by Nancy Holder
Jean swayed. He felt as if he were dissolving into ether. What mischief was this?
“My lord?” Isabeau whispered anxiously, her white face hidden by veils of darkness and shadow. “How is it with you?”
Je m’appelle Jeraud, he thought. My name is Jeraud.
He turned and looked over at the crying woman. We don’t belong here, he thought.
Then he felt other eyes on him, from above: He gazed up at the steeple of the church to see her there, Karienne, his mistress of long standing. How defeated she looked, even haggard. He’d offered her to a nobleman, to make certain her way was easy. She was to leave tonight. Her things were packed, and they’d bade one another adieu. In bed.
She was magnificent.
She’s Kari. A grad student. By the God, I killed her. I slit her throat! And that woman is my mother, Sasha Deveraux.
His knees buckled, and the spectators gasped.
“Jer?” Eve said as she peered at him, standing stock-still.
“He’s changed time,” Jer told her, trembling. “He’s cheating.” He skirted around the slippery slope he’d failed to climb and spotted a rockier path toward the summit. “Come on. We have to hurry. We have to stop him.”
“Him who? What?” She hesitated for a second, then followed after him. “Eli?”
“Come on.” Thunder rumbled, and lightning sliced the night as Jer scrabbled over the rocks like a madman. He had to stop Holly. Had to save her.
“Jer?” Eve was struggling to keep up with him.
“Damn you. Vite!” he screamed at her.
Outside Mumbai:
Holly, Alex, Pablo, Armand, and the Temple of the Air
Did Jer’s voice echo off the black mountains?
“It is done, my love,” Alex said to Holly. Alex, who was the lord to her lady, her thrallmate, closer to her than anyone in the world. Closer—
And then she knew, as the evil poured out of him and rushed into her soul. As his contamination ruined her.
As she was damned.
“No,” she whispered, trying to step away from him. But his gaze held her in place. “Please.”
But she was in thrall to him—the great enemy of the Cahors, warlock, mage son of the Lost Son of Light: demon, devil. Brilliance blazed around him; he stood in the center of a sphere of light so white that it was blue; and then the colors shifted and changed like the northern lights. He was magnificent, and terrible.
Duc Laurent, of House Deveraux, dead these many centuries.
His face changed; shadows and angles and sharp features cracked the softness, and his smile was a filthy leer. He reached out a hand and cupped Holly’s chin, grinning down at her body. Paralyzed, she was forced to endure his touch, and then his kiss.
Pablo, Armand, she pleaded.
Shadows flew across the moon, and the cawing of a thousand crows, a million, screeched in her ears. The ground shook, and she would have fallen to her knees if Alex—Laurent—hadn’t moved his hand, and kept her upright through magic alone.
Then through the screaming of the crows she heard Jer shouting her name.
“You are in thrall with me, the lady to the lord,” Laurent said to her. “You know the curse: Those who love the Cahors witches die by drowning. He loves you.”
No, she thought. No.
“He loves you and he always has. It is the curse of my bloodkin to fall in love with you witchwomen. Jean first and now this idiot. He could have ruled a kingdom, a world, but instead…he fell in love with you.”
Jer, run, she called to him.
“He is cursed to die by drowning.” He smiled at her. “You do it, Holly. Drown him. Take Jer Deveraux under the water and send his warlock soul straight to hell.”
I refuse.
He murmured under his breath, and hot whispers skittered through her bloodstream, heating her veins. Her muscles jerked; she tried to shake her head, refuse him. But as he stepped back, she spun around and charged at Jer, who was running toward her. Eve, the warlock, was with him.
She flew at him. If he smiled, his face was such a ruin that she couldn’t tell. Superhuman strength propelled her into his arms; then she shoved him backward, hard, and they both shot into the lake. Down she pushed him, down, harder. Crows covered the moon. Eve was screaming. Pablo and Armand splashed into the water after her.
Kill him. Drown him. Yes, she wanted to. He deserved it. For all the misery he had brought her, hunting her through the centuries. No rest. Forever feeling his wrath, hateful and relentless.
Yes, yes, Duc Laurent urged her.
She couldn’t see him in the black water. She didn’t need to breathe. But he would. He did. She grabbed his arms and held them against his body; then she covered his mouth with hers, and sucked all the air out of his body.
Die, Jean, she thought. Die, as you should have when my family attacked your family’s castle. When I crept out of our marriage bed to leave you to the flames, and then told you to run. Instead you hunted me down, tried to kill me when I’d risked all for you. Die. Damn you to hell and back.
He went limp. She smiled. She had fulfilled her lord’s will. Laurent, her love…
No! He was not her love. He was not. Jer…She was killing Jer.
She grabbed him and forced the air back into his lungs. Nothing happened. He dangled limply in the water.
No, help me, no, she begged, kicking her legs as she fought back to the surface. The face of the Goddess gazed down on her, demanding another bargain, a sacrifice, in return for the power to save Jer’s life.
“No,” Holly said, gasping, as she broke the surface. “I’m done with you. Done.”
Weak moonlight revealed Jer, lying facedown in the water. Crying out, she flipped him onto his back and headed toward shore. The crows were attacking Pablo, Armand, and Eve. The three had created a magical barrier, but she could see that the crows were pecking at it. Laurent stood apart, laughing.
“You are my lady,” he said in a booming voice. “And you’ve killed him.”
No, she thought. No. But Jer trailed behind her in the water, limp and unresponsive.
Somehow she dragged him to shore. Her dress hung in tatters around her legs as she straddled him, putting her ear to his mouth. He wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse.
He was dead.
Our God can raise him up from the dead, Pablo thought to her as he, Armand, and Eve focused their magical power on the invisible barrier between Laurent Deveraux’s crows and them. Let Him in, and He will do it.
Pablo watched as Holly began CPR, lamenting that she would cast her magical powers away at such a crucial moment. Armand glanced at him; they were thinking the same thing.
Then Eve shouted, “Damn it, Holly, bring him back!”
And suddenly light poured from Holly’s body and covered Jer like a shroud. Or maybe a warming blanket. She lost sight of him. Searching wildly, her fingers touched soft, smooth skin, and the familiar angles and hollows of his features—all the scars gone, whole and healed.
Oh, I love you, I love you. I could never kill you, she thought. But she had. He was dead.
I take it back. Take back time, or take my soul; take whatever you want, only save him.
She saw Catherine, mother of Isabeau, in her black and silver gown, heavily veiled. She was standing in a dungeon, with a dagger in her hand. She held it out, and in her mind Holly reached out her palm. Catherine sliced open Holly’s hand.
I will come to you, and demand my price then. And you will pay it.
Holly watched her blood well along the wound in her palm. Yes, yes, I will, she swore. Only save him.
The blood flared into fire. It ran along her hand like ignited gunpowder. Instantly unbearable pain shot through her; she smelled her own flesh burning. Smelled her hair. Her teeth. Her bones.
It was unbelievable agony.
It was what he had felt. Jean. Jer.
It can go away, Catherine told her. Say the word. He will die, now, but you will no longer suffer.
“No,�
� she screamed. “Jer!”
The pain intensified. It burned the air around her, every space she had ever touched. It burned time.
Holly screamed.
And screamed.
Jer woke. Holly had tried to drown him. Now she was on fire, and all the demons of hell were diving after them.
Jer grabbed Holly and flung her over his back as Armand, Pablo, and Eve hurled fireballs at scaly creatures and monsters with talons, and hulking giants and winged nightmares. And his ancestor, the terrifying Duc Laurent, rode a skeleton warhorse that breathed fire and galloped above the rocks, crushing them with his hooves. Hellhounds bayed and clacked their teeth.
“Faster!” Jer shouted at the others.
And Holly’s burning body sizzled into his scarred and suffering flesh.
“Fire in the hole!” Eve shouted.
Jer jerked his head around just in time to see the landscape behind him explode in a shower of rocks and debris. He ducked his head to avoid getting hit, and kept running.
“Holly, work with me!” he shouted.
She groaned in agony, and his heart broke for her. And suddenly, in the distance, he saw two figures appear, running toward them. More of Duc Laurent’s men? Behind him Jer heard people dying, and he realized in a second that the Duc was killing his own coven. So much for the Temple of the Air. It sounded like at least a couple of them were fighting back; Jer just prayed that would give them enough time.
Eve ran up beside him. “Jer, there’s something I haven’t told you.” She was panting heavily.
“Please let it be that you know a way to stop this guy.”
She swallowed big gulps of air. “I might.”
He glanced over at her without slowing. “What?”
“I think we can conjure the Black Fire.”
He almost tripped. “That’s impossible. Only Deveraux can do it. Even if we could find Eli, we would still need three of us.”
“We’ll have three of us.”
“What are you talking about?” A fireball whizzed past Jer’s ear.
She stared at him for a full beat as they ran. And then she said, “Jer, I’m a Deveraux.”
Scarborough: Nicole, Amanda, Tommy, Richard, Owen, Kari, Anne-Louise, and the cats
In the kitchen of House Moore, Kari watched Nicole pacing, anxiously whipping out her cell phone to check for messages, cuddling the baby against her chest. Owen was swathed in a silver shawl covered with amulets and sachets Anne-Louise had brought as baby gifts.
The kitchen was redolent of cinnamon and cloves, and a tiny flicker of longing for lost Christmases tugged at the recesses of Kari’s ashen memory.
A vein pulsed at Nicole’s temple, and she kept pacing and chewing her lower lip. Her nervous energy made it all the more obvious to Kari that she herself was dead inside. Kari knew she should also be upset, and frightened, but she was neither. She was flat. Empty.
Standing at the granite-topped kitchen island, Anne-Louise, in white and silver, peered at a scrying stone, one of thirteen she had set up in a circle on the counter sprinkled with salt and crushed hazelnuts. White candles burned at the four corners of the counter, and in the center stood a statue of the Goddess in her incarnation as the Virgin Mary. A low-burning flame in an arched alcove beside the refrigerator was dedicated to Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, and a lock of Holly’s hair was burning in it.
Kari moved so that she could see over Anne-Louise’s shoulder. She saw Holly, writhing in agony, her skin turning black as though from fire. She was in trouble. So were those with her, including…Jer!
Kari remembered pain and death. She remembered Jer’s knife at her throat as she lay dying on the floor of the Supreme Coven’s headquarters in London. The loving words in ancient French they had exchanged before he’d slit her throat. She had begged him to; it had been Wind Moon, and whoever killed her would acquire her magical strength. Rather than allow it to flow to Michael Deveraux who had wounded her, she willed it to Jer, the man she had lost in this century, and in France, long ago.
In another century, in medieval France, they had been lovers—Karienne and Jean. She was his beloved mistress, his exquisite French lily, and they lived in a perpetual state of decadent pleasure. When his arranged marriage to Isabeau was successfully negotiated, he had set Karienne aside, and she had accepted that, for she knew the ways of politics; and, as one allied with the House of Deveraux, she agreed that he must marry the enemy witch to keep their noble family safe. But Kari knew that Jean loved her. She had his heart, and that would comfort her in the long years ahead.
Count Alois, her new patron, had informed her he would come for her after the wedding ceremony. Her things were packed, and they would live in Paris. She had one precious hour before she must fasten her admiring gaze on a man who was not Jean. He would become her legal husband. And so, she stole into the church, to watch from the steeple, for seeing him given to another in name only was preferable to not seeing him at all.
Wind and firelight cast shadows over the glittering assembly. Silver and black, for Cahors; red and green, for the doublets and gowns of the Deveraux. Gems, gold, and silver. The blood of sacrifices hung in the air. The wailing of the serfs over those who had died.
He is mine, she thought as she gazed down on her handsome, lost Jean. She dug her fingers into her palms, and prayed that she might be pregnant with his babe. She wasn’t certain, but she had her suspicions.
As droplets of blood welled and slid down the lifeline in her right hand, Jean’s father, Duc Laurent, opened Jean’s vein with a ceremonial dagger, and Isabeau’s mother did the same to her. Their wrists were bound together.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled, and the torches flared. Who was that woman, standing off to one side, weeping?
Clouds rushed the moon. Overhead, lightning sizzled like falling stars. And then, a dagger of grief cleaved Karienne’s heart: As his blood mingled with Isabeau’s, his face changed. From standing stiff and guarded, half-glowering at the bitch, now he leaned toward her, gazing at her like a starving man at table. He glowed with rapture, and adoration. He loved Isabeau, his bride.
“Non,” she protested, gripping the wood railing. It was to be a political match; no one dreamed the two would harbor anything but sheer hatred for each other…and yet, as Jean looked upon Isabeau, his hard face softened as it never had for her, for Karienne.
Karienne, alors, viens ici, a voice murmured to her. Viens. Je t’espére.
Come here. I am waiting for you.
“Qui?” she murmured. Who? Was it Jean, at last, calling to her? Had he seen how wrong he was to love that murdering witch?
Karienne, viens ici. Maintenant.
And the voice urged her again, to come…now…to leave the room at House Moore, to quietly get a coat, and take a lot of money from Anne-Louise’s purse…to walk down to the gate, and to the lane, where the bus would come, and to take the bus, and then go to Dover, and from there to take the ferry…
…to France.
By the time they realized she had left…
…she was gone.
Mumbai: Jer, Holly, Eve, Pablo, and Armand
“You’re a Deveraux!” Jer shouted in disbelief. “When did that happen?”
She had the decency to look ashamed. “My family has hidden their true name for a long, long time. I—I didn’t know when to tell you. I wasn’t sure…” She trailed off.
It made sense. Deveraux had not exactly been popular with the Supreme Coven for quite a while. It also explained the weird sort of kinship he had felt with her. It explained a lot of things.
“We’re still only two,” he said finally. “We still need Eli to make Black Fire.”
That is not going to be a problem, he heard Pablo say in his head.
Why?
Look carefully at the people in front of us.
Jer looked again. Running toward them as fast as they could were Eli and Philippe.
This must be a miracle, Jer thought. Magic didn’t d
o this. No magic that I have, anyway.
Yes, perhaps, Pablo replied.
“Philippe!” Jer bellowed. “How did you find us?”
“Eli cast a finder’s spell. He saw you. In fact, he insisted there were several Deveraux with you. I didn’t really want to come.”
Jer smiled crookedly. “I’m glad you did. Take Holly,” he said to Armand, holding her out to him. “Be careful.”
Armand slung her over his own back. Jer grabbed Eve’s hand and ran for everything that he was worth. His scarred legs screamed in agony, but he ignored the pain and instead fixated on his brother, and his…What was she, a cousin?
A moment later the three of them collided. Jer reached out and grabbed Eli’s hand. “Black Fire! Conjure it. I know you know how!”
For once there was no sarcastic retort from his brother. Instead Eli began chanting in a deep, ringing voice. Jer and Eve listened intently, and when the chant began to repeat, they joined in.
“Incendio, Agni…Dando…”
Armand, with Holly in his arms, and Pablo beside him, passed the three and began casting magic with Philippe. Jer turned and faced the oncoming Duc. He imagined him on fire. He imagined him burning as he had, and as Jean had, and as Isabeau. He imagined him dead.
And, ten feet away, the Black Fire sprang into life.
Scarborough: Amanda, Tommy, Nicole, Richard, Owen, Anne-Louise, and the cats
Anne-Louise listened to everything Nicole and Amanda told her. She paced, and then she whirled around and said, “Nicole, Amanda, where did you find this book?”
“I’ll show you,” Amanda said, as she rose and led them through the house. She led them into the study, below the portrait, and headed for a wall. She took a deep breath and waved it open, and the others moved back.
“I—I should go with you,” Nicole said. But it was clear she was conflicted.
“I’ll protect Owen,” Richard promised.
“If you hear me knocking, move your hand over the wall like I did,” Amanda told him.
Reluctantly, Nicole handed her child over, and then followed Amanda into the darkness. She smelled evil. The shadows whispered warnings.
She wanted to turn back.