I don't own Twilight, Stephanie Meyer does. I just play there.

CH. 11

The man sighed loudly, sliding down into the steaming hot water in the centuries-old copper tub, his eyes closed, his nude body relaxing from the heat. Silently, a serving man moved through the room, placing scented, hot towels on the rack, and lifting the discarded clothing from the floor. He placed the SIG/Saur .357 pistol on the shelf across the tub, next to the bottle of Pernod-Ricard Perrier-Jouet champagne chilling in the ice bucket, the single crystal glass standing incongruously on the bath shelf beside the deadly gun. He kept his eyes averted from the man in the tub, never noticing the myriad scars tracing the man's history in his skin. He concealed with practiced ease his creeping fear of the man and never looked back as he left the room, carrying his master's discarded clothing.

Wooden floors of deep ochre, polished to a high sheen, met windows, tall and narrow, looking out over a vast city alive with neon, and split by a dark river crossed with lighted bridges, a panorama the man ignored. His breathing deep and even, he controlled his body easily after many years of long practice. Nothing in his countenance indicated that the glittering foil around the top of the champagne bottle was removing itself, along with the wire holding the cork in place. As the foil drifted gently to the floor, the cork slowly twisted out of the neck of the bottle as it rose to pour gently into the crystal flute. The bottle settled back into the ice bucket as the glass floated to the man's hand. He sipped appreciatively, reflecting that the exorbitant cost of the wine had been well worth it. It was custom bottled for him alone, flavored with honey that came from bees kept in an isolated mountainside village in the remote Alps. He sighed gently, slipping a little deeper into the hot water as he contemplated his next move. The fingers of his other hand traced the outline of the gun as he contemplated the latest unfolding of his plans.

"Ah, Katharine, Katharine," he murmured. She was the curse of his existence, but sometimes he remembered how it had been between them, in the beginning. His lips curved in a small smile as his memories played through his mind.

They had been children together, the most outstanding children ever trained by the long-gone Templars. It had only been right, proper, that she should belong to him. He knew, almost from the beginning, that it was he who was destined to rule. It was he for whom the Templars had labored, it was he for whom they planned, it was he for whom the band of gifted children had been gathered and trained. He knew, without being told and despite the pretense to the contrary, that all of it was for him. They were his, as they should be, his to rule, his to use, his tools to remake the world for him. But he was not a foolish child, and had learned already that adults were unprepared for his brilliance in someone so young. To say these things aloud, to force adults to acknowledge him before he was ready to assume his rightful place, before he came into the fullness of his power, would have been folly. And so he had waited, all through the long, bitter years of their training, waited for the final secrets to be imparted to him, waited through oaths he never intended to keep and through rituals that meant nothing but power to him, waited to be acknowledged, waited to be followed as was only his proper due. He waited too, for Katharine to grow into womanhood, so that they could be joined as man and wife. She was for him, he knew it. He had known it from the moment he first saw her furious red face and long red braid struggling in the practice yard when she was only seven. Why else would their mentors bring a girl, a mere female, no matter how gifted, how intelligent, how skilled, into a group of men who had all but ruled the known world? Training her, even the knighting, which he had objected to but held his peace over, all served one purpose: to make Katharine the perfect mate for the man who was to rule the world. And in the beginning, she had recognized his innate superiority. She respected him. She never competed for leadership with him, like the others. She never tried to force him to her will. She felt no need to measure herself against him, which he knew meant that she accepted his superiority. She had never fought him physically, though they had sparred lightly together, and he understood this mark of respect augured well for their future. While she argued with him, and disagreed with him in the classroom, she never did so away from their teachers, which, he knew, meant that it was only for show, only for the classroom and the foolishness of their teachers. Even when she began to receive training that he did not participate in, she kept her face properly lowered when speaking with him, and was properly embarrassed to receive attention form their teachers that he did not. He knew, he always knew, that Katharine accepted, even welcomed her role as his helpmeet. She had always show reticence in his presence, proper deference for his rightful lordship over her, and he loved her for it. He courted her for years, letting her know just how highly he valued her, letting her know that he was superior to other men, that she was most fortunate that he loved only her. They were knights, but they were not bound to celibacy. He wanted the binding of marriage, but some of their mentors disagreed. He had dealt with those who objected to his plans as they deserved, and Katharine had not needed to know that those deaths were anything but the accidents, the natural course of events for those men. Two years after their knighting, he and his sworn men took Katharine away from their hidden base in order for them to be married.

But he was betrayed. Katharine, the woman groomed, trained, created for only him, defied him. She had flatly refused him. That was not something he was willing to let pass. The priest was old, and compliant, and he and his Katharine were married. It was unfortunate that she was bound and drugged at the time, but the marriage was valid and he wasted no time in consummating it. He thought that perhaps her reticence stemmed from her doubts about marriage in general, at least for her, since she had been raised by men and treated almost as a man for far too long. Surely, once they were married, in every way, Katharine would come to her senses and accept him as her lord and master, as women were supposed to do. Certainly, once she understood that he meant her to be his consort, to sit at his feet as he commanded the world, she would admit her true feelings for him. He wanted heirs, strong sons to follow after him, and Katharine was the perfect woman for him. Her sons would be strong, gifted men.

But he had been betrayed yet again. Katharine had not accepted him, or the marriage. Once the drugs wore off, she escaped, killing two of his men in the process. She had broken the marriage and shattered his plans to use the treasures of the Templars to solidify his rule of Western Europe, the first step in his plans. She and seven others from the band of gifted knights had removed the treasures from his grasp and hidden them elsewhere. They had withheld the knowledge from the final secrets he had never been given. They locked him out of the other worlds, kept him from his first plans to transport an army from the parallel worlds into his own, an army he planned to use to conquer every country, every people on earth. For over six hundred years, Katharine had forestalled or delayed his plans. At every turn, she was there, she or her minions, defying him, denying him his rightful place. He had tried, more than once, to have her killed, or even to kill her himself, but he had never quite managed it. Nor had she managed to kill him. He thought that was because, deep inside, she still loved him, wanted her place with him, and struggled to resist his command of her heart. He sighed again. Sometimes, this business of being the proper ruler of the world was a challenge. Dear Katharine, dear, dear Katharine, who persisted in her stubborn refusal of his right to rule, to rule her.

So he began to search for allies who were different, not influenced by the foolishness of Templar teachings or the judgments of a delusional woman. Some of those allies were able to carry him travelling between the worlds, though he could not do it on his own. The human tools he used to communicate with those allies were expendable, which was fortunate since they didn't seem to last long. He breathed deeply of the scented steam curling around the bathing room, well pleased with the direction his plans were going. The advent of new allies for Katharine didn't disturb him overmuch. They were, he knew, vampires, and he had on his side some of the rulers of the vampires. This was nothing he hadn't foreseen, and planned accordingly for. It was Katharine whose plans were doomed to failure, new allies notwithstanding.

And he looked forward to her failure. After all, there was debt between them, a debt he looked forward to settling.

"His name is David de Morgan," she said softly, pronouncing the name in the French manner: Dah-veed dee Morgan.

"You do know him," said Jasper firmly.

"Yes." She gazed at the Cullens thoughtfully, her expression calm, but Jasper could feel the rock-solid determination, the implacability of her resolve where this de Morgan was concerned. "He was one of us, one of the last Templars. He had been selected before I was born, because his gift of telekinesis was evident even as a toddler. His father was known to my great-uncle. He underwent much of the same training I did, and was knighted, drinking of the Holy Grail, at the same time I was."

Carlisle snapped his fingers. "Of course! The Holy Grail! That is why you are immortal, or nearly so."

Finder smiled. "In my case, the Grail isn't the only reason for my longevity, but for de Morgan, and the rest of us who were the last knights, it is. But the Templars who were our teachers began to distrust de Morgan as he grew into manhood. He was…too perfect, too certain, too…" Finder trailed off into silence, obviously searching for the correct words to explain something sensed rather than seen.

"I heard him speaking to you," Carlisle offered. "His voice is truly beautiful, like...like what God must sound like." Edward, hearing the voice in his father's mind, nodded in understanding. "Or like the speaking voice of music," he said.

"Yes. He is like that," agreed Finder.

"Why did your mentors come to distrust him?" asked Jasper.

"Do you know how most humans instinctively shy away from you, an utterly instinctual reaction to a danger their conscious minds do not perceive?" At their nods, Finder continued. "I believe that the wiser of my teachers listened to their instincts, and thus prompted, began to take very careful observations of de Morgan."

"But you, you never trusted him, did you? Why not?" asked Esme, certain that Finder had always feared this strange man who had frightened Carlisle.

"Because, strange as it seems, I never saw him as anything but purely evil. Even as a child, I feared him. Much of my childhood was spent avoiding him, hiding my abilities, my mind from him. I knew, from the first moment he looked in my eyes, that he was evil. I said nothing at first. A child, judging her elders, especially a female child, was not likely to be taken seriously. Even though I was accepted, loved even, I was, for some of my teachers, still a female first. And when I grew old enough, learned enough to be able to begin to selectively speak to my mentors, de Morgan killed them."

"Why didn't they stop him? Why didn't they see what he was?" Straight to the point as always, Emmett believed in the direct approach to every problem.

"Likely part of his gift was being able to hide his true nature, Em," said Jasper.

"I thought all of you Templar people were gifted. Why didn't someone else see what you saw?" asked Rosalie disdainfully.

"Some did, quite early, in fact. They protected me for a long time, and paid the price. De Morgan killed them. It looked like bandits or accidents, but he killed them."

"Wait a minute. I thought you were immortal." Seth was puzzled at immortals being killed, even by others. Something didn't fit together yet.

"I do not like the term "immortal", young Seth. It does not accurately describe my state. I heal almost instantly from most things, I have an immune system that is unparalleled, preternatural reflexes and strength, and I have drunk from the Holy Grail. But I can be killed. I age, though extremely slowly, which indicates to me that some day I shall naturally pass away, if accident or mayhem doesn't get me first. I am not, thankfully, immortal."

Carlisle tilted his head. "Thankfully?"

Finder smiled. "That I can, eventually, die naturally, is my anchor to my humanity. I believe, you see, in a creator god, and in my ultimate meeting with it. My humanity is what keeps my honor intact, for I cannot go to God with it broken. I believe all sentient beings have souls which return us to God, and which we must keep unsullied to the best of our abilities. If I ever once believed that I could not die, that I could not end, it would be easy for me to use my power for only myself. It would be easy to judge, to kill, to view the short-lived as expendable with myself as the legitimate ruler by right of superiority. But I am not automatically superior to anyone. I am only superior by the size and rightness of the choices I make, and that is a temporary state that can always be altered by the next choice. You must understand my position, Dr. Carlisle, for you have made similar choices, you and your family."

"And that is why this de Morgan is evil. He believes he has the right to rule to kill everyone who resists him, because he is superior by right of birth, by the right of his gifts, whatever they are." Edward's summation was damning and implacable.

"Yes." Finder bent her head, not meeting the family's eyes for a long moment. "You do understand that you Cullens, by name and by association, are extraordinary. You have found the same kind of commitment to honor without the easy anchor of humanity that I have. You are far stronger than I, and you have my unqualified admiration."

The family looked at each other, noting Carlisle's pride, Esme's love, the shimmering bonds of commitment between them all, something beyond friendship or alliance, something forged of love, and found themselves smiling.

"So for you, this is a matter of honor?" Bella was genuinely trying to understand this strange, small woman who was so old and so gifted, so very dangerous, and who had spent centuries trying to live up to an ancient code of honor.

Finder smiled, a broad grin that lit up her entire face. "Yes, Miss Bella. That is precisely why I am doing it. For me, honor does not end."

"Nor does it for us, Finder," said Edward warmly, and the Cullens agreed.