“Don’t play dumb. There are vampires keeping an eye on every move you make. No point in trying to deny it.”
Vampires?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sara said, trying her best to convince herself that the Journeyman was just a nightmare and that no contract had ever been signed.
The man Braze had named as his brother continued to stare at her without speaking for several moments, then let his breath out as he turned to regard the clouds outside once more.
Sara breathed her own sigh of relief.
“Ok, so maybe you don’t know. Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that those monsters are tracking you. For all I know, they followed you to France, too. Like me.”
“You mean you weren’t looking for your brother all this time?” she asked.
“My brother?” he chuckled, “How was I supposed to be looking for him when I thought he was dead? No. Someone I’ve been able to trust until now put me on your trail and the pickings have been good.
“I follow you. I wait. And, sure enough, once night falls the vamps come creeping out of the woodwork.”
He tapped the leather scabbard running down his outstretched leg.
“Which means I get to take the monsters out, one after another. Which is the point of all this.
“The point of all what?” Sara asked, “I’m sorry but I don't think I understand.”
He replied without looking at her, “My mission is the point.”
She heard it then. There was something about the way he said it...my mission.
Sara recalled the moment when she had first seen him. She had taken him for a homeless man, dressed as raggedly as he was. But more than anything, what had stayed with her was the look in his eyes. A look of manic zeal that she had seen before in other people, the kind of people with a message to spread. What they thought of as the good news of faith and how others would burn in hell unless they took up the call.
“So, what is it. Some sort of religious deal?” she asked.
Then, inspiration struck as the pieces of his puzzle fell into place and she continued, “Are you some kind of a priest?”
He shook his head, a smile burgeoning upon his lips.
“What a strange idea, but no. I learned early on that I wasn’t cut out for that life. That was a universe that damn near swallowed me whole, but for a great man who saved me from it and from myself.”
Ok, Sara thought, yet another strange man speaking in riddles.
“I see that it is a family thing,” Sara said, “You Abraxis men talking in puzzles, while saying more than one thing at once when you think people aren’t paying attention.”
If there had been the glimmer of amusement in his eyes the moment before, that glow was snuffed out when Sara spoke.
His voice was cold as he replied, “I am no Abraxis. The day my father abandoned me, he took his name with him, and I became Clement Duchamps. My own mother couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge me. Apparently, it was too painful for her, but at least she lent me her name.
“She did that much.”
His voice trailed away as memories stirred behind his eyes. Sara felt that she had gone too far except that safe ground with the impossible man before her was equally impossible to find.
He cleared his throat as he shrugged his shoulders. Sara could not help but think he looked like a man with the weight of the world upon them as he did it.
“So, is that what Braze thought?” he asked at last, although Sara could tell he was not waiting for her answer. In any case, this was a man who followed his brother’s way of changing the subject without warning.
“That I came looking for him? Of course, he would think that. Always the center of the universe, everything depending on him, as usual.”
“Well, you can take this however you want, but he tells me your being here is calming to him,” she hesitated a second, then said, “I can see it when I look at him...as if some burden has been lifted away because of you.”
Clement looked at Sara, then spoke.
“Good for him. But, maybe you should try seeing it from my side. For Braze, even as young as we were before we were separated, he has always seen the world as if it revolves solely around him. As if he is the hub around which the rest of us turn.
“That’s one hell of an ego, if you ask me.”
Clement rubbed his chin then continued.
“It’s not his fault, really. I can recognize that. Our father is the one who put him up on a pedestal and then kicked me into the corner.
“You see, I’m not a wolf like them. My mother was human and my father took her in a moment of weakness. That’s how he said it. It was weakness and I was the result. That same weakness bred true in me, a man who cannot change into a beast...