Chapter 61
Chapter Sixty-One
JADEON
How terrible can death be?
Morning came with a shimmer of light, illuminating the vibrant stained glass windows.
I had waited and observed the hands turn on my watch face—irrevocably, silently. An array of colors flowed through illuminating the dark, vibrant blues and reds in an exquisite ancient design.
Too late to run.
Painful welts appeared on my skin.
With that small drop of light came a foreign scrape as stone grated against stone and the fireplace shifted, disrupting my panic.
With the secret passageway exposed, I staggered through, fleeing the dawn into the dark corridor, shielded from the light.
After several quick turns, I descended the stairwell, stopping abruptly before a heavy wooden doorway with its seventeenth-century baroque engravings.
Behind me, I heard a grating as the fireplace settled back.
Blackness.
The door opened and I walked through, peering in.
A tall figure stood silhouetted by the candlelight.
I immediately recognized the priest from the cathedral.
It was the way his face captured the light, lean and impossibly beautiful.
Now, without his shield, the truth revealed itself, he was an eternal.
“Father Jake!” I said.
“Jadeon, come in,” he gestured.
Turning briefly, I closed the door and took in the room, admiring the luxurious décor.
Large tapestries depicting music and dancing and marriages hung fast on the walls.
Lush carpet covered the entire floor and the Victorian furniture offered up its generous hospitality.
Father Jake guided me to an easy chair and invited me to sit.
I was grateful to have a moment to rest, still reeling from both my recent attack and my tussle with Ingrid.
“Is he here?” I asked as I sunk into the soft seat.
“Catch your breath and then we’ll talk,” Father Jake replied.
“I have to get back to them.”
“You are still weak, Jadeon. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
He was right. I had been fighting my fatigue, but it was fast catching up.
“The cuneiform,” I said. “You didn’t need to decipher it?”
“No,” he said.
“You came for me,” I said. “He sent you to find me.”
“He’s always watched over you,” Father Jake said. “His way is not to interfere.”
“Then why now?”
I have to fight this need to sleep.
“He will explain,” Father Jake said.
I looked around, trying to keep my eyes open.
I was filled with exhaustion, having made it this far, the echo of the attack still saturating my being. I knew falling asleep in this place was a risk, yet I could not fight the pull of it.
Gently, Jake placed his hands over my eyes and lulled me into a state of calm. “Lilly was your wife,” I realized. “The Stone Masters murdered her.”
A flicker of grief danced in his eyes.
“Am I safe?”
“When you awaken, you’ll be ready.”
The unsettling of my stinging flesh dragged me into unconsciousness.
In my dream, they came to me—my ancestors, draped in the forgotten centuries.
Their presence was a murmur, a trembling in the marrow of my bones.
You cannot cage the darkness, they whispered, voices like candle smoke curling against my skin.
No matter how you strive, it seeps, it breathes. Yet still—you may be the light.
“He’s ready for you,” a voice whispered in the quiet.
I opened my eyes and jumped up out of the chair.
How much time had I wasted? My senses told me it was night, but it was difficult to gauge within the lower rooms of Leeds Castle. Father Jake stepped aside and another priest, thirty or so in appearance, stepped out from the shadows.
Strange, how I had imagined him older, timeworn even, cloaked in the gravity of centuries, as his words had so often implied.
And yet, as he stood before me, he was anything but ancient.
He was young, achingly so, his beauty not of this world, but sculpted from something celestial.
His presence haunting, the kind of beauty that unsettles, that whispers of power.
Father Jake withdrew from the room.
“Fabian?” I said with reverence.
“Welcome, Jadeon,” Snowstrom said. “Now that you have rested, you’ll be able to think more clearly.”
This was the man who had appeared to me outside Belshazzar’s, the person whom Marcus and his minions had run from. Perhaps, I reasoned, they knew something that I did not.
Despite my disquiet, I accepted the cup he offered and gratefully gulped down the red liquid, quenching my thirst. The potent drink was from an ancient, and it quickly revived me.
Was I drinking his blood?
He smiled. “I am Fabian Snowstrom, but I’m also known by many other names.”
“You’re the Alchemist?”
“I am.”
“And Father Jake is Jacob Roch?” I asked.
Fabian nodded.
“Why such secrecy?” I asked.
“As I said in my letter,” Fabian began, “I have lived for thousands of years. There are those who think that I am nothing but a myth, though others—those who believe in me—would come in droves for the ashes of their loved ones and the world would be awash with vampires.”
A collection? Here? The realization struck me that this was no ordinary hoard, but something sacred, a legacy that demanded protection at all costs. Who guarded it, I wondered and how could it ever be kept safe?
Fabian’s eyes were a vibrant blue, and I could not help but stare. His very presence was startling.
“You know why I am here then?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Alex and Catherine. Are they still at Belshazzars?”
“Down to business so quickly.”
“I don’t have much time.”
“On the contrary,” Fabian said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No offense taken.”
“I just have to do something.”
“You cannot control another’s destiny.”
“I disagree.” I really did.
“But of course you do.” He smiled.
“Who are you?”
“I was once a shaman. And now I watch over the nightwalkers. Waiting for when one of them needs to be reined in.”
“Orpheus?”
“And you.”
“Me?” I asked.
“You.”
“Why do I need to be reined in?”
“Because of your potential.”
“For what?”
“The Knowledge.”
“Please explain.”
“Powerful dormant forces lie within you because you have opened the gateway of the soul,” he said.
“I don’t get you.”
“As a seeker of the sacred knowledge, you have the ability to manifest. To rule.”
“Obviously, I need some practice.”
“I agree,” Fabian said.
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”
“You weren’t ready.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Of course.”
“Then, of course,” he said.
“There’s something about you that’s mysterious—”
“Age brings with it eccentricities.” Fabian’s eyes reflected kindness. “After thousands of years, one is allowed an idiosyncrasy or two.”
Teach me everything so that I can get them back.
“There is nothing that I can teach you that is not already within you,” Fabian answered my thoughts.
“But I am here for you to show me how to kill Orpheus,” I said.
“You are here because I brought you here.”
My mind raced and I sensed Fabian inside my head, weighing every rumination.
“You’re wondering if I have them.”
“Sunaria’s ashes?”
Fabian indicated for me to sit, positioning his own chair opposite mine. He took hold of my hands.
“I have so much to learn,” I sighed and gazed at him in admiration, enjoying the sensation of Fabian’s touch as he rubbed his thumb affectionately against the back of my hand. This, an unfamiliar, fatherly gesture, carried the warmth of a father’s affection and the quiet kindness I had never known.
“How is it that we are eternal? That we possess the power to endure, to exist forever? —”
“Longevity?” Fabian said. “A timeworn question for all of us. We can only surmise that it is the way our blood transforms. It is highly concentrated with oxygen, therefore durable. Our cells regenerate quickly at the molecular level. We have evolved into timeless beings that exist outside spatial realms. We are unaffected.”
“I want to feel that I am not an abomination.”
“Nothing is,” Fabian reassured me. “You are merely another facet of nature.”
I considered his words. “I have Jacob’s pendant, the one I found at the Mount.”
“He’ll be happy to have that back,” Fabian said.
“It belonged to Lilly, his wife?”
Fabian nodded.
I cringed. “It must have fallen from her neck when the Stone Masters took her . . .”
“They believed they were doing the right thing.”
“How did you come to be here, though, in this castle? I always believed there were no underground passageways beneath this chateau. No hidden vaults or secret dungeons.”
“Yes, I started that rumor myself.” He chuckled.
“I designed these very rooms, furnished them with the help of my love—a mortal. However, that was many years ago. I fulfilled my promise and took her half sister’s life.
She was dying, you understand. I just sped up the process.
My lover then repaid her promise to me and secured a place for me beneath this castle where I could live in peace. Away from prying mortal eyes.”
“This woman you talk of—”
“The very same. Elizabeth, daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, crowned Queen of England in 1558. We met while she was imprisoned here, betrayed by her lover. I sheltered here one winter night and heard her cries. No longer able to ignore her supplications I visited her in the guise of a priest. I was a mysterious guest, no doubt, but soon my social calls grew more frequent. I saw to it that she was freed from prison. Elizabeth became a magnificent queen. She guarded her castle well, took care of her land by herself with no man to help her. We worshipped one another. She was a brilliant and radiant woman.”
Fabian’s face lit up.
“And you dress as a priest still?” I said.
“I am ordained.”
“By the Church?”
“The Church,” he said.
“Catholic?”
“Older.” Fabian smiled.
“Then I believe you are the right person to help me.”
“I am.”
“Fabian, help me to get Catherine back. I must return to Belshazzar’s and persuade Alex to leave.”
“What I am about to tell you will unsettle you,” Fabian said. “Orpheus has given you the greatest of all gifts.”
I was shocked. “Orpheus has been my enemy for my entire life—”