by Kat Ross
“Bon soir,” he said cheerfully.
Balthazar froze for a moment, then strode to the sideboard and poured himself a drink.
“You could have asked for an appointment.”
“I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“And what is the nature of this impromptu call?” Balthazar inquired with a thin smile, his mind racing. A visit from Gabriel D’Ange was not something one generally hoped for. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s rather late.”
“Straight to the point? All right, then. Bekker’s in town.”
Balthazar stilled.
“Are you sure?”
Gabriel tossed something on the table. Balthazar picked it up. It was heavy card stock, dark blue with gilt lettering. An invitation to a masked party at the Picatrix Club the following night. Gentleman only.
“He’s calling the Duzakh together again.”
Balthazar fingered the invitation, then dropped it back on the table.
“Why are you telling me this?”
Gabriel laughed. “Let’s not play games. I know you had a hand in the civil war. Whispering in this ear and then that one, intercepting some letters, forging others. Pushing those fils de putes into devouring each other.”
“And what if I did?”
“Your protégé. Lucas Devereaux. Didn’t Bekker kill his family?”
Balthazar’s jaw worked. “You know he did.”
“So we both have reason to hate him.” Gabriel stretched his boots toward the fire. “I plan to attend. I have a few men, but I could always use another.”
“Sorry, I’m busy that night.”
Gabriel turned cold eyes on him. “Yes, you’ve always been a mercenary, haven’t you?” The tone was withering. “Loyal to none but yourself. But some of us have a higher purpose.”
Balthazar drained his glass. “Are you still calling yourself an archangel, Gabriel?”
“Not anymore. I’ve mellowed.”
Somehow Balthazar doubted this.
“A temporary alliance only,” Gabriel persisted. “I’ve had … setbacks lately. The Order’s numbers have been winnowed.”
Balthazar picked up the invitation again, studying it. There was no name specified, which didn’t surprise him. The Duazkh were nothing if not paranoid about their true identities.
“How did you manage to get one? Doesn’t Bekker loathe you?”
“I put out the word that I had something of great value.” Gabriel reached into his pocket and withdrew a leather glove. He put it on, then reached into a different pocket with the gloved hand and drew out a thick gold cuff. It glowed in the firelight. “A peace offering.”
Balthazar covered his shock. Such talismans were rare indeed. “Where did you get that?”
“It was Vivienne Cumberland’s. You know her?”
“By reputation only,” Balthazar lied. “Did you … harm her for it?”
“No.” Gabriel returned the cuff to his pocket.
A strange wave of relief passed through Balthazar. “What do you plan to do?”
Gabriel shrugged. “None of them trust each other. They’ll be ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. We go in and liven things up a little. Once it all goes to merde, it will be a free-for-all. I’ll improvise something nasty for Bekker, never fear.” He stood. “Bring your man Lucas. I hear he’s a brawler.”
Lucas. He should have returned by now.
“Where is he?” Balthazar demanded coldly.
“He’ll be along soon, I’m sure.”
“If your men laid a hand on him—”
Gabriel walked to the door, his dark coat blending with the shadows. “It’s time to choose sides, old friend. Keep the invitation in case you decide to cancel your plans. I have another.” He paused, his voice soft. “It was good to see you again. You’re not an easy man to find, Balthazar. No, not easy at all.”
When he was gone, Balthazar raised an unsteady hand to his forehead. Gabriel was telling him he could track him down anywhere, anytime.
Not for the first time, Balthazar wished he’d never passed through that flyspeck village in Gaul.
A minute later, Lucas burst into the room, his clothes disheveled though he appeared unhurt.
“Fucking bastard,” he muttered. “I saw him leave. Two of them held me at gunpoint in the stables.”
Balthazar set his empty glass down, his good mood utterly soured. He handed Lucas the invitation. Lucas’s eyes narrowed as he scanned it. He knew who owned the Picatrix Club.
Jorin Bekker. The worst of the Duzakh by far, and that was saying something.
Officially, Bekker was a Belgian national, a wealthy merchant with business interests in the Congo and elsewhere, but that was simply a matter of convenience. Bekker’s allegiance was entirely to the gold he’d amassed in the slave trade and other vile endeavors. Balthazar knew he was the sort of man Gabriel despised with particular intensity. Bekker was no run-of-the-mill killer. Thousands had suffered at his hands, although he kept them clean these days, delegating the dirty work to others.
And Gabriel D’Ange…. He never left anything to chance. Never improvised. His schemes were always meticulous and utterly ruthless. And he’d been trying to get to Bekker for centuries now. Jorin was the one man who’d managed to elude him. Which meant he had something up his sleeve that he wasn’t sharing.
Gabriel had Vivienne’s cuff. The fact that he’d worn a glove to touch it meant he hadn’t used it yet, but God only knew what he intended — and what Balthazar would be walking into if he accepted Gabriel’s invitation.
“What are you going to do?” Lucas asked, fingers straying unconsciously to the scar on his face.
Bekker had given him that when he left him for dead as a young child.
Yes, Balthazar thought wearily, that’s an excellent question.
What the hell am I going to do now?
The grandfather clock in the hall chimed four o’clock as Balthazar stared into the banked coals of the fire, unable to sleep.
If he did go to the Picatrix Club, there was a fair chance he wouldn’t walk out again. Balthazar had many enemies among the Duzakh, not all of them dead, unfortunately. One might recognize him despite the mask. He was a tall man, taller than most. That alone would set him apart.
If he didn’t go…. Well, Balthazar didn’t truly believe Gabriel would punish him for it, that wasn’t his style. But it wouldn’t earn him any goodwill either. And Lucas Devereaux was like a son to him. If there was a chance to see Bekker dead….
Balthazar rubbed his forehead.
A true existential dilemma.
Not to mention the damned cuff.
If not for me, Gabriel would have lived and died on his father’s farm, likely by the ripe old age of forty or so, and that would have been the end of it.
Balthazar had been on a recruiting trip for Neblis, searching for children with the spark to wield a talisman. Only one in a thousand mortals had it. Those who served the Persian king wore the cuffs of the Water Dogs and those who served Neblis wore the chains.
It wasn’t something Balthazar was proud of it, but he’d done it. And one day he’d found himself in a tiny village near the sea, leading one of these children from a thatched hovel to the horse Balthazar had left tied to an apple tree. Gabriel’s parents had been both deeply religious and desperately poor. Balthazar purchased the boy with minimal fuss, promising a vague apprenticeship. His mother wept when they left but Gabriel himself was dry-eyed and full of questions.
Balthazar trained him personally in the arts of necromancy. He was clever and fearless, and at first Balthazar thought he had great potential. But he soon revealed a rebellious streak and his own moral code that no number of beatings could break. They just made him harder. More obstinate.
And yet even after Neblis was dead and her dark lords scattered across the globe, Gabriel had never come after him.
Balthazar suspected it was because he too had worked against the Duzakh.
Hono
r among thieves.
Now he rose and and pressed a hidden panel near the fireplace, revealing a cache of talismans he’d collected over the years to hide them from the Duzakh. It was his life’s work, a way of atoning for the wrongs he’d committed and, in all honesty, continued to commit.
He lifted a set of necromantic chains, running the links through his fingers. Taken during the Purge, when Balthazar had seized the opportunity to part some of the worst of the Duzakh from their source of immortality. The iron was cold and heavy in his hands, shimmering with a fey light.
He’d served Queen Neblis for two hundred years. Stealing children was the least of his crimes. The things he’d done for her….
Well, they would earn him a place in the Pit for all eternity.
Balthazar did not fear death the way ordinary people feared it. No, the thought of what waited in the afterlife brought the sort of terror that dried one’s tongue and left the palms slick with icy sweat.
He had boltholes no one would ever find, perhaps not even D’Ange. All his instincts screamed at him to have nothing to do with this. He’d come to London in the first place because he intended never to return.
But he had made a promise a very long time ago, to a man who had believed in redemption.
That he would try to be good.
Balthazar returned the chains to their place and closed the panel. He made the sign of the flame, fingers brushing forehead, lips and, lastly, heart. Then he trudged off in search of something suitable to wear to a party.
23
“The man’s a wraith,” Vivienne muttered.
She sat in the conservatory at Park Place with Alec, who reclined on the sofa, his bad leg stretched out on an ottoman. He held the afternoon post in his hands.
“Cyrus found nothing useful about D’Ange in his archives?” she asked. “No clue as to where he might be?”
Alec shook his head. “Nothing more than we already knew.”
“What about the strong room? Was anything else missing?”
“He hinted at it, but didn’t specify what. Only that it wouldn’t be a danger to us.”
“Hell,” she muttered.
Alec sighed and scanned a second letter. “Harrison Fearing Pell and John Weston sent a note from New York, offering their aid.”
They’d worked with Pell and Weston on the Clarence case, forging a bond of friendship with the pair of young investigators at the American division of the S.P.R. Harry in particular was exceedingly clever, Vivienne thought, but she very much doubted D’Ange had crossed the Atlantic.
She forced a smile. “It’s kind of them, but I don’t think there’s much they can do that Henry Sidgwick and all his agents aren’t already.”
Three long weeks had passed since they’d returned to London from Ingress Abbey, with no more word from Gabriel D’Ange and no sign of Anne. Nathaniel was still recovering at a hospital in Bucharest, but his last letter had been hopeful that he would be strong enough to return to England by April or May.
Alec and Vivienne made a full report to both Henry Sidgwick and Inspector Blackwood of the Dominion Branch. Blackwood had offered them men to watch the house, but Vivienne refused. Their only hope was that D’Ange might try to contact them again, arrange for some sort of a deal, and she didn’t want to scare him off.
Every day was an agony of waiting. Alec bore it with his usual stoicism, but Vivienne was starting to come apart at the seams.
Before she met Alec, she’d been bonded to another. When that daēva died, Vivienne had lost the will to live. If not for the children who’d been left in her care, she would have ended it. And when she took a necromancer’s blade between the ribs at Gorgon-e Gaz, it came almost as a relief. Her name had been Tijah then.
Achaemenes … Alec … had bonded her against her will to save her.
It was a bitter irony. Under the Empire, daēvas had always been the ones with no choice in the matter.
She’d hated him for a while. But Alec Lawrence was hard to hate.
Now she’d take that blade a thousand times over if it would keep him safe from D’Ange.
And she wondered where he would be if he’d chosen differently.
“Viv,” Alec said softly. “Don’t dwell.”
She lifted her head. “Sorry.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
Alec held her gaze for a moment more, then looked away.
He wouldn’t let her smoke in the conservatory, said it was bad for the plants, but she kept thinking of the pack of Oxford Ovals on her bedside table.
Vivienne heard footsteps and Quimby’s flushed face poked into the conservatory. “My Lady,” he hissed. “There’s a visitor, he wouldn’t wait.”
Alec frowned.
The butler quickly read out a card resting on a small silver tray. “Count Balthazar Jozsef Habsburg-Koháry—”
At that instant, a tall man filled the doorway, olive-skinned and sleekly attractive.
“Don’t mind the title,” he said with a charming smile. “Just Balthazar will do.”
Vivienne’s rage was so acute, it took her a long moment to react. She leapt to her feet and slammed him into the wall, a knife materializing at his throat. From the corner of her eye, she saw Quimby beat a swift retreat.
Balthazar’s gaze narrowed. He glanced at her bare wrist. “Missing something?” he murmured.
The knife edge pressed deeper, at the edge of drawing blood. “You bastard—”
“Let him go, Viv,” Alec said with a touch of impatience. “He doesn’t have it. He wouldn’t be here if he did. I want to hear what he has to say.”
Since the Clarence case in New York, Alec had been favorably disposed towards Count Koháry. Vivienne saw things differently, but she knew he was right. She scowled and took a step back. “Talk, necromancer.”
“I’m not a necromancer,” Balthazar said, straightening his coat in a leisurely fashion that made her want to murder him all over again. “Not anymore.”
“Then how is it you’re still alive?” Her voice lowered. “I know you’re an old one. We’ve determined that much.”
“There are other talismans to prolong life,” he said cagily. “I’m not here to discuss that.” He swallowed. “I’m only here to tell you the name of the man who stole your cuff. Gabriel D’Ange.”
“We know that already,” Vivienne snarled.
Balthazar regarded her. He smiled. “But did you know where he’s going to be tonight?”
She took a step back, still wary, if less inclined to kill him on the spot.
“A place called the Picatrix Club. It’s owned by a man named Jorin Bekker, though he’s rarely there.
“Bekker,” Alec murmured. “I know that name.” A look of hatred crossed his face. “We nearly had him in Berlin that time, do you remember, Vivienne?”
She nodded grimly. She knew exactly who Jorin Bekker was.
“The Club is named after an eleventh century book on magic and astrology originally written under the title Ghayat al-Hakim,” Balthazar continued, removing his hat and tossing it on a side table. “His own private joke.”
Vivienne stared at him. “I don’t care about that. Tell me about D’Ange.”
Balthazar handed her an invitation. “I have no idea where he’s staying in London, but he told me he planned to attend. He’s been trying to get to Bekker for … let’s just say a very, very long time.”
She scanned the engraved script. “And why should I believe a word you’re saying?”
He shrugged. “Don’t. I’m just clearing my conscience, such as it is.”
“How did you learn he had the cuff?” Alec asked.
“He showed it to me. Gold with a winged griffin, yes?”
Vivienne looked up sharply. “So he has it with him.” She paced to the French doors, watching Balthazar’s reflection in the glass. “What do you know about the Order of the Rose Cross?”
Balthazar gave a small shrug. “They’re maniacs.�
�� A bark of laughter. “Necromancers on some divine mission from God, if you can fathom it. Assassins, above any law except their own. They’ve killed kings and popes and hundreds more people you’ve never heard of.” His voice softened. “Once you’re on Gabriel’s list, he’ll hunt you down if it takes him forever. So I hope you fully appreciate the risk I’ve taken in coming here.”
“I do,” Alec said in a friendly tone.
Vivienne said nothing. She was thinking. “Why is he going to the Picatrix?”
“Like I told you, he wants Bekker.”
“I have no objection to that. But I want my cuff back!” She didn’t mention Anne. The less this man knew, the better.
Balthazar gave a slow nod. “I’m sure you do.” He reached for his hat. “Well, good luck to you both—”
She rounded on him. “Where are you going?”
Balthazar placed the hat on his head and adjusted the brim. “Home. I have a party to dress for. Black tie, you know.”
“Oh no, you’re not simply walking out of here….” A pause. “You’re going?”
“I have a personal score of my own to settle with Bekker.” His lips thinned. “May I have my invitation back now? I’ll need it to get in the door.”
Vivienne snatched it away from his hand. She looked at Alec, who nodded.
“Take me,” Alec said.
Balthazar laughed, long and loud. “And let Gabriel know I betrayed him? Not a chance.”
Alec Lawrence’s temper finally roused. “I’ll be discreet. But we’ll never get near him without an invitation…. Unless you have another one?”
“Sorry. I’d give it to you if I had.” He paused. “What did you do to him anyhow?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alec replied wearily. “It was a long time ago.”
Balthazar gave a small shake of his head. “Time means nothing. D’Ange doesn’t forget.” He eyed the invitation. “It’ll never work anyway. He obviously knows you.”
“It’s masked, isn’t it?”
Balthazar’s gaze hardened and Vivienne saw a hint of the man beneath the well-groomed façade. “Don’t make me regret coming here.”
Vivienne swept to the door, blocking it. “You’ll take Mr. Lawrence as your guest or I’ll alert the Dominion Branch that there’s a soiree of necromancers taking place in London tonight. I think they might be interested.” She smiled. “As a bonus, I’ll put out the word that you’re their informant.”