“You are right to go east. Pulling a demon from a mortal is one matter, but tearing it out of a werewolf is another entirely. You should speak to the Helvetian head priest.” Her tone changed. “They have something that may help you, but I will not speak of it here.” Tom knew she meant the Helvetian Stone, but he feigned ignorance.
“What is the quickest way to Wallachia?” he asked.
“The quickest way for you would be along the Rhine. I would advise the path that traverses Schwarzer Mond territory and then disappears into the deep forests of the Transylvanian Alps. Mortals don’t go that way, ever.” Her voice deepened on ever. “A man named Felix Freudenberger is the clan leader of the Schwarzer Mond. They keep themselves in a castle in the hilly woods, above a tiny little village. There is an old lumber mill in shambles sitting in a grassy meadow before you come to the castle. No one lives near it, and it is not in use. When you see it, you should go inside and find a saw. Fell a tree and Felix will know you are in the valley and are friendly.” Henriette stood as if to leave but Tom wanted all the details. “I would tell you the way beyond that,” she said regretfully, “but I have been to Wallachia only once, and long ago. Felix will know the way.”
“With all due respect, I am not convinced that this Felix is a man whom I can trust. If I do as you say, he may come down from the castle ready to fight. I’m sure he would not be alone.”
“Ah, now I see the darker side. That’s the pirate I had expected. Only your kind looks for spring traps in a friendly gesture.” Henriette meant only to joke, and Tom understood. He nodded, smiling, when she said, “Why don’t I send you along with his brother-in-law, Gustaf?”
“He may kill his in-law first and then come for me second.” Tom smirked and Henriette burst into laughter.
“What about his former magescribe, Geoffrey?”
“Now that’s a man a werewolf will want to keep around,” Tom agreed. Magescribes were of high value to immortals. They were not full-fledged magesmiths, though some considered themselves to be, and they were handy when a clan or cult felt they were bargaining with underhanded salesmen of magical paraphernalia. Often magescribes were more formally learned in the subject area than were magesmiths who crafted the products, such in the way a chef may be more learned in the anatomy of a side of beef than the rancher who raised it.
“Excellent, because he is with this group. Mr. Mylus!” She tilted back her head and called out into the cellar from the side room. Causing a jam in the tight space, young Geoffrey Mylus squeezed his way between the herd of militia men, tripping over himself and others and catching his satchel of books and writing utensils on their polearms and scabbards, pardoning himself nervously.
“Miss Petit?” Geoffrey’s young appearance was a surprise to Tom, for, most magescribes packed a minimum of thirty years’ experience beneath their belts. Rather than being amused, Tom was impressed, and the wheels in his brain began to turn. Mr. Mylus, he thought, might be good for more than just one excursion. The lad was a year or two Tom’s junior, with wild, thin, light brown hair of medium length that changed position and shape nearly every time the scholar turned his head or made an expression. His face was friendly and pacifistic and presented its two intelligent brown eyes proudly.
“This is Thomas Crowe,” she said simply. “Yes, Geoffrey, the one and only. Quit your gawking and pay attention to your orders.” She passed the white staff across hands and placed a hand on his back. “You will show him the way to Felix. Do not bring along all your things, just the ones that are necessary. Mr. Crowe requires a hasty and quiet trip.”
“It’s a … well not a pleasure. Oh! I didn’t mean that. I mean to say it is odd and exciting to meet you under the circumstances, Mr. Crowe.” Geoffrey touched his small glasses and tossed his shoulder to shift the placement of the shoulder strap on his satchel. Tom nodded and went to tip his hat but remembered he’d not had one for some time. With his hand already in the air, he pretended to fiddle with his hair.
“Well, you have your business to attend to, and you have your orders,” interjected Henriette, looking first at Tom and then at Geoffrey.
“Thank you,” said Thomas. “Your trust and assistance were not necessary, and I am surprised you offered either.”
“Oh they are both undeserved and unwarranted,” she agreed. Tom cocked his head in confusion. “My guidance and healing were also inappropriate and dangerous, but I did not help Thomas Crowe. You are a stranger of no consequence, and I’ll surely forget our meeting by tomorrow.” Her white staff rapping against the floor, Henriette returned to battle with her soldiers, leaving Thomas alone with the young magescribe. When the high priestess was out of sight, Thomas took up his belongings and snuck away from the cellar and down an alley. Scrambling along after him was Geoffrey Mylus, too timid to bother Tom about some necessary items he was leaving behind.
Thoughts of Molly dogged Tom as he crept along. Crumbling brick and other disturbances only momentarily reminded him he was in the middle of a skirmish. He turned over his options in his mind. Should he go back to Montmartre or flee to safety? Molly, should she care to, could find him if she remembered to use the ring. Also, he thought, it would be foolish of him to waste the chance Henriette had provided him at her own risk. As it turned out, the cellar was part of a subterranean outlet leading away from the clan commune and opened up again almost outside of Paris, save for a block or two, where a trio of horses was tied up outside and their owner was nowhere in sight. Even if he went back for Molly, she might reject him. Corvessa’s sting had not worn away, and Tom was won over by paranoia. Hoisting himself up on one of the horses, he made for the countryside with Geoffrey. Catching up with Tom on the back of his own horse, Geoffrey fired off suggestions as to where to go. Tom hushed him and told him to wait until they were out of sight.
“Back to Marseille! Pick up your heels!” Jack Darcy played shepherd, whacking the backs of his men with the flat of Quarter and driving them south, out of Paris. “No captives! Leave them girls! Any of you who is worth his salt knows that one gold coin is more valuable than ten pretty gold heads to Jack Darcy!” He held his stomach and spoke through the pain of the ball lodged above his intestines. His half-transformed face struck fear in the hearts of the Blood Moons. No man dared sneak anything more than he was allowed to carry onboard The Howl. Jack was known to make an example of crew who were caught with contraband.
As he sped through Paris alongside Molly, Leon kept his head down and his face wrapped in his scarf. Just as he and Molly took a turn to the east, the Seine appeared briefly to the west, down a long avenue. Leon saw Jack Darcy hobbling away in the distance, his men lugging armfuls of French treasures. Molly looked over one shoulder and saw Leon slowing down.
“Look at him, still alive and strutting out of the city with my family’s fortune!” Leon raged, turning his mare about.
“Who?” asked Molly, following Leon’s gaze toward the pirate.
“Jack Darcy!” Without support from the Black Coats, Leon would not be able to lay one strike on the old werewolf, but allowing him to just limp away with Chateau Beaumonte’s riches was too shameful to bear.
“I have no time to waste, Leon.” Molly spurred her horse and started off in a trot. Thomas was far outside the city, nowhere near Jack, and so she had no business with him. When she heard Leon catching up behind her, she broke into a gallop. Leon refused to look back for fear of giving in to his sense of honor and doing something he would regret. Jack and his men picked up their pace as the French army and the Paris Clan marched into the commune, guns blazing. Molly and Leon turned to the southeast and made their way safely from the city. It would require them to take a long route around the countryside if they were to follow Tom’s trail, but Molly had an instinctive bearing on him, and there was no doubt in her mind that they would catch up to him eventually.
Stopping only when their horses could take no more, Tom and Geoffrey made an impromptu camp after sundown each day, going out of their way to
hike into the nearest forest where a bonfire would not easily be seen from the roads or a farm. Not until the third day did the two men have a conversation, and when they did it was only because Tom wasn’t straining himself to stay awake and watchful.
“So, Mr. Mylus, if we can keep our present pace, how long is the road to Schwarzer Mond country?” Tom spoke with mouthfuls of tough bread, handing some to Geoffrey.
“Three or four more days,” Geoffrey guessed, looking up in thought as his hands counted their progress. “The last leg of the trip is the most difficult, only because we must change roads. There is no worn path to the saw mill, and Hainburg Castle sits on a low mountain.”
Tom nodded, expecting the journey to be more difficult than Geoffrey made it out to be.
“Pardon my asking,” said Geoffrey, “but you are the Thomas Crowe I am thinking of, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean? Is there another?”
“Not to my knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, you are the outlaw Thomas Crowe. You’re the one they can’t catch. The one who routed the Black Coats in Barbados.” Geoffrey straightened his glasses and squinted, taking them off and rubbing the lenses on his sleeve. “There must have been some excitement in Paris when that happened. Everyone seems to have heard about it.”
Tom watched the fire and chewed on his bread. He thought he could hear his brother’s last words hanging on the hot rising air around the flames.
“Oh yes, there was much activity on Montmartre. Leon Beaumonte played peacemaker and met with Miss Petit in anticipation of riots. I was called upon by Felix to assist the commune in magical matters during the affair. The city has been on pins and needles for months, and things have been so desperate since the incident in Barbados, Miss Petit, against good judgment, called upon the Blood Moons for extra protection for the commune.”
Geoffrey would pause unexpectedly when he spoke, as if to assemble his sentences carefully before speaking them. Tom had mistaken Geoffrey’s scattered speech for weak nerves. He quickly learned that the young magescribe was observant—a heavy thinker—and that his confidence—or lack thereof—had nothing to do with his quirky behaviors.
“What is your area of specialty, Geoffrey?” asked Tom. “I’m sure you’re just as aware as I that magescribes around our age are one in a million.”
“The magical studies were my father’s interest before me, and his father’s interest and so on. It runs in the family. I began at an early age as something of an apprentice to my father. I loved the subject and discovered there was work available for me years before my peers would be completing formal education.” He took off his glasses and rubbed them on his sleeve again.
“But you aren’t a magesmith?” Tom couldn’t see Geoffrey’s eyes well enough to determine if the telling signs were there.
“You are observant, Mr. Crowe. No, no one in my lineage is or ever has been. However, new knowledge suggests that natural-born mages need not be magesmiths. My father spent a great part of his life proving to the magical community that there are varieties of persons who may learn to use magic as well as any magesmith, and he often points to me as proof.” Placing his glasses on his face, Geoffrey looked up at Tom with a proud smile.
“Do you craft autocasts, or design spells?” Tom was curious. Listening closely, he leaned forward and gnawed on another piece of bread.
“Neither. Well, actually I practice a specialized combination of both. Have you ever seen a firearm imbued with a magical attribute?”
“Only a few. Complex items don’t normally fare well as autocasts.”
“Exactly my point,” said Geoffrey excitedly, leaning forward. “Before I came to Europe, my father and I developed the method that made enchanting simple and complex machines possible and practical. If you have seen such a device, it had to have come to my shop at one point or another. The method has not been revealed yet. I am going to qualify myself as a magesmith before I attempt to impress my hard-nosed peers.”
“You must know of Gabriel Vasquez,” said Tom, remembering the pair of pearl pistols Molly carried.
“Indeed! I never met him, but my father traveled to Barcelona to conduct business between his former company and our growing one. Why?”
“I came to France from England with his daughter, Lucia. Calls herself Molly Bishop.”
“Where is she now?”
“Paris, I guess,” Tom said with a shrug, pasting a disinterested look on his face.
Geoffrey sensed the subject was a sour one and did not ask Tom about it. Instead he went on to explain how he had come to live in Europe. He had made the trip only a year before, looking for a new location for his business, and he had ended up in a comfortable position at Castle Hainburg with a respectable clan of werewolves. Since that time he had become well-known as a reliable and knowledgeable magescribe and arms-crafter. His aging father had encouraged the change of scenery since London, the only remaining market for magic, was eventually going to tighten its laws on the industry. Everyone knew it was coming. “So, I heard this was the best gambit, and as it turns out, it is,” he said. “At least, Eastern Europe is. As I said, I was sent to France only to aid the Paris Clan temporarily.”
“You’re talented and fortunate, by anyone’s measure,” Tom said in earnest. He wondered if Geoffrey took his use of ‘fortunate’ offensively, but Geoffrey grinned at the compliment.
The bonfire was sleepy long before either of the two men, and several times that night Tom made short excursions into the woods to find enough dry branches to keep it awake. Geoffrey Mylus, to Tom’s surprise, was more interesting than his first impression had forecast, and the longer they spoke, the more reason Tom had to make friends with him. I’ll wait until I’ve seen Hainburg before I make him any kind of offer, Tom thought, tossing the fire some fuel and taking a seat. I’m sure I can pay him anything those werewolves are. What Tom did not realize was that for the first time, friendship, in addition to talent and skill, was a factor in his decision to hire someone to his crew.
In the early morning Tom woke from sleep. He was standing alone somewhere in the woods, far away from camp, but not far enough that he couldn’t find his way back. A distracting throb pestered his eyes, and his skin tickled now and again as if someone were touching it. Recognizing the dreigher’s influence, Tom shut his mind to the illusions and began hiking back toward the camp. He was so tired. His knees complained with every step, and his lungs heaved. The farther he walked, the longer it seemed to take him to get anywhere. The tickling sensation on his arms and legs was almost impossible to ignore.
Thomas …
The voice was soft, and Tom told himself he had heard nothing at all.
Thomas …
Becoming angry, he stopped and spun around in all directions, sensing he wasn’t alone and getting ready to pummel whoever or whatever was bold enough to test him. With his right hand he rubbed his left arm furiously, fighting back the tickling sensation. When he stopped, he noticed that the hand felt wet, and when he looked down he had to stop himself from panicking. There was blood on his hand and both arms looked as though they had been bleeding for several minutes. In an instant, his legs were overcome with the same sensation, and he dared not look at them. Little red patches bloomed on his white shirt. “Why am I bleeding?” he said aloud, almost whispering. “Why? Why am I bleeding? Where is it coming from?”
Thomas …
Intuition told Tom to turn to look behind him. Down the incline, between a thicket of trees, he could barely make out the shape of a tall, slender man. It stood still, making no sound. The forest grew cold, and the blood on Tom’s arms conducted it down to his bones.
Thomas …
Tom found the energy in his legs to move again. Slowly moving up the incline, he backed away from the figure, keeping one hand out to feel for anything coming up behind him. When he looked away for only a second, the figure was twice as close as it had been before. Tom relied upon the acute vision lent to him by his curse and squinted. The figu
re became clearer, shorter—it was Harlan.
“No,” Tom said quietly. “You’re dead. I’m going to tear you out of me one way or another, you wretched thing!” Fingers clawing at his head, Tom lost his balance and fell over, screaming and swearing at the dreigher. The figure of Harlan was closer, only paces away when Tom opened his eyes. Furious, he scrambled backward on his hands and feet, reaching for Brother and finding no blade. He’d left it at camp. Harlan’s face changed from expressionless to angry, and his human features melted away, leaving only two empty eye sockets, a flat nose and a gaping mouth that stretched up and up as it let out a long, disturbing moan that invaded Tom’s skin and stole the life from it.
With a jolt, Tom sat straight up from his sleep. The forest was gone. It was after sunrise, and Geoffrey was stamping away the last glowing coals of the fire from the night before. In the distance his ears picked up the last traces of someone’s voice, but no one was near; no one could have seen him and Geoffrey.
“What’s the matter?” asked Geoffrey. One of Tom’s eyes was acting up again, blackened as it was when Geoffrey first saw him in Paris.
“Nothing.” Tom got up and helped Geoffrey pack everything away. Both men were loading up the horses, when Geoffrey mentioned Ozias. Tom stopped and gave him a funny look.
“How do you know about Ozias?” he asked with a look of suspicion.
“You were talking about him just last night, after you spoke of living in London,” Geoffrey answered, appearing confused.
“No, we were talking about your shop and studies,” Tom argued.
“That was two nights ago, Mr. Crowe. I’m sure of it.” Geoffrey didn’t think much of the mix up and continued dressing his horse for the ride.
“Yes … right.” Tom went along with Geoffrey’s story, because after looking around he realized they were not at the camp he had last been at while awake. There was a whole day’s gap in his recent memory. Between going to sleep on the third night of the trip and that morning, the dreigher had taken over. Had he been possessed for an entire day prior to that morning? Or had his memory merely been stolen during his nightmare? Tom said nothing of the visions or the dreigher to Geoffrey, and within the hour the two headed out again, a day and a half from Castle Hainburg.
The Lore Series (Box Set): All 3 Books In One Volume Page 45