The Unforgiven (31 page)

Cade tried to rebel. Foolish man. She watched dispassionately as his face contorted and colored with effort. As his big body strained against the compulsion to throw himself onto the muddy sand. It was a battle he couldn’t win. Didn’t he realize that?

His crimson aura became a deep, dismal brown. He dropped to his hands and knees, barely able to hold up his head. Even his wings bowed, the tips kissing the sand.

“Very good.”

Azazel advanced and swung a leg over Cade’s back. He settled his borrowed human body atop his enemy’s back as he might settle into a horse’s saddle. With one hand, he gripped Cade’s hair and pulled back his head almost to the point of snapping his neck.

Cade’s teeth bared in a snarl. His body shook with fury even as he obeyed Maddie’s command to spread his wings. Azazel just smiled and gestured to Maddie with his free hand.

“Come.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

His aura glowed darkly. “Where you lead,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. When you look inside and remember.”

The words were cryptic, but she accepted them without question. Nodding, she unfurled her wings and, with a graceful leap, took to the air.

Vaclav Dusek surveyed the deserted hut. The untouched order of Dr. Simon Ben-Meir’s workroom was deceiving, he
thought. A distinct residue of blood magic lingered in the air. Blood magic and death.

He turned to his guide. “You say you found nothing to indicate where Ben-Meir and the woman might have gone?”

The woman twisted her hands together. “Nothing, Professor. Only an overturned chair here in the workroom. But Dr. Ben-Meir’s computer, it is still here, as you can see. None of his clothes or belongings seem to be missing. Maddie’s purse and passport are on the shelf in our hut, just as they have been for weeks. I do not understand it. Surely if there had been some kind of attack or struggle, the rest of us would have heard it.”

She drew an unsteady breath and continued. “The jeep is missing—we noticed that when we rose in the morning. Ari and I thought Maddie and Dr. Ben-Meir might have driven to town for supplies. Though, it was odd that they would leave without telling someone. Then Gil noticed his Vespa was missing and the new laborer was also nowhere to be found. And the earth at the bottom of the Watcher well had been disturbed.”

Dusek laid a hand on the back of a chair. “This one?”

The woman blinked. “What?”

“Was this the chair you found overturned?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, it was.”

He ran his hand over the wood. An image sprang into his brain of a man and a woman facing each other. Arguing.

Ben-Meir’s assistant stumbled on in her heavily accented English. Hadara Stern was a particularly annoying human, Dusek decided. In a rare fit of charity he stifled the urge to kill her. A public death would not serve his purpose.

“It has been two days.” The woman wrung her hands so hard it was a wonder her fingers didn’t twist completely off. “I think, Professor, we really must call the police. I delayed until your arrival, as you asked, but now—”

“Of course.” Dusek waved a hand. “Two days with no word
is certainly troubling. And the missing British laborer besides. By all means, notify the authorities.”

“Do you think . . . ?” The woman’s throat bulged with a thick swallow. Most unpleasant. Dusek imagined her naked and bloody, begging for her miserable human life. It was a mildly amusing thought. Perhaps . . .

“Do you think the laborer abducted them?”

“It is possible,” Dusek said. “Or perhaps this Cade Leucetius stole something of value and Dr. Ben-Meir and his companion gave pursuit.”

Relief flooded Hadara Stern’s face. “I had not thought of that. It is very possible, is it not?”

“No doubt the police will have more theories. Please. Go and make the call. I will look about a bit more.”

On the verge of tears, the assistant bit her lip and hurried away—a good thing for her, because Dusek had been perilously close to snuffing her life, consequences be damned. He lifted his hand from the back of the chair and rubbed the palm with his opposite thumb. Interesting. Just that small contact had caused his muscles to clench.

He closed his eyes briefly, reviewing his vision of Ben-Meir and Ms. Durant. The two had stood just so. The woman had stood between the table and the door; Ben-Meir had been positioned on a small, handwoven square of carpeting. There had been something in the archeologist’s hand. An artifact, gold but dirty. No doubt it was whatever had emerged from the hastily dug hole at the bottom of the Watcher well.

Dusek drew a steady breath, steeling himself for the coming ordeal. His hand was steady when, crouching, he placed it palm down on the rug.

It was as if someone inserted a hot poker into his left eye. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t suppress a sharp hiss of inhaled air. It was a struggle to look past the turmoil to the
scene beyond. But he did. A body was lying on the ground, neck bent sharply: Ben-Meir, dead. The woman crouched nearby.

Dusek sucked in a breath; for an instant he felt as though he’d been struck in the chest. The missing assistant was Nephilim. Watcher magic glowed wild and red about her head. He sensed the unformed nature of her power; she was unaware but in transition.

The magic emanating from her presence was that of Azazel. Madeline Durant was a descendent of Azazel. She was Dusek’s own kin.

He uttered a curse. Clan Samyaza did not possess the power of remote vision and discernment. How had Artur Camulus learned of this dormant’s existence? Surely he had, if he’d sent one of his own to retrieve her. Enslaved to Clan Samyaza, the woman could prove a formidable challenge to Dusek’s plans. Artur Camulus was changing the game.

A slow smile cracked Dusek’s features. A challenge? He’d almost begun to think life had none left to offer.

He narrowed his concentration on the relic in the dormant’s hands. The piece was bent and scorched, the central stone damaged, but the mesmerizing pattern of circles was clear to Dusek’s questing mind. The Seed of Life. Lilith’s slice of immortality, the weapon that had killed Dusek’s ancestor Ezreth. The Seed of Life was the goal of Dusek’s long existence. He had diverted DAMN funds into Ben-Meir’s coffers in the hope the archeologist would unearth information relevant to this very amulet. It seemed the archeologist had far exceeded expectations.

The Seed’s design contained the secrets of Heaven’s creative power transmuted into earthly form. Dusek had often traced the pattern while creating alchemical potions and gems, but it was the elusive magic of the demonic bloodstone, the carrier of the true spark of immortality, that had over the centuries
become the obsession of all Clan Azazel alchemists. The quest had even passed into human lore, where the bloodstone had assumed a deceptively innocent name: the Philosopher’s Stone. For centuries Dusek’s ancestors—the sons of Ezreth—had tried to create a duplicate of the stone. For centuries, they had failed.

By whatever name the gem was known, its magic was vast. And deadly. It had sent Dusek’s ancestor Ezreth into Oblivion. The final moments of Ezreth’s death lurked as a shadow in Dusek’s ancestral memory. The first son of Azazel had been murdered by his Nephilim half sister, Lilith.

Dusek imagined the Seed in his hands. He imagined the power. The glory. And then he remembered the talisman was gone.

His scowl returned as the scene from the near past continued to unfold: The door to the hut opened, admitting Cade Leucetius. Dusek’s fingers clenched. The Nephilim woman, caught in her trance, stared. She and Leucetius exchanged words. Dusek could not hear what was said, but whatever it was caused the woman to turn violent. She struck out; the Seed of Life flew from her hand. The relic hit the floor and traced an erratic, rolling line across the ground. The edge of a small rug sent the disc lurching into the air . . .

It landed atop Ben-Meir’s body, and something
alive
passed from metal to flesh. Simply the echo of that magic caused Dusek’s mouth to gape.

Leucetius, apelike fool that he was, had been consumed with settling the woman’s outburst; he had not even been aware of the transfer. Having rendered the woman senseless, he approached the corpse and pocketed the amulet. Leaving the archeologist’s body where it lay, he hoisted her into his arms and fled. Leucetius did not see the corpse’s ribs expand, nor its eyes flutter open.

Dusek straightened. He had seen enough. The game had indeed changed.

Maddie took to the air. Azazel, carried on Cade’s broad back, glided beside her. But which direction to take? She looked uncertainly in Azazel’s direction.
Look inside and remember,
he’d said. The answer lay, then, in her ancestral memory. In the memory of one ancestor in particular . . .

Chartres, France
AD 1200

The architect known only as Scarlet, descendant of an unholy union of Watcher father and Nephilim daughter motioned his litter forward, into the shadow of the rising cathedral.

A lifetime he had devoted to the re-creation of Lilith’s power. Her tools had been fire and gold; his were stone, mortar, and glass. Guided by his own magic and his ancestor’s memory, he worked combinations of form, color, and light. Such ethereal elements would, he believed, reveal the path to immortality. He was prepared to sacrifice everything—fortune, renown, wealth—if only he could discover a way to cheat Oblivion. So many years he’d labored. Yet, the time was a pitiful span, a mere heartbeat in the scheme of the universe. And he had yet to uncover the secret. But his goal was close. He sensed it. Perhaps in this time, in this place, with this masterpiece, he would gain the ultimate prize.

Sacred geometry, he was convinced, held the key. He’d seen Lilith’s amulet, the Seed of Life, in his dreams; he’d used his own magic to expand the vision. He’d added twelve circles to her seven, creating a
pattern of nineteen overlapping rings. Into that design he’d introduced a magical, winding path. Now, at last, he would add his birthright: Lilith’s bloodstone.

He had spent years exploring the mysteries of the damaged gem. Lilith’s blood and magic lived in the stone. As did Azazel’s will. The merged power hung suspended in the crimson shard, but the stone was incomplete. Flawed. This Scarlet knew.

And yet he’d carried it on his person since his father delivered it into his hand with his dying breath. Scarlet did not expect to pass the gem to his own daughter, however. There would be no need. Not if he succeeded in his quest. Not if he and his progeny achieved immortality.

His litter threaded its way through the piles of stone and mounds of sand and lime surrounding the building site. Masons and apprentices scurried like mice to clear a path. The lead litter-bearer cried the approach of the master builder.

Scarlet’s chair did not halt until it reached the cathedral’s great western towers. Parting the curtains, he alighted. The asymmetrical spires were the only portions of the old church left standing after the devastating fire of six years earlier. Scarlet might have had the towers pulled down, but their charred facades reminded him strongly of his own damaged birthright. He thought it fitting that they remain as sentinels guarding his new creation. He envisioned a great circular window in shades of deep red and blue spanning the space between them. But that glory would require some years yet to achieve. He smiled. If all went according to plan, he would have an eternity in which to perfect his
magnum opus.

Tucking a scroll under his arm, Scarlet strode through the scaffolding that separated the towers, the peak of his hat brushing a cross timber as he passed beneath. The cathedral nave extended before him, as yet unroofed. The perimeter walls and the bases of the columns were not yet risen to shoulder height. But to Scarlet’s eye, the graceful proportions of the design and the magical properties of the space were already evident. There was but one element to complete it.

Dusty lime misted the air and clung to the embroidered hem of his robe, but Scarlet took no notice. The mason directing the day’s work hurried up. Upon a plank supported by two large blocks, the man unrolled the scroll Scarlet proffered. He had inked his masterpiece—the sacred labyrinth, a maze of tiles—in dark lines upon the parchment.

“
You will re-create this pattern,” Scarlet told the mason, “exactly as I have drawn it—in stone, here in the nave. I will show you the exact location for the pattern center.
”

The mason, his grizzled head bent, studied the plan. “One path, then, sir? Beginning at the outer edge, twisting into the center, then out again?
”

“
That is correct.” Scarlet slipped a finger into the silken purse belted at his waist where he’d secured the bloodstone. It was warm to his touch.

The mason traced the drawn line with his finger. Back and forth, winding and twisting. “Ah,” he said. “I understand.
”

Scarlet very much doubted that he did. But the mason’s understanding, or lack of it, was immaterial. A man did not need to understand his destiny in order to fulfill it.

Maddie pulled her mind from Scarlet’s memory, awash in a combination of sadness and triumph. The master builder of Chartres Cathedral had not succeeded in his quest. He had died, as had each of his descendants in turn. But not because his vision had been in error. It had not. His cathedral did indeed re-create the magical framework of Lilith’s amulet. It was the fragment of bloodstone he’d possessed that had been inadequate. The damaged stone had not been able to bring the spark of life to Scarlet’s creation.

But now . . .

Anticipation kindling within, Maddie flew steadily north.