by Kat Ross
“Wait,” Balthazar said in desperation, holding his palms out. “Just listen. This is all a mis—”
Chapter 20
Everything hurt.
Everything, from the tips of his toenails to the roots of his hair.
His left ear throbbed like a funeral drum. His right eye watered uncontrollably. Dangly bits were trying their best to crawl back inside and hide like flustered field mice. He felt as if he’d been dipped in boiling oil and staked out to dry on a medieval rack.
Which wasn’t far from the truth.
Balthazar’s eyes cracked open. He hung suspended from manacles around his wrists, his feet just brushing the floor. The fancy uniform coat was gone, ditto his shoes and the Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen. He pressed up to the tips of his toes and the agonizing weight in his shoulders eased a little. Balthazar winced at the momentary relief.
He turned his head and found Gabriel staring at him from a few feet away.
“Sorry,” he managed in a hoarse croak. “I tried.”
Gabriel made no reply for a long moment. His expression was grim. “You’re sorry.”
Balthazar coughed. Spat a gelatinous gob of something dark. “I’ll admit, it wasn’t the most well thought-out plan. But you might give me some credit for trying. I could have left you to your fate—”
“That’s not the fucking point! I almost had him,” Gabriel hissed. “At the museum. I was seconds away.” He shook his head in disgust. “And then you—”
“Oh, please. With that ridiculous false nose? Bekker would have seen through it even if I hadn’t first.” Balthazar’s eyes narrowed, his own voice dangerously soft. “Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to get close to him with a weapon? Weeks. The tedium I endured! The endless meetings and luncheons—”
“Luncheons?” Gabriel was swiftly growing apoplectic. “Nom de dieu. If you weren’t utterly incompetent—”
“I surrendered my virtue for that invitation,” Balthazar snarled. “And Bekker’s head would have been sailing through the air in another five seconds if you hadn’t come along like some ludicrous version of Cyrano de Bergerac—”
A pink flush crested Gabriel’s cheeks. “Everywhere I turn, there you are. First at the Picatrix with Alec Lawrence, then in Brussels. Like an evil little monkey—”
The chains started clanking as Gabriel tried to swing himself towards Balthazar. It was a pointless exercise trussed as he was, but his rage needed some outlet. Balthazar’s lips curved in a wintry smile.
“I’ll enjoy watching them torture you,” he announced. “In fact, I hope I get a front row seat.”
“You fils de pute….” Gabriel lapsed into a lengthy, escalating tirade that finally drew the attention of the new guards. They strolled over and exchanged an amused look. Balthazar knew them. Their names were Axel and Daan and they could have been first cousins. Blonde, beefy and not the brightest lights in Bekker’s cosmos, but then none of them with the exception of Constantin had an ounce of cunning. Bekker clearly didn’t want any free thinkers in his service.
“Trouble in paradise?” Axel inquired.
Gabriel subsided, though his chest still heaved.
“I would like to request that I be moved to a different detention area,” Balthazar said. “Maybe a nice dank cell somewhere where I can ponder my coming death in peace.”
“Why don’t you hang him up by the ankles?” Gabriel suggested.
“By all means, if it helps distract you from the fact that you’re about to be wearing your entrails like a muffler—”
“Shut up,” Axel growled, his blonde brows lowering. His forehead was so negligible, the result looked like something scrawled on a cave wall in Altamira.
“Save your breath,” Daan added helpfully. “You’ll both need it to scream soon enough.”
They had a good giggle over this. Balthazar wondered if they’d been drinking.
“You won’t be laughing so hard when my wife gets here,” Gabriel said.
The guards exchanged a solemn look.
“His wife,” Daan echoed in a quaking voice. “Well, now I’m truly terrified.”
A fresh burst of hilarity erupted.
“Will she bring her rolling pin?” Axel wondered, wiping his eyes.
“No, no, it’ll be knitting needles,” Daan put in. “She’ll poke us and tell us we’re very naughty boys.” He mimed the poking with one meaty hand as Axel made porcine squealing noises.
Gabriel waited, stone-faced, until their breathless wheezing subsided.
“You haven’t met her yet.” His smile made the hair on Balthazar’s neck rise up. “But you will.”
Part IV
“There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.”
―Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
IV.
Chapter 21
Anne ran faster than she’d ever run before.
The ground unfurled beneath her feet, the stars streaking past overhead like bright nails hammered into the roof of the sky. Paved streets turned to dirt roads. A rabbit bounded across her path. Barking dogs gave chase, but they didn’t catch her. The lights of towns came and went, one after another, until they grew far apart and the land began to rise.
She refused to think about the slim chance Gabriel was still alive, or what might be done to him if he was. She just kept on running. The constellations guided her south, where rivers cut through the rugged terrain and medieval fortifications dotted the hills. The Forest of Ardennes stretched across three Belgian provinces to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. When she passed the town of Belval, Anne knew she was getting close.
And she felt no surprise when five miles beyond the village, she saw a long drive cutting into the woods. The crowns of the trees formed an arching tunnel overhead. It was a place she’d seen a hundred times in her dream. Two stone pillars flanked the drive, although there was no gate. The forest was mostly tall pines with some oak and beech. She listened for mortal heartbeats but heard none.
Anne left the road and veered through the woods. A mile later, she encountered a wrought-iron fence. She unlaced her boots and peeled off her stockings. The cumbersome black dress followed. Anne stood still for a moment in the darkness. With her slender arms bared and auburn hair spilling loose down her back, she looked like a sweet woodland nymph.
She climbed a tree and perched in the crook of a branch. Lights glimmered ahead, like a huge steamship floating on the horizon. The dirt road met an elaborate pair of gates and turned to a gravel drive. Inside the grounds, she saw twin reflecting pools and curlicues of manicured hedges, none higher than a foot tall. She estimated the distance from the fence to the house to be a quarter of a mile. Dark shapes moved purposefully around the perimeter.
Anne watched for several minutes and counted four pairs of guards making circuits of the fence. They didn’t carry lanterns or torches, presumably to maintain their night vision. Anything moving across that vast expanse of lawn would be immediately spotted.
She waited for the next pair to pass and climbed the fence, bracing a foot between the sharp finials at the top. Her shift caught on one of the spikes and she ripped it free, dropping down on the other side. Anne slid into the Nexus. She smelled freshly cut grass and a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. Fish swam in the pools. She sensed the ripples of their passage disturbing the water. She heard mortal hearts beating, some close by, others distant.
The next pair approached along the perimeter, fifty yards off. She called to earth and her bones trembled in response. She called to air, her own breath quickening. Cloak me from the sight of these men. Shadows shifted and rearranged. Her form faded to a dark blur and they walked straight past.
She made a beeline for the house, the grass cool beneath her feet. Halfway across, the clouds parted and the moon appeared, big and bright. She knew her illusion was far from perfect. Feeling
suddenly exposed, she slunk into the shadow of a gurgling fountain at the end of one of the reflecting pools and released the power. If Bekker sensed her, he might kill Gabriel on the spot….
She heard a pistol cock. A guard stepped around the base of the fountain, the front of his trousers unbuttoned. The rush of the water had masked his heartbeat. His eyes widened when he saw a girl standing there wearing only a cotton shift, but the pistol aimed at her head didn’t waver.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he muttered.
Anne smiled and raised a finger to her lips as if they were playing a game. In his brief instant of confusion, she kicked the pistol from his hand and snapped his neck. He fell without a sound. Anne waited, watching the ground in a twenty-foot radius around her. Five minutes passed. No revenant tore from the earth. Nor did the guard come back to life.
He wasn’t a necromancer.
She rested on her haunches, thinking. She could hide the body under a hedge, but it wouldn’t be long before his disappearance was noticed. A search would be mounted, the alarm raised. There was no way around it.
Unless I kill them all.
It’s what she would have done back in the day. In truth, it was all too easy to be that person again, like slipping on a comfortably worn pair of boots. Anne looked up at the moon, resigned. I’ll do it quick and quiet.
The sentry at her feet must have come from the guardhouse to relieve his bladder. Besides the pistol, he carried a sword. She took it, testing the balance. It was a heavy iron blade, forged to dispose of revenants. Anne sank into the Nexus again. She deepened the mantle of shadow until the edge grew dull.
She glided like a specter across the grass, bare feet making no sound. Anne killed the eight sentries patrolling the fence first. Until the last moment, their eyes slid straight past the woman in white. Her blade was a blur and none had time to cry out. She left the bodies where they fell.
Then there was only the guardhouse. She rose up on her toes and peeked in the window. Three men sat at a table, cleaning their guns. Her muscles felt loose and warm. Nicely limbered up. She kicked the door in and slashed the closest one across the throat, taking the second on the backswing. The third died as he tried to stumble away.
When she heard no hearts beating except her own, Anne sprinted for the house. If someone was looking out an upstairs window, they might detect a dark blur of movement across the lawn. But it took her all of three seconds to cross from the guardhouse to the wide stone balcony stretching along the front of the mansion. She vaulted over the low balustrade and pressed herself against the wall. Anne dropped to all fours and crawled beneath a dozen dark windows. She paused at the last and listened intently. There were no signs of life in the room beyond. She used a trickle of earth to open the latch. Then she let go of the power. It would be too risky to touch it again.
The detached calm of the Nexus evaporated. Anne waited a moment for her racing pulse to slow. She sat on the sill, swung her legs over and landed silently on a carpeted floor, the sword in her right hand. Heavy drapes fell shut behind her. She locked the window, wiped her bloody feet on the rug and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
She stood in a richly furnished salon with a frescoed ceiling and dark oil paintings on the walls. Anne slipped to the door and cracked it open. She stepped into a long corridor with more doors. All was quiet as she made her way deeper into the house, passing through a series of similarly lavish rooms arranged around vast marbled courts with glass domes far above. As imposing as the façade looked, Anne realized it was just the tip of the iceberg. The scale of Bekker’s house boggled the mind.
Long minutes passed. She saw no one, heard nothing. The place had a cold, sterile feel, as if it was never used. Anne started to wonder if Jacob had been wrong. Perhaps Bekker had taken Gabriel somewhere else. They could have gone anywhere through the gate.
Anne fought the onset of despair as she crept through a banquet hall with four fireplaces you could ride a horse into. She searched for stairs leading to other levels but saw none. Then she found herself back at one of the galleries she’d already passed through. She recognized the paintings, figures from Greek mythology. Anne cursed softly and retraced her steps, taking different turnings.
At the third marble court, she chose an archway to the left leading into a long gallery paneled with mirrors on both sides. They caught the dim light, throwing back a kaleidoscope of shimmer and shadow. She was about to enter when some primitive, deep-seated instinct made her wait. She scanned the far end and detected a patch of impenetrable darkness drifting along the gallery. It made no sound and if it hadn’t been moving, she never would have distinguished it from the other shadows.
Anne’s pulse leapt, a sour taste flooding her mouth. She hadn’t encountered a lich in a long time, but of all the creatures of the Dominion, they held a special terror. Once, as a child, she’d been trapped in a deserted village when a legion of Neblis’s Druj passed through. She’d curled into a ball, hardly daring to breathe, as they marched by a few feet away — necromancers, revenants, wights and the eyeless shades known as liches. One touch meant death. Unlike other Druj, swords were useless against them, even iron ones. They could only be unmade with air.
Anne stilled herself.
The lich moved down the center of the gallery, trailing tendrils of darkness. She watched in the mirrors as it drew closer. Once it came to the archway, the foul thing would probably notice her. But if she moved now, it definitely would. And liches were fast. Panic welled and she was seconds from grabbing at the power when she heard the clink of chains.
“Any sign of them yet?”
Two necromancers entered the gallery, about thirty feet down on the right. They seemed to have just encountered each other. One was tall and white-blonde with a handsome, square-jawed face. The other’s reflection was blocked by the first and Anne couldn’t get a good look at him.
“No.”
“You should go outside and check in at the guardhouse. Make sure the cannon fodder is doing its job.”
The reply sounded surly. “Why can’t you?”
“Mr. Bekker gave me other orders. The Afrikaner is coming.”
The way he said it, with an edge of fearful awe, made Anne wonder who the hell the Afrikaner was.
“I have to wait at the portal for him.” A low laugh. “Not even D’Ange will last long in his hands.”
Anne felt a rush of joy to learn Gabriel was here and alive, but as the two men spoke, the lich had been drifting steadily closer. It didn’t radiate the cold stench of revenants, and it lacked the macabre animation of wights, yet there was something fundamentally awful about liches. They were like jagged tears in the fabric of the living world.
It was nearly on her when one of the necromancers snapped his fingers. “Shadow!”
The lich wavered, spitting distance away, then flowed back down the gallery like smoke. Anne wiggled into the niche of a statue next to the archway. She hoped they would say something more about Gabriel, but the faceless necromancer, the one who was meeting the Afrikaner, strode away, trailed by the shade. The other, the blonde one, stalked down the gallery in her direction, moving swiftly and with purpose. She pressed behind the statue, her hand tightening around the hilt of the sword. His footsteps passed. Then they stopped abruptly. He sniffed the air. Exhaled. He opened his mouth and drew a deep breath. Tasting it.
“Come out, come out,” he said softly, his sword rasping from the scabbard.
Anne stepped from her niche.
His eyes crawled over her. “Well, look at you. All bloody.” He smiled, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Just how I like my women.”
She’d learned the sword from Vivienne, whose mastery of edged weapons equaled Gabriel’s mastery of the chains. But this man would be nothing like the sentries. Necromancers carried swords by ancient tradition and knew how to use them. Anne’s skills, on the other hand, were decidedly rusty.
He took a step closer, amusement on his face. �
��Are you the advance party of the heroic rescue attempt?” He patted his thigh as if calling a dog. “Let me put the collar around your pretty little neck and it will go easier.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He studied her with a spark of interest. “All right. Show me, little one. Maybe I can give you some pointers.”
The marble was cold and slick beneath her feet as she raised her sword. He moved with loose-limbed grace like a dancer, his own blade coming up, and then it began. There was no prelude, no testing. Just blades joining with a force that sent shockwaves down her arms. Well-fed necromancers had the strength of ten men and this one had clearly gorged himself not long before. His sword was also iron, but longer and heavier than the one she’d taken from the sentry. A true broadsword.
He drove her down the gallery, their blurring blades reflected back a hundred times in the full-length mirrors. Within a minute, sweat slicked her palms and trickled between her aching shoulders. She was too fast and he knew it. He was starting to wonder why she wasn’t dead. Anne parried an overhead strike that nearly drove her to her knees. His smugness turned to irritation, his mouth setting in a hard line.
Then her bare feet lost traction on the marble as she pivoted away and the tip of his sword sliced down her shoulder. The edge was so sharp she didn’t even feel the sting, only the hot rush of blood. Anne gritted her teeth.
I have to put him down. Have to put him down before others come….
Viv would have cut him to ribbons by now.
She made a clumsy swing for his head, which he easily dodged. She forced herself to slow, panting with terror, only deflecting his thrusts at the last possible second. A sadistic gleam entered his eyes. The cat toying with the wounded mouse — which wasn’t far from the truth. Blood slicked her hands. Her grip was starting to slip. Anne weakly fended off a slash from the left. She staggered, the tip of her blade scraping the floor. Her arms trembled as she tried to lift it.