Absolution - The First Book Of The Vampire Immortalis Trilogy (5 page)

Adam McLeod was sat on a bus, drifting in and out of sleep. It was the middle of the morning and he was fighting to stay awake, but his body was still on Eastern Standard Time and all it wanted to do was sleep. His thoughts had turned to Henry Warwick and the story of how he had become a vampire. He had heard it so many times that he felt he could do a better job of telling it than Henry himself.

Henry was like a father to Adam. Without him, Adam would have pressed the self-destruct button years ago. It was Henry who had helped him out of some very dark places and it was Henry who had convinced him that becoming a vampire was all part of God's plan for him. It was also Henry who had mentored Adam in the ways of the warrior and given his life as a vampire a real purpose. God had led him to Henry and to the Knights Perennius just as God had led Henry to Gilbert.
“Melrose Abbey!”

Adam was quickly brought out of his slumber by news that he had arrived at his destination. He grabbed his holdall, thanked the driver, and got off the bus at the stop on Buccleuch Street.

Anna was standing there, waiting for him. Despite all the years apart, he recognised her instantly, just as he knew he would. She was wearing a knee length unbuttoned fawn raincoat over a perfectly fitting black dress and she looked even more beautiful than he remembered.

“Hello, stranger,” she said, holding out her arms to embrace him.

Adam dropped his bag and walked straight into them. He held her tightly, his head nestling on her shoulder and her head on his. It was all he could do not to burst into tears. After a few moments, he loosened his grip so that they were still in each others arms, but standing face to face. “Long time no see,” he said, taking the time to look deep into her green eyes.

Adam and Anna had first met aboard a ship, The Hector, while it was sailing from Scotland to Nova Scotia. Adam was then a headstrong eighteen year old in search of adventure and had been all too willingly duped by the offer of free passage to the New World and the wild promises of bountiful farmland that awaited him. What he hadn't been told was that there was thick forest down to the shoreline that would have to be cleared before anyone could actually work the land. There was also the added complication of the native Indian population not taking too kindly to white men cutting down their trees. That little nugget of information had been left out of the sales spiel too.

The Hector had left from Greenock on the 14th of July, 1773, and Anna was among the 170 or so other passengers aboard. The fiery redhead with the impish smile had stolen Adam's heart the moment he set eyes on her and they became inseparable within days of setting sail. It was all the more surprising because when they first met they shared little in the way of a common language. Adam spoke Gaelic, as did the vast majority of The Hector's passengers, and knew only a few words of English. Anna was fluent in English, and several other languages, but spoke not a word of Gaelic. Despite her Celtic good looks, she was in fact from Rottweill, a town that today is found in the south west of Germany, but at the time of Anna's birth in 1420, was a free imperial city within the Holy Roman Empire. Words mattered not because laughter became their language of love.

The three-masted fluyt had been built to carry cargo, not passengers, and so conditions on board the creaking vessel were spartan to say the least. With a rotting hull and its general poor state of repair, the Hector should never have been sailing three thousand miles across the Atlantic, whatever its payload. How it made land was down to good fortune, nothing more. A fierce storm off the coast of Newfoundland almost sunk her, and it blew her so far off course, that it added two full weeks to the journey, resulting in the already meagre food and water supplies being rationed further.

It was during this storm that Adam developed the bloody flux, a severe form of dysentry that is accompanied by internal bleeding. Together with smallpox, the flux was to claim 18 lives aboard The Hector during that 11 week voyage. It would have been 19 lives if Anna hadn't been nursing Adam as he lay dying below decks.

When he was within hours of breathing his last, Anna knew that she could not bear to see him die in her arms. It was then that she offered him eternal life. Until that moment he had no idea that she was a vampire. He was in no condition to fully absorb this startling revelation, but even in his feverish state he knew that he didn't want to say farewell to Anna. Not now. Not ever.

Anna had fallen in love with him too, but she knew that even if he lived for an eternity, it was still goodbye. She knew full well that her actions meant breaking the blood oath that all vampires under the protection of the Immortalis swore to uphold at all costs. It, more than anything else, secured the Pax Libertas, allowing vampires to live peacefully, if anonymously, among mankind.

When The Hector finally made land, Anna slipped ashore unnoticed, without telling Adam. She knew running from the Immortalis was pointless. No matter how long it took, the enforcers would find you. The vampire lover who had saved Anna from certain death had been hunted down and destroyed within days of her crossing the divide between human and vampire. Instead, she gave herself up to Jacob and awaited her fate before the Grand Council. By the time Adam found out she was gone, it was too late. The Council had voted. Anna had been unexpectedly spared, but not without punishment. She was sentenced to purgatorium until such time as she was able to redeem herself in the eyes of the Grand Council. Purgatorium was a state of being that meant she was banished from the vampire community while being obligated to serve the Immortalis until redemption. She was also forbidden from ever seeing Adam again.

But now, Adam was looking deep into those green eyes for the first time in over 200 years. He had spent two centuries living in North America without ever seeing so much as a glimpse of Anna. As an enforcer for the Immortalis, Adam lived the life of a transient nomad, criss-crossing the continent, sometimes in defence of the Codex, but more frequently to take the fight to foot soldiers of the Battalion Sabbatarian, the clandestine organisation intent on ridding the world of vampires. Whenever Adam arrived in a new town, he hoped to catch even a fleeting moment with Anna, but it was never to be. Unbeknown to Adam, while he went from Austin to Baltimore to Charleston, Anna was living a world apart in Amsterdam or Berlin or Copenhagen.

“Grab your bag,” said Anna. “I've an abbey to show you.”

With that, the two of them walked the short distance to the ticket office, arm in arm.

“Do you know what, you don't look a day older,” Adam said to Anna as she bought two admission tickets.

“Well, thank you, kind sir!” she replied. Given their true ages, she had considered asking for two concessions for senior citizens, but thought better of it. The dour man behind the ticket desk had already raised an eyebrow when the two Americans had requested one audio tour in Spanish and one in French “just to hear what they sound like”. Despite their accents, neither Anna or Adam were American, and both spoke their chosen languages fluently, but when people expect dumb Yankee tourists to roll up, it seemed rude to disappoint them.

Once inside the abbey's grounds, Anna and Adam made straight for the graveyard which runs along the south side of the main church building. It didn't take them long to find the small area of ground disturbed by the Hundeprest's return, the lingering smell of a vampire filling his nostrils as readily as it did her's.

Adam's attention was drawn to the handful of teenagers messing about in the park on the other side of the abbey's railings. They were close enough for him to hear their raised voices, but far enough away for him not to be able to make out what they were saying. They certainly showed no interest in what Anna and Adam were doing, but tourists looking at headstones would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“Moles.”

Adam and Anna were both startled by the sudden and unexpected interruption from behind them. They were even more taken aback when they turned round to see a hooded monk.

“We are plagued by the wee bastards,” continued the man who turned out to be an abbey visitor guide in costume. “They are aye givin' us grief, digging up the ground. Give me a shout if you want tae know anything else about the abbey.”

Adam and Anna watched as the man in the habit and blue Adidas trainers walked back into the ruins of the abbey. They knew that whatever made that hole in the ground, it was certainly no mole. Wherever the Hundeprest was now, there was no doubt in either of their minds that he had risen from this very spot. Little did their monk friend know, but that meant the sort of grief that comes in the size of mountains, not mole hills.

CHAPTER SIX

Anna and Adam had been hunting in the foothills of the Eildons under the cover of darkness. Adam, in particular, was in need of nourishment after his long flight. They had been careful to follow a small herd of deer for some time to discover its weakest members, those that would probably not survive the severity of winter. After selecting a target a piece, the two vampires descended like lightning. The rest of the herd had barely scattered by the time the two vampires had grounded and killed their prey.

Satisfied, they began to make their way back to Anna's house via the tracks that run around the perimeter of the golf course. “Do you know, I never got a chance to thank you for saving my life,” said Adam.

“I didn't know you would still want to thank me after all these years stuck in a time warp.”

“I don't know. Being permanently eighteen has its benefits,” replied Adam, putting his arm around Anna's shoulders as they headed for home. “Not so good if you want served in a bar, but I don't drink so even that doesn't bother me.”

“You can get served in a pub in Scotland at eighteen,” said Anna, “but I'd forgot that it was 21 in the States. I'll take you to one or two of the local watering holes while you're here. They are the best place to go for local gossip.”

“They certainly did a good job keeping us apart,” said Adam of the Immortalis. “I always thought I'd bump into you somewhere, sometime, but it wasn't to be.”

“I was never told where you were, but I did hear snippets of news about you from time to time. You've made quite a name for yourself.”

“Well, I'm getting pretty good at dodging silver bullets, that's for sure, although I think the fact that Sabbatarians are lousy shots has a lot to do with it.”

“They might improve now that there's a price on your head.”

“You heard about that, too? Well, if the bounty goes any higher, I might shoot myself just to claim it.”

“Be serious. I can't imagine you working as an enforcer?”

“I had a good teacher in Henry Warwick, and now that he has semi-retired, I seem to be getting a lot more gigs. I haven't figured out yet if it's because they think I'm good at what I do or because I'm the one they would miss the least if things don't work out.”

“From what I've heard it's because they think you're good. Too good even.”

“Too good? I just do what I'm told to do, Anna. I don't make the laws, I just enforce them. Live by a code, die by a code.”

“Mary told me that you might enjoy your work a little too much.”

“The likes of Mary don't often have to get their hands dirty,” said Adam defensively, “so she knows little about the life I lead or what gives me enjoyment.”

“I think she was just trying to tell me that you weren't the same sweet innocent boy I left behind on The Hector.”

“I might have done a lot of growing up, but I never gave up hope of seeing you again.”

Anna put her arm around Adam's waist, losing herself in a moment that she thought she would never experience again, not even in her wildest dreams. She had been willing to give her life to save his, a man she had known for barely a month, and her love for him had not diminished even with the passing of year upon year, decade upon decade, even century upon century. She would happily give her life again for him for moments like this.

They had almost made it down to the tarmac road that runs from Dingleton Mains farm, past the golf clubhouse, and back to Dingleton Road, when Anna started to hear a voice inside her head.
Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat
.
Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat
.

“The Hundeprest is killing someone,” she blurted out, stopping Adam in his tracks.

“Can you see anything? Where is he?”

“I don't know. I can only hear his voice. He's giving absolution in Latin.”

Anna was beginning to gasp for air as she struggled to form a picture of what was happening in her mind's eye, but there were no pictures, only darkness. And then nothing. No voices. Nothing. The Hundeprest had struck again and now two representatives of the Immortalis had been powerless to stop him.

“Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat.”

Jane Reid knew her killer's face. She had seen it less than an hour ago, just before closing time. It belonged to the man who had skulked into her antique shop to hawk a large cross that he claimed was a family heirloom. It did look old, but was probably a cheap reproduction given the dishevelled appearance of the bearer. Either that or it had been stolen from a church. Not that she got a chance to examine the cross - the stench of stale sweat and bad alcohol breath saw to that. When she finally managed to usher him out, she had to literally douse the shop in air freshener.

Peter Cameron had given up any ideas of making his fortune from selling his cross to a big time Charlie collector. All he wanted today was enough money to buy some booze, but the stupid fat bitch had looked a gift horse in the mouth and had passed up an opportunity of a lifetime. He had started by asking for the paltry sum of two hundred pounds, but by the time she was practically pushing him out of her precious little shop, he had dropped the price to £20. Twenty pounds! Even then the silly old cow wasn't interested.