“The baroness is a very interesting woman. I didn’t realize she was related to such famous Nightwalkers.”
Marsh nodded., “Ah, yes, her uncle, the count. Terrible business that was back in its day.”
Elle laughed. “Why, were you there?”
He looked at her with slight surprise. “Actually, I was,” he said.
“Tell me, Hugh. How old are you?”
His eyebrows arched up at the question. “Loisa has been busy, I see.” He started removing his waistcoat. He stopped at the second button.
Elle realized that she was staring at him.
“I’ll close the screen, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, I think that might be best.” She swallowed.
He drew the divider across and she lay in the half -dark listening to him shuffle about.
The train thump-di-thumped along on the tracks below her.
“If I were an ordinarily mortal, I suppose I would be about thirty right now. In real time, I am two hundred and eleven,” he said.
“So you are a real Warlock then?” she said.
“Yes, I suppose you could say so, depending on what you mean by real Warlock.” She heard fabric rustle as he undressed.
There was a soft thump. He growled.
She got out of bed and stood by the screen to see what the cause of the noise was. She was about to peer through the gap in the panel when Hugh yanked the barrier aside. They stood in front of one another, swaying gently in time to the moving train. “This cravat,” he mumbled.
Her hands went gently to the offending necktie. “Let me help.” Deftly, she lifted the fine silk fabric and started working at the knot he had drawn tight. As she worked, she inhaled his sandalwood smell. It was mixed with tobacco and there was a slight hint of brandy on his breath. It was strange how she could discern such fine details, . It was as if she had known him for all her life.
The knot gave way under her fingers and, transfixed, she found herself caressing the top button that held his collar until it came free.
His breath quickened at her touch and his hands held hers, his elegant fingers caressing hers.
Her fingers stilled at the square of skin at the base of his neck.
“Elle, I …” His eyes were luminous as he looked at her.
“Shh …” In an act of utter bravery or madness, she stood on her toes and kissed him.
Their mouths met. The touch of his lips sparked an energy that plunged to the very depths of her. In that moment, she knew that this was the one kiss of her life. It was the touch of him she would remember forever. The kiss she would dream of when she was lonely. It was the kiss she would relive when she was alone. It would transcend the physical, the realms of Shadow and Light. All other kisses that followed, if there ever were to be any, would not compare.
He groaned and pulled her tightly against him, his lips claiming hers. She felt his body against hers, hard and powerful, aroused. His hands slid down the length of her with an intensity of desire she did not anticipate. She gave herself over to it and arched herself into him, willing him to feel her passion.
Light started flickering behind her eyelids. She fought it, for she wanted to stay in the here and now, holding on to his shirt, urging him closer in the moment, but the pull of the Shadow was too strong and she was hurled violently into the vortex.
It was summer … The golden evening sun caressed the garden like a lover with perfume of freesias and lilacs … Hugh stood on the terrace. His hair was graying slightly at the temples … He held out his hand … A woman in a strange dress walked up to him, her hair and face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. Children ran and played on the grass, their tinkling laughter around them.
She opened her eyes with a start. Marsh had pulled away from her. There was a look of utter confusion in his eyes.
“You saw something. I felt it. I mean, I think I saw it too.” He frowned and touched his forehead. He was breathing heavily.
She swallowed. There was too much to say. She couldn’t even begin to find the words.
“It can’t. You are the Oracle. You … this is interfering with everything.” He turned away from her, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. “Touching you is like drinking from a cool clean fountain after suffering from a great thirst. It is … perfection.” She saw the tension in his shoulders. “But I know what that will do in time. We cannot. Must not.”
“Um … I … ” she said.
He turned and put his hand on the screen and his eyes filled with sadness. “Elle, I think I had better close this screen. Best if you went to bed now.” He could not look at her.
She closed her eyes and looked away. He did not want her, and there was nothing she could say to change that. Like an obedient child, she stumbled into her bunk. The light on his side of the compartment went out. She could hear him shifting about in the dark and eventually it went quiet. In the darkness, she swallowed down the burning lump of disappointment and rejection that had lodged in her throat. How could she have been so stupid to let down her guard like that?
The train thump-da-thumped in sympathy, jiggling them a in their bunks, as if it wanted them to get up and do something, but there was nothing either of them could say.
As usual he was right; she had seen what was to be. Perhaps it was for the best. Somewhere in the future there would be a happy Viscount and Viscountess Greychester. They would live with their children in a house filled with sunshine and laugher. What hurt the most was the fact that she was almost certain that she would not be that woman.
CHAPTER 38
The train had stopped moving. Elle sat up in her bunk. “Marsh?” she whispered in the dark. There was only silence. She slipped out of her bunk and drew the divider aside. A shaft of metallic light from outside fell across his empty bunk. She peered out the window. They were in the middle of nowhere. Only the darker looming shapes of mountains interrupted the cloud-streaked night sky. The moon fought to make itself seen through the trees.
Something was wrong. She felt the wrongness scrabble inside her with its tiny claws, like a trapped bird.
There was a soft noise outside the compartment. Without a sound, Elle lifted the lid of her trunk and picked the Colt out of its holster. She slipped the safety catch off with a quiet click. With the revolver resting in her hand, she went to the door and opened it slightly.
“Hugh?” she whispered.
Two dark figures crashed into the compartment. One grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. Elle felt her nightdress rip as one intruder stepped on the hem.
She twisted round and kicked one of them in the knee, but she was barefoot and he was so much stronger than her.
“Let go of me, you bastards!” she said between gritted teeth. She felt a sudden surge of energy pulse though her and it crackled over her skin like static.
“Ooh, they said the little kitty would put up a fight.” One of the men grabbed her by the hair. And shook his hand as if touching her had stung him. “Now, be a good girl and come with Uncle Chunk. There are people who have business with you.”
“I am not your kitty and I am going nowhere,” Elle said. She wrestled her arms up from beside her and pulled the trigger. The discharge of the round in such close quarters was deafening.
One of her attackers loosened his hold on her and dropped to the ground like a sack of spuds, but the other held firm. She tried to aim at him, but he grabbed her wrist and twisted it back painfully. The Colt dropped to the ground and skittered away.
“Now hold still. I’ve orders not to hurt you too much,” he said as he shoved a piece of cloth over her face. An acrid smell filled her nose and mouth. Chloroform, she thought in a panic. She couldn’t breathe. The cloth was suffocating her. She wrestled her face away and took a breath so she could scream, but the world started swimming around her. “Let go of me,” she gasped, and tried to scratch at the strong hands holding her, but the world tilted … and everything disappeared into darkness.
Marsh walked dow
n the corridor of the train. He had gone to investigate the reason for the train stopping. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones.
“Problems on the track, sir,” a sleepy concierge had told him. “We have sent two engineers to clear it away. It’s probably just a fallen tree. Nothing unusual for these parts. It would be better if you went back to bed. We will have this sorted out in a few minutes and we’ll be on our way before you know it.”
Marsh looked about in frustration. There were no other enquiries that he could make. With a growing sense of unease, he turned back to the compartment.
He looked at his pocket watch. It was four o’clock in the morning. Hopefully this stop wouldn’t detain them for too long a time. He cursed himself for not choosing to travel by airship. But the next flight to Constantinople from Venice departed in two days’ time. It would have taken them longer to get there. And the thought of being stuck on an airship after the incident with the pirates made him quiver. The train was more anonymous. And he had been hoping to see Rosamund. That had been a disaster. The woman never failed to disappoint. And then he had allowed himself to kiss Elle He had tried to resist, but she was so beautiful standing before him in her nightdress. She made his insides melt when she looked at him like that. No woman had ever made him feel that way.
They would have to speak about it in the morning. He needed time. Time to woo her, to do things properly. She deserved that. He ran his hand through his hair to clear his thought.
The thwack of gunpowder igniting on steel reverberated through the train. Every nerve in Marsh’s body stood on end as his finely tuned senses felt the vibrations in the ether. That was the sound of gunfire. He started running.
He skidded to a halt outside the door of their compartment. The door was open.
“Elle?” he called. There was only silence. He was sure he had closed the door on his way out.
The tinny smell of gunpowder filled is nostrils. He summoned up a ball of light from the lamp in the corridor and flung it into the darkness ahead of him. It was a handy trick he had learned in the military, but one he had not needed to use in years. The compartment was empty but there was a metallic tang in the close space that made his blood run cold.
Elle’s sheets and bedclothes hung off the bunk. He ran his hand over them. The linen was still warm from her body and the faint smell of freesias drifted from them. He felt his chest constrict. Please no, he thought. The rug before the bed felt wet and sticky. He examined his fingers in the dwindling light with a growing sense of unease. His suspicions were correct. His fingers were covered in blood.
He peered out of the carriage window into the darkness. Nothing but silence and ominous forest spread out before him. He rushed to the other side of the carriage and flung the door open. The moon struggled its way out from between the clouds and trees. A horse snorted and shook its head. A carriage harness jingled. He heard the sharp crack of a whip and the dark shape of a carriage rumbled into motion.
Without meaning to, he shouted. They were getting away.
Marsh launched himself at the carriage. He managed to grab the back railing. The carriage was covered in something dark and sticky that smelled like tar. With all of his strength, he dragged himself up onto the roof of the carriage.
The coachman turned round and aimed a yellow blast of alchemy at Marsh. He blocked the deathblow but the eddy of energy hit him in the ribs and knocked him sideways, off the carriage. He landed with a thump on the gravel next to the tracks. Stunned, he could only watch as the carriage sped away into the dark.
He lay alone in the dark for long seconds, unable to move. Slowly, the feeling ebbed back into his body. He could feel the large chunks of gravel that lined the tracks dig into his back. He struggled to sit up, but his limbs would not respond
Up ahead, the train whistled. The locomotive let out a great huff of stream and the carriages creaked. The train started moving. He was going to be left behind.
With all of his strength Marsh tried to push himself up off the ground, but his arms gave way. He slumped back down as the last of his strength slipped from his body.
Above him, a dark shadow moved. Quiet as a whisper, it landed beside him. Marsh felt soft lace sleeves on his face as cool hands traveled over him.
The train was moving faster now. Not long before it would be gone.
Arms that were inhumanly strong dragged him upwards. He groaned as his knees hit hard metal steps. A pale face with dark eyes looked down at him.
“Loisa,” he whispered.
“Stay still, you’re bleeding,” she said. His head rolled to the side, and with odd detachment, he watched the ground move below him.
“Sir, are you all right?” The voice sounded far away. He looked up. The conductor’s face swam in and out of his field of vision. Hands lifted him and a searing pain ripped through his side. He looked at his hands. They were red. There was blood on the railing and on the floor around him. Not his blood, was it? The faces of a few startled passengers peered out from their compartments. People were asking questions about what had happened. Their faces floated about in front of him, the words sounded like noises under water. They disappeared before he could answer.
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed belatedly. Was she screaming because of him? He closed his eyes for a moment …
“Hugh … Hugh, can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes. “Loisa,” he tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t move enough to let the words out.
“Hugh. Wake up.” He felt someone patting his cheek. It was really irritating. He moaned in protest.
“Damn you, Warlock. Wake up. I’m not letting you die on this train.”
Marsh felt himself teeter on the edge of the encroaching darkness. There seemed no point in fighting it any more. He had failed everyone. What point was there in living in a world without her? Elle was gone and there was nothing he could do about it, was the last thing he thought as the oily darkness slipped over him, slick and black.
Slowly, Elle drifted into consciousness. It was dark and she could smell a familiar musty scent of leather and sweat. Her eyes felt heavy, crusted with sleep, and her tongue felt too big for her mouth. It was hard to move.
She sucked in a lungful of the metallic air and a wave of nausea swept through her. Fighting against the encroaching darkness, she opened her eyes again. The world tilted into focus. Her wrists ached when she moved and her calves were cramping. Someone whistled outside. A spark reactor hummed.
She forced herself to focus. Seats … wood paneling … the curve of a hull … silence outside … the absence of the smell of horses.
She was on an airship.
Slowly, painfully, she tried to drag herself upright. She needed to find a porthole to see where they were, but every joint and muscle screamed in agony as she moved. Another wave of nausea swept over her. She fought it, but once more everything went dark again.
CHAPTER 39
Marsh sat in the dining cart, his coffee and breakfast untouched on the table in front of him. Hunched over and brooding, he watched the station and the platform slide into view.
Bucharest. And Elle was gone.
He took a determined sip of his cooled coffee. It was bitter and set his teeth on edge.
He shifted to find a more comfortable position, but his tightly bandaged rib cage made him think better of it. The blast of alchemy and the fall last night had caused more damage than he cared to admit. He felt empty and hollow, like something had been ripped from his insides. He was almost sure he knew what that missing thing was. The power that rested within him was almost all gone. The glowing node that made him a Warlock had diminished to a few glowing grains, deep inside him. And for the first time in his life, he was properly afraid.
A slight commotion on the platform caught his attention. A group of liveried attendants were dragging a clutch of black-lacquered sarcophagi from the train onto a trolley. He recognized the gilded red family crest of the a dragon on one of the smalle
r coffins. It was Loisa Belododia’s traveling coffin. She was on her way to her family’s winter palace in the Carpathians. It was an ideal place for her kind this time of year because the days were short and overcast. Nightwalkers thrived in the cold.
Loisa had saved him last night. In the compartment, when no one was about, she had dripped a few drops of her ancient blood onto his wounds. It was not enough to heal him, but she dared not give him more. The mixing of Warlock and Nightwalker magic was too dangerous. The blending had been known to turn the recipient into a grotesque and raging monster. The drops of black blood, thick like molasses, knitted the broken bones and sealed up his ruptured organs. He survived.
Loisa had sat with him for a long time, with her cool fingers resting on his arm. Shortly before sunrise she had leaned over and kissed his brow. She had whispered a prayer in the old language that he would be well, before the first rays of sunlight had sent her rushing back to her compartment in a cloud of black lace that trailed behind her.
He watched the trolley of coffins move off the platform. Loisa could be no further help until sunset. But by then, she would be safely ensconced at the winter palace for the season.
What did Loisa say to Elle last night? Loisa was one of the old ones and, as was the case with most creatures blessed with immortality, she thrived on gossip and discord. Not that it really mattered now. There was no way of knowing what Abercrombie would do with Elle. The mere thought of it made him queasy. He stared darkly into his cup. He had made a complete mess of things. He was a failure.
He sighed at the stillness of the carriages. The train had better hurry up. He needed to get to Constantinople without delay.
The conductor walked past with his pocket watch in his hand. Marsh signaled the man over to his table. “Excuse me, when are we departing?”
The conductor looked at him apologetically. “We will have a three three-hour wait here, my lord. They need to stock and realign the carriages.” He cleared his throat. “Also, there is the matter of reporting what happened last night to the police.”
A Conspiracy of Alchemists Page 23