I gripped the bars. “Madame Serrone,” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“Madame Serrone!”
She glanced up, startled, and I realized she had been
mouthing words in prayer. Her face brightened and she hurried to the door. “Helena! You’re free!”
“Not yet,” I said. “We’re leaving. All of us.”
“Alexandre is a few cells down. We’ve tried to call to one another and pass information when the guards are away.” She swallowed. “They planned to make an example of you tonight. For everyone who ever dared to fight them.”
“Their plan failed,” I said, as Marceau unlocked her cell door and hurried to the next one. “Let’s go.”
Within a minute, Marceau and Dureau had unlocked every cell. Yet some of the prisoners weren’t coming out.
I looked into one cell, where a middle-aged man with auburn curls looked haggard and frightened. As frightened as he had always been under the Lycanthru’s control.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re free.”
He stared blankly at me.
“Now!” I ordered.
He shook his head and took a step back, farther into his cage.
I was tempted to leave him. We had no time to argue. But I thought of Father Vestille, knowing he wouldn’t have left without taking as many as he could, even if it cost him his life.
“Listen, all of you,” I said, moving into the center of the corridor. “The Lycanthru captured you and locked you all away, to keep you quiet. Because you were a threat. They’re frightened of me now, because I learned how to fight them. But long before that, they were frightened of you. All of you. You don’t need to fear them anymore. They can’t do anything worse to you than what they’ve already done. You’re free and we’re all leaving, right now. All you have to do is come out.”
No one moved. The corridor of open cell doors remained quiet.
Yet we heard rumbling and snarls near the outside Arena.
I raised my crossbow. “We’re leaving, whether you come with us or not. We can’t wait for Simonet and the rest of the Lycanthru to come back. They killed my family and they’re ready to attack my friends. They’ll attack yours, too, if you let them. I need your help to fight them. To tell people the truth so we can save them. All you have to do is come with us.”
Something shuffled from a nearby cell. Then a wide-eyed man emerged, glaring at me. The auburn curled man before me started moving, too, and soon most of the inmates had stepped out.
I moved to one of the cages, where an elderly bearded man sat on a bench, hanging his head. It was Marc Creonin. “Monsieur, we need to leave,” I said.
He shook his head. “They’ll kill us.”
“We’ll kill them,” I argued. “With silver and fire.”
“You might,” he said, staring at his feet. “I can’t risk it.”
“You’ll die here.”
He nodded. “Probably so.”
I wanted to yank him out of his cage, force him to come along. But we couldn’t waste our time or energy fighting with him when the Lycanthru would return any moment.
I had no choice but to leave him.
“All right, let’s go,” I said. I looked back at the frail man in the cage. “Catch up if you can, Monsieur.”
He nodded.
A din of growls and howling rose from the corridors.
I reloaded my crossbow and readied it, addressing the inmates. “They’re coming through that door any moment. When they do, I’ll shoot as many as I can. Use your torches to set the carcasses on fire if they get past.”
In his cell, Monsieur Creonin sat higher and craned his neck to see what I was doing, as the snarls grew louder.
The wolves would be on us in seconds.
I lifted the crossbow. “Here they come.”
The door burst open and five wolves poured through it, with more growling behind them. I fired, one bolt after another, taking down each of the five, then the two behind them that stumbled into their bodies. Marceau and Dureau lowered their torches to set the wolf carcasses ablaze, as another wolf leaped over them to charge me. I fired again, dropping it in the midst of everyone. Another wolf tried to climb over the blazing pile of bodies but I dropped him in mid-leap. I shoved the nearby wolf corpse with my boot, trying to slide it toward the pile. Monsieur Serrone grabbed its torso and dragged it, piling it with the other bodies. Another wolf peered beyond the rising flames to see me. I fired a bolt between its eyes and it dropped out of sight behind the pile. The flames rose, filling the end of the passage with smoke.
We turned to move away from it. Creonin now stood to his full height at the door of his cell. He hurried to job alongside me. “Mademoiselle, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course,” I said, slowing. “We’ll help you.”
“No. I’ll only slow you down.” He was already starting to wheeze. “But I see that you will escape. So I am trusting you. To protect Claudette.”
I gasped. “You know her?”
“Listen closely,” he said, stopping and putting his hands on his knees as we entered the next passage. “I told the wolves my name is Marc Creonin. My real name is Marsuvio, and Claudette is my granddaughter. Her name is Claudette Sofia Valet.”
“Your last name is Valet?”
He shook his head, bent over. “That is her father’s name.”
“What happened? How did -?”
“Just listen, both of you,” he said, bending down further and removing his sandal.
Marceau waved Dureau ahead. “Go on, take the others out. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Make sure you are!” Dureau warned, leading the inmates away with his torch held high.
Marsuvio unfastened the strap of his sandal and removed it. Then he peeled back the inner sole, revealing a small hole dug into its bottom layer. From the hole, he pried a tiny golden object
– a key – that hung on the end of a tiny chain. He seized my wrist and pressed the key into my palm. His eyes were wild.
“Take this key and my granddaughter to the Queen. She can protect her.”
I felt a shiver throughout my entire body. “The Queen?”
“Give her my name. She will see you,” he wheezed. “The key will tell her everything. Protect Claudette. I’m entrusting her to you.”
“But –!”
Marsuvio turned toward the sound of growls from the passage we had just left. “Marceau, give me your torch and a few of those vials. I’ll hold them off.”
Marceau hesitated, then surrendered his torch with some containers and seized my arm. “Let’s go, Helena.”
“Wait! We can’t leave him!” I said.
Marsuvio flung the door open and jogged inside with the torch, straight toward a gang of snarling Lycanthru. He yanked the door shut behind him.
“No!” I lunged for the door, but Marceau shoved his hand against it, keeping it shut. “We’ve got to stop him!” I cried.
“He’s made his choice!” Marceau shouted. “He’s bought us time. For us and for Claudette. All we can do is honor his request.”
“But we can’t let him –!”
Glass shattered against a stone surface. Then an explosion pounded against the thick oak door, nearly pushing us back from it.
Marsuvio was dead. And he had taken those Lycanthru with him.
After a second – a single second to grieve – Marceau hurried off. “Let’s go,” he said. “They hold their rituals in some rooms near the next few passages.”
I followed him through the next four corridors, then out into a large room, with some benches lined up to face a raised platform. It reminded me of the setup of the barn where I first spied a Lycanthru ritual back in La Rue Sauvage. At a far end of the room was a steel cage that could hold a large animal – or a small child. Its door stood open. An entry door on the opposite wall was slowly swinging shut.
I ran at it.
“Helena, wait!” Marceau called, chasing af
ter me.
I rushed through the door to the opposite passage, to see Simonet running off, with Claudette slung over his shoulder. She lifted her head, seeing me, as she bounced against his back like a sack of potatoes. I sprinted after her, nearly running into two Lycanthru who emerged from side entrances. I prepared to release my glove-blades, charging at them, as two more wolves appeared behind them. And another two after that. Followed by another three, all baring their fangs as they padded toward me.
“Helena!”
I turned and fled back toward Marceau, who held the door open for me. I leaped into the room and he slammed and locked it behind me. “I saw her!” I said. “I saw her!”
“There are too many of them!” he shouted, as the wolves pummeled the wooden door.
We ran to the other side, escaping into the hall as they cracked the door’s lock and it swung wide open. A low torch was lit near it, and I hurled a Lycanum vial straight at it before ducking into the hall. The wolves howled at the explosion that spit flame into the corridor, behind us. We ran down the passage, toward Dureau and the other inmates, toward the passage that led outside.
Away from Claudette.
I had failed.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Marceau said, reading my thoughts as he ran ahead with his torch. “We’ll find her again, later.”
I hurried after him, making no reply.
Within minutes, we had caught up to Dureau and the others, about thirty inmates. We followed Marceau through a series of passages to a larger corridor that led down a long granite ramp. We passed few Lycanthru along the way, and I easily disposed of them with a handful of bolts. It seemed Marceau was right about this side entrance being rarely used.
We hurried down the slope to a set of large double doors and pushed them open.
The cool night air rushed through me, filling me with a sense of new life. Several of the men around me also smiled at the scent of the thick pine trees lining the steep hill below us and the whistling wind tickling our ears.
While Claudette remained in Simonet’s clutches.
“No time to waste,” Marceau urged. “Move!”
“Which way?” I asked.
“The rear of the asylum.”
“We just escaped!” I argued. “We need to get as far from this place as possible. Why not down the hill?” The dark forest of trees below looked easy enough to descend quickly, and would put plenty of distance between us and the Lycanthru.
“Not everyone’s legs can make it down that hill,” Marceau said.
I glanced back at the others, realizing that some of the elderly would never make it. Including the Serrones. Even the younger prisoners had not used their legs much for years, and might tumble straight down that hill to the bottom.
“We’re heading for the stables,” Marceau said. He urged us all to the back of the asylum, then led us to two horses and wagons. “Pile in!” he ordered. “Dureau and I will drive.”
We climbed in fast. I jumped up into the back of the wagon behind Marceau.
“You!” Marceau said, leaning back to pull me toward the driver’s seat. “You sit up here with that crossbow, in case there’s any –!”
I turned toward a snarling wolf as it charged, silencing it with a quick bolt. Everyone paused for a moment, then hurried to find their places.
“Understood,” I said.
Marceau took the reins and snapped the whip. We rolled out quickly, rushing around the other wall. Two more wolves ran at us but I dropped them both before reloading, with the last bundle of bolts in my satchel.
We rumbled around the front of the building, where we met another dark wagon approaching the asylum entrance. Drawing closer to pass it, we spotted Séverin DuChard returning, with a large St. Andrew’s cross – the one he meant to torture me on – in his wagon’s rear bed. He stared at us, stunned as we rushed toward him. He tugged on his reins and rose in his seat, baring his teeth as he crouched, ready to leap at us.
I hurled my torch at him. He dodged, barely avoiding it as it landed on the other side of his driver’s seat. I grabbed a Lycanum vial from Marceau’s bag and tossed it onto the seat as DuChard turned to jump off the wagon. The vial exploded, spewing flames in all directions and overturning the wagon and its horses. From the ground, DuChard screamed as flames burned his face. He pressed his head to the ground to squelch the fire as we rode off, leaving Asile de DeSarte far behind.
A minute later, I settled into the front seat, my crossbow at the ready.
We were free.
“We made it,” Madame Serrone said, breathless. “Thank the Lord.”
“If you say so,” Marceau said, snapping the reins again to push the team harder. “I’m just glad we all survived.”
I thought of Marsuvio, sacrificing himself. Marceau caught my eye, and swallowed, reading my thoughts once more. Once we were all safe, we had to find where they had taken Claudette.
“I haven’t formally met you,” Madame Serrone said, leaning over the wagon to offer her hand to Marceau. “I’m Gisele Serrone. This is my husband, Alexandre. Thank you both for rescuing us all.”
Marceau squeezed her hand briefly, then returned his attention to the road. “You’re welcome. My name’s Marceau,” he said. “Marceau Vestille.”
My nerves flared.
He twitched suddenly at me, seeing something in my expression. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
I could see it, now that he said his name. The same large forehead, beneath his unkempt brown hair. The same piercing eyes. Even the same manner of hunching over in his seat as he held the reins, just like Father Vestille often hunched when he prayed or sat to listen closely. “That’s an uncommon name,” I said. “You must know Father Vestille.”
He considered it, then shook his head. “I don’t know any Father Vestille.”
“Are you certain?” I asked. “He’s a close friend of mine.”
“And ours,” Madame Serrone added.
“Are you sure you don’t know Abier?” Monsieur Serrone asked, leaning forward.
Marceau’s face darkened. He glared back at Monsieur Serrone, then at me, less focused on the road now. “Abier Vestille is a priest?”
I swallowed. “Yes. So you do know him.”
He fixed his eyes ahead once more, his jaw set hard. “Of course I know him,” he said. “He’s my brother.”
47.
We traveled along the dark road in silence, the wagons rumbling on toward La Rue Sauvage. Marceau fixed his scowling eyes on the road, refusing to turn toward me as he drove the horses.
Marceau Vestille.
Why hadn’t Father Vestille ever mentioned having a brother? Or any other family, for that matter? And why did Marceau seem so angry at him?
I cleared my throat. “Father Vestille – uh, your brother – helped me a lot against the wolves. He hid me away so I’d have a place to rest, where they couldn’t find me. He also prayed for –.”
I stopped short at a vicious glance from Marceau. He turned his attention back on the path. “I’m glad he was there to pray for you, since he’s a priest now. That’s very important. Praying for people who need real help.”
He drove the horses harder and I gripped the rail to keep from falling backward. The Serrones and the other passengers also clung to the sides behind us, as Dureau whipped his team in the rear wagon to catch up.
I swallowed and tried again. “I assume you haven’t seen him since you were taken to Asile de DeSarte. How old were you?”
“Sixteen,” Marceau said without looking at me. “But it’s been longer than that since I last saw Abier.” He paused, clenching his jaw. “I was thirteen when I left the orphanage.”
I blinked. “Orphanage?”
His eyes and face were like stone. ”Orphelinat de Saint Jean, in Burgundy. We grew up there.” He heaved a slow sigh. “Our parents were thieves. They tried to steal some jewelry, I don’t know what, from a man’s house. The man shot them. Nuns found us, left alone at
home, and they took us in.”
“How old were you?”
“I was four,” he said. “Abier was seven. He always took care of me when we were little. But unlike him, I never used to believe the stories about our parents. I kept thinking they were still alive and would return one day to take us home. They never did, of course. Dead parents don’t come back.”
His voice had such a hard edge to it, but seemed on the verge of breaking. Like someone in a fight who kept getting back up but couldn’t manage to throw a punch.
“So I ran away when I was thirteen, to look for them,” Marceau said. “I knew Abier wouldn’t come so I never told him I was leaving. He was satisfied to do chores around the orphanage for the nuns and priests, finding things to do for people. But I knew we needed to leave, to find our parents, or at least find a place where we could take charge of ourselves.” He hung his head a moment. “I never got along too well with the nuns. Anyway, I learned the truth about my parents soon enough, from some friends I made on the streets who helped me dig up information. Turned out to be exactly what they told us. Our parents were thieves who got caught, and were killed.”
“So then – did you go back?”
He kept silent a moment. “I suppose I had that in mind,” he said. “But it had been a few years. I was sixteen, living and working here in DeSarte as a farmhand, tending pigs for a farmer named Bremme. Then I saw a friend of mine cut open one night by one of the wolves. I reported it, but the police wouldn’t listen. So I told people on the streets, anyone I could warn. Next thing I knew, the police were at the door of Monsieur Bremme’s farm, dragging me into a padlocked wagon headed for Asile de DeSarte. I’ve been there ever since, almost thirty years.” His face creased even more. “‘Father’ Abier never came looking.”
I saw the same anger in his eyes that I felt toward Father Vestille last year. “No one knew about any of you,” I said. “How could Father Vest—your brother – figure out how to find you?”
“It’s been thirty years,” Marceau said. “Abier’s gone on to become a priest, making a new life for himself.” He fixed his eyes on me. “And he’s your good friend, but you’ve never even heard of me.”
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