Dark Challenge. Christine Feehan. Dark Series – book 5

Julian dissolved into a fine mist and spread out across the sky, moving in a semicircle toward the vampire’s position. Three bolts of lightning slammed to the west of him, and he realized Barack was deliberately exposing his presence as he raced toward the mountain, hoping to give Julian more time to get in a position to attack. Julian immediately took advantage of the vampire’s momentary distraction, streaking through the sky even as he built up fog on the forest floor so that it drifted in wide bands and began to rise in banks of mist.

The vampire was directing his attacks from a cliff above the forest floor. Julian could see him now and vaguely recognized the remnants of the once handsome Carpathian male. Now the face was sunken and gray, wisps of hair clinging to the scalp in tufts, the body old and gnarled. The vampire had not had time to feed.

As Julian materialized behind him, the vampire whirled around with a low cry. Julian smiled politely. “It has been long, Bernado. Much too long. I was but a boy, and you were telling me you were off to the libraries of Paris, in search of historical documents that might give our people a clue as to what really happened between Gabriel and Lucian. Did you ever find such a thing?” His voice was a soft blend of purity and confidence.

Bernado, monster of his dreams, his life. This cunning, crafty ancient who liked to consider himself a great scholar.

Bernado blinked, taken aback by the casual conversation. It was totally unexpected. He had not had a conversation with anyone in over two hundred years. “That is so. I was looking. I remember now.” His voice was gravelly but thoughtful, as if he had to reach back to find the moment in time. “I found two entries that might have alluded to them. One was in a personal journal, that of a count. He wrote that he saw two demons fighting near the cemetery right there in Paris. That the fight went on for some time, a vicious battle but almost choreographed, as if each combatant knew what the other would do before he had done so. He claimed the two continually changed from one being into another. He wrote that both fighters appeared to have suffered terrible wounds, yet there was no trace of either fighter and no blood on the ground when he was able to get close enough to examine the cemetery. He told no one of his sighting for fear of being ridiculed.”

“It does seem possible, then, that you uncovered something our people have searched centuries for.” There was praise in Julian’s soft voice. “And the other entry? Where did you find that?” It had been the excitement and lure of this mystery that had first ensnared Julian’s interest in Bernado’s studies all those years ago.

“It was a mere line or two in a record kept by a supervisor of the cemetery workers. A personal record, no more. It alluded to one of his workers, who he suspected had drunk far too much wine one night. It was the same date as that of the count’s memory. The supervisor wrote that one of his men told of a fight among wolves and demons that ended in mortal wounds. He would no longer go into the cemetery and work, as he was certain the demons had risen from the graves.”

Julian nodded. “You were once a man I thought had greatness in you. I looked up to you. To your learnedness. But you betrayed that trust.”

The vampire blinked at him, uncertain about his mild tone. “You wanted knowledge. I gave it to you.”

Julian could feel the power building in him, around him, in the very air itself. Century after century, each dark, barren rising, the aching need for his twin, the lost fledgling years. It was rising in him, the bleakness, the emptiness, the dark stain of humiliation and isolation. All he’d had left was his honor. His Prince and the healer had known and had recognized his need to be of value to his people, but this monster before him had altered the course of his life for all time.