Nightbound (8 page)

“Is that all?” Beau hid his relief by opening his case. “Well, that explains why your wife wants to fill my bed.”

Harlech looked uncomfortable. “’Tis not like you to avoid females, Beau.”

“In truth I thought I had tired of them,” Beau admitted. “’Twas not until I had Alys under me that I felt the need.”

“The woman was immune to your scent, and you still took her to bed?” Harlech grinned. “Small wonder half the garrison envies you.”

“I did not take her. ’Twas an accident; we fell together.” Beau paced across the room and back again before he regarded Harlech. “I will tell you this: I wanted
to have her, right there, even as she was swearing to hurt me if I did. She thought me a brute come to rape her.”

“No doubt.” Harlech saw his face. “Good God, man, you’ve never had a mortal female refuse you. That in itself must make this Alys seem like the most alluring Aphrodite ever to walk the earth. So, then. Did you force yourself on her?”

Beau gave him a filthy look. “I may have unseemly thoughts, but never would I violate a woman.”

“I never doubted it. I will tell you my great secret, the one that has kept me true and faithful to Viviana all these centuries.” Harlech smiled. “I have known any number of fetching wenches, and yes, a few who have thrown themselves at me, begging to see to my pleasure. When this happens, I see them as children too young to know what they are about.” His mouth curled. “And then I go and find my wife.”

“Alys will not be throwing herself at me,” Beau admitted. “She has disliked me from the start.”

“She will come to like you, Beau. Everyone does.” Harlech clapped a hand on his shoulder. “But likely she is indifferent to you, or her passions run another course. To cool your desire, I suggest you think on some Kyn female you might pursue, and the mortal solely as a sister. A very
young
sister.”

A sister, when Beau could not even remember his mother.

“And there is that look on your face again,” his captain said. “You’ve worn it like a mask every day since Byrne’s brother attempted to take the Realm. It reminds me of how you were when we were boys.”

“’Twas a shock. I should have known those Saracens meant to harm us.”
And if I were to tell you the reason for that, you would have my head piked on the castle gates.
“As for women, I see you with Viviana, and our lady with Byrne, and I want the same for myself. A wife, a companion. But there are so few unattached females among our kind that thinking on them in that manner is the same as dreaming.”

“I am sorry I have troubled you about it.” Harlech grimaced. “Only know that if you are in need of anything from a brother, you have but to find me.”

As Harlech helped him pack, Beau’s thoughts drifted back to his brief life as a mortal. He remembered almost nothing of his childhood before he had been sent to foster with Harlech’s family. The smallest and thinnest of boys, Beau hadn’t dared to utter a word to anyone.

Preoccupied with his own training, Harlech had barely noticed Beau until one afternoon in the lists, when some of the older boys had come looking for Beau. That day it had been seven against one, and yet when the tussle ended and the dust had cleared, every squire lay huddled and moaning in the dirt.

Harlech had tethered his mount and walked over to where Beau stood, his battered face tight and his bruised hands fisted, his back pressed against a hay bale. “Well-done. Who taught you to fight?”

Beau spat out some blood, but his eyes never strayed from the boys he had knocked down. “Priests.”

“Huh. I shall have to attend church more often.” Harlech gave him a measuring look. “Go and wash up. Mother hates to see evidence of our labors at her table.”

Beau jerked his chin toward the fallen. “What about them?”

“I expect they’ll be too busy now,” Harlech said, eliciting new groans from the fallen. To one of them, he said, “Do remind me, Master Thaddius, what is the price for a squire who loses a challenge?”

The older boy hung his head and muttered, “Shoveling out stalls for the stable master.”

“Ah, yes.” Harlech smiled. “Shit for shit.”

“Do you remember Squire Langston?” Beau now asked Harlech as he stowed some extra shirts in his traveling case.

“Thaddius the Thickhead?” Harlech chuckled. “God in heaven, Beau, I have not thought of him in seven lifetimes. Why have you?”

“He died at a tourney in France when he was but twenty,” Beau said. “He took a lance through the heart. He couldn’t afford the proper armor, but still he rode. I thought it brave of him.”

“Stupid, more like,” Harlech corrected. “Thaddius was a braggart and a bully who thought himself ever invincible. ’Twas what killed him in the end.” He cocked his head. “You were never friends with Thaddius.”

“Do you recall the day in the lists, when he and the other squires came to thrash me?” As Harlech nodded, Beau said, “I did not come to the evening meal because I was bloodied and beaten. I went to the stables and shoveled out the stalls with them.”

Harlech made an impatient sound. “As angry as they were? They might have smothered you in shit.”

“They hated me because I was small and thin and
alone.” Beau closed the case and fastened the straps. “I had to show them that I was no different.”

“And did you?”

“I took a few more cuffs that night, but none in earnest,” Beau admitted. “I have never been one to lead others, Harlech. If not for you, Thaddius might have become my friend and guide. I daresay I would have followed him to France, and died a mortal death as he did.”

“But you followed me into the Templars, and off to Crusade, and back to England again.” Harlech’s expression turned pensive. “Where I, your good friend, gave you the plague that took us both to the grave.”

“As well as the immortal life I’ve lived since we clawed our way out of them.” Beau shrugged into the black leather jacket he wore when among mortals. “For a long time I believed we were cursed by God for our sins. But the modern world has changed my thinking, and now I am persuaded to believe it is as Cyprien’s leech would have it. We were changed by the strangeness of that plague, not divine condemnation. It was not punishment, but accident.”

“You have been thinking too much of late.” The captain folded his arms. “So what if it was chance? Would you have rather died on the wrong end of a lance, as Thaddius did? Is that the real reason you’ve given up wenching? Why you spend so many nights hunting alone? Some manner of atonement?” He peered at him. “Have you taken to excessive praying, or drinking animal blood?”

“No. I have no desire to make myself into a changeling.” Beau felt once more the urge to confess to his friend the truth. “Harlech, becoming a Templar was the
making of me as a mortal, but being changed to Darkyn was my penance. If Dr. Keller is right, then I must accept that I have done nothing to make amends, not once in these seven hundred years.”

“You speak as if you need absolution for some terrible crime, but you have done nothing. Indeed, I have known you to be everything that is loyal and true and good in a man, mortal or Kyn.” The captain threw up his hands. “You do yourself injustice without cause. Name a moment when you have not conducted yourself as the most courageous of warriors.”

“It does not matter. We must all face a day of reckoning.” And if he was right, his would soon be at hand.

Harlech looked puzzled. “Reckoning for what?”

Beau looked out into the darkness toward the east. “All our sins left unforgiven.”

Unable to sleep, thanks to the X-rated movie starring Beauregard York that kept playing in her head, Alys went down to the hotel’s indoor pool to swim off her frustrations. By dawn she had managed to exhaust herself, which allowed her to sleep until her afternoon wake-up call. It took another hour to rouse her interns and have their equipment loaded into the rental vans they’d be using for transport to and from the site.

Before they left the hotel, Alys coordinated their GPS units, distributed handheld radios, and gave her student drivers strict instructions to stay together. “I don’t want anyone accidentally ending up at one of the theme parks.”

“Disney is for little kids,” Brenda said, sounding huffy. “We were hoping to hit Knights Realm, but they’re closed for renovations or something until February.”

“I can skip the medieval experience,” Charles told her. “Those guys are just a bunch of wimpy RenFaire freaks anyway.”

“Might I remind you all? This isn’t a vacation.” The disappointment on their faces made Alys feel a twinge of regret; they were still kids. “That said, if you’re diligent and we finish the project on schedule, I might be persuaded to pay for a celebratory visit to one of the parks for everyone.”

“SeaWorld,” Chan said instantly.

Brenda shook her head. “Universal is way better.”

“The Holy Land Experience.” Paolo cringed as the other interns glared at him. “I can’t help it. I’m Catholic.”

“If the time comes,” Alys promised, “we’ll take a vote.”

Driving her Jeep, Alys led the mini-caravan out of the city, following roads through hundreds of acres of undeveloped land until she reached the turnoff for the survey area. Newly installed fencing made of steel and wire had been tagged every few yards with danger signs warning of high voltage.

“Wow.” Brenda, who was riding in the passenger seat, peered at the signs. “Kind of extreme. I guess we won’t have to worry about looters.”

Electrified fences seemed rather excessive to Alys as well, but obviously Tremayne meant to keep trespassers off the foundation’s land at any cost.

She stopped at the entry, where she inputted the access code on the security pad to release the gate’s electronic lock. As the final barrier swung inward, the last rim of sunlight vanished, darkening the clear sky to an orange-bordered violet.

The lack of light didn’t bother Alys, as she had always been more awake and alert at night. She also liked seeing the stars glittering overhead; that was something she’d missed since leaving Europe.

The sky looks like his eyes.

“What was that, Dr. Stuart?” Brenda asked.

Alys hadn’t realized she’d uttered it out loud. “I said that the sky is a nice surprise. We can’t see this much of it in the city.”

Her intern frowned at her. “Are you okay? You seem a little, um, preoccupied. I mean, even for you.”

“I have a great deal on my mind.” And there was no room in it for Beau York.

The foundation’s property encompassed wide fields, acres of woods, and several small lakes, all of which showed no signs of occupation. Alys liked the sprawling majesty of the black oaks and their long, twisted limbs, made almost elegant by the silvery drapery of Spanish moss. The dirt road on which she drove had been recently leveled and graded, which would make the students’ trips back and forth to the site easier.

She spotted a crumbling brick wall illuminated by her headlights and slowed to take in the first sight of the old Spanish mission. Bright lights over the archaic buildings suddenly switched on, making her flinch until she heard the faint rumble of a generator.
Someone is already out here, or Tremayne has the power supply on a timer.
Since there was no sign of any other vehicles, Alys guessed it to be the latter.

At least Beau York hadn’t shown up yet. Alys needed time to collect herself and prepare to deal with him.

The preliminary surveys conducted by Hylord’s contractor
had included a few photos of the mission, but seeing it in person allowed her to appreciate the fine details. The Spanish priests who had arrived here six hundred years ago had evidently taken their time constructing the place, which appeared much larger and more elaborate than some sixteenth-century Franciscan missions on Florida’s east coast she had seen in photos.

Four main buildings, all joined by open-sided passageways, made up the compound. In the center stood the mission’s church, which featured a two-story tower vestibule and arched windows that might have once held glass panes. Beside it a flat-roofed structure was probably the cloister, where the priests had lived and slept. The other two buildings were smaller, and she guessed they had served as a kitchen and a stable or storage barn.

From all indications the mission had been built as the precursor to the sustained European presence in the area, one that had lasted until the late eighteenth century, when Spain ended two hundred and fifty years of rule over Florida by trading it to the English in exchange for Cuba.

Alys parked in a clearing behind the mission, where she got out and directed her intern drivers to back in so they could easily access the cargo areas.

“Do you think we’ll find any dead people out here?” Brenda asked as she went to help with the unloading.

The groans and laughter drew Alys’s attention, and she joined the group of students. “If I answer all the questions, then you won’t learn anything. Does anyone want to offer an opinion for Brenda?”

“I doubt it,” Charles drawled. “The ground’s too wet
in this part of the country. That decays the soft tissue right away, and turns any bones left into rice pudding.”

“Thank you for that visual, Charles,” Alys said. “Human remains can be found almost anywhere humans have lived, but we won’t be excavating any we might uncover here. Does anyone know why?”