Rauza Bal, Kashmir
Prester John Sainte-Germaine stood on a balcony overlooked the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains. In a week, his estate would be crawling with the well-to-do from around the world. He didn't care. Right now all he felt was betrayed.
Not by his Lord. No, he understood that the silence he felt at Ahriman leaving him for another was temporary. Once He was strong enough to dominate Grey, His will would be done across the world, and Sainte-Germaine would benefit.
No, Prester John felt betrayed by Incursion. A milennia and a half ago, the boy had changed his face, per John's asking, long before the name Prester John meant anything. Back then, they called him Simon Magus. Before that, they had called him his true name. What Incursion had failed to say was that the face he granted Magus was another man's. The face of the man Incursion hated more than any other.
Prester John was glad the son of a bitch was dead. And he was even more glad his scientists were taking the corpse apart piece by piece, gene by gene to examine His Lord's work.
Still, for fifteen hundred years, the appearance he had been given had allowed him to walk unhindered among the courts of Europe and Asia, in a way his true form never would have. The boy had had his uses after all, Prester imagined.
The phone rang.
"Victor, what is it?" Sainte-Germaine asked as he heard the tone in the voice calling from Japan.
"He's coming here to Kashmir to see me? And what do you mean you're quitting to work for him?"
"Victor? Victor!"
Victor Shiva had hung up.
Well, Sainte-Germaine thought. First blood goes to Grey. As he scanned his eyes around the artifacts in his office, his eyes fell upon his newest acquisition, sitting in a sword case on his wall.
Caledfwlch.
First blood, yes. But he wouldn't get the last...
