by Kat Ross
Alec’s face hardened. “He’s an animal, Anne. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’d hit him with a full syringe!”
That wouldn’t stop Gabriel, she thought. Not right away, at least.
“But couldn’t you just have used the power on him—”
Alec held up his arm and pushed his shirtsleeve back. She saw a band of white skin … and no cuff.
And the truth hit her like a hammer blow.
“He took them. Vivienne’s and mine both. He hasn’t used them yet, but you have to help me get them back!” The raw desperation in his voice would have broken her heart if it hadn’t just fractured into a thousand pieces.
“I’ll handle Gabriel,” Anne said in a voice she barely recognized.
Anything else she could have forgiven. Anything. But this….
“Be careful. If you’d seen him at the Picatrix…. Are you even listening?”
“What did he say? Exactly?”
“That he didn’t want the cross anymore. Only the cuffs. That I could go find another set.” Alec’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t trust him, do you?”
“Of course not,” Anne snapped.
“Vivienne is close, I can feel her. She’ll be here soon—”
Anne stood and brushed off her skirts. “I’ll get them back for you, Alec.”
“Anne. Damnit, Anne! Come back….”
She strode through the lower level of the castle and emerged from the kitchen just as Gabriel entered through the front door. He was humming Rosa del ciel from L’Orfeo.
“Darling,” she said with a smile. “Oh, is that supper?”
He had a cloth bundle under one arm, a loaf of bread sticking out the top.
Gabriel’s face lit up when saw her. He pulled her into a kiss and Anne’s fury mounted at the flush spreading across her skin.
Pure animal lust, she thought savagely.
Gabriel pulled back, his gaze wary. “Are you all right, Anne?”
Her smile widened. It was the same smile she’d worn when she wanted to make him talk to her.
“I’ll just run along and dress, shall I?”
Gabriel gave her a last long look. “I’ll meet you in the tower then.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
She went upstairs and swiftly searched both bedrooms, finding nothing. He must have them on him.
Anne stared at the green dress for a long minute. Then she put it on, moving like an automaton, and sat down in front of the vanity. She twisted her hair into a chignon and pinned it up.
A single tear ran down her cheek. Anne brushed it away. Steeled herself.
Gabriel was waiting in their old dining room in the tower. A simple meal had been laid out on the table, things he’d bought in town. Bread, cheese, a bottle of wine.
How handsome he looked in his dark coat and snowy white shirt. She wondered how she could ever have thought him plain.
Gabriel pulled her chair out, then sat down across from her. He seemed on edge.
“I have to tell you something, Anne.” A pause. “Don’t be angry at me.”
“Don’t be angry at you?” She raised her eyebrows. “I wonder what it could be?”
She stood, bracing her palms on the table, and leaned towards him.
The narrow ring of gold in his irises seemed to gather the candlelight. Gabriel grew very still.
“Could it possibly be the fact that you made love to me while my brother was lying shackled in your wine cellar?”
“Anne—”
She summoned a wind, sending the plates smashing against the wall. “Where are the cuffs, Gabriel? Vivienne is coming here and she’ll rip you to pieces. Give them to me.”
“You betrayed me,” he growled, his chair grating back as he sprang to his feet.
“No, you betrayed me!”
Another gust knocked Gabriel back a step. A crack zigzagged through the stone between his legs.
“I’ll tear this tower down,” she seethed. “Bury us both.”
He threw his arms up. “Go ahead!”
“You stole their cuffs—”
Gabriel pulled out a leather bag and threw it at her feet, his accent thickening as it always did when he grew angry. “Fucking keep them, I don’t care. I just want you, Anne!”
She grabbed the bag and feinted for the door. He moved to block it and she ran up the winding stairs to the top of the tower, Gabriel in pursuit.
Anne backed against the parapet as he exploded from the doorway. Gabriel stopped ten paces away, breathing hard. His face was very pale. When he spoke, he’d mastered himself — if barely.
“When you first came here, I purposefully avoided you. I didn’t want to look at you, speak to you. I was … afraid of you, Anne. I’d never stopped thinking about you since the night we met.” He started to pace. “I just wanted to get rid of you.” A sharp gesture. “Finish it. So I sent two men to track down your brother but I had no idea he’d left on holiday. I only discovered later they’d all gone off to fucking Gran Canaria.”
Gabriel rarely cursed. It was a measure of his extreme agitation that he did so now. “Then Vivienne appeared at Saint George’s asking about you. She traveled with a man, but it wasn’t Alec Lawrence. What were the odds? They were never apart!”
Anne knew the truth of this. Bizarrely, her first thought was, Good for you, Alec, taking a holiday without her.
“I had no quarrel with Vivienne,” Gabriel continued. “I tried to make her leave, but she was relentless. Then she found your bracelet. It must have fallen off when I carried you back through the passages. She confronted me. And I thought of a better way to punish Alec.”
Gabriel smiled and for an instant Anne saw the harsh executioner who had passed judgment on so many of his fellow men.
“To bond my brother?” she demanded.
“No,” he said softly. “Worse. To keep the cuff and let the threat that I would hang over his head for all eternity. Never knowing when I might choose to put it on and sever him from the Nexus. Cause him unbearable agony.” Gabriel shrugged. “I wouldn’t have actually done it. I wish to be bonded to him as little as he wishes to be bonded to me. But he wouldn’t know that.”
Anne slowly shook her head. “You are the Devil.”
“Am I?” Gabriel scratched his ear. “Ah well, it seemed a fitting punishment at the time. But then I came to know you.” He sighed deeply and looked up at the sky. “How to explain? You made me remember what it’s like to be … human again. Just a man.”
She waited, listening with crossed arms.
“So I told myself, no! He’s your brother. I should show … mercy.” He said the word with a touch of wonder, as though it was some bird with exotic plumage he’d never seen before. “And I tried to, I tried, Anne, but when he attacked me at the Picatrix, I stopped caring. I thought I’d take his cuff too and use them myself.” He sighed. “Then I started to feel bad again. I was going to tell you before—”
“You lying bastard,” she growled. “You wanted my power.”
“If I wanted that, I could have forced you! I just…. I wanted you to stay with me, Anne. It was the only way I knew how—”
“You have no idea what the bond means to him. To Vivienne. It’s not like your chains. It’s a marriage of two souls! Without it, they’ll both die as surely as if you slit their throats yourself.” Her jaw clenched. “In truth, you know almost nothing about the bond, Gabriel. You don’t even know it can be used by one bonded to track the other. I never betrayed you. You betrayed yourself by bringing Alec here.
“But that’s not what….” Her voice nearly broke. “How could you ever imagine for one second that I would trade their happiness for my own? You don’t know me at all, Gabriel.”
And that was the worst of it.
Gabriel looked remorseful. “I’m sorry.” He took a step toward her. “Anne, I—”
Anne Lawrence wasn’t the sort to slap a man. She made a fist and punched him hard in the face. Gabriel rocked back on his heels. He touched his lip and h
is fingers came away red.
“Ma petit bête,” he whispered brokenly. “I just love you so fucking much.”
Anne grabbed his coat. And then her mouth was on Gabriel’s, his blood on her tongue, and she felt the wordless despair of the damned. She still wanted him despite his stupidity and recklessness. God help her, she still wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her very long life.
Gabriel pulled away, his breath ragged. “Come with me, Anne. Leave the cuffs. Just come. The ship is waiting.” He glanced out at the Channel, where a pinprick of light floated on the dark water.
“I can’t.”
“Then kill me!” He pulled a dagger from his belt and tore his shirt open, offering Anne the hilt. “Go on, do it! Carve my heart out. I won’t resist!”
From another man, the demand would be ridiculous melodrama. Anne knew Gabriel meant every word.
There was a crash at the base of the tower, like a heavy oaken door rebounding against a wall.
His head snapped toward the door as footsteps rang faintly on the stairs.
“Get behind me, Anne,” he said softly, and she sensed his hackles rising, knew more blood was about to be spilled. He’d endured too much in the last days. It had broken his self-control.
And who would she try to protect?
She gave him a push toward the parapet, sick with dread. “Just go, Gabriel!”
“Not without you!” His voice lowered, his eyes pleading. “You love me, Anne. You know you do.”
Yes, her heart whispered. And I would watch you kill my brother and his bonded, or them kill you, and there would never, ever be a way back. But perhaps I can still save you….
A sob tore from her throat. Anne grabbed the blade from his hand and drove it between his ribs to the hilt. Gabriel let out a hissing breath. He braced a hand on the parapet. His face turned to ash.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t love you. I want you gone. Now!”
The look in Gabriel’s eyes was a blade to her own heart. He threw his head back and … changed. His form seemed to shimmer. To blur at the edges. She blinked and in that brief instant, Gabriel was gone.
A great cat, tawny with jagged black stripes, crouched on the parapet.
A reflection of the man inside.
Gabriel’s soul was a fierce, terrifying, beautiful thing.
The heavy hindquarters bunched. Anne reached out, her fingertips brushing silken fur as it leapt over the edge. She gave a sharp cry and leaned out as far as she could, but the ground far below was lost in gloom.
“Anne!”
She dimly saw Vivienne and Alec and two strange men swarm onto the parapet. Anne picked up the bag with the cuffs and thrust it into Vivienne’s hands.
“I have to go,” Anne whispered, not trusting her own voice. “Don’t follow.”
She pushed past them all and dashed down the winding stairs, barely hearing the voices calling her name.
What if she was wrong?
What if he was too weakened?
The tower stood a hundred paces high.
Anne ran into the courtyard, terrified she would find a broken body sprawled on the flagstones, but the bailey was empty.
Empty save for a trail of blood leading out the postern gate to the steep path that wound down to the shore where they used to walk together.
She fell to her knees and wept bitterly, but Anne would never permit them to find her that way. So she stood and turned her back on Chateau de Saint-Évreux, walking out the gate and down the road, her skirts dragging through the dewy grass on the verge. It was still dark but dawn wasn’t far off. Her legs carried of their own accord, her mind lost in a labyrinth of memories.
Small things, but precious to her.
Gabriel chopping wood in his shirtsleeves, whistling a jaunty tune.
Gabriel sitting cross-legged on the floor with a needle and thread mending clothes or cleaning his boots while she read aloud to him.
Gabriel.
Killer. Lover. Soldier of God … and baker of birthday cakes with pink rosettes.
The memories drowned her.
It was the first time she’d been happy and she hadn’t had the sense to realize it.
Each day brought a new surprise. He had an ocean of blood on his hands … and a phobia of spiders. She’d found him standing sheepishly on a chair one morning, a razor in his hand and soap on his face. He’d refused to come down until she carried the creature outside, cupped in her palm and trying hard not to laugh.
“It’s the legs, Anne,” he confessed to her afterwards. “The tiny hairs….” Gabriel had given a convulsive shudder.
She understood it would take years to truly know him. Each time she peeled away a layer, there was one another waiting beneath.
And oh, how she wanted those years.
She’d never even asked his last name.
After a while, Anne saw the gates in the distance, wrenched half off their hinges. She had no idea where she planned to go. Only to keep walking until she ran out of road.
And then a sound made her turn.
A low, despairing howl.
The sound did not come again, but she marked the direction. She entered the forest, walking until she spied a stone structure through the trees. Anne went inside.
It held a barred animal enclosure, spacious and with fresh straw on the ground that was littered with gnawed bones. A second cage, covered in a length of oilcloth, sat empty to the side. Gabriel must have planned to bring it with them.
The beast sat on its haunches in the darkest corner. When it saw her, it growled deep in its throat.
A man-eater.
And what would become of him now that his master was gone?
A savage, uncaring pity rose up in her. Anne filled herself with wind and earth, filled herself to bursting. The cage door flew from its hinges, clattering against the stone wall. She held her ground, not blocking the way but unafraid.
Part of her would welcome his jaws around her throat.
The Beast of Gévaudan stared at her for a long minute. Then it crept into a shaft of pale morning light.
A wolf, but like no wolf Anne had ever seen. It was easily three times the size and with silver eyes like mirrors. A majestic creature. Its haunches bunched … and it sprang past her, arrowing away without a backward glance.
She watched it vanish through the trees.
“Go find her,” Anne whispered.
Part V
“That which is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
29
Sunday, May 19
The morning the master of Eridge Castle finally arrived home was one of celebration.
It had taken two full months before Nathaniel was strong enough to make the journey from Bucharest. He still walked with a slight limp, but Alec had made him a present of a sword-cane, which he now leaned on as they made their way to the dining room.
“You spoil me, Alec,” Nathaniel murmured with a flirty smile. “You’ll have to teach me to use it properly.”
Alec grinned. He enjoyed Nathaniel’s teasing. If his preferences had been different…. Well, the Viscount of Nevill was a strapping specimen. And a very dear friend.
The cook, Mrs. Abernathy, made a bang-up English breakfast for him, with eggs and bacon and kippers and toast with her homemade strawberry jam. They gathered at the table and dug in. Nathaniel was already hatching plans to whisk them all away to the World’s Fair in Paris, where the new Eiffel Tower had been unveiled, though he said the lifts to the top weren’t quite ready yet.
“Someone will have to carry me up the stairs,” he declared. “Any takers?”
Alec laughed and poured a cup of tea.
“He’s going to milk that leg for all its worth, mark my words,” Vivienne said. “Lazy lord.”
Nathaniel smiled, then sobered a bit. “So D’Ange is gone?” He buttered a piece of toast and took a bite.
Vivienne nodded
.
“Will you try to find him?”
“No,” Alec replied firmly. “We promised Anne we’d let it rest.”
Nathaniel arched a blond eyebrow. “Sounds sensible.”
Vivienne shifted a little, but gave another reluctant nod.
Anne had brooked no argument from either of them on the matter.
“And this Picatrix Club?”
“Shut down,” Alec replied. “Though the man who owned it, Jorin Bekker, was long gone by the time officers from the Dominion Branch stormed the place.” He glanced at Vivienne. “Happily, D.I. Blackwood never discovered we were there that night. He would have been … displeased we cut them out.”
To say the very least.
Nathaniel blew on his coffee. “You say a necromancer actually helped you?”
“I still don’t trust him, but I do think Koháry spoke the truth when he said he stood against the Duzakh,” Vivienne conceded grudgingly.
“I saw him kill at least four at the Picatrix,” Alec said, folding his napkin with a contented sigh. “One had captives. He freed them and saw them to safety.”
“His man Devereaux held his own in the garden.” From Vivienne, this was high praise. Her face clouded again. “He’s far more than Koháry’s servant. I intend to keep an eye on them both. ”
“Hmmm, I’d like to meet this Count Koháry someday,” Nathaniel murmured.
Vivienne laughed. “He’s exactly your type. Groomed to a fault and charmingly oily.”
“Your mind always crawls straight into the gutter, darling.” Nathaniel beamed. “But I still love you.” He went to the sideboard and helped himself to more bacon. “So D’Ange killed Adrian. And he was the pricolici?”
“That’s what Anne says.”
She’d barely spoken of what had occurred at the Chateau de Saint-Évreux. Neither of them had pressed her about it.
“But how did he come to be a beast?” Nathaniel wondered aloud.
“Not a clue,” Vivienne replied.
Lord Cumberland reached for the jam, a merry glint in his eye. “Well, good riddance. He belonged to a bad breed, and we are quite content to be freed from him and his kindred. Aren’t we, Vivienne?”