The Highwayman

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The Highwayman Page 21

by Michele Hauf


  You always need that other something.

  “That other something,” Max said with a smirk. “Yeah, she’s it.”

  And it only took him two and a half centuries to find her.

  Max stepped on the gas and passed a convoy of cars. Five kilometers out, he veered left, sensing the path he should take.

  It wasn’t Vaux le Vicomte, but a splendid fieldstone mansion that topped the horizon to the west. Two pepper-pot turrets hugged the front façade. Twelve-foot hedgerows surrounded the iron gates fronting the estate. It was impossible to see the grounds, but Max sensed no activity outside.

  He parked the rental before the gate. There was not a gateman, nor an intercom, and the gate was overgrown with a wide-leaved vine dotted with frilly white flowers.

  Max stepped out and noted the new tire tracks impressed in the gravel. Someone had been here recently.

  He gripped the iron gate and released the bars with a hiss. Flapping his hands alleviated some of the sting. He drew his gaze up to the insignia topping the gate. It was no family crest or coat of arms.

  “A sigil.”

  But to ward off what? Demons? Isn’t that what Rainier did—summon demons?

  It was a guess. Max had no idea what Rainier was involved in. For all he knew the man could be inundated by the dark denizens and was merely trying to fend them off.

  They had become opposites by fate. If Max had spent his life pursuing demons it made sense Rainier may have spent his avoiding them.

  But if Gandras wasn’t a deprivation demon, as he’d always guessed, what the hell was it?

  The sun blinked on the horizon. Crickets chattered in the tall grasses. Max shook out his shoulders but paused before shifting from his human form. The shadow couldn’t get past any wards his human body couldn’t penetrate.

  “Guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  Uncoiling the whip, he snapped it once, high. The tip gripped the top bar. Giving it a tug ensured the whip held securely. Then he climbed the whip.

  He’d done this before; the razors braided within the leather had been spaced to allow handholds. The sigils on the whip reacted to the warded gate, glowing fiercely. Each step shocked through Max’s system as if he treaded a high voltage line. He gritted his teeth as the clash of wards cut like a blade through his nervous system.

  Reaching the top, he grabbed the iron. It hissed and smoked. His flesh burned. Kicking against the crossbar, he swung his body wide and high and managed to lever himself over the top. With a cry of pain, he pushed away from the warded iron and dropped.

  He landed sprawled, half on the gravel drive, half on grass. The cool thick grass soothed his burned palms. He winced at the remnants of electrified warding that shimmied through his veins.

  Had he been completely demon the wards would have reduced him to sulfur dust. Rainier was not a stupid man.

  Retrieving the whip and coiling it but keeping it in his hand, Max strode up the gravel drive.

  Now to discover what made Rainier Deloche tick.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to find me.”

  Max stopped at the bottom riser of a half-dozen limestone steps that ascended to the front entrance. Massive stone urns sprouted wild nightshade, spilling their violet blooms across the grass. Demonic gargoyles leered down from the rooftop, sooted and streaked from rain.

  Rainier leaned in the doorway, a long, black velvet robe open over his bare chest. Striped pajama bottoms and bare feet said he’d either been sleeping or lounging.

  Ah, the glamorous life of a gluttonous playboy.

  “You tried to kill me and Aby.”

  “Me? Nah. I just wanted to smoke you out. Pity, that was a pretty hotel. It opened during the World’s Fair in 1900, I believe. That was one hell of a party, man.”

  The guy must have never left Paris. And Max had never returned. No wonder he’d not sensed Deloche was alive until now.

  “What’s up, Rainier? Not keen on getting rid of the shadow that’s been riding you for centuries?”

  Rainier smoothed a hand over his bare abs. “Not particularly. Kinda like sucking the dreams from people, you know? I’m sure you do, too. Still a kicker that you can’t get it up though.”

  “I can get it up with the best of them.”

  “Oh, right, you just can’t complete the transaction.”

  “Never realized how big of an asshole you are, Rainier.”

  “Yeah, well, I was always the one who shed caution and jumped into life feet first. See what happens when you pause to think things through? You go without an orgasm for centuries.”

  The man laughed uproariously.

  Max splayed out his arms, showing his lack of humor. “We are at an impasse, Deloche. I need this thing gone from me. You want to keep it. One of us will have to surrender.”

  “I agree. Doesn’t do one or the other any good to carry only half. Imagine what we could do if we possessed the whole damn thing?”

  Rainier glanced over his shoulder but Max couldn’t see what he looked at inside the mansion. His former partner fashioned an evil grin. “I’m all for sport.”

  That grin was the same one Rainier had always delivered to those he’d robbed, cheated or tricked. And now Max stood on the receiving end.

  He’d known this wouldn’t be easy. Might as well get into the mood.

  “To adventure!” Max rallied.

  “To danger!” Ranier replied.

  Rainier stepped back and, as Max suspected, a dark shape gushed out the doorway toward him.

  Whip already in hand, Max seized the malformed demon about the chest with the razored leather. The sigils glowed. It took but a yank to cut the thing in half. Sulfur dusted the air.

  Max ran over the settled dust and kicked at the closed door through which Rainier had disappeared. It wasn’t locked. He hadn’t expected it to be. Rainier loved a good chase.

  “To the best man go the spoils,” he muttered.

  He had to admit, he loved a good chase, too.

  Once the door closed, the interior settled to darkness about Max. Floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with heavy damask drapery. No artificial light glowed from behind shades or glass globes. It took a moment to adjust his sight to the darkness, but Max did not stop walking.

  The odor of brimstone was so strong he could not pick out a specific demon or know if it were a residual scent from the summonings Rainier must perform.

  The whip cracked on the marble floor. “Deloche!” The echo of his voice sang longer than the whip’s bite.

  His hackles prickling, Max spun swiftly to see a demon soaring toward his head, its blue eyes the only thing visible. He ducked. Talons clawed his scalp, lifting his hair.

  A brimstone hiss preceded the next blind attack. This time the talons drew blood. Wincing at the wound to his thigh, Max swung the whip and captured the unseen enemy. It struggled, jerking Max’s arm roughly until his shoulder socket popped audibly. The demonic bastard was strong. Max heaved and managed to swing it around. Moving in a circle, he used momentum to throw the demon against the wall.

  Stunned, the demon couldn’t comprehend the snaking whip quickly enough to save its head.

  Two demons down.

  Max popped his shoulder bone back in place. “Hell to go.”

  He entered the ballroom cautiously. Candelabra lit the center of the room. Dozens of lit candles dripped wax, forming stalagmites on the parquet floor.

  Tinny strains of a harpsichord coerced him to search the dim shadows of the empty room for the source. He recognized the tune, a Scarlatti fugue…

  Max chuckled. “The Cat’s Fugue.” How oddly appropriate.

  Visions of frock coats, wide panniered dresses and fancy wigs flashed in Max’s mind as he strolled the vast ballroom. It was as if the ghosts of his past awaited his arrival at the soirée.

  The room was not empty, except for the sensations of evil that prickled his flesh. They were everywhere and nowhere.

  He could not k
ill what he could not see. Yet, neither could they kill him if he were but a shadow.

  Shucking his mortal shell, Max shadowed and slid across the floor and up against the wall. He skimmed the flocked paper higher. This room had not been changed for centuries for dust crusted on the paper.

  And indeed, there were ghosts. He moved through their ectoplasm, cold and gooey, some sticking at the edges of his shadow. Touching the cold death made his shadow shiver.

  He’d not dealt overmuch with ghosts. Much as he knew they could not harm him, he didn’t look forward to touching them now.

  Below, the room grew darker with swirls of black smoke. Demons formed, stirred up by the evil resonance that coated the room like a shroud.

  The entities were aware of him, he knew. Sliding out of the room and seeking Rainier seemed the better option than trying to fend off the dozens of demons he now counted. Some opened their maws, tilting their heads to catch the hot wax dripping from the candelabra. Others joined hands to dance a hideous quadrille. Most stared directly at him—a shadow clinging to the wall, gliding slowly along the ancient paper until it found position directly over the ballroom doors. He couldn’t hold form long before the shadow would overwhelm and he’d be off in search of dreamers.

  The doors slammed shut below him, causing Max’s shadow to temporarily lose its grip on the wall. Below, the coven of demons ceased their mad machinations and bowed to the man who walked to the center of the room.

  Rainier’s mad, Max decided. Or else he would surrender his half of the demon’s shadow.

  “My people!” Rainier, arms held wide and velvet robe splayed, greeted his minions. “Bring in the distractions!”

  The doors at the far end of the ballroom opened and a macabre band of demons and ghosts danced inside. Three particular brutes—menace demons, Max guessed from their switchblade grins—pushed a huge iron cauldron on a wheeled tumbrel that looked as if it had been stolen from the eighteenth century.

  A spinning ghost whirled in and around Rainier, tipping its head to its eerie master—literally, for it must have been beheaded. It tucked the head under its arm and glided off into the crowd.

  A cavalcade of women in grand dresses with wide skirts and tattered lace, dust-coated diamond necklaces and mouse-infested wigs, shimmery figments of their former selves, ghosted across the floor and mingled with the demons as if at an elegant event.

  “You ready to join the party, Maximilien?” Rainier did not turn toward the door, over which Max still clung. “It’s going to be a wild one! Where’s that kitty cat?”

  Max’s shadow cringed at that query. He slipped down the wall and puddled on the floor, but did not transform. Not yet.

  A tall ghost who was mostly corporeal and only partly ectoplasm glided forward, her grand skirts dragging a trail across the dusty floor. She bowed exquisitely before Rainier.

  “You were my favorite,” Rainier announced. He stroked the woman’s cheek. Rainier’s hand slid through flesh and bone and she winced as if the touch were painful.

  Max had always believed ghosts could feel no pain.

  “What did you bring me today?” Rainier asked.

  The woman slid her palms over her frayed skirts. Bits of lace separated and fell, but dispersed to dust before touching the floor. She parted the folds of fabric, and it opened to reveal no feet, only bloody stumps. As she moved backward, the thing she had concealed beneath those generous skirts was revealed. A cage.

  Inside sat a reddish-brown cat.

  Chapter 21

  M ax shifted to human form. The shadow relented grudgingly, tugging at his soul. Like the wards in Aby’s home, it sensed the darkness to come and wanted to remain, to stick around for the macabre events.

  He solidified before Rainier, his hand about the man’s neck. “Release her!”

  Legions of demon and ghost loomed over them. Blue eyes glowed, talons clicked in anticipation. Incorporeal bodies shimmered, craving the life they once possessed, and tasting it in the room.

  Rainier put up a hand to stop his troops’ advance. Max did not relent his chokehold. He knew how easy it was to bring death to those who did not give him what he demanded.

  Behind him the cat meowed. Aby’s plea crept through Max’s flesh and touched his soul. His breath huffed out. The desire to destroy faded, seeping out like the shadow he had just been.

  Maximilien Fitzroy did not give death unless it was warranted. Not two hundred fifty years ago and not now.

  He released Rainier and put up his hands in placation. He knew his partner well enough. When he wanted something, he would stop at nothing to get it.

  Rolling his head, Rainier made show of puffing up his chest and setting back his shoulders. He had no physical weapons that Max could see, except for the hundreds of demons drooling for a chomp at Max’s intestines.

  “Funny how we both settled in with kitty cats of our own, eh?” Rainier nodded to the left.

  The ballroom inhabitants parted to reveal a tall, slender woman with long white hair, clad in a barely-there beige sheath of a dress. She slinked across the floor, feline smooth, her catty glances piercing the crowd. Wax droplets spotted her hair as she passed beneath the candelabra. Her bright green gaze was focused solely on Rainier.

  A familiar, Max assumed. His fingers itched for the whip, but he had to play this game right. He was outnumbered, and his opponent treaded insanity.

  Yet so do you.

  Indeed.

  Max laughed, releasing a hearty chuckle. He was aware the room gazed in awe upon him, as did Rainier. The familiar flicked a bored gaze over all.

  “So you have a collection of demons and ghosts due to your nefarious sex life with a demon conduit?” Max shook his head. Laughing held back the urge for violence. “Good old Rainier. Always the Lothario.”

  Rainier smirked. “Yeah, well, you can’t climax? I have to bed whatever comes my way.”

  The white-haired familiar hissed at the cage. Max stepped before it, protecting Aby futilely. How she had gotten here from the safety of Ginnie’s apartment, he could not guess. Didn’t matter. He’d meant it when he promised the werewolf he’d keep her from harm.

  But he wasn’t about to play the hero so the wolf could claim the prize. Aby was his.

  “Let me walk out of here with Aby,” Max proposed, “and I won’t return. You can continue to do…whatever it is you do, demon shadow intact. I won’t bother you again.”

  “Maximilien Fitzroy.” Rainier shook his head, then looked up from a tilted smirk. “You’re lying. I know you.”

  “It’s been a long time, Deloche. A man changes.”

  “His core remains the same. Once a thief, always a thief. Once a liar? Well. I’m surprised you didn’t come after me a century ago. I know the shadow inside must eat at you. Yet, there’s no way you’re going to sacrifice your freedom from the shadow for a woman. A familiar, Max. The very creature you’ve spent your life destroying.”

  It disturbed him that Rainier knew more about him than he knew of his former partner. Had Rainier tracked him through the decades? He had garnered a certain unwanted fame as the Highwayman.

  If he were so eager to have the complete demon himself, why hadn’t Rainier come after him sooner?

  “You going to kill mine, too?” Rainier hugged the familiar to his side. She snarled an unhappy mewl. “She’s a tough one. You don’t have a hello-how-do-you-do for an old acquaintance, Max?”

  The familiar’s eyes glinted like stolen emeralds. Max studied her face. He’d met her before? But that would make her…The original familiar with whom he and Rainier had shared that disastrous night.

  “She’s a survivor,” Rainier added. “We hooked up about a month after the big night. Her old man—who was a witch, by the way—kicked her out.”

  The familiar pushed out of Rainier’s precious hug, obviously annoyed. Preening her hair, she eyed Max coyly.

  “You head off to do your thing now, sweetie. Max and I have business to discuss,” Rainier told
her.

  “We have no business.”

  “I say we do. You want to save that pretty Abyssinian? A fine breed. Rangy but devoted. Had one of those once. Demon ate her.”

  “Have you been collecting familiars over the centuries?”

  “Someone has to keep them safe from your vengeance. Ain’t that right, sweetie?”

  The familiar meowed from the lush sofa she’d climbed onto over by the wall beneath a pair of dusty portraits. Max marked her position from the corner of his eye. He slid his foot back, the rowel of his spur connecting with the cage.

  “What kind of business do you propose?” If he could keep Rainier talking that would give him time to plan. Their conversation kept the demons and ghosts at bay, as well. He and Rainier provided a macabre spectacle. “Riding the high roads for good old times?”

  “Stealing is so gauche.”

  “So you’ve not been afflicted with the need to take things?”

  Rainier smirked. “If you’ve got a problem, buddy, maybe you should see someone about that. I’m into charity.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Sure I am. Gave over a million to the Helping Hearts Foundation last year. They love me.”

  Irony at its finest. This kept getting better and better in no way that appealed.

  “So back to business. You know demons?” Rainier said. “I know them better. But a summons doesn’t always conjure the ones I can use or control. I need an exterminator for the unruly ones. Someone who won’t blink an eye to slicing off heads.”

  “And that would be me?” Max crossed his arms high on his chest. “What do you summon them for, Deloche?”

  “Clients. The highest bidder. Gotta write those charity checks somehow. Mostly for the fun of it.” He gestured at a particular ghost, the one who’d had the cage under her skirts. “Most take on a human shell as soon as they arrive. But their stolen mortal forms stick around forever after they die. It’s a bitch.”

  “Fitting. You destroy them, so why shouldn’t they haunt you ever after?”

  “You have trouble with the ghosts of your destruction, Max?”

 

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