The Geomancer (2 page)

Adele turned her horrified eyes from the spreading extinction she had begun, and suddenly she was back in the kirkyard. Dread filled her. She knew what was coming. A familiar figure dropped like a meteor through the branches and smashed to the ground. Gareth. He rose with a face like death for Mamoru. Adele tried to shout at Gareth to run. The fires of the Earth struck him and he too twisted in agony, just as all his brethren had. Mamoru slammed him to the ground. Gareth fought to rise and Mamoru battered him again. Gareth struggled up once more, his sharp fangs bared.

Adele's younger self finally stirred on the tomb, kicking crystals away. Swinging her feet over the edge, she sat up, shoving the stupor and the pain aside. She had her mother's khukri in her hand. She walked unsteadily across the graveyard toward Mamoru, who pressed his boot on Gareth's throat. Gareth grasped the man's ankle, but couldn't find the strength to shift it.

The young woman plunged the glowing dagger into Mamoru's back. He didn't cry out. He simply turned and looked at her as if he was disappointed. Then he vanished in the moonlight.

Adele ran over to her younger self, who stood over Gareth as he writhed in agony in the dirt. Geysers of silver fire erupted across the cemetery. Gareth's flesh turned red, then black. His face cracked and tore away. His outstretched hand shriveled. His horrible cry faded and his bones dropped smoldering in the grass.

Adele grabbed herself, trying to shake awareness into her stunned face. “Stop it! Don't let Mamoru turn you into a tool of extinction. It's
your
power, not
his
. It isn't his choice.” She pointed at the charred skeleton of Gareth. “Save him!”

“I can't,” she replied in a cracking voice Adele remembered from years ago. “It's too late.”

An overwhelming helplessness gripped Adele. She fell to her hands and knees in the ashes of her lover and screamed.

The dark timbers of Edinburgh Castle abruptly hovered above her. Adele gasped and felt sweat dripping along the sides of her neck. Her heart pounded, nearly shaking the bed. She reached across the mattress to find it cold and empty.

Gareth had died. She hadn't saved him in the kirkyard. He was gone. Adele couldn't remember the days between that terrible night and this one. She could only remember the way he held her in his arms. If only she could go back to sleep and live in a dream where they were together.

A blast of cold wind scattered thick photographs from the bed. A tall shadow entered an open window. Gareth stood silhouetted against the grey skies. His blue eyes reflected in the dim lamplight. He stared at Adele for a long moment before swinging the glass shut.

“Adele.” His voice rumbled in the quiet.

Her hand gripped the covers beside her, along with the pictures she had been studying before she dozed off. Gareth stepped down from the windowsill. He wore his usual black trousers and white shirt. His long black hair was tousled from the wind.

“You're alive.” Adele hadn't wanted to say it out loud in case it might wake her up again.

His brow furrowed and he smiled. “I was only out for an hour or two.” He moved to the bed with a silent tread and took her arms in his firm grip. He was tall and elegant, but well-muscled. His lips were soft when he kissed her.

Adele clutched him tight.

“Another nightmare?” Gareth asked.

“Yes.” She pressed her face against his chilled chest. “As always, I couldn't use my geomancy to save you, and I couldn't stop the death that Mamoru started.”

“But you did.”

Adele pushed back against her pillows and pulled her knees up. The truth didn't assuage her. Every time the nightmare struck, she was left in fuming helplessness. Over the months since the horrors of that night, the frequency of the dreams had lessened. However, when they came they still brought the same rage and she needed a moment to calm herself.

Taking long breaths, she was surprised to see her face across the room in a wall mirror. She was olive skinned with voluminous brunette hair and the Persian features of her mother. However, this face was different from the one in the dream. Adele was only twenty years old, but her girlish features were overlaid with lines creasing the corners of her eyes and grey streaking her hair. She looked away from the face that had been born that night in the kirkyard and hastily changed the subject. “Were you writing, or out thinking?”

“No. I was feeding.”

“I thought your people came to the castle for you to feed.”

“With your troops here in Edinburgh now, they're uncomfortable passing by your soldiers.”

“Have there been any incidents? I'll have Major Shirazi deal with it.”

“No, but they feel the Equatorians look down on them for providing me with blood. So I go to them now to spare them the embarrassment.”

Adele felt a twinge of sadness at his discomfort. “I'm sorry. My troops don't understand yet that your people give their blood willingly. It's so foreign to them.”

“I understand. They've never seen it before because it's never happened before.” Gareth gathered the papers that had flown around the room. He looked at each of the pictures as he picked them up. Most of them were shots of Greyfriars kirkyard. “Perhaps you shouldn't go back there.”

“Why?” Adele asked with alarm as she crossed to the fireplace to be away from her reflection in the mirror.

“If you stayed away maybe the nightmares would stop.”

“I don't want to stay away. Taking pictures has helped me over the last few months. It's therapeutic.” She knelt to toss in several chunks of coal and jostled them with an iron rod. “I keep taking pictures of it expecting to see . . . something. Something from that night. Burns. Fire. Some proof that it happened in the real world. I know what I did that night, but the pictures all look normal.”

Gareth came up behind her, holding a stack of photographs. “We know it happened. We were both there. All the vampires were scoured from Britain. I died—”

“Stop.” Adele stared at the glowing embers. That night in the kirkyard, she had done more than just destroy all the vampires and make the island uninhabitable for them; she had silenced the power of the Earth here forever. Anywhere else in the world, the rifts would sing to her. But not in Britain or Scotland. It had taken several months before she stopped trying to find the rifts again, to touch the warmth that she was used to flowing at her fingertips. Adele knew that power was still available to her if she left the island, but she had grown oddly content at its absence. Now she was almost used to the silence and the cold that surrounded her in this place. A part of her felt like any other normal human being. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Gareth flipping through the photos.

He said, “Pet is very photogenic.”

Adele smiled and rose. He was looking at a picture of a grey cat stretched out on his back, looking coyly into the camera. There were many other pictures of the cat and of the many other cats who lived around the castle. Gareth continued to shuffle through the photos. Many showed Edinburgh's inhabitants at their daily chores. A pretty young woman smiled into the camera in a few of the shots. And there were other pictures of the stone city of Edinburgh in various seasons and sunlight. Soldiers of her personal guard lounging or training. Townspeople drinking, laughing, flirting.

Gareth nodded with approval. However, there was something curious, a little disappointed, about his expression. He obviously noticed an absence among the photos. Adele took the stack from his hands and went to her desk. She pulled open a drawer and removed a box.

“What's that?” Gareth asked.

“Pictures of you.”

He tried to look surprised, but he couldn't keep the satisfaction off his face. “I have my own box?”

Adele pulled out a pile of photos and set them on the desk near a flickering lamp. He joined her and saw an extraordinary variety of pictures of him. Some he posed for, but most she had taken when he was unaware. Sitting before the fire. Staring out the window. As a distant shape in the air above the castle. There was a picture of him on the battlements surrounded by a veritable herd of cats, with his hand resting idly on the back of one that arched happily under his touch.

He flipped through a series of close-up pictures of his hands. His fingers were long. His fingernails were sharp and capable of being extended into claws. The photos showed his hands draped along the arms of chairs, holding books, settled on a tabletop, holding a pen, and grasping Adele's hand.

Gareth looked up at her. “You seem fascinated by my hands.”

“I am.” She placed her own over his, relishing the roughness of his hands. “They're wonderful.”

“They are just hands.”

“No. They belong to a vampire. You have a diminished sense of touch compared to humans, and yet, look. Holding a pen. Writing. You use tools, unlike any of your kind. Your hands are subtle. Facile. Elegant. Powerful.” She kissed his fingers. “And yet gentle.”

His lips skimmed over hers, light as the air itself. “Let's go back to bed.”

Adele took the photos and dropped them back in the box. “I'm not sleepy.”

Gareth swept her up off her feet. He clutched her tight against his chest as he leaned down and blew out the lamp. “Who said anything about sleep?”

C
HAPTER 2

Adele woke the next morning with Gareth beside her. He stared at the ceiling with one arm looped over her shoulders. Pressing into his side, she enjoyed the warmth for a few minutes longer. The position of the sun on the floor told her that it was long past mid-morning.

“I could stay in bed all day,” she told Gareth.

“I should get up.”

“Eager to be at work?”

Gareth gave a huffing breath that could have been agreement. He sat up, taking the heavy quilt and allowing the frigid air to assault her body.

“Oh God, it's cold.” A furry form shifted and complained at the foot of the bed. Then a huge grey cat stretched and padded over to Adele. With a groan, she lifted the feline deadweight into her arms. Adele buried her face in his luxurious fur. “Oh my God, Pet. You're like the best bed warmer ever. When Gareth isn't about, that is.”

She grabbed for her robe and raced for the coal grate to prod the embers. A faint orange glow throbbed, and she tossed several new pieces on the fire. Tending her own hearth would be forbidden at home in Alexandria, but there were few true servants in Edinburgh Castle and she kept them all out of this wing so she and Gareth could be alone. The nature of their relationship was kept secret, although no doubt rumors of all sort likely circulated around the city and beyond. Adele had little time to worry about that. This time together was the only common domesticity she and Gareth had ever shared, and she relished any touches of normalcy.

Adele noted the wonderfully rumpled Gareth sitting on the side of the bed with his muscled legs stretched out. She found it alluring that he was so unaware of himself at all times. She wanted a picture. Her camera rested on a nearby table. It was a box several inches square with a lens on one side, a viewfinder on the back, and a single button on top. A simple but wondrous device that created instant memories and history. When Adele lifted the camera, Gareth gave her a mild warning glance. She shifted her focus to a yellow cat sitting outside the thick window. She pretended to click the shutter and gave Gareth a charming smile. When he looked away, she took a photo of him.

As she dressed, Adele remarked, “I'm starving. I wonder what Morgana made for breakfast.”

“Whatever it is you'll declare it delicious.”

“You sound jealous you can't taste her magnificent cooking.”

“A vampire's curse.” He tucked in his shirt. “I'm thinking a scouting mission to the Continent might be in order soon.”

“That's dangerous, isn't it?”

Gareth fumbled briefly with the knob, then pulled the door open for her. “Yes, but we want to be ready for the offensive when the weather warms.”

“We'll plan something.” Adele knew he was right, but didn't want him going off alone.

Breakfast was laid in a front room along with a roaring fire. Coffee, tea, and orange marmalade shipped in from Egypt. The Scottish farms provided eggs and bacon and neeps, or turnips, which the locals never seemed to tire of. Adele piled food on her plate, having pushed away the terrors of the night. Gareth didn't eat, so he spent his time fighting curious cat paws away from the plate of bacon.

They both heard footsteps coming rapidly down the hall and looked up to see Morgana in the door. She was the pretty young woman seen in so many of Adele's photographs. Her face was red from exertion. Her normally soft eyes were wide. The young servant was barely twenty years old and quite pretty in a vigorous farm girl sense. Her brunette hair was long and nearly as uncontrolled as Adele's. The two women had become fast friends and Adele trusted her implicitly. Morgana carried a sheet of paper in her hand that Adele recognized was a yellow tear-sheet from the telegraph pad.

Morgana swallowed. “Miss, this message came this morning from Governor-General Condorcet's office in London. It's in code.” She held up several sheets, with her handwritten scrawls of letters that made no sense.

“You have the code pads.”

“It's in Arabic, miss.”

“Really? Arabic and in code?” Adele took the sheets from the servant with an unwelcome sense of apprehension. Arabic was used for more private messages, and although Morgana had mastered translating the English codes, Arabic was as yet beyond her. “Morgana, send for Major Shirazi.”

Morgana paused at the door with a shocked look. “But miss . . . I don't . . .”

“I'm sure it's nothing,” she assured her friend with as warm a smile as she could muster. “But best to take care of the usual protocol. Hurry now.”

Adele began working alone. Several minutes later Morgana returned with the commander of her Home Guard, a unit known as the Harmattan. In his heavy winter serge, Major Shirazi stood at the door, his worried eyes staring at the coded sheet, and then up at Gareth. Adele and Morgana sat at the table and worked together with the codebook. Gareth paced, pausing to study the women conversing, running their fingers down columns of symbols, and writing. He failed to notice that Pet had captured an entire plate of bacon and carried it off piece by piece until the cat collapsed by the fire unable to move.