At the base of the terrace, Laila and Séverin crept around the edges, working their way to the shadowed alcoves where Tristan sat. Séverin ran to him, grabbing his wrist. He waited a moment, then loosed his breath.
“His pulse is racing.”
At least he had a pulse.
Séverin crouched on the floor, reaching for the straps that bound each of Tristan’s legs to the chair. His hands trembled. This close, the helmet around Tristan’s head gleamed a sinister blue. Tails of light whipped through the top, as if tentacles rippled over his skull. His eyes roved beneath closed lids.
“What did they do to you?” Séverin murmured under his breath. He spared a glance at Laila. “Grab the Eye and start looking for the Ring.”
But Laila felt rooted to the spot. Something felt off. It nagged at her, itching at the back of her skull.
“Séverin, wait.”
“I’m getting him out of here,” he said fiercely. One knot done, Séverin turned to the straps and bindings on the other leg. All the while Tristan didn’t move, didn’t twitch. As if he couldn’t feel a thing. “That’s final.”
Laila turned to the worktable. There was the Horus Eye. Beside it, the Ring.
All of it there, ripe treasure for the taking. But she couldn’t swipe it off the table. Something stayed her hand. Instead, she touched the wood that faced Tristan. The images it had witnessed sank through her thoughts, pulling her away from the surrounding scene. The stage. The curtains pulled back as a man with a blade-brimmed hat stepped through. Roux-Joubert coughing, blood escaping from his handkerchief and flecking the wooden table. Tristan screaming. A cloth shoved past his lips.
Laila pulled back her hand, her heart racing wildly. Out the corner of her eye, she could sense Séverin. His hands working on the knot. Distantly, she heard him.
“Laila, grab the Eye and Ring. What are you waiting for—”
She saw herself touching the Horus Eye. It felt as if she were outside her own body. She felt herself straining her perception, trying to read it as she would with any un-Forged object. But the Eye was Forged, and whatever secrets it held drew away from her touch. Next, she reached for the Ring.
Images slammed into her.
The tools on the table. The cast molding of zinc. Blue lights on a thread. Tristan screaming as the Ring was made.
“Now hush, boy, be quiet or I will meld that Phobus Helmet to you. Is that what you want? Don’t you see your place in the grand revolution? Don’t you understand what must be done to awaken the future?”
Laila yanked back her hand.
She shouldn’t have been able to read it.
It was fake.
“Séverin!” she called, not caring that her voice had risen, that someone might hear her. She reached for his hand just as he touched the helmet. But she wasn’t fast enough. Séverin reached out with both hands. The moment he lifted it off Tristan’s head, the blue lights cut off abruptly. Beneath it, Tristan’s head lolled to one side. They had not changed him out of the clothes from the greenhouse. He was covered in his own filth. Séverin turned to Laila, a victorious smile blooming on his face. Laila blinked. It happened so fast. One moment, the blue lights disappeared. The next, they flared to life. Lightning curled, coiling around Séverin’s arms. He fell backward, his head thrown back, body trembling—
“No!” cried Laila.
She kicked the helmet away from his hands, reaching for Séverin. His eyes rolled back.
“Majnun.”
He didn’t move. In the distance, Laila heard a door opening. Voices growing more insistent. The whining screech of metal on metal as the curtains were scraped back. Laila’s mind splintered. She had to leave. Or she could hide Séverin here, cover him in enough mirror powder that no one would find him until everyone else joined her. She had the Horus Eye at least.
Laila rocked back on her heels, then winced sharply. Something had jabbed into the back of her neck. She reached up with one hand—and felt flesh. The cold, clammy skin of someone’s wrist. And beneath that wrist, a blade.
Laila went still. She snatched her hand away, her back rigid as a board. In a moment, she would have to turn. Slowly, she moved her head. As she did, she slipped one hand into her satchel. It was still open, now fallen across her lap. Her fingers closed around a Night Bite.
“Please,” said a shaking voice behind her. The voice of the person who held a knife to her. “Please.”
Something snapped inside her. She knew every contour of that voice. How it dipped low in a laugh. Rose high in excitement. She looked behind her: Tristan.
Tears streamed down his face. But even as he wept, he did not lose his grip on the knife that he held to her throat.
“Please,” he begged, and he did not sound like himself but like a boy haunted and hunted. “Please, you don’t understand.”
26
SÉVERIN
Fifteen minutes before midnight
Séverin opened his eyes.
He was kneeling. He knew that much. His knees ached. The muscles of his neck throbbed. When he looked down, he noticed his hands were bound together. As if in prayer. His mouth tasted sour. A hint of clove burned on his tongue.
“Do you know where you are, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie?”
Séverin glanced up. Roux-Joubert stared down at him. Séverin shifted from one knee to the next, feeling the heavy weight at the bottom hem of his left pant leg. Before he’d stepped foot into the catacombs, he’d placed a time-weighted bag full of diatomaceous earth and sulfur in the lining. A trail, he’d hoped, but now he wasn’t sure the others would find it in time.
Séverin bit his lip, hoping the pain would jog his memories. He remembered entering the catacombs. He remembered seeing the strange grooves carved along the floor of the stage. He pushed himself, new images rising to the surface of his thoughts. Laila. Laila screaming at him, reaching for him just as he was reaching for the helmet that had been stuck tight to Tristan’s head.
“He’s fine, my boy,” said Roux-Joubert, as if he could read his thoughts.
Séverin bit back a growl.
Roux-Joubert had laid a trap for them. And he had placed irresistible bait for Séverin: Tristan.
Séverin looked up. The scarlet curtains, once pulled close, had been flung back. The Tezcat door sprawled before him, towering like a great beast of polished obsidian. Through the Tezcat, he could see the Forging exhibition. Objects hovering above black podiums. The stingy light of sulfur lamps draping the scene in shadows. But that was not all that he could see. Standing just on the other side of the Tezcat, feet planted firmly in the Forging exhibition, their hands shoved into pockets and smug grins on their faces were Enrique and Hypnos. Séverin looked away from them, his heart beating fast in his rib cage. His gaze swept the stage. Only two people stood there. Roux-Joubert, dressed in a black suit, his honeybee pin prominent and polished on his lapel. Behind him, a stout man with a strange bowler hat, the brim of it gleaming as if … as if it were a blade.
Séverin tried to twist his neck to look behind him, but he couldn’t. Laila and Tristan were gone.
“Where are they?” he croaked.
“They’re waiting to bear witness,” said Roux-Joubert.
He took a step toward Séverin, then stopped. He reached for a handkerchief in his pocket, coughing violently. Even now, his head still swimming with the remnants of nightmares, Séverin could see the other man was not well. The handkerchief was blood-splattered. Séverin opened his mouth to speak when the man in the blade-brim hat held out an object from behind his back: the helmet.
Blue sparks traveled up the glass exterior, and Séverin shuddered. That thing was the last object he had touched before collapsing. He remembered how it had invaded his thoughts. Images darting through his mind, grabbing his soul in a tight fist—his mother screaming at him: Run! Run, my love! Run! Tristan crouched in a rose-bush. The cuts of thorns crosshatching his skin. Golden-skinned pheasant on a dish. Laila’s hand falling limp to the floor. Or
tolan bones cutting the inside of his mouth.
Nightmares. All of them.
“The Phobus Helmet needs no introduction to you,” said Roux-Joubert. “Though you do seem surprised to see it. It was banned about ten years ago by the Order of Babel. Quite a pity, considering it produces excellent results. No one motivates you better than yourself. And who knows you better than, well, you?”
Séverin remembered Tristan’s face when he pulled back the helmet. The bruises beneath his eyes. As if he hadn’t slept in days.
“It’s astounding what one might reveal in their worst nightmares,” said Roux-Joubert.
The man in the blade-brim hat pulled up a chair for him, and he sat, crossing his ankles and smoothing the front of his jacket as if they were sitting down for tea.
“Including an acquisition of a Fallen House bone clock.”
Séverin’s gaze hardened.
“Oh, don’t worry, my boy. It’s still particularly impressive that you were able to figure it out. Frankly, I wasn’t sure you would, but I left the trap there just in case.”
Séverin fought against the ropes binding his wrist, but they didn’t budge.
Roux-Joubert got up from his chair. In the sulfurous lighting of the catacombs, his face was drawn. Almost yellow from illness.
“Shhh … Shhh … Don’t do that. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. Let someone else do that. Otherwise, where’s the fun?”
He touched Séverin’s face, trailing a nail down the side of his cheek. But then Roux-Joubert winced. He grabbed his sleeve, as if there was a wound there that needed tending. Slowly, he drew up the fabric, revealing a long gash covered in a bandage that was stained yellow.
“This is the price of godhood,” rasped Roux-Joubert. “A price that we tried to pay once before.”
Séverin looked behind Roux-Joubert. Enrique and Hypnos stood there, clearly inside the exhibition and talking to each other, throwing something up in the air as if they had all the time in the world. Séverin wetted his lips. His voice sounded hoarse, but he needed to talk. Needed, more importantly, to keep Roux-Joubert talking.
“Godhood?”
“Of course,” said Roux-Joubert. A manic gleam shone in his eyes. “Have you never wondered about why only some humans can Forge? It is an essence alongside the blood. One capable of being harnessed by the power of the Babel Fragment itself. God made us in His image. Are we not gods, then?”
Once more, Roux-Joubert lifted his sleeve. He tore off the yellow-stained bandage, revealing pale skin crosshatched with scars.
“It was hard,” he admitted. “To hurt oneself. To flay oneself. But—”
He took a glowing knife from his breast pocket and dragged it across his arm. He winced, but when his blood ran, it was not red, but gold. Gold as ichor. As the blood of a god.
“—it is worth it. The Fallen House made a discovery of our blood years ago. With the right tools, we could harness the essential essence within us that allowed those of us with the affinity to Forge. But that is just the beginning. It gives one power over more than just matter and mind—it gives one power over the spirits of other men. I’ll show you.”
Séverin jerked back, but the ropes bound him into place. Roux-Joubert took a step forward. He pressed the knife point against Séverin’s cheek, dragging it downward. Séverin tensed. His breath turned jagged, his pulse leaping wildly. When he had finished making the cut, Roux-Joubert pressed the broken skin of his arm to Séverin’s face. Séverin cried out, but Roux-Joubert only pressed harder.
Roux Joubert’s voice was low, damp against Séverin’s neck. “I could make you an angel, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie.”
A searing pain rent itself across Séverin’s back. He screamed. Something shoved through his shoulder blades. He exhaled a shaky breath then looked behind him. The slender point of wings shoved through his suit, sharp as finials. Wet, pearl-pale feathers rose steadily into the air as they dried.
“Or I could make you a devil.”
Séverin doubled over. A new pain gripped him, shooting through his temples. His vision blacked out, then restored just as horns shot out from his forehead, curving around the backs of his ears.
“I could change you.”
The very cells of Séverin’s being quivered until, in an abrupt rush, it fell away. The horns pulled back into his skull. Wings furled tight against his spine.
Roux-Joubert gasped—Séverin could not tell whether from triumph or pain. He looked up to see the other man squatting, rocking on his heels. He was grinning and smiling so hard Séverin thought his teeth would crack. Roux-Joubert licked his lips, but no blood fell. Gold flaked off onto his chin, spattering the front of his jacket.
“But we cannot remake the world on just the power given by one Fragment, you see? If we were to join them, then perhaps such imaginings as I might have performed would be permanent. I could remake you. Remake the entire human race in the images of new gods. Imagine it. No more of this hideous mixing of blood. A purity. Assured and filtered through the holy relics passed down to us from the first ages.”
Séverin fought through a wash of pain. His tongue felt leaden. “You know, I was told once that an ancient civilization in the Americas made gods by sacrificing humans.” He smiled. “If you’d like me to drive a stake through your heart, you need only ask.”
Roux-Joubert laughed. “It’s far too late for that. It is time for revolution. Soon, the Babel Fragments will be joined together … but first, they must be awakened. Only then can we fulfill the promise and potential that the Lord set out for us.”
Even through the haze of pain, Séverin’s mind latched onto something: first, they must be awakened …
“And what promise would that be?” he asked.
“Why, to make the world anew, of course.”
The man in the blade-brim hat hoisted the Phobus Helmet. Séverin recoiled. He would do anything—anything—not to wear that cursed thing again.
“And it’s nearly time,” said Roux-Joubert.
He looked over his shoulder, grinning widely at the image of Enrique and Hypnos.
“Your friends have been most helpful. Which makes me think that perhaps I owe you something … a thank-you, of a sort. All this time, you wished to know where the West’s Babel Fragment lay, did you not? Perhaps you wanted to alert the Order? Warn them, even?”
Séverin said nothing. His gaze flicked to the image of Hypnos and Enrique. Still laughing.
Don’t look …
“You’ll soon find out,” said Roux-Joubert, smiling. “You know, I rather like you. I think you could fit very well among our rank, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie. Should the doctor decide to let you live of course.”
Blearily, Séverin ran the word through his mind. Doctor. What doctor? Roux-Joubert coughed again, this time more harshly. He dabbed at his mouth, spittle glossing his chin.
A sound echoed from the stage. Séverin forced his head to raise. Laila stood there. Behind her, holding a knife to her throat … Tristan. Séverin couldn’t look away from him. Tristan’s eyes were the same piercing gray they had always been. But Tristan’s eyes held no betrayal, only grief … and when he saw Séverin, his eyes widened. His mouth opened as if to speak, but something held him back. Séverin’s gaze flew to Laila. Laila, who was … mouthing something to him. Beside her, Tristan’s eyes glistened.
Séverin couldn’t read her lips. His head still felt fuzzy from the Phobus Helmet. But he watched her hands. How they squeezed Tristan’s wrist. As if she weren’t fighting back … but reassuring him.
Before him, Roux-Joubert tore off the honeybee pendant from his lapel. He twisted it sharply, and the ground ruptured beneath them.
“Now it begins.”
Séverin tried to take advantage of the chaos. He lurched forward, but an object whizzed through the air, sharp and whistling. The blade-brimmed hat of Roux-Joubert’s accomplice caught the edge of his jacket, pinning him to the ground.
“That would be a poorly thought out move on your p
art, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie.”
Séverin could only watch as the ground beneath him changed. The deep, spiraled grooves set into the earth glowed a faint blue. Bones peeled off the walls. They began to merge, cobbling themselves together into terrible shapes. The dead were bent into thrones and crosses, grotesque skeletons wearing crowns, and cruelly formed beasts. He felt a cataclysm rising inside him, of true Forged power, not the ornamentation and posturing of the Order, but the very thing that had sewn itself into humanity.
“Are you familiar with the word ‘apotheosis,’ Monsieur?” asked Roux-Joubert. Ichor dribbled from his lip.
Séverin didn’t respond.
“It’s … a moment of ascension. From mortal to immortal. Man to God. And you shall witness it, but you shall not be alone. The doctor will see what I have done, and I will be glorious beyond reckoning,” he wheezed.
Roux-Joubert raised his hands. All along the walls, the bones shivered. They peeled off the walls—skulls, femurs, necklaces of teeth—careening down from the terraces, knitting themselves together. The bones clasped together, the sound like thunder.
With the scarlet curtains fully drawn back, the image on the Tezcat mirror shivered. Across, Enrique and Hypnos had not registered the danger. They smiled and carried on, not even raising their heads.
“Séverin,” called Laila softly.
Her dark eyes were wide and glossy. There was a plea to her voice. One that Séverin didn’t know how to answer. Because maybe Roux-Joubert was right. Maybe there was no hope. They had intended to deliver the Horus Eye to the Order. To show them where the Babel Fragment lay hidden. They thought the Babel Fragment would be far away, hidden somewhere far from the Fallen House.
The Gilded Wolves Page 27
