lying there, still as death,
  Kendall couldn’t help thinking of how they had
  both fed just hours ago, how the embrace had been
  more than a mere exchange of blood. Strange, she
  thought. Nothing like that had ever happened be-
  fore. Not that normal feeding wasn’t pleasurable.
  It beat the hell out of the best mortal sex, but some-
  thing was different last night.
  The room began to spin slightly. Fresh air, she
  reminded herself. She stuck her .45 magnum in her
  belt under her shirt and slowly made her way up-
  stairs. No sign of Isabella or Montrovant. Too bad,
  that, because Kendall would have loved a chance
  to put a few slugs in the vampire’s brain. Dark one,
  she chuckled to herself. Dim one is more like it.
  The brisk, late afternoon air did perk her up a
  bit. Her head began to clear, and she felt her
  strength returning. She could still tell that she had
  lost some blood last night, but fresh vampiric vi-
  tae went a long way toward making that up.
  The town of Glastonbury seemed a pleasant
  enough little place. The locals puttered about, not
  taking much notice of Kendall. Even so, she made
  a point of not drawing attention to herself. She
  was intrigued to see that, from the outside, there
  was no sign of the damage to Isabella’s front door,
  which had not yet been repaired. The house ap-
  peared much the same as the others around it.
  What other tricks, Kendall wondered, did their
  
  261
  Dark Prophecy
  mysterious host have up her sleeve?
  Now that Kendall was beginning to feel stron-
  ger, she made an inspection of the area around
  Isabella’s house to look for any signs of
  Montrovant’s passing or other possible danger.
  With most of last night’s conversation having been
  in French, Kendall did not have a good idea of what
  was going on, but that didn’t preclude her from
  keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.
  She finished her circuit as the sun was dipping
  below the horizon. Having found nothing out of
  the ordinary, her gaze wandered east to the tor,
  which dominated the landscape. She had investi-
  gated the hill and the tower chapel the first night
  she and Owain had arrived in Glastonbury. Think-
  ing of Owain, she couldn’t help again remembering
  the ferocity with which they’d embraced last night.
  Perhaps it had been her imagination, but she had
  felt at one point that he had been on the verge of
  draining all of her blood. Maybe he would have
  taken her and made her like him. Maybe he would
  have left her a dead and withered corpse. She felt,
  though, that she had been close to one end or an-
  other. Kendall had felt him fighting himself,
  fighting his desire for her, and she didn’t know what
  to think about that.
  Though her vocation was not a typical one, she’d
  always viewed Owain as her employer and the job
  as the means to an end. Perhaps in a way she was
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  262
  addicted to the physical prowess his blood engen-
  dered within her, but she took pride in serving him
  well. Last night, however, they each had crossed
  the line of employer-employee. Owain, she was al-
  most sure, had wanted more than her blood. He
  had wanted her. And she had wanted him. She had
  wanted his blood; she had wanted to be like him,
  to be with him from that night forward.
  The feelings distressed Kendall. Losing control
  during the feeding was bad enough, but to tie her
  emotional as well as physical well-being to the
  whims of another…
  And not just a man, she chided herself. A vam-
  pire, for Christ’s sake! She tried to push such
  unproductive thoughts out of her mind.
  With the onset of dusk, Glastonbury’s residents
  quietly made their ways home or to the local pub.
  The last of the bargain-basement, early-season tour-
  ists wandered back to the village and their B&Bs, or
  climbed into rental cars and headed off to Bristol or
  Bath or wherever they were staying. Kendall hoped
  that she and Owain would be long gone before tour-
  ist season kicked into full gear in a few weeks. She
  didn’t want to be near when the hordes of New Agers
  and trendy Wiccans descended on the village. Leg-
  ends connected the tor with everything from King
  Arthur to the druids to the faerie world. Kendall’s
  first impulse was to scoff at such fantasy, but then
  again, she worked for a vampire, so who could tell?
  
  263
  Dark Prophecy
  But that was exactly what she didn’t want to
  think about at the moment. As she attempted to
  ignore the implications of her evolving relation-
  ship with Owain, Kendall’s eyes turned to the ruins
  of Glastonbury Abbey, which were not far from
  Isabella’s house, maybe a hundred yards to the
  south. Numerous portions of walls and arches still
  stood after centuries of disuse. In the deepening
  shadows, Kendall imagined the abbey was still in-
  tact, and she was seeing the surrounding
  countryside in much the same way that someone
  hundreds of years ago might have.
  She rounded a corner and traced the weathered
  stone with her fingers. Hundreds of years, she
  thought. If Owain makes me like him, I could be
  around that long. She sighed, finding it impossible
  to keep her mind off her master and what had, or
  had not, transpired between them. She had heard
  Owain refer to his curse, but what a sense of con-
  tentment she would feel to walk the earth for
  century after century! Kendall frowned at the wist-
  ful turn of her pondering. Don’t kid yourself, she
  thought. Does he look happy to you? She didn’t un-
  derstand the melancholy that hung over Owain
  like a relentless stormcloud, but it was none of her
  business. And there’s no point in romanticizing about
  becoming one of the Kindred, she scolded herself. He
  would bring her into the fold, or he would not.
  There was nothing for her to do except her job.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  264
  She was curious, however, about what it was like
  to live for hundreds of years. The world changed
  so much, yet some places, like these surroundings,
  she imagined, seemed almost untouched by time.
  Perhaps it would not be too presumptuous of her
  to ask Owain one night. For someone like Kendall,
  who was not quite thirty years old, the perspective
  of time on that broad a scale was unfathomable.
  To her dismay, Kendall found herself thinking
  increasingly of Owain as more than her employer,
  more than her master and the source of her height-
  ened abilities. If she could, without stepping over
  unspoken boundaries, she wanted somehow to ease
  the pain that she saw in his face. I’d like to be there
  for him, she admitted, if only to herself.
  A noise roused Kendall from her reverie, though
  she didn’t consciously register what the sound was.
  Acting from instinct, she whipped the gun from
  her belt in one fluid motion and spun.
  
  265
  Dark Prophecy
  TWELVE
  “Only then shall Caine unyoke his red-eyed ox,
  whose name is called Gehenna, for none may abide its
  countenance.”
  The transformation was nothing short of as-
  tounding. Calm, caustic Isabella, as she spoke, was
  gripped by a passion, a sense of urgency, that Owain
  would not have thought possible of her. It was as
  if the words of prophecy had ignited a fire within
  her eyes.
  The words affected Owain also, but differently.
  Gehenna. The Endtime. The darkest night when the
  eldest of Cainites would rise from their centuries
  of slumber and consume all their progeny. The
  night, some said also, when the Dark Father him-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  266
  self would return to walk the earth, and if the
  prophecies were to be believed, he would be none
  too pleased with what he found.
  The First-Born comes in fury. He harrows his chil-
  dren from their graves. His wrath is a hammer, an
  unhewn cudgel wet with the blood of the Kinslaying.
  Owain had indeed slain kin, both mortal and
  Cainite. He had even destroyed the bearer of the
  chalice of Christ.
  His voice is a dark wind scouring the plain. At his
  word, the sky opens, raining blood…. His children raise
  expectant faces to the Heavens, but they are choked
  and drowned in the torrent of spilling life. Such is the
  price of their hungers.
  Owain doubted that his sins, considerable as they
  might be, would stand above those of others of his
  kind. That final day of reckoning would bring fi-
  nal damnation for all Cainites, he suspected.
  The prophecy resonated within Owain. It struck
  a chord of truth, clawed its way into the blackness
  of his soul. In his very bones, he could feel the
  power of the words. The visions that had assaulted
  him for months began to flash through his mind.
  Some images were glimpses of the personal hell
  that had clung to him since the days of his mortal-
  ity. Others hinted at the fate that awaited the race
  of monsters he had joined. More of Isabella’s words
  than not overlapped those that echoed in his mind.
  “The Winnowing,” Owain said quietly to him-
  
  267
  Dark Prophecy
  self. For so many weeks, he had tried to ignore, to
  forget, the haunting visions, but now hearing
  Isabella speak, he realized that the message was not
  his alone. It was not his place to set it aside and
  turn to other matters.
  “Is it not clear?” she asked him. “The Winnow-
  ing. All around the world, your kind shrivel and
  die, victims of their own boiling blood. Streets that
  literally crawled with the Damned now are empty.”
  “But you, of all people,” said Owain, remember-
  ing the letter to El Greco that Isabella had forged,
  “know that the blood curse was set loose by Carlos.
  A Sabbat plot out of control.”
  “Does that make it any less true?” she asked, a
  trace of condescension returning to her voice. She
  raised from her lap the leather tome she held.
  “These are the words of Joseph of Arimathea.
  Prophecy written by his own hand. Must he per-
  sonally set each piece in motion? Does he have to
  tap the corpse of a curse-stricken vampire and pro-
  nounce ‘Winnowing’ for the prophecy to be
  fulfilled? Divine vision often comes to pass at the
  hands of unsuspecting agents.”
  “The words of Joseph of Arimathea?” Owain
  asked, staring at the large book she held.
  Isabella nodded. “He foretold the blood curse. He
  foretold the fading of the blood.” Her gaze hard-
  ened on Owain. “He foretold much more…
  Kinslayer.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  268
  His mind still roaming through the visions,
  Owain very slowly retook his seat and opened his
  beleaguered commonplace book across his knees.
  The pages were blood-splattered and ragged. He
  began from the back, flipping through the blank
  pages until he came to the last entry that he had
  written:
  What would Angharad think?
  The words were those of Albert, the slain
  Malkavian. Albert, who had spoken a name he
  should not even have known. Albert, who had
  given to Owain the locket that had allowed Isabella
  to spy upon him. Owain looked up from his book
  to Isabella.
  “Divine vision often comes to pass at the hands
  of unsuspecting agents,” she said again.
  “Albert?” asked Owain quietly in disbelief.
  “I have watched you for many years,” said
  Isabella. “I have used various means, countless
  agents. Albert was not the most…reliable source
  of information, but he was in contact with you, on
  and off, for several centuries.”
  Owain remembered the locket, the picture of the
  beautiful woman and the scrawled writing on the
  back—mother. As with Ellison and his Melitta,
  Isabella had provided Albert with a connection to
  someone dear from his past.
  What would Angharad think? For a brief moment,
  hope flared within Owain. Could Isabella do the
  
  269
  Dark Prophecy
  same for him? But then he would be indebted to
  her. He would become a pawn in her game as surely
  as Albert and Ellison had. That he would not tol-
  erate.
  Owain turned more pages of his commonplace
  book, past the entries that he had written over the
  years, and came to the pages that were rendered
  in the graceful script of his one love, Angharad.
  He saw the outline of a leaf that was now crumbled
  to dust, and he saw the words that, for so many
  years, the leaf had concealed.
  “Let it be thus. Thy will be done.” Isabella, from
  where she sat, recited the words that Owain read.
  They rang in his mind. They were the same as in
  the visions. They were the same as Kli Kodesh had
  spoken on the streets of Toledo. “Angharad knew
  of Joseph’s prophecy,” Isabella said.
   “How?” Owain asked weakly. He barely heard
  Isabella’s response. His thoughts were reaching
  years into the past.
  Isabella tapped the book in her lap. “Joseph was
  not a mere mortal, Owain. Do you think he would
  have met with one such as yourself, that he would
  have put himself in a position to be murdered and
  his blood consumed, if not for some greater pur-
  pose?”
  I offer hope. These, too, were Joseph’s words. But
  what, Owain wondered, could Joseph have hoped
  to gain by his own death?
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  270
  Isabella spoke more of the prophecy, which she
  seemed to know by heart:
  “I have seen a Cross, steeped in the blood of our
  Lord, burst forth into new life. I have seen it ring itself
  in Holy Thorns, lest the impure approach and taste of
  that forbidden fruit.
  “He knew it was going to happen, Owain,”
  Isabella insisted. “The Isle of Angels
  trembling…Michael thrown to the Earth. In 1375,
  an earthquake shook this part of England. The
  chapel to St. Michael atop the tor was destroyed.”
  Her eyes shone with conviction. “These words were
  written hundreds of years earlier! The night that
  you drank Joseph’s blood, the period of time that
  was hidden from you—when would that have
  been?”
  Owain thought back to when he had fled from
  Wales at the outset of the fourteenth century, to
  his time in France, to the newly remembered jour-
  ney to Britain. “It was that year,” he whispered, full
  of dismay.
  “Joseph speaks of his own sacrifice, the end that
  he knew would come. Just as the cross was the in-
  strument of Christ’s execution, Joseph’s staff served
  as his, and it burst forth as the Holy Thorn!”
  Owain shook his head. There must be some other
  explanation. How could Joseph have known hun-
  dreds of years before what Owain would do? Owain
  surrendered to dismay and shock as the age-old
  
  271
  Dark Prophecy
  words and visions assailed him with renewed vigor.
  …the Isle of Angels trembling…Michael…thrown
  to the Earth.
  The hillside pitched and shook. The tower listed
  to one side and then another. The stone cross
  within fell to the floor and smashed to pieces.
  Stones pulled loose from the tower. It leaned dan-
  gerously. A portion of wall gave way. The entire
  structure tumbled earthward….
  “Owain.”
  His vision cleared. He saw again the furnishings
  of the sitting room, but the dichotomy was too
  great. He stared uncomprehendingly at Isabella.
  “There is more,” Isabella said. She turned to her
  own tome. Her finger followed the words on the
  page:
  “Thence shall come the Kinslayer. His is the blood
  of sacrifice. His are the sorrows of the ages. Lamenta-
  tions stain his soul. Winnowed are the Children of
  Caine. Winnowed is the Kinslayer. He weareth a
  crown of thorns.”
  Owain heard the words. He heard the name that
  seemingly had been ascribed to him. Kinslayer.
  “And when the Winnowing shall have come to pass,
  the Kinslayer will stand before the Betrayer of the
  Blood. Wails and gnashing of teeth are the shadow of
  the Betrayer, following more surely than night behind
  day.
  “And lo, the Earth shall open her womb and the
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  272
  Beast shall crawl forth seeking the blood to sate its thirst.
  Michael, most exalted of the Glorious Company,
  trembles at the Unholy Triad complete. The Beast
  walks the Earth. The Undoing of the Children of Caine
  is at hand.”
  “I have not heard those words before,” said
  Owain.
  “Because it was not time,” said Isabella. “Until
  now.”
  “Time for what?”
  Passion flared again in Isabella’s eyes. “Time for
  all that Joseph strove for to come to pass. Time for
  the destruction of all your kind. Time for all that I
  have striven for to come pass. It is your destiny,
  Owain.”
  “It is my destiny to destroy all vampires? To de-
  stroy myself?” He shook his head. “You’re mad.”
  “You have been destroying yourself for nearly a
  thousand years!” Isabella almost shouted. “What
  has the curse of Caine brought you other than the
  slow death of every ounce of your humanity? You
  have suffered for a millennium. ‘His are the sorrows
  of the ages. Lamentations stain his soul.’” Her voice
  suddenly became gentle, understanding. “This is
  your release.”
  “These prophecies,” Owain waved his hand over
  the books, “they are nonsense. How can you know
  that I am the Kinslayer, or that Joseph meant for
  me to kill him and take his blood?” He argued, but
  
  273
  Dark Prophecy
  out of a sense of defiance. The visions had touched
  his soul too deeply. The prophecies, as well as
  Isabella’s words, whether they could be proved or
  not, rang true to him.
  Isabella closed her book, set it beside her on the
  couch. “I know these things,” she said, “because
  Joseph told me.” Owain did not believe that he had
  heard what she had really said. “I sat as close to
  him as I am to you now, over a thousand years ago.”
  Owain sat speechless.
  Isabella did not wait for him to recover. “You ac-
  cused me of bringing Montrovant here. I did not.
  But I believe he came here to serve a purpose. ‘And
  lo, the Earth shall open her womb and the Beast shall
  crawl forth seeking the blood to sate its thirst.’
  “I’m sure you noticed the archaic French that he
  spoke,” said Isabella. “He had just crawled out of
  the ground, out of whatever foul pit he had slept
  in for hundreds of years. And he sought the grail.
  He wished to drink the holy blood that might sate
  his thirst.”
  Owain could see the connection that she drew.
  Kinslayer. Beast. “But that is only two thirds of the
  Unholy Triad. What of the Betrayer of the Blood?”
  Slowly, Isabella rose to her feet. “The timing of
  the prophecies,” she said, “has long been a mys-
  tery to me. Like the apostle Paul waiting for the
  return of his Lord, I have awaited the Undoing. I
  left a trail for you to follow—the letters between
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  274
  you and El Greco. Through my spies in the Sabbat,
  I even influenced the name of the experiments that
  led to the blood curse.”
  Another piece of the puzzle fell into place for
  Owain. “Project Angharad,” he said almost to him-
  self, then turned to Isabella. “That was solely for
  my benefit.”
  She nodded. “I’m afraid my faith in the prophe-
  cies was not as strong as Joseph’s. He gave his life,
  yet I endeavored to construct signposts to bring you
  to me. I should have known that the visions would
  lead you here eventually. Once the Winnowing
  struck, the visions would follow.”
  “Then I’m touched by the blood curse? That is
  what sparked the visions?” This revelation per-
  plexed Owain. Most Cainites stricken by the curse
  had died horribly within days, or weeks at the long-
  est.
  Isabella shrugged away his question. “Perhaps the
  curse, which Joseph foresaw, spawned the visions.
  Or perhaps it was the song of your beautiful siren
  in Atlanta that touched your soul, that pried loose
  those hidden memories just enough, and the vi-
  sions followed. Either way, the visions came, as
  Joseph knew they would…and you are here. It is
  your destiny.”
  Destiny. From the earliest days of his mortal
  childhood, Owain had always striven to be the
  master of his own destiny. He had fled Wales rather
  
  275
  Dark Prophecy
  than submit to the yoke of the descendants of the
  Norman invaders. He had chafed under the author-
  ity of El Greco and the Sabbat, of Prince Benison
  and the Camarilla. In corrupting the Templars and
  searching for the grail, Owain had gone as far as
  to defy the God he blamed for the tragedies heaped
  upon him.
  Now, however, he found that he was not king
  but pawn in the games that Isabella had played for
  centuries. He was an unwitting piece in Joseph’s
  prophecies.
  Or so Isabella would have Owain believe.
  “My destiny,” he said in measured and deliber-
  ate tones, “is mine to decide.”
  Isabella did not attempt to dissuade him. Not in
  so many words. “You asked about the Betrayer of
  the Blood named in the prophecy,” she reminded
  him. “The woman in your visions—she was some-
  one you knew.” It was a statement. Not a question.
  Owain felt the color rising to his cheeks. Albert
  and Ellison may have given in to Isabella’s emo-
  tional blackmail, but Owain was determined not
  to repeat their mistakes. He would maintain what-
  ever control he might actually have over his own
  destiny. “You have sullied her name twice already,”
  he warned. “With Albert, and with Carlos and the
  Sabbat. Those were lures to bring me here. We
  both know that she has nothing to do with this
  affair, so tarnish my memory of her no further.”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  276
  Isabella looked suddenly concerned, her expres-
  sion becoming a caricature of a worried mother.
  “Oh, but Owain, what of your book?” She gestured
  toward his tattered commonplace book. “Wasn’t it
  she who gave it to you? Why do you suppose she
  would have copied part of Joseph’s prophecy into
  it? And how could she have known it?”
  Owain tensed at Isabella’s questions. He had
  been asking himself much the same thing and had
  no reasonable answers.
  “And what of the visions?” Isabella asked.
  “What of them? Dreams and phantasms.”
  “But didn’t all your visions seem coincidental and
  random at first? And now you see that they are
  signposts pointing to the prophecies.”
  “Do I?” Owain asked. For a brief time he had
  been taken in by her story. There were uncomfort-
  able similarities between his visions and the
  prophecies, to be sure, but more than that? “Coin-
  cidence,” he stated. “Pure coincidence. And even
  if you were right, even if I am the Kinslayer, and
  Montrovant is the Beast, Angharad could not be
  the Betrayer. She is dead and long gone. Your
  prophecy is unfulfilled.”
  “Are you so sure?” Isabella asked.
  “You are mad,” Owain said. “You would have me
  play your game so that I might destroy myself?”
  “What good fortune have your centuries of unlife
  brought you, Owain?” she asked sharply. “All those
  
  277
  Dark Prophecy
  you have known and loved have died, while you
  linger on. Have you not, during those endless
  nights, felt the pull of the sun, the longing for your
  eternal nightmare to end?”
  Again, Isabella’s questions eerily mirrored
  Owain’s own thoughts. She had watched him too
  long for the Ventrue to fool her. It was that very
  espionage, however, that infuriated Owain, that led
  him to resist her at every turn. She had manipu-
  lated him enough. No more. “You claim to have
  lived for more than a thousand years. Answer your
  own question.”
  “Ah, but I am not like you, Owain,” said Isabella.
  Her voice turned cold. “You are a blight upon the
  face of the earth, a curse upon humanity. Joseph
  said that he offered hope. He spoke the truth. He
  offers the hope of release. For you, the hope of re-
  lease from your curse. For the world, the hope of
  release from you.
  “I am not like you,” she said again. “I live for a
  purpose. I do not rise every night to steal life so
  that I might go on only to steal more life, night
  after night until the end of time. And this is the
  Endtime.”
  Her hatred for Owain and all his kind was fully
  revealed. No thin veil of sarcasm or desire for
  knowledge masked her intentions any longer, and
  as much as she angered Owain, he could not re-
  fute her words. He had spent many years thinking
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  278
  much the same thing—wishing for the courage to
  meet the sun, wanting the curse to end but lack-
  ing faith. And hope.
  I offer hope.
  Now he possessed, quite possibly, the means to
  end the curse. Not just for himself but for the en-
  tire world. Isabella was a scholar of the prophecies.
  He could merely follow her direction, and the eter-
  nal hell would come to an end. But faced with the
  prospect of the destruction of his accursed race,
  Owain realized that Isabella had missed one detail.
  A tiny spark of hope did burn within his breast.
  “You are wrong,” he told her. “I don’t go on with-
  out purpose, though for some time I too have
  believed that.” Owain pictured Angharad as he had
  seen her in the most recent visions. She had
  seemed so completely real. After all, he had not
  merely stood before her. He had touched her. His
  hand had rested against her delicate face. The rest
  he tried to overlook. She had turned on him, had
  named him Kinslayer. But even these disturbing
  and hurtful actions only served to prove to Owain
  that her memory was still alive for him. His pas-
  sions that, months ago, had been sparked by the
  siren’s song flamed higher through the visions.
  Humanity was rekindled, and so long as the fire
  burned, life held meaning for him.
  “There is a memory I hold close to my heart,”
  said Owain. “I have spent too many years full of
  
  279
  Dark Prophecy
  hurt and longing, but it is not too late for me to
  cherish the memory. You are wrong, Isabella. I live
  with purpose.”
  Isabella, standing before Owain, did not speak.
  Instead, she bowed her head and at the same time
  raised her hands, palms outward, before her face.
  With hushed voice, she began to chant. The words,
  barely audible, were the same foreign tongue that
  Owain had heard her use before. He did not dwell
  on her incantation for long, however.
  Slowly, Isabella lowered her hands as one. Fore-
  head, brow, then eyes were revealed. Owain rose
  from his chair, almost stumbled backward over it.
  Centuries of unlife had done nothing to prepare
  him for what he witnessed. His first impulse was
  to turn and run from this house, never to return,
  but he stood and watched with horrified fascina-
  tion.
  Her movements were ever so slow. Nose, lips,
  chin, were all visible now. The features were dark
  still but had shifted, were different. The woman
  before him stood taller than had Isabella. Her bear-
  ing was graceful, stately, like an ancient queen. The
  dark eyes and hair, the gently rounded face—the
  features were all hauntingly familiar to Owain.
  “Angharad.”
  She stood before him. He caught himself with
  his hand upraised, reaching toward her cheek. His
  fingertips tingled with anticipation of the touch of
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  280
  her skin, softer than the fleece of the most pris-
  tine lamb. But then the weight of the paradox
  landed full upon him—this room in this house, the
  hundreds of years that had passed, the impossibil-
  ity of what his eyes beheld.
  “Witch’s trickery!” He averted his eyes. He would
  not look upon this debasement of his memory, this
  abomination. For although he was appalled, he
  could not trust himself not to fall to his knees be-
  fore her, to shower kisses upon her feet.
  “Owain.”
  Her voice was all that he remembered and more.
  His knees nearly buckled at the sound. “She is
  dead,” he said, teeth gritted together. “She is dead.”
  “Owain,” she said patiently. “What do your eyes
  tell you? What does your heart tell you?”
  He still would not look. “You are a creature of
  deceit, a woman of lies!”
  The sound of her quiet laughter, Angharad’s
  laughter, surrounded him and ripped bare memo-
  ries of mortal days. “I am a woman of lies. You are
  correct. But not in the way that you think, dear
  Owain.”
  Dear Owain.
  He tried to control the trembling of his body.
  Nine hundred years of loneliness, and now here she
  was again. “She is dead.”
  An easy footstep. And then another. “You are
  right, Owain. It would be a simple thing to take
  
  281
  Dark Prophecy
  on her appearance, to look and sound like her.” Her
  fingers were brushing back the hair from his face.
  He closed his eyes tightly, hoping to shield him-
  self, but her touch was as he remembered it. “You
  are right, but it is not what you think.”
  She reached down to his side now and took his
  hand. Owain was powerless to resist her. He was
  frozen between fleeing and taking her in his arms.
  She raised his hand and placed it upon her breast.
  A tremor ran through Owain. He could feel the
  beating of her heart.
  He had seen her only once after his Embrace—
  when she was old and blind, living in the abbey at
  Holywell. That night, he had smelled the blood
  running through her veins. He had heard the beat-
  ing of her heart. And though his eyes might deceive
  him, the scent of blood would not lie. She was
  Angharad.
  “I am not like you,” she said in soothing tones,
  as if explaining away the nightmares of a child, “but
  I have lived many lives. I am of the Reborn, my
  dear Owain, and my magics have let me be who I
  must so that the prophecies might be fulfilled.”
  The realization of the truth she spoke took hold
  of Owain like an undertow dragging a shipwrecked
  sailor to his doom.
  Her mouth was close to his ear now. He could
  feel her breath. Her words took on the tenor of a
  lover’s promises. “There is no such thing as coin-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  282
  cidence.” She used his own words. “When your
  brother Rhys, my husband, decided that you must
  die, did you think it chance that one of the
  Damned took you for his own? Joseph instructed
  me well, dear Owain. I lived that life so that you
  might join the accursed legions of the undead, so
  that you might one day arrive at this point in time,
  so that you might fulfill your destiny.”
  The room was spinning about Owain. His foun-
  dation of the past nine hundred years was being
  torn from beneath him. Was he to believe that the
  one love that had been both his solace and his tor-
  ment was a lie?
  “I have lived many lives and died many deaths,”
  Isabella said, “only to return again to life, so that
  my purpose could be fulfilled. Whose womb do you
  think it was that birthed accursed Albert into the
  world? Who do you think nurtured his madness so
  that, one night, a Malkavian might claim him, so
  that another night Albert might find you?”
  The true immensity of her deception began to
  dawn more fully on Owain.
  “The appointed time for you to know these
  things has arrived,” said Isabella, said Angharad.
  “And know this you must—I never loved you,
  Owain. I cared for you only as far as caring would
  bring you to this point now. You have drunk the
  blood of the prophet, and I am your betrayer. The
  Kinslayer will stand before the Betrayer of the Blood.
  
  283
  Dark Prophecy
  The Undoing of the Children of Caine is at hand.”
  A pounding like thunder rose in Owain’s head.
  He turned to face Angharad, to face his love. Tears
  of blood streamed down his face. His claw-like nails
  dug into his own palms. Centuries of questing to
  control his own destiny, and now he discovered
  that the most encompassing underpinning of his
  existence was a lie, a ruse by those he had known
  nothing about. And now she would have me some-
  how fulfill her prophecy? She would have me achieve
  the goal for which she betrayed me?
  “No!”
  The back of his hand struck Angharad across the
  face as he swung with all his might. Her head
  snapped to the side and the blow hurled her body
  across the room. Her limp form struck the wall and
  fell.
  Owain could barely see through the blood that
  filled his eyes. He raised his hand before his face—
  the hand that had struck his love. In his other
  hand, he still held the commonplace book. He
  twisted until the spine snapped and the leather
  cover and every page within was torn asunder.
  Then he raised the crumpled mass above his head
  and slammed the book to the floor.
  Angharad, too, lay crumpled on the floor.
  Owain turned away from her. His love for her
  may have been a lie, but he had felt the fire of pas-
  sion within his breast. Despite the overwhelming
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  284
  pain, he knew that rekindled humanity still
  struggled to emerge from his blackened soul. He
  stomped from the room. He would escape this
  place, and though the great sorrow would linger on,
  he would find the person who had truly found a
  place in his heart. He would find Kendall, and they
  would leave this place and its prophecy. And he
  would set her free. He would release her to her own
  humanity, lest he snuff out that fragile flame in
  both of them.
  He ripped away, once and for all, the front door
  that still hung askew by one hinge. The night
  called to him. It beckoned him to share his
  newfound freedom born of heartbreak.
  But he stopped cold after only three steps,
  stunned by what he saw. For a moment, he was sure
  he heard the cruel laughter of a vengeful God.
  On the walk before him lay a human hand, sev-
  ered at the wrist. The lifeless fingers tightly
  clutched Kendall’s pistol.
  
  285
  Dark Prophecy
  THIRTEEN
  Owain stood over the hand. His nostrils flared
  as he caught the scent of blood—the same blood
  that, just last night, he had shared with Kendall,
  the blood that was a mingling of his and hers. He
  turned his face, and his rage, heavenward. In ev-
  ery direction, threatening dark clouds gathered on
  the horizon.
  Twice in the past hour, Owain had found mean-
  ing in his empty nights—purpose that might
  transform his lingering existence into a life worth
  living. Twice, purpose had been snatched away
  from him, trampled before him and left to rot like
  carrion in the sun.
  After hundreds of years of bitterness over the loss
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  286
  of his one love, he had begun to see that he might
  hold her memory dear to his heart rather than con-
  stantly mourn what never was. Then the
  impossible—Angharad had stood before him, here
  and now, the culmination of all his dreams, only
  to tell him that his love was a lie, that she had car-
  ried for him through the centuries only a burning
  hatred.
  Despite more than ample justification, Owain
  had not given into despair. He realized this with
  grim satisfaction. For certainly that had been her
  aim—that he renounce both life and unlife, that
  in despair he abide by her wishes and fulfill the
  prophecy. Words of Undoing. Perhaps she would
  have revealed them to him and had him perform
  some great magic.
  But no. Even amidst unfathomable tragedy,
  Owain realized that the spark of humanity he felt
  was housed not solely within his memory of
  Angharad, but within his very soul. It still burned
  without his one love, if faintly. The spark was
  fanned by the woman whom he’d always viewed
  as a servant, a tool to be used and then discarded.
  And now…
  He glanced back down at her hand. Owain knew
  who had done this. He recognized a wound caused
  by a sword—his own sword, no doubt. A scant trail
  of blood, imperceptible to any except a creature of
  blood, led eastward toward the tor. It was a trail,
  
  287
  Dark Prophecy
  Owain knew, that he was meant to follow. But if
  that were the case, he thought, perhaps he might
  still find Kendall alive. The dark one would gain
  more leverage from his captive if she still lived.
  Owain must find out. He stepped forward over the
  hand and began making his way to the tor.
  With each step he took, the clouds ringing the
  sky advanced as well. They rolled in like waves
  crashing upon the shore. Thunder, distant at first,
  drew closer. All the primal fury of the heavens, it
  seemed, converged upon the Isle of Angels. Owain
  crossed the last of the dale and began to climb the
  slope to the tower. His every other step was illu-
  minated by the flash of lightning from one
  direction or another. The wind whipped his hair
  so that he had to hold it back from his face.
  The next flash of lightning revealed a shape just
  ahead on the hillside—a statue where none should
  be, where moments before, none had been. For a
  split second, Owain’s mind spun him back to the
  streets of Toledo, to the eerie storm that had raged,
  to the creature he had faced.
  “Kli Kodesh,” Owain called above the wind.
  Another flash and the statue stood with out-
  stretched arms. Owain had not seen the other
  move. Neither had he seen at first the twisted ex-
  pression of hope fulfilled on the chiseled features,
  nor the bloody tears of joy that stained the alabas-
  ter cheeks. “You have come to give me release!”
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  288
  said the ancient, his face turned up to the stormy
  heavens.
  “No,” said Owain. “I am here for another rea-
  son. I will have nothing to do with your prophecy.”
  From deep within Kli Kodesh, a rumbling laugh-
  ter grew, hesitantly at first, but he soon surrendered
  to it completely, and his booming voice rang above
  the noise of the rising storm. “But you are here,
  Kinslayer.”
  “Where is Montrovant?” Owain demanded. He
  would have no more of games, of riddles.
  Kli Kodesh struggled to rein in his mirth. Fresh,
  red tears speckled the grayed fabric of his once-
  white robe. He raised a hand and indicated the
  tower standing above them. “The Beast awaits.”
  Owain stepped past the ancient one. Kli Kodesh,
  his laughter mixed with joyful sobs, made no move
  to stop Owain. The last hundred yards to the
  chapel were steep, but the very wind seemed to
  push Owain forward and hurry him along his way.
  The clouds had closed in around the tower so that
  only a small patch of the night sky was visible di-
  rectly overhead; however, as Owain climbed the
  last steps on hands and feet, the storms crashed to-
  gether and no stars shone through the maelstrom.
  Owain stood before the open door of the chapel.
  From above, the carved form of St. Michael, most
  exalted, looked down upon him.
  Suddenly, Kli Kodesh spoke and Owain realized
  
  289
  Dark Prophecy
  the ancient one stood right next to him. “And when
  the Winnowing shall have come to pass, the Kinslayer
  will stand before the Betrayer of the Blood.” The rain
  began to fall, a few, large, forceful drops at a time.
  “I have already dealt with the Betrayer,” said
  Owain.
  “Have you?” Kli Kodesh cocked his head. “The
  widow flatters herself.”
  More riddles. Owain had had more than his fill.
  He was surrounded by lunatics spouting puzzles and
  prophecy, while inside the tower, one who de-
  pended on him for her life might very well be dying.
  His patience at an end, Owain lashed out at Kli
  Kodesh, but the ancient one was gone, vanished
  from where he’d stood a moment earlier.
  “He knew you would come,” said a voice in ar-
  chaic French. Owain turned to face Montrovant,
  who stood in the doorway of the chapel. “You will
  tell me where I can find the grail,” said the dark
  one. He held Owain’s sword, the blade encrusted
  with dried blood.
  “You are tiresome,” said Owain.
  Montrovant snarled, and as he opened his mouth
  to reply, Owain sprung forward. Montrovant recov-
  ered quickly and swung the sword, but the figure
  through which the blade sliced was a mere figment
  of shadow. Before the dark one had finished his
  stroke, Owain slammed into him from the side,
  claws slashing through Montrovant’s face.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  290
  Owain ignored the cries of the fallen vampire and
  ducked into the chapel. He would have his ven-
  geance, but first he would save—
  Owain took only one step into the tower. Greet-
  ing him were Kendall’s wide eyes, surprised,
  questioning. Her severed head was mashed down
  on top of the cross on the altar. Her mouth was
  open slightly, as if upon her lips was the beginning
  of a cry of warning.
  Owain spun, but his moment of shock proved
  costly. The sword bit deeply into his side. Luckily,
  Montrovant’s movement was constricted as he
  crossed the threshold. Still, Owain crumpled to the
  floor. He landed in a pool of blood that had dripped
  down from the altar. The scent of Kendall’s vitae
  was all about him as he stared up at her bulging
  eyes.
  Montrovant raised the sword above his head, and
  the blow fell exactly where Owain had known it
  would. It clanged against the stone where he no
  longer lay. Owain’s claw tore through Montrovant’s
  jugular. The dark one’s hands shot to his throat.
  Owain snatched up the dropped sword before it
  even had a chance to clatter to the floor.
  Montrovant staggered backward out of the chapel.
  “Your time on this earth is done,” Owain said,
  as he advanced with the blade bathed in his own
  blood. He tried to ignore Kendall’s questioning gaze
  at his back. There was never a question of mercy.
  
  291
  Dark Prophecy
  With his first step out of the tower, the wind
  pulled at Owain. It tugged at his hair, his clothes,
  his arm, his sword—as if the storm tried to lift him
  high above the earth. The driving rain that now
  fell was nearly blinding. The lightning again re-
  vealed Kli Kodesh, who stood to the side of the
  chapel. Owain held his sword poised between the
  ancient one and Montrovant.
  “I see your wounded side,” said Kli Kodesh. “But
  what of your crown of thorns?”
  Owain could barely hear over the din of the
  storm, and before the last word had crossed the
  buffeting winds, Kli Kodesh struck. He moved with
  more speed than even Owain could comprehend.
  A blow to the head staggered Owain, but before
  he could react, Kli Kodesh was gone.
  Owain whirled to meet Montrovant’s lunge. The
  Ventrue’s elbow crushed the other vampire’s nose
  while Owain’s blade also sliced downward through
  the air and into flesh. Montrovant fell, hamstrung,
  to the ground.
  Owain, the wound to his side throbbing, stag-
  gered back until he stood against the outer wall of
  the chapel. He glanced about for Kli Kodesh, but
  the ancient one was nowhere to be seen.
  Another flash of lightning and Kli Kodesh stood
  calmly beside Owain. Owain readied his guard but
  wasn’t sure how to overcome the ancient’s speed.
  Momentarily, Owain was distracted by the rain run-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  292
  ning down his face—no, not water. Blood. He
  raised a hand to his forehead and quickly jerked
  away a pricked finger. Checking more carefully, he
  realized that the stinging at his temple was not from
  Kli Kodesh’s blow itself, but from a wreath of thorns
  that the ancient one had slammed onto Owain’s
  head.
  With Montrovant immobilized for the moment,
  Owain stared through the sheets of rain at Kli
  Kodesh. The ancient one did not attack, however.
  Instead, he stared back at Owain. Kli Kodesh wore
  a quizzical, almost expectant, expression. “We are
  here,” he said. “The Triad is complete. You may
  speak the Words of Undoing.”
  “Enough of your prophetic nonsense!” Owain
  shouted over the storm. He considered striking at
  Kli Kodesh again but there seemed little hope of
  success. Owain was as helpless against the ancient
  one as a mortal would be against Owain.
  “The relic!” cried Montrovant, as he crawled to-
  ward Owain. “You must tell me!”
   Still wary of Kli Kodesh, Owain turned again
  to face the other opponent, against whom he could
  at least defend himself, but suddenly the tower—
  no, the entire tor!—rumbled violently. Owain was
  tossed against the wall of the chapel. Montrovant
  fell to the ground, and even Kli Kodesh stumbled.
  Thunder rocked the hill again. Blinding lightning
  flashed from the sky—at least a dozen strikes blast-
  
  293
  Dark Prophecy
  ing the crest. Owain pressed himself to the tower
  and covered his face against the searing energy of
  the lightning. He recoiled from the electrical blasts
  and from the spray of charred earth they showered
  over him.
  When he looked again, a broad crater was
  opened in the hill not ten yards away, and in the
  center of the depression rose a lone figure. At first
  only the head and shoulders were visible, but as
  Owain watched, the form of a man rose straight
  up from the earth, not stepping but moving directly
  vertical, as if the ground itself lifted him. To
  Owain’s amazement, the very soil seemed to pack
  itself together to lend the body form.
  “Kinslayer,” intoned the creature. Perhaps it was
  a trick of the rapidly fluctuating light of the storm’s
  pyrotechnics, but the creature’s body appeared to
  change, to flicker—flesh one moment, something
  dark and insubstantial the next.
  Owain, entranced, watched, and as he did, he
  recognized the slightly familiar features before him.
  He had seen the face before, though unlike before,
  the eyes, from corner to corner, were now solid
  black. The chest, legs, arms, all swelled beyond
  normal proportions as the creature grew in stature.
  Its untamed hair flailed violently on the wild gusts
  of the storm. Yet in the twisted, demonic face of
  this otherworldly thing, Owain found something
  familiar.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  294
  “Nicholas?”
  The creature’s black glare locked onto Owain the
  instant he spoke the name. A cruel grin exposed a
  maw as black as its eyes but crowded with jagged
  teeth. In some way, Owain was sure, this was the
  Gangrel that had brought a message to Atlanta so
  long ago, the Gangrel that had hunted Owain in
  Toledo.
  Toledo—the city where Owain had first seen Kli
  Kodesh.
  Owain pried his gaze from the creature and
  glanced over at Kli Kodesh. Is this the ancient’s do-
  ing?
  Kli Kodesh, though, stood with his mouth agape.
  Oblivious to Owain, the elder spoke: “And lo, the
  earth shall open her womb and the Beast shall crawl
  forth seeking the blood to sate its thirst.” In disbelief,
  he shook his head. “I was wrong.”
  At that instant, Owain was blindsided.
  Montrovant crushed him against the wall and then
  pounced on Owain as he fell. “The grail! The
  grail!” Owain lost his grip on his sword.
  Montrovant’s eyes bulged. His claws gouged
  Owain’s neck. The dark one bit savagely into the
  side of Owain’s face. Madness consumed
  Montrovant. There was no rational thought left in
  those eyes, only the quest and centuries of failure.
  “No!”
  The single word from the Beast shook the earth,
  
  295
  Dark Prophecy
  rattled the stones of the tower. From its open
  mouth, the creature vomited a black, writhing
  mass. It came in a flood, a seething stew of viscous
  shadow, oozing toward the tower. The Beast’s
  mouth stretched open impossibly wide as it dis-
  gorged the shadow, which was composed of many
  vaguely human shapes. Here an arm reached out.
  There an eye was visible for a moment before sink-
  ing beneath the surface of the advancing mass.
  The shadow given form moved with alarming
  speed. Black hands took hold of Montrovant’s
  ankles. More of the shadow climbed his back,
  grabbed his arms, his neck. The mass scraped at
  his eyes, pulled him back until, with a final ear-
  shattering scream of rage, he was pried from atop
  Owain. Montrovant’s mouth and claws dripped
  with Owain’s blood.
  A moment more and only Montrovant’s face was
  visible atop the mound of the writhing shadow.
  Whether or not any of the appendages that came
  to the surface only to sink back into the churning
  mass were Montrovant’s, Owain could not tell, but
  the frenzied Cainite’s expression of pain and frus-
  tration bespoke his inability to escape.
  As another flurry of lightning bolts struck dan-
  gerously close to the tower, the black-eyed Beast
  came forward. With each step it grew larger and
  left a footprint of blackened, scorched earth. The
  Beast reached into the shadow, and the mass re-
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  296
  ceded beneath its massive hands, which grasped
  Montrovant by the shoulders.
  Suddenly, the shadow-mass rushed ahead, a tidal
  wave of pitch black that washed over both Owain
  and Kli Kodesh. Captivated by the creature before
  him, Owain was engulfed and held immobile by
  the arm-like appendages, while the inky shadow
  covered him like a second skin. As his head went
  under, all became darkness. After a moment, how-
  ever, Owain found that he could see, though his
  vision was dimmed and gray.
  The Beast raised Montrovant several feet off the
  ground. The helpless Cainite, as if prey hypnotized
  by a serpent’s gaze, did not struggle. The Beast
  struck at the base of Montrovant’s neck. Fangs
  drove into flesh. The dark one threw back his head,
  but no scream of agony escaped his contorted, con-
  vulsing form.
  The Beast was easily twice the size of
  Montrovant. Its freakish, bulging girth dwarfed the
  Cainite. The Beast fed, but more than blood was
  sucked from Montrovant. His already pale and
  gaunt frame went rigid. His skin drew tight like
  canvas stretched over his bones. It cracked and
  then split. Scalp and hair shriveled away to noth-
  ing. Finally, the clothes and bone and flesh that
  remained all crumbled away to dust, and the Beast
  stood with empty hands.
  It stepped toward Owain, and again the shadow
  
  297
  Dark Prophecy
  melted before it. Owain felt himself lifted off the
  ground. He stared directly into the black eyes.
  Their hunger, their hatred, drank him in. The
  blackness was not empty. It was a churning reflec-
  tion of death, and like the shadow that had held
  Owain’s body, it swirled with the souls of those the
  Beast had consumed. Owain saw Nicholas, and he
  saw Blaidd. He saw Montrovant dragged to
  Oblivion, and countless others.
  The Beast shook Owain. Bones cracked, joints
  popped, as he was rattled like a straw doll in the
  tempest. The Beast’s maw opened, and the stink
  and rot of death enveloped Owain. “Kinslayer.”
  The force of its voice reached inside Owain, took
  hold of his heart and twisted.
  From what seemed like a great distance, Owain
  heard the sound of mixed sobbing and laughter. Kli
  Kodesh, he thought idly, as if none of it really mat-
  tered any more. But surely the ancient one was not
  so far away.
  Owain’s thoughts were vanquished by the shock
  of the Beast biting into his neck. Each of the count-
  less fangs struck with the force of a thousand iron
  hammers, but even more painful, Owain felt his
  soul laid open by the ravenous Beast, which found
  purchase there. It touched the hunger that had
  eaten away Owain inside, that had consumed his
  humanity. The Beast may have taken Nicholas’s
  body, but now it assumed Owain’s face, only one
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  298
  of the faces it had worn all along—since the day
  the Dark Father had drawn his final breath; since
  the time when Ventrue and Gangrel had no mean-
  ing, for the Beast was whole, yet still it hungered.
  Owain’s hunger rose to the surface. He thirsted
  as never before in hundreds of thousands of nights.
  Still, the Beast’s hunger far outweighed Owain’s.
  It drew sustenance from him as it reclaimed its own.
  And then a voice spoke again from a great dis-
  tance: “Only then shall Caine unyoke his red-eyed ox,
  whose name is Gehenna, for none may abide its coun-
  tenance.”
  Was this the rising of the Dark Father? Owain
  wondered. Somehow, though the Beast had not
  released him, Owain could see those bottomless
  black eyes. They drew him in as if he were noth-
  ing. He was falling, falling….
  The black, shadowed corpses, mileposts of his hun-
  ger, swirled around Owain. There was the first,
  nameless mortal in the streets of Westminster. There
  was Blaidd, bestial Gangrel laid low. There was Mor-
  gan, and the family of Owain’s other nephew
  Iorwerth—dear Blodwen and Branwen, little Elen
  and Sian, infant Iago. There was Gwilym, first of
  many ghouls. And Kendall, the last.
  They did not accuse him, because hunger was his
  nature.
  But what of Joseph? Owain had pierced the flesh,
  tasted the blood, of the Arimathean.
  
  299
  Dark Prophecy
  Slowly the blackness receded. The darkness was
  merely the night, and a cool breeze blew across the
  crest of the tor. Owain stood by the chapel, and
  beside him was Joseph, holding in his hands a
  golden chalice. Owain had heard the rumors and
  left France for Glastonbury Abbey. He’d sought the
  grail so that he might crush it in his bare hands.
  With laughter in his heart, he would destroy the
  vessel of Christ.
  Yet instead, he knelt before Joseph. The grail
  shimmered with the glory of a host of angels, and
  all thoughts of a vengeful, cruel God were washed
  from Owain’s mind.
  “You have achieved your quest,” said Joseph. “As
  are we all, you are unworthy. Yet by the grace of
  God, you are chosen.”
  Joseph lowered the grail, and Owain’s hands also
  held the edge of the chalice. As it tipped gently
  toward him, vitae the likes of which he’d never
  tasted brushed against his lips. The hatred, the
  emptiness, washed away. No matter how desper-
  ately he tried, he could not hold on to his anger.
  As Owain gazed heavenward, the blood filled him,
  nourished him, made its mark on his soul.
  Joseph raised the cup above his head. “Let it be
  thus. Thy will be done.”
  Behind Owain, the tower trembled and shook,
  and as the stones fell, so fell the darkness once
  again. The swirling mists of black death covered
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  300
  Owain, and he knew that he was not alone. The
  Beast was with him, had always been with him. As
  it sifted through the flotsam of his soul, the Beast
  came upon the crown of thorns, the sanctified
  blood that guarded the last shred of humanity.
  “Kinslayer!” the Beast named Owain, but even
  his most heinous crimes could not blot out his re-
  demption. Uncowed, the Beast consumed the
  blood, and with it the thorns. Its hunger could not
  be checked. It could not resist the call of blood.
  Owain crashed to the ground. The storm raged
  all around. The wind roared with the fury of the
  Beast, which stood over Owain. But all about, the
  shadow had broken into hundreds of pieces, each
  a shade from beyond the Veil, broken by the Beast.
  The gibbering shades scrambled back frantically to
  the Beast, but it cast them aside. It clawed at its
  own throat and chest, as if a great burning had
  taken hold of it. Owain lay unmoving on the
  ground. He lacked the strength to raise himself up.
  The Beast snarled and spit vitriolic blood as it
  clawed through its own chest.
  Kli Kodesh lay only feet from Owain. The an-
  cient one spoke:
   “I have seen a Cross, steeped in the blood of our
  Lord, burst forth into new life. I have seen it ring itself
  in holy thorns, lest the impure approach and taste of
  that forbidden fruit. I have seen a great white Eagle
  perched in its branches. It opens its mouth and lo it
  
  301
  Dark Prophecy
  speaks with the hidden voice of the mountains. Words
  of Undoing it speaks for the Children of Caine.”
  Slowly, Owain marshaled all his strength and
  climbed to his knees. He had seen the truth of the
  humanity that dwelled in his soul even despite the
  power of the Beast. He had seen the designs of Jo-
  seph, the folly of Isabella and Kli Kodesh. And
  Owain, too, spoke:
  “Let it be thus. Thy will be done.”
  The Beast let out a deafening roar, and around
  it the milling shades were drawn into a mighty vor-
  tex. The Beast’s cry of pain and outrage was cut
  short as more shadows were torn from its throat.
  The spiral gained strength. Its swirling wind tugged
  at Owain, but he resisted. Higher and higher the
  black vortex climbed. All the while, the screams
  of the restless dead were flung into the night. With
  a final crash of thunder and a flash of lightning
  through the center of the writhing cloud, the
  shades exploded into the sky. Wisps of shadow shot
  toward the horizon in every direction. Only a
  greasy, acrid smoke hung over the tor.
  Almost instantly, the storm subsided. The dark
  clouds still concealed the stars above, but the wind
  ceased, and the thunder died away. Before Owain
  stood Nicholas, neither larger nor more monstrous
  than a man. He stood with his bloody hands raised
  before him, his chest ripped open to reveal a shred-
  ded heart. Bewilderment creased his brow. He took
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  302
  a step, but then fell to his knees and collapsed to
  the ground.
  Before Nicholas had come completely to rest, the
  Isle of Angels again started to quake and tremble.
  Owain pitched himself forward and rolled as, be-
  hind him, the tower collapsed, and the crater of
  the Beast’s rising was covered by tons of rubble.
  
  303
  Dark Prophecy
  EPILOGUE
  The house smelled like a Confederate field hos-
  pital. It smelled of death. Instead of rooms and
  rooms of bloodied and broken young men, how-
  ever, there was only one individual in Rhodes Hall
  who was struggling to survive.
  Prince Benison sat unmoving by Eleanor’s bed
  as he had for two days and two nights. His eyes
  were small slits, swollen with fatigue. Though the
  sun had not been a problem in his and Eleanor’s
  shielded room, he had exercised great force of will
  to sit through the days, and he would sit through
  the next day, and the next. However many it took,
  for he feared they would be the last days he spent
  with his beloved wife.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  304
  Banish such thoughts! Benison charged himself. I
  will not let her slip away. I will stay with her, and she
  will not leave me.
  Eleanor tossed and mumbled in her delirium oc-
  casionally, but for the most part she suffered quietly
  as her fever raged. The blood curse had struck
  quickly. One evening she had been fine, the next
  she had raved and destroyed the parlor, apparently
  defending her home and family from nonexistent
  Yankee invaders. When Benison had carefully re-
  strained her, she’d swooned and remained in this
  coma-like state ever since. The prince had re-
  mained by her side constantly. The divine
  transformation of Atlanta to Benison’s holy vision
  of Primus had not yet been achieved, but Benison
  felt confident that the Lord would, nevertheless,
  reward him for loyalty to both wife and city.
  For several months, the curse had receded, with
  a death reported only infrequently. But was that,
  Benison had wondered, because he had appeased
  God, or because the weak and susceptible had all
  fallen previously? He could not forget how, earlier
  in the year, the curse had spread through his city
  like wildfire. Apparently, the danger was not past.
  Eleanor stirred restlessly. It pained Benison to
  witness the anxious expression on her unconscious
  face. “Benjamin…” she called out weakly.
  Benjamin. The prince cringed. Obviously, she
  was so ill that she could not pronounce ‘Benison’
  
  305
  Dark Prophecy
  clearly. Or perhaps she fretted over the insurrec-
  tion of the Atlanta anarchs, which Benison had
  not yet completely put down. Benjamin, after all,
  was of Eleanor’s clan. She would be embarrassed
  and angry, and understandably so, that he had not
  remained loyal.
  Benison gently stroked her wrinkled brow. With
  a fresh white kerchief, he dabbed the sweated blood
  from her face. “Do not trouble yourself,” he whis-
  pered to her. “All will be well.”
  A quiet knock sounded at the door, and the
  ghoul Vermeil entered. “Sir, Theo Bell has arrived.”
  The name sent a flash of anger through the
  prince, but he maintained his calm. Theo Bell—
  Brujah archon. Benison had suspected for some
  time that Bell’s justicar master, Jaroslav Pascek,
  watchdog of the Camarilla Inner Circle, was look-
  ing for an excuse to intervene in Atlanta. Thus far,
  Benison had quelled the anarch unrest to the point
  that there was no great disturbance, a fact that must
  gall Pascek and Bell, since the leader of the revolt,
  Thelonious, was Brujah.
  Of course he is Brujah! In Benison’s opinion, the
  entire clan was a collection  of troublemakers who
  didn’t know their place, and now Theo Bell was
  using the blood curse as an excuse to rummage
  around in Benison’s city.
  The prince took a deep, calming breath. This is
  for Eleanor, he reminded himself.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  306
  Three sets of footsteps in the hall and another
  knock.
  “Enter.”
  Vermeil opened the door, and Bell stepped into
  the room. “Prince Benison.”
  Benison nodded but did not turn from his wife’s
  sickbed. He had met the archon before—a hand-
  some, large, black man, as large as Benison himself.
  Certainly, Bell was aware of Benison’s sympathies
  during the War of Northern Aggression, and
  though Benison had been a supporter of states’
  rights rather than of slavery, he was sure Bell was
  resentful. Add to that the natural recalcitrance of
  the Brujah, and this was someone Benison wanted
  as little to do with as possible.
  “I have brought the wanderer,” said Bell.
  Benison nodded again. He and Eleanor had de-
  clined this opportunity before, but now he felt that
  he had little choice. “I hear that he aids the Sabbat
  as well,” said Benison without preamble.
  “He offers aid where it is needed,” Bell re-
  sponded. “That is his condition for helping us as
  well.”
  And we may not survive without his help, thought
  Benison.
  “May he tend your wife?” asked Bell.
  Slowly, Benison rose to his feet. Stiff joints
  cracked in protest. He stepped back from the bed
  and saw how disrespectfully the archon was dressed,
  
  307
  Dark Prophecy
  in blue jeans and a bulky leather jacket—no way
  to enter the home of the prince. But this was all
  for Eleanor’s sake. “He may.”
  From the hallway, a robed and hooded figure en-
  tered the room. His face was cloaked in shadow.
  Without speaking or pausing, he stepped past Bell
  and Benison to the bedside, then stood for a long
  moment looking down at Eleanor. Her face, again,
  was covered with tiny beads of bloodsweat.
  The wanderer raised open hands before him,
  then touched one lightly to the other. After a mo-
  ment, he separated them again, and in the center
  of each palm was a tiny wound where before there
  had been only unmarred flesh. Rich, red blood
  welled to the surface. He lowered a hand to
  Eleanor’s mouth, and even in her stupor, she licked
  the vitae that dripped on her lips.
  “And this will heal her?” Benison asked doubt-
  fully.
  “I haven’t seen it fail yet,” said Bell, “and I’ve
  been all over with him.”
  Benison bristled at this thinly veiled barb. He
  knew that Bell had aided the anarchs who opposed
  the prince, yet there was nothing Benison could
  do. The leaders of the Camarilla were quite clear
  that all disputes were secondary compared to the
  havoc and carnage wrought by the curse. A cure
  having miraculously come to light, they were mak-
  ing every effort to eradicate the curse.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  308
  The wanderer turned and held out his other
  bleeding hand toward Benison, but the prince, with
  a gesture, stopped the stranger.
  “He says the blood acts as a ward against the
  curse as well,” said Bell. “You know how quickly
  the curse can spread. It would be best if the Prince
  of Atlanta were beyond danger.”
  Benison glared at Bell. Did the archon speak
  solely of the curse, or of the political situation as
  well? Reluctantly, the prince accepted the proffered
  hand. The few drops of blood were warm and fresh
  upon his tongue, and the warmth quickly spread
  throughout his body as he swallowed.
  The wanderer withdrew his hand, and a sudden
  wave of lightheadedness washed over Benison. He
  staggered forward and grabbed the stranger’s shoul-
  der to steady himself. Beneath his hand, the prince
  felt a protrusion of misshapen bone, a past injury,
  perhaps, that had not healed properly, and as Bell
  helped Benison regain his balance, the prince
  caught a split-second glimpse of part of the face
  within the recess of the hood. The jawline and nose
  were familiar, but Benison could not at first place
  them.
  “Are you all right?” asked Bell.
  Benison shook his head to clear it, and the diz-
  ziness passed. “Yes.”
  The archon looked back at Eleanor. “I think your
  wife looks better already. I hope she recovers
  
  309
  Dark Prophecy
  quickly,” he said. “We’d better be moving on. He
  has agreed to help us,” Bell indicated the wanderer,
  “but not forever, and we’ve got lots of work to do.”
  Eleanor did seem to be resting more easily,
  Benison noticed, but something about the stranger
  nagged at the prince. Benison stared intently at the
  wanderer as he and Bell turned to leave. “You of-
  fer us miracles,” said the prince.
  Bell was already in the hallway. The wanderer
  stopped in the doorway but did not turn back
  around. “I offer hope,” he said, and then stepped
  out of the room.
  The picture snapped into place for Benison—the
  voice, the face. Rage welled up within the prince.
  He started after them.
  “Benison…?”
  The sound of Eleanor’s voice stopped him in his
  tracks. He turned to see her eyes open, the mad-
  ness and pain vanquished. He started to turn back
  toward the hallway and the receding footsteps, but
  he moved to his wife’s bedside instead.
  The wanderer had performed a miracle, indeed.
  Perhaps mercy was in order. Besides, he was under
  Camarilla protection, and it would be unwise for
  Benison to antagonize the Brujah archon.
  Go on your way, Wanderer, Benison thought, but
  know that old transgressions are not forgotten.
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  310
  Crumbled stones, after months, still covered the
  Isle of Angels. But what were months except the
  blink of an eye to Kli Kodesh? As still as one of
  the stones himself, he sat among the rubble that
  had been the chapel to St. Michael.
  Most exalted of that Glorious Company.
  Eventually, the mortals would repair the damage
  done on the night of the Rising. For now, they
  spoke in hushed tones of the great storm that had
  swept down upon them and shaken the very earth.
  A great storm had swept down upon the world of
  the Cainites as well.
  The Beast walks the earth. The Undoing of the Chil-
  dren of Caine is at hand.
  As Kli Kodesh retraced again and again the
  strands of prophecy in his mind, he was filled with
  both anger and anticipation. Anger, because he had
  been wrong. Not once, but twice. He had assumed
  that Montrovant was the Beast, but the dark one’s
  hunger was not that to which the prophecy re-
  ferred. Kli Kodesh had tampered with the threads,
  but could a prophecy of truth ever truly be denied?
  Surely Montrovant had played his part despite Kli
  Kodesh’s misinterpretation, but Montrovant had
  been part of the Triad no more than the hapless
  Gangrel who had acted as a portal for the Beast’s
  crossing from beyond the Veil.
  For now the Beast was loosed. Its seed had al-
  ways existed, Kli Kodesh knew, within the soul of
  
  311
  Dark Prophecy
  each Cainite—the insatiable hunger that withered
  roots to the shallow soil of the human world. But
  now the Beast was given form, and the ascension
  of the Dark Father was that much closer to real-
  ization, for the Kinslayer had managed to vanquish
  the hunger—but to destroy it?
  The Kinslayer, Kli Kodesh mused,  or the Wan-
  derer, as some have taken to calling him. That, of
  course, was the master-stroke of the Arimathean,
  and Kli Kodesh had been completely blind to it.
  There was absolution, however, in the fact that
  Kli Kodesh was not the only one to err despite
  countless centuries of study. The widow thought that
  she was the Betrayer, he mused. Ah, the hubris of
  youth.
  But had it not been pride that led Kli Kodesh to
  his mistakes? His second misinterpretation, galling
  as it was, was also his cause for anticipation. The
  Kinslayer. The Betrayer. The Beast. The Unholy
  Triad complete. Kli Kodesh had assumed that the
  end would come at once, but he of all creatures on
  earth should have known that time was ever-flow-
  ing. In his own timelessness, though, he had lost
  track of that fact.
  The widow, too, had misjudged both the
  Arimathean and his prophecy. She’d labored for
  the destruction of the Cainite race, but, in the end,
  a savior had emerged from the wreckage of her
  schemes—the Wanderer, an enlightened one who,
  
  Gherbod Fleming
  312
  already, younger Cainites flocked to in hopes of
  overcoming the hunger. He offered hope of deliv-
  erance from their curse, and that was Joseph of
  Arimathea’s crowning achievement. His prophe-
  cies had unfolded over centuries not to destroy the
  Dark Father, as the widow had been led to believe,
  but to redeem the souls tainted by the original
  curse.
  Kli Kodesh admired the audacity, the misdirec-
  tion. Had not he himself, after all, been taken in?
  Redemption, however, he left to others. One might
  as well offer atonement to the sun or the stars.
  Yet all was not lost. The Beast was risen into the
  world.
  Only then shall Caine unyoke his red-eyed ox, whose
  name is Gehenna, for none may abide its countenance.
  The corners of Kli Kodesh’s lips turned up in a
  smile. It was the first time he had moved in many
  hours. No matter his failings, the time of his re-
  lease was still at hand. The next step along the road
  had been taken.
  And the road’s name was Gehenna, and it was paved
  with dying dreams.
  Let it be thus. Thy will be done.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Storyteller [multi]/EXTRA/Fiction/Trilogy of the Blood Curse by Fleming Gherbod (z-lib.org)/Fleming, Gherbod - Trilogy of the Blood Curse/Fleming, Gherbod - Blood Curse, Bk 3 - Dark Prophecy.pdf