by Kat Ross
“Give me the maps,” he said. “They’re no use to you anyway. The Greater Gates are locked and shall never be opened again.”
Dr. Clarence took a step closer. The blizzard howled around them. Alec felt the void to his left beyond the wall, a black abyss that dropped at least a hundred feet to the paving stones below.
“Per me si va ne la città dolente,” the daemon hissed. “Per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore….Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.”
Through me you go to the grief-wracked city. Through me you go to everlasting pain. Through me you go to wander among lost souls. Abandon all hope, Ye Who Enter Here.
Alec couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Are you quoting Dante’s Inferno at me, Dr. Clarence? The only truly terrifying part is your Italian accent. It’s all wrong for the Late Middle Ages, if you’re going for authenticity.”
Alec raised his sword only to have it knocked away as the daemon closed the distance between them faster than he could have imagined possible. They grappled beneath the blank glares of the stone gargoyles, crashing against the tower wall with bruising force. Smoke rose from Alec’s coat where Clarence touched him. The stink of burning flesh filled the air. Alec instinctively sought the Nexus, battering against Vivienne’s iron grip. It was futile. Instead, he smashed an elbow into Clarence’s face. Bone crunched and red spurted from his nose.
He bleeds just like everyone else. The body he stole still lives. Just snap his neck….
The doctor roared, pupils pulling into themselves like collapsing stars. Darkness gathered there. Something tangible and sentient. It eyed him almost lustfully.
“Look at me, daēva,” he hissed. “Why don’t you use your elemental power?” The lids narrowed. “Or is it because you can’t?”
A faint sound rose above the wind. Alec thought it might be the echo of feet pounding up the tower stairs. Clarence heard it too, eyes flicking to the doorway. Alec seized the chance to slither away. He leapt for his sword half buried in snow ten feet away, every movement precise and economical. The frozen hilt seared his palm but he barely felt the cold. He brought it back for a two-handed sweep. Air whistled against the razored edge of the blade.
On second thought, I’ll take his head. That usually does the trick.
Everything in Alec’s field of vision snapped into sharp focus. He sprang forward, faster than a mortal eye could track. He was almost there when he hit a patch of black ice. The ground tilted beneath his feet. Agony exploded in Alec’s knee as he dropped onto it hard, the impact jolting the sword from his hand. Clarence kicked it over the parapet. A hand seized his coat and pinned him to the low wall so that his back arched out over nothingness. He smelled the daemon’s breath, a sulfurous spring.
Alec had never encountered anything, man or beast, stronger than himself. It came as a shock to discover he couldn’t break free, no matter how hard he struggled. Clarence’s other hand reached into his wool jacket and removed a shiny object.
Alec’s chest felt painfully exposed. His heart slammed against his ribcage. Bits of sleet whipped his face, melting on his lips.
A blade through the heart will do me. The daemon knows it. I can see it in his eyes.
Alec stared up at the dark sky, willing Vivienne to come, knowing she wouldn’t make it in time. The centuries of his life spun away into the distance like the void receding at his back. What did it all boil down to? What was the bloody point? Besides his own stupidity and recklessness.
I wish I’d kissed her, just once. And: I always knew my leg would kill me in the end.
Dr. Clarence looked at him intently. The darkness behind his eyes flickered. Vivienne was seconds away now. They both knew it. The daemon’s arm moved forward and up, almost tenderly, shoulder hitching a little as the knife in his hand struck bone.
The pain in Alec’s knee was eclipsed by a terrible tearing in his abdomen. His legs felt severed from the top half of his body. Cold and numb. The daemon raised a bloody hand. Alec heard the droplets sizzle as they struck the ice, like butter on a hot griddle.
He tried to find a place of emptiness, but the pain was too vast. It blotted out everything except the sight of Clarence’s hand, which paused an inch from Alec’s face. The palm curved, a grotesque parody of a mother about to cup the rosy cheek of her infant. An ocean of flame roiled beneath the skin. Alec felt its tidal pull, sucking him deeper out to sea. He closed his eyes. Tried to twist away. Everything seemed swathed in red gauze.
“I’ll be back for you, daēva,” the daemon whispered.
He yanked Alec away from the abyss just as Vivienne exploded from the tower archway. A knife flew from her hand into Dr. Clarence’s back. She was yelling, though Alec couldn’t make out the words or even the language. He slid to the ground, leaning brokenly against the tower wall. His head lolled down and he saw the scalpel buried there. Clarence had turned his guts into sausage hash.
“Amán,” he muttered in Greek, though he’d meant to say, “Oh, dear.”
A dozen uniformed officers jammed the narrow walkway. Arms lifted him up—Vivienne?—and took him in from the cold. The stairs made his head whirl. He knew he was dying when she put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Stay with me.” And then for good measure, “Meíne mazí mou,” in case he was still in Greek mode.
Vivienne only said that when he was at death’s door, a threshold he had lingered on more than once. He’d said those same words the day he bonded her, when she was the one bleeding out on the sand. She had told him to go away. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t.
“Always,” he told her now, his voice a ragged husk.
He managed to hold on until the eighty-second step. Then he fainted.
Chapter 9
Two constables helped carry Alec to a doctor on Magpie Lane, a few short blocks from St. Mary’s Church. His name was Couch and his skills were highly regarded, although Alec lost so much blood on the way, it was obvious no one except Vivienne expected him to live.
A rail-thin housekeeper answered their frantic pounding on the front door. She took one look at Alec and led them straight to the surgery at the rear of the house. Shelving held rows of neatly labeled glass bottles and medical textbooks. A black leather bag perched on a small desk in the corner. It was nearly identical to the one they’d seized from Clarence.
“Put him there,” the housekeeper said briskly, pointing to a long wooden table. “Dr. Couch is having his supper. I’ll fetch him immediately.”
The police deposited Alec on the table, then waited awkwardly in a puddle of melted snow. Vivienne snatched a folded sheet from a pile, wadded it up, and pressed it against Alec’s abdomen. Within seconds, scarlet bloomed through the white cotton. He hadn’t woken up. It was a mercy, she thought. Vivienne had felt the blade go in. Through their bond, she experienced perhaps a tenth of what Alec did, and still the pain had taken her breath away.
“What’s happened?” A man of late middle age bustled in, wavy grey hair sticking out in unruly tufts as though he had a habit of tugging at it. He had shrewd blue eyes and a broad, ruddy-cheeked face with large features that made him seem younger. The buttons of his dark frock coat strained against a prosperous paunch.
“He was attacked by an escaped mental patient,” Vivienne said. “The man had a knife.”
“Was the assailant apprehended?” Dr. Couch asked in alarm, rushing to Alec’s side and checking his pulse.
“Not yet. But the police are combing the streets. It happened over at St. Mary’s.”
“We’d best join the search, milady,” one of the constables said, touching the brim of his cap. He glanced at Alec, then away. “Dr. Couch will see to Mr. Lawrence.”
Vivienne nodded distractedly as the officers hurried out the door.
“Let’s have a look,” the doctor said, gently lifting the wadded sheet. His face grew grave as he unbuttoned Alec’s shirt. Vivienne sensed a presence in the doorway. The housekeeper had return
ed with bandages and a pot of boiling water.
“What’s that for?” Vivienne demanded.
Couch shot her a harried look. “I’m a believer in heat sterilization, Lady Cumberland.”
She frowned. “What’s that?”
“A new technique that seems to reduce infection.” He used a pair of forceps to dip a surgical needle in the pot. “Fetch the black thread, Mrs. Bergmann.”
The housekeeper moved to comply. She had the same cool efficiency as her employer and Vivienne guessed they’d been together a long time.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Stand over there and try not the get in the way,” Dr. Couch replied, not unkindly.
Alec lay still as a corpse while the doctor shot him full of morphine and sewed him up. Couch’s demeanor remained calm and competent throughout, but Vivienne could see the resignation in his eyes. All he could do was suture the skin. There was no way to repair the internal damage.
“I’m terribly sorry, but it’s unlikely he’ll last the night,” Dr. Couch said when it was done. He had a direct manner Vivienne respected. “The blade pierced both liver and kidney. I counted seven separate stab wounds. The survival rate for this kind of injury is roughly one in twenty, Lady Cumberland. Even if he does live, there’s a good chance he’ll be septic within a week.” He wiped his hands on a cloth. “He’ll stay here tonight. You might wish to remain. Just in case.”
“I’ll stay. Thank you for what you’ve done.”
Dr. Couch nodded. “I wish it was more, but he’s in the Lord’s hands now. Call me if you require anything.”
The stairs creaked as Dr. Couch went up to his rooms, which occupied the top three floors of the building. Vivienne sank into a chair. She watched Alec sleep. He looked as bad as she’d ever seen him. White and bloodless as the children who’d been taken by Harper Dods. The morphine dulled his pain, but she felt it at the edge of her awareness.
Vivienne didn’t blame Alec for not waiting. She would have done the same. But it terrified her to think of what might have happened if she’d been a few seconds later. Vivienne had been bonded to one other daēva before Alec. She had died trying to work fire. Part of Vivienne had never recovered from the loss.
He’ll live, she thought. He’s a tough bastard.
She took his hand. It felt feverishly warm. The daēva blood working to repair ruined tissue. There wasn’t a bone in Alec’s body that hadn’t been shattered at one point or another. Not an inch of skin that hadn’t been torn open. Had he been mortal, he would have been dead a thousand times over. He’d always pulled through.
But eventually, there would come a day when he wouldn’t. She knew this too. Alec wasn’t immortal, just very old. Lucky too.
You’re a tough bastard, she thought again, barely aware of the tears on her cheeks.
Alec’s eyes fluttered open sometime after midnight. He’d already metabolized a dose of morphine that should have kept him in twilight for a full day.
“Where?” he croaked.
Vivienne brought a glass of water and helped him drink. She understood what he was asking.
“Clarence got away. He scaled down the side of the tower like a bloody spider.”
Alec closed his eyes. “He knew…my name.”
“What?”
“He called me…Achaemenes. Called me a slave.”
Vivienne was silent for a long moment. “When I find him, I’m going to send him back to a pit so deep and dark, he’ll never find his way out.” She produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit one, snapping the lighter shut with a savage snick. “You’re in a doctor’s surgery, by the way. He plugged the holes. Took hours.”
“Oughtn’t…smoke in here,” Alec managed.
She waved a hand through the nicotine fog. “Couch’ll never know.”
Alec laughed weakly. “Rots your lungs.”
“Not mine.” Her full lips curled. “Called you a slave, did he? The tosser.” Her language tended to grow coarse when she was angry.
“Thought I still was.”
She frowned. “That’s interesting. Doesn’t get out much, our daemon, does he?”
“He could have killed me, Viv.”
“I know. You got lucky.”
“Not what I mean. He chose to spare me.”
She snorted. “I’d say he carved you up pretty badly, Alec.”
He coughed, wincing. “Yes. But he knew the wounds wouldn’t be mortal. Why not the heart? Only way to be…certain.”
Her almond eyes grew thoughtful. “Are you sure?”
“Fairly sure.” Alec lay back and closed his eyes. “Need to sleep now.”
Vivienne nodded and fussed with the sheet, tucking it around his shoulders. “Heal yourself,” she said. “And do a proper job of it.”
“I am,” he murmured.
She smiled at the thought of what Dr. Couch would say when he came down in the morning and found his patient sitting up.
Tough bastard.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, December 19
Alec spent two more days in Dr. Couch’s surgery. On Tuesday afternoon, he walked out the door, leaning heavily on his cane but otherwise operating under his own steam. Dr. Couch, who taught at one of the colleges, tried to convince Alec to stay on for another week or two. He wanted to write a paper for The Lancet about Mr. Lawrence’s remarkable recovery.
Couch was disappointed at Alec’s polite refusals, but clearly delighted with his own skill.
“You’re the case of my career, Mr. Lawrence!” he declared with a grin. “I don’t suppose you’d agree to a portrait?” He blushed. “I’d like to hang it on my wall.”
Alec agreed, and Dr. Couch found a photographer. They posed him sitting on a tasseled footstool with his top hat on and chin propped on his cane.
He’d told Vivienne everything that happened atop the tower except for the part about slipping on the ice; that his infirmity had betrayed him. She would feel guilty, as she always did, but it was simply the price of the bond. The cuff took a piece of you. In Alec’s case, it was a bad knee. For Cassandane, it was a malformed ear. Each daēva endured a different mutilation. Alec would have a limp until the day he died or their bond was broken. He hoped it would be the first.
Back in London, they both stewed. Dr. Clarence hadn’t resurfaced. An exhaustive search of Summersbee’s shop confirmed that the Ptolemy pages were gone. Blackwood’s men confiscated Mr. Crawford’s single folio, despite vociferous complaints and threats to sue. He seemed to believe it was all a plot by Mr. Summersbee to steal his clients. That Summersbee was dead failed to persuade him otherwise.
Vivienne sent a cable to Cyrus and Cassandane informing them of the latest developments. Cyrus responded that he would continue searching the archive for anything of use, particularly as it related to the Greater Gates.
And so they waited. Vivienne spent her time prowling around the house, or overseeing her various charities for women and girls. Alec worked in his laboratory, but he was unable to lose himself the way he normally did. He blamed Vivienne. He rarely chafed under the bond, but he did now. No matter how far apart they were, he could sense her growing frustration, like the maddening hum of a fly.
On Wednesday morning, Alec shaved and dressed in a suit of charcoal grey. His woolen greatcoat had been too blood-soaked to salvage, but he found an old ulster that ought to keep the rain off. He placed two objects in the pocket. The first was a stone, the second a shell. He put his top hat on and made his way into Green Park. Stately oak and plane trees framed long, sweeping vistas and acres of manicured lawns.
On fine summer days, people would set out picnic baskets. But it hadn’t always been so civilized. Alec remembered passing through on horseback with Vivienne a couple hundred years before. They’d been set on by some luckless bandits with bayonets and terrible teeth. Vivienne had wanted to chop their heads off, but Alec scared them away with a display of witchcraft.
London had been far worse then. A ci
ty of plague and decay, suffocating in its own stench. They hadn’t lingered.
Alec took Constitution Hill to Knightsbridge and entered Hyde Park. The waters of the Serpentine shimmered a dull grey. Two swans glided along the shore of the lake. Fortunately, the water hadn’t frozen over. He slipped a hand into his pocket. The talismans dug into his palm. One for Traveling, one for Locking.
Alec took a quick look around, saw no one, and waded into the lake, his reflection absorbing itself. The substance he entered was more like smoke than water. His clothing remained dry as the gloaming closed over his head. Beneath, a twilight world stretched in all directions. Alec followed a gentle slope leading down. Tall grasses undulated to either side. Within a minute, he saw the luminous glow of the Gate.
A doorway, perhaps twelve feet high and five wide. Had it been open, the surface would flow like a swift river. Alec circled it. The Gate looked frozen, although shadows flickered behind it. Most definitely still locked.
Alec watched the shadows for a moment, battering futilely at the bars of their prison. Shades trapped in the Dominion. If they escaped and found a living host to prey on, they would become ghouls. Undead creatures with the ability to assume the form of their victim. A ghoul would go on killing and changing until it was stopped, either by fire or iron.
The Greater Gate of London was the last of the twelve he and Vivienne sealed. It had taken them centuries to find, which was the primary reason England still had a ghoul problem. So many had come through while they were hunting. But Alec knew now that Clarence had not entered the world this way.
A well-heeled matron was pushing a pram down the shore path when he emerged from the lake. She gave him a startled look. Alec tipped his hat with a smile, and she hurried off.
He didn’t want to go back to St. James yet. So he exited the park at Alexandra Gate and walked south, past the Royal Horticultural Society and the Natural History Museum, into the tangle of streets past Old Brompton Road. A light rain began to fall. He turned his collar up.
