by Kat Ross
“So am I. And mine has an evil temper.”
“They all do,” Vorstmann replied wearily.
Balthazar tried to picture Mrs. Vorstmann and failed. The whole scene was sliding deeper into the unreal. The product of an absinthe nightmare he couldn’t wake from. His thoughts felt fractured, derailed. Did the little grey butcher even have a first name? Or did his wife call him Vorstmann, too?
Balthazar looked away as Vortstmann squinted through his greasy spectacles, angling the blade. And exhaled a sharp breath when the scalpel flew out of his hand, spinning end over end into the shadows at the far end of the hall until it thwacked into someone’s palm. Bekker’s men looked confounded, except for Constantin, who guessed what was in store and had already started backing away.
A small woman strode into the torchlight. She was barefoot and painted head to toe in dried blood. With her wild auburn hair, she reminded Balthazar of the Celtic queen who had burned Londinium to ashes and whipped the Romans so badly they almost fled Britain.
Two men trailed behind her. Julian Durand and Jacob Bell. And then a third figure stepped forward, prematurely greying at the temples, hair parted on the left, ruler-straight, moustache waxed into sharp points. Lucas Devereaux caught Balthazar’s eye and gave a brisk nod.
“Why don’t you practice on me first?” Anne Lawrence said softly. Her green eyes swept over Gabriel, saw he was unharmed, then fixed on the little grey man in his apron and misty spectacles.
“Who is this person?” Vorstmann asked.
For a brief moment, the silence was complete. Then Constantin shattered it with a single word.
“Daēva,” he hissed.
Swords scraped from their scabbards. Bekker’s men spread out, forming a ragged line. Anne looked them over with contempt. And Balthazar was suddenly grateful he hung in chains next to Gabriel. It was the only thing that might save him from this woman.
Vorstmann opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Anne’s arm blurred and the next instant, the scalpel was buried in his skinny throat. He dropped to his knees, fingers twitching weakly around the blade. Anne walked forward. Her chest rose and fell, pumping like a bellows. A whirlwind scoured the chamber. It howled in Balthazar’s ears, tore at his hair and clothes. Just before the torches went out, he saw jagged cracks slice through the mosaic on the floor. Jacob and Julian unfurled their chains. Lucas raised his sword. Then darkness descended.
“Daan,” Axel gasped with a note of wonderment somewhere to Balthazar’s left. “I think that’s—”
“My wife,” Gabriel finished in satisfaction.
Balthazar heard grunts and gurgles and the clang of iron against iron in the darkness. They were all fighting blind, guided only by the faint necromantic glow of the chains, and his gut tightened every time the sounds of combat came close. Revenants were out there, too. He could smell them. Hopefully, it meant Bekker’s men were dying in droves.
Then he heard a metallic click and a soft groan as Gabriel slithered from his manacles.
“I have you now,” Anne said in a tone that was both soothing and no-nonsense. “Can you stand?”
“My legs are fine,” Gabriel said tightly. “Anne…. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Her voice fractured. “You great lummox.”
There was a moment of quiet, followed by kissy sounds.
“Hello?” Balthazar whispered into the darkness. “I’m sorry, but would it be too much trouble—”
He gasped as the manacles opened and he dropped like a sack of grain to the stone floor. No gentle arms to catch him like Gabriel, but he could hardly complain.
“Thank you,” Balthazar ground out, beset by a fresh wave of agony as he tried to move his left arm and found it was dislocated. “Lucas?”
“Here, my lord.” Hands groped around and hauled him to his feet.
“You don’t have to call me that, really.” Balthazar had told him this for years but it never seemed to register. “I need you to pop something in for me.”
“Er….”
“My arm. Feel it?” He guided Lucas’s hand.
“Oooh, nasty. Brace yourself, my lord.”
Lucas expertly snapped the ball back into the socket. Balthazar tried to be stoic but couldn’t suppress a whimper. “Well done,” he muttered. “Do you have a talisman to Travel?”
“In my pocket.”
“Thank God.” He paused. “Gabriel? Anne?”
There was no response. They’d already gone. Every man — and woman — for themselves, then. Good. Balthazar preferred it that way. He and Lucas skirted the diminishing sounds of fighting and headed for the outline of the open doorway at the end of the chamber. Balthazar wished the Order luck, but he was done. Finished. Vorstmann might be dead, but there were others like him, and Balthazar knew one thing with perfect clarity: he would never, ever allow himself to be at their mercy again.
A dead necromancer lay in the corridor outside, but nothing else moved. “This way,” Balthazar said, limping away on stiff legs. “How did you know to come here?”
“I assumed the plan would go to hell,” Lucas replied with his usual tone of profound gloom. “Most things do.”
Balthazar’s laugh turned into a wince. “So you disobeyed my orders.”
“Yes, my lord. I was outside the museum when the shots were fired. I’d marked Bekker’s landau and saw it leave empty. So I waited for a while more. When neither of you appeared, it seemed clear you’d left through a gate. His estate was the obvious place.”
“I could have been dead.”
Lucas gave a faint smile. “Not you, my lord.”
“So you rode out here alone?”
A cheerless shrug. “What else could I do?”
“Leave me.”
Lucas shot him an irritated look. “I caught up with Bell and Durand on the road. Once I’d explained the situation, they were glad for an extra man. We entered the grounds together. The sentries were already dead.”
Balthazar glanced at him. “All of them?”
Lucas nodded. “Miss Lawrence got here first.”
Balthazar flexed his fingers. Sensation was returning, a thousand tiny red-hot needles pricking his abused flesh. “Remind me to send her a card. Maybe a basket of fruit, too. Better to stay on her good side.”
Lucas didn’t crack a smile. “Yes, my lord.”
“You must be wondering about Bekker. He left to see Leopold.”
They reached what Balthazar now thought of as the Pink Mermaid Chamber. He strode to the edge of the pool, where the tin of Keating’s lozenges still rested on the edge.
“I assume he was intending to return,” Lucas said quietly.
“Yes. He was.” Balthazar met Lucas’s dark eyes. “Through this portal. But he had two necromancers with him.”
“Poor odds,” Lucas said. “For us.”
Balthazar nodded. “I don’t think I could lift a sword, even if I had one. I was strung up for hours.”
“Better we leave then.”
“Yes.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Lucas took out his own spiral shell, closed his fist around it.
And then a distant greenish light lit the depths of the pool. It grew steadily brighter. Balthazar briefly closed his eyes. “Never mind. He’s here.”
Without hesitation, Lucas strode to the lip of the pool, his sword poised in a low two-handed grip. Balthazar considered urging him to run, but he knew Lucas wouldn’t listen. The glow intensified and the crown of a bowler hat appeared, rising out of the gateway. Lucas waited for the shoulders to emerge, then swung for the fences. He’d been captain of his cricket team in boarding school. Blood fountained. Hat and head, remarkably still conjoined, hurtled into the void.
Balthazar gave a silent cheer, then stumbled back as a jet of necromantic lightning boiled out of the murk. The power was dissipated from passing through the not-water of the gate, but it still knocked him flat. Fingers and toes twitched spasmodically. There was no loss o
f consciousness this time so he heard all that followed. The death of the second necromancer, the roar of revenants, and Lucas’s high, sharp screams.
Balthazar’s staring eyes fixed on the ceiling. He seemed unable to close them. Every muscle had locked down tight in trembling outrage. His body felt like a dispossessed house with an aged, stooped butler trudging through the rooms, blowing out the candles one by one. But his vision was unimpaired and now he saw a twisted face loom above him.
“I’ll burn you for this,” Bekker snarled. “Over a slow fire.”
Balthazar tried to draw breath, but his lungs were frozen. He heard the slither of iron links unfurling.
Bekker’s own breath was panting. Clotted with rage. “Or I’ll keep you as my pet. Yes, that would be a better punishment. To show the others. Maybe we’ll pass you around. You can be the Duzakh’s new mascot.” His eyes flicked toward the door. “Come along into the gate now. I’ll take you back to Boma.”
“Lucas….” The word was hardly audible, more a hiss of air, but Bekker gave a dry chuckle.
“Dead. Mr. Marchand was a bit outmatched.”
Balthazar felt a suffocating despair. He no longer cared what awaited him after death. He only wanted Bekker to know the truth. Needed him to comprehend the depths of his treachery and loathing. “Name’s not Marchand,” he croaked. “It’s Devereaux.”
Bekker dropped to his haunches, gaze narrowing. “What are you rambling on about?”
He didn’t even remember.
Balthazar sucked in a thin, wheezing breath. “The ring you stole from me…. The family you slaughtered…. You left a boy alive.”
Bekker frowned. Then a slow smile broke across his face. “Your man Lucas.”
“Yes.”
“You saved the little brat. How touching.” Bekker polished the black stone on Balthazar’s shirt and held his hand up to the light. He closed his fist. “Well, the omission has been remedied.”
“Always hated you.” Balthazar’s head fell to the side. “Always.”
“Do you think that wounds me?” He snapped the collar shut around Balthazar’s throat, then seized his chin in a crushing grip, forcing his face up. “I always hated you, too. Thought you were better because you shared her bed.” He meant Neblis. “But that almighty bitch is dead and so are the rest of them. Except for me. Why do you think that is?”
Balthazar stared mutely. He wished he could spit in Bekker’s face, but even that petty act of defiance was beyond him.
“Because I care for no one. I have no weaknesses. It doesn’t matter that you killed my men. I can find new ones. I thought you were the same, but you’re here because of a dead boy. A worthless little mewling thing you should have left behind. Should have finished off yourself.” Bekker’s lips curled in disdain. “But you tied him to your apron-strings and now the weight of him is dragging you down to a hellish, lightless place where—”
Bekker never finished the sentence because there came the high, humming scream of the tachikazi, the sword wind, and his head flew from his shoulders. Lucas towered above him, a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. Then he crumpled, slowly, and lay still.
Balthazar’s heart raced in the cage of his chest. He knew what was coming next. Lucas’s sword lay just out of reach. His fingers twitched, reaching….
The revenant emerged from the pool. Balthazar closed his eyes. He heard the drip of water, sloshing against the edges as it waded out. The point of its iron sword dragged on the marble tile. The smell hit, not just decay and rot, but the cold, airless dank of crypts buried beneath mountains of ancient stone.
He hadn’t feared revenants in a long time. They were huge and hungry but simple for a swordsman of his caliber to dispatch. Now his skin prickled as he heard it move closer, blade scraping. It made a snuffling sound. Dry leather creaked. He could sense silver eyes crawling over his body.
He stopped breathing. Held still as a corpse. Then he thought of Lucas. What if it…? Balthazar was about to stir when the heavy footsteps moved away. They plodded out the door and the icy stench lifted.
Balthazar gritted his teeth. Tried to roll over. To sit. Even dogs could do that.
I’m terribly sorry, the butler intoned. But all the staff has been let go. This structure is officially condemned.
“Bollocks to that,” Balthazar muttered, channeling Vivienne Cumberland. Drawing on the force of will that had kept him alive for more than two thousand years – or, more likely, the excesses he’d indulged in London before coming here – he dragged himself to Lucas.
The injuries were horrific. No wonder Bekker had written him off. Even the revenant was fooled. Balthazar couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to stand, let alone lift a sword. Blood oozed from his mouth and nose. From many, many places. It pooled beneath him in a spreading crimson tide.
“Just hang on a minute,” Balthazar whispered.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, he snapped the open manacle of the chain leading from his own neck around Lucas’s wrist. “Can you feel it? The life? It’s just there, Lucas. Just there, waiting for you to take it.”
Lucas lay unmoving. Unresponsive. Balthazar pressed an ear to his chest and heard the faintest heartbeat. He gave Lucas a brutal shake. Lucas cried out, the piercing, agonized sound of a dying animal. “Damn you, you have the spark. Use it! Take me. Reach for me. I’m just there…” Balthazar gasped as an alien intelligence took root in his mind. “Yes, yes, that’s the way. Keep going. More.”
He shuddered to his marrow as his life seeped away through the collar.
So this is what it’s like.
Not pleasant. No, not pleasant at all. But a smile spread across Balthazar’s face as the wounds began to close, the bones to knit, the color returning to Lucas’s waxen skin. It was like watching a terminal illness in reverse. Even the wings of white at his temples darkened to a chestnut brown.
I should probably stop him now, Balthazar thought distantly. But of course he couldn’t. And part of him wondered if it wasn’t for the best. Let Lucas go on without him. Perhaps his time was over. Had been for a long time even if he didn’t want to admit it. A strange calm came over him. Maybe there was nothing after death. Just peace and quiet. Balthazar blinked languidly, considering this. Might be a bit boring, after all….
Lucas’s eyes flew wide. He popped up like a jack-in-the-box. Looked down at his arm, then at Balthazar, with an expression of horror. The draining ceased immediately. The thread between them snapped.
“My lord,” he said faintly. “What have you done?”
Balthazar flopped to his back, the chain rattling. He waved a limp wrist. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Lucas peered at him with astonishment. “My lord…. You’re weeping.”
“Don’t be silly.” Balthazar stared at him. “I don’t weep.”
“Cry?”
“Not that either,” he replied coldly. “I have a mote in my eye.”
“How do I get this thing off?”
“Give it here.”
Lucas held his arm out and Balthazar flicked the hidden catch. He stared at his own hand with distaste. It had wrinkles. “I’ll definitely have to pay for sex now,” he muttered, suddenly afraid to look in a mirror.
“I killed Jorin Bekker,” Lucas said in wonder. “I actually did.”
“Would you mind checking his body for the key?”
“Oh God, yes. Sorry.” Lucas trundled off and returned with the key. He unlocked the collar from Balthazar’s neck and kicked the chains away. “Thanks for that.” He swallowed. “Really.”
Balthazar gazed at him fondly. “Don’t mention it. Will you take me home now?”
“Of course. Which one?”
“London.”
Lucas Devereaux scooped him up like a kitten. He looked happier and more … well, full of life than Balthazar had ever seen him. “Some brandy will do you a world of good, my lord.”
“Yes, brandy. And a nice shag. Don’t worry, not with you.”
> That earned one of Lucas’s rare laughs. “I’m glad to see your spirits are still robust.” He waded into the gateway.
“They always are, Lucas.” Balthazar’s eyes slid shut. “Though as for the rest of me….”
He must have slipped away for a bit, because the next thing he knew, he smelled the clean linen and beeswax of his bedroom in Mayfair and Lucas was pulling the sheets up to his chin.
“Read me a bedtime story?” Balthazar murmured, burrowing deeper into the goose down.
His lips twitched. “I think you’d better rest.”
“Yes, Mother.” Lucas bent over the candle and Balthazar grabbed his arm. “Leave it burning.”
“Of course. I’ll be just down the hall if you want me, my lord. I’m … I’m not at all tired.”
Balthazar made some reply, his eyes already closing again.
Part of him feared a cameo appearance in his dreams by the bespectacled Vorstmann and his cranial crochet, but this proved to be unfounded. The candle burned low and his silvered head didn’t stir from the pillow.
For the first night in a very long time, Balthazar slept like an angel.
25
Anne trembled as she pressed her cheek against Gabriel’s in the darkness, felt the scratchy tickle of his beard and his warm, living body in her arms. He was still in one piece, still sane…. Or, at least, sane within the parameters of his own brand of lunacy, which in view of the horrors she’d seen that night, was starting to make perfect sense.
It had been a bravado performance—Why don’t you practice on me first?—but when she walked into that chamber and saw the rolling steel cart and the instruments laid out on it and the ghastly little man with the apron and the scalpel in his hand, she couldn’t help thinking of what she would have found if she’d come a few minutes later.
“Hello?” a voice whispered somewhere to the left. “I’m sorry, but would it be too much trouble—”
Balthazar. Anne used a trickle of earth to unlock his chains. She heard him call for Lucas Devereaux.