by Kelly Creagh
Her eyes met with his again as a thousand questions scrolled through her head at lightning speed. Chief among them was how he’d played her so well from the beginning of all this. Though it seemed now as if he’d played everyone, all his supposed “friends,” including Poe.
Why? To what end? To serve what purpose?
If he’d been Lilith’s pawn all this time, then why had he ever entered Isobel’s world to seek her out and “warn” her about what was happening? Why had he fought against the Nocs and helped her along? If Varen was what Lilith had wanted from the very beginning, if he was what she’d needed, then why had he involved Isobel at all?
None of it added up.
However, it had not been lost on Isobel that Lilith had not called him “Reynolds. ”
Of course, Isobel had always suspected it was not his real name. But why had he needed to conceal his true identity? Why hide behind a mask and cloak?
“She doesn’t know about you, does she?” Isobel asked. “The other you, I mean. ”
Lowering the cutlass, Reynolds aimed the blade toward the floor and, thrusting it downward, embedded the sword between the boards. There, the tarnished hilt swayed as he took several steps backward into the foyer hallway. Drawing the second blade from its sheath, he gestured with it to the first.
“Pick it up,” he said.
Isobel’s hands balled into fists at her side, a knee-jerk reaction to his command. “No. ”
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“You’ll pick it up,” he said, assuming a stance of defense, his knees bent, blade aimed at her once again, his free arm behind him, held level with his chest, “or you won’t. Either way, we fight. ”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Isobel said. And it was the truth, though mostly because she had seen him do battle with these swords before. He’d moved like a column of flame, flicking to and fro, a graceful and deadly figure.
Considering that Isobel had never so much as touched a real weapon in her life, she didn’t think the contest would be a fair one. She stood no chance against him, and they both knew it.
“Clearly,” he said, “you do wish to fight me. That, you’ve already shown. I am simply in a better position, I think, to accept your challenge. At least my back is no longer turned. Now take your weapon. ”
His answer, infuriating, sent a fresh wave of heat through her veins while also reminding her that Reynolds wasn’t big on caring about what was fair. Or right. Only for whatever happened to fit with his own agenda. Whatever that happened to be.
“You’re calling me a backstabber?” she spat.
“I am finished talking. ”
“Well, I’m not!” Isobel shouted.
“On your guard,” he warned. “I strike on the count of five. ”
Though her palms itched to grab the sword—the only means she could see to protect herself—the last thing Isobel wanted to do was give in to his demand. She’d had more than her fill of doing what he told her. Following his orders without questioning him, believing him when he’d said they were friends—that had all brought her here, to this moment. This time, though, she would not be so gullible as to play into his hands.
“Tell me why you’re doing this,” she said.
“I am doing this,” he growled, “because I have been given the order to kill and am bound to obey. It was not specified, however, that I should not first provide you with the means to defend yourself. That is my own kindness. Now draw!”
“Kindness?” Isobel railed.
“One!”
She glared at him, and her eyes darted again to the sword still stuck in the floorboards. Now she wanted to pick it up.
He was doing it again, she thought. He’s finding your buttons and he’s pushing them. Don’t do it, don’t be his puppet.
“Two. ”
Her gaze returned to that of her opponent.
“Three,” he said, his face emotionless.
But what had she heard in his voice just now? Had there been a slight catch in that single syllable, or had she imagined it?
“I—I don’t know how to fight,” she said, stalling.
“You don’t have to know!” And now he was yelling. “If you paid attention to a single thing about this world, then you would know already what to do. You’d have acted. Four!”
Though Isobel understood nothing of Reynolds—of Gordon—or his motives or who or what he was or what he was after, she had learned enough about him to recognize when there was something more slithering beneath the surface of his words and actions than he was willing to let on.
“And you could have killed me by now if you’d wanted,” Isobel said. “So why haven’t you?”
“Don’t make me. ” His voice had dropped to a whisper, low and full of warning. He was nervous too, she thought, but about what? Could it be he’d been allowing her to stall?
He nodded at the sword embedded in the floor, which had only just stopped swaying.
“I will,” he said, and Isobel knew that he meant it.
This was all part of the game, she thought, all part of his charade. If Lilith told him to do something, he had to do it. Or else risk . . . what?
Deciding that she’d had enough of unanswered questions, that it was time for the truth, Isobel hurried forward and grabbed the sword. She pulled it from between the floorboards with both hands and reluctantly raised the blade toward him as she struck her own fight stance.
Though it might have been the pattern of light sliding over him as he moved back, Isobel thought she saw him smile, his eyes gleaming with some dark triumph she couldn’t name.
“Begin!” he shouted.
Isobel lunged at him and knocked his sword aside with her own.
His arm followed the movement of his blade, letting her know he’d allowed her to make the connection. Isobel didn’t doubt it.
Backing away from her, crossing one leg behind the other, he let her swipe at him again, then easily deflected her advance. Isobel lunged again and again, and each time, he sent her blade aside with his own.
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The fuse of fury he’d lit within her grew shorter and shorter with each of her rebounded attacks. He was making fun of her, she thought. He was doing this on purpose to mock her, trying to make her feel weak and stupid.
Well, she wasn’t. She had made it this far, hadn’t she?
Isobel continued her onslaught, but he repelled her blows one after the other, and their swords continued to clank and clack as they wound their way around the foyer.
He had yet to attack her in return, but she knew better than to think it wasn’t coming.
Already losing her breath, Isobel paused and scampered, out of weapon’s reach.
Over his shoulder, she caught sight of the painting with the ship just in time to watch the black-water jaws of the ocean open and overtake the battered and ragtag Grampus, upending the vessel.
When her eyes returned to Reynolds, though, it was too late to sidestep or use her sword to divert the swing of his own cutlass, the tip of which caught her left shoulder, splitting the skin there in a deep gash.
Isobel hissed, the searing pain of the wound too sharp to elicit a scream.
She raised her free hand to the gash, her fingers coming away scarlet with her blood.
“Your distractions cost you,” he said.
Isobel gritted her teeth and, charging forward, swiped at him again. He skittered back, arms spread wide as he narrowly avoided her strike, which slashed across his midsection, slicing a horizontal slit in his waistcoat.
They paused to look at each other, their eyes meeting in mirrored expressions of shock.
“Again,” he said, and moved on her, slashing this way and that, slinging blow after blow, forcing her back from him and toward the front door.
Isobel met each of his strokes with a block and a parry, her body moving before s
he could tell it when or where.
Sword fighting. She was actually sword fighting.
The unexplained ability, now seemingly inherent, reminded Isobel of how she had once shared a dance with Pinfeathers at the masquerade ball without knowing how. What had the Noc told her then?
Just let go.
Then she remembered something Reynolds had once told her after pulling her from the sunken grave where the Red Death had nearly buried her alive.
That grave, Reynolds had said, you could have flown out.
If that was possible in this world, then so was this.
Isobel raised her sword and rushed him, the heat of her own blood searing her free arm as it ran down to her wrist, where she could feel it soaking into the ribbon. He blocked her, but she whirled, slashing low and quick to nick his leg, tearing the fabric of his trousers just over the knee.
He didn’t bleed, but she hadn’t expected him to. What had been more rewarding was the look of surprise and momentary confusion that came over his stoic face. For once, she’d actually cracked the Rubik’s Cube code of his fortitude and had elicited a response. Flashing a dark smile, she went after him again. Once more, their swords traded back and forth, clanking loudly, and this time, she was the one forcing him back, driving him through the narrow hall she knew opened into the kitchen.
Once they were through the narrow bottleneck squeeze of the hallway, though, Isobel paused in her onslaught, startled and bewildered to find that they were not in a kitchen at all but outside, on a long and wide stone balcony.
Fierce winds gusted around them, coming first from one direction and then another, whipping Isobel’s hair into a frenzy, tugging the skirts of her black dress this way and that. The pink ribbon fluttered in her peripheral vision.
To her left, a line of stone faces carved into the side of the house watched the storm with indifferent eyes. Green men, Isobel thought, remembering them from the day she had seen the protector gargoyles on the facades of the houses in Varen’s neighborhood.
On her other side, a row of stone columns supported the floor above.
Through them, she saw a streak of lightning slice the sky in two, the ultraviolet spear of light illuminating the crooked line of black rock cliffs below that overlooked a white and rolling sea.
And there, standing on the brink of the farthest bluff . . .
“Varen!” Isobel shouted.
Forgetting her fight with Reynolds, Isobel lowered her sword and rushed to the balcony’s edge.
“Var—!”
Her cry was cut short by Reynolds, who had caught her from behind. Hooking her around the waist with one strong arm, he held the blade of his sword to her throat with the other.
“I told you that you cannot reach him this way,” he hissed in her ear. Isobel wrenched her elbow up and then jammed it into his stomach. He took the blow with a grunt but did not release her.
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“Let me go!” she shrieked.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“No!” she yelled. “You don’t understand!”
Taking the hilt of her sword between both hands, Isobel plunged the tip downward straight in and through the bridge of his foot.
He released her at once. Isobel stumbled away from him and farther down the stone walkway.
“Do not go to him!” he shouted after her, yanking the blade free from his foot. “Isobel, you must listen to me. ”
“I am done listening to you!” she screamed at him.
He limped after her, though his gait seemed to grow steadier with every footfall.
It made Isobel think about what had happened to him at the Grim Facade, when the Red Death had turned Reynolds’s own blades against him, running him through with both. Even though Isobel had been sure he was dead, Reynolds had remained unconscious for only a few seconds and then awoke to yank the swords out of his own chest.
The memory reminded her there was nothing she could do to stop him.
But perhaps, she thought, glancing at the sightless eyes of one of the nearby green men, there was a way to distract him, to keep him busy while she found a way to the cliffs, to Varen.
Isobel went to the wall and placed her hand on one of the stone men’s faces. She pictured his eyes blinking in her mind, and it was no more than a split second before they did.
“Stop,” Reynolds said, still making his way toward her. “What are you doing?”
“Fight,” Isobel whispered to the stone man, who immediately began to twist his head from side to side, causing the stone around him to crumple and fall away in chunks, revealing strong shoulders and a muscled torso, as though the rest of his body had merely been trapped within the wall. “Fight in my place,” she said.
Isobel did not wait to see what would happen when the gargoyle freed himself completely from the stone. Instead she hurried down to the next green man, and the next, whispering the same word to each of them. She looked back only when she reached the end of the balcony and a short set of stone steps, which led up to a massive and windowless wooden door marked with a large shield-shaped family crest.
The golems, free from the wall, which now bore a row of body-shaped craters, surrounded Reynolds.
Each of them, seven in total, held either a club or a spear clenched in gritty fists. Some of them even bent down to pick up the larger stone chunks of fallen wall.
Dropping her sword, Isobel kicked it across the balcony floor in Reynolds’s direction before at last turning back to the door. She pressed down on the lever handle and pushed against the wood, face-to-face with the coat of arms, which bore in its center a pair of outspread bird’s wings, in the middle of which blazed the scrolling word USHER.
Isobel rushed into an open and dimly lit hallway. Whirling, she shoved the door shut behind her. It banged into place, its echo reverberating around her, ricocheting into the high vaulted ceiling.
Even through the thick layers of stone and wood, Isobel could still hear Reynolds shouting her name, calling out to her just before the sharp and unrelenting barrage of clanking and crashing ensued.
But it was already too late.
She wasn’t listening anymore.
34
The Edge of Reason
Isobel slowed her steps. She spun in a quick circle, taking in her surroundings.
The hallway was too long and the ceiling too high to belong to Varen’s house.
Scanning the walls, she could find no windows.
Old-fashioned threadbare tapestries depicting medieval knights, nobles, and ladies hung in their place over the decorative purple-and-gold-papered walls.
A plush Persian carpet runner ran the length of the floor beneath her feet, while tall curio cabinets full of strange artifacts like gold scarabs, Egyptian ankhs, and bleached animal skulls lined the walls on either side of her.
Long hallway tables holding stacks of ancient books sat outside several sets of closed double doors along with heavy high-backed chairs, the arms of which bore the carved images of crouching sphinxes.
Golden candelabra shaped like women in flowing gowns adorned the walls, the low and steady light they offered between their outstretched hands providing minimal relief from the darkness that saturated everything.
Somehow she’d been transported somewhere else, to some type of antiquated mansion or castle.
Disoriented, she thought about making another door like she had in the garden. Picturing the cliffs in her mind’s eyes, with Varen standing on the verge of the jutting precipice, she held one hand out in front of her. The ends of her bloodstained ribbon dangled loose from her outstretched wrist.
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She waited, but nothing happened.
Isobel held her arm steady, willing a door to materialize, like it had for Reynolds in the woodlands, like it had for her on the floor of the warehouse during the Grim Facade. There was no response
to her intention, though, not even a ripple in the air. Her hand, as well as the space before her, remained empty.
She glanced around again and noticed that there, at the end of the hall, one of the walls ended at a staircase.
She ran toward it, and as she sprinted down the passage, the eyes of the figures in the tapestries followed. In her peripheral vision, she saw the heads of the faceless candelabra women turn to watch her pass. Isobel ignored their stares, placing a hand on the grand banister of the staircase, the polished wood shining liquid black in the low gleam of the flickering tapers.
Hesitating for only an instant, already knowing she had no other choice, that she couldn’t go back the way she’d come, Isobel took the steps, rushing to the short landing and then up and around the second flight to the level above. As long as she kept moving, she thought as she climbed, as long as Varen stayed foremost in her mind, she would reach him no matter which direction she went. The dreamworld would take her there. She had to believe that.
And if she couldn’t find a way down to the cliffs yet, at least she might be able to locate a vantage point—a window or balcony from which she could spot Varen again and try to get his attention.
When she reached the next floor, Isobel hurried into the center of another hall, similar to the one she’d left below. She paused, though, when she heard the sound of low and muffled voices emanating from behind one of the many gigantic ebony pairs of double doors.
At first she could make out only mumbling, then one of the two male voices within grew louder, more discernible.
“Not hear it? Yes, I hear it, and have heard it,” the voice hissed, anxious and frantic. “Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!”
Isobel stepped nearer to the door, straining to catch the torrent of strange words.
“Said I not that my senses were acute?” the voice continued. “I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—tonight—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon?”