Sunset (Pact Arcanum)

by Arshad Ahsanuddin

  Lorcan screamed as, weakened by poison and blood loss, Nick mistimed his strike. The tip of his sword buried itself in the ground, while Brion danced aside. Wasting no time, Brion lashed out, striking squarely with his full strength at the joint between the blade and the hilt of Nick’s sword. The Sentinel sword shattered, shrapnel flying as Nick staggered. Kicking out with his right leg, Brion buried his boot in Nick’s abdomen.

  Knocked backward off his feet into the barrier that surrounded them, Nick collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath. Immediately, Brion stood above him, raising his sword, ready to cleave Nick’s skull. As the Daywalker looked up, dazed, Brion opened his mouth to gloat—then he suddenly froze. His still-open mouth released a trickle of blood as his sword slid from his twitching fingers and he stared down at the foot of black steel protruding from his chest. The blade’s blue runes shone brightly as the flames licked at Brion’s shirt. His talons clawing weakly at the black sword, he looked desperately into Nick’s eyes. “Have mercy, Lord.”

  Nick’s expression twisted in anguish. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Brion stumbled away, Reaper sliding out of his chest as he collapsed. The black steel hungrily absorbed Brion’s blood, the blade attuning itself to its latest victim. Brion whimpered in fear. “Mercy,” he croaked one last time before his eyes glazed over.

  The runes flared white, and Nick shrieked as he heard another voice join the chorus within the Crown of Souls. Dropping the sword, he clawed at his head, desperately trying to drive out the screaming in his mind. A storm of loathing rose from the imprisoned souls as they struggled to break free, his weakness only driving them to fight harder. Nick felt them rising to displace him, fighting against his feeble attempts to suppress them again.

  Then he felt Lorcan’s arms around him and the exquisite pain as the Nightwalker bit into his neck. As Lorcan fed, the bridge opened between them and memories Lorcan had kept carefully hidden rushed forth. Nick experienced the unexpected loneliness of the three years after their first meeting, the sudden joy Lorcan had felt when he arrived in Anchorpoint for the first time and found Nick waiting at the teleport gateway, the Nightwalker’s helpless desire as they rekindled their relationship, the night Lorcan had looked down at Nick’s sleeping face and finally understood.

  Love.

  In the face of that knowledge, as the inmates of the Crown of Souls howled their hatred and despair around him, Nick did the one thing Lorcan had always denied him. He leaned forward and drove his fangs deep into Lorcan’s neck, and the two fed simultaneously. The blood magic doubled and redoubled, growing exponentially in strength as the bridge encompassed everything they were. All of their secret thoughts and dreams opened to each other as they became one.

  Their collective will drove back the storm of hopelessness from the Crown of Souls, locking the imprisoned voices away again behind Nick’s internal shields. Then, alone, they turned once more to each other in the echoing silence of their joined minds.

  “I love you, Nicholas.” Lorcan’s inner voice was tinged with sorrow.

  “Ruarc, I’m sorry.”

  “I have no regrets. If your heart thaws, I will be waiting.”

  “Someday, I might come for you.”

  The bridge faded. Lifting their heads and retracting their fangs, Nick and Lorcan stared into each other’s eyes—red to red. Nick turned away, to where the black sword lay upon the ground, its runes returned to their original azure. In a three-foot circle around it, the grass had turned crisp and brown. As he watched, the sword faded, re-sheathing itself in the back of his mind. Lorcan stepped away from him, retrieving his own sword as he went.

  Feeling Take’s light touch on his shoulder, Nick took the proffered hand and stood.

  “We tried to help you fight them down, but Scott couldn’t reach you. Lorcan said blood magic was stronger, so we let him try.”

  Nick nodded and turned to Scott, who kept their link masked. They contemplated each other silently.

  “I’m sorry you had to do that,” Scott said aloud.

  “I didn’t have to, Scotty. I could have let him kill me.” Nick glanced at the circle of dead grass. “Maybe that would have been the better choice.”

  After a moment, Scott reopened their psychic connection. Silently he reached out to Nick and held the Daywalker in his psychic embrace. “Be at peace, brother,” he thought. “I will never leave you.”

  Nick drew strength from him, silently fortifying his resolve. Then he turned to face the other vampire. “Prince Lorcan.”

  “Prince Nicholas,” Lorcan said impassively.

  “What are your intentions, Magister Diluthical?”

  Lorcan stared at him in defiance. “Nicholas Magister Luscian, House Diluthical accepts the outcome of the Challenge of Kings, and I offer my surrender on their behalf.”

  Nick felt Scott’s surprise through the link.

  “Lorcan, the Challenge of Kings only applies to a direct duel between Magisters,” said Scott. “Brion assumed your challenge, rather than making his own.”

  “I made no challenge, Consul. My will was constrained. My Master merely spoke through my lips, the better to provoke your Magister’s outrage and guarantee the challenge would be accepted.”

  Nick sighed. “That was smart. I would have turned him down if he had challenged me himself.” He met Lorcan’s eyes sadly. “I thought you had betrayed me. I should have known better.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Lorcan said simply. He drew himself up. “My Lord, the Challenge of Kings is decided. I offer you a century of service by House Diluthical as demanded by law and custom.” He frowned for a moment, glancing at the cameras. “Understand, however, that we will serve you as Magister Luscian, in your capacity as a member of the Court of Shadows. We are not part of your Armistice, Prince Nicholas. We will not bend our knees to you as Primogenitor Jiao-long, nor will we accept the Traveler’s authority over us.”

  “Ruarc, are you sure you want to do this?”

  “My Lord,” said Lorcan, “let me retain this small bit of honor to offset my Master’s betrayal. You have no allies in the Court after Los Angeles. The next time, they might succeed in destroying you.”

  “Very well. I accept the limitations of your allegiance.”

  Lorcan knelt before Nick. “Nicholas Magister Luscian, House Diluthical recognizes the verdict of the Challenge of Kings. We surrender our honor to your keeping. Our lives are yours. We are your blades to wield.”

  “I accept the honor of House Diluthical, to defend as if it were my own. Rise, Lorcan Magister Diluthical Primogenitor Luscian.”

  Lorcan stood again. “What are your orders, Master?’

  “Return to Icehaven and cooperate fully with Armistice Security in their investigation of this incident.”

  Lorcan bowed. “As you wish, my Lord.” He gathered his will, and using the same codes he had used to enter the jumper block that surrounded them, he teleported away.

  Ana looked at the crowd of reporters. “Now what?”

  “I guess I still have to give that damn speech.” Nick rolled his eyes, and then stared down at Brion’s body. Raising his hand, he released a bolt of blue fire that reduced the body to ash. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”

  Armistice Embassy, Washington, D.C.

  Jeremy clicked off the screen and withdrew his psychic probes from Nick’s mind. “Command Access.”

  “Online,” said the voice of the embassy’s security AI.

  “Please inform Armistice Security Headquarters that I am ready to assist them if they need someone who can get past any psychic shield.” His voice sharpened. “All I want in return is to be there when they interrogate that bastard Lorcan.”

  SENTINEL

  CHAPTER 19

  July 2040; Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia; The next day

  The Director of the CIA, Derek Cochrane, turned off the monitor and ejected the data crystal, slipping it back into its case before turning to Andrew
Kensington. “A sword fight to the death on the National Mall. What the hell is the world coming to?”

  Kensington chewed his lip as he stared at the bank of video monitors that filled one wall before him. It wasn’t the first time he had been summoned to the Director’s office since taking over the “Los Angeles project,” as his operation had come to be known. It was an office geared toward work and nothing else, with an ultra-modern, glass-and-steel desk and sparse furnishings. No plants. No pictures. No distractions. Most who entered were put off by Cochrane’s focus and intensity, but Kensington found it refreshingly professional.

  “It was more than that, Director,” he finally said. “From what intelligence I have been able to gather, the black sword the Ambassador used is actually a potent magical artifact designed to imprison the soul of the person it kills for eternity. My contacts indicated he has never had the will to use it.”

  The Director stared at him, appalled. “We can’t have these creatures running around loose, Andrew. Tell me there’s something we can do about them.”

  Kensington sighed. “I am still cross-referencing the intelligence we’ve received from the Court of Shadows with the information the Armistice has released, as well as the data we have been able to glean. As near as I can tell, most of what the Armistice has been telling the press is true. What they’re omitting is the extent of their tactical strength.

  “It seems there are more than two million Armistice citizens living in North America, all of whom have combat training, either learned or preprogrammed by the Gift. In addition to the embassies, they have bases, called chapterhouses, set up in most major cities on the continent. Chapterhouses appear to function as military garrisons, for facilitating fast deployment to the site of any significant breach of the treaty. There are also three major population centers: Anchorpoint, Icehaven, and the Citadel.

  “The largest, Anchorpoint, is the headquarters for both the Triumvirate and Armistice Security. The Court of Shadows has been unable to locate the city, which is shielded from detection, and its members have only been allowed inside by direct teleport. The second city, Icehaven, is mostly populated by Nightwalkers and is exposed only to indirect sunlight.”

  Director Cochrane looked skeptical. “How did they manage that?”

  “They built it under water, Director. It is somewhere on the floor of Hudson Bay, but it is also shielded from detection. The Court couldn’t give me an exact location.”

  The Director nodded. “You said there were three population centers.”

  Kensington hesitated. “The third is hard to credit. Supposedly it is located on the Moon, with associated spacecraft and orbital habitats.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “They were able to build three cities in impossibly remote locations in the space of a few short years, Director. My contacts suggested they accomplished this using some form of temporal manipulation. Is it so hard to believe they have the capability for space travel?”

  Director Cochrane sat back at his desk. “What have you been able to discover about their weaknesses?”

  “Not much so far. In addition to their technology, they have significant financial power and influence, mostly due to the longevity of their investments. The Ambassador has direct command over all the assets formerly controlled by the rest of his bloodline. He may well be the richest man in the world. While we do have the biochemical signature for vampirism, its tactical utility is limited—unless we are able to develop some form of bioweapon against them. We are still investigating that possibility. We don’t have enough information about Sentinel physiology to determine if there is a way to detect or neutralize them easily.

  Kensington flipped through the folder in his hand, and pulled out an enlarged image of Nick’s business card. He tapped the triskelion seal of the Triumvirate for emphasis.

  “The only real vulnerability I have been able to identify is their command structure. Local groups in each city appear loosely organized around the chapterhouses, although the Triumvirate sets the overall policy and makes major decisions. The Triumvirate itself is the focal point of their society. If we remove them, the Armistice will fragment into smaller communities that will be much easier to isolate and destroy.”

  “Do we know who they are?”

  Kensington frowned. “No, sir. My contacts refused to identify them. They insisted it wouldn’t be honorable to sell them out to humans, even though they consider the Triumvirate to be their most bitter enemies. The only information they would give us was to confirm that the Ambassador is not one of the three.”

  “What are your plans to acquire that information?”

  “I will continue to try to develop other intelligence resources, in addition to the Court. Apparently, the Armistice is not well regarded in the Sentinel community outside North America. They consider the truce between vampires and Sentinels to be a betrayal of everything they have been fighting for. I am still trying to identify valid targets with whom I can attempt to make contact. It’s slow going, sir. These people have had millennia of experience at staying hidden from us.”

  The Director’s expression was grim. “Keep working on it, Andrew. Your successes are the best break we’ve had so far in defending ourselves against these monsters. I will pass your information on to the DNI taskforce personally.”

  “I will do my best, sir.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” Director Cochrane stood and offered his hand. “Good luck, Kensington.”

  “I don’t need luck, sir.” Kensington shook his superior’s hand. “This is our world, not theirs. These things won’t get away with trying to dominate us with their filthy magic. Sooner or later, they’ll slip up, and we’ll wipe them out. It’s only a matter of time.”

  The Director let his hand drop. “In that case, good hunting.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kensington turned on his heel and strode out of the office.

  Director Cochrane sat at his desk, thinking. The urgent ringing of the telephone interrupted his thoughts. “DCIA,” he answered.

  “Director Cochrane,” said the Director of National Intelligence, “I am about to brief the President about the incident on the Mall yesterday. Do you have any new information for me?”

  “No, sir. We are still chasing down possible leads. At present, we don’t know much more than you do.”

  “We can’t afford to be ignorant about the capabilities of these people, Derek,” Director Mitchell growled. “I don’t care what you have to do, but get me answers.”

  “We’ll do our best, sir.”

  “Good luck. You’re going to need it if you don’t produce.”

  Director Cochrane hung up. “I don’t need luck,” he muttered, as he checked the internal security monitors that followed Agent Kensington back to his team. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  July 2040; Armistice Security Headquarters, Anchorpoint City, Grand Mesa, Colorado; Five days later

  Lorcan absentmindedly turned the Journeyman security pass over and over in his hands as he lay on the narrow bed in his detention cell and contemplated the events of the previous days. He had been taken into custody almost immediately upon his return to Icehaven, along with all the other members of the embassy staff. He had carefully answered the interrogators’ questions about his part in the assassination plot, telling them everything he remembered about the traitors in their midst.

  Jeremy had stood across the table from him, verifying his responses to ensure he wasn’t hiding anything. The young Sentinel’s thoughts had bypassed all of his mental defenses to touch his mind directly. Lorcan shivered at the memory. Jeremy had burned with bitter fury as he had openly ransacked Lorcan’s memories, pawing through the most secret thoughts, most intimate recollections. Lorcan had never felt so violated—not even when Brion had forced him to betray Nick.

  Nicholas. He closed his eyes, his heart aching. I have lost Nicholas. He had told the Daywalker he had no regrets, and that was true, up to a point. His perfect memory
of their two years together would have to keep him warm on the cold nights ahead, but he couldn’t stop wishing for just a little more time, thirsting for just another of Nick’s ever-so-casual caresses.

  Although he’d created an honorable excuse to stay in contact with Nick, he knew the Daywalker would almost certainly never touch him intimately again. Nick would think it unfair to lead him on. Still, he clung to the hope things might be different someday. It was the only thing that kept him from the sunrise—the knowledge that if he destroyed himself, he would never know if Nick would ever change his mind.

  The double bridge was the strongest blood magic possible, and the most devastating. He had always refused Nick when the younger vampire had wanted to try it, knowing that nothing would be hidden from that level of intimacy. Only the strongest emotional bond could survive such complete truth. He had known the cost when he let Nick feed simultaneously from him that day in Washington, but it was worth it to ensure the Daywalker’s mind survived the assault of the Crown of Souls. Lorcan just wished it didn’t hurt so much to let him go.

  His thoughts were interrupted when two Armistice Security agents entered carrying a pair of restraints. Lorcan slipped the plastic card into his pocket, and wordlessly held out his arms to be handcuffed, the integrated ward of the restraints surrounding him and suppressing his abilities. He followed the agents out of the containment area to a fixed-point gateway that teleported them to another level of the tower. They led him to a comfortably furnished waiting room, and the agents removed his restraints, then waited outside. Lorcan took a seat in one of the overstuffed leather chairs, and stared straight ahead at the wall, emptying his mind.

  * * *

  “Seems pretty calm, given everything that’s happened,” said Takeshi, watching Lorcan over the security monitors along with the rest of the Triumvirate.

  Layla shook her head. “He is merely waiting for the axe to fall. He knows we have to make an example of someone, and he is the only Court authority figure we have access to now that Brion is dead.”