“If what he says is true, if he’s the Council’s man, he sold his soul. Just like my grandfather. He will burn. No matter what. Just like me,” Severne said.
“Samuel had the affinity. We used it for decades. But then he refused to help me any longer. He said we’d been wrong. I had to make a deal with the devil to continue our quest,” Reynard said.
“Samuel refused to go along with your agreement,” Kat said.
“He was my partner for years. We killed so many. Then he decided it was wrong. He went against all we believed,” Reynard said.
“Against you,” Kat said.
“We fought. I stabbed him,” Reynard said.
“But he passed his gift to my grandmother before he died,” Kat said.
“He betrayed me. I created the Order of Samuel to make things right.”
“You retroactively made him a collaborator in your mad scheme,” Severne said.
The opera master reached to pick up the daemon blade, but Kat moved to take it from him. Severne protested, but when her hand closed over the hilt, he grew suddenly silent. He released it to her fingers. She could feel its great heat in her hand, but it didn’t burn her skin.
“I can’t save you, Reynard. You’ll still burn. But I won’t leave you here to burn alive.”
Katherine D’Arcy plunged the blade that Reynard had used to kill her mother into his Brimstone-tainted heart. As the knife entered his chest, a great winged shadow she’d seen before swept out from the carving of Michael on the wall to engulf Reynard’s writhing body. She’d seen daemons consumed many times, but this was hotter and brighter. She fell back from the conflagration as her would-be rapist burned and Severne caught her to keep her from falling to her knees.
“My name is Katherine,” Kat quietly said to the man who had respected that fact all along.
She would hear Reynard’s screams for the rest of her life. It was a horrible sound, but a fitting end.
The intense burn as damnation claimed him to nothingness cleansed her mother’s blood from the daemon blade. The winged shadow disappeared at the same instant that Reynard’s ash disintegrated in the air.
Severne lifted her into his arms. She didn’t protest. He could run faster, and the building was beginning to fall. She touched the carving of Michael’s face. It had been blackened by the burning struggle with Reynard. She brushed Lavinia’s hand. The chill in the wooden fingers was gone.
Severne pulled her away from the bas-relief mural. She could see the fire already flickering up the walls. Then she was enveloped in an explosion of lava-like flame that should have resulted in horrible scorching pain.
But didn’t.
She was in Severne’s arms. It was where she most wanted to be. He took her through the flames to the other side.
Chapter 30
Fire and rescue personnel had responded to the blaze on Severne Row, but no training could have prepared them for a conflagration of hellish proportions. When Kat’s eyes fluttered open, ladder trucks were fully deployed, and fountains of water fell on nearby buildings to keep them from going up in flames. The great light of l’Opéra Severne created thousands of leaping shadows everywhere she looked.
Later there would be speculation about the miraculous localization of the fire. Grizzled firefighters with enough experience under their belts to recognize the impossible would cross themselves years from now when the fire was mentioned. The habitual muttering of prayers whenever Severne Row had to be crossed would become a tradition for all department captains.
Tonight, as water fell like a soaking, soothing rain, Severne held her. His embrace was like an answer to her prayers that he would live.
L’Opéra Severne continued to burn.
It had been given up as lost. The roof had caved in, and flames blazed into the night sky.
Kat looked up at Severne. His black hair dripped. His white shirt was plastered to his muscular frame. He was altogether glorious. She suddenly remembered the others and looked around to see hundreds of performers, musicians and technicians milling around.
The conductor was tended by paramedics. He wore a blanket as if it was an evening cloak. Tess carried steaming cups to the artists she usually helped in other ways. Supportive as ever. When she looked Kat’s way, her eyes glowed, but it was only the reflection of the fire. She was human even if her abilities as an experienced prompter were inhumanly brilliant.
Finally, as Kat had begun to lose hope, she saw Eric. The young daemon boy was cradled in Sybil’s arms in the shadow of an ambulance. Kat extricated herself from Severne’s hold. He had to loosen it to let her go. She rose and steadied her legs before she approached the daemon woman who had almost killed her. Severne rose to follow her, but he didn’t interfere.
“You would help him now?” Kat asked.
“I’ve always tried to help him, even though I let him wander the halls more than I should have. I didn’t know he planned to burn l’Opéra Severne. I would have tried to stop him. They should never have asked such a sacrifice from a child,” Sybil said.
Eric had turned his sooty face toward Katherine. He’d been crying. The water from the firefighter’s hoses didn’t account for his reddened eyes.
“They?” Kat asked. She couldn’t believe the daemon boy had started the fire that burned what was left of his mother.
She reached out and Eric took her hand, but he didn’t release his hold on Sybil with the other.
“Lucifer’s Army. They used Eric to burn the opera house so they could be freed,” Sybil explained.
“Now they’re nothing but smoke and ash,” Severne said. “Why would they choose death over imprisonment?” His fists were clenched. His jaw was tight. He was helpless to save the daemons he’d captured.
“No,” Eric said. He shook his head. To Katherine, he continued, “They aren’t dead. Some of them will die in the fighting, though. They warned me I might not see my mother again.”
“He freed Lucifer’s Army to attack the Council. They were taken and imprisoned one at a time, but they were released all at once. They planned a surprise attack to take the Council unawares. It will be a horrible battle,” Sybil explained. “He weeps because of that, not because of the fire.”
Katherine let go of Eric and backed into Severne’s arms. Here, a huge historic building burned. There, in the hell dimension, a daemon war would rage.
“You’ll be safe with us,” Kat said. She meant Eric would be safe, but she included Sybil, as well. She didn’t trust the daemon woman, but she didn’t want her to have to go to war.
A loud roar shook the air around them, and the ground trembled. A woman screamed and the whole crowd cried out together, their exclamations blending into a great sound of dismay, punctuated by embers of cherry ash falling from the sky.
L’Opéra Severne was gone. John Severne watched its final collapse, flames and shadows dancing on his stark, handsome face.
His eyes weren’t red, but his face was wet. They were all soaked from the fire hoses’ rain. Still, water and tears ran together so no one could tell where one became another. Kat turned and buried her face in Severne’s chest. He pulled her closer. Sybil hugged Eric, protecting him from the falling remnants of the building no one would ever know he’d burned.
It hadn’t been arson. It had been a revolution. One even a small boy couldn’t escape.
Sybil had never intended to endanger him. Her bargain had been a bluff. Kat could tell the daemon would have helped Eric no matter what she’d done.
“Katherine, you aren’t burned. The building was engulfed in flame when I carried you out. I couldn’t avoid the fire. You should have died. You aren’t even injured,” Severne said.
He ran his hands over her damp skin, checking for burns that didn’t exist.
She remembered the heat. She remembered how he
had been afraid for her to touch Reynard’s blade. But neither his knife nor the fire had burned her.
“Brimstone protects you from flame. The danger to Eric wasn’t from the fire, but from the building’s collapse,” Sybil said.
“Kat has no Brimstone in her blood,” Severne said.
“But the baby she carries does,” Sybil said. “Brimstone isn’t always a curse. It can be a gift. Tonight, Brimstone helped protect you. The baby will be human as you’re human, but the Brimstone will make her or him a little extraordinary, as well.”
It should have been too soon to feel a stir, but at Sybil’s words, Kat felt a quickening in her womb. It was a fluttering to life of warmth she and Severne had created. The early movement was proof that their baby would be special. Sybil was right.
“No. It isn’t safe. I can’t endanger a child with my cursed blood,” Severne said.
But he held her closer.
He would never let her go. She trusted him completely. He’d come back for her. He’d let Michael go, safe and sound. He’d even given Grim to the baby to guard him and her sister.
He only needed time to discover the love he already held in his heart.
“Who knows whether the Council will be able to hold a contract over your head after tonight? They have their hands full facing Lucifer’s Army,” Kat said.
She put one hand over the place where she’d felt the baby move. She promised him or her that it wouldn’t matter. She would protect the baby with all she had even if the Council wasn’t defeated.
But her promise was interrupted.
Severne cried out and sagged against her. A blazing light flared from his arm. It burned through the wet material of his shirt. Steam rolled as if boiled away from the fabric. The man she loved fell to his knees. Had the contract claimed him? Had freeing Michael hurt him after all?
She couldn’t watch him burn now. Not when their baby was just beginning to grow.
Kat sank down beside Severne.
“Get back. Get back,” he warned.
His shirt was burning away. She couldn’t hold him. Even with the protection of the baby’s Brimstone, the heat was too great. They watched his shirt turn to ash and fall from his skin. But as the ash fell, the tally marks on his arm glowed. It was the marks that had flared, blazing to life and burning the shirt away.
Kat reached toward him, but he held her away.
Eric sobbed. Steam rolled. The rest of the crowd was too busy gawking at the collapsed opera house to notice Severne burning.
But before his skin ignited, the tally marks changed from flame, to fierce ember, to charcoal, to pale gray lines she could hardly see.
Severne held his arm up in disbelief.
“Kat...they’re fading,” he said.
He didn’t stop her this time when she reached to feel his rapidly cooling skin.
The daemon marks were gone.
* * *
Crews dug for hours for the chest that had been in Severne’s rooms. When it was finally found, they brought it forward as if they were frightened to touch it. Everything else was gone. Only the chest remained.
Severne and Kat opened the chest in private. Inside, the cask still smoked, but when Severne lifted its lid, the contract inside was gone.
Only ash remained.
Chapter 31
The next day dawned before they were able to leave the wreckage of the burn site. She and Severne cleaned up the best they could with borrowed clothes so that Levi Severne wouldn’t be frightened by their appearances. They didn’t want to scare the dying man by showing up suddenly, smudged and charred with burned clothing.
But they did need to check on his father now that Severne’s tally marks were gone as if they’d never been.
Neither of them knew what the disappearance of the marks might mean for Levi Severne.
John still hadn’t told her he loved her, but he also hadn’t let her go for most of the night. There was no mention of him going to see his father alone. He held her hand. She followed. She was glad to be with him after the fear and the flames.
“Without Grim, we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Severne said.
He led her to a garage a block away from the smoking ruin of the opera house.
In the back corner of a reserved section of the garage, a row of half a dozen vintage sports cars gleamed. An attendant met them at the gate and produced the key Severne requested. He led Kat toward the row of cars, and she somehow wasn’t surprised when the car he chose was low and lean in a perfect mimicry of its owner. It was a foreign black roadster with minimalist, perfect lines and only a little chrome.
Its motor thrummed to life with a smooth roar once Severne turned the key, after he’d helped her sink down into a leather-upholstered passenger seat as soft as butter.
“French?” Kat asked.
“Of course,” Severne replied.
He drove the car as if he hadn’t been born when horse and buggy ruled the roads. Kat relaxed back in her seat and enjoyed the ride. He changed gears in the same way he handled everything, with grace and a purpose of motion gifted to him by a long life and so much practice that he was an expert. She discovered her cheeks were hot as her thoughts strayed to other ways that John Severne had shown her his expertise.
Too soon they came to a subdivision of older homes. The houses themselves were simple, but the grounds surrounding them were obviously the reason for the estates, much more extensive and elaborate than the houses themselves. The land around the houses provided space for gardens and privacy.
Severne pulled to the curb in front of a picturesque Craftsman.
He came around to open her door. Even from the street, Kat could see the bushes she’d seen before, heavy with clusters of hydrangea blossoms.
She paused.
Her mother had been here, and someone had taken her photograph in Levi Severne’s garden.
“He’s forgotten his former life. He doesn’t know me. I have to introduce myself each time I visit,” Severne warned as he took her arm.
But when Levi Severne met them at the door of his home, he greeted his son with his name.
The men hugged as if they were reunited for the first time in decades. Although she was frightened by the implications of her mother’s photograph, Kat blinked back tears. She followed John and his father back into the house as he helped the elderly and frail man to his chair. The exertion had taxed Levi’s strength. A nurse came from the rear of the house and helped him. He coughed until his handkerchief came away spotted with ashy blood.
“I’d like to go outside to talk,” the old man requested. “I want to be with my flowers in the sun.”
Severne looked at the nurse, and she nodded.
The sun had risen on a bright and cloudless day. The nurse hovered while they prepared her charge to go outside. She touched Katherine’s arm before she could follow Severne and his father as they slowly made their way to the back door.
“Terminally ill patients often regain lucidity just before they pass...” Her warning trailed off, and Kat nodded to confirm that she understood.
It was possible John didn’t have much time with his father. She would leave the questions about her mother unasked. But she did respond with movement when John looked around to see where she’d gone. He needed her near him. She understood. She wanted to be near him, too.
The garden was lush. Pale blue hydrangea clusters were showy against the verdant bushes. Their beauty hadn’t been evident in the old, faded photograph she’d found. Kat allowed some privacy as Severne and his father murmured together. She guessed which bush her mother had been photographed in front of, and she went to it. She brushed its blossoms with her fingers until cool dew kissed her hands.
“The contract is fulfilled? I woke last night as if fro
m a foggy dream. I remembered everything I’d forgotten.” He coughed again, and Severne placed a hand on his quaking shoulder.
But when Levi saw Kat near the bushes, he lowered the stained handkerchief. She had turned from the hydrangea after picking a small cluster. The soft blooms were delicate. Petals fell like blue snow from her fingers.
“She came to me for help. She knew I was no friend to the Order of Samuel. You aren’t her, but you have her eyes. Her hair. I remember Anne D’Arcy. I had to refuse. The Council wanted her lover. He was on their most-wanted list. A dangerous revolutionary. I couldn’t help her,” Levi said. He talked almost to himself, his words were so quiet. It was the confession of a dying man. “One of the Order’s monks followed her here. He was documenting her betrayal for his master. He took her photograph near the hydrangeas. She hurried away before I could reconsider.”
“Reynard killed her,” Kat said. She allowed the hydrangea cluster to fall to the ground with its petals.
“I wanted to help her. But I promised my wife I would save our son. Though it seems now that he was the one who saved me,” Levi said.
Severne continued to hold his father’s shoulder with a supporting hand. The elderly man had slipped deeper into his garden chair. His head tilted to the side as if he didn’t have the strength to keep it upright.
“No. It’s the D’Arcy family that has saved us, Father. I didn’t fulfill the contract. But my tally marks are gone. The Council is at war with Lucifer’s Army. I think our part in it is done.” He showed his father his arm where only clear skin remained. He explained to Levi Severne about the daemon boy and the fire, about the trunk full of ash the workers had found.
By the time he’d finished the whole story, Levi had slumped even more in his chair.
“I forgive you,” Katherine whispered as the old daemon hunter’s eyes closed for the last time. “And my mother would forgive you, too.”
Levi held his son’s hand while he peacefully slipped away.
Brimstone Seduction Page 24