Grave Sins

by Jenna Maclaine

  MacLeod stopped pacing and looked at Devlin as if he had just remembered that the rest of us were in the room. I had the feeling that pacing in front of that fireplace was a longtime habit of his. He sighed and leaned one broad shoulder against the corner of the mantel.

  “Several months ago I learned from an informant in town that there were very fresh bodies being dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College. As we all know, there is, unfortunately, a very lucrative trade for the Resurrectionists these days. The bodies that were being used by Dr. Knox at the Medical College, however, were too fresh to have been robbed from their graves, so I asked Clarissa to make sure these bodies were not vampire victims.”

  “Who is Clarissa?” Devlin asked.

  “One of the queen’s ladies and a longtime member of my court. Clarissa frequently hunted near the Medical College, so I asked her to inquire about the bodies when she had one of the medical students in thrall. She reported that the bodies were pristine, no bites or open veins, and no blood loss. Apparently the cause of death on most of them was suffocation. I decided it was a matter for the human authorities and thought that was the end of it.”

  I leaned forward and caught Drake’s attention. “So if these people were not killed by vampires, then why are we here?”

  Drake looked at the king. “Do you want to tell it, or shall I?”

  MacLeod scowled at him and inclined his head. “You have your spies in my court, so I’m sure you know as much as I do,” he said harshly.

  Drake didn’t seem to be bothered by the tone and continued with the story. “We’re here because it has come to the High King’s attention that recently, while Clarissa was out hunting, she saw one of the bodies being delivered to the Medical College … by the queen herself.”

  “It’s ridiculous, I tell you!” MacLeod shouted. “She wouldn’t have done that. She couldn’t have! I was with her that night. All night.”

  Drake looked at him with sympathy etched on his face. “You understand, my friend, why I can’t take your word for that. Any vampire who would cross the deserts of northern Africa to steal a woman would have no qualms about lying to save her. The High King cannot turn a blind eye to this, MacLeod, you know that. You are a king yourself and you know that, as such, you must dispense justice equally or you are not worthy of the title. You are a good man, my friend, and a great king. You must let us see this through to the end.”

  MacLeod stared at him for a long moment before turning his back on us and bracing his arms against the mantel. “Get out,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “All of you get out. I’ve had enough for one night.”

  We all looked at Drake, unsure of what to do. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he rose and wordlessly held out one elegant hand to assist Bel up. We took our cue from him and all filed past MacLeod. He never looked up. He was the king, after all, and we had been dismissed.

  As I closed the door silently behind us, Devlin turned to Khalid. “Did MacLeod send Clarissa to Castle Darkness with the rest of the court?” he asked.

  Khalid looked away, and then met Devlin’s eyes. “No, she stayed behind because the king knew you would wish to question her.”

  Devlin nodded. “I’ll do that now, before we all retire for the day.”

  Khalid squared his shoulders. “That will not be possible.”

  I groaned inwardly. Devlin had issued an order, and he was not a man accustomed to having his authority questioned.

  Devlin arched one black brow at the man, and his face settled into that cold arrogance I had come to know so well. “I said I would question her now, Khalid. I realize that you are the first lieutenant of the King of the Western Lands, but do not forget who I am. I do not await your pleasure, you await mine.”

  Khalid bristled, looking as if he would challenge that statement; then the tension left his body and he shrugged one shoulder. “As you wish, my lord.”

  And so it was that the eight of us ended up marching down the grand staircase and through the common rooms to the large kitchen at the rear of the house. Set into the far wall was a thick oak door. Khalid jerked the door open as if it weighed nothing and stalked down the dark stairs to the wine cellar.

  “I thought she was a member of the court,” I called out. “Why is she being kept down here?”

  Khalid paused on the stairs and turned to look at me. “Clarissa was caught in a bit of a quandary. If she told you what she saw, then she felt she would be betraying her queen. If she tried to cover up what she believed to be the truth, then she feared the Red Witch of The Righteous would know her for a liar. She tried to run last night, and when she was caught MacLeod ordered her to be locked in the cell down here until your arrival.”

  So the vampires of the world thought that I could somehow use magic to tell a lie from the truth? Interesting. In theory, I supposed I could come up with some sort of lie-detecting spell, but spellcraft wasn’t really my forte. To be quite honest, I couldn’t tell the truth from a lie any better than the next person. It might be useful for others to think that I could, though, so I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

  The cellar was large, with bottles of wine and other household goods stacked along one wall. Mostly, though, it was empty except for the massive holding cell that stood in one corner. This was where we were supposed to find the reluctant Clarissa, but there was no one in the cell. I walked up and laid my hand against the cold iron of the bars. The only thing inside was a cot, a washbasin … and a pile of dust on the floor. I looked at the others and each of us turned to Khalid in horror.

  “As I told you, questioning Clarissa will not be possible,” he said in an icy tone.

  “What the hell happened here?” Devlin asked quietly.

  Khalid shook his head, and suddenly looked very tired. “I do not know. We were informed that you would be here before the dawn. Hashim was here with her, to guard her and keep her company. Around four o’clock this afternoon he came running up the stairs to tell me she was dead. He saw nothing. One minute she was there and the next—” He gestured to the pile of ash and bone fragments, all that is left when you kill an old vampire.

  We all looked to Hashim and he jerked his chin up, that arrogant expression settling across his face as if he dared any of us to question him. Oddly enough none of us said anything until finally Drake moved forward and said gently, “Did you perhaps fall asleep, old friend?”

  Hashim turned angry eyes to him and said in a clipped voice, “I did not. I heard a sound upstairs and I turned to look, but there was nothing there. When I turned back … she was gone. We have not gone in to collect her remains. We left everything exactly as it was for you to inspect.”

  “You said you heard something upstairs. Could someone have—” Hashim narrowed his eyes at me and I bit my tongue before the words slipped past you could come out of my mouth.

  “No one came in and no one went out,” he said flatly. “And Khalid has the only key to the cell.”

  “Oh, God,” came a small voice from the rear of our group. I had blissfully forgotten about Bel until then. “She killed herself,” she said, casting those violet eyes to me, “because of you.”

  I took an involuntary step back, and my elbow banged into the bars of the cell. Turning away from her accusing glare, I surveyed the contents of the cell again.

  “There’s no weapon,” I said. “She couldn’t have cut off her own head, and there’s no stake on the ground. If she killed herself, then how did she do it?”

  Everyone moved a few feet forward and looked into the cell as if some answer would suddenly become apparent. But there was no answer, and looking at what remained of Clarissa I was beginning to suspect that questions were all we were going to find in this house.

  Chapter 9

  I didn’t sleep well that day. I kept dreaming about being locked in a cell, helpless, while someone ran a stake through my heart. It was one of my top five ways not to die. I don’t think Michael slept at all, and we were both more relieved than irri
tated when Devlin knocked at our door in the early afternoon. I sat up in bed, pulling the sheets up around me, while Michael called for him to come in.

  Devlin closed the door behind him and flung himself into the nearest chair, running one hand through his black hair in a nervous gesture I’d come to know so well over the last thirteen years.

  “Where’s Justine?” I asked. “You didn’t leave her alone, did you?”

  I didn’t think any of us were safe in this house, and I couldn’t imagine Devlin leaving the love of his undead life asleep and alone.

  “No, I sent her to fetch Drake. The five of us need to search this house from top to bottom. It’s a large house that’s riddled with secret passageways, and despite MacLeod’s assurances I want to make damn sure that there’s no one in it that we don’t know about.”

  I completely agreed. MacLeod had said that the house was empty except for the five of them, and the five of us, but his wife was a suspected murderer, and after finding Marrakesh on that roof this morning I wasn’t so sure I shouldn’t be lumping him into that same category. It would be foolish to take his word on anything at this point.

  “Tell me something, Cin,” Devlin asked. “You know dark magic. What are we dealing with here?”

  I arched a brow at him. “I do not know dark magic, Devlin. You know I don’t practice that.”

  He held his hand up. “I apologize. I simply meant that you know what it feels like, what it smells like. After Venice, I mean.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Do not judge me for that, Devlin. I did what I had to do, or Gage would have killed us.”

  “Darling,” Michael said calmly, “no one is judging you. He was only asking.”

  Devlin regarded me with very patient, watchful eyes. I blew my breath out and forced the tension from my shoulders. Michael was right. I was overly sensitive on the subject. I had a right to be, though. If an evil wizard abducted you, your lover, and your best friends, and necessity forced you to use dark magic to kill said wizard and nearly a dozen other people in order to escape, you’d be a little touchy about it, too. As far as they knew, I had been cleansed of that evil, was as pure as I had been before we set foot in Venice. I hadn’t told any of them, including Michael, but I could still feel it inside me, waiting for an excuse to come out and play. The reasons I had kept this from them were many and varied, and having Devlin insinuate that I knew the dark arts hit a little too close to my guilty secret for me to be comfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just a sore subject. I don’t really know much about dark magic, but I do know it when I feel and smell it. The magic that’s been performed in this house is similar, but it’s not exactly like what I felt in Venice. Gage’s magic smelled of sulfur and old blood … and power. This smells highly of sulfur, not so much of blood, and has the cloyingly bitter odor of …” I closed my eyes and inhaled “… wormwood maybe?” I shrugged. “I can’t tell you what kind of magic it is, but I can tell you that it’s powerful and probably very dangerous.”

  Devlin nodded. “Would you know if you walked into the room where the spells had been cast?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Possibly. The smell would permeate the room where the spell had been cast. But if you think that someone smart enough and powerful enough to work that kind of magic is going to have an altar set up in their bedroom, you’re deluding yourself. Unless he’s an arrogant fool, he won’t make it that easy for us to figure out. I could probably find the room, but I doubt it’ll tell us much of anything about who did the casting.”

  “It is a start, though,” he said. “And more than we’ve gotten so far.”

  “I understand where you’re going with this reasoning, Devlin,” Michael interrupted, “but has no one but me figured out the flaw in this theory?”

  Devlin leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Michael said, “that we’re so used to Cin’s magic that we’ve forgotten that she’s the only vampire anyone has ever heard of who is also a witch.”

  “What’s your point?” I asked.

  Michael turned to me. “Have you smelled a human in this house?”

  I frowned. “Well, no, but the scent of dark magic, or whatever kind of magic this is, might cover it.”

  Devlin groaned and leaned back in the chair. “But the rest of us can’t smell or sense magic the way you do.”

  Of course. I might not smell a human in the house, but they should certainly be able to. I flopped down against the pillows.

  “Damn it,” I said to the ceiling. “So, what? We’re dealing with another demon in human form? That would mask the scent of a human.”

  Devlin shook his head. “I would know the scent of a demon. I spent years in Kali’s company, after all. Here’s a thought: Could a witch or a wizard cast a spell to obliterate his scent?”

  I sat up again and tucked the sheets back around me. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never had the need to try it, but I suppose it wouldn’t be too difficult.”

  There was a brief knock at the door, and before I could call out, Justine stalked in, followed by Drake and Bel. I was surprised to see Bel and wondered what the hell Justine had been thinking to bring her along. I glanced sharply at her but she simply rolled her eyes and put as much distance between herself and Bel as was possible.

  Drake propped one shoulder against the mantel and crossed his arms. His gaze lingered on my bare shoulders and the sheet wrapped tightly around me. Seeing that look, I resisted the urge to demand that everyone leave the room so I could dress. Older vampires were immodest to a shocking degree; none of them would have given much thought to being seen in such a state of dishabille. The fact that I was uncomfortable only served to remind me just how young I was.

  “My dear, would you care for your dressing gown?” Drake asked, plucking the garment up from the top of my trunk where I’d discarded it earlier. It was a sumptuous thing of crimson silk and delicate Oriental embroidery, imported from China. He held it open, as if I might get up from the bed and allow him to help me into it.

  All eyes turned to me, waiting for my response, and I tried to hide the blush that crept into my cheeks. I ducked my head and murmured, “I’m fine where I am, thank you.”

  Drake shrugged and tossed the robe aside. I glanced at Michael and found his eyes narrowed on Drake, a muscle ticcing in his jaw.

  “So,” Devlin said, drawing our attention back to the conversation. “It’s either a human witch or a demon.”

  Drake laughed. “A witch or a demon? I think it’s more likely that Marrakesh really did murder those people and MacLeod killed Clarissa and then tried to kill Marrakesh in order to cover it up.”

  “I won’t rule it out,” I conceded, “but I saw his face when he found the queen and I honestly don’t think he had anything to do with it.”

  Drake shrugged. “You can become quite a good actor in two thousand years, Cin.”

  I thought about it and then shook my head. “No, I still don’t think he did it.”

  “If we are going to name MacLeod as a suspect, then we must name Khalid and Hashim as well,” Justine interjected. “I have known them many years and they would do anything for their king. I do not believe it—I do not want to believe it—but Khalid was the only one with the key to that cell. He could have easily murdered Clarissa to keep her from telling what she had seen, and his brother would have covered for him with that ridiculous story.”

  “It is the simplest answer,” I said, but it still didn’t sit well with me. For one, it didn’t explain why magic was being worked in this house.

  “It still gets us nowhere,” Michael said. “Any one of the three of them could have chained her to that gazebo.”

  “I think Marrakesh did it to herself,” Bel said as she delicately seated herself in the room’s other chair and smoothed the ice-blue silk of her dress across her lap.

  We all looked at her. Finally I said, “You think that the Queen of the Western Lands took off all her cl
othes, went out onto the roof just before dawn, and chained herself to the gazebo?”

  “Why not?” she said. “It makes perfect sense to me. If you’re going to burn up in a pillar of fire, you wouldn’t want to ruin a perfectly good dress, now would you?”

  I started to ask why any vampire who wanted to greet the dawn would need to chain herself to a building, or how she would even manage to do it alone, but I thought better of it. Instead I said, “Your logic is … truly unique.”

  Bel smiled brightly. “Why, thank you.”

  I shook my head and turned back to Drake. “Of course, these theories are all nice and tidy, but I’ve found that, while that works well when dealing with humans, vampires’ actions are rarely explained in the simplest of terms.”

  Drake smiled at me. “So when you hear hoofbeats—”

  I smiled back at him. “I think unicorns, not horses. Besides, none of these theories explains the use of magic in the house.”

  “Ah,” Drake said, “but you’re assuming that the one has anything at all to do with the other.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “You’re right. Someone in the court could have a human witch who has been practicing some form of the dark arts in this house for quite some time. It would explain the lingering smell and the absence of any human scent. So we’re back at the beginning again with a whole lot of questions and absolutely no answers.”

  Devlin pushed his massive frame out of the chair. “Oh, we’ll by God have some answers before the next dawn. First, we’re going to search this place from top to bottom, and then at sunset we’re going out. I can’t trust a thing anyone in this house tells me, but there are people in this city who have no interest in this one way or another, and we’re going to talk to them.” He looked at Michael. “Have you ever wished you’d gone to university?”