The old Ford made it to the top of the hill and about another five kilometres before it sputtered to a stop. Swearing, Matt put the truck in neutral and manoeuvred it off the narrow road and under a copse of trees. It was dark now, and the last vehicle they’d seen – a Fiat packed with camping gear and an elderly couple who waved and smiled as they passed – had been a while ago.
Em yawned. ‘Are we there yet?’
‘Close,’ said Matt. ‘Maybe a few kilometres from the main road that’ll take us to Seville, but I think we’re going to need another vehicle. Gimme a sec. I’ll take a look at the engine, see if I can figure out the problem. Otherwise, I’ll animate something.’
‘OK,’ said Em sleepily. ‘Be careful out there.’
Matt stared at his sister, at the way her eyelids were drooping.
‘You really pick your moments to nap, Em,’ he said. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, we’re trying to save Rémy’s life.’
‘Sorry,’ Em mumbled. ‘It’s just… I feel so calm and comfortable.’ She giggled faintly. ‘Even with the smell of petrol seeping in from the dashboard and the springs stabbing me through the seat.’
Matt outlined a torch in his sketchpad, ignoring the pages of images from earlier in the day. He did his best to peer at the engine using the animation’s faint light. Behind him, the high brush whistled in the warm night breeze, carrying with it the smell of manure and the sound of something big rushing across the field towards them.
Matt whirled round, and stared up into the dark face of a man seated on a huge black horse.
‘My deepest apologies for your sister’s forced siesta,’ said the man, jumping from the saddle-less horse with an ease that belied his size.
‘Since I could not be sure of your reaction to my sudden appearance, I decided encountering you one at a time might be the safest course of action. I am Don Alessandro de Mendoza,’ said the man with a bow. ‘But many know me as the Moor of Cadiz.’
Matt didn’t reply right away. He just gawked. The Moor looked exactly as he had sketched him only hours earlier, climbing from the rubble of the Grand Inquisitor’s palace with the body of a small boy on his back. But instead of torn robes and breeches, he looked like he was heading to a rodeo or to perform for a country rock band, in black jeans, a black cowboy shirt with silver buttons and shiny black cowboy boots. He still had his knives, though.
One in particular caught Matt’s eye, its black handle etched with the symbol Rémy bore on his neck, its sharp blade tucked into a leather sheath at the man’s hip. He didn’t look any older than when Matt witnessed his escape from the rubble, which meant, if Matt’s calculations were accurate, the man was at least five centuries old but didn’t look a day over thirty.
‘Matt Calder,’ said Matt after a moment, extending his hand. The Moor shook it warmly. ‘My sister is Em. We’ve been looking for you, sir.’
‘And I you,’ said the Moor. ‘I lost you in London. I had to follow you here by more traditional means. Airplane travel is a difficult experience for me. Even after all these years in the twenty-first century, I find it terrifying.’
‘You were in London?’ Matt asked. ‘Rémy was looking for you there.’
‘He found me,’ said the Moor. ‘In a way.’
‘But how did you find us?’ Matt wanted to know.
The Moor studied Matt in the glimmer of the animated torch. With his pale skin and black clothing, the young man seemed half of the world and half not. The Moor gazed at Matt’s dark irises laced with threads of gold, but as he was a man who had lived during an age of miracles and magic, he didn’t comment.
‘You and your sister have an unusual combination of powers,’ he said.
‘You have no idea,’ said Matt.
‘You leave certain auras in your wake. Over the years, I’ve become quite sensitive to auras.’
‘You’re a Guardian,’ Matt said. ‘Aren’t you? Otherwise, Em wouldn’t be snoring inside the truck right now.’
The Moor gently banged his hand against the door, startling Em awake. It took her a beat to take in the scene outside before she pushed open the cab door. The Moor helped her down then, before releasing her hand, he kissed it gently.
‘I hope this way of greeting is still acceptable,’ he said. ‘It’s a very long time since I’ve been in the company of such a powerful woman.’
‘That way of greeting should always be acceptable,’ Em said, staring up at the Moor’s eyes. ‘I recognize you from Matt’s drawings. I am so happy to meet you. Have you been following us?’
‘I have been watching over Rémy since he arrived in London, but you all left faster than I had anticipated,’ said the Moor apologetically. ‘Without an Animare by my side, I cannot travel quite as quickly. But that is a story for another time.’
From a distant bend on the mountain road, Matt spotted headlights coming towards them. The Moor led his horse behind the trees and tied him up before helping the twins push the truck out of sight. They climbed up into the flatbed and hid until the car had shot past. Then Em and Matt filled the Moor in on what had happened to Rémy, and what they had discovered from Matt’s flashback.
‘I should have come more quickly,’ the Moor said fretfully. ‘I’ve taken too many risks with that young man’s existence.’
Heat lightning streaked across the sky above them.
‘Are you Rémy’s dad?’ Em asked. Matt scowled at her.
Jesus, Em.
I’m just asking. It’s possible, don’t you think?
The Moor’s expression was sombre. ‘My children perished in another age,’ he said. ‘But it has been my sworn duty for centuries to protect those with the mark of the Conjuror, just as it has been the will of Don Grigori and the Grand Inquisitor to kill or enslave them and use their power for their own survival. I was protecting a Conjuror that day, the day you saw in your sketchpad, Matt.’
‘The little boy?’
‘I rescued him that day, but lost him to vile treachery,’ said the Moor. ‘He was a son to me, and yet someone I trusted betrayed us and he was enslaved and put on board a ship bound for Hispaniola, for the plantations. I never saw him again.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Em, with tears in her eyes.
The Moor’s voice grew quieter. ‘It took me many years to recover from his loss. I rested among people who understood and protected me as I wondered how to make amends. I vowed then that while I had failed the boy, I would not fail his descendants. I searched for centuries until I found the Duprees. The mark was upon them. I fell to my knees and thanked my God for his mercy.’
‘Who did you find?’ asked Em. ‘Rémy’s mother?’
‘Rémy’s grandfather. My attentions, alas, were unwanted. He believed I was the Devil.’ The Moor looked wry. ‘I kept watch just the same. I learned to blend into the background. I guarded Rémy’s mother from the day that she was born. As the fates would have it, I was with her the day that the Camarilla recognized her at a concert in London, when she was still in her youth.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘But she gave me the slip. Love, I believe, was the cause.’
‘Rémy said his dad met his mum at a London concert,’ said Em.
The Moor nodded.
‘I persuaded her to leave London, return to the New World. I had hoped she and her new husband would be safe at her family home in Louisiana. But it seems that it was the worst place I could have sent her.’
‘The painting,’ said Em.
‘The painting,’ the Moor agreed. ‘I had sent her to the heart of the viper’s nest. For the one thing I did not know was that the Camarilla had sent the painting as cargo on the same slave ship as the Conjuror. Twice I have failed Rémy’s family. I will not fail him again.’
Em stepped away from the lorry and looked up at the wisps of clouds skirting across the pale yellow moon. For a split second she couldn’t help wondering if Zach was sitting on the jetty in Auchinmurn staring at the same moon. Had she made a mistake in following her brother instead of her heart? Em cut off the thread of these thoughts. Regrets were dangerous.
She turned back to the Moor, who was watching her intently.
‘We’ve read parts of Annie Dupree’s journal and we’ve heard Rémy’s story,’ she said. ‘But what I still don’t understand is who Don Grigori and the Grand Inquisitor are, or what they want.’
The wind rustled the trees noisily, the air warm and heavy. Thunder rumbled in the distance as more lightning shot through the sky, illuminating the red mountains.
‘These beings are more dangerous than you can possibly imagine,’ said the Moor. ‘Centuries of hunting them has taught me that much.’
‘Beings?’ Matt said. ‘As in, not human?’
‘Don Grigori may once have been human,’ the Moor said. ‘But the Grand Inquisitor is from the beginning of everything, a divinity drawn from the darkness and formed in chaos. Some have said he is a fallen angel, banished from heaven when God created his kingdom on Earth. Others believe he is Orcus, ruler of the underworld.’
Matt squeezed Em’s hand to squelch his rising terror. Em squeezed back, harder.
‘When the Grand Inquisitor is loose in the world,’ the Moor continued, ‘his power exceeds that of all the Animare and Guardians put together. Time is a blink of an eye to him. And he has a wicked plan.’
‘What is it?’ said Matt, trying to prevent his voice from trembling.
‘With the help of his Camarilla, the Grand Inquisitor is preparing Earth for something called the Second Kingdom. And the only one who can stop him is a Conjuror.’
Three long fingers of lightning shot across the sky, illuminating the curve of the narrow road and the scrub brush. In that split second, Matt saw four men in commando gear with masks and night-vision goggles, crawling in the scrub towards the truck. They were carrying guns and gas canisters.
‘Camarilla!’ Matt shouted.
The Moor’s head snapped round. Before Matt and Em could react, he had torn the night goggles from one man’s face and broken another’s forearm with a snap kick. A gun fell at the howling man’s feet. The Moor kicked it into the brush.
But as fast as the Moor’s movements were, he wasn’t fast enough. Even as he whirled about to fight off the third attacker, a canister of gas flew through the air, rolled on to the bed of the truck and released its poison.