by Marie Mistry
“Rich bastards and their wine cellars,” Aeron grumbled back.
That was the only reply I got before we carefully followed the steps down. Blaze had a handful of pyrokinesis and was lighting the way ahead with Enzo doing the same at the back.
Ivory and Onyx zoomed ahead, their wings carrying them down the tunnel faster than we could walk. I knew they'd alert me if anything happened in front of us and the loss of that worry meant I was free to focus on the damp, earthy smell which surrounded me. Every now and again, a worm or insect would wriggle out of the walls Bane had created and onto me, making me flinch.
Bugs were somehow more disturbing than a poisoned mansion.
We finally emerged into a well-lit, modern wine cellar. It was empty, but the open bottle on the table to one side suggested the guards were helping themselves to the alcohol in Craven’s absence.
We came out behind a wall of barrels, the tunnel hidden in their shadow.
A creak on the stairs had us all tensing, but Enzo simply disappeared and reappeared holding a large body.
One guard down, two more inside the house.
Blaze and Enzo moved off first, leaving me with the two brothers to slowly climb the stairs. I tried to touch as little as possible, but it was going to be unavoidable. Leaving the wine cellar, we emerged into a small, dark stairwell.
“Servants' staircase.” Aeron's voice was quiet and soft in my mind. “It will take us all the way to the third floor where the office is.”
I nodded, following as he led the way up the stairs, Bane close on my heels. Even the servants' stairs were richly decorated with plush carpets and imposing suits of armour that glared down at us as we passed. The only light came from the lamps in the garden outside. The stained glass of the huge windows cast colourful beams onto the patterned wallpaper. We reached the third floor without incident, and I began to think we might have overreacted about the difficulty of breaking in.
That, of course, was when a second guard turned the corner, his single earring glinting in the light.
Bane didn't even try to hide.
He just reached out and suddenly that earring had expanded, encasing the guard's head in a lump of solid diamond.
The poor man didn't have time to scream. He just dropped to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut. Blood leaked from underneath the strange, diamond headdress he now wore, confirming his fate.
“Second guard down,” I whispered to the rest of my mates, stepping over the corpse and into a dark hallway.
“Dining room and parlour are clear,” Blaze replied. “Moving on to the living area and games rooms.”
How the hell was he getting through his section so fast?
Enzo was silent and all I got from him was a sense of focused determination. I couldn't look much further because we'd reached the door at the end of the hall. It was rather unremarkable, except for the ornate handle which Bane crouched down in front of, his mask making a hiss as he exhaled.
“The handle's rigged to spike anyone who touches it,” he mused, taking a pick out of his pocket to tap the metal.
Sure enough, the metal liquified and reformed into a spiked version of the handle we'd just seen.
“More poison?” Aeron grumbled. “What is it with this guy? Normal people don't booby-trap their own houses!”
I would have replied, but I was too fascinated by what Bane was doing. His fingers were touching the wood of the door and he was murmuring almost inaudibly to it. When a crack in the door appeared, slowly widening till it was just big enough for us to squeeze through, I muffled a gasp.
I knew Bane could control plants, but surely that wood was dead? When I looked at him, my questions written on my face, he just winked.
“I asked it very nicely.”
I just rolled my eyes and squeezed through the crack and into a study that went up and up and up. Straight in front of me, a huge, towering window of stained glass stared me in the face, almost as though I was in a church. The centre was a mural of the house, presided over by the hooded figure of the Strange God and around the edges, smaller square panes held images of multiple figures.
I didn't get a chance to study them because Bane and Aeron were already spreading out across the room.
“I'll take the gallery,” Aeron said, already halfway up the metal stairs to the thin balcony that ran around the middle of the room. I could see shelves upon shelves of books and documents up there, interspersed with built-in filing cabinets between them all, labelled in neat handwriting. I hoped that that would make it a quick search.
Bane didn't even pay attention, instead heading straight for the sturdy wooden desk in the centre of the room.
Needing to feel useful, I headed over to the cabinet closest to me.
“Accounts, 1898,” I murmured across the bonds to the brothers. “1899, 1900, 1901 … it's all finances over here.”
“Same up here,” Aeron replied. “Employee records, bills, tax and insurance documents. God, Enzo's father is so boring.”
“There are false bottoms to every drawer in the desk.” Bane had his hand pressed to the wood again. “Look for things beyond the obvious.”
I relayed the message again, then started checking the bottoms of the filing cabinets. “Still nothing.”
Bane either didn't hear me down our fractured bond or was too focused to reply. A glance behind me showed that he was still using his gift to talk to the wood, so I wandered over to the window instead, examining the glass pictures in the window more closely.
The first image showed a pale-haired man and a woman dressed in grey, kissing under a tree. The one beneath it showed the two together again, but this time, the woman was obviously pregnant.
Then below, the woman holding two bundles, the man smiling down at them both.
That was the last on that side, so I switched to the other, only to see the woman on the ground, the pool of ruby red glass beneath her making it clear she wasn't innocently asleep, no matter how peaceful her expression was. In the background, another man clutched a dagger, whilst the blonde man wept.
The picture below that showed a pair of hands passing the two bundles through a doorway and the final one showed the blonde man driving a sword through the heart of the woman's murderer.
It was the story of Enzo's parents. Craven had had it immortalised in glass where he would need to look at it every single day, but why?
“Though he is a Gluttony like me, his sub-caste is Punishment.” Enzo appeared out of the shadows behind me and I arched a brow. “I'm just checking in, Pretty Darling, so I can patch you up. Don't panic.” His hand came to rest on my shoulder and I relaxed as he patiently undid the effects of the poison, the headache I had ignored lessening slightly.
When he was done, I bumped my face mask against his softly in a tender approximation of a kiss and turned back to the window.
“So, he made himself look at his past every day as a method of gaining power?"
“It's nice to know he was using me even before he paid for my services.” The anger in Enzo's voice was palpable, but there was something tender in his eyes as he stroked the image of the woman holding him and his brother. “I will admit to a certain curiosity about what she was like, what she would have thought about her son…”
“She would have thought you were wonderful, just like I do.”
He gave me a wistful smile. “Kindness cannot overshadow the truth. I suspect she'd be as horrified by my profession as you are.”
“Perhaps, but you are more than your work.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I'll remind you that you said that.” He gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “Back to the search.”
“I thought you were supposed to be avoiding the shadow realm, in case there were more traps there.”
“Oh, there are and they're very sophisticated. But that's half the fun.”
“Be careful,” I insisted.
He disappeared back into the shadows with a wink, just as Bane said something unintell
igible down our bond.
“I can't hear you,” I replied.
“I said, come and help. This drawer mechanism is tricky.”
I quickly moved over to the desk and held the lid of the secret compartment open while Bane fiddled with a mechanism within.
A few seconds later, he stepped back, holding something, and visibly collapsed in relief. “I don't want to know what is in that vial but I'm glad I got it out before the trap broke it.” He held up a small glass tube, filled with a blue liquid that sloshed as he moved it.
Carefully setting it aside between some papers, he pulled out the contents of the drawer: a stack of clothbound books, each meticulously clean, despite the yellowing of some of the pages.
“The man kept a diary?” Aeron scoffed.
“Better,” I replied, flicking through one. “It's a record of everyone he ever sold poisons or toxins to.”
“More money stuff,” Bane groaned. “How can anyone be so organised when I can't even remember to check the tiny financial summary Daron sends me every month?”
I brushed off the fact that Daron was taking care of Bane's money for him, and instead perused the list. “Nothing here from any Syndicate members we know…”
“That doesn't mean shit since we still don't know the identity of the Grand Master.” Aeron had descended the stairs again and carefully took the book from me, adding it back to the pile. “We should take them with—”
A flash of light burst through the window, followed immediately by yells and even a damned siren.
We exchanged a single panicked look.
“Back to the cellar, now!” the brothers ordered in unison, squeezing through the crack in the door faster than I could respond, dragging me with them.
A light was already coming up the hallway in front of us and I reacted automatically, throwing my odynokinesis out towards the approaching guard in force. It only lasted a second before Aeron slammed me out of the way, his aerokinesis reaching out and stealing the oxygen from around our would-be attackers. Only when they'd dropped to the ground, dead, did he turn back to me.
He glared. “Do not waste your power on them. Bane and I will protect you. You're sick, remember?”
I glared defiantly back, but now wasn't the time for an argument. Biting my tongue, I followed as they jogged back towards the staircase we'd come up from.
Stepping over the bodies proved difficult and I blanched as I realised no fewer than eight men had been in the group.
“Where did the extra guards come from?” I wondered. “There were only ten…”
“Who cares?” Bane growled. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
More lights came from beneath us on the stairs and Aeron cursed in my mind, dragging us through the first door he saw. We burst out of the staircase, only one floor below where we'd started. This dark hall was identical to the one we'd just left but there was already a guard there, his hand outstretched, fire brewing in his palm.
We dived out of the way; Aeron to one side of the room, Bane and I to the other.
Everything that came next seemed to happen in an odd kind of slow motion. We landed behind a suit of armour, my motion carrying me straight into it. My hands instinctively grabbed the cold metal for support. I heard Aeron send a gust of wind at our attacker but before my eyes could catch up with my ears, Bane's hands had grabbed my waist, twisting me out of the way.
My eyes met his just in time to see the spikes, protruding from the armour, pierce his side … His body in the exact place mine would have been just half a second before.
The scream which tore from my throat came from my gut, helpless and broken.
Bane staggered forward, put a hand against the wall and brought his finger to his lips. His hand fell away, not because he could control it, but more as though the sheer weight of his own limb was suddenly too much to bear.
How could he be telling me to be silent at a time like this?
“Cellar, now.”
He grabbed me and chucked me at his brother but I tugged Aeron back.
“Bane's injured!”
Aeron cursed again and pulled his brother over his shoulders. He looked down the hallway in the direction we'd been headed, then at the window to our left.
“Aeron, what are you—?”
Before I could finish my sentence, he'd grabbed my hand and tugged the three of us through the glass, smashing into the night and the drop below.
Chapter 29
The wind whipped my hair as we plummeted and I squeezed my eyes shut against our inevitable end. With my wings bound to my back, I couldn't even flare them to try and slow our descent and the muscles in my back screamed with the urge to take flight. In my mind, I cursed my Lust mate a billion different ways for choosing death over capture without at least consulting me first.
But the end never came.
“Baby Girl, I need you to open your eyes and look at me.” Aeron's voice was annoyingly persistent for a man who was about to die.
I opened one eye, fully expecting to accidentally bear witness to the final second before I hit the ground and became a demonic pancake.
But instead all I could see was the night sky, the stars above glimmering in a pattern I didn’t think was normal.
“I can't do this for long without you, Lilith. I need eye contact, a hug, a kiss, anything.”
Aeron was still clasping my hand, his other arm locked around his brother's unconscious form as we floated in the sky. Our clothes were covered in splinters of broken glass and his hair was being whipped around as much as mine was.
When I looked into his eyes, he sighed in relief. “Thank you. I was running low.”
Oh, right, intimacy was what he needed to recharge. Well, since I wasn't dead, I decided to forgive the utter terror he'd caused me. I cuddled closer to him, pressing my body against his as I held the eye contact.
His body relaxed. “We'll make it if you keep doing that,” he whispered. “We're meeting the van at the end of this trail of stars Kain's left us.” Huh, so that was why the stars were shining weirdly. “I just hope Bane can hold out that long.”
I shifted my gaze to Bane without meaning to. The wounds from the spikes were rapidly beginning to ooze a horrible white puss and I gagged at the smell.
Just a nanosecond later and that would have killed me. I reached my spare hand up to check his pulse. Though the mating bond was still telling me he was alive, the weak, yet steady, throb under my fingertips soothed me further. He was strong. He had to survive this.
And afterwards, I'd kick his ass for making me worry.
“Hang in there, Bane,” I whispered.
But the wind stole my words.
The van was still moving when we caught up to it but the moment we were visible, the back doors were thrown open and Jin and Kain dragged us into the back.
My gaze instinctively sought out my mates. Blaze was driving, Enzo beside him yelling directions and Daron was typing at his computer like a man possessed, muttering things under his breath.
“Bane's been poisoned!” I yelled into the chaos.
“We'll have bigger problems if I don't shake this tail,” Blaze growled, jerking the wheel sharply to the side. I slammed to the side, my momentum cushioned by Aeron who tugged me close just before impact.
“We need to get to a healer,” I insisted.
Kain, who had caught my poisoned mate, rolled him over and gagged. The wound had almost doubled in size and the veins around it had turned a startling white, shining through his tanned skin. Closer examination showed it was actually fizzing gently around the edges and the pungent smell reminded me of rotten meat. I grimaced and fought down my panic. Bane was alive and, as long as that was the case, we would make it.
“I'll take him to Rezinax.” Kain stood, his face grey with concern.
“You don't know how the shadow realm will affect his injury,” Enzo argued, clambering into the back and shoving Kain aside and placing his hand just above the wound. “The toxin is al
ready in his bloodstream. Travelling through it can be tough on a regular person. Too much stress and his heart could stop.” He took his hand away. “I've slowed his heartbeat, which should slow the spread, but I'm not a healer. I have no clue how to get the toxin out of him.”
“The Resistance has healers,” Aeron muttered. “We know how to get there. It's closer than Vice…”
“Have we lost that tail yet?” Enzo yelled at Blaze.
“I think so,” he murmured. “Daron, what do your eyes in the sky see?”
Daron flicked up another screen and studied it. The image flicked from a regular camera to night vision, and back again, before he answered. “No heat signatures or light in over a one-mile radius. Drone's low on power though.”
“Call it back then.” Blaze sounded exhausted.
Daron opened the door and in flew a tiny drone, landing neatly in the palm of his hand. I didn't bother to marvel at it, despite how interesting I might have found it. Instead, I curled up on the floor beside my injured mate, making sure I didn't touch his wound as I hugged him.
“I suppose we're both poisoned now,” I whispered, stroking his dark, sweaty hair back from his face. “But you're going to shake this off and get better. The Resistance will help. I'll make them.”
“I know why those guards appeared so suddenly,” Daron said, a few minutes later. “Listen to this: 'Ronan Craven, previously Prime of the Assembly, escaped from his prison just two hours ago. His guards were found, with their memories wiped, wandering in a field some three miles from their assigned locations. No signs of forced entry or confrontation at the scene.'”
I looked up. “They came to see if he went home.”
“And instead they found us, breaking in.” Jin sat beside me. “Of all the luck…”
“No one who saw us lived to recognise us,” Aeron insisted. “They have no reason to suspect it was us and we did get something useful.” He pulled out the small pile of books from his pocket. “Records of everyone Craven ever sold poisons to, and even the aliases he used when doing it.”
Daron reached back and grabbed the books from Aeron with a swiftness that surprised me. “I'll start going through recent entries, matching poisons with likely victims. If he did sell to the Syndicate, we'll find out.”