by Reinke, Sara
“Good-bye, Julien,” he said as he walked out the door—and the coldness in his voice would haunt him for centuries beyond that moment, the callous cruelty he’d somehow been able to convey in so brief and simple a statement.
Even if he hadn’t truly meant it.
* * *
Because of course, he hadn’t truly meant it. And the next day, after a long and lonely night spent staring up at the ceiling of his flat, restless and heartbroken, he’d returned to the boarding house. Again, he strode across the threshold and up the stairs, but this time, when he opened Julien’s door, he had no intention of leaving him behind.
You’re coming with me. He had it all planned in his head, everything he was going to say, everything he was going to do. Regardless of who was in there with Julien, or what they were doing together, he was going to grab him by the arm and drag him in tow. Grab your bags, your clothes—take everything. If you need money, I’ll get it for you. I love you and I need you like I need air to breathe and blood to survive, and I can’t let you do this anymore, not another minute. I won’t let you.
But the room was empty.
Not just empty as in Julien wasn’t home, but empty, as in Julien’s things were gone, and so was he, with no apparent sign he’d ever even been there. His closet door stood partially ajar, empty of clothes. Mason jerked open the nightstand drawers, but all of Julien’s things—his stockings, shirts, his books and pens—all of them were gone. The knapsack he kept on the floor near the window was gone, as was the messenger pack he carried with him to see Aaron. His coat no longer hung on its customary peg by the door, and the chamber pot, wash basin and pitcher were all empty.
“Where did he go?” Mason asked the landlady, after rushing down the stairs in a near-panic, and beating on her door until she answered. It was still near enough to dawn for her to have been asleep, and she peered out at him bleary-eyed and squinting, clutching at her robe.
“Who?”
“Julien Davenant—the man upstairs in the fourth room. I gave you money for his rent yesterday.”
“Oh.” She nodded once. “He’s gone. Left in a bit of a hurry, in fact. Said he was going home for a bit again. He does that, you know.”
But Mason didn’t know, and he frowned. “Home?”
“Yes, to Kentucky, or thereabouts. Maybe it’s Virginia.” The old lady shook her head. “Anyway, he does that—stays for a few months, then goes back again a few. Back and forth, all the year through.”
What the hell? Mason thought, because that made absolutely no sense to him. Julien had never said anything about returning to Kentucky. If he’d managed to escape from Lamar—if he’d believed Lisette dead along with the Morins, and Aaron had come with him to Boston, then why would he have gone back?
“What of his brother?” Mason asked, and when the landlady looked puzzled, he continued. “He has a brother who lives in Charlestown. His name is Aaron. Did he go back to Kentucky, too?”
“Don’t know about any brother,” the woman said. “But he did leave me an address in Charlestown, I think. Said if he had any parcels or posts, I could send them there and he’d get them.”
She ducked inside, leaving Mason alone in the entryway, and her door partially open for a long moment. When she returned, she held a scrap of paper in her hand with an address written on it: 1476 Brighton Avenue South.
Mason took a carriage out to the address, one in a long row of neat, stately brownstones along a tree-lined, cobbled street. The front yard was framed by a wrought-iron fence, the front stoop fashioned from smooth, pale granite. To his surprise, Mason found a brass placard mounted beside the front door: Dr. Samuel Wilks, Neurologist and Generalist.
A doctor? he thought, surprised and admittedly perplexed as he knocked on the door.
A young woman in the simple dress and apron of a housemaid answered moments later. She smiled at him in friendly fashion, but when he inquired about Aaron Davenant, her expression and demeanor abruptly changed, growing apprehensive, nearly fearful.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, all but shrinking behind the door as she started to close it. “But I’m afraid there’s no one here by that name.”
“How about Julien Davenant?” Mason pressed, but again, she shook her head. “Is Dr. Wilks available, per chance? Maybe he could help me.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid he’s not. Good day to you, sir.” The maid said all of this in a rush as she closed the door swiftly, smartly in his face. He heard the lock latch from the other side; even through the door, he could still sense her rapid, frantic heartbeat, could still smell her fear.
What the hell is going on? he wondered with a frown. He knocked again on the door, then when no one replied, he knocked again, even more loudly. When still no one answered, his frown deepened and he turned, tromping down the stairs. He’d almost made it across the yard, back to the gated entrance, when a soft voice from behind him drew him to an abrupt halt.
“A man came for him yesterday.”
Mason turned in surprise, and found the young maid standing on the stoop. She’d apparently slipped outside and closed the door behind her in near silence. With a cautious glance at the nearest windows, she then motioned to Mason to follow her. Wrapping her arms around herself against the chill, she hurried down the front steps, then ducked around the side of the house.
“Aaron Davenant stayed here until yesterday,” she said in a low voice as he joined her. She kept cutting fervent glances in all directions, as if she feared being caught or overheard. “Dr. Wilks has forbade us from speaking about him with anyone, but I…I’m worried for him, sir. The man who came to get him…there was something not right in his eyes. They had a cold look about them. And Dr. Wilks was afraid of him—that much is for sure.”
“What did he look like?” Mason asked.
“He was a well-dressed gentleman, clean-shaven,” she said. “He walked with a cane, one with a curious handle. It looked like a dog’s head, all carved out in white.”
Mason felt the downy hairs along the nape of his neck stir uneasily at this. Only one man he knew of carried a cane matching such a description—Lamar Davenant.
“Why was Aaron staying here?” he asked the maid. “Was he a student nearby? Was he studying under Dr. Wilks?”
The girl blinked at him, and he had no accounting for her baffled expression. “Aaron wasn’t a student of Dr. Wilks’s,” she said. “He was a patient. He has been these past two years or so.”
Another icy chill stole down Mason’s spine. Julien had said he’d been prostituting himself for two years. I don’t need pocket change, Mason, he’d said. I need money to help Az.
“A patient?” he said softly, and she nodded. “Why? What was wrong with him?”
“He fell off his horse some three years ago. It cracked his skull, caused his brain to bleed. Dr. Wilks has been working with him ever since. He’d been in a coma for the first year, and since waking up, had to relearn everything—walking, talking, eating. He didn’t remember anything, not even who he is, poor thing.” Her expression grew somewhat mournful. “And his brother, Mr. Davenant, the one you’d mentioned, he came almost every day to see him. He’d spend hours with him, reading to him, or talking, or playing chess. You could tell he just adored him.”
Oh my God, Mason thought. His mouth felt suddenly dry; it tasted sour like bile as the urge to retch came over him. Oh my God, what have I done?
“Did Julien pay for Aaron’s care here?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, sir. He’d arranged for it all through Dr. Wilks.”
“Does he owe the doctor anything in arrears?”
The maid shook her head, seeming surprised. “Oh, no, sir. Mr. Davenant always paid on time, sir, and in full. He was always very prompt.”
What have I done? Mason thought again.
“Why did the man with the cane take Aaron away?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But like I said, the doctor…he was afraid of him. And he’s
told us not to say anything about it—not Aaron, or his brother.” She looked around again, then leaned closer. “I’m worried about them.”
So am I, Mason thought in both mounting alarm and dismay, as he pressed a silver dollar into the young woman’s hand to thank her for her help. God Above have mercy—I’m worried about them, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Are you alright?” Mason stared at the laptop screen, through which he could see a slightly blurred image of Edith’s face. “Did they hurt you?”
They were connected via webcam, though their interaction was anything but private. Andrei stood behind him, no more than three feet away, while on Edith’s end, Nikolić’s girlfriend Anna was clearly visible in the immediate background. The blonde woman was on her cell phone; Mason could hear her in the background speaking in Serbian and suspected she was talking to Nikolić, getting a status report on her brother.
Edith held her hands up, waggling her fingers demonstratively, as if to say I’ve still got them all…for now. “I’m fine. Just trying to get used to my new arrangements,” she said with a weak, weary smile. “This place isn’t so bad, I guess. Nice enough bed, my own bathroom, a fully stocked lab. Just about everything I could ask for.” She cut a dark glance over her shoulder at Anna. “The view could sure as hell improve, though.”
“I’m glad they brought you someplace nicer than this.”
“Looks like Nikolić takes better care of his girlfriend than his men.” Looking back at Mason again, she softened. “He hasn’t hurt you anymore, has he?”
“No, Edi. I’m good. I think the son of a bitch is even starting to like me.”
She managed a weak laugh. “It sounds like he has every reason to. You saved Piotr’s life.”
The young man, Piotr, had survived the night, which had honestly shocked the shit out of Mason. Andrei had somehow been able to procure a supply of ceftriaxone, a powerful antibiotic they could run intravenously. But even so, between the infection and the blood loss from his surgery alone, Piotr remained incredibly weak—and anything but in stable condition.
“Nikolić ordered him pumped him full of juice,” Andrei had explained. “To help boost healing. We gave it to him intravenously with the antibiotics—it works faster that way.”
“It’s been a long time since I did my rounds in orthopedics,” Mason said to Edith over the webcam. “I think the jury’s still out on that one.” His brows lifted. “I’m sorry you’re involved in this bullshit.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said with a frown. “Phillip’s the one who started it.”
“Any luck figuring out what he was up to?”
Another sideways glance at Anna. She was still on the phone, but he suspected she was also keeping careful tabs on Edith at the same time, lest she give too much information away.
“They got a hold of Phillip’s hard drive and laptop from Pharmaceaux,” Edith said and when his eyes widened in surprise, she nodded grimly. “Don’t ask me how. So far, though, everything I’ve been able to access has been pretty much on the up-and-up, his work on Eleanor’s treatment project, primarily.”
“I thought Father had been taking care of all that.” To his shame, Mason hadn’t really kept up with his father’s pet project over the years: searching for a cure to the disease that not only afflicted Eleanor Noble, but had killed Julien’s sister Lisette, with whom Michel had fallen in love. Termed autoimmune-specific disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, it caused progressively worsening hemorrhage, and eventually death. Mason knew Eleanor received almost daily treatments of synthetic blood clotting factors that Michel himself had developed in the hopes of prolonging her life. He’d never realized Phillip had been involved.
“Michel spearheaded the treatment research, but he put Phillip in charge of trying to engineer a retroviral cure even before Lisette had her stroke. A retrovirus is a kind of virus that can replace a host cell’s DNA with its own genetic code, changing it. By programming the retrovirus with the DNA code you want to implant into the host cell, you can change that cell—that entire organism—anyway you want. In theory, anyway. Michel hoped that Phillip would be able to come up with one that could help a patient like Eleanor produce more platelets on her own, in essence reversing the course of her disease.”
“But he didn’t,” Mason said, an assumption not a question.
“Not that I can tell, or Michel ever told me,” Edith said. “I guess it doesn’t matter. None of it has anything to do with Diadem that I can tell, or with the Davenants. I’ll just have to keep digging.”
“If the answer’s there, you’ll find it, Edi,” Mason told her gently, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Sorry I’m not more gung-ho to share in it.” She reached up, toying with the collar cinched around her throat. “I’ve been at this since before sunrise,” she said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Yeah.” Mason smiled, but there was precious little humor in it. “Me, either.”
All of a sudden, Nikolić came tromping into the room, his face twisted with a furious scowl. His hands, his arms, the front of his pants and shirt all appeared to be bloodstained—freshly so. He snapped something in Serbian to Andrei, who immediately snapped to rigid attention, abandoning the slouched posture he’d affected to that moment as he’d leaned against a nearby wall. Nikolić held out his hand expectantly, and Andrei’s eyes were wide and somewhat alarmed as he handed the larger man the trigger device for Mason’s electronic collar.
“Say zbogom, Dr. Morin,” Nikolić growled, marching toward him. As he leaned over his shoulder to reach the laptop keyboard, Mason caught a whiff of the blood smeared and splattered on his skin—human blood, undeniably fresh. “That’s Serbian for goodbye.”
“Wait,” Mason began, but it was too late. He saw Edith’s eyes grow wide with alarm as she caught sight of Nikolić, and a split second later, as the big man punched the power button, the screen cut to black.
“Come with me,” Nikolić said to Mason, turning on his heavy boot heel and stomping back toward the kitchen doorway.
Oh, shit, Mason thought, looking at Andrei. They’d just checked on Piotr less than ten minutes earlier. What the fuck could’ve happened between now and then?
Andrei seemed to glean this just from Mason’s bewildered expression alone and shook his head ever-so slightly, as if to reply, Beats the shit out of me.
Mason rose from his seat and fell in step behind Nikolić, with Andrei trailing closely behind them. To Mason’s surprise, Nikolić didn’t lead them to the first-floor room where Piotr lay resting. Instead, they went in a single-file line up the stairs to the third floor. To Julien’s room.
Oh, God, Mason thought, his breath abruptly drawing to a halt in his throat. He stared at the blood on Nikolić’s hands again in new dismay. Had something happened to Julien? It didn’t smell like his blood—didn’t smell like that of a Brethren—but with that goddamn collar on to scramble his senses, how could he be sure?
Oh, Jesus, no, no, please, he thought, seized with bright, sudden panic and nearly shoving Nikolić aside so he could rush into the room. Once across the threshold, however, when he was able to step around Nikolić, he saw Julien glowering at them from them bed, seemingly uninjured—and very much alive.
It looked like someone had slaughtered a goat at the bedside. The walls, floor, and mattress were all soaked with blood, and Julien’s face, neck, and bare torso were spattered and smeared with it.
Are you alright? Mason asked, opening his mind reflexively, forgetting—and then damning the fact—that his telepathy didn’t work because of his collar.
“Back so soon, Nikolić?” Julien growled. His gaze settled on Mason, unreadable and unyielding. “I told you—I don’t want that man touching me again. Keep him the hell away.”
“Take that out of him.” Nikolić ignored Julien completely and turned to Mason, thrusting one thick finger out and pointing to the length of slende
r tubing running from Julien’s chest to the bucket on the floor.
Mason blinked, startled. “What?”
“You said it was to drain the blood from around his lung,” Nikolić said. “I see a bucket full of blood there. It’s drained. Take it out.”
“Yes, but it…that might not be all,” Mason said. “And it might come back if I pull the tube out too soon. His lung might not be fully reinflated. It—”
“How long?” Nikolić interrupted. The cleft between his brows had deepened since his arrival in the kitchen, a feat that had seemed nearly impossible at that time. “Until it can come out for good, Dr. Morin. How long?”
“Another day at least,” Mason said, and although he hated the fact that he’d taken on a desperate, almost pleading sort of tone to his voice, that’s exactly what he felt like he was doing. “Maybe two. Maybe more. I’d have to—”
“No.” Again Nikolić cut him off. “That’s too long. I won’t wait. Take it out of him now.”
“You don’t understand. If I take it out too soon, he could start bleeding inside all over again. If he’s hemorrhaging, he could develop another—”
Mason’s voice cut short, ripping up into a sharp, agonized cry, as a sudden surge of electricity rushed through him. It felt like he’d just grabbed hold of a live power line with both hands—while standing buck-ass naked in a wading pool. His entire body convulsed, his muscles seizing with agonizing ferocity, and then he crashed to the floor. The voltage stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving him to shudder in a fetal position, knees drawn to his chest, on the dirty bedroom floor.
He looked up, his vision blurry with tears, and saw Nikolić holding the trigger device for his collar in his hand.
“Didn’t I mention that Vučko modified a standard shock collar for you and Dr. Averay?” he asked innocently. “The same kind I use for my girls. They can deliver electrical charges equivalent to a high-end stun gun with the simple touch of a button. I’ve found I get a lot more…cooperation with them in place, especially since I can adjust the amperage from one milliamp—a mild shock—to seventeen, which is potentially lethal. What you just felt was ten.”