by Bec McMaster
Yet.
"Yes," he said, into the stillness of the room. "Yes, I would have taken the commission to kill Sebastian. Out of duty for the blood we shared. If any of the Sicarii were going to kill him, it should have been me."
Drake's entire expression shuttered. "I would have stopped you."
"You couldn't have. I'm very good at what I do." Very good at killing. Perhaps it was the only thing he was good at? "I always find my target." The words were emotionless, which almost made him laugh. One son too given to emotion and one who could barely feel it. Which one was the monster?
Or had been.
"Eleanor wouldn't have wanted you to resign," he said quietly.
"Really?" His father's nostrils flared in rage. "Well, why don't you ask her? She's not dead. She can hear what we're saying."
Bishop glanced toward the woman, then away. She'd always been kind to him. The only one he'd been able to speak to of Mya, in fact. But was she still in there? How could she be?
"I'm sorry, Eleanor," he said, for he'd been rude, and if his father was correct, then he owed her more than that.
Eleanor stared at him, her right fist clenching and her eyes spitting sparks. "Mm-hmm... I'mmm...."
Drake strode to her side and fell to his knees. "Darling, it's all right. Here, have some water."
"What are we going to do about the demon?"
His father held a glass of water up to Eleanor's lips, murmuring something to her.
"Don't you care?" Bishop demanded. "If the demon has found a way back to our plane of existence, then it will be coming for revenge. You're the only person it fears, the only person who has some sort of chance of standing against it, and it won't let that sit idly."
"I'm aware of that." Silver eyes glinted in the firelight as Drake looked up. "I'm just not certain what I'm supposed to do about it. I'll alert Lucien, and let him know that there might be some more danger coming his way."
Lucien Devereux, Lord Rathbourne, was Bishop's other half brother, and had once been chosen by the demon as the perfect candidate for its vessel. After thwarting the demon's attempts to take him over, Rathbourne was enjoying a quiet month with his new wife and their child. He wouldn't welcome this news.
"You'll alert Lucien." He couldn't stop bitterness from seeping into his tone. "I'm sure that will do the world of good. He can barely use magic after the demon's psychic attack."
"He and I are working on that."
"Damn it, Drake," Bishop appealed directly to him. "We need leadership. Of all the times you could have chosen to step back from the Order, this was potentially the worst." And he knew why. It wasn't just Eleanor's state of being, but the loss of Sebastian, the son Drake had never known about.
"It will sort itself out—"
"That's the best you can offer?" he exploded. "What about all of the people who relied upon you? Those sorcerers who aren't strong enough to stand against this war that is coming?" Me, damn you. "How do we fight a demon without you? How do we—"
"Well, perhaps I don't have all of the answers anymore!" Drake slammed the spoon down, his eyes flashing silver lightning.
Finally. Bishop glared back.
And then Eleanor touched Drake's hand. Just that, a simple touch, a fumble, but the Prime turned back to her, bowing his head. Bishop couldn't quite meet her eyes as she glanced up at him above his father's head, as though trying to tell him something.
Drake's head sank, and Bishop felt ill at the sight. He wanted to apologize, but it was too late. "How do I save them?" Drake rasped hoarsely. "When I cannot even save those I love?"
"By trying. I don't know." Bishop swallowed hard. "The Order needs you. Lucien needs you. There's no way he can stand against the demon a second time." Still no response. "I need you."
This time, those silvery eyes turned his way.
"I've never asked you for anything," Bishop blurted. "I know why you couldn't be in my life as a child. I know that prophecy dictated your presence would bring about the deaths of all your sons, and so you kept away. Well, it's too late. The prophecy is here. It's already stolen one of your sons. You have two left, and one of us is the next to die." Reaching for his hat, he swallowed hard. "If you sit here, then maybe it will be both of us next time."
Drake flinched. "Adrian—"
"No. I'm done. I've said my piece." He headed for the door. "The next move is yours."
* * *
"I worry about him," Drake said, gently wiping the mush of potato from the corners of Eleanor's mouth. "There's a darkness in his eyes that I haven't seen before. And I didn't notice it until tonight." Putting the plate aside, he looked down.
What was he doing? He'd lived as the Prime of the Order for over twenty years, confidently making decisions that he'd known might cost lives, and forcing himself to make them because the alternative was unforgivable, but... the loss of Sebastian had cost him more than he'd known, and the damage to Eleanor.... He would never forgive himself for not fighting her harder when she'd insisted on wading into deep waters in order to protect him.
"I don't know what to do," he admitted to her. "I love you so much, and yet this... all of this is my fault. And I cannot ask more of Lucien and Ianthe. They barely got out of the last assault with their lives. But every move I consider involves Adrian, and do I dare? After tonight? I couldn't lose him, Ellie. Not him. He's the one son I was ever allowed to watch over, and he's been through so much."
A hand brushed against his sleeve.
Drake's head shot up."Ellie," he whispered, capturing her wavering hand. The Healers that had treated her after the fatal showdown with Morgana came in every few days and worked their sorcery over her. She wouldn't have survived otherwise, one of them had told him bluntly, but she was improving and would continue to do so, though they couldn't say how much of her cognitive function she would retain.
There was a look of fierce determination on her face. "N-nnuh.... N-Nottt...." Frustration made her look away, shaking herself.
"Not?" He asked. She squeezed his hand with her good one, and Drake's mind raced. "Not my fault," he said, though he didn't believe it.
"F-froen...." Eleanor lurched into an excited babble of words that ran together, and Drake helplessly looked on. "You. You... choy...."
He tried, he really did, but he could see her frustration growing with his inability to understand her.
Reaching out, she tried to capture his hand and pressed it to her shoulder, then looked angry. Drake maneuvered it at her whim, until he finally realized where she wanted it. "Here?" he asked, pressing his palm flat over her heart. "What do you—?"
That fierce look told him everything. "Choy... choyz...."
"Choice?"
Relief showed in her face.
"Choice," he said again, then understood what she was trying to tell him. "By not making those choices, I'm frozen. Which is a choice of its own."
Drake let out a long-suffering sigh. There was a hole inside him that would never fill. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd stepped out of the house. Or bothered to discover what was going on in the world around him. Bishop's emergency call the night Verity showed up, perhaps. Sebastian's death had ripped his heart right out of his chest, and all he could see when he closed his eyes at night was his son desperately reaching for him... and then the look on the boy's face when Drake had to choose whether to save Lucien, who might have had a chance, versus the son who was already dying.
He'd never suffered such indecision before.
"M-move," Ellie told him.
"Make a move." Everyone wanted him to do so. How the bloody hell could he tell them that he didn't know which way to go? Standing, Drake paced. "I cannot accept the mantle of Prime again." He simply didn't have it in him. The others might think that it was a simple solution that would fix everything, but he wasn't that man anymore. "But there is another who can. I just have to convince her she's right for the role."
Eleanor's eyes were wise.
"I'm a fool," he tol
d her. "I cannot let everything that we've tried to build all these years fall to pieces. I cannot lose Lucien or Adrian as well."
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. What now?
"Sir," said the butler, rapping at the open door. He was drenched and trying to hold someone upright.
Drake stepped protectively between Eleanor and the door. "Yes?" he demanded, trying to see who leaned against the butler's side.
"There's a young woman here," Milton said apologetically. "She insisted that she see you. I wouldn't have let her in, it being so late and all, but...."
The young woman looked up, her bedraggled blonde hair clinging to her shoulders. Those dark brown eyes flinched away from the faint lantern light, and her aura was bleeding around the edges. "You're the Prime?" she whispered.
"Not anymore," he told her, a flash of uncertainty unknotting within him. He could sense sorcery leeching off her, like a faint mist. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
He thought he knew most of those who belonged to the Order.
"I need help," she whispered, and her knees gave way as she tried to take a step toward him.
Both he and the butler caught her. A deeper glimpse at her aura showed that it was savaged almost beyond repair. Something had happened to her—something magical.
Drake set a hand to her face, caressing her clammy skin as he used his power to soothe her aura.
The girl wilted in his touch, pressing her forehead against his hand. "Thank you."
"What happened to you?"
"They took everything away from me. I was halfway through a Vision when my father removed my blindfold, and suddenly I could see everything...." She swallowed hard, forcing herself to calm. "My visions are gone now. It's the first thing I ever predicted—that I would lose them the day I saw the world again."
Drake frowned. Visions? He felt a sudden clench of cold spear through him. There'd been a blindfolded girl in the house where his son died.
"My name is Miss Cleo... well, it was Sinclair, but now it is Montcalm." Then she said the words that rocked him to the core. "I'm your son Sebastian's wife, and he desperately needs your help."
Chapter 11
"NOAH GUTHRIE USED to frequent Balthazar's Labyrinth," Verity said, peering at the Black Horse Pub, which was the entrance to the occult world they called the Labyrinth. The Portobello Road markets bustled around them, completely unaware of what dark secret was hidden nearby. "That's where he fell in with a bad crowd and turned to darker arts than what we're supposed to practice."
"Typical," Bishop murmured, flexing and unflexing his fist. "If you want to find the scum of the sorcery world, you look here."
"Why thank you," Verity announced. "I'd have thought you'd consider the Hex to fit that description."
"The Hex has its charms, surprisingly enough."
"Do you know, you can be almost charismatic when you set your mind to it?" Verity cleared her throat, flushing faintly.
He looked away.
"Lady E said if we were looking for Phineas Trask, he'd be here too. And this is where Murphy and I met with the demon," Verity said. "It makes sense to start looking here."
"And all it costs to get in is a drop of your blood to pay the stone golem at the door."
Blood. Verity forced a smile. "I can cope with that, Bishop."
"Blood can be used in a lot of spells."
"You don't trust the Labyrinth, or its denizens? Everything I've ever heard about the Labyrinth says that it has rules and they're strictly enforced." Rather like the Hex, in a way.
"Fine," he muttered under his breath, shoving his hands in his coat as he stalked across the road toward the Black Horse. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."
The pub was nearly empty this early in the afternoon. The short man behind the bar jerked his head toward the steel vault door in the wall and continued polishing his glass as they entered. A chain manacled him to the bar.
"Odd little fellow, isn't he?" Verity murmured, glancing over her shoulder.
Bishop slashed his thumb with a blade he produced from somewhere inside his coat sleeve, and held it over the lead bowl in front of the altar. "Fellow may be somewhat imprecise. I'm not certain what he is, but it's not entirely human."
Verity echoed him and the ex-bank vault door swung open, revealing an enormous stone golem that guarded the entrance. She smiled at it uneasily as she stepped through. Constructs could be made of anything: blood, shadow, grass, stone.... But they remained inanimate objects, driven purely by their master's will, and rather difficult to destroy.
Then they were through into the narrowed streets and mishmash of alleys that formed the Labyrinth. Dirty glass panels far overhead kept the weather out and watchful eyes away. The street was lined with little shops tucked in against each other like little old ladies on a winter's day, and people hawked their wares from barrows in the square up ahead.
"This way," Bishop told her, directing her down a small laneway that appeared empty. Except for the shadows and gloom, of course.
Verity sighed. "Always the back alleys."
"Where else does scum hide?"
"You know where we're going?" She swept her skirts clear of a puddle of... something oily.
"I know where Trask resides." Bishop moved with predatory intent, those hawk-like eyes prowling every shadow. They turned down another street, and then another.
"Here it is." He pointed to a small shop with an Eye of Horus gilded into the brickwork.
Bishop glanced up toward the roof.
"What is—?" A whistle jerked her gaze up and a young lad scampered across the tiles, vanishing behind a chimney. Verity drew just enough power into herself to punch out of there, if need be.
"Trask's a collector of black occult items," Bishop muttered. "Some of them are deadly, some of them are worth a small fortune. He's got a half dozen lads working for him, no doubt, to make sure nobody steals into his shop.
"Can we handle them?"
"Yes." Bishop pushed the door open, and the bell tinkled.
She had a feeling that no matter whom he faced, Bishop would be able to handle them. He exuded a quiet sense of competence, and fear seemed to be a distant connection he barely knew.
He stepped through the door, keeping his large body in front of her.
"You don't have to shield me," she pointed out.
That earned her a startled look, then he gave her a faint smile. "You're right. I learned that when Zachariah hexed me."
"At least you can smile about it now," she pointed out.
The jest killed that expression.
Sound skittered from the back room.
"Trask?" Bishop called, one hand near his belt as he took careful steps into the shadowy shop. "A word, if I may?"
The shelves were lined with all sorts of oddities: mirrors that didn't seem quite like mirrors, books, amulets, a skull on the counter, and a half dozen opaque globes set on fine red velvet. There were a pair of sarcophagi looming near the door, and several fine scrolls on a shelf.
Shadows shifted as someone separated from the gloom. A fine cloud of red powder was blown toward them.
Bishop jerked her out of the way, shouldering her into the side of the gold-and-blue sarcophagus as he barreled past. Then he was leaping over the counter after the figure, a flare of white-hot blue gleaming to life in his hands as he vanished through the curtains.
Etheric blades. "Bishop!" she called, and went after him.
"This way!" Bishop yelled, thundering up a set of crooked steps. His footsteps were the only ones she heard.
Verity took a cautious step into the back room. A safe gleamed in the wall, the painting that hid it swinging wide open. A single candle fought the gloom, and there was a musty scent she couldn't quite place.
She couldn't see anyone, but she also didn't feel like she was alone. An empty room lacked a certain little something.
"I know you're there," she said softly, sliding a hand toward the pistol in her belt. Her indigo sk
irts swished around her ankles as she took another careful step forwards. "I assume Mr. Bishop is chasing shadows?"
Something moved behind her and yanked her back into his arms, jerking a blade to her throat.
Verity froze.
"Not another step, missy." Whoever it was smelled like stale cigars and burned cinnamon. Another flare of light swirled to life as he lit a pair of candles with his sorcery.
Bishop thundered back down the stairs, slamming to a halt as he saw her caught there.
"You," her attacker said. "Don't move. I know what you are."
"Trask," Bishop said flatly. He straightened, both hands held in front of him. "You don't have to do this."
"Put the blades away."
Bishop vanished them, and Verity's eyes burned with afterimage. She tried to catch his gaze, to tell him she could handle this herself, but he was focused purely on the man behind her. "Let her go."
"Or?" Trask sneered, jerking her backward.
Bishop froze again.
Look at me, damn you. She growled under her breath and he finally, finally glanced toward her.
I've got this, she tried to tell him. She wasn't telepathic, alas, but the tense muscles in his shoulders relaxed. Somehow he saw the message in her expression.
"We just wanted to ask you a few questions," Bishop said, watching only her.
"Aye." Trask shifted behind her, which made the knife prick her throat. "Course you did. That's why you come in here with them blades."
Bishop smiled. It wasn't very nice. "If I were here on a commission, you wouldn't have seen me coming at all. Let her go."
"Why should I? Seems to me that this here"—Trask jerked her roughly—"is what we call insurance. Or perhaps... the spoils of war, I should say. What? What are you smiling about?"
"That was your last warning," Bishop told him. "Verity."
Verity let her breath out slowly then gathered in her power, a stealthy glide of pure heat through her veins.
"Don't you try nothin'," Trask snarled, and she knew he'd felt her blossoming with heat.