Darkest Heart (16 page)

"No!" He slammed his fist hard enough to put a dent in the hood of the car. "I haven't come this far to get cold feet! She's not my mother - my mother died twenty-five years ago!"

Sonja looked at him for a long moment before speaking. "It's one thing to tell yourself that - another to accept it. I'll let you take down Noir. You deserve that much satisfaction. But I beg you; let me kill her."

"She's my responsibility, Sonja."

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"No, she's not. Believe me, you don't want to do this." Her voice was so horribly sad, yet her eyes were impossible to read. "Killing someone you love is like driving a nail through your own heart - not hard enough to finish you off, but deep enough to ruin you for life. Look, Jack - I'm not human." She said it gently, as if reminding him of a minor, indelicate fact. "I do not have to live with the things I have done -

I simply have to exist. And existing is far different from living. Ask any street person. Whatever crimes you've committed pursuing your vendetta, I won't let you add matricide to them, even if it is once removed."

Estes shook his head as if he could somehow make her words fly out of his ears. Grief was bubbling up from underneath his anger, threatening to render him defenseless. He could not allow that to happen. He looked Sonja straight in the eye - but all he could see was his own contorted, angry face reflected in her sunglasses.

"If you can do this, so can I."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Noir loathed the Twenty-First Century.

Granted, it was just beginning, but the era was already showing signs of being tiresome, what with humans constantly prattling on about computers this and digital that. It reminded him of all that blather about steam power and pneumatics during the Industrial Revolution.

Humans were so insanely proud of their little discoveries, but inherently blind to their darker applications.

Little had changed since the first grunting upright ape set the savannah ablaze while dragging a burning branch back home to his tribe. It was up to Noir and others of his ilk to realize the true potential of the computer age, then orchestrate a way to benefit from the damage and despair it would spawn. Still, it was difficult for him to become excited about the prospect of stalking victims in cyberspace. It was all so...

bloodless. What was the point? Where was the sport?

So much had changed since he had first fought his way free of the shroud: kingdoms had risen and collapsed; religions died only to be reborn in different skins; new worlds were discovered, conquered and reconquered. So why should he bother mastering the nuances of modern technology, language, etiquette, and dress when it all was going to change in a few years, anyway?

Why bother indeed? He knew the answer to that question all too well. It was far too easy for one of his kind to become anachronistic. Vampires had to stay up to date if they wished to avoid detection. That was why he affected dreadlocks and black silk suits instead of a turban. There used to be a day when Nobles prided themselves on staying current, but now most of them seemed content to remain walking museum pieces. He had seen Count Tenebrae on the streets of London just last year, dressed like he was planning a night out with Wilde and Whistler. In the old days, such blatant anachronism in dress would have been equivalent to signing your own death warrant, but not anymore.

Perhaps, in his own way, he was guilty of the sin of anachronism as well. There was no denying that things had changed for the better for his kind. The days of existing in fear of vampire hunters and the witch finders elite were long gone. But still, old habits died hard.

He had seen kings beheaded, martyrs torched, Popes strangled in their baths, cities burnt until the sky was so thick with soot there was no telling day from night. Some of the most dangerous men known to history had once been amongst his confidantes and enemies, and yet he endured: eternal, if not unchanged.

He was born in the Holy Land, in the city of Tyre, in what was once known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

His father was a second-generation crusader baron, his mother a former slave who occasionally served her Christian masters as healer and sorceress.

His father's father had been the third son of a rural petty-baron in the north of France, who realized it was better to soldier in the name of the Lord and risk death by heathen hands than to squat in a chilly castle and munch turnips in the vain hope his elder brothers and their progeny might succumb to the plague, and took up the cross and followed Hugh of Vermandois across the Alps.

His grandfather fought with great bravery and precious little mercy, emerging from the slaughter of Jerusalem looking as if he had been dipped in blood. Man, woman, child, it made no difference to him; his ruthless sangfroid in battle became legendary amongst his fellow crusaders. In reward for his service,

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) Noir's grandfather was granted a baronage by King Baldwin and presented with a goules shield bearing a two-handed sword in argent, point down, piercing a human heart in white. He was also given the surname Coeur de Neige: "Heart of Snow." In France, Coeur de Neige had been the surplus son of a lesser noble, but under the baking sun of the Transjordan he became a man of means whose counsel was heeded in the Court of Lieges. Using his new status to its greatest advantage, the fledgling baron married the niece of Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and Lord of Tripoli, thereby cementing his place in the emerging aristocracy of Outremer, as the crusader kingdoms were then known. Noir's father, the first of his line born to the title, arrived in 1130.

Noir's mother, Lisha, often claimed the blood of Hannibal flowed in her veins. As a boy, she would regale him with tales of her family having been descended from the royal wizard-priests of Moloch and, more recently, the master hunters who captured and sold African elephants and other wild beasts to the Romans for the spectacles at the Circus Maximus.

When Noir's father, the younger Coeur de Neige, first laid eyes on Lisha, she was a slave. Years before, while traveling to Mecca, her family's caravan had been set upon by brigands, who slaughtered her relatives and sold her into slavery. Fortunately, Lisha had proved herself not only beautiful, but also skilled as an herbalist, and she was bought by a wealthy Frankish baron who was more interested in curing his gout than sating his lusts.

Coeur de Neige was visiting the old baron, who was a friend of his late father's, when he fell ill with a fever. Lisha nursed him back to health, spending weeks at his bedside. When the old baron died a year later, one of his last acts was to grant Lisha her freedom. Coeur de Neige quickly brought her within his retinue as apothecary and concubine. Noir was born three years later, in 1161.

He was the first of four children, and the only one to survive past infancy. Although born on the wrong side of the blanket, his childhood was a comparatively happy one, as his father proved favorably disposed to him. The baron lavished a great deal of time and attention on both Noir and his mother, making sure they wanted for nothing.

Along with making sure Noir was taught the finer points of horsemanship and combat, Coeur de Neige saw to it that his son was schooled in both Latin and French, so that he might serve as steward to the house.

Lisha made sure that her family's traditions were passed along to her son, as well. She schooled the boy in how to recognize, harvest, and dry the various herbs and plants used in any respectable apothecary, and upon his reaching the age of thirteen, they graduated from the potions and pills of the healer to darker knowledge. It was then that Noir discovered that his mother was indeed heir to ancient power.

Although it was within Lisha's power to summon siroccos, call down cyclones, and visit unimaginable plagues upon her enemies, she never once did any of these things. Even though she could curdle the wombs of those who spited her so that they produced hare-lipped fools, she never lifted her hand to curse them. It simply was not in her nature to do so, despite the degradation and injustice she had suffered throughout her life.

Some would say that his mother was a woman of kind heart and good intentions. Noir thought she was weak.

When Noir turned eighteen, Coeur de Neige presented his illegitimate son with an emblazoned shield depicting a two-handed sword in argent, point sinister, piercing a human heart in sable. This was the closest his father ever came to publicly acknowledging him. Noir was proud to have been given arms and promised to serve Coeur de Neige as loyally as any vassal knight. And for nearly ten years, he was as good as his word.

Coeur de Neige soon discovered that his son was an adept diplomat with a keen eye for the interests of the family. Given the tenuous situation of the crusader states, having an intelligent aide whose loyalty was assured by blood was handy indeed. Coeur de Neige's trust in his son was so absolute, he appointed Noir his steward and left him in charge while he traveled to France and claimed the northern barony of a great-uncle who had died without issue. For the better part of a year, Noir served in Coeur de Neige's stead, settling issues amongst the tenants and filling his father's seat at the Council of Lieges.

During his father's absence, five galleys were brought to the Port of A[let on the backs of camels. This bizarre fleet, manned by Outremer warriors thirsty for Muslim blood and treasure, sailed the Red Sea, ravaging the coasts as far as Aden. A group of knights even went so far as to try to seize Medina. After a year of such raiding, Saladin's navy destroyed the Frankish fleet and had the prisoners put to death at

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) Mecca, much to the Mohammedans delight.

The man behind such outlandish piracy was Reginald de Chatillon, Lord of Krak Montreal and the Port of Atlet. He cared little of a man's pedigree, provided he was ready with a sword and willing to die for Christ and kingdom. Noir admired the crazy-brave Chatillon, who was the type of man whose personality could easily sway Popes and kings and incite men into taking up arms against insane odds.

The smell of a new crusade brewing in the Holy Land brought Noir's father, the fifty-five year old Coeur de Neige, back from France. And when he arrived, Noir was stunned to discover his father had a sixteen-year-old wife. Her name was Mathilde and she was her husband's second cousin on his mother's side, as well as being directly related to Eleanor of Aquitaine. The baron, who was getting on in years, had succumbed to pressure from his Frankish cousins to produce a legal heir, one whose pedigree as a European and a Christian could not be questioned.

One of the grounds for agreement to the marriage, as put forth by Mathilde's family, was that Coeur de Neige renounce both Lisha and Noir and turn them out of his service. Which he did as easily as another man might change his boots.

Lisha was aggrieved by the turn of events, but she did not allow it to destroy her. For years she had been setting aside the pieces of jewelry and other finery the baron bestowed upon her, and lost no time in securing a villa on the mainland. Noir, on the other hand, was not so well prepared, either financially or emotionally, and found himself turned out into the world with nothing but the clothes on his back, a sword, and a bastard's shield. It was his mother who made him the gift of a fully outfitted horse, a set of arms, as well as a page from her household staff.

Thus caparisoned, he traveled to the fortified castle of Krak Montreal and pledged his sword to Chatillon's service, knowing that he would soon have the chance to prove himself in battle to his new lord.

In 1185 Saladin attempted to take the Krak Montreal, only to meet with a stalemate. A truce was signed between Saladin and Chatillon, but Reginald, ever the daredevil, broke it by raiding a caravan and carrying off the sultan's own sister. This final insult was all that it took for Saladin to declare holy war and invade the Kingdom of Jerusalem in earnest.

Saladin's troops blocked the main road to Tiberias and sent a small force to attack the town, hoping to lure the crusaders into the open. Coeur de Neige's kinsman, Count Raymond of Tripoli, urged the King of Jerusalem not to fall into Saladin's trap, even though his own wife was within the threatened city. As the evening wore on and tempers flared, Chatillon, who was never a friend of Tripoli, accused Raymond of cowardice and treason and prevailed on King Guy to change his mind. For once, Chatillon's vaunted brashness did not hold him in good stead.

The next day the forces of Jerusalem underwent an exhausting march in grueling heat and spent the entire night without water. To make matters worse, Saladin's men set grass fires that filled the air with choking smoke that added even further to the troops' thirst and disorientation. Finally, with the smoke from the grass fires pouring into their faces, the foot soldiers broke ranks and fled, disrupting the cavalry. The bravery and dedication of those marshaled on the shores of Lake Tiberias was not enough to overcome Saladin's army, who swarmed them like locusts on a field of ripe wheat.

The Christian forces were annihilated; the king, the grand master of the Templars and Chatillon were captured, and only a handful of knights escaped. By all rights, Noir should have died with his comrades on the lakeshore, but he somehow managed to stagger from the chaos of the battlefield with the help of his page.

By the time they reached his mother's villa, Noir had no more blood in him than a mouse. He vaguely recalled tumbling from the back of his horse upon entering the courtyard. Although Lisha was deeply afraid for her son's life, she did not allow herself to become distraught. She kept her head, ordered that he be prepared for treatment, and sent a runner to Coeur de Neige to inform him of his son's condition.

Lisha knew Noir was dying, and that no mortal medicine could save him. She set aside her dried herbs, powdered rhinoceros horn and pickled tiger penises and turned to the ornately worked rosewood chest with the golden lock she kept in a special hiding place in her workshop.