by Kat Ross
She regarded him for a long moment. “Why don’t you hate me as Julian does?”
Jacob Bell turned to face her, a large hand propped on the counter. “Quite frankly, Miss…. Anne. I’m overcome with relief that you’re here.”
“Why?”
He looked amused. “Because Gabriel has been utterly impossible to be around for the last two months. I assume you’re aware of his temper?”
They shared a look of mutual sufferance. “I am.”
“Well, until you arrived, it was on a hair trigger. He made everyone’s life miserable.” Jacob stroked the sharp edge of his moustache with the pad of his thumb. “No, let me rephrase that. A living hell. I’ve never seen him in such a state. I feared he might do something reckless and Gabriel is not a reckless man. A little mad perhaps, but never reckless.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Besides which, the food’s been awful. Burned, or raw, or an unholy combination of the two. That bisque was a remarkable improvement.”
Anne couldn’t help but grin. “I’ve noticed that the quality of Gabriel’s cuisine does tend to reflect his mood.”
“The meatloaf?”
She shuddered. “I think he poured a whole cellar of salt into it.”
Jacob barked with laughter. “He can be a devil sometimes. But he’s our devil, at least.”
Anne sobered. “He’s still angry at me.”
Jacob studied her, his expression an odd mixture of pity and admiration. “That might be true, but I think you’re more than a match for him, Anne.”
They said goodnight and retired to their rooms. It would be hours before Gabriel returned and she didn’t intend to wait up. But her conversation with Jacob had lifted her spirits, not just because he seemed to be on her side, but because she liked him very much. In truth, she’d been leery of the Order of the Rose. Whatever divine mission they claimed, they were still necromancers. The vilest scum on earth — or so she’d been taught. Gabriel was different, but she’d been unsure about the others.
Jacob Bell struck her as an honorable man. Julian Durand might be, too, and she resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least Gabriel wouldn’t be walking into the confrontation with Bekker and Constantin alone. Counting the new recruits, he’d have four of the Order at his back.
She shifted restlessly. It had to be enough.
4
Anne usually rose with the sun, but a feather bed made for a pleasant change from hard sand and whining mosquitoes, and she slept late the next morning. She stretched luxuriously and threw the covers off. Being clean, rested and well-fed had its advantages. Her mood was much improved and she felt ready to deflect any slings and arrows Gabriel cared to hurl at her without losing her own temper.
I’ll kill him with kindness, she thought, dragging a brush through her hair and pinning the heavy mass of it up. Just like I did before.
Sunlight poured through the half-open shutters as she padded to the window in Gabriel’s shirt. Her own clothes would be dry by now, although the thought of donning a black dress again was unappealing. Men’s attire was much more comfortable than the torturous layers required of women. Anne threw the shutters wide, frowning as she heard grunting below.
Jacob and Julian were down in the yard, stripped to the waist and sparring with their chains. Julian was lithe and wiry like a cat, while Jacob had slabs of muscle on his chest and back, but the two seemed evenly matched. One end of the chain was fixed by an iron manacle to the wrist. The other was weighted with a heavy collar – just the right size to encircle a human neck.
But they weren’t using the chains for that purpose now. No, they were trying to tangle each other up, grappling like lunatics, heedless of the vicious bruises and cuts the heavy iron links inflicted as they whipped through the air. Anne watched, repelled and fascinated. Blood covered them both, though the wounds closed within seconds. Accelerated healing was one of the necromancers’ greatest gifts. Daēvas recovered quickly, too, but not like them.
Anne had no idea necromantic chains could be used this way. At Gorgon-e Gaz, the Antimagi carried swords. They wore the chains but only to herd their human cattle. She wondered if it was a technique of Gabriel’s invention.
The moment she thought this, he appeared from the kitchen door. Jacob and Julian broke apart, panting.
“Where’s Anne?” Gabriel asked. He looked rough and bleary-eyed, as if he’d just awakened himself.
“Still abed,” Jacob replied.
“Give him your chains,” Julian said to Jacob with a grin.
“Glutton for punishment?” Gabriel asked mockingly.
Julian smiled. “I’ll get the better of you one of these days.”
“Hope never dies,” Jacob said. “Though in your case, it really ought to be buried alive and nailed into the casket.”
And then Gabriel was pulling the shirt over his head and Anne saw how thin he’d grown, each rib prominent, though he was still corded with lean muscle. Jacob tossed him the chains, which Gabriel caught gracefully with one hand.
Anne drew a sharp breath, her fingers gripping the sill.
Don’t watch, she thought, suddenly queasy. You’ll regret it.
But she couldn’t look away.
They squared off ten feet apart. Gabriel held the chains loosely in his left hand, leaving a coil of links to dangle at his side. His posture was relaxed, weight tipped slightly forward. He let Julian come to him and their first few exchanges were brief and testing. Then Julian seemed to tire of the foreplay, rushing forward with his mouth set in a line. Anne flinched every time the chains cracked across Gabriel’s bare flesh, though he barely seemed to register it. He absorbed the assault for two long minutes, and then his own movements became inhumanly fast and ferocious. She heard the brittle crack of bone. Seconds later, Julian lay in a groaning heap.
Gabriel sank to his haunches and held out a hand, hauling Julian to his feet. He supported him with an arm around his shoulders until Julian shook it off. Whatever had shattered seemed whole again.
“Va te faire foutre,” Julian muttered darkly.
“He thinks if he curses in French, God won’t hear him,” Jacob said.
Julian gave a ragged laugh. “Now you have to defend my honor, brother.”
“If you insist.”
“Not you, too,” Gabriel said to Jacob with a touch of irritation. He wasn’t even out of breath. “Julian already delayed my breakfast.” He glanced at the clothesline, where Anne’s knickers snapped in the breeze. “Unlike you two, I have things to do this morning.”
Jacob only smiled and coiled his chains in readiness.
And so it began again, blood running freely, the chains blurring in deadly arcs. Then Jacob did something complicated, reversing the swing in midair, and the next instant Gabriel was sitting on his rump in the dirt, ankles neatly trussed. Julian crowed and Gabriel laughed in delight and despite the stupid brutality of the entire exercise, the sound made Anne wistful. She realized she wanted more than anything to make him laugh like that again.
“Maybe I should beat the holy hell out of him,” she muttered. “That seems to do the trick.”
They were pouring buckets over their heads to wash the blood off when Anne decided she’d had enough. Her appetite was gone. She used the upstairs privy and pulled on the baggy trousers, clutching them with one hand rather than bother with the braces. By the time she reached the yard, they were all in the kitchen, chattering like magpies.
Anne knew that if she walked into the room, Julian would subside into chilly silence. And frankly, there was too much masculine energy buzzing around. She wanted some peace and quiet.
So she retrieved her clothes from the line, changed in the bathing room, and hung Gabriel’s borrowed pants and shirt up to air out as washing them would be far too much trouble. She was trying to decide what to do with the rest of the morning when she saw the boy, Joseph, coming out of the stable.
“Hello,” she said.
He squinted up at her. She guessed hi
s age at eight or nine from the missing front teeth. He had a sweet face. Of course, they were all sweet until they grew beards and their brains seemed to shrink in proportion to other parts.
“Hello, Miss Lawrence.”
“If I wished to go swimming, where would be the best place?”
Without hesitation, he pointed to a faint path leading away from the house.
“Is it private?”
He nodded. “All this land belongs to Mr. Bell, right down to the sea. Just follow the path to the end.”
Anne beamed. “You’re an excellent child. Thank you.”
He gave her a dubious nod.
She strode off down the winding path. The instant Anne entered the dense tangle of brush, the air grew still and hot as Hades. Her dress adhered to her skin, heavy as a horsehair blanket. Sweat trickled from every pore. Anne swatted at a mosquito, then another one. Then clouds. The path seemed to go and on, and she was starting to wonder if she’d missed a turnoff somewhere when she heard the sound of the sea and emerged into a hidden cove.
For a brief moment, she remembered her first view of the dull, grey water of the Normandy coast in February, and the first time she saw Gabriel galloping down the road to the Chateau de Saint-Évreux. She remembered the fear and anticipation of his boots ringing on the stone stairs of the tower. She hadn’t known his name then, only that he was a killer and she was in his power.
Life can certainly be strange, she thought, kicking off her boots and shedding her dress and stockings. Anne waded out in her chemise and knickers. The cove was shallow, the water clear as glass and sheltered by rocky outcroppings. When it reached her waist, she dived down. After the long trek through the brush, the sensation was akin to being reborn, clean and cool again.
She spent a little while exploring the reef, which bloomed with tall stands of coral, schools of bright tropical fish darting in and out of crevices. Anne drifted along the bottom, weightless and tranquil, cradled in the perfect silence of the underwater realm. Then she glimpsed a larger shadow and swam against the current to investigate. At the edge of the rocks where the waves poured through a gap, Anne caught a flash of webbed hooves, followed by a long, maned neck and broad, flat tail. She reached out a hand, but the creature vanished into the depths with surprising speed.
Anne surfaced, her heart pounding, and spotted Gabriel standing on the shore.
“I think I just saw a ceffyl dwr,” she called excitedly. “They’re very rare and I’ve never heard of one being seen in saltwater, let alone this far south. Henry Sidgwick will wet himself when I tell him!”
Gabriel’s expression darkened as she waded towards the beach. His gaze locked on her body and his jaw set hard, but he seemed incapable of looking away. Anne realized with an evil surge of satisfaction that the chemise had molded to her breasts and hips so completely it might well have been transparent.
“I expected you to stay at the house,” he snapped irritably.
“I’m not a poodle. It was hot and I wanted to cool off.”
“When you didn’t come down for breakfast, I started searching everywhere. I was half mad with worry! Then Joseph finally told me where you’d gone.”
Anne stared at him. “As inconceivable as it seems, I’ve managed to survive without your protection for…. Oh, let’s see.” She counted on her fingers. “More than two millennia.”
Gabriel muttered something in French that sounded vile.
She scooped up her dress. “Do you mind?”
He turned his back as she stripped off the wet chemise and pulled the dress over her head. “It’s safe,” she muttered, doing up the row of buttons.
Gabriel half turned, but deliberately looked past her shoulder. “The ship from Port-au-Prince arrived. We leave tonight.”
“Thank God.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is my company so tedious?”
“No.” She strode past him and made for the path.
“What then?” He fell into step beside her. “Is it Julian? I spoke to him. So did Jacob. He won’t be rude to you again.”
“It’s not that. It’s…. I don’t know. Nothing at all.” She glanced at him. “You need to eat more. You’re skin and bones.”
Gabriel’s expression turned guarded. “You were watching, weren’t you?”
“With all the racket, I could hardly sleep through it.”
“And it bothers you to see the chains.”
“Yes. No. Not really.” She glanced at him. “It bothers me to see you beaten to a pulp for no good reason.”
“It’s not for no good reason.”
“Please don’t use double negatives, they confuse me.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “It’s part of the training, Anne.”
She snorted. “I don’t think you need any more training. You’re lethal enough as it is.”
“No, but they do.”
She let out a breath.
“And if they learn to fight me, they’ll never have to face a tougher opponent.” The words were spoken without boastfulness. “It may seem barbaric to you, Anne, but it’s necessary.”
“If they keep you alive, that’s all I care about.” She sighed. “I didn’t realize so much time had passed. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“It’s been hours and hours.” His eyes softened. “I thought you might…”
Gabriel never finished the sentence because the swarms of mosquitoes descended and they both broke into an undignified run, heads down and hands swatting. By the time they reached the manor, the moment had passed.
Gabriel paused to take his clothes down from the line. “What did you see?” he asked. “In the water.”
“A ceffyl dwr. It’s a sea horse. Not the little kind, the big kind.”
His eyes lit with interest. “Ceffyl dwr,” he echoed.
“They’re usually found in lakes and ponds,” she explained. “Some stories say they’re malevolent, others that they’re impish tricksters, tempting mortals to take a ride and then evaporating into mist. According to legend, a Welsh farmer managed to tame one with an exceptionally fine bridle and used it as a cart horse. But one day they passed too close to the sea and the ceffyl dwr dragged both farmer and cart beneath the waves, never to be seen again.”
Gabriel grinned. “Perhaps that’s the one you met.” He paused, the clothes hanging over one arm. “If I’d been with you, would I have seen it, too?”
“Most people lack the sight.” She smiled. “But you? Yes, I think so.”
He seemed pleased with this answer. The winds of his mood had shifted again, the shadows retreating. Gabriel was not the sort of man who liked to wait. He was no doubt relieved that the ship had finally arrived. Yet for all her talk of wanting to leave as soon as possible, Anne suddenly wished it had been delayed a little longer. Because once they set sail for France, their course would be set. And how it might end filled her with dread.
They parted ways to prepare for the journey. Anne passed Julian in the hall and he nodded, even though he looked like he’d just eaten Gabriel’s meatloaf.
Progress, she thought, packing her valise again.
Anne insisted on running the twelve miles to Hamilton, though she agreed to let Gabriel take her valise with his horse. She arrived at the docks with flushed cheeks and immediately spotted the Dreadnought waiting at anchor. It was an oceangoing American-built clipper, with a wider beam and deeper draft than its antecedents from Baltimore.
Jacob Bell waited at the end of the wharf. He strode up to her, his long legs devouring the distance.
“You’re fast,” he remarked. “We just arrived a few minutes ago and Gabriel set a hard pace.”
“I can outrun a horse if I really want to,” she admitted.
He looked impressed. “In skirts?”
Anne grimaced. “I hoist them up. It’s quite scandalous.”
Jacob laughed. “Come, we’d better go aboard. Gabriel is in a fever to sail.”
They moved through the thinning crowds. The sun w
as setting and soon there wouldn’t be enough daylight for the pilot boat to guide the Dreadnought from port.
“Where is he?”
“Down below giving his usual speech to the raw recruits.”
“What does that consist of?”
“A combination of dire threats and….” Jacob stroked his moustache. “More dire threats.”
“Sounds lovely. They volunteered for this?”
“You’d be surprised at how many applications he gets. Since the debacle with Adrian, Gabriel is even pickier than he used to be, which is saying something.”
Adrian was a rogue member of the Order who had turned out to be spectacularly unfit for shapeshifting. He’d taken the form of a wolf and gone on a rampage that ended in Romania, when Gabriel finally caught him and tore his throat out.
“It’s no light decision to join the Order,” Jacob continued. “By the time Gabriel is done investigating potential candidates, he knows more about them than their own mothers.”
“But what do they get out of it?”
“That’s the most important question of all. If it’s power they seek, they’ll be denied. The ones he chooses often view the chains with revulsion. It’s the justice he offers that attracts them, usually for very personal reasons.”
Anne wondered if Jacob had been one of those. “And what if they don’t wish to be necromancers?”
“They don’t have to be.”
That surprised her. “It’s optional?”
“Entirely, although most accept the chains in the end. It’s no small thing to survive a mortal wound.” His lips quirked. “And those tend to occur with alarming frequency when one keeps company with Gabriel D’Ange.”
They crossed the gangway and Jacob called out a greeting to Captain Dunham, a short, stocky man with threads of silver in his dark hair and an air of competent authority. With the last passengers aboard, he began barking orders to the crew. The sails were raised halfway, the mooring ropes thrown off, and the Dreadnought eased out of the harbor towards the open ocean.
Anne stood at the rail with Jacob, watching the lights of Hamilton dwindle behind them. Once they’d reached safe depths, the square sails were hoisted high and the ship gained speed. Captain Dunham left the wheel to his first officer and strolled over join them.