by Gaelen Foley
The butler, Gray, admitted him in short order. Max shooed away the giant guard dogs, who gave him a clamorous welcome.
“Virgil?” he clipped out.
“Downstairs, my lord. The others have also arrived.”
“Good.” Max gave Gray his opera coat, for he had been sitting in the theatre box with his lady when the messenger had brought him this most consequential communiqué.
At last, they had word of Drake.
He had sent word around at once, calling the others together immediately to discuss what to do, and he now headed down to the Pit to join them.
He paid no mind to the florid excess of the décor with its crimson walls and heavily carved wood; Dante House had been deliberately fashioned to look like some lavish bordello or gaming house in keeping with the Inferno Club’s scandalous reputation.
This façade, of course, helped to keep the decent world away. The Prometheans in particular would not have ventured near it, taking such care as they did to appear as upstanding pillars of Society.
Stepping into the dusty music room, Max crossed to the harpsichord. He glanced over his shoulder out of habit, then played the few notes that triggered the bookcase to turn away from the wall.
Gears and mechanisms based on simple clockwork science creaked beneath the floorboards. The bookcase popped away from the wall, revealing the opening.
He walked over silently and opened it like a door, stepping into the dark labyrinth hidden inside the walls. He pulled it shut behind him and made his way down to the Order’s covert lair hewn into the limestone beneath Dante House, their headquarters, affectionately known to all their London agents as the Pit.
He found his team and their handler, Virgil, already waiting for him when he arrived, the torchlight flickering on the clammy, cavelike walls.
They sat at the rough wooden table where they had planned many a mission. Rohan Kilburn, the Duke of Warrington, was wiping a smudge off the gleaming blade of his knife, while Jordan Lennox, the Earl of Falconridge, was scanning the advertisements in the evening newspaper for any coded messages that someone might have been trying to send.
Sebastian, Viscount Beauchamp, the Earl of Lockwood’s heir, had also joined them. The younger agent was drumming his fingers restlessly on the table, annoying Virgil.
The taciturn old Highlander had recruited all of them ages ago and had long served as the head of the Order in London. The men all looked over as Max jumped down lightly off the ladder.
“There he is,” Beauchamp murmured.
“Max,” Jordan greeted, while Rohan merely nodded.
“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” he said as he tossed his cloak aside and joined them.
“What’s all this about?” Jordan asked.
Max reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper. “I’ve just received a letter from Drake’s little friend.”
“The gamekeeper’s daughter?” Rohan echoed in surprise.
Max nodded. “Emily Harper. They’re in Germany.”
“What, she followed him?”
He nodded wryly, and every man there reacted with the same astonishment Max had felt when the courier had brought it to him.
“How on earth . . . does she even speak German?”
“She barely speaks at all,” Max said. “A woman of few words.”
“Now there’s a rarity,” Beau muttered.
“Well, she’s discreet. Which is why I reckon Drake trusted her years ago with information he never should’ve shared.”
“Shite,” Rohan muttered.
“Exactly,” Max replied. He hesitated. “It would seem Drake is now officially James Falkirk’s head of security.”
Virgil cursed, got up from the table, and walked away.
They all stared after him for a second, then Beau turned to Max with a dark look. “So, where exactly are they? Did she give specifics?”
“Waldfort Castle in the Bavarian Alps. It’s north of Munich. She says various men have been arriving. It sounds to me like Falkirk has called a number of the leaders together to meet there. Now we know why Drake took off.”
“Not necessarily,” Jordan cautioned.
“When do we leave?” Rohan asked bluntly.
“Wait a second,” Jordan insisted. “What makes you think this girl can really be trusted? As much as it chagrins me to remind you of the incident, now that you’ve just barely let me live it down, none of you got hit in the head with a potato by this charming little miss. I did.”
Rohan laughed aloud. The other two couldn’t help smiling. Virgil merely frowned over his shoulder, arms folded across his chest.
“The girl’s got damned fine aim, I’ll give her that,” Jordan muttered. “But one thing only drives her: Whatever helps Drake. Why would she tell us where he is when she knows what we intend?”
“He’s right, it could be a trap,” Beau agreed, but Max scoffed, shaking his head.
Max threw the paper down. “Read it. She’s begging for his life. That’s why she wrote it. She says she’s gone to bring him back. Only, at this point, she’s not sure she’ll be able to do it by herself.”
“But she helped him escape,” Jordan said skeptically. “You told us at the time that you thought she might have even been in on that whole charade of Drake’s putting a knife to her throat and taking her hostage. That’s how he made you back off.”
Max shrugged. “I considered the possibility that she might be in on it, but she was genuinely devastated after he escaped.”
“Devastated enough to go after him,” Rohan agreed. “I wonder if Kate would do that for me.”
Beau smirked at him.
“This girl is no actress,” Max said grimly. “She struck me as the sort who can barely tell a lie.”
“Oh, that’ll really help if the Prometheans get a chance to question her,” Beau muttered.
“So, what do you want to do?” Jordan asked.
Max shrugged. “We’ve got to go get him.”
Rohan nodded in agreement. “We’ll just make sure we’re ready for whatever we might find.”
“Virgil, what do you think?” Max asked.
The Highlander walked back slowly to the table. “Jordan makes a good point. This could be an ambush. Either way, leaving Drake out there is not an option we can entertain. He can identify all of you, and if he has turned traitor as a result of all he’s been through, the consequences could be disastrous.”
“Don’t forget, Falkirk has the Alchemist’s Scrolls now,” Jordan reminded them. “That’s sure to impress the rest of the Council. We’ve known for some time he’s been trying to find a way to overthrow Malcolm. James could seek to use these scrolls as a tool to rally supporters against your brother.” He directed his words to Virgil, for it was no small irony that the head of the Order and the head of the Promethean Council were brothers.
With very bad blood between them.
Max nodded, meanwhile, resting his hands on the table. “If this girl’s letter is in earnest, as I believe it to be, not a trap, this does present us with a profound opportunity. Not just to recover Drake but to wipe out the whole Council with one blow where they are gathered.”
“I say we’d better get to Munich. Fast,” Rohan murmured.
“It’ll take time. The Alps are not exactly easy terrain,” Beau remarked.
“They didn’t seem to pose much of a problem for our little tracker,” Max said with a wry half smile.
“She must have an impressive set of survival skills,” Jordan agreed with a nod. “Lucky for us that Drake chose the woodsman’s daughter for his dalliance rather than the chambermaid.”
“Actually, he never touched her. It was obvious,” Max said with a wave of his hand. “Chit’s as pure as the Alpine snow.”
“Then God help her if the Prometheans catch her,” Jordan murmured.
“Drake will protect her.”
“If he’s turned?”
“He could never turn that evil. He’d
feed us to the wolves before he would ever betray her,” Max said. “You saw how he was with us—”
“Like a rabid dog,” Beau agreed.
“But she had him eating out of her hand.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Jordan said with a shrug, directing his comment to Virgil. “Maybe he can be saved.”
“Don’t get sentimental,” Rohan said flatly. “I can still pull the trigger if you two can’t. I just need your orders.” Rohan also looked at Virgil in question.
The tall, brawny Scotsman, his wild red hair shot through with gray, considered his response for a long moment before speaking. “You’re going to have to assess the situation when you get there and deal with him accordingly. It’s impossible to say from the distance if he is with us or against us. He could have done all this as a ruse.”
“Then why would he not contact us?” Jordan argued. “Why wouldn’t he include us?”
“Maybe he thinks he can handle it on his own. I know a few agents who’ve acted likewise on occasion.” Virgil raised an eyebrow in particular at Rohan. “However,” Virgil continued, “if you catch up to them and find that he has truly joined their side, he must be sacrificed. And the girl, as well, if she tries to get in the way. She already knows too much.”
Rohan flinched ever so slightly and laid his knife down on the table. As their team’s most expert killer, he knew Virgil was speaking to him. “Yes, sir,” he promised quietly.
As chilled as Max was by their handler’s reply, he knew the Highlander was right. Drake was, at best, playing a role as a Promethean. But it would be foolish to place too much faith in his mental state.
Max had seen for himself how confused his boyhood friend had become after months of torture in a Promethean dungeon. Drake had not given up their names through all that time, but that was because his mind had shut down, his memory splitting off from itself, as it were, so that he was no longer able to tell the enemy what he knew.
At the moment, they had no way of knowing if his return to Falkirk was an act of genius or lunacy.
“For myself, I find it hard to imagine that Drake would ever betray us. He told them nothing even under torture,” Max reminded them. “I know this man. I cannot think he’d do it.”
“Well, Falconridge will make the call once you arrive,” Virgil instructed. “Whether Drake lives or dies.”
“Me?” Jordan exclaimed. “Why is it always me?”
“You’re the most objective. The best observer,” Virgil answered. “Max wants him spared for loyalty’s sake and Rohan wants him put down to protect the Order. I can always count on you to weigh both sides, lad.” The old man slapped him fondly on the shoulder.
“Sir, maybe Niall knows something about this castle. The layout, anything that could help us get inside.”
Virgil nodded. “I will talk to him.”
The agents exchanged a grim glance. It was Beau who spoke up. “With all due respect, sir, hasn’t the time has come for stronger measures than just talk? You’ve been ‘talking’ to Niall ever since he was captured weeks ago, and it’s yielded next to nothing—”
“Mind your tongue!” Virgil scolded, smacking the young agent in the back of the head. “How dare you?”
“You’re coddling him!”
“Sir, we all can see the prisoner knows more than he is telling.” Jordan spoke us with all his gentlemanly tact.
“Perhaps you’d let us question your, er, nephew before we go.”
“Aye, I can make him talk.”
“No,” Virgil shot back.
“Stop protecting him!” Rohan warned. “Whatever he is to you, he’s still an enemy!”
“Sir, he is an asset like any other,” Max said calmly, knowing that if Virgil and Warrington started, they would never get out of here. They were more like father and son than Virgil had ever been with Niall.
“I will question him myself!” their handler boomed, outshouting Rohan when he started to protest, holding a finger in his face. “I was interrogating prisoners since before you were born, you coxcomb! Now, stay out of it and go make your preparations for the mission!”
Rohan let it go with a large, disgruntled sigh.
The men exchanged ominous looks.
“I’ll arrange for the boat to take you across the Channel. Kiss your wives good-bye,” Virgil grumbled in a cynical tone. “You leave at dawn.”
“Yes, sir,” Jordan murmured.
As they got up from the table, Max heard Beau attempt to placate the old man.
“I meant no disrespect, sir. I just want you to be careful. Blood is not always thicker than water.”
“Get out of here,” the Highlander muttered, waving him off in what passed for Virgil as gruff affection.
Beau turned, met Max’s wry glance, and discreetly shrugged. Then the agents returned to the upper regions of the house and set off to gather supplies and put their affairs in order for the mission.
Virgil let out a long, weary exhalation after his boys had gone. He shook his head to himself at their warnings about Niall.
To be sure, these men were more like sons to him than the younger copy of himself locked in the nearby cell, who stared at him with such hatred like some cursed, malevolent mirror every time he went in to try to talk to him.
He knew they only nagged him out of concern, and that, indeed, they had a point. By all rights, he should be using harsher measures to force Niall to talk, but even Virgil, old, battle-hardened warhorse that he was, could not bring himself to do it.
The deep decades-old heartbreak that he had buried within himself had now resurfaced, skewing his view of this situation more than he was ready to admit.
It wasn’t Niall’s fault that he had been turned into a Promethean.
Thirty years earlier, Malcolm’s hatred had driven him to kidnap Virgil’s betrothed and marry her himself, virtually holding her hostage as a way to tie Virgil’s hands against bringing the full force of the Order against his Promethean cell.
What Malcolm hadn’t known was that Virgil had already lain with Catherine, not long after the traditional Scottish handfasting ceremony betrothing them. They hadn’t been able to resist each other, and Virgil’s honest intentions toward the bonny lass were clear. As a result, she was already pregnant as their wedding date approached.
So, when Malcolm, along with his henchmen, had abducted her out of her parents’ home, he had taken both Virgil’s intended wife and unborn child away from him.
When he first learned it, he had lost his mind in such a fit of Highland fury that it had taken three of his fellow agents to hold him back, at least long enough to get control of himself and begin to consider a rational plan.
His first concern was for her safety. And that was ultimately what had defeated him.
Every time he had planned or set out on a rescue operation in the ensuing years, he had called it off at the last minute, knowing that Malcolm would not hesitate to kill both Catherine and the baby boy who eventually was born. Virgil had not been head of the London station at that time but a field agent. One of his teammates, in fact, had been Rohan’s father, the previous Duke of Warrington. His fellow fighters had urged him to let them conduct a raid. If he was too close to it, his friends would do it for him and get his family back.
But Virgil did not dare. He knew his brother all too well. The up-and-coming Promethean leader would cut their throats before the Order agents had even gained the building. Any attempt at rescue would only bring them death. So, for their own safety, he had let his brother keep them . . . as hostages.
All that had happened long ago, though such wounds never healed.
Catherine had not long survived her forced marriage to Malcolm, murdered, he had heard, during an attempt to escape with the baby.
Once she was dead, Malcolm had kept the boy and raised him as his own.
Virgil had never expected to get his now-grown son back in his custody. He had Drake to thank for that.
Perhaps this Emily Harper and he h
ad something in common, Virgil mused. For as much as the girl refused to give up on Westwood, Virgil felt the same toward his long-lost son.
Of course, it was rather awkward, because Niall had been brought up to believe that Malcolm was his sire and that Virgil was his hated uncle.
Virgil had told Niall the whole difficult story a few weeks ago, but his son refused to believe it, despite their obvious physical similarities.
He did not remember his mother but seemed to consider Malcolm not just his father but his closest friend.
Virgil had never been so jealous in his life. But he refused to blame the lad. He’d come around in time.
He had to believe that.
He had never stopped loving his son from afar though they were strangers. It wasn’t Niall’s fault, after all, that Malcolm had warped his mind with all that occult Promethean filth. Virgil clung to his faith that Niall could still be saved.
After all, if James Falkirk could undo Drake’s Order training and turn him into a Promethean, then surely, Virgil could do the opposite, he reasoned. He could win Niall over for the Order.
That was why he had gone easy on him. He had to show his son there was another way than the Promethean creed of force and pain and cruelty and “might makes right.”
He was sure that if he could just break through the hatred Niall had been taught from his cradle, then his splendid grown son would begin to feel the bond between them. Somehow, he had to win Niall’s trust.
Hoping that something might coax the lad to share some information about this Waldfort Castle in Bavaria, he rang for Niall’s supper from the kitchens; Gray soon sent it down to the Pit on the dumbwaiter.
Virgil picked up the tray and carried it down the tunnel roughly hewn into the rock.
There were several of these subterranean passageways connecting the various functional sections of the Pit. This one led from the agents’ meeting chamber to an underground cavern divided into three holding cells.
Only one was occupied at present.
Behind the bars of the middle cell, Niall Banks had been the Order’s guest for a month and a half, ever since the night they had found him beaten to a pulp on the floor of the Pulteney Hotel—Drake’s handiwork. By now, his dislocated shoulder had pretty much healed after Virgil had returned it to its socket.