She looked at him sadly. She had never heard anything quite so heartbreaking, or deranged.
The side of his mouth turned up in a miserable smile. “Deranged? Really?”
“So all the antiques,” she started, changing the subject abruptly, somewhat unnerved by the secret he felt determined that she should hear. “That’s why they meant so much to you? Why… you injured Jules so badly.”
“Yes.”
She that realized it would take very little of his strength to do the same to her. She was the same zombie that Jules was, and they possessed relatively the same strength, same speed, same dismal outlook.
“You don’t have to be like him.” He looked at her intently. “If you allow me to drink just a little of your blood. As I said before, I cannot create vampires, I would only pass on my gifts to you. So you have nothing to fear, and you wouldn’t be like Jules anymore.”
She stood up suddenly. “I’d rather not. Actually I came here hoping to ask you for permission to leave for one night. I promise I would return to you in twenty-four hours.”
He sighed. He had just told her his painful life story, and that entire time she was thinking of nothing but Black Opal. “I don’t suppose you’re planning on rescuing that revolutionary while you’re gone?”
She looked down at him. “I just want a few hours away from this place.”
“Or were you thinking of going back to Haffef?”
“Never. You know exactly what my plans are, Edel. You always know. Just read my mind,” she hissed.
“No,” he said at last. “I can’t let you go.”
“Why not?! Why not at least think about it?”
“Because you’ll never come back.”
Cameo met his eyes defiantly.
“You invited me to read your mind.”
Her eyes narrowed as she nodded. “Read my mind all you like. I’m dead inside, just like you.”
He watched as she walked away, swiftly, gracefully, into the darkness, then he looked out over the water of the Azez again. Haffef had gone. He was alone.
* * * * *
Kyrian sat down heavily on the settee. The room was dark, with only candles giving illumination to the pile of Opal’s things that he’d arranged on the floor in front of him. It was morning, but the clouds had rolled in during the night, and they were dark and looked heavy with snow.
It had been days since he had lost sight of the highwayman, who was apparently now a revolutionary. Of course he had heard of Francois Mond. Everyone had. Kyrian wasn’t quite certain of all the man’s exploits, but he was aware that he had been in a collaboration with a panel of ten others who had spoken out against the monarchy in Shandow and had spurred the people to revolt. It had been dubbed the Shandow Revolt, but it was in reality a failed revolution.
So now this realization that Black Opal was Francois Mond threw Opal in a glaringly new light. Kyrian looked down at the belongings. He had spent the last few days staring out at the palace, wondering what was happening in there, and going over the final things that Opal had said to him. He had wanted to protect him in the last moment before he was taken prisoner, and Kyrian was lost in the crowd. No one had ever come to find him. So his last act had not been in vain.
Kyrian haunted the streets of Villoise and finally gave in and bought a new set of inexpensive clothes with the money that Opal had handed him. He ordered a bath and lingered in it, bored, wondering if he were going to see Black Opal again. Finally, he just piled up the highwayman’s things and looked through them. There was a good deal of fine clothes, makeup paints, and other styling accessories that Kyrian planned to leave behind. The items that really sparked his interest were two separate books, one leather-bound and one loose, tied with string, and two wanted posters. The one for him as Black Opal that he had enjoyed pointing out looked nothing like him, and one worn thin for Francois Mond. The woodcut on the earlier one showed a young man, perhaps Kyrian’s age or a little younger. Opal had been at the heart of a revolution when he was younger than Kyrian. This astounded the lad more than anything else. He had done very little in his life in comparison. Perhaps this, more than anything else, was what had prompted him to pack up, taking some of Opal’s papers with him.
He descended the steps with a heavy heart.
The older woman behind the desk peered over her glasses at him. “You certainly look very smart today. Decided to take your friend’s advice and buy something new to wear, I see.”
Kyrian smiled at her. “Yes. I suppose he was right about that.”
She took the key he offered her. “You never know what pearls of knowledge some of us old people have to give sometimes.”
He paid the bill, still feeling a bit bewildered about his future.
“Best to keep yourself bundled up, young sir. An unusual chill is in the air. It set in last night and has iced up the harbor. There’s a ship stranded here, and the fishing boats are all frozen in the water.”
Kyrian pulled up the collar of his new coat and fished for a pair of heavy leather gloves lined with fur. “Good day to you.”
Outside, he breathed in the cold, and his head ached. He stepped out onto the Azez Road, which was the main road with the harbor in the distance, and also the road he and Opal had been on when he had been apprehended. As he neared the harbor, there was barely another person in sight; anyone he did run into was either hurrying into a warm doorway or outside with a purpose, chopping up firewood, or peeling frozen clothing off a clothesline. Most of them just watched him with a knowing look in their eyes.
“The boats aren’t going anywhere today, sir.”
When Kyrian finally did get down to the dock, he understood what they really meant. The sea surface had frozen solid, at least around the harbor. The dinghies were ice-coated. The pier itself was iced up. He didn’t take a step further for fear that he might slip over the side and into the Azez. Although he suspected it was solid enough to be skated on, he didn’t want to take any chances.
Kyrian turned around and looked north at Cammarth. A freak cold had left him stranded in Shandow. He had been contemplating his next move for the last few days, and two distinct ideas had come to light. It seemed the gods were moving him down the path that he was now certain he must take.
* * * * *
Opal pulled his cloak around him and looked up at the light streaming in from the barred window of the tower cell that he had been placed in. It had been days, and the only soul he had seen was one jailer. He was an overweight man with thinning red hair who brought in a pan of food, scraps from the kitchen. Opal had had quite a lot of time to think and suspected that was exactly what Avamore was hoping he was doing, locked away and awaiting the day of his execution.
He spent his time assessing his reflection in the face of the empty pan. He was growing steadily grungier in a slush of muck, without so much as a comb or wash basin as the days crept by.
“Francois.”
He startled.
A man pushed open the door.
Opal leapt to his feet.
This was the man that he had seen several times before, the one who came to bring him his food. This time he opened the door wider and allowed entry to Mister Lantillette and two more roughly dressed men, one dark-haired and one who apparently preferred to remain anonymous, wearing an executioner’s hood. They carried in a large case.
“Oh, disgusting.” Mister Lantillette pressed a handkerchief to his nose.
“Is it the day of my release?” Opal asked hopefully.
Lantillette smiled and motioned for the others to open up the case that they set up on a chair. Within the case was what appeared to be a set of workman’s tools, worn rough with use.
“Compliments of the King of Shandow.”
Opal looked at Lantillette, uncertain of what he meant.
“You do play the spinet so wonderfully, Francois.”
“Thank you ....”
“A pity that your last performance is indeed your last.”
; The dandy looked down at the case before him. “What do you mean?”
“Take him now.”
The jailer and the two others who had followed Lantillette into Opal’s cell grabbed him and forced him onto the floor. Weakened from lack of adequate food and water over the past few days, he wasn’t much of a match for three men larger than he was. They ripped off his right glove and pushed one hand palm down onto the ground before him.
“Pliers or mallet?”
Opal struggled to pull his hand back to the safety of his body.
“Hey, hey, I don’t think so, my friend.” The dark-haired man holding Opal sat down on his back, pinning the dandy beneath him. “Let’s have the mallet.”
Mister Lantillette opened a folder and began to read aloud a list of Francois Mond’s crimes against the Belfour family and the country of Shandow as Opal watched the mallet pass from one fiend to the other.
“Is this a new one?”
“No, not really, it has a good balance, though. I was just roofing my mother’s house with it last week.”
Opal’s eyes widened as the jailer held it over his unprotected hand.
In one swift motion, the mallet struck its mark, and Black Opal felt the knuckle of his little finger shatter. He cried out and fought to get his hand back.
Lantillette chuckled.
“Shrieked like a little girl,” the man with the mallet mocked. “Nine more to go. This should be funny.”
“Don’t forget the hands.”
“No!” Opal struggled, “Don’t!”
“Be glad we aren’t using the saw.”
“Not my hands, please.”
“What difference does it make?” Lantillette smirked, “You’ll be dead in a few days anyhow. I can promise you, you’ll never have another opportunity to play another musical instrument or pick up a rapier again in your life.”
If Cameo could possibly get to him, he would be able to gut this man with a blade, but not if his hands were rendered useless. He had held out the hope that she might be able to free him. Now, as he felt the second finger of his right hand break, he knew that day would never come.
He screamed in pain.
* * * * *
Cameo awoke with a start. She sat up panting, uncertain what she had just heard. It sounded like the scream of a dying man.
There was a silhouette of a man standing at the end of her bed. As she looked into its face, she heard the cry again, and she saw what this shadow had seen: Black Opal being tortured in a tower cell.
She leapt to her feet frantically and snatched a glimpse of the dark morning outside as she dressed in haste, and then she burst out the door of her room.
Jules looked up from where he was sitting in front of the fire.
Chester was in the sitting room, scrubbing the stains from the walls, and for the most part it looked remarkably better than it had. The broken window was replaced. There were new curtains, and a new settee.
At first her anxious thoughts about finding Edel still awake were replaced with a sense that things were stable in the apartment again, and then she glanced down at the spot on the floor were Jules had been laying in a pool of blood the night before and saw the stain of his blood that Chester had not yet cleaned. Her eyes met Jules’ eyes finally. She hated Edel in that moment. She hated him because she knew that even if he were awake, he would not release her to spare Opal the pain that he was enduring, and she hated him because of the look in Jules’ eyes now. He was anxious.
He was hiding it behind a quizzical expression, but he could not root out the core of his feeling, and that core was fearful. He met her with a timid, yet intrigued, look.
“How’s your head?” she asked in a flat voice as she buckled her belt on.
“It’s all in one piece, sitting atop my neck, if that’s what you mean.”
Cameo took a step toward him. “Yes, that was the basic question.” Her eyes lingered on the floor where he had been lying for a moment, wondering how long he had been unconscious, and who, if anyone had tried to help him.
When she looked up again, he was also looking away from the stained floor and about to speak.
“Has Edel gone to sleep?”
Jules closed his mouth. He had been about to say something pertaining to his ordeal, and then he realized that she didn’t care, and he stiffened. “He left hours ago.”
“What time is it?”
“Noon?”
She rushed over to the window, it was icy. “It’s so dark.”
Jules looked down at the fire, thinking about what he had just experienced. He was just realizing that he had no one to confide in at all. He had awakened to the sound of glass breaking and subsequent banging. The room was being repaired around his nearly lifeless body. Edel literally stood over him as he replaced the window that Cameo had thrown him through.
He was nothing. No one here cared about his life. He was just refuse left lying around to be ignored.
Edel had renovated the sitting room as much as he could before dawn and had departed without saying one word to him. A few minutes before Cameo had come out of her room, Jules had managed to pull himself up and climb onto the settee. He had no idea what the back of his head even looked like, but he was alive… sort of. He was coherent.
“I have to get out of here,” she stated. “They are torturing Opal.”
“He’ll never let us go.”
She spun around, frustrated, and marched over to the bar.
He studied her as she poured herself a tall glass of whiskey and then proceeded to drink it down at a harried pace, as if she needed to silence some inner demon.
“How do you know he’s being tortured?”
She set the glass down and looked back at Jules. “A shadow showed me.”
His eyes widened. “You can see them, too?”
“Unfortunately.”
“They talk to you?”
She smirked, “Not exactly.”
“I have tried to avoid them.”
She glanced over at the corner of the room closest to her bedroom door where one of the shadows was now standing… watching. “Perhaps that’s best.”
He hesitated to follow her gaze but felt compelled to look at the silhouette of a man standing just outside of her bedroom door, and as he did it turned to face him. Jules turned away, frightened of the thing that he had just acknowledged.
Cameo’s lip turned up at the end, slightly amused by his trepidation. She poured herself another drink and then changed her mind and offered it to Jules.
He looked up at her, fearful and uncertain.
“Do you like whiskey?”
“You know I do,” he said, taking it from her.
“Oh, that’s right.”
He nearly put the glass to his mouth, then he thought the better of it and pulled it away to ask, “Does this come with a kick to the chest, or are you being genuinely kind?”
She grinned. He was obviously referring to when she had him tied to a tree in Lockenwood forest. “I’m being… kind. Although I don’t know why. You’ve given me plenty of reasons not to like or trust you.”
“And you murdered Wick.”
“And you murdered Kyrian’s grandfather.”
“Yes, I did. Perhaps I shouldn’t have killed that holy man.... It seems I’ve been paying for it ever since.” He set down the alcohol, no longer interested in it.
“Oh?”
“I’m not going to sit here explaining myself to you.” He curled back up on the settee and stared at the fire, deep in thought.
Cameo thought for a moment that he might add something to the last sentence he spoke, but since nothing came, she simply moved back over to the bar for another drink.
Chester was slowly scraping away at the burned surface of the furthest wall. She watched him for a few minutes, anxiously awaiting nightfall.
“Why didn’t you end my life?”
She turned toward Jules.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said, never shifting hi
s gaze from the fireplace. “There were so many opportunities.”
“I don’t kill everyone I come into contact with. That idea is just part of the myth about Cameo who lives in the graveyard. You know, the children’s story?”
“I know the tale.” He looked up at her.
“Well, I don’t kill everyone. It’s just a silly story.”
“Yes, but what I don’t understand is why you didn’t kill me. You have slain many people who threatened you. I have been—I am—a threat to you. Why haven’t you taken my life?”
“Haffef has already done it.”
He bit his lip as if the memory of it pained him to think about, and he nodded. “He didn’t finish the job.”
“Is that what you’re hoping for? Someone to finish you off?”
He sobered. “I was just asking a question.”
There was a knock at the door.
Cameo and Jules went silent.
Chester suddenly dropped the scrub-brush that he had been using to the floor. His attention now focused on the door that needed to be answered.
Cameo felt somehow dizzy, as if this moment, waiting for Chester to shuffle over to the entry, was surreal and unending. Who could possibly have come to the vampire’s lair? Right up the inner stairs, inside the palace itself? Opal? Could it be Black Opal? For a moment Cameo thought that she might literally faint, she had become so anxious, so unnerved by the possible happiness that could be just beyond the entry door.
Chester yanked open the heavy door to a young man who was shaking snow from his hair.
“Hello, Cameo,” Kyrian smiled.
“Kyrian?” There was a note of alarm in her tone.
The lad regarded the creature who answered the door. This must have been the being he had seen in his dream, the one he was warning Opal about. Now he could see how wrong he was to have warned him. This was no creature, just a sad, old man imprisoned in a dead body.
Chester pulled the door completely open, allowing Kyrian to walk in, although his eyes were imploring him not to enter.
“How did you get here?” Cameo came toward him, putting herself between him and the man on the settee.
Cameo and the Highwayman (Trilogy of Shadows Book 2) Page 14