Flight of the Crow

by Melanie Thompson

  Bryn nodded. “I will. You be careful down in the basement. No blowing us to hell.”

  Sam smirked and batted her eyes. “If Quinn was at home, I might be tempted.”

  “Don’t hate him because of me.”

  “I’ll try but I won’t promise. I am who I have always been.”

  Bryn ran up the stairs and changed to a walking dress with a small bustle in her favorite dark purple. She buttoned her walking boots and headed for the morning room. Fingle was there dusting the shelves of the china cabinet. “I need your tracking abilities, Fingle. Sam gave her consent.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Who we be chasing?”

  “Draak Priest. I feel sure Fenix is trying to find him so we can either beat her to it or find her following him.”

  Fingle nodded. “Are we leaving now, Miss?”

  “Yes, put your dusting cloth away.”

  They took a cab to le Rouge Derriere. The club was locked up and dark. When they descended from the cab, Fingle began to transform. His nose grew to outrageous proportions, his ears lengthened and his eyes drooped. He always slightly resembled a bloodhound, now he was more bloodhound than man. He dropped to all fours and sniffed around the front of the building. “Miss Fenix been here recently.”

  Bryn followed him into the alley and behind the building. “I knew she would try to find Priest.”

  Behind the club, where the police had recently vacated and the dead body had lain, Fingle sniffed and searched for a scent in a back and forth pattern that covered everything. He rose from his crouch next to Bryn. “Been a murder here. Smells it with my sniffer, I does.”

  “Can you detect Priest’s scent?” Fingle had tracked Priest so many times he was very familiar with the evil man’s unique odor.

  “He been here all right. He’s the one what done the killin’. I smell his murdering rage and his…excuse me, Miss, his excitement. He like the killing and he does nasty stuff to the bodies.”

  Bryn smiled grimly. “Find him, Fingle. Take me to his lair.”

  Fingle set off toward the red light district, the Pigalle, with Bryn following as best she could. He wound through the streets, nose to the ground, ears flapping. It was still morning. People were in the streets going about their business. Old women shopped, young children played ball or rolled hoops, horse-drawn carts filled the streets as deliveries to restaurants and bars took place. Fingle wove his way between the bustling crowds, ignoring everything but the scent he was following. A dog barked at him and he growled back, the reddish-brown hair on his head standing up.

  A large covered dray pulled up to the curb and Fingle turned abruptly to examine it, his nose to the ground twitching. He approached the steps into the back slowly and Bryn grew excited. Maybe Priest or Fenix hid inside. The burley driver came off his box and stared at Fingle. “What the hell is he?”

  Fingle turned and barked sharply at the driver whose massive biceps were revealed beneath rolled shirt sleeves. He was exactly the kind of man Fenix liked. When Fingle put one hand on the steps and started climbing into the van, the driver raced around the side of the wagon to stop him. “Hold on, there.”

  But Fingle was already inside. Bryn ran to follow and eagerly pushed past the blustering driver to look inside. Hams, the dray was filled with meat. Fingle stood in the middle turning around and staring in awe at racks of sausages. Bryn snorted with disgust. “Come on, Fingle. This is not what we’re after.”

  His mournful gaze met hers. “Westphalian ham,” his voice was wistful and almost a howl.

  “No!” Bryn scolded. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait a minute,” the driver yelled. “Did he touch anything?”

  Bryn waved her hand over his eyes. “Forget us. We were never here.”

  “You were never here,” he repeated and Bryn ran after Fingle, who galloped away, tracking once again with a string of sausages hanging out of his mouth.

  He led her down several side alleys, trotted by Saint Sulpice Church, and ended up in front of a building that had been cut into small apartments. When he stood up, his mournful eyes held a question. “He lives in there. Do you want me to keep hunting him?”

  “Can you scent Fenix?”

  “Yes, Miss Bryn. She been here, but she weren’t alone.”

  “Can you tell who she was with?”

  “Someone from your club. I smelt sex on her, definitely a female and older. I detected old lady scent.”

  “Do you smell that on me?”

  His face reflected confusion. “Should I?”

  Bryn’s tiny smile flashed and was gone. “I was only wondering. I can’t believe it’s an odor you can detect. I feel sure she was with Mistress Chat. She runs the club and she’s both old and very sexually active.”

  “Old people have a very distinctive scent.”

  “That’s something I never needed to know. Did she go inside?” Bryn hated to think of her sister alone in that place. She shouldn’t go off on her own like this.

  Fingle’s tone was mournful. “Yes, she went in there.”

  “Then we go, too.”

  They slipped down a narrow alley and entered the building through the black door. The foyer was small and smelled of garlic, cooking oil and fried meat. Fingle sniffed around the base of the stairs and pointed with his nose. “They’s gone up.”

  “Both of them?”

  Fingle nodded and started up the stairs on all fours sniffing each step on the way. Bryn followed with her heart in her throat. They were in Priest’s lair, the lair of the Devil himself and Fenix had followed him here. She was newly reborn an adult. How could her sister be so thoughtless and cause her this much anxiety? She must know how terrified Bryn would be.

  They reached the third-floor landing and Fingle sniffed his way to the flat facing the front. Bryn took Fenix’s wand out and tapped the door. It flew open. Bryn stepped across the threshold and gasped. Mistress Chat lay on the floor in the middle of the room. Her arms were at her side and her skin was a frightening gray. Bryn rushed across the room and knelt beside her. Chat’s breathing was shallow, her heartbeat barely detectable.

  When Bryn lifted the older woman’s head, her eyes fluttered open. “Fenix?”

  “Gone. Did you see what happened?”

  “He took her.” The older woman’s voice quavered as she shuddered and shook. Death was fast approaching.

  “Where? Do you know where he took her?” Bryn hated to torment the woman with questions, but if she knew anything, it was of the utmost importance.

  Chat’s eyes rolled up in her head. Her lips moved but Bryn heard nothing. Then she collapsed and her last breath rattled out of her throat. Bryn laid her tenderly on the ground, removed her cloak and laid it over the body.

  She stood up and dusted the front of her deep purple dress. “I think she said something before she died, however I was unable to hear it.”

  Fingle nodded. “She said church, Miss Bryn. Heard it clear as a bell.”

  “Church? What church?”

  Fingle pointed at the window. “Mayhap it be that one.”

  Bryn glanced out and saw stained-glass windows in the tower of Saint Sulpice glinting in the morning sunlight. “Why would he take her there?”

  Fingle began licking his hand. Bryn blinked. His tongue was at least eight inches long. He stopped licking and looked into her eyes. “It be an old church. Think you, he knows a secret?”

  Chapter 9

  Fenix woke when her head banged against a rough, pitted limestone wall. She groaned and opened one eye. Wasted effort, there was no light. Where was she? The last thing she remembered was riding in the horseless carriage with Mistress Chat. Thinking about the dominatrix brought memories crashing into her head. Mistress Chat was dead. Draak Priest had killed Chat with a snake or maybe with some kind of spell. It was all fuzzy and out of focus. When Chat fell to the floor, he’d touched Fenix’s forehead with the tip of the dagger and she’d passed into darkness.

  Hands suddenly grabbed her and
tossed her over a masculine shoulder. It was broad and strong so it couldn’t be Priest. The back her head rested against was broad and heavily muscled. A huge hand gripped her legs tightly. She decided to play dead and hung there like a sack of flour as the huge man shambled forward, turned and started to climb down a ladder. Far below, she glimpsed a beckoning light.

  The descent seemed to take forever. At the bottom, the giant stopped and waited. “This way, imbecile.”

  Fenix easily recognized the voice of Draak Priest. The tunnel they traveled was dark but she knew where she was. Bones were sorted and stacked to the ceiling on the walls lining the passage. They were deep in the catacombs beneath Paris. The dank air lay on your skin like filthy linen and left you feeling dirty and besmirched. It smelled of dust and ashes with undertones of rotting meat and sewage. She knew the smell of death had to be imagined, but she thought she scented that as well.

  They continued down tunnels that twisted and turned, by rooms filled with candles and more bones, by altars and walls covered with the graffiti of the ages. She was soon completely lost and allowed herself to flop listlessly against the giant’s back. She was doomed. Whatever Priest had in mind for her was going to happen. There was no way she would be saved. Bryn could not track her into the depths of this ossuary. When she heard the sound of running water, she whimpered with fear. They’d descended all the way to the aqueducts under Paris. Priest was going to throw her in and leave her.

  * * * *

  Draak Priest smiled and stroked the cross hanging from a cord around his waist. This was the culmination of years of scheming and planning. He had captured one of the Sahir twins. Owning one would surely lead to possession of the other. The fact it was Fenix, the delicious golden phoenix, made him quiver with anticipation. Everything was going exactly as planned this time. He was in control. He had all he needed to perform the ritual that would give him back his lost youth. Immortality was no gift when granted to a man already old. He’d spent a thousand years as a seventy-year-old man. His knees ached unbearably, he had numerous digestive issues he hated to think about, and his eyesight was poor.

  The entrance to the moon chamber was hidden. It took him several minutes of searching to find it. Only feet away from where he crouched, water rushed through the underground river. Moisture from the water made everything slick with slimy green algae. The metal door set low in the wall was locked. Priest pulled a skeleton key out of a pocket in his robe and inserted it into the ancient lock. At first it refused to budge. He passed his hand over the lock and the key turned halfway and stuck. He closed his eyes and willed it to unlock. When it finally clanged open and the bar dropped inside the mechanism to open the lock, he sighed with relief. He’d never doubted his ability to get into the locked room, but bending down was painful and his patience was limited.

  He shouldered the rusty door open. It groaned and creaked on corroded hinges as it scraped across centuries of collected dirt. “Take her in there,” he ordered the dummy he’d conscripted to aid him. The huge man’s brain was small and weak and easily overpowered with magic.

  The room behind the door was small and for the most part filled with an iron cage. The hulking prison was a hundred years old built long before the French Revolution, but was used then for special prisoners. Marie Antoinette was rumored to have been held here, but Priest knew this room had been used for more nefarious purposes than just holding prisoners. The cage was built to restrain a select group of people, namely witches. The bars were made with iron blended when hot with star metal brought from Egypt. The special metal was melted from a meteor which had landed in the Sahara Desert long before the pharaohs ruled. It resisted all spells and curses to break it. Once Fenix was in there, she would have to remain his guest until he opened the door.

  Chuckling to himself, he grabbed the witch’s red-gold hair and jerked her head up. Her golden eyes flew open. “You!” She snarled.

  “Yes, it is I, your nemesis, Draak Priest.” He ran a possessive hand down her back. She wore a diaphanous gown that clung to her curves. For a moment, he contemplated enjoying her body right here in this damp hell. But he thought better of it. When he lay with Fenix, and he would lie with her, it would be as a young man with the erection of a young man. Oh yes, he would be as strong as a stallion, able to fuck her for hours until she screamed for mercy. “Soon,” he said. “Soon you will know me in a different way, my dear. Soon I will be young and as powerful as any stud you’ve taken between those white thighs.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “Ah death, for us it could be considered a gift. But for you, it will be a gift longed for but never attained.”

  He opened the cage door. “Put her in there,” he told the dummy.

  While the big man was dumping his fair burden inside the cage, he bustled around to the altar built into the wall. Guttered candles sat in their nests of melted wax. He scraped them all away and knelt on the kneeling stone. Only two days from now, he would perform the ritual that would give him back his life. He turned around and sat on the stone. The cage was right behind him. When he looked up, he saw the hole in the ceiling that led all the way to Saint Sulpice, fifty feet directly over their heads.

  The hole was under the stained-glass dome of the church’s chancel. When the full moon rose to its zenith on September ninth, the light would shoot down the tube from the dome magnified by a special piece of glass in the eye of the lamb at the center of the fantastic stained glass mural. The light would first hit in the center of the cage, then slowly move to the altar where Priest planned to capture it with the Coeur de Flamme, use it to increase the power of the stone and ensure the success of his transformation. He would use the surge of magic from the stone to infuse the dagger of Lazarus with the power to resurrect his younger self.

  Satisfied his plan was as fool proof as he could make it, he turned to Fenix. The dummy had dropped her on the floor of the cage and stood over her waiting for orders. He stared down at her, so beautiful and so vulnerable, and gloated. “If you please me, I may decide to remove your curse and keep you as a concubine.”

  Fenix spit on the ground. “I’d rather die and be reborn a thousand more times.”

  He laughed. “You were always the spirited one. Your sister is more cautious, though she will try to move heaven and earth to find you, I doubt if even she can locate this place.”

  “Maybe not, but I can.” The strange voice startled Priest. The rasping intonations were familiar but he couldn’t place them.

  “Who’s there?” He demanded. “Show yourself.”

  A robed man, no not a man but something infinitely more terrible, stooped and seemed to flow through the low door to stand beside the cage. Priest gasped and lifted his hand to shoot the terrible intruder with a blast of deadly magic. Before he could loose the blast, Lazarus sped around the cage and grasped him around the throat in an iron grip. “Where is my dagger?”

  Terror rose in Priest’s throat like lava. He whimpered in Lazarus’s steely grip. “I don’t know.”

  Lazarus lifted Priest like he weighed nothing and held him at eye level. “You will take me to my dagger, you filthy worm. I know you plan to use it to make yourself young. You will never succeed. Old forever, that’s your curse, worm. Take me to my dagger.”

  Terrified beyond the ability to think clearly, Priest did the only thing he could. He transformed himself into the giant dummy. Lazarus dropped him and Priest immediately changed into the worm he’d been named and buried himself under the rusty floor of the cage.

  When Fenix saw the vampire Lazarus slide into the dungeon room, her heart almost stopped. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. But he did her a favor by terrifying Priest and making him disappear. She took the opportunity offered by his interest in Priest and scurried between the giant’s legs and out the door of her cage. However, the omniscient Lazarus had seen her making her escape, and scooped her up by the neck of her gown.

  “Not so fast, my pretty. I didn’t com
e down here to find you, but it is a most delightful accident.”

  He stood her up and began brushing the dirt off the front of her gown. “My, my, the cursed dragon did not care for you properly. His ideas of what is due a beautiful woman fall woefully short of acceptable.”

  She tried to push his hands away and he grabbed her shoulders. “I wish you no evil, Fenix Sahir. I am trying to regain a lost artifact. Rescuing you is a happy mischance for me and a blessing from God for you. Be sure I will not harm you…today.”

  Fenix had moved beyond terror and was much closer to hysteria. Lazarus seemed to feel this. His touch on her shoulder was cold and impersonal. She tried to focus on his words. They seemed to be telling her he did not intend to hurt her. She swallowed hard and a tremulous smile quivered on her mouth. “How can I trust you?”

  He leaned close and she realized he did not smell like a vampire. They reeked of blood, the coppery iron odor radiated from them like garlic breath. He smelled like ashes and dead flowers. It was strange but not a bad smell. “I imagine your sister is somewhere above ground sick with worry. We must find her and ease her mind.”

  Fenix nodded. “Yes, she worries so.” Her voice quaked and quavered as though she were an old woman.

  He placed his hand on her back and urged her down the tunnel. She stopped and looked back toward the room. “What about his servant?”

  Lazarus chuckled. “How thoughtful of you to concern yourself with the imbecile. I’m sure his master will shortly return to human form, if you could call it that, and take possession of his property. Now come, let us find your sister.”

  “Don’t leave him for Priest. He’s innocent of wrong doing, just a pawn and cruelly pressed into service by that monster.”

  Lazarus groaned. “Very well, we shall collect the servant if for no other reason than to foil the wishes of Priest.”

  Chapter 10

  Bryn could not believe Mistress Chat lay dead at her feet. Fingle lifted his nose and howled. “Stop that. You will have the gendarmes down on our heads.”