by Kat Ross
“Is it private?”
He nodded. “All this land belongs to Mr. Bell, right down to the sea. Just follow the path to the end.”
Anne beamed. “You’re an excellent child. Thank you.”
He gave her a dubious nod.
She strode off down the winding path. The instant Anne entered the dense tangle of brush, the air grew still and hot as Hades. Her dress adhered to her skin, heavy as a horsehair blanket. Sweat trickled from every pore. Anne swatted at a mosquito, then another one. Then clouds. The path seemed to go and on, and she was starting to wonder if she’d missed a turnoff somewhere when she heard the sound of the sea and emerged into a hidden cove.
For a brief moment, she remembered her first view of the dull, grey water of the Normandy coast in February, and the first time she saw Gabriel galloping down the road to the Chateau de Saint-Évreux. She remembered the fear and anticipation of his boots ringing on the stone stairs of the tower. She hadn’t known his name then, only that he was a killer and she was in his power.
Life can certainly be strange, she thought, kicking off her boots and shedding her dress and stockings. Anne waded out in her chemise and knickers. The cove was shallow, the water clear as glass and sheltered by rocky outcroppings. When it reached her waist, she dived down. After the long trek through the brush, the sensation was akin to being reborn, clean and cool again.
She spent a little while exploring the reef, which bloomed with tall stands of coral, schools of bright tropical fish darting in and out of crevices. Anne drifted along the bottom, weightless and tranquil, cradled in the perfect silence of the underwater realm. Then she glimpsed a larger shadow and swam against the current to investigate. At the edge of the rocks where the waves poured through a gap, Anne caught a flash of webbed hooves, followed by a long, maned neck and broad, flat tail. She reached out a hand, but the creature vanished into the depths with surprising speed.
Anne surfaced, her heart pounding, and spotted Gabriel standing on the shore.
“I think I just saw a ceffyl dwr,” she called excitedly. “They’re very rare and I’ve never heard of one being seen in saltwater, let alone this far south. Henry Sidgwick will wet himself when I tell him!”
Gabriel’s expression darkened as she waded towards the beach. His gaze locked on her body and his jaw set hard, but he seemed incapable of looking away. Anne realized with an evil surge of satisfaction that the chemise had molded to her breasts and hips so completely it might well have been transparent.
“I expected you to stay at the house,” he snapped irritably.
“I’m not a poodle. It was hot and I wanted to cool off.”
“When you didn’t come down for breakfast, I started searching everywhere. I was half mad with worry! Then Joseph finally told me where you’d gone.”
Anne stared at him. “As inconceivable as it seems, I’ve managed to survive without your protection for…. Oh, let’s see.” She counted on her fingers. “More than two millennia.”
Gabriel muttered something in French that sounded vile.
She scooped up her dress. “Do you mind?”
He turned his back as she stripped off the wet chemise and pulled the dress over her head. “It’s safe,” she muttered, doing up the row of buttons.
Gabriel half turned, but deliberately looked past her shoulder. “The ship from Port-au-Prince arrived. We leave tonight.”
“Thank God.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is my company so tedious?”
“No.” She strode past him and made for the path.
“What then?” He fell into step beside her. “Is it Julian? I spoke to him. So did Jacob. He won’t be rude to you again.”
“It’s not that. It’s…. I don’t know. Nothing at all.” She glanced at him. “You need to eat more. You’re skin and bones.”
Gabriel’s expression turned guarded. “You were watching, weren’t you?”
“With all the racket, I could hardly sleep through it.”
“And it bothers you to see the chains.”
“Yes. No. Not really.” She glanced at him. “It bothers me to see you beaten to a pulp for no good reason.”
“It’s not for no good reason.”
“Please don’t use double negatives, they confuse me.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “It’s part of the training, Anne.”
She snorted. “I don’t think you need any more training. You’re lethal enough as it is.”
“No, but they do.”
She let out a breath.
“And if they learn to fight me, they’ll never have to face a tougher opponent.” The words were spoken without boastfulness. “It may seem barbaric to you, Anne, but it’s necessary.”
“If they keep you alive, that’s all I care about.” She sighed. “I didn’t realize so much time had passed. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“It’s been hours and hours.” His eyes softened. “I thought you might…”
Gabriel never finished the sentence because the swarms of mosquitoes descended and they both broke into an undignified run, heads down and hands swatting. By the time they reached the manor, the moment had passed.
Gabriel paused to take his clothes down from the line. “What did you see?” he asked. “In the water.”
“A ceffyl dwr. It’s a sea horse. Not the little kind, the big kind.”
His eyes lit with interest. “Ceffyl dwr,” he echoed.
“They’re usually found in lakes and ponds,” she explained. “Some stories say they’re malevolent, others that they’re impish tricksters, tempting mortals to take a ride and then evaporating into mist. According to legend, a Welsh farmer managed to tame one with an exceptionally fine bridle and used it as a cart horse. But one day they passed too close to the sea and the ceffyl dwr dragged both farmer and cart beneath the waves, never to be seen again.”
Gabriel grinned. “Perhaps that’s the one you met.” He paused, the clothes hanging over one arm. “If I’d been with you, would I have seen it, too?”
“Most people lack the sight.” She smiled. “But you? Yes, I think so.”
He seemed pleased with this answer. The winds of his mood had shifted again, the shadows retreating. Gabriel was not the sort of man who liked to wait. He was no doubt relieved that the ship had finally arrived. Yet for all her talk of wanting to leave as soon as possible, Anne suddenly wished it had been delayed a little longer. Because once they set sail for France, their course would be set. And how it might end filled her with dread.
They parted ways to prepare for the journey. Anne passed Julian in the hall and he nodded, even though he looked like he’d just eaten Gabriel’s meatloaf.
Progress, she thought, packing her valise again.
Anne insisted on running the twelve miles to Hamilton, though she agreed to let Gabriel take her valise with his horse. She arrived at the docks with flushed cheeks and immediately spotted the Dreadnought waiting at anchor. It was an oceangoing American-built clipper, with a wider beam and deeper draft than its antecedents from Baltimore.
Jacob Bell waited at the end of the wharf. He strode up to her, his long legs devouring the distance.
“You’re fast,” he remarked. “We just arrived a few minutes ago and Gabriel set a hard pace.”
“I can outrun a horse if I really want to,” she admitted.
He looked impressed. “In skirts?”
Anne grimaced. “I hoist them up. It’s quite scandalous.”
Jacob laughed. “Come, we’d better go aboard. Gabriel is in a fever to sail.”
They moved through the thinning crowds. The sun was setting and soon there wouldn’t be enough daylight for the pilot boat to guide the Dreadnought from port.
“Where is he?”
“Down below giving his usual speech to the raw recruits.”
“What does that consist of?”
“A combination of dire threats and….” Jacob stroked his moustache. “More dire threats.”
“Sounds lovely. They volunteered for this?”
“You’d be surprised at how many applications he gets. Since the debacle with Adrian, Gabriel is even pickier than he used to be, which is saying something.”
Adrian was a rogue member of the Order who had turned out to be spectacularly unfit for shapeshifting. He’d taken the form of a wolf and gone on a rampage that ended in Romania, when Gabriel finally caught him and tore his throat out.
“It’s no light decision to join the Order,” Jacob continued. “By the time Gabriel is done investigating potential candidates, he knows more about them than their own mothers.”
“But what do they get out of it?”
“That’s the most important question of all. If it’s power they seek, they’ll be denied. The ones he chooses often view the chains with revulsion. It’s the justice he offers that attracts them, usually for very personal reasons.”
Anne wondered if Jacob had been one of those. “And what if they don’t wish to be necromancers?”
“They don’t have to be.”
That surprised her. “It’s optional?”
“Entirely, although most accept the chains in the end. It’s no small thing to survive a mortal wound.” His lips quirked. “And those tend to occur with alarming frequency when one keeps company with Gabriel D’Ange.”
They crossed the gangway and Jacob called out a greeting to Captain Dunham, a short, stocky man with threads of silver in his dark hair and an air of competent authority. With the last passengers aboard, he began barking orders to the crew. The sails were raised halfway, the mooring ropes thrown off, and the Dreadnought eased out of the harbor towards the open ocean.
Anne stood at the rail with Jacob, watching the lights of Hamilton dwindle behind them. Once they’d reached safe depths, the square sails were hoisted high and the ship gained speed. Captain Dunham left the wheel to his first officer and strolled over join them.
“You must be Miss Lawrence,” he said. His voice was deep and gruff, the voice of a man accustomed to having his directives obeyed without question.
“I hope I didn’t delay your departure.”
“Not in the least.” His blue eyes glinted as he shared a look with Jacob. “I’m well used to navigating in darkness anyway.”
She cast Jacob a puzzled look.
“Captain Dunham and I have a long acquaintance,” Jacob explained.
“Oh?”
“During the war, I was an officer with the Union Navy, dispatched by President Lincoln to catch Confederate blockade runners,” Dunham replied. “Brits, most of them, hoping to earn their fortunes ferrying contraband between Bermuda and the mainland.”
“They were wily bastards,” Jacob said. He glanced at Anne. “If you’ll excuse the profanity.”
“Oh, I’d call them worse than that,” she replied dryly.
“They’d douse all their lights and try to creep into port,” Dunham said. “The sailors were forbidden even to smoke on deck. But we’d be waiting for them, also in darkness. It was a mighty fine game of cat and mouse.”
“How many did you catch?”
“A fair number.” He sighed. “But there were too damn many of them. Five out of six slipped through our fingers.”
“I’m surprised the British were sympathetic to the South,” she said. “Slavery had been abolished for a long time by then.”
“Officially, Britain was neutral toward both sides.” The captain gave a mirthless laugh. “But they sorely missed their cotton and tobacco, so private investors bankrolled the blockade runners. The poor American consul in Hamilton had a devil of a time trying to convince the local authorities to help him put a stop to it.”
“Well, at least the right side won the war in the end.”
“That we did, Miss Lawrence.” He doffed his cap to her. “And now I should return to my duties.”
She and Jacob stood quietly for a minute, listening to the splash of swells against the hull and distant banter of the crew.
“Jorin Bekker was one of those men who financed the blockade runners,” he said. “There’s hardly a dirty little pie that doesn’t have his fingers in it.”
“He sounds deserving of Gabriel’s wrath.” Just hearing the name Bekker made her anxious all over again.
“You’re worried for him.”
Her eyes flashed. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes.”
Anne waited, but Jacob remained silent, gazing out at the water.
“That’s all? No blandly reassuring words? Something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, Anne, he’s done this a thousand times, it’ll all go off like clockwork’.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“What are the odds, then?”
Jacob considered it. His calm was starting to irritate her.
“Thirty-seventy.”
“For who?”
“Gabriel gets the seventy.”
She let out a breath. “Better than the other way around, I suppose.”
They turned as two young men emerged from one of the hatches. Both wore the dazed expression of schoolboys who’d just been turned loose from the headmaster’s study.
“It’s the fledgling chicks,” Jacob murmured, taking her arm. “Try not to scare them.”
“I’m sure Gabriel’s already done an excellent job of that,” she whispered back.
The men regained their composure as Jacob hailed them.
“Anne Lawrence,” he said, presenting her. “Mr. Jean-Michel Fanastil.”
He was the handsomest creature she’d ever seen, with kinky black hair sharply parted on the right, wide-spaced dark eyes and a mouth that belonged on some carnal statue. He even had a cleft in the center of his perfect chin. Yet there was a reserved, almost chilly quality to his gaze.
“Monsieur Fanastil,” she said.
“Enchanté,” he replied softly.
Jacob indicated the second man. “And this is Mr. Miguel Salvado.”
Where Fanastil was aloof, Salvado clearly fancied himself a swashbuckler. Wavy chestnut hair tumbled about his broad shoulders, which were encased in a coat with embroidered scarlet thread at the collar and cuffs. His boots had been polished to a high gleam. If only he’d had a plumed cavalier hat and a rapier, he might have stepped straight from a tale by Alexandre Dumas.
Salvado bowed and favored Anne with a dazzling smile. “The pleasure is mine,” he murmured in a Spanish accent.
She said something polite in return, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Where does Gabriel find these men?
Not that Anne objected. She might try to sketch Monsieur Fanastil during the journey. Both he and Salvado would look ravishing in pirate garb.
“I suppose I ought to find my cabin,” she said, when the silence grew awkward.
“Shall I escort you?” Jacob asked.
“There’s no need.” With all the concern for her welfare, one would think she had a pack of ravening jackals at her heels. “I can find my own way.”
The men bowed and bid her goodnight.
Anne asked a sailor for directions to her quarters, where her valise waited on the bed. The cabin was small but tidy, with a built-in table and shelves. Anne took out her charcoals and idly began sketching what she remembered of the ceffyl dwr.
I ought to cable Sidgwick once we reach Paris, she thought. He must have a mountain of assignments for me by now.
But she was also starting to despise the idea of letting Gabriel go to Brussels without her.
His war is not my war. Now repeat that a hundred times.
When Anne was a child, she’d met Alexander of Macedon during his siege against Queen Neblis. He conquered half the known world and seemed indestructible, yet he’d died at the age of thirty-two – not from an enemy’s sword but a fever.
Vivienne would say the gods punish hubris. If that was the case, Gabriel certainly had it in spades.
Anne looked down and realized she’d made a mess of the sketch. It was a
smudged blob with what looked like tentacles and a duck’s bill. She crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. Her hand began to move almost of its own accord, sketching the stark outlines of trees, a road, and a dark tunnel leading to an unknown destination.
When it was done, she stared at the drawing for a long moment.
Then she tore it into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the bottom of her valise.
Chapter 5
The next morning, Anne found Jean-Michel Fanastil and Miguel Salvado on deck arguing about poetry. Salvado insisted it had to rhyme to be any good, but she could see immediately that this was a long-running provocation. They both looked in high spirits.
“Good day, gentlemen,” she said with a smile, joining them at the stern rail.
The men murmured greetings.
“You are a friend of D’Ange,” Salvado said, a slight question in his voice.
So Gabriel had told them nothing.
“Oh yes, for ages. I first met him through my brother. They’re great chums.”
He nodded. “I see.”
“My brother had … borrowed a certain item from him some years ago. A cross. I came to return it.” She glanced at the crucifix around his neck. “You’re a religious man, I see.”
“Yes, we’re both Catholics,” Salvado replied. His skin was a light golden brown, his eyes a slightly darker shade and fringed with curling lashes. They glinted with the self-aware mischief of a professional troublemaker.
“Gabriel said you come from Santo Domingo, yet you’re fluent in English,” Anne said.
He grinned. “My blood is Spanish, black, Indian and who knows what else. I learned to speak many languages so when I go to heaven, I can converse with all my glorious ancestors.”
Jean-Michel Fanastil silently shook his head. He understood enough to get the gist.
“If you don’t mind poor grammar and a worse accent, we can switch to Creole,” she said. “So Monsieur Fanastil is included.”
“He speaks French, too.”
“I’d like to try Creole. It’s a lovely language.”
Salvado nodded happily. “Mwen pa pran swen.” I don’t mind.
At first, the conversation was halting, but Anne improved with practice. Fanastil appeared astonished that she knew the language at all, and warmed considerably when she expressed her great admiration for the Haitian revolutionaries. They discussed their favorite poets and he recited some of his own works, ignoring Salvado as he attempted to pantomime the “gentle breeze swaying the branches of the mango tree” and the “bloodied scarlet breast of the rosegaster.”