Chapter 1: The Visitor

There was a feeling of inevitability when I met you. The sense that we would be together; that there would be a moment when you would look at me in a certain way, and we would cross the threshold from friendship into something so much more.

We spoke once about lovers who kept finding each other, no matter how many times the world came between them. And I think I had to break your heart, and you had to break mine. How else would we know the worth of what we were given?

I think you were always meant to know me a little better than anyone else. And our lives were fated to converge like some cosmic dance. I know there is a terrible distance between us. But our bodies are made of celestial light, and we are hurtling through space and time, toward the most beautiful collision.

Twin Flames – Lang Leav

The visitor sat at the kitchen table and poured himself a drink.

He leaned back in his chair, unbothered by the precarious creak it gave beneath his bulk.

Outside the kitchen window, the world was a clear, cloudless blue. The little windchime that hung over the porch sounded every once in a while, with the passing breeze, while birds drifted around picking bugs from the grass and peering in the window, hoping for seed.

He sighed into his drink of choice, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out the journal he'd kept stashed there for weeks. He dropped it on the surface of the table and flipped it open, running his fingers gently over each page as he turned it. Careful not to bend or damage a single fragile sheet.

He flipped passed her account of Sorley and Malvina. Then he passed Eric and Fernanda too.

He settled on the place he knew now by memory, rereading the passage for the millionth time. She had dated it only July 2012, but his heart had flipped in his chest when he saw that she was so near to him. Just two years ago she had sat, perhaps in this very spot, and written in this diary. Written a letter to him that she worried he would never get to read. Just two years ago she had been here, and yet those two years stretched outward for an eternity. It had been the longest wait.

Gallowglass, it read.

I read now. I read and I can't stop reading. I don't think I was ever like this before. I was always too busy trying to leave the house. Trying to get out. Trying to grow up and do things that I thought adults were meant to do. Now, I check the lock three times before I go to bed.

Now, I look over my shoulder and wonder what's around every corner. Now, I can't stop dreaming up horrible things. Now, in my dreams your father is telling me to run, but from what, or who, I couldn't tell you. I tried searching for Fernando the other day at the library. I don't know what I was looking for really, perhaps just a trace of the home I had left behind. A ghost from the past to tell me it was all real, and I haven't lost my mind, but I don't know.

I couldn't bring myself to search for you. The fear of a death certificate, the fear of a marriage or a... well of anything really that would even suggest you had moved on with your life... Please don't misunderstand. I want you to be happy. I want you to be so, so happy. I want you to live and live well. I want the world for you, and knowing your family you no doubt have it, but I...

Things have been... hard. I feel like I'm walking through a dream. I feel like I'm still caught in the darkness. I feel like I've been dropped in a pressure cooker, and there's this clock ticking somewhere over my shoulder but I can't see it. I know its there though. It's ticking and it's hot, and I can't breathe and I can't sleep. I feel like I need to run but where do I go? It's all I can do to hold out until November. It's all I can hope that the fall will return me to you.

I found a poem the other day, in a book in the library. I'm there all the time now. There's air conditioning and I can't afford Wi-Fi at home. When I'm not working that's where I am.

I can't say your name here. I'm afraid that if I do, you will somehow disappear. Like, if I speak of you out loud, everything I know to be true in my head will cease to exist outside of me. Like this thing we found in each other will cease to exist. Like you will have never existed at all.

And I will be here alone in a century that is no longer my home. And the way back to you – the way back to all of you – will be barred forever. Forbidden from me. When I was Malvina, I never thought I'd want to go back. But even then, I don't think I ever stopped missing you. Wondering about you. Wishing for you.

I couldn't let myself think of you after I was Malvina. But I think I always felt you. The way I feel you now. You are more sensation than words, I think. It's fitting, I suppose. It suits you to be a feeling in my chest more than a word on my lips.

I don't know. I've copied the poem down. I told myself at the time that it was for you, but knowing the way of things, it's more for my own peace of mind. Even though I can't say your name, you are always here inside of me, right where I need you. Right where you can't be taken from me.

He traced the words with a small contemplative frown. She didn't sign her name. She'd had no need to really. It was her journal. She had never anticipated he would one day read her words. The picture she painted of her life here in between trips to the past was grim, and he turned to regard the kitchen he sat in once again trying to see the world through her eyes.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, but he did not reach for it as he supposed was expected of him. Instead, he turned the page, and read the next passage.

The next passage was dated in August. It made little sense. She hadn't known chess before 1270. He knew this for a fact. He'd been there the day she asked his father to teach her. And yet, here she was, predating her knowledge over and over again in a half-mad scribbling.

Queen. Knight. Bishop. Rook. King.

He flipped the page, hoping for some sort of explanation, but the next page was very much the same.

Queen. Knight. Bishop. Rook. King.

And again, on the next page, and the page after that.

Then beneath the final scribbling was a series of letters and numbers, something about a phantom wind, and again the list of chess pieces all lined up in the same order. Queen. Knight. Bishop. Rook. King. His phone buzzed again in his pocket, and he snapped his head up in frustration before silencing the device and turning back to the page.

He studied the numbers and felt a sinking suspicion in his gut that they belonged to a license plate. He pulled out his phone and saw Fernando's face lit up on the screen. He pressed his lips together in exasperation and answered, holding the phone to his ear.

"Where have you been?" Fernando snapped.

"You know where I am," the visitor's voice was even. His eyes were still on the license plate number in his mate's diary.

"You're going to have to do better than that," his stepfather gritted his teeth. "Matthew and Diana are—"

"Fine," the visitor said calmly. "They are fine. They've plenty of resources at their disposal. They've got Marcus and the knights. The babies are safe and healthy—"

"I know that," Fernando said. "But they keep asking after you, and I'm running out of excuses."

"Then don't give them any," the visitor shrugged.

"Eric..." Fernando started but he trailed off. He had too many questions. Too many hopes and fears. Too many losses and not enough wins.

The men fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. After a beat, Fernando started again. "You'll tell me if..."

"Of course," came his reply. "I would never withhold that kind of information from you."

"I know we've had our differences—" Fernando started but Gallowglass cut him off.

"She's your daughter," he said. "She misses you."

"How do you know that?" Fernando asked him, voice wavering between suspicion and surprise.

"She kept a diary," he said. "July 2012, she sat in a library searching for you."

There was a sharp intake on the other end of the line, and a bitter silence that the visitor knew all too well. It stung to know she'd been so close this whole time. It stung to know she had been here, and they were unaware. It left a bitter taste in his mouth even now, and he was sure it was the same for Fernando.

Fernando cleared his throat and changed the subject. "The christening is..."

"Send my apologies if you must," Gallowglass supplied.

He could hear Fernando pull the phone from his ear and press it to his forehead. He could hear the other man's mind spinning. He could feel the strain these last few months had put on his nerves. Fernando returned the phone to his ear.

"You've nothing to apologize for," he sighed. "You've given them plenty. Take your time."

Gallowglass nodded to himself, knowing Fernando couldn't see him. He spoke up before the other man could end the call.

"Before you go," he said.

Fernando paused. His silence the only acknowledgment that his stepson had spoken at all. But Gallowglass knew he was there, and he knew he was listening.

"I need you to run a license plate for me."

Meadowbrook home was a lively place to be at lunchtime on a Saturday.

The visitor adjusted his nametag, which read William, making sure it was easy for the residents and patrons to read before tying his hair back out of the way, and helping a woman named Margaret carry her tray of food to her seat.

He helped her get comfortable and settled her tray down in front of her. He offered a kind smile to the woman who patted him on the cheek.

He had almost made it back to the serving line when a voice caught his attention from behind.

"We don't see many men like you around here."

The visitor stopped and turned toward the speaker. Valentina Baez was 68 years young, but for the poor state of her mind and memory. She had salt and pepper hair, a round nose, and a dimple on her chin. But what struck him most about her were her eyes. They caught the light in the exact same way her granddaughter's eyes always had. Valentina studied him appreciatively and Gallowglass couldn't help but grin back at the woman who had raised his mate. She gestured to the seat across from her and nodded for him to sit.

She was having a good day today. He knew this from listening in on the nurses down the hall who had all sighed in relief that their typically combative and suspicious patient was well enough to take herself to lunch and socialize with other residents.

The visitor pulled out the chair in question and sat down across from her. Her eyes twinkled with mirth, and she leaned over, squinting at the name on his badge.

"William," she said in broken English, her accent lilting with every syllable of his name.

This was another thing. Valentina Baez was fluent in both English and Spanish. Most days she spoke Spanish, but with her brain having reverted back to her teenage years, she sometimes spoke butchered English as though she was still learning.

He smiled and switched to Spanish, hoping to make the burden of communication easier on her troubled mind.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, señora," he said.

She arched an unimpressed eyebrow and pursed her lips. "You speak well I suppose," she said. "But do I look like an old married lady to you?"

He tilted his head in half hearted apology for his mistake. "Hardly, señorita, please forgive me my mistake."

She grinned at him. "Better," she said, teasing.

"So, what brings you here?" She asked him archly, glancing around at the other patients with a look of mild reproach.

"Just passing through," came his reply.

She huffed out a laugh and glanced at him. "Me too," she said. "I don't even know how I got here."

He didn't let his sadness for the other woman show. She was young. If not by his standards, then for the state of her disease. So young to have lost her memory. Though she thought herself a young woman in her teens, 68 was still too soon to be holed up in a place like this.

"Sometimes I feel the same," he supplied and glanced around the old folks' home with a wry twist of his lips.

She nodded and stared at him, her eyes taking on a glazed quality, her lips turning down into a partial frown, as if her mind was slowly registering that something wasn't making sense. She admitted freely that she didn't know how she'd gotten here. She didn't remember coming to Meadowbrook. She didn't know how she had gotten to this table. Or why she was surrounded by old people and nurses in scrubs. Who was William to her? He could see her mind turning with this question over and over, trying in vain to circumvent its own distress.

She was remembering that she forgot something, but now if only she could remember all the things her mind forced her to forget.

He waited, still as a statue. Hoping her mind would settle and she would forget that she couldn't remember. Hoping her mind would calm itself back into delusion. Hoping she would at least enjoy her meal. But her heart kicked up, and her fear spiked. She flooded the room with the sharp scent of adrenaline, and the visitor knew his hope had been too good to be true.

He looked up sharply and signaled to the nearest nurse who hurried over to calm Valencia Baez down before she gave in anymore to her panic.

After the license plate number was a budget. He blinked down at the number, trying to comprehend how she had managed to last so many years with so little to her name. Blinked and tried to reconcile her meager income, her food assistance money from the government, and the cuts she'd had to make in her own resources to skirt by. Blinked and tried to comprehend this when he knew for certain that she had about a dozen properties to her name, a healthy stock of shareholdings, and several vaults scattered across the globe which held the material means of her inheritance.

She had cut costs everywhere she could, and the picture she painted in numbers for him now—

His stomach turned. He forced himself to flip the page.

Eyes lighting up in relief and recognition at the date.

15 April 2013,

Astraea:
Often confused with Dike and Nemesis, goddesses of moral justice and rightful indignation, Astraea was the daughter of the Dusk and the Dawn. She was also the sister of the four divine winds. The virgin goddess of innocence, and purity, Astraea represented the first form of justice that existed among humans before evil spread across the world. Astraea was the last of the gods to remain among mortals during the Golden Age of man. She held out for as long as she could, but as the world deteriorated around her, she fled the world of men in disgust for the way it had fallen. When things became unfixable, Astraea abandoned the world of men. Some believe that the goddess of innocence and justice will return someday to usher in a new Golden Age for humanity, others believe she is truly gone for good.

Ragnall:

From Ragnvaldr. Old Norse composed of the word "regin" which means "advice," or "counsel," and "valdr" meaning "power," or "ruler."

Also, the name of Sorley's father. Chosen by Gallowglass as a substitute for the typical Greek name bestowed on de Clermonts by Philippe during their christening after their first hundred days.

Chivalry:

Super complicated. Super not dead.

Swallows:

Migratory birds that mean quite a bit to old undead dudes that have too much time on their hands. A symbol of good luck. Through history they have been assigned many meanings. To the Greeks they were a symbol of love. To the Romans, the lost souls of children taken from the world too soon. To Christians, they are a sign of rebirth and new beginnings. And now, I guess, they mean me. Or so everyone has told me, and so says the ring that now sits on my finger. Anyone who sees a swallow pressed into the wax seal of a letter, will know that letter is from me.

Ouroboros:

A serpent who is caught in a loop. Devouring its own tale. Representative of the continuous cycle of life and death. Associated with rebirth and eternity. One of many de Clermont sigils. An ouroboros encircles the swallow on my ring, signifying to all who cross my path, that I have the favor of the de Clermont, and that they are not to trifle with me. I think it's the ouroboros, rather than the metal, that makes the ring feel so heavy.

The visitor took in her words – devoured them really – with a heavy chest and a heavy mind. He remembered it like it was yesterday. The flutter of her veil, white as death over her sun kissed face. The whisper of her gown as she walked the lonely path from the castle to the altar down the hill. The golden serpent wrapped around her wrist and her hand, the head of a snake come to rest on her index finger, in a foreboding display of strength and power. She was a fury even then. Hopelessly mortal, and of a world entirely forbidden to him. She was the beginning and end of things. She was neither here nor there. She was eternity trapped in her mortal skin.

And her eyes, they had glimmered in the sunlight as Philippe lifted her veil—

They had glittered in the sunlight, delighted that she'd reached her journey's end.

Soft and bronze and suddenly uncertain, those eyes had turned to look at him.

Astraea.

Virgin goddess of innocence and purity and justice and precision and—

The visitor shook himself and turned back to the page.

Blood rage.

He sucked in a breath.

Dangerous. Secret. Something I know nothing about at all, thank you very much. Gallowglass didn't tell me a damn thing.

Despite the way his heart stalled in his chest, Gallowglass snorted at her words, before standing and searching the kitchen drawers for a black sharpie. He sat back down at the table and removed the cap, carefully redacting her words. He knew it had been a bad idea to explain to her all that he had, but the matter had been pressing and she'd been so vulnerable back then. So exposed. The household had been so full that winter, he couldn't sit by and watch her drift into danger without warning her about his uncle's black eyes, and the acquisitive natures of many of their family friends.

He didn't regret telling her, but her written account would have to go.

Sometimes, when your instincts tell you to run, it is all you can do to plant yourself like a tree, freeze and hold your breath, and hope with all that you have inside of you that the danger passes you by. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is refuse to flee.

The visitor read this passage over and over again with clenched teeth and fluttering eyes. She should never have had to learn this. She should never have to know when it was safest to freeze, or flee, or fight. These are things he would have spared her from, if only he could have.

He turned his face from the memory of the cold. Turned from the rush of water in his mind's eye, the mouth of a cave, and Matthew's cold, black, feral eyes.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and the visitor pushed the diary away. Leaning back in his seat, he unlocked his phone and stared down at Fernando's message.

Stolen plates, it read. Victim was an old lady in Nebraska. Bite marks. Memory loss. Nothing good.

The visitor hissed and gritted his teeth, standing from the chair to pace the length of the kitchen. What were those plates doing in his mate's diary? What did they have to do with the chess pieces? What did they have to do with the phantom wind she wrote about? And what of her dreams?

Outside, an engine growled its way down the street. Gallowglass typically would have paid such a sound very little mind. But the growl turned to a purr as the car slowed outside his mate's house, crawling to a stop and idling right there within full view.

He glanced out at the car through the window as he made his way to the door. Grey. Nondescript. Sedan. Honda, from the looks of things. He tore open the door, and stared at the tinted windows, too dark even for him to see. Whoever was in the car hadn't seen him yet. This he knew with certainty. He stepped onto the porch, deliberately placing himself in the light, and drew himself to his full height. Allowing the driver to drink their fill.

If a car could draw back in fear, it would only be fair to say that this one would have. As it was, the click of the gear shift, a desperate stomp on a well-used pedal, and the scent of burning rubber flooded the street. The visitor raised his chin in challenge while the car across the street spun its wheels, overcome by panic. The vehicle tore off down the street before Gallowglass decided how he wanted to proceed. The trail of smoke and fear the driver left in their wake told him all he needed to know. His lip curled into a sneer as he tracked their retreat with predacious eyes, unwavering in his resolve. The car could be tracked easily enough. The person driving it was nothing to him but a nuisance. For now, he let them go.

He thought back to his mate's diary, and the words she had written there. Smiling ruefully to himself, feeling for the moment a bit more beastly than human, he couldn't help but think she was smarter than the driver of the car. She was a survivor, his mate.

Had she been driving that car and seen someone like him coming her way, she would have known to hold her ground. She would have resisted the urge to flee. It would have saved her life.

His phone buzzed. He answered it without looking down. He knew the screen would show Fernando's face.

"Eric," Fernando said, his voice low as he closed a door behind him and stepped into a more private room.

The visitor still stood on the porch, watching the empty street, thinking about his mate and whoever was in that driver's seat.

"Fernando," he said, and he heard his stepfather pause. The quality of his voice had changed with the threat. The old Gonçalves bastard on the other end heard the tone and knew it well. He waited for his stepson to tell him what he needed to know.

"Someone's hunting your daughter," he said, his voice rough and grating as he spoke. The young de Clermont shifted in the doorway to get a different angle of the street.

Silence rang between them.

A door opened. There was a rush of volume – voices and laughter and the clatter of dishes. The christening must have gone well.

Baldwin's voice sounded, and Fernando pulled the phone from his ear to speak to him. The door closed again and then there was silence, but Gallowglass knew his uncle was still there. A hushed conversation between the two men on the other end spoke volumes of the situation. Fernando put the phone back to his ear.

"Give me twelve hours," he said. "I'm on my way."