His eyes focused slowly, and he remembered the priest. It would not do to have his new ally awaken to find himself in a heap on the floor.

Rising for the first time since the dark one had grabbed him and spirited him away, he stretched his limbs...then leaned down and scooped up Santorini's unconscious form easily, moving into the outer hall and down to where the fire still roared. Abraham didn't care for the fire or its warmth, but he knew it would be comforting to his companion, and after what he'd just done, it might take a considerable effort to achieve that comfort, or any level of trust. The only thing in Abraham's favor was that he had not taken the fool's life.

Laying the bishop out on a small couch, careful not to cause any bruises or lumps, or aggravate those already forming, he seated himself in a chair in the shadows to wait. If he'd learned only one thing from his ordeal it was the ability to be alone with his own thoughts.

_.

Antonio was dragged from the darkness by a throbbing drumbeat that grew clearer and clearer as he approached coherent thought. It was not until his eyes were fluttering open and the dancing light of the fire split the darkness that he knew that beating for his own pulse, and the throbbing from a head that felt as if it had been clubbed into pulp.

He tried to rise, but moved too quickly and fell back...the motion, and the soft impact on the couch, both served to redouble the pounding, and he closed his eyes a second longer, trying to regroup his thoughts. Then memory flooded in and his eyes flew open once more. In a sudden burst of energy remarkable in one so recently unconscious, Antonio sat upright, his eyes scanning the shadows in sudden terror.

"Calm yourself, my friend," Abraham's voice slipped like silk from the shadows. "If I wanted you dead, trust that you would be."

Antonio spun toward the sound...just able to make out the vampire's shadowed form seated in a chair, off to one side of the fire and set back in an alcove. The urge to rise and to run, not looking back, taking his chances on reaching the courtyard outside and his mount, was strong, but the calming influence of common sense proved the stronger.

Antonio leaned back in his seat.

"For one so eager to set me free, you are remarkably unappreciative of your own success," Abraham said, chuckling softly.

Antonio's hand flew to the knot on his head, rubbing it gingerly. He looked dumbly around at the room. "How..."

"You must forgive me, but I did not trust your wielding of the axe. I took...steps...to insure that I would lose as little flesh as possible in my release.

Even so, it was not without its danger...or its pain.

I find that you have saved me twice now...once by rescuing my body, and the second time by allowing me the use of your own. I thank you, my friend...but I wonder, what is it that you think you can gain by keeping me alive? You have seen how the dark one dealt with me the last time we met...what makes you think another meeting would turn out differently?"

Antonio fought to order his thoughts. He knew he was alive only because this other allowed it, and he wanted very much to ensure that nothing about that situation changed.

"Alone, I have no chance of ever seeing Montrovant again," he said at last. "Not unless he desires it to be so, and when such a meeting comes about at his will, he will triumph. The Church is not without resources that could better handle the dark one than I myself, but I do not wish to call their attention to my own failures or shortcomings.

"I want you to track him for me, and for yourself.

I want you to work with me to find a way to either bring him back, along with that which he seeks, returning both to the influence of Mother Church...or I want him dead, and I will present you as the new guardian. It makes little difference to me."

Abraham sat in silence for a while. He sat so long, in fact, that the bishop was about to speak again, fearing he'd failed to make his case.

"You are a fool," the vampire said at last. "You believe Montrovant was working with you, that you had a pact. The dark one is well known to the Order I served, and I have heard a great deal of his history. He has never had a "pact" in his life except with his own desires. If he could make you-or the Church-believe that he was your ally to gain what he wished from you, he would not hesitate. Neither would he hesitate to bring the Vatican to ruin or to hang your plump carca.s.s from a tree and lie beneath it, feasting on the blood as it spilled.

"So," Abraham continued, "what you would have me undertake in your name, or in the name of your Church, who cannot even know I exist if we are to preserve your shaky position, is a fool's errand. You don't know it, but there are those in the Vatican who know of my kind, of Montrovant, even. How will you protect me from them? How do you suggest I go about doing as you ask? You would have the prey chase the hunter across the countryside, supported indirectly by those who will not acknowledge him. You would have me seek a nearly certain second death at the hands of the one I have so narrowly escaped this time. I will ask you then, what is in it for me? An alliance with the Church is a precarious situation at best for one such as I, and hardly worth risking my existence over."

Antonio thought fast. He thought back to Montrovant, sifted through what little he knew. "If Montrovant seeks to be guardian of the Grail," he began, wording his answer carefully, "there must be some personal gain in holding that relic...something he would not share with me. If you return that treasure to the Church, the guardianship could be yours.

You could begin your own order, gather your own dark knights. I can offer handsome payment in gold and treasure, but something tells me that if such was your goal you could acquire it easily enough on your own.

I could offer you blood-a ready, virgin supply of it, but again, I doubt you need my a.s.sistance, for if you did, you would not have lived long enough to be saved by me this time. The sweetest thing I can offer is revenge.

"I won't go so far as to say you owe it to me, even though I dragged you from the wall and the burning of the sun. I will say that you owe it to yourself.

You owe yourself a chance for revenge. I have heard the dark one say on many occasions that the one thing that grows more and more scarce in his existence is entertainment. Can you afford to deny yourself this chance?"

Abraham was laughing softly again. Rising slowly, he stepped from the shadows into the flickering light of the fire. His skin was healed in great part, except for the single scar, his hair was clean and luxurious...

his eyes bright and reflecting the laughter on his lips as Montrovant's never had.

His hair was blond now, where it had been stringy and graying, and it swept back over his shoulders. He stood half a head taller than the bishop, but more slender, and built with the strength of youth, though there was a hint of experience and age to his eyes that belied that initial impression."You speak well, as one would expect from a man of your calling, but your words are unnecessary.

Montrovant himself ensured that I would follow him if I survived...he bid me do so, and you yourself have named the reason for his madness.

He is bored. He invited me to exact my revenge, though I doubt he expected I would be afforded the opportunity, or that I had the means to carry out that revenge should the opportunity present itself.

"He follows the Order, and I myself must find them again. He has his quest, and I have mine, and now my own is sweetened by the knowledge that I may find what I seek and take my revenge at the same moment.

Since I am already planning this adventure," the vampire's eyes began to flicker brightly, as if amused, "I would be a fool to not accept aid from one who could prove a detriment if I refuse."

"I pose no threat to you," Antonio babbled quickly. He would have gone on, but Abraham held up a hand for silence.

"I know that you think this is true, but it is not.

If I were to refuse you, and to leave, you would seek another, or another means of carrying this out without my help. That other would be a hindrance -perhaps a serious danger-to my own efforts. It is in my best interest to be your ally, my friend, and I am not ungrateful for the rescue."

Antonio rose then, and Abraham strode closer, offering his hand, which the bishop took uncertainly.

"It is settled then," the vampire concluded, smiling.

"There are things I will need before I can depart, and I must build my strength a bit...but there is little time to lose."

"Whatever you need, if it is within my power, I will provide it,"

Antonio answered eagerly.

"In that case, I have a request that will test just how far you are willing to go, my friend. It is not a good idea for me to be hunting near here. I might be seen, and, should I return, my mission a success, I would not want the locals to remember me in hatred or fear."

Antonio shivered, knowing what was to come and dreading it.

Abraham watched him closely...a grim smile twisting his lip. "Do not fail me in this, Antonio. I will consider it a gauge of how close our...

friendship...is to grow. Make her young...pretty...sweet. Bring me something to make up for those days and hours screaming hopelessly in the darkness of that crate. I am very hungry, Antonio," Abraham's eyes flashed suddenly, yawning before the bishop like an endless cavern and calling out to him to leap into their depths. "I am starved."

Antonio turned then and fled. He could sense Abraham's eyes focused on his back, could hear the vampire's mocking laughter floating after him down the hall. In that instant he knew he'd traded one dark master for another, gaining little but his sanity. His heart cried out to him to turn away, but his mind was already working over the details of how he would obtain the girl.

The laughter floated about him like a cloud, seeping up from his mind to haunt him as he rode swiftly back to Rome. His lips began to form the words of a prayer out of habit, but he bit them back suddenly, ashamed, and thrilled at the same time.

As he rode the darkness seemed to swallow him whole.

FOUR.

Montrovant and his followers were not long on the road before the approaching daylight forced the first halt. His men did not question him, being familiar with his oddities. There were certain places known to them all, safe, hidden places, that allowed for discretion and secrecy.

Montrovant wanted to be beyond the annoying, clutching reach of Bishop Santorini and the longer, more insidious grasp of the Church itself. He could easily have spent the night in his own keep, made his farewells the following day, and gone at the sun's next setting, but once the scent was firmly planted, he needed to act. Even the few miles they gained that first night were too much for him to resist.

Rising as he now did to a new night, the day and the pitiful, annoying existence of the weakling Abraham behind him, he felt a freedom he'd not experienced in some time: that of the road. It had been too long since he'd shared time with that finest of companions, and he found himself itching to be gone, far from Rome, far from those who knew him. His old hunger filled his senses.

He had been close enough to grasp the treasure he sought more than once, and the faint scent of it that remained had fermented over the years.

Now he felt it growing strong once more. He'd sat too long in that keep, letting the Order's empty words and the "alliance" with the Church numb his senses. He had not followed the Grail so many years to sit and watch others possess it: the time for such foolishness was past.

His followers felt the freedom as well, coveted it.

Le Duc in particular glowed with renewed vigor.

The dark one's progeny's eyes sparkled and his wit was recovering the sharp, stinging quality Montrovant remembered well from past adventure.

The two understood one another in ways that the rest would never comprehend. Dark men, all of them, with secrets and hungers they preferred not to share and pasts that would see each dangling from a dozen scaffolds; none of them had been born to sit and watch the world pa.s.s.The first night they spent in the ruins of an ancient abbey, Montrovant and Le Duc in the cellars below, the others finding what comfort they could among rotted pews and the shattered remnant of stained gla.s.s. Many years had pa.s.sed since any had celebrated the ma.s.s between those walls. The only worshipers who remained were buried beneath stone monuments in the cemetery behind the building, overgrown with weeds and vines and crumbling to the dust that had sp.a.w.ned them.

Montrovant led the others out at dusk, keeping off the main roads but paralleling them as he wound their road away from Rome. In the distance the umbrella palms lining the ancient roads were in clear view, marking their way as they set off across country.

With nothing else to guide his choice, Montrovant headed for France. It was there that he'd last encountered the Order, there where he'd faced them down, watched the ancient creature Santos crumble, seen his own sire Eugenio clash with the ages-older Kli Kodesh. There might be no answers waiting in France, but it was home, and there were those there with the wisdom, influence, and contacts to guide him in his quest.

They did not wear the colors of the Templars openly. That order had been banished by King Philip, its leader, Jacques de Molay, put to the stake and torched before Montrovant's own eyes. The Templars had gone underground, their meetings held in secret and their rites closely and jealously guarded from outsiders. Their influence had less- ened only slightly, and Montrovant had kept his own ties to the Order as firm as possible without truly involving himself in their affairs.

He was believed to be a direct descendant of another Montrovant, one who'd helped to found the Knights, and who'd saved them more than once from certain destruction at the hands of mythic evils. He was not questioned, and only a very few suspected the truth, that he and that other Montrovant were one and the same, and that the knight who fought most closely at his side, Jean Le Duc, had been one of the first Templars ever to wear the cross.

Their road veered off shortly from the straighter route of the Romans and through a brief range of mountains. It would cut a considerable amount of time off their journey, though the going would be more difficult. Montrovant was indifferent to the difficulty. Either way was the same to him, except that the mountains would bring him more swiftly to his goal.

It was on the second night's travel that they found the pa.s.sage leading upward and began their ascent, taking the trail more slowly and in single file as it began almost at once to grow more steep.

"This is a lonely way," Le Duc commented, riding up beside him. The moonlight cast long shadows over the way ahead, the sky gray, stark, and the mountains looming overhead were lined with a silvery sheen.

"Our way has always been lonely," Montrovant replied softly.

"Whether or not there are others about makes no difference, unless one is hungry."

Le Duc grinned at this, but shook his head. "I know you better than that, dark one. The boredom would drive you underground and you would never surface."

Montrovant grinned. "That much is true, but it has been too long since I got out of that moldy keep and onto the road. It is one thing to crave society and its intrigue, quite another to spend endless dreary nights in the company of the same few."

They rode on in silence for a bit longer, the others filing silently along behind. None could find the energy to break the lethargic silence.

The weight of the journey was on their shoulders, as always, at the beginning. Everything lay ahead, nothing behind, and it brought solitary thought and introspection to each.

Finally Le Duc spoke once more.

"Do you know this trail? I have never traveled it myself, and wondered if we would be seeking shelter before sunrise, or if you had a stop in mind?"

"I have not been this way either," Montrovant replied. "I chose this as the shortest route. There are rumors of a monastery up the mountain, odd rumors, to be truthful. We will seek that as our shelter, and if that fails, we will just have to find something else. I want to be over these mountains tomorrow night and on the road to France."

Le Duc nodded. "I will send two of the men ahead to scout," he said softly. He turned to the side then, slowing his mount and dropping back as Montrovant continued on, moving with steady speed, not pushing his mount, but not really caring about it either.

The trappings of mortality sat well on Montrovant's shoulders. He was a large, powerful, striking man...tall, slender and imposing, long dark hair sweeping out behind him like a cloak. He rode with the practiced ease of the warrior, but he did not need the horse to get where he was going...in fact, it slowed him. The others slowed him as well, but in a world growing increasingly dangerous for his kind, it was best to appear as "human" as possible.

Two dark forms trotted by, and took off at a slow gallop up the trail.

The scouts. He watched as they pa.s.sed...felt the steady drumming of their hearts...familiar, comfortable. His men worked as a single unit, a precision that he demanded of them. Among men they were the safest from his hunger. He needed them more for their strength, obedience, and unwavering faith in his own judgment than he did for sustenance.

There were meals enough walking the streets of each city, tilling the fields mindlessly.

The trail wound up and between two towering peaks. It was not well-traveled, but there were some indications that others had pa.s.sed that way re- cently. Deep ruts from pa.s.sing tires, the cold ashes of campfires, and occasional animal remains appeared here and there.

None of the signs were fresh.

It was nearly an hour before the scouts returned to them, and the moon was beginning to descend from her throne. The two came at a faster gallop, less concerned for safety on a road once traveled.

They reined in beside Montrovant.

It was du Puy who spoke.

"We have located the monastery. It is not on the main trail, but up a winding side-road that branches off about two miles ahead. We rode close enough to see the walls, and to note that there appear to be no guards."

Montrovant's eyes gleamed. Two miles. Then there was time to arrive, and make arrangements, before the hour was too late and he was forced to be more...direct.

Nodding to du Puy, he whistled for Le Duc to join him, repeating what the scout had said. "We will ride hard now until we reach the monastery, and we will seek shelter there. Remember that there are rumors of strange things from this place.

You and I are no strangers to the odd, or eerie," he grinned at this, "and it will be up to us to look out for the others."

Le Duc nodded. "Perhaps it is just their seclusion that brings the reputation?"

"Perhaps," Montrovant replied, "but we cannot afford to take that kind of a chance."

Le Duc dropped back once more in silence, pa.s.sing the orders back along the line as Montrovant spurred his mount and sped up the trail, following du Puy and the other scout.

It seemed only moments before the branch in the trail appeared, and du Puy turned down that way without hesitation. The trail they entered was wider, more of a road. Montrovant suspected that the brothers at the monastery would bring carts down that road to the trail below, meeting merchants and travelers there to do their trading, rather than trying to negotiate the narrower, more treacherous pa.s.sage to the bottom of the pa.s.s.

Briefly he wondered at the seclusion of the place.

He hadn't given Le Duc all the facts behind the rumors. There was talk of travelers not returning, emissaries of the Church that traveled this way and either were not seen again, or came back with tales that caused others to believe them mad. Something in the tales itched at Montrovant's memory. Something familiar, and at the same time strange.

In any case, there was little that he feared, and certainly not a group of secluded monks on a mountain. He would seek their shelter, feed, and be on his way. There was no time to lose if he was to find the trail of the Order still warm with their scent, and this time he intended once and for all to answer the question of exactly what treasures they kept and guarded. And he would taste their blood as well.

The monastery rose from the base of the highest peak as they rounded a last curve in the road. It was not a tall building, but stretched wider than Montrovant would have expected, spanning an area at the base of the mountain that spoke of depth and size. Hardly what one would expect from a small monastic order.

He rode boldly to the front door of the keep, ignoring the danger of possible ambush, and dismounted, dropping his mount's reins beside the walk. There was no sign that their approach had been noted. The walls were dark and silent, shadowed from even the moon's soft rays by the side of the mountain itself. It was eerie that there were no guards...