4

“YOU DO NOT WISH TO DO THAT.”

Although he could not see the Janissary’s eyes, Nicholas imbued his words with the full force of a vampire’s persuasive abilities. Hands stronger than any mortal’s could possibly be grasped the man’s wrist, forcing the blade down and away from his throat. Nicholas turned and easily captured the young soldier’s gaze. “Killing me,” he said, “would not help you or your wounded comrade. I am your only friend here. You can trust me.”

“No!”

An incredibly strong will glared back at Nicholas from two deep-set, jade green eyes. “The infidels must die. As Malik and I would willingly die for the glory of Allah.” \

The vampire’s gaze probed deeper. “By what name are you called?” its owner demanded.

At last the Janissary’s eyes lost focus. His words slurred drunkenly. “Gaspar,” he said. “I am called Gaspar.”

“You have another name. Do you remember it? A Greek name.”

Despite his trance, Gaspar uttered the word with a hateful sneer. “Anatole. An infidel name. I claim it no longer.”

“And Malik? With what name was he born?”

“As an unbeliever, he was called Alexius.”

Nicholas thought of the medallion with the craftsman’s mark that he had sent with Leander. “Is Alexius the son of Kostas, the silversmith?”

Defiance glinted in the green eyes. “We are the sons of Allah. No other!”

Nicholas pressed his unnatural influence one last time. “Sleep,” he commanded. “You must return to your bed and sleep until sundown tomorrow. Now.”

Slavishly, Gaspar obeyed. He was sound asleep before he’d even finished folding himself onto the cot.

Retrieving his fallen poultice, Nicholas went to apply it to Malik/Alexius’ wound, only to find the injured soldier staring up at him in abject horror. “Demon,” he rasped. “Sorcerer! Allah protect us! Help us!” His terrified cries segued at once into rapid-fire Turkish, cutting off only when Nicholas at last managed to capture his gaze and forcibly calm him.

“There is no demon here,” he soothed, adjusting the plaster over the blood-stained bandages covering Malik’s lacerated chest. “And you have seen no sorcery – only the physician, going about his duties. There is no need to fear him. No need at all. Do you understand?”  When Malik nodded and went lax against the pillow, Nicholas released his hold on the terrified mortal’s mind. “You will live,” he said then. “But you must rest.”

“Gaspar...”

“Was not seriously wounded. He sleeps. As should you.”

The grateful compliance Nicholas had expected did not come. Instead, Malik looked up at him with icy, unsheathed hatred. “It is better to die in battle and be taken at once to Allah than to live as prisoner to the infidel swine!”

Nicholas shook his head, surprised at the venom of the wounded man’s words. “You are not prisoners. And these ‘swine’ are Greeks. The same as you, Alexius.”

“Lies!” The Janissary repeated the word in choking sobs until Nicholas feared his agitation would re-open the sword wound. Once more, he took the man’s will as his own and ordered him to sleep until the sun rose and set again tomorrow.

When Malik/Alexius fell back and lapsed into obedient slumber, his physician moved away, bending to recover Gaspar’s dropped weapon from amidst the floor rushes. It was a lancet from the surgeon’s tools, usually kept near the hearth in the infirmary’s main ward. Had Gaspar ventured that far, unnoticed, to steal it? Or had some careless aide left it within easier reach? Frowning, Nicholas resolved to lecture his assistants about such blatant negligence. Had Gaspar chosen to attack one of the mortals... He put the thought out of mind for the moment, pocketed the lancet and closed the chamber door on his spellbound charges. He turned the key, assailed by a twinge of conscience as that object joined the knife in his belt pouch. For their own safety, these Janissaries must  be unwitting  prisoners after all,  at least until he could return with the sunset tomorrow. For what remained of this night, however, he had a dark need of his own to fulfill.

Silvered clouds obscured a pale, waning moon in the western sky. A chill mist hung in the air, the better to hide his flight from the night watch on the walls below. Nicholas flew high above the dark, hulking shapes of church domes and the winding roads lined with long-deserted houses. Great tracts of the emperor’s holy city lay abandoned now, populated only by rats and by packs of marauding curs. Like Antonio, the former inhabitants had long since fled up the Bosporus to safer ground, leaving Constantinople to the six thousand loyal defenders who had vowed to remain and protect it. Nicholas fearfully wondered if they would be enough. Giustiniani’s spies had estimated the sultan’s forces at twenty thousand strong.

Mindless of the damp and cold, he flew higher, crossing over dim torchlight flickering far below on the tri-fold walls. He soared over the battlefield, over Mehmet’s camp dotted with glowing fires, then turned back above the field of carnage that stretched between city and tents. Like some terrible bird of prey, the vampire circled in search of a victim left behind by the mercy expeditions, a soldier of either army deemed unsavable and left to die.

He did not have to search long.

As though to hide his evil deed, a black cloud descended to cover the moon altogether, plunging the bloody battleground into total darkness. He fed until the faintly beating heart lurched to a fluttering halt, then rose from his grisly task, prepared to take flight once more.

“Such a sumptuous bounty your little war provides.”

Nicholas started at the familiar voice. Only LaCroix could have masked his presence so completely that not even his progeny could sense him nearby. He looked up at his maker with glowing eyes, and eschewing words, responded with the deep-throated growl of the vampire’s wrath.

Far from moved by the implicit threat, LaCroix seemed genuinely pleased by it. “I shall refrain from commenting,” he said, “on the hypocrisy of feeding upon the very souls you strive so zealously at other times to save.”

The black cloud drifted north, leaving them bathed in feeble moonlight. Nicholas forced the vampire’s fangs into submission, his eyes fading back to mortal blue. “Your restraint is exemplary, as always,” he said, the words no more sincere than LaCroix’s had been. “Go back to Vienna and your precious Janette. Leave me alone!”

“Poor, naive Nicholas,” his master opined as though his outburst had never occurred. “Idealism is a superbly admirable trait – among mortals. Our kind, however, answers to a far higher calling. One of our own making.”

“Save your philosophizing, LaCroix. I still have a purpose here, and I am not leaving.”

“So you have said. Do satisfy my curiosity, however. Now that the good and noble physician has rescued these two changelings from the clutches of certain death, precisely what does he propose to do with them?”

Nicholas, who had been in the  process of  walking away, whirled on his sire, eyes glowing anew. “What do you know about them?” It was a foolish question, and LaCroix’s smug silence said as much. Where his ‘fledglings’ were concerned, the ancient vampire seemed always to know of every act and deed. Nicholas reconsidered his response and then grudgingly answered the question. “The physician proposes,” he said, “to reunite them with their families.”

“Ah. Then you will return them to the Turkish camp?”

“Their Greek families.”

LaCroix’s expression presaged his disapproving words. “You wrongly assume, Nicholas, that the lion will lovingly embrace the lamb.”

A breeze carrying the puissant scents of blood and death swept over them, disarraying Nicholas’ hair and cloak. “They are Greeks,” he insisted quietly.

“Once, perhaps.” LaCroix’s eyes glittered in the cold light. “Now they are what the Turks have made of them. Just as you are what I have made of you. These Janissaries can no more become Greeks than you can be mortal again. Some changes, my dear Nicholas, are immutable.”

“They have families that love them, care for them.”

“As do you. It waits for you – in Vienna.”

“I told you, I will not leave. My task here is not yet complete.”

Smiling a crocodile’s smile, LaCroix touched at a trace of red on his lower lip, the remnant of his own recent meal, and salaciously licked the crimson nectar from his fingertips.

 “We shall see, Nicholas. We shall see.”

*   *   *

“Knight!”

Nick had no sooner set foot in the precinct house than Captain Stonetree’s summons drew him aside. “Over here.”

Nick followed the man down a corridor and into one of the observation rooms. On the other side of its one-way glass, Schanke appeared to have his hands full with three very vocal teenagers.

“Nobody had any reason to hurt Con, man!” one of the two boys protested. “Get real. He was our friend. I can’t believe you’re asking these questions!”

“Yeah,” Schanke countered, “but friends have disagreements sometimes, right? That what happened here, Bertie? Adelle here threw you over for Con, so you decided maybe to slip a little something extra into the guy’s beer?”

Over the trio’s ardent objections, Stonetree handed Nick a case file, stapled with Natalie’s faxed prelim report on Conrad Lewis’ autopsy. “Not one of this bunch looks much like a probable,” he said, then shook his head. “But hell, with kids nowadays, you just never know.”

Nick, to whom “kids nowadays” were more an enigma than the ancient Turks had ever been, could only nod in agreement. “You want me to go in and lend him a hand?”

“Yeah.” Stonetree shifted his bulky frame toward the door. “But give Schanke the lead. He’s the one with the kid experience.”

“Sure, Cap.”

“Oh...” Stonetree turned back from the open door. “You get anything on the preacher? What was his name?”

“LeFebre. Nothing, really. He doesn’t look much like a probable, either.”

“M-hm.” Stonetree grunted the syllables, apparently unsatisfied with that conclusion. “Well, keep me posted. Somebody put that stuff in the Lewis kid’s drink. I want to know who.”

“Right.”

When the captain had gone, Nick took a moment to study a hastily scrawled note clipped haphazardly to the folder. In Schanke’s spidery hand, it read:  Bertram “Bertie” Cabot Jr., 18 – jealousy?
 Adelle Dienstat, 17 – la femme in poss. love triangle?
 Philippe “Phil” Bordage, 17 – owed victim $500
 Guys have died for less.

Nick sighed, tucked the folder under one arm and plunged into the fray.

“That isn’t fair!” Adelle wailed as he entered the interview room. “Nobody hated Con. None of us!”

“Looks like somebody did.” With a nod to his partner, Nick took a seat at the table and pretended to study the folder’s contents. “Says here he died of heart failure triggered by an overdose of a ‘party drug.’ Rohypnol, aka ‘Roofies.’ Any of you know how he happened to swallow something like that?”

The blond boy Schanke had called Bertie glowered at him. “Who’re you?”

“Detective Knight. Okay, your turn. You want to answer the question, please?”

“We already answered it.” That came from the dark-haired boy, who had to be Phil. “A dozen times already. We dunno how he got the stuff, okay?”

“Not okay,” Schanke told him. “You owed Con five bills. Maybe you just found a quick way to wipe the books.”

“Stop it!” Adelle shouted. “Stop saying things like that!”

“Don’t we have the right to, like, a lawyer or something?” Bertie wanted to know. “We don’t have to answer any more questions until we get one.”

Schanke snorted. “You sure you need one? You got something to hide, Bertie-baby?”

“No! I told you...”

”Okay, okay, let’s start over at the beginning with this thing.” Schanke had adopted his best tough cop persona, and was playing the part to the hilt. “You were all outside the church before the service started, right? Having a little nip, ribbing Con about getting all religious on you, stuff like that? Didn’t anybody tell you the legal drinking age in Ontario is nineteen? You were all under age.”

Phil bristled. “Hey, c’mon. Chill out, will ya? It was only a beer!”

“How many beers?” Nick wanted to know. “One apiece? More?”

“Six pack,” Phil said, sounding rattled. “And yeah, we only had one each.”

“Then think really hard.” Schanke emphasized his words with care. “Who else touched the can Con drank from?”

“Bottles,” Bertie corrected. “It was bottles. And nobody touched it but him.”

 “Did you know about his heart condition?” Nick asked. “Did he?”

“Yeah, but nobody thought...” Phil seemed to catch himself before letting something slip, and slumped back into his chair, looking sullen. “Nobody thought it was serious, okay?”

Schanke leaned in. “Not serious enough to worry about a little doped beer gag, anyway. Was that the deal? A prank that went bad?”

Both boys chorused loud denials of that accusation. Adelle had begun sobbing into a shredded tissue and begged to call her parents. Schanke told her the precinct had already done that. She cried harder and blew her nose. Nick handed her a fresh tissue, listening to the rapid beating of her heart. He could sense fear and apprehension in all three of them, but none of the murderer’s animosity, no trace of a predator’s driving need to kill. If there was one thing Nick Knight had learned to recognize in eight centuries of un-life, it was a killer and the instincts that drove him.

“All right,” he said gently. “Let’s say it was a prank. Nothing serious will happen to you if you come clean now and admit it. But we have to know what happened. We have to know it wasn’t a homicide.”

“So talk to us,” Schanke admonished. “The truth this time.”

Bertie seemed on the brink of tears now too. “But we didn’t!” he insisted. “I swear to God we didn’t!

Venting a heavy sigh, Schanke declared the interview over, and promising the three rides home, exited the room with Nick in tow. The moment the door clicked shut, he pressed the heels of both hands to his eyes and moaned. “Man oh man, sometimes I really hate this job.”

“If they did it,” Nick said, “I don’t think it was intentional. They don’t exactly strike me as the cold-blooded killer type.”

“Ditto. On all counts.” Schanke shuffled back into the chaos of the precinct bullpen and headed for the coffee nook. “Ohhhhhh, do I ever need a caffeine fix. Hey guys, we got any of those chocolate creme donuts left? I only got two.”

Nick left him to forage on his own and went to write up a desk full of reports. But he found it impossible to concentrate on any of them.

The night shift ended at 3 a.m., which left two full hours of darkness this time of year. Nick spent half of it cruising Toronto’s near-deserted city streets, spinning mental wheels along with the Caddy’s.

He still couldn’t fathom how Henri LeFebre had recognized the vampire or how, having sensed such an evil, the man could offer, unafraid, to help him excise it. Most mortals would have fled from him in terror, and would have to be ‘persuaded’ to forget what they had seen.

But then, Natalie Lambert hadn’t fled. She, too, had offered to help when she’d accidentally learned his secret, and she’d been searching for a cure ever since.

LeFebre’s offer, on the other hand, proposed aid of an entirely spiritual nature. It depended on something Nick had thought lost nearly eight hundred years ago, when he’d first stepped into the darkness.

It depended on faith.

“Ah, vanity!” the Cadillac’s radio whispered. Nick twisted the knob, but again found it already off. LaCroix’s phantom voice purred through the speakers anyway. “‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,’” it quoted. “‘What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’²  Is there a soul? Does such a vague, ephemeral wisp truly exist at all? Or does it merely tease at your feeble conscience because that petty mortal foible you call faith remains behind to fan the flames?”

Nick wrenched the radio’s switch on and up to full volume, drowning the ghost’s haranguing words under the booming rhythms of a hip-hop rock station.

The green Caddy turned onto Richmond, gliding to a stop in front of the aging brick facade of a night club with stenciled canvas awnings identifying it as The Raven. The club’s mortal patrons had long since departed, leaving only the thrumming signatures of a half dozen vampires who lurked on the premises. Janette had always harbored a weakness for taking in strays.

As though she had already expected his arrival, she lounged at the bar, wearing an impeccable, low-cut velvet gown. Two untouched drinks waited on the bar in front of her.

“Bon soir, Nicolas,” she said without turning around. “You are just in time to join me for one last small libation before I retire for the day.”

Nick hesitated on the landing. He hadn’t been at all certain that coming here was wise. Janette embodied all that he sought to deny within the vampire community, not to mention temptations wrought by memories of their long and decidedly lustful past. He didn’t know, either, if she had yet forgiven him for their master LaCroix’s demise. Or whether she ever would. Why had he come here?

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, answering his own question, and made his way through the club’s empty tables and suspended decorative chains until he came to stand beside her. When she turned, stretching both perfect elbows back to lean against the bar, the gown gapped just enough to reveal the supple, sensuous curves of both her breasts.

Nick stared despite himself, and that seemed to please her no end. “Come then,” she said, patting the bar stool beside her. “Sit and drink with me.”

Nick sat, but spurned the offered glass. “I can’t...” he started to say.

“Miklos is stocking a unique vintage these days,” she announced. “So unique, in fact, that it has only... one... customer.”

She drew the words out into a throaty, seductive purr, pressing closer until she had molded herself against him and captured his mouth with her own.  He didn’t resist the advance. Resisting Janette was entirely beyond the willpower of most men, mortal or vampire. He deepened the kiss instead, and lost himself in memories of a thousand pleasure-filled nights spent in her arms. They were pleasures that had begun with a disillusioned knight’s fateful stop long ago at an inn on the road to Paris...

“Say good-bye to the light,” she had breathed when she’d lured him from the banquet hall into her arms, her bed, her darkness. “Say good-bye.” \

And when the knight had lain, sated, upon the seductress’ silken pillows, LaCroix had come to fulfill that promise, stealing the sunlight – and his mortal soul – away from him forever.

“Janette...”

Nick broke their impassioned embrace with a supreme effort, clutching and draining the glass as though it were a drowning man’s life line. The drink was bovine blood, as she’d implied, and it was a concession that both puzzled and pleased him, considering the derision she had always held for his quest to become mortal again. Janette and LaCroix had always been of one mind on that account. To deny your nature was foolish and unproductive, they said. To embrace the darkness, the blood lust, the kill – these things were the right of what LaCroix would have called the ‘superior creation.’

The vampire.

“I... have a problem,” he confessed, and suddenly unsure how to continue, he simply sat staring bleakly into the empty glass.

“So I can see.” From somewhere, Janette produced a bottle and refilled the glass with more of the same ‘vintage.’ Nick thought fleetingly that Natalie would disapprove of even this much indulgence, but he downed the cow’s blood anyway, and faced Janette with newly-bolstered resolve.

“There’s a mortal,” he said, “who has learned what I am. I don’t know how he knew. He’s a sensitive, I think. A faith healer.”

Janette scoffed. “Charlatán!”

“No.”
 
“Nicolas, when ever will you stop chasing wisps? You are what you are, mon chevalier, and no pompous, posturing exorcist can do anything to change that.”

“He’s not an exorcist.” Nick voiced the denial before he’d thought to consider that there were, in fact, similarities. The rite of exorcism had, after all, been performed on their kind in the past – nearly always with dire consequences to those mortals foolish enough to attempt it.

“Hmph.” Janette sipped at her own drink, and the alluring aroma of human blood assailed Nick’s senses. “The names change, but the superstitions remain the same. They can do nothing.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“Mais oui. I know that all the popes and prelates in the ten long centuries I have lived have never yet convinced their vengeful God to wipe us from the Earth. And they have tried. You know only too well that they have tried.”

Nick smiled thinly. “It’s not exactly the same thing,” he argued. “I’m talking about one vampire, and one mortal who might be able to help him.”

“And you risk much for both of them,” she said with a distinctly warning tone. “You know the laws of our kind, Nicolas. You have already defied them once by allowing your coroner friend to live. Now this... If the faith healer cannot be made to forget, then he must be killed, at once, before he can betray us to other mortals. You know this.”

He met her gaze with a determination that had no need of words. She knew of his vow never to take human life again, knew that he had broken that vow only in the throes of the last great war, and she knew, too, that he would under no circumstances break it again now.

Janette sighed and set down her glass. “Oh, Nicolas. What am I to do with you?”

“Nothing.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and drew away before the desires she kindled could tempt him again. “And don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

She looked doubtful, but smiled at him anyway. “See that you do, chéri. You know the consequences if you should fail.”

“I know.” He kissed her again, quickly, and then fled to the safety of his car and what remained of the waning night.