by Kat Ross
“I do vaguely remember that,” Vivienne said with a frown.
“They were bad men, his victims?” Cassandane gave Alec a funny look.
“Yes.”
“I would’ve let him have his fun,” she muttered.
“He was an Antimagus, Cass,” Alec replied with a touch of asperity. “Our sworn enemies, remember?”
She grunted and poured a glass of palinka, the nasty homemade moonshine she drank like water.
“The trail led to Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire,” Alec continued. “The year was 1614, I believe.” He looked at Cyrus, who nodded. “The man we sought had a strong interest in Christian mysticism. He would carve a symbol into the withered flesh. The sign of the Archangel Gabriel.”
Vivienne raised an eyebrow.
“I started asking discreet questions. They led me to the Society of Unknown Philosophers and eventually to two men. Johann Constantin Andreae and Gabriel D’Ange. They were both members and practitioners of natural magic.”
“Natural magic?” Cassandane frowned. “I don’t know that.”
Cyrus removed his spectacles and started cleaning the lenses on one sleeve. “Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa coined the term in his 1526 De vanitate. It encompasses arts such as alchemy and astrology as opposed to ceremonial magic, in particular goety and theurgy, which deals with the summoning of spirits. White versus black magic, if you will.”
Alec cleared his throat. “Andreae and D’Ange were also key figures in an even more elite and secretive organization called the Rosicrucian Order. The Order was said to consist of no more than eight members, all sworn bachelors and devout Christians. On the surface, it seemed benevolent. Charity for the poor, that sort of thing.
“I came to suspect the Order was more than they claimed, but I couldn’t prove anything. And I didn’t want to act unless I was sure. So I befriended D’Ange. I gave him the impression I might be a suitable candidate. And I finagled an invitation to his house.”
Despite the years, Alec still remembered that night. The smell of beeswax candles, the dusty bottle of wine they’d shared. D’Ange’s quiet intensity as he spoke of his new Order.
“He was called away during dinner and I took the opportunity to look around. I found a hidden door that led to a small chapel. It had a stained glass window depicting the Archangel Gabriel.” Alec’s voice hardened. “I knew then it was him. The altar had a bible and a Rosicrucian cross. I wanted to unnerve him, to goad him into making a mistake. So I took the cross.”
“What happened to D’Ange?’ Vivienne asked.
“He left Strasbourg that same night, I don’t know why. And you returned. We went to Athens to find the Greater Gate there. I never saw him again. But shortly after, the Order published several manifestos.” Alec looked at Cyrus, who had an encyclopedic memory for such things.
The old magus nodded. “Fama Fraternitatis, published in1614 in Kassel, Germany. It was followed by Confessio Fraternitatis and then The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in 1616. The last was quite different from the first two.”
“How so?” Vivienne asked.
“It was more … I don’t know, more personal. Poetical, if you will. Andreae was the anonymous editor. It related a dream by Rosenkreutz, the supposed founder of the Order.”
“Supposed?”
“We believe he was a legend,” Alec said. “A phantom. That the real founder was Gabriel D’Ange.” Alec sighed. “I never crossed paths with D’Ange again and the Order went underground after that.”
“And the cross you stole?”
“I gave it to Cyrus when I saw him a few years later.” Alec smiled faintly. “He’d just fled Prague after being tossed out a third-floor window by Protestant rebels.”
Cassandane gave a snort, eyeing her bonded with amusement. “The Second Defenestration. I told you to leave them alone.”
“Where was I while you were in Strasbourg?” Vivienne asked.
“You’d gone into the Dominion to hunt necromancers.”
“Oh, right.” She tossed the cigarette into the stove. “May I see this cross?”
“It’s in the strong room,” Cyrus said.
They followed him to a chamber with an ironbound door and waited while Cyrus produced a set of enormous keys.
“He’s like a squirrel hoarding acorns,” Vivienne murmured. “Magus, I always wondered if you had the Grail itself stashed away in here.”
Cyrus didn’t smile.
The room beyond was cavernous. Alec’s gaze took in an extravagant clutter of objects ranging from rusty swords to musical instruments from a bygone age, and a thousand other things, all stowed with care on wide floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Cyrus went directly to a glass cabinet and took out a cedarwood box. He eased the lid open.
Vivienne squinted. “I thought at least it would be a fancy one,” she said with a note of surprise. “It’s not even gold.”
The cross was the size of her palm, plain wood, with a rose carved in the center.
She held it up to the candlelight. “What does it signify?”
“There are various interpretations,” Cyrus replied. “The blood of Christ and the power of redemption. Christ’s mother, Mary, who was always closely associated with the rose. But it can also symbolize the union of opposites and the dualism in nature. D’Ange adopted the symbol, but the rose cross is much older than his Order, most likely dating back to the first century.” He paused. “This one could be that old.”
Vivienne shook her head and handed the cross back to Cyrus, who tucked it into the velvet lining. “Gabriel D’Ange,” she said softly. “I thought he might be a werewolf, but it never occurred to me that he wasn’t even the bloody abbot of Saint George’s. He knew so much about the monastery’s history, the paintings, all of it. He struck me as a genuine man of God.”
“He was,” Alec said quietly. “Or claimed to be.”
“The question is, what is he now?” Cyrus wondered with a troubled frown.
“I never saw him change,” Vivienne said. “But one of the others, yes. I think he was about to when D’Ange came.”
“And he has Anne.” Alec pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling a stab of guilt. He’d been so preoccupied with Vivienne, he’d hardly given a thought to his own sister.
“Did she know about any of this?” Cassandane asked.
Alec shook his head. “She’d only stopped to see me in Strasbourg for a single night. I didn’t tell her why I was there.”
As usual, Vivienne spoke the words no one else wanted to.
“Will D’Ange hurt her?”
Alec let out a long breath. “I don’t know. He’s a strange man.”
“I don’t think he will,” Cyrus said firmly. “Not without a reason. He always had a rigid sort of honor, if that makes sense.”
“Nothing makes sense,” Vivienne muttered. “Why now, after all this time?”
None of them had an answer for that.
17
“I’m so sorry,” Vivienne said quietly, after Cyrus and Cassandane had gone off to bed and they sat alone in the library. “It’s my fault. I should have gone with Nathaniel—”
“Hush. It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
“What if—”
“D’Ange uses the cuff?” Alec said icily. “I don’t know, Vivienne. I suppose we’ll deal with that if it happens.”
The light from the coal stove played across her high, regal forehead and generous mouth. Cassandane had given her a pair of trousers and a man’s shirt. Vivienne was tall but more slender and it seemed to swallow her up.
She was silent for a long moment. “Do you ever…. Ever wish you hadn’t—”
Alec rose and knelt beside her chair. He took her hand. “Vivienne,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I don’t regret a single moment of the lifetimes I’ve had with you. And if he bonded me right now, it would still be worth it.”
She looked into his eyes and let
out a soft breath. Then she reached for him. Alec pulled away.
Vivienne was on her third glass of palinka.
“I’ll make us some tea,” he said.
She laughed. “Tea? But that might sober me up.”
Alec stuck the bottle under his arm and stood. “I’ll be back.”
She sighed and lifted the walking stick. “Don’t you want your cane?”
Alec smiled. “I’ll need both hands for the tray.”
Vivienne leaned it against her chair and returned to staring out the windows at the unkempt garden beyond.
As Alec walked down to the kitchens, he thought again of Gabriel D’Ange. They hadn’t known each other long. He remembered only a man with polished manners and a humble air that concealed the monster beneath.
Alec puttered around the large kitchen, gathering the tea things. With his power trapped in the cuff, he had no fear of fire. It was strange to light the stove like a mortal, to bring the kettle to a boil himself, with no urge to seize the wild power of the flames and try to work them.
He didn’t know why daēvas couldn’t touch fire. Only that if he did, he would die.
He threw a handful of leaves into the teapot and filled it with steaming water. Then he added a saucer of cream, six sugar cubes and two chipped porcelain cups.
The wind howled along the slate roof as he made his way back to the library. Through the darkened windows, he could see the shapes of the trees swaying outside.
Vivienne is hanging by a thread, he thought. I’ll have to hide the palinka until we return to London.
She never, ever drank to excess, in part because she knew he despised the feeling of drunkenness, and he couldn’t really blame her for it now. He was almost tempted himself. But he didn’t want her that way, even if—
Alec was three paces down the hall when he was slammed with the skin-crawling sensation of something from the Dominion. He halted, head cocked. The house was quiet, the low wind the only sound.
Alec set the tea tray on the floor. One of the cups gently rattled against its saucer. He let out a slow breath and stood.
The corridor was dark with doors all the way down. Around the far corner, he could see a glint of light from the library. Alec started toward it, eyes flicking to either side, alert for any sign of movement. Most of the doors were closed, but a few stood open an inch or two, revealing a crack of darkness beyond.
Something was here, among them. The only question was whether he could find it before—
A shadow slithered out of the doorway on the left just ahead. It gave off cold waves of wrongness. The reek of the Dominion grew overwhelming. Alec caught a sudden flash of movement. Startled, he staggered back through the opposite door, tripping over something that crashed to the floor with a clatter like old bones. A quick look confirmed that the obstacle was exactly that, one of Cyrus’s bizarre skeletons. He collected anything outre — mermaids, giants, two-headed unicorns — and refused to listen when Alec told him they were fakes, glued together by charlatans.
Alec hopped over the bones, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the door. Moonlight spilled through the window, illuminating a diamond-patterned carpet and more strange outlines strung together with wire and wax. His gaze swept the room, searching for anything he could use as a weapon, but a creak snapped his attention back to the solid black rectangle that led into the hall.
Very slowly, a face moved into the moonlight. It had gleaming white skin and onyx eyes with no pupils.
A girl.
She’d been no more than twelve when the wight took her. She must have been pretty, with a perfect little bud of a mouth and wavy golden hair. Now the hair was dirty and snarled, and the mouth curled in a smile too old and cunning for the rest of her features.
“Daēva,” it hissed, holding out a hand tipped with black talons.
So it could talk. Not all of them did.
“Go back where you came from.” Alec’s throat felt too dry. He hated wights, especially the children.
She tilted her head and took a step forward.
Alec snatched up one of the skeletons and hurled it at her. She dropped to a crouch, tapping her nails on the floor. Rat-a-tat.
Rat-a-tat.
Wights weren’t especially strong, but they were bloody quick. If those nails opened an arterial vein, death would come swiftly.
Alec grabbed a standing lamp and used it to fend her off, steer her away from the doorway.
She feinted, but he saw it coming and swung, knocking her away.
She was back on her feet in an instant. Lunging, batting the lamp aside….
Another shadowy figure loomed in the doorway. He saw a flash of steel…. And Vivienne’s sword neatly claimed the wight’s head.
She rushed to Alec’s side, her face hard and sober. “Did it hurt you?”
He shook his head. “A few scratches, nothing more.”
Distant shouts drew them to the strong room.
Cassandane stood over two more dead wights. The heavy door had been smashed in, and Cyrus crouched among the mess inside. Half the glass cabinets were broken and his precious collection had been strewn across the floor.
Alec bit down and tasted blood. “The cross?” he asked tightly.
Cyrus scanned the wreckage, his face bleak. Then he frowned. “No, it’s there….”
He pointed. The cedarwood box lay on the floor. Alec picked it up and opened it. The rose cross still nestled in its velvet lining.
“We must have scared him off,” Cassandane said.
Cyrus was muttering to himself.
“Is anything else missing?” Vivienne asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve no idea. I’ll have to check everything against my records.”
“You can’t stay here,” she said gently. “This old heap. Just the two of you. It’s not safe.”
Cyrus rounded on her, his usually mild face ablaze with fury. “I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s been taken. Perhaps he wasn’t after the rose cross after all. I have all sort of things in here….” He trailed off, crawling over to a set of reed pipes and clutching them to his chest like an infant.
Vivienne shared a look with Alec. “We have to tell Sidgwick and Blackwood what’s happened. Launch a full inquiry. I want every resource they have bent on finding him. And if D’Ange wants to trade….” She glanced at the cedarwood box. “He seems to know where to find us.”
“First thing in the morning,” Alec agreed. He no longer sensed any danger within the walls of Ingress Abbey.
“I’ll take care of him,” Cassandane said, her eyes on Cyrus. “You go. Cable if anything happens.”
“Still think D’Ange is a harmless necromancer?” Alec snapped.
Cassandane gave him a level look. “I never said he was.”
He immediately felt stupid. “I’m sorry, Cass.”
She patted his arm. “Go get some sleep. I’ll keep a watch.”
“There’s another dead wight in the room with the skeletons,” Alec said, his gaze turning to the pair that lay headless in the hall. A man and woman. Likely the poor girl’s parents.
Cassandane gave a nod. “I’ll burn them all in the garden.”
He trudged upstairs with Vivienne. She paused before going to her own room.
“I saw the tea tray in the corridor,” she said softly. “The cups were all upright, neat as a pin.”
Alec tensed, but he couldn’t lie to her. Not his own bonded. “I sensed the wight, Viv. Before I saw it. Almost like a bad smell. It was the same in Gran Canaria with the men D’Ange sent … though not exactly. The reek of the Dominion wasn’t present. Only that they posed a threat.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think it’s because of what happened in New York?”
“I think so.”
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Well, that’s good. It’s useful.”
Alec forced a smile. “Yes. Goodnight, Vivienne.”
Part III
“
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
—Edgar Allen Poe
18
In the blustery gloom of March, Anne’s fever turned into a wracking cough. Gabriel spent the days in an armchair reading as she recuperated, though they rarely spoke. He brought her broths and tea and slowly nursed her back to health. Sometimes, she heard him playing the pianoforte in the music room, dark, funereal pieces that suited both their moods.
When Anne grew stronger, she began to take little walks around the castle. She found open rifled-through trunks full of elegant gowns and realized she’d been wearing the clothes of a dead woman, but this seemed appropriate. Part of her had died the night he caught her and she roamed the halls in a melancholy daze.
Gabriel never suggested she return to her tower, nor did he lock her in. But he never left the castle during the day anymore, and after the sun set…. Well, she knew where he went now.
Where he slept — if he did at all — she had no idea.
One afternoon, when rain slicked the windows and fog from the Channel pressed thickly against the glass, Gabriel came in with the chess set in his hands. It was the same one he’d given her in the first days of her captivity.
Anne was sitting up in bed, reading The Fall of the House of Usher. She glanced at him and deliberately laid the book facedown on her lap.
“I thought you might want to play.”
She knew he’d never apologize. Nor would she. But holding a grudge required too much energy.
“All right,” Anne said.
He pulled two chairs up to the window and laid the board. They played three bloody, drawn-out games. Anne won two.
“Not bad,” she said, leaning back. “But your schemes are too elaborate. They tend to go wrong.”
“Not always.”
“You should read Gioachino Greco’s masterwork on the subject. You might learn something.”
“Pah. The Calabrian? I met him once. He wasn’t that good.”
Anne laughed.
They played often after that and the brittle tension between them eased, though Anne thought often about the creature that attacked her. Gabriel had claimed he wasn’t born with the ability to change his form. She wondered if she could learn how to do it herself. The idea was intriguing. If she could change her form…. Well, that would alter the equation between them.