by Gaelen Foley
She made sure her dress was buttoned though the mirror above the fireplace revealed her general state of dishevelment. She let out a rueful sigh. “I suppose.”
He sent her a roguish wink, then went and unlocked the door.
Emily saw their visitor—an obese Continental nobleman in a flamboyant purple full-dress coat, with a high, starched neckcloth in the dandyish style.
“Pardon the intrusion, Lord Westwood, but I’ve brought someone very special to meet you,” Count Galtür said. Because of his high, restrictive cravat, he had to bend from his massive waist to see the small child by his side. “Come along, lad.” He gave the child a nudge into the room.
Emily was just about to sit down, but when she saw the boy, she stopped.
Drake had also gone very still. “What’s this?”
“This is our special guest. His name is Stefan.”
The Bavarian shepherd boy wore traditional peasant garb, a short neat jacket providing a glimpse of the brightly embroidered suspenders holding up his brown lederhosen. He had eyes of Alpine blue and tousled golden curls like a cherub.
About six years old, he literally looked like an angel that had fallen out of the sky. All he lacked was harp and wings.
As Count Galtür shooed him in, Stefan looked all around him at the room, wide-eyed, and clearly rather scared, as though even he could sense something wrong in this place, that maybe he shouldn’t have come here or trusted these strangers.
“What is he doing here?” Drake inquired, folding his arms across his chest.
“He has come to see the castle. He is to visit with us for the next few days and learn how to be a knight, then he will be our special guest on the night of the, er, feast.”
Emily felt the blood drain her face.
She had forgotten about the Prometheans’ need for a sacrificial innocent ever since Falkirk had declared her no longer suitable for that hideous role.
Staring at the little boy, apparently her replacement, she felt sick. It took everything in her not to run over, grab the child, and put herself between them and him.
“We found him well outside the nearest village,” Galtür said meaningfully, while he dabbed the greasy sweat off his bloated face with a handkerchief. “He told us he was watching his family’s flock when one of the lambs strayed. He followed it, but a wolf came, and he says he is very ashamed, but he ran away to escape the beast. The wolf took the lamb, alas, and now our poor Stefan is afraid to go home because his parents will be angry.”
Emily was repulsed by the fat man’s cloying tone.
“So, I asked him if he would like to come with us and see the castle,” Galtür said, smiling brightly at the lad. “I told him he could learn to be a knight, or even pretend to be a prince.”
“Indeed,” Drake murmured. She knew him well enough to sense his rage in that one word though he hid it from the others.
She watched with her heart in her throat as he bent down slowly to the boy’s eye level. “What do you think of the castle so far, Stefan?”
He repeated the question in German since the boy did not understand.
“Sehr groß.” Very big.
Drake smiled at the boy in calming reassurance, then Emily’s own progress in the language carried her through the rest of their exchange.
“Don’t you worry about that wolf. I will personally hunt it down and kill it. I will give your father money for the lamb and tell him that this was not your fault.”
“You will?”
“Ja.”
“Thank you, sir.” Stefan tilted his head, studying Drake. “Are you the king of this castle?”
He laughed quietly. “No. I’m just Drake.”
Emily realized at his answer that he had just made up his mind in regard to his earlier temptation.
Stefan’s arrival had done more than she ever could to remind him and persuade him that Promethean evil was not to be trifled with. It had to be destroyed.
He offered the boy his hand, and Stefan shook it. Then he straightened up to his full height once more. “Now, if you need anything, you let me know,” he instructed his new little friend.
“Thank you, Herr Drake.”
“Come along, Stefan. We have a fine chamber set aside just for you.” Count Galtür gave Drake a questioning look; he accepted their new sacrifice with a grim, subtle nod.
The fat man nodded to him, then grinned down at their oblivious victim. “Come along, my lad! Let us see if we can’t find something to eat to restore us after all that walking. Our cook has just made pastries. Are you hungry?”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
Galtür pulled the door shut, leading the boy off to get a snack and continue their tour of the castle.
As soon as they had gone, Emily turned to Drake, speechless—her horrified demand needed no words.
He turned to the window, closing his eyes. He locked his fingers as in prayer and brought his hands up to his mouth with a stricken look and a barely audible utterance. “God help me.”
Chapter 19
Bavaria
Rotherstone’s team had picked up Niall Banks’s trail along the way to Munich, but they had not yet caught up to him or located him precisely enough to corner the bastard and carry out their revenge.
Leading his comrades northward out of the quaint Bavarian capital, Max recalled the particulars from Emily Harper’s letter, and knew they should also be getting close to Waldfort Castle. The Promethean stronghold was nestled somewhere in the rugged country they now traversed.
Meanwhile, perhaps the tedium of the long, monotonous journey had worn a bit of the edge off their watchfulness that day.
All seemed quiet. The thick primeval woods showed no signs of human habitation. The thin, dry air made them weary as the endless, dusty road spiraled up the mountain.
But then, all of a sudden, as they came around a bend, gray towers burst into view above the trees, just a few miles ahead.
“Shit, is that the place?” Jordan muttered, reining in.
“Bloody hell!” Rohan immediately reached over his shoulder for his rifle. “Come on! We’ve got to catch up to Niall and stop him before he gets there!”
“Keep it quiet, though. Hold your fire until you’ve got a clear shot,” Max ordered. “Let’s not alert the whole damned place we’re here.”
“Do you think Malcolm’s up there with an army?” Jordan asked with a trace of worry.
Max nodded. “Likely.” More importantly, Drake was in the castle, as Emily’s letter had advised.
They hoped he had not moved on.
“We’ll kill Niall quietly out here in the woods, then move in closer to see if we can get a look inside those walls.”
His fellow agents nodded.
“Let’s go.”
They urged their horses into a gallop though the animals strained against the steep incline.
Max’s heart pounded as they rode. That was the first time they had isolated Niall within a finite space.
In the Alpine wilderness, the escape routes open to him were nearly limitless. But they finally had him pinned down to a stretch of ground somewhere between their current location on the road and the castle gates ahead.
The only mistake they could make at this point would be to pass him.
Or to miss the shot, he amended.
Or rouse the attention of the countless Promethean foot soldiers surely guarding the castle . . .
“There!” The eagle-eyed Jordan reined in suddenly, pointing into the forest.
Max looked over and spotted their quarry: Niall had pulled off the road to let his horse drink from a stream.
He looked as shocked to see them as they had been at suddenly spotting the castle.
Indeed, he had dismounted. On foot, he held his horse’s reins, but as soon as he saw them, he reached to get back onto his horse.
Max looked down the rifle’s sights and took a shot. It grazed the horse’s rump. The animal screamed and ripped away from Niall, carrying with it
the musket strapped to the saddle.
Still armed with pistols and dagger, Niall turned to flee. He splashed across the stream and bolted deeper into the woods.
The chase was on.
Unfortunately, once they left the road, the terrain in the steeply sloping woods was too difficult for the horses, the turf too soft and loose, too many stones and roots.
“Jordan, keep the horses!” Max ordered their injured friend as he and Rohan jumped down from the saddle. “Shoot him if he comes back out on the road.”
“Yes, go!” he said impatiently, capturing the reins of their mounts. They left him and their horses behind, racing off into the forest to hunt the man who had killed their handler.
Max cursed at the difficult sprint over angled ground, his pulse hammering. An earthy smell of rich soil rose from his every running stride. He pressed off the solid surface of fixed stones when he could find them in his path. But the seconds seemed to drag as he and Rohan raced through the same woods where, unbeknownst to them, Emily had first been captured weeks ago.
Rohan suddenly fell to on one knee, bringing his gun up to his shoulder. “I’ve got the shot.”
“Take it.”
Boom!
His bullet flew just as, in his haste, Niall tripped—fatefully—on a root.
“Shit!” Rohan hissed, though he had hit his target—in the shoulder. They heard Niall’s brief, low cry. Rohan was already reloading. “Shoot him, Max!”
But Niall returned fire: Max ducked behind a tree for cover, then, glaring with fury, he advanced, his rifle at the ready.
Rohan was a couple of yards behind him to his right as Max reached the stream where Niall had been watering his horse. Its babbling lull was the only sound; the birds had gone silent.
With a bead of sweat running down his face, Max scanned the forest, his finger on the trigger. He wanted a clear shot, but at the moment, Niall was just a blur of motion as he fled through the leafy trees.
Max had to glance down to watch his footing as he crossed the quick, rushing stream. The rocks were treacherous, slippery with moss and pristine Alpine water. When he glanced up again halfway through the current, Niall had disappeared. Max splashed on the rest of the way through the brook, with Rohan right behind him.
Niall was enraged—and in a lot of pain.
The bullet had torn through the same shoulder that had so recently healed after being dislocated by James Falkirk’s mad bodyguard. Still, he was glad to have the flesh wound compared to what he would’ve got if he hadn’t tripped.
He had recovered his pace, though, pounding uphill through the forest toward the gates of Waldfort Castle. He knew that as soon as he reached them, he could send some of his father’s men out to deal with these bastards on his tail.
He did not doubt that, by then, Malcolm had taken the castle, that Falkirk and his fellow traitors had been put to death. Either way, Niall had no doubt that his place as future leader of the Prometheans was securely restored.
All he had to do was get inside the castle gates.
He came barreling out of the woods onto the drawbridge, and instantly, the sentries’ guns were aimed at him.
“Halt! Who goes there?” they roared, clearly rattled by the shots they’d heard fired.
“I’m Niall Banks! Let me in, you fools! I’ve got three Order agents on my tail, and one of the bastards just shot me! Move, now—or you will answer to my father!”
Nothing happened.
The two Frenchmen looked at each other skeptically.
“Open the damned gates now!” he screamed, punching the metal portcullis. “I’m already shot! Do you want them to kill me? I said move!”
The older one shrugged at his comrade. The other begrudgingly went and began to raise the portcullis.
Niall snarled under his breath, glancing behind him as it inched upward much too slowly.
His heart pounded. He could feel the Order agents nearly breathing down his neck. They were just behind him somewhere in the woods.
He did not wait for the portcullis to open all the way but rolled through the narrow opening.
Jumping to his feet, he laid hold of the first guard he got his hands on. He threw the man against the stone wall, out of the way of any incoming bullets his pursuers might happen to fire.
“When I give you an order, I expect to be obeyed!” he roared in the man’s face. More guards approached while the portcullis groaned shut behind him. “My father will hear about this! You! Let the surgeon know that I shall need him shortly. You two, take me to my father.”
The men exchanged an odd, wary look.
“You wish to see the head of the Council?” the older, leathery-faced Frenchman asked.
“That’s what I just said,” Niall snapped.
The Frenchman shrugged. “Very well, monsieur. We shall show you to the great hall.”
“About bloody time,” he muttered, marching ahead of them. The two useless sentries flanked him. “Where’s Falkirk?” he demanded.
“Dead, monsieur.”
He snorted in satisfaction. “Good. Just as I thought.” It sounded like everything had gone according to plan.
Then he stepped into the great hall and realized he was wrong.
Very wrong.
For they did not take him to see his father or uncle or whatever Malcolm was to him.
Instead, they made him wait in a reception room for several minutes like a peon. A chill was already creeping down his spine when he was taken into the great hall . . . And brought to stand before none other than Falkirk’s lunatic bodyguard.
“Well, well. If it isn’t my old friend,” Drake said, relishing this moment. He folded his arms across his chest, studying Niall Banks in amusement. “I see you’ve had more trouble with that shoulder.”
The red-haired giant had gone utterly pale. “What are you doing here?”
Drake raised his eyebrows politely, lounging at his ease on the lordly wooden chair at the head of the great hall. “I might ask the same of you.”
“I was told James is dead. So how is it that you, his bodyguard, are still alive?”
“Dumb luck,” he replied with an insolent shrug.
Niall turned to the others in the room, incensed. “What is going on here? He is not one of us! This madman attacked me in London. He handed me over to the Order!”
“You were lucky I didn’t cut your throat,” Drake said serenely. “It was James who stopped me, you’ll recall—even though you tried to kill him.”
“James Falkirk was a traitor—as are you! Are you people blind?” Niall demanded. “This man is an Order agent!”
“No, he is the current head of the Council,” Emily spoke up, standing by his chair, her hand on his shoulder. “And if you want to live, you’ll give him your allegiance.”
Niall glanced around, turning pale. “Head of the Council? Where is my father?”
Drake drummed his fingers in the silence. “Let’s just say he’s not here.”
“Did he come?”
“Oh, yes, we had a charming visit. At least now I have an inkling of how he found out about our location. From you, wasn’t it? Tell me, how did you escape the Order’s custody?”
Niall narrowed his eyes at him in hatred. “I took the old man off guard. Virgil Banks. He’d dead, for your information. I strangled him. Took his keys, and let myself out.”
Drake went perfectly still, masking his horror.
Virgil’s dead? His throat closed.
It could be a lie, he told himself at once. But he dared not let his shock show on his face. Everyone was watching. Emily’s steadying touch on his shoulder brought him back to the present though his heart was pounding.
Niall looked at him with a cold smile as if he knew exactly the effect his news had had. “Now tell me where my father is.”
“Certainly,” Drake answered, recovering in the next heartbeat, though he knew not how. “He was standing right about there, where you are now, when I cut his throat.”
/>
Niall lost his mind. Jacques and his men rushed in to control the red-haired giant when he let out a roar and tried to rush at Drake. “You killed my father?”
“I did,” he clipped out matter-of-factly, rising from his chair. “If you don’t respect my authority, you are more than welcome to join him.” He drew his knife as he walked toward them. “Hold him for me.”
“Wait!” Niall got control of himself when he saw his reflection in Drake’s blade, inches from his face.
“What?” Drake growled. Thinking of Virgil’s possibly being dead, he was half-tempted to cut the bastard’s nose off.
Then in the morning, he could blind him in one eye, and the day after that . . .
“There are three Order agents in the forest,” Niall panted nervously, as though he could read Drake’s murderous intentions in his face. And perhaps he had also recalled the broken bone he’d received the last time they’d met.
“Talk.”
“They’ve been hunting me all the way from London.” He swallowed hard. “If you’re really one of us, then send your men out to kill them,” the brawny young Scot challenged.
“Kill them?” Drake drawled. “What a fool you are, Niall. The eclipse is tomorrow night. We take them alive,” he told the others. “Then I will gut them on the altar as offerings to Father Lucifer, before I kill the child.”
Then he threw Niall to the surgeon, who had just walked in. “Put him in the tower room and keep him under guard,” Drake ordered Jacques, gesturing to the surgeon to tend him. “One wrong move,” he warned his prisoner.
Niall glared at him but kept his head down as they led him out at the point of a gun.
The only reason he had not tossed Niall into the dungeon was that he did not wish to test the Prometheans’ loyalty. They had transferred their allegiance to him easily enough, thanks to James’s backing; but their sympathies might shift again if he appeared to treat Niall with undue disrespect.
After all, most of the men present had long expected Niall to become the next leader of the Prometheans after Malcolm Banks. Drake could not afford the outbreak of another battle between factions with the ceremony of the eclipse so near. Somehow, he had to hold this wild group together just long enough to herd every last one of them into that vile temple.