3

THE FOG HAD LIFTED.

The trumpets and fifes had sounded retreat, and in the wake of the omen, nothing had stirred outside the city walls – nothing but the moans of the dying. At the Gate of St. Romanus, a long line of carts and battle-worn wagons waited to go out and retrieve the wounded. It was into the second of these that Nicholas placed his apothecary chest. The youthful driver turned to look at him in wonderment.

“How do you do that?” he asked in Greek, and nodded toward the chest.

“Do what, Leander?”

“Fill it,” the boy said. “Sometimes I think you are more sorcerer than healer, Master Nicholas. How do you still find the ingredients for your potions when the other physicians have so little left to work with?”

“I have my sources,” Nicholas demurred. “But I would not exactly call them sorcery.” He walked forward to place one hand on the flank of the sorrel mare in Leander’s harness. At once, the animal snorted and shied from the vampire’s touch.

“You see?” Leander teased. “Athena does not believe you, either. She wishes to know what manner of magic it is that you possess. As do I.”

“No magic at all.” Nicholas stepped away from the wary horse and tried to keep his tone light-hearted. “Do you know that for a shoemaker’s son, you ask entirely too many questions?”

“So I have been told.” But Leander paused only for a moment before asking another. “What do you think it meant, the light? Was it truly an omen?”

“No.” Nicholas wished he could feel the assurance of his own words. “It was a trick of the moonlight, nothing more.”

The shouts of sentries atop the inner wall signaled the opening of the massive iron gate. He walked alongside as Leander's wagon followed the foremost cart through the archway, past the raised portcullis of the middle wall and finally through the iron door of the outermost fortification. In weeks past, they would have traveled a mile or more along the banks of the Lycus before reaching the battlefield on Mesoteichion’s plain. Tonight they came upon the dead and dying within paces of the wall, and the wagons needed to disperse no farther than the last remaining trench before beginning to claim their burdens.

Leander’s wagon had creaked along the foss’ edge for scant minutes before the miller’s cart in front of them halted, its driver leaping down to inspect two bodies that lay sprawled together in the mud. Immediately, the bearded man shook his head, climbed back to his cart and drove on. Leander goaded his mare to do the same.

“Wait.”  Before they had moved past the bodies, Nicholas stopped the mare with a hand to her bridle. Again, the animal shied, but he paid it no heed. Something else had captured his attention: a sound too faint for mortal ears but rhythmically loud to his own – the beating of two human hearts.

When he pulled a bottle from the apothecary chest and headed toward the “corpses,” Leander clambered from the wagon to follow him. “What are you doing? The burial parties come behind us. A physician can do nothing for the dead – unless he is indeed a sorcerer.”

“They are not dead yet.” Nicholas knelt to turn both fallen men face up. Despite their armor, both had suffered sword wounds to the chest, one far more grave than the other. And though both bore facial features that would have identified them without question as Greeks, what remained of their ruined armor and bloodstained clothing was Turkish.

“Janissaries.” Leander all but spat the word. “Now you know why Xenos the miller passed them by.” Leander bent to retrieve a tattered yellow banner bearing Constantinople’s double-headed eagle that had been trampled underfoot in the skirmish. “Leave them. Let the Turks come for them in their turn.” He let the ruined flag fall back into the mud.

“They could die by then.” Nicholas lifted one man’s head to administer the wine-and-sleeping-draught mixture from his bottle, then repeated the action with the other. “Help me with them.”

“Are you mad?” Leander grabbed his arm, causing the wine to spill. “Save your potions and your sympathies for the Christian wounded, physician. These men are...”

“These men are Greeks,” Nicholas interrupted him. “Like you.”

“No. They are changelings, stolen by demons from their cradles, raised by the heathen as traitors and spies. Leave them here! They warrant no mercy from us.”

Calmly, Nicholas pulled his arm free of the boy’s grasp. “All men deserve that much.”

The soldier he held moaned and mumbled something in the Turkish tongue. Nicholas tipped the bottle to his mouth and with that motion, bade him drink again.

“Why?” Leander pleaded. “Heal them, and they will give you a knife in the back for your trouble. Better you should finish them where they lie.”

“No.”

Nicholas could offer no reasoning that Leander would understand. How did he explain that once, two centuries past, a mortal knight named Nicholas de Brabant had lain bleeding on a field outside another city’s walls; that while an enemy had raised a scimitar to dispatch him, another had dissuaded his comrade and shown the wounded knight an unexpected mercy?

Here and now, Nicholas de Brabant could not –  would not – do less.

Making no effort to hide the ease with which he lifted the wounded man, Nicholas carried him to the wagon and returned for the other. Leander’s objections continued all the while. “Giustiniani will have you hanged, drawn and quartered for this. Nicholas, will you listen to reason? The sentries will not even allow us past the gate with them!”

“Leave that to me.”

They both mounted the wagon then, Leander to its driver’s perch and the physician to its bed, where he could tend to his forbidden charges.

Leander lodged a final complaint. “We have wounded of our own to save,” he said.

“Yes. And we have room yet. So I suggest we go after them. Quickly.”

 Leander had given up his arguments then, and with a loud sigh, turned Athena to the task.

*    *    *

In an instant, raucous traffic sounds roused Nick from memories of an ancient city to the noisy surroundings of a modern one. The hotel he’d been hunting for finally loomed on his right, and he steered the Caddy into its underground parking garage. Minutes before, he’d been granted yet another reprieve when a janitor outside the Spirit of Pentecost Church had informed him that Henri LeFebre hadn’t been staying on the property, but had taken a hotel room in town.

Though it was after nine p.m., his knock on the hotel room door was readily answered by a slight, dark-haired man with deep brown eyes and a friendly smile.

“Are you Henri LeFebre?” Nick asked.

“Yes. You are from the police?” The man spoke with a lilting Belgian accent. “I’ve been expecting someone.”

With a nod, Nick produced his badge, and LeFebre studied it for a moment before ushering him on into the room. “Please, Detective Knight, come in. Do you know yet what happened to Con Lewis? What he died of? I have been praying that...”  The sentence cut off abruptly when LeFebre turned from shutting the door and met Nick’s gaze directly for the first time. For the briefest of moments, the mortal’s brown eyes took on an aura all too familiar to the vampire -- a look of fleeting but unmistakable terror. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Nick to wonder if LeFebre somehow possessed the same “sixth sense” that had spooked Leander’s mare all those years ago in Constantinople.

The reverend walked past the modest room’s neatly made bed to a small table and two mock leather chairs set in front of the tall hotel window. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, Nick followed the man’s lead and took a seat, avoiding the French Bible that lay open on the table, its pages graced by a blue silk, cross-emblazoned bookmark.

“We don’t have the autopsy results yet,” he said in answer to the initial question. “Had you known Conrad Lewis long?”

“Only since I arrived here. About a week all told. His faith was very new, still very fragile. But I know that he believed.”

The look in LeFebre’s eyes was one of wary curiosity now. Nick resisted an urge to squirm and tried to regain the upper hand with another question. “I understand your service includes some sort of healing ceremony, is that right?”

LeFebre nodded.

“And Conrad took part in that as well?”

“Yes.”

“Just what did he need healing for? Was he ill?”
“I don’t know.” One hand stroked the well-leafed edges of the Bible’s pages. “The ailment is not always specified.”

“And this ceremony consists of what, exactly?”

The reverend seemed to find that an odd choice of words. “It ‘consists’ of prayer – along with the laying on of hands and an anointing with oil.”

Nick straightened, leaning forward in the chair. “And what sort of oil would that be?”

LeFebre reached into a pocket to withdraw a tiny glass vial capped with a blue plastic lid. “It’s quite harmless,” he said. “Merely a symbolic gesture.”

“May I?” Nick held out a hand. The small bottle was dropped into his palm – and instantly his hand was seared as though he’d just grasped a burning coal. Startled, he let it fall to the tabletop, the singed hand diving into his own pocket to recover from the burn. It emerged a moment later along with his handkerchief. Under the minister’s perplexed scrutiny, he wrapped the little vial in the cloth. “Is this the same oil you used in the ceremony earlier this evening?”

“Yes,” LeFebre said distractedly. “Why?”

“It’s just routine.” Nick uttered the standard placation without thought as he tucked the white bundle into a coat pocket. “Did you know much about Conrad Lewis? His friends, his habits?”

“Very little. He did have three friends, from the university I think. Two young men and a girl. They dropped Con off at the church sometimes. He said that they often... what is the phrase? ‘Hanged over’?”

“Hung out,” Nick corrected. “You said his faith was something new.  Does that mean he’d never expressed any particular religious interests before?”

“He told me he had been raised in a Christian home. But like many children, he rejected the faith of his parents. Until he lost them. For a time, he blamed God for that. Then he began to look for answers.” LeFebre caressed the Bible’s pages again and quoted softly, “Intruis l’enfant selon la voie qu’il doit suivre...”

“...Et quand il sera vieux, il ne s’en détournera pas,” Nick finished automatically. It was a verse that LaCroix had often taken a certain perverted delight in hurling at him. Raise up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.¹

Surprise glinted in the faith healer’s brown eyes. “Your French is exceptionally good.”

Instantly regretting the slip, Nick shook his head. “Not really. It’s just that in this part of the country, in this job, it helps to know a little French.”

“And apparently a little of the Word as well? And yet there is something...” Again, LeFebre interrupted himself to stare uncertainly at the man across the table from him. “Do you not believe in God, Detective Knight?”

This time he did squirm, shifting in the padded chair. “Yes. Of course.” This wasn’t going well, and he desperately needed to steer their conversation back onto the subject at hand. “Did you notice anything at all unusual about Conrad’s behavior earlier this evening?” He wasn’t sure for a moment whether LeFebre had heard him. The man’s piercing gaze locked with his own and something in their depths made the Beast stir in restless agitation. Blinking, Nick broke eye contact and looked away to the window.

“Nothing,” came the delayed answer to his question. “He came early, to help us prepare. But he seemed to be fine then. Do you... come from Belgium, by any chance? Your accent...”

“No.” The lie came easily enough, for all that it was partially true. In 1194, the maps had given his mortal birthplace an altogether different name.

“Forgive me,” LeFebre said. “One always looks for countrymen in whatever foreign land. I thought I heard a hint of home. There is a lovely province in the central north of Belgium. A former duchy called Brabant.” When Nick failed to hide his startled look, LeFebre smiled at him. “Do you know it?”

Nick was spared another lie by the warble of a cell phone coming from his jacket pocket. Silently thanking modern technology and whoever the caller might be, he rose, muttered a relieved “Excuse me,” and retreated to the window to answer the call. “Yeah. Knight.”

Natalie’s anxious voice responded immediately. “Nick, I just finished the Lewis autopsy. I think you’ll probably want to take a look at this.”

“I’ll be right there.”

LeFebre had also risen, and watched as Nick tucked the phone away. “You have news about Con?”

“No, not yet. I’ll let you know what we find, when I can. Thank you for your time, Reverend LeFebre.” He nodded his farewell, hoping to leave without engaging in the formality of a handshake. But LeFebre had already extended a hand.

Reluctantly, Nick accepted the man’s grasp with the intention of releasing it at once and escaping the room. But the moment LeFebre’s fingers touched his own, a fire hotter than any hell he had ever imagined seared through him. The vampire within him writhed in sudden, unexplained agony. Unbidden, Nick’s eyes flashed from blue to yellow-gold. He forced them shut, broke the handshake and spun away, nearly colliding with the window’s cold, hard glass. He pressed both hands to it, palms flat, and used its chill comfort to fight the vampire back into submission.

What was happening here?

He expected to find revulsion and fear on LeFebre’s face when he turned back around, his eyes mortal blue once more. But to his astonishment, the other man’s expression held only sadness. It was a sadness that verged on pity, and at that realization, the Beast snarled. Nick quelled it with a visible effort before looking the minister in the eyes. In the vampire’s commanding baritone, he said, “You did not see this.”

The light in the mortal’s eyes should have changed, should have succumbed at once to his will. It did neither.

“But I have seen. I see that you... do not wish to be as you are,” LeFebre said with a sagacity that defied reason.

Defeated, Nick released the man’s gaze and looked down at the carpet. “No.”

“Then perhaps...”

When LeFebre started toward him, Nick’s upraised hand warned him away. “Don’t,” he rasped. “This is a thing beyond your healing, your understanding. Leave it.”

The faith healer stopped walking, but the stance he took was both physically and verbally defiant. “Nothing is beyond God,” he said.

Nick’s gaze snapped up to glare at him. “I am.”

“No. Whoever told you this has lied to you. No man is past grace, past redemption.”

Nick allowed the gold to return to his eyes and permitted the vampire to snarl its words at this foolhardy human. “Je ne suis pas l’homme,” it growled. I am not a man.

Lesser mortals would have bolted in terror then and there. LeFebre stood his ground, just as Natalie had done on the night he had tried – and failed – to make her forget. His Beast possessed no resource to deal with this. Such open defiance unnerved it, left it angry and vulnerable.

And a vampire could not afford to be vulnerable.

“Submit your will to me,” he commanded, letting the gold light of his eyes glow brighter. “It is better that you forget what you have seen.”

Incredibly, the resolve in LeFebre’s gaze only grew stronger. “You are not beyond God,” he insisted. “No one is.”

The fire in Nick’s eyes died suddenly, as though someone had thrown cold water over burning embers. “It’s really that black and white for you, isn’t it?” he queried hoarsely, amazed at the other man’s calm in the presence of his demon. “‘Ask and it shall be given unto you.’”

The mortal’s answer was direct and completely without pretense. “Yes. For you as well. Grace is freely given to us all.”

“You have no idea what I am,” Nick told him. “What I've done...”

“It makes no difference,” LeFebre persisted. “All sin is equal in the eyes of God.”

Nick almost laughed aloud. The naive simplicity of this man’s argument was, as LaCroix would once have said, becoming vexatious. Yet something about Henri LeFebre fascinated him as well.

“Then what of evil?” he asked. “What does your faith say about that?”

LeFebre lifted the Bible from the table, held it open in both hands. “That it shall be destroyed,” he replied. “Just as the evil you harbor within yourself can also be destroyed. I have touched it. And I saw that although it seeks to control you, it does not define you. You have denied it this. For all its power, you have not given it your soul.”

Nick flinched at the word. “There are many who say we have no souls,” he breathed, echoing LaCroix’s vampiric litany.

“Then there are many who are wrong.”

Exasperation edged Nick’s reply. “How can you be so sure? So confident?”

LeFebre showed no reaction to his anger. “That you have a soul? Because I have seen it.”

While a part of him wanted desperately to believe these things, LaCroix’s creation held far too much of his sire’s cynicism to allow it. “Forgive me, Monsieur LeFebre, but perhaps you ‘see’ a great deal that isn’t there.”

“Perhaps,” the minister said simply. “But I know that your soul survives. It is hidden, eclipsed by the darkness. But it is there.”

Acutely uncomfortable now, Nick searched for a tactful way out of this, and remembering Nat’s call, patted the pocket containing the cell phone. “I have to go,” he started to say.

“Please...” LeFebre stepped forward and stopped again, the Bible still in his hands. “Let me help you.”

Nick didn’t know whether to praise or damn the man’s tenacity. “You don't know what you're asking.”

“I am willing to try.”

Nick strode to the door and opened it to go, but there was one last matter he had to resolve. “You cannot speak of this,” he said without looking back. “Not to anyone. Your life may depend on it.” He hadn't meant for it to sound so much like a threat. But then, if LeFebre chose to view it that way, neither would Detective Knight do anything to disillusion him.

Before the minister could protest, Nick went on out the door.

Toronto’s sky had blown free of clouds to become a dark, moonless field of stars. A perfect night for flying.

Nick left his Caddy in the underground garage and took a shorter route to the coroner’s building on Grenville. The lab comprising Natalie’s “office” was a cramped, blue-tiled room that smelled pungently of formaldehyde and disinfectant, though neither quite managed to hide the stronger odor of human blood. Thankfully, the corpse on Nat’s dissecting table was covered with a heavy green sheet. When he walked in, she came out of the cold storage room, still wearing her surgical gloves and scrubs, and pushed the thick door shut behind her.

“You said you had something,” he stated without preamble. “On Conrad Lewis?”

“Over here.” All business, Nat crossed to the twin viewing panels on the back wall and flipped on the light to reveal two chest x-rays clipped to the glass. She pulled off her gloves before pointing to the heart region on each picture in turn. “There, and there. Do you see it?”

Nick squinted at the arcane negative image of bones and vaguely defined internal organs. “I guess not,” he confessed. “What exactly am I looking for?”

“The thing that just put Conrad on the possible homicide list. He had a congenital heart defect commonly referred to as an enlarged heart. You can see the anomaly in the left ventricle wall, right here.” She pointed again, but Nick had to resolve himself to taking her word for it. “The cause of death was congestive coronary failure.”

“You’re saying he died of a heart attack? At seventeen?”

She nodded. “Most likely induced by the rohypnol, yes. Which means that either someone slipped him the drug without knowing it could kill him...”

“...or they did know and intended to kill him,” Nick finished. “The faith healer, LeFebre, said that Conrad had come to him asking for healing. Maybe this was why.”

“So he probably knew about his condition. The question now is, who else did?”

“Oh.” Nick searched his pockets for the folded handkerchief and cautiously unwrapped it so that the small vial fell into Natalie's hand without touching his own. “Have the lab take a look at this, would you?”

“Okay.” She slipped the bottle into an evidence bag and picked up a marking pen from the desk. “What is it?”

“Some sort of holy oil or something. LeFebre uses it in the healing ceremonies. It's probably nothing, but we should check it out anyway.”

Natalie wrote something on the bag and left it on a corner of the desk. “You think LeFebre should be a suspect?”

“Maybe.” Nick shook his head. “Or maybe not. I dunno. There’s no motive, for one thing. And LeFebre is... well, not exactly what I expected.”

She’d heard something in his voice that told her all was not as it should be. “What happened?” she asked. “What's wrong?”

“Nat... What do you know about Pentecostalism?”

She frowned, momentarily taken aback by his apparent change of subject. “It’s a Protestant religious movement that began in the States in the nineteen-teens, practices faith healing, glossolalia, all that Elmer Gantry stuff. Why?”

“Do you think there’s anything to it? The healing part, I mean.”

Nat’s hazel eyes held a hint of suspicion now. “Are you asking what I believe personally or professionally?”

“Both,” he said honestly. “Off the record.”

“Well...” She crossed her arms, a gesture that often indicated her frustration with something – or someone. “Professionally speaking, I’m a card-carrying agnostic. Personally... I've never discounted the value of faith, Nick. I couldn't. I’ve seen it make the difference between life and death too many times.”

“And what about the faith healers?”

Natalie’s eyes widened in comprehension. “Oh, no. We’re not talking about some ‘spiritual’ cure for vampirism here again, are we?” She glanced once at the door to be sure they weren’t being overheard, then lowered her voice anyway. “Because I’ve told you before, your condition is physiological, not some metaphysical curse you can conjure away by pulling pins out of voodoo dolls!”

“Nat...” He tried to quell her anger by taking hold of her hands. “Nat...” How to explain what had happened at the hotel? He’d just have to say it, straight out. “Nat, LeFebre knew. He never did anything more than shake my hand, and he knew. How could he do that? How?"

“Wait... wait a minute.” She slipped her hands free, the suspicion instantly back in her voice. “What did he know?”

“He saw the evil. The vampire. And he wasn't afraid. Not any more than you were.”

“He saw...” She let the sentence die unfinished. “Nick, don’t you think maybe you should be just a little more careful here? It might be a good idea to keep in mind that Henri LeFebre could be a murder suspect.”

“I don't think so.”

“Then do your job and prove that he isn’t! How do you know that his ‘flock’ isn’t helped along on its spiritual journey with a little chemical assistance?”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “That’s why I need an analysis on the oil.”

“And I’ll do that, but I’d also bet it won’t show us much. He’d probably be bright enough to destroy any tainted samples the moment he knew the police were looking for evidence. No, you need another way to test it. Someone to investigate the process LeFebre uses, up close and personal.”

Nick took a deep breath and held it for a moment. “You mean going undercover to one of the revival meetings?”

“Got it in one.”

“Nat, that’d be just a little obvious at this point. LeFebre already knows what I look like.”

“Send someone else then.”

“Who? Schanke? I’m sorry, but his idea of a sacrament is six chocolate donuts and a Coke.”

She laughed. “Not exactly who I had in mind, no. You need someone qualified to determine whether or not there are drugs being used.”

“Who, then?”

She looked him in the eyes, a stolid determination growing in her own. “Me,” she said. “I’ll go.”

*    *    *

“I will go,” Leander had said, and he took the tiny silver medallion from Nicholas’ hand. It had been secreted with one of the Jannissary’s belongings and bore a single name, Alexius, engraved on its round face in Greek letters. On the back was a silversmith’s mark – one Leander thought he recognized. “I still say you are mad to do this. But if it is Kostas’ mark,” he added, pocketing the disc, “I will bring him, as you ask.”

“Thank you.”

When Leander had gone, Nicholas returned to his charges in the barracks-cum-infirmary that stood near the Xylokerkon Gate. Thirteen of the wounded, Greeks, Venetians, Genoese and Catalans, shared the common chamber. The two Janissaries he had sequestered in another, smaller room, and it was there he meant to use the poultice he’d just made, on the soldier with the more severe wound.

He carried his preparation through the doorway, approached the man’s cot, and preoccupied, realized a split second too late that the other bed was empty.

A broad knife flashed in the lamp light (where had he stolen that so quickly, so easily?) and came to rest firmly poised against Nicholas’ throat. A voice, draught-slurred and speaking heavily accented Greek, whispered from just behind his ear. “You will keep silent, infidel,” it hissed, and the blade pressed harder, drawing blood. “Or by Allah, I swear, I will cut off your head...”