Cameo and the Highwayman (Trilogy of Shadows Book 2)

by McCullough-White, Dawn

  Kyrian looked over her shoulder and saw the man who had murdered his grandfather sitting there. He met the lad’s eyes for a moment, long enough for Kyrian to see the white irises, and then he bowed his head. If it were possible to avoid Kyrian at all, Jules seemed that he longed to do so.

  Cameo put one hand on his shoulder. “How did you get here?”

  “Cyrus brought me here.”

  “Your dead grandfather?”

  “Yes.” He looked into her eyes. “I’ve come to free you.”

  “Free me? Free Opal.”

  “I don’t know how.” He smiled, “But Cyrus thinks you could release Black Opal if I set you free.”

  The door latched loudly behind Kyrian. It was an unsettling sound of permanent confinement. Cameo looked at Chester unappreciatively.

  Kyrian grinned at her and took her hand. “Come on now, come with me and you can save Opal. I know where he is. He’s in the tower at the west end of the palace.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  The lad paid no attention to her; he simply pulled her hand harder and moved toward the door as Chester ambled back into the room.

  “Kyrian!”

  He met her expression, which was rather dour.

  “I can only go a short distance from this apartment. Edel will not allow me to leave. I am his prisoner here. He forbids me to leave.”

  “Who’s Edel?”

  “He’s a vampire.”

  “Oh,” he mused as he lowered his pack to the floor. “Well, then I must meet this man.”

  “No! Kyrian, he’ll kill you.” She pushed him toward the door. “You cannot stay here.”

  “I must.”

  “Please go. I’m not worth saving, and you have your whole life ahead of you.”

  He smiled at her thoughtfully and unbuttoned his new coat. “I brought some of Opal’s things with me. He has some paperwork here. I think it might be some of his speeches, you know, from when he was Francois Mond.”

  She seemed disappointed.

  “Anyhow, I just thought you might want them, or he might.”

  “I would like them. I think Opal would probably like his cosmetic bag. Did you bring that with you?”

  “Uhh, no.”

  “Alright.” She wandered back into the sitting room, dismayed that Kyrian was in peril for his life.

  Jules glanced over at each of them, feeling uneasy with Kyrian’s presence.

  The lad followed her into the room. “Did you have a fire? What’s that on the floor there… is that blood?”

  Chapter Ten

  CAMEO HEARD THE CLICK of the latch and turned to look at Kyrian who was sitting at her desk.

  “Is that him?”

  She stood. “Don’t go out there. Let me handle this.”

  “You know we can’t wait forever. Opal’s life is at stake.”

  “I know,” Cameo stepped in front of the lad, “but just wait a moment, please?”

  Kyrian sighed and licked the frosting off a pastry. He and Cameo had been cooped up in her room for hours waiting for nightfall and the arrival of Edel. Kyrian was ready to leave.

  She slipped out of her bedroom door.

  Edel was standing at the window seat in the back of the room where he liked to spend most of his time. He looked out at the clear night sky.

  Jules didn’t meet her eyes when she glanced in his direction. He was haunting that same place on one end of the settee before the fire, mute and subdued.

  Cameo approached the vampire, but he paid no attention to her, almost to the point where she started to think it was deliberate.

  “Good evening, Cameo.” Edel turned around. His hair was pulled back into the short ponytail he always wore, tidy, perfectly tidy, actually. His entire appearance was smart and trim, and he was wearing that same dark wool suit that she had seen every night that she had been there.

  “Yes, I generally wear them until they are threadbare. It’s not as though I’m trying to impress anyone at this stage of the game.”

  And he smelled… well, as usual.

  “Like a cemetery?”

  She just looked into his eyes.

  “Is there something more pressing you were planning on telling me?” he asked, a bit put off by her thoughts.

  “I must go to Opal.”

  An image of a man smashing Opal’s fingers came to his mind suddenly. He waved the thought away and moved around her, toward the pastry tray; once there, he stared at the cakes with the usual longing that she had witnessed many times before.

  She began again, stronger, “They are torturing him.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then let me go to him,” she growled.

  He looked away; for one moment he hoped avoiding this confrontation would make it end. “He is Francois Mond. You know my opinion on this.”

  She glanced at Chester suddenly—he was an arm’s length away from her—and then met Edel’s eyes defiantly. “Perhaps I can persuade you.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.”

  “Do you?” she hissed.

  “I know you don’t want to hurt me.”

  “It would be just awful to watch your last descendant die, the way that Haffef murdered your children.” Her voice was spiteful, and she hoped she had hurt him as she said it.

  “You have no weapon.”

  “Do I need one? Chester’s weaker than I. I could break him with my bare hands.”

  “Please don’t make idle threats; in the end these will never come to fruition and only sully our future friendship.”

  “How do you foresee our future friendship, Edel? After Opal is executed, I mean. How will I be able to forgive you for not allowing me to save his life?”

  Edel seemed to deflate. He shrugged, “I don’t know. I just thought that eventually, perhaps ....” He stopped suddenly and listened.

  Cameo’s fervor waned. She hesitated to speak, as he was now paused in midsentence.

  His mood changed abruptly, and he looked up at her. “Someone is here.”

  “Stop changing the topic!” She ran toward her bedroom door, but he was faster and able to open it before she could stop him.

  Edel threw the door open and immediately fell to the ground wishing he had not been so bold. Someone was within, and the aura of white light emanating from this individual was so bright that it was like he had walked onto the surface of the sun. He couldn’t get his balance; he shielded his eyes and cried out for help.

  Cameo met Kyrian’s smiling face and then glanced down at the vampire at her feet who was begging to be dragged out of the room.

  Kyrian moved closer. “Hello, Edel. As I understand it, you have been keeping my good friend Cameo prisoner here. I know that you have shown kindness in your way, and I know that you are not an evil being, although your deeds are shocking. You must free Cameo now.”

  Edel was face down on the floor with his arms desperately attempting to protect himself from the light. “I know,” he whispered.

  “I can leave?” Cameo asked, suddenly shocked by this turn of events. “Right now?”

  “Yes. Yes, I free you.”

  Cameo felt suddenly unburdened. She moved into the room and took Kyrian’s hand. “Come on.” Then they stepped over Edel’s forsaken form, ignoring Jules who was still in the sitting room, and walked out the door of Edel’s apartment.

  * * * * *

  “How ....”

  Kyrian handed her Opal’s things as they stood knee-deep in sparkling snow. It was extremely dark, and he could barely see her standing before him; nothing was visible to him except for the starlight and her eyes glittering in the shadows. “Oh, I have my ways.”

  “But how did you command a vampire?”

  The lad laughed and then looked to his side as if he were sharing a private joke with someone else.

  Annoyed, Cameo glanced down at the paperwork she’d been given. “These aren’t Opal’s old speeches. They’re Bellamy’s. A play and his journal of poetry.”

&nbs
p; “Really? Well, maybe Opal will want those.”

  “Something to remember the love of his life by? I would think so,” she said, stuffing it into her shoulder pack.

  “You’re the love of his life.”

  Cameo met his eyes. “I sincerely hope not.”

  The lad shook his head.

  “Why didn’t you force Haffef to do as you asked?”

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  She reached for her flask, “I should go.”

  “And I.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Lockenwood, and then the signs are telling me to go south. And I might as well listen because if I don’t they’ll just point me back in that direction eventually anyhow,” he said, smiling.

  “Going to join the priesthood?”

  “No. No, bureaucracy. I must go my own way.”

  “I owe you,” Cameo said, stashing away her flask.

  “No, you don’t. How are you going to free Opal?”

  Cameo gazed back at the palace. It was shiny, coated in a layer of ice making it impossible to climb up the tower. She’d be forced to go in the closest door instead.

  “I’m going to kill someone,” she said darkly, and then noticed the disappointed look on the lad’s face. “You didn’t really expect diplomacy from me, did you?”

  * * * * *

  Two royal guards were outside the palace door. One standing, and one sitting at the base of the door, head on the doorframe, taking a nap. It was the dead of night, and their vision was limited to lamplight. That, and the incredible speed at which Cameo was able to travel, was probably why they were taken by surprise.

  The assassin tore a dagger from the conscious soldier’s belt and slit his throat with it just as he felt the tug at his belt. For a moment, he thought that he was being mugged, and then he realized the punch he’d taken to the throat was actually a punctured artery, and he slumped to the ground in disbelief. Not missing a beat, Cameo stabbed the sleeping guard in the neck and threw him out of her way.

  She tried the door, but it did not push open as she had expected. So she knocked.

  It opened a crack. “Yes, Fisher, what is it?”

  Cameo was able to force her arm inside and grab the man by the throat. “Let me in.”

  Instead of doing as she asked, the guard slammed the door on her arm, managing to both injure and anger her. As Cameo was being crushed in the door by this soldier, and possibly someone else, she tightened the grip on his neck until she felt something break under her fingers and the pressure against her on the door lessened.

  She was able to force her way inside, dropping the guard’s unconscious body to the floor in front of her. There was another man standing behind the door; he seemed young, perhaps Kyrian’s age. He moved for his pistol, but the point of her dagger met his stomach in one quick motion. He dropped the pistol and slid to the floor in shock.

  Cameo grabbed the gun and ran down a dark hallway, deeper in the heart of the palace, taking the first left she came upon. As she raced down the vast expanse of hallways, she saw elaborate hand-carved woodwork decorating massive pieces of furniture, heavy with brocade. Exquisite paintings of royals and scenes of wars lined the walls. The place was immense. Thousands of royals and nobility inhabited Cammarth Palace, along with their servants. Apparently Opal had once lived there, too, if the story about his father being a music teacher for the royal family were true. She wasn’t all to certain how much of what that highwayman had told her was factual and what was fanciful anymore.

  She neared the end of this hallway, leaping over a servant who had fallen asleep at his post, and was confronted with a plain, brown door that seemed out of place. She cursed under her breath. That could lead her straight into the armory and confrontation with soldiers. Too many soldiers could overpower her easily. She had to pick her fights. On the other hand, there was no other choice. She couldn’t crawl out a window and up the tower because there was simply too much ice. She’d never be able to make the climb.

  After taking a moment to regain her composure, she tried the door. It was locked.

  Cameo looked over her shoulder at the old man asleep in a doorway. He might have the key she needed, but she didn’t relish the idea of killing some helpless old servant to keep him quiet. Instead she attempted to force the door. It opened.

  Cameo stepped inside. It was completely dark, except for a sliver of light in the back that highlighted several stone steps and a door.

  She was in the tower. She had to be. Cameo knocked over something on her way to the stairs. The sound resonated on a rough-hewn stone floor, and throughout the cylinder she ascended. It was nearly hard to believe that this was also part of the white palace. This, a coarse element leftover from when this building had been only a keep; now it was the royal dungeon reserved for enemies of the Belfours.

  There was a landing and a door; she peered inside but could see nothing but the dark.

  “Opal?”

  “Hey, who are you? No one is supposed to be in here.”

  Cameo turned suddenly.

  There was a large man standing on the landing now.

  She pulled the trigger of the borrowed pistol. It backfired.

  The man’s face seemed to widen as he realized that she was not supposed to be there.

  Cameo watched him grab a musket, slowly, at a human’s pace. She knocked him in the face with the butt of her pistol and stabbed him in the neck with her dagger, then stepped back to watch him fall.

  “Samuel?!” someone called down from another landing, higher up.

  Cameo grabbed the gun and mounted the next set of spiraling steps.

  Another jailer came out of the darkness, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Good evening,” she said; her eyes were glittering in the shadows. “Take me to Francois Mond.”

  “A woman?” he laughed. “Where’s Samuel?”

  “Dead. Everyone in my way is dead.”

  He hesitated.

  “Take me to Francois Mond or I’ll shoot you.”

  “Shoot me?” He took a step toward her. “You would wake up the palace—” The jailer grabbed for the gun as she pulled the trigger.

  The blast echoed down the shaft of the tower. There was a white cloud of black powder smoke; the man fell back, shot in the chest.

  Cameo pushed his body aside in the narrow passage as she continued up the steps.

  The next landing was the last.

  Cameo looked through a gap in the door and spied a man lying on the floor, lit by a bit of light from a window. She could hear him moaning. He was huddled in a fetal position, covered in a what seemed to be a large, black blanket… and then she saw the boots. Exquisitely tailored boots.

  “Opal! Black Opal!”

  He didn’t move.

  Cameo turned to look down at the tick bedding and a crude desk on the landing just outside the door. There were a few loose papers with sketches, and a set of keys just lying there.

  After a moment, she had the correct key and swung open the door to Opal’s cell. Cameo knelt down beside the dandy. Now she recognized the blanket to be Edel’s cloak and tossed it to one side.

  For a moment, she didn’t recognize him at all: he had no rouge, no make-up of any kind on. His face was dirty and bruised. His clothes were loose and open, and he was lying in a pool of his own refuse.

  She knew that jacket though, and those boots.

  “Opal?” She touched his arm, “It’s Cameo.”

  He cracked open his eyes, his face still pressed against the cold, stone floor and smiled a little smile at her. “You came.” The sudden realization hit him: she knew who he was, and what he’d done. The world he had created as Black Opal the highwayman collided with his old life of Francois Mond the revolutionary.

  Opal searched her eyes for a moment in trepidation. If she were a royal, or sympathetic to the Belfour family.... “You know,” he uttered.

  “Yes.”

  He
glanced down at his dirty clothes and said brokenly. “I bet you’ve wondered what the architect of the revolution looked like and now you’re saying to yourself, ah, that Francois Mond certainly is a handsome devil.”

  “That is exactly what I was thinking.”

  He laughed for a moment, overwhelmed to see her, then sobbed as she pulled him into her arms. Opal tried to wrap his arms around her, but his hands were nothing more than broken mitts now, and as he attempted to touch her, he knocked one against another and gasped in pain. “My hands ....”

  She saw the twisted and swollen appendages at the end of his wrists. The royal family was slowly taking their revenge on the last revolutionary they were able to round up. She seriously doubted he would ever be able to use them again.

  “Come with me, Francois Mond.”

  He attempted to stand, but she lifted him off the floor instead.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Cameo’s mouth curved up at one end into a reassuring smile. “Someplace no one will look for us.”

  “Please tell me it’s not a graveyard.”

  Before she could speak, she felt him nod off, his head resting against her collarbone, just below her chin.

  * * * * *

  Opal awoke with a start. He tried to move his fingers to brush his hair from his face and lurched awake from the pain. A woman moved beside him, roused from sleep by his sudden movement.

  He looked around. He was in a small room, lying in a bed with red sheets and velvet bed-curtains, but the white plaster walls were dirty. He turned to look at the person lying beside him, momentarily uncertain where he was.

  Cameo was facing him with one arm thrown over his chest, just waking from sleep.

  He mouthed her name, confused at his current location, but feeling a sense of relief that she was there with him. “Where are we?” he rasped.

  “In a whorehouse,” she said, now conscious, much to her chagrin. “Specifically Hattie’s.”

  He recognized the name. “We’re still in Shandow?”

  “That’s right,” she said, stroking his hair.

  He glanced out a small ice-coated window, and then back at her. “Are you certain we’re safe here?”

  She touched his bruised face. “We won’t stay long. The ships are frozen in the port, but as soon as the harbor thaws, we’ll leave.”