by Kat Ross
“I see Constantin is teaching you tricks,” Anne said. “Have you learned to beg?”
“I’ll teach you to beg, bitch,” he growled, his voice guttural and inhuman.
Janssen’s revenant was half out of the crack now, sword scraping the marble as it struggled to free its lower body. It wore leathers that had once been white but were now caked with old gore. Silver eyes roved between them, trying to decide who to eat first. The necromancer dropped to all fours, though his form was still man-shaped. Constantin’s training must be in the early stages.
He skittered forward, nails ticking on the floor. Anne readied her blade, but he headed straight for the revenant. She grimaced as he tore into its throat, rending the rotten flesh with his teeth. The revenant jerked in surprise. It flailed and roared. The necromancer gave a low snarl, jaws snapping through dry bone and withered tendon. It was the most revolting display she’d ever witnessed.
Also the first time she’d ever rooted for a revenant.
When the Druj stopped moving, Dog-boy sat back on his haunches. He looked … bad. Something white wiggled at the corner of his mouth. When Anne realized it was a maggot, she decided she’d had enough.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said with jerky swallow.
Anne glanced at the other two. One sprouted fur that looked vaguely calico. The second had an armored tail with a bizarre fin. She laughed. “Is that the best you can do?”
Dog-boy bounded toward her, surprisingly fast. Saliva dripped from his serrated maw.
Ah, the hell with it.
Anne reached for the Nexus. Dog-boy screamed as both legs broke. He fell to one side, howling in agony, but the other two were already moving, flanking her with broadswords up. Anne shattered more bones — the big, useful ones. Thighs. Spines. She called on water to reverse the flow of blood to their hearts, on air to steal the breath from their lungs.
And it slowed them, but not as much as she’d hoped. They healed with astonishing rapidity, a few seconds at most. Anne kicked Dog-boy in the face and he grabbed her foot with a broken arm, flipping her with a jarring impact that rattled her teeth. Her sword flew away. Dog-boy loomed, stained lips parting, and she rolled aside just as his jaws snapped shut next to her ear. His breath was beyond description.
Anne leapt to her feet, ducking under someone’s blade. Calico lunged and she kneed him in the groin so hard his eyes rolled back to the whites. She used earth to shatter Dog-boy’s legs again. He toppled with a bitter shriek. Happily, Calico was still frozen in a fetal position. She took the liberty of borrowing his sword and cut his head off.
Anne turned, surveying the battlefield. Dog-boy and — she decided to call him Missing Link. Dog-boy and Missing Link were hurting but mobile. They circled her warily, the tenacious bastards. Dog-boy had mostly given up pretending to be a dog and stood upright, favoring his left leg.
“She’s not just a bitch, she’s a witch,” Missing Link muttered, his tail swishing.
“Shut up,” Dog-boy growled. “We can take her.”
Anne sighed. Working the elements carried a price. Her brother Alec called it sympathetic magic. Whatever she did to the necromancers resonated in her own body. Things hurt — Holy Father, yes they did — but nothing had ruptured. Yet.
Dog-boy’s yellow eyes fixed on her hungrily. His tongue licked across his teeth and gave a suggestive wiggle. “How about we—”
Calico’s revenant, bless its dear mummified heart, came through right then, and right under Dog-boy. He dropped with a lurch into the crevice. Missing Link took a hasty step back.
“Help me!” Dog-boy screamed, wedged up to the hips. His finned friend hesitated for an instant, but by then it was too late. The revenant had him from below. Anne ignored the screams. She watched emotions flicker across Missing Link’s face. Not remorse or pity, but a simple calculus.
Fight or flight?
He chose the latter.
Unfortunately for Missing Link, if there was one thing Anne knew how to do, it was run. She caught him by the tail halfway down the gallery. Behind her, Dog-boy gave a last wail and fell silent. She heard the revenant feasting with gusto. Of course, another would be on the way….
“Don’t hurt me,” Missing Link moaned, throwing his sword aside. The tail started to shrivel and press between his legs.
“Give me your chains,” Anne snapped.
He complied with shaking hands. She bent down to snap the collar around his neck when his eyes darted beyond her shoulder. Anne whipped her sword around and nearly took Jacob Bell’s head off.
“Easy.” He leapt back, palms out. “Just me, Miss Lawrence.”
She shook her head and grinned. “It’s about time. So I’m Miss Lawrence now?”
“Yes.” His gaze took in the three dead necromancers. “Yes, I think you are.”
Behind him she saw Julian Durand and Lucas Devereaux finish the revenants.
Anne tensed. “What’s Balthazar’s man doing here?” she demanded.
“He came to find his master,” Jacob replied calmly. “He says Balthazar is on our side and I believe him.” He paused. “I know a few things about Mr. Devereaux. There’s no way on earth he’s with Bekker, whatever Gabriel thought.”
Anne paused just long enough to finish collaring Missing Link and plant a foot on his back. She didn’t wear the manacle but simply held the chain like a leash.
Maybe Jacob Bell was telling the truth. Or maybe Constantin wasn’t the only traitor in their midst. Who knew what had really happened inside the museum? She wasn’t there to see it.
“Where’s Jean-Michel and Miguel?”
“They’re not remotely ready for this,” Jacob replied. “Guns won’t do us much good. And I’m not throwing their lives away against trained necromancers, not even for Gabriel.” His gaze narrowed. “I’m not liking the look in your eyes right now. Like you don’t trust me.”
Anne wanted to believe him, but she still didn’t know how Bekker had managed to take Gabriel alive. With a sanctus arma in his hand, no less. She remembered Lucas standing outside the museum and dark suspicions bloomed in her heart. Oddly enough, it was Julian who laid them to rest. He strode forward with an unreadable look on his face. Anne waited, the power filling her. Julian stopped a few feet away and folded his arms with a sigh.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, but I’m sure as hell glad you’re here now. I just wanted you to know. If I happen to die, at least you won’t remember me as a complete bastard.” His lips quirked. “Just partly a bastard, yes?”
Anne raised her eyebrows. Missing Link tried to worm away and she jerked the chain.
“Ow,” he muttered.
“So all I had to do to win your respect is kill a whole lot of people?” She smiled. “That’s heartwarming.”
Julian winced. “When you put it like that….”
Anne’s voice softened. “Tell you what. Help me find Gabriel and all is forgiven.”
He nodded. She used the chain to haul Missing Link to his feet. They all stared at him.
“What?” Sweat rolled down his forehead. “I don’t know where they have D’Ange, I swear. Mr. Bekker sent me down to patrol the ground floor. I’m one of the new hires, I don’t even get any sick days yet—”
He was still rambling when Lucas Devereaux approached, radiating violent menace despite the waxed moustache. Anne shortened the chain, holding it taut as Lucas leaned over and whispered into Missing Link’s ear. The blood drained from his face.
“Right,” he said firmly. “The thing about Mr. Bekker’s house is….”
Missing Link led them to the end of the mirrored gallery and stopped before a patch of bare stone wall between two suits of armor. Anne fed a thread of power into the key talisman she’d taken from his pocket. A doorway winked open, revealing spiral stairs leading up into darkness.
The hidden doors were the only way to move between levels. If Anne hadn’t run into the necromancers, she might have wandered the ground floor for hours.
Sh
e jerked the chain. “You first.”
Missing Link started up the stairs. He claimed there were six or seven Antimagi on the second floor, one guarding the portal Bekker used to Travel, the others watching Gabriel. He also claimed he didn’t know where Bekker was, but that Gabriel was being held in a chamber called the Hall of Scales. Constantin had been put in charge of the prisoner.
When Anne asked Missing Link about the Afrikaner, he’d gone even whiter and refused to say anything more. She considered using the manacle linked to his collar to extract the information, but the prospect was revolting, a line she would only cross as a last resort. The Order had similar feelings about mental rape. They used the chains to kill — but never that.
The stairs curved around and ended at another blank wall.
“Where does it open to?” Anne demanded.
“A corridor intersecting with the one leading to the Hall of Scales,” Missing Link whispered. “I can’t promise it won’t be watched, but the second floor is as big as the first. It would take fifty men to guard all of it. The security is based on the key talismans. Mr. Bekker intended for you all to be cornered and killed downstairs.”
Anne stared at him until he swallowed and looked away. “If you’re lying to me—”
“I’m not, I swear! Just don’t feed me to a revenant.” He shuddered. “Please.”
Anne glanced at Jacob, who nodded. He and Julian readied their chains. Lucas dropped a hand to his sword hilt. Anne used the talisman to open a door in the stone.
The smell hit her like a fist. An overpowering stench of death. She retched, gorge rising, and Missing Link slammed her hard against the staircase wall. He tried to grab the key talisman but couldn’t pry her fingers open. The necromancer spat a curse and darted away into the pitch black. Anne shook off a wave of dizziness as the others rushed past her in pursuit. There were scuffling sounds, a scream and then silence.
“He’s down,” Lucas said. “Ugh. I think I just stepped on…. I don’t know what.”
“Hang on, I have matches.” Anne heard a rasp and a wavering flame appeared in Jacob’s hand, driving back the darkness. She covered her mouth. Drained corpses lay stacked against the walls like firewood. Towering piles of them. It was impossible to tell the age or sex except by size; the children were smaller. Rags of skin clung to bones, eyes shriveled to opaque marbles in their sockets.
Missing Link sprawled on the floor, his head twisted all the way around.
“Mother of Christ,” Jacob said softly.
The match burned down and he lit another, holding it high. The room was huge. Anne didn’t want to think about how many of Bekker’s victims it held. Hundreds at least. She drew a shallow breath and looked for a way out. “Down there,” she said hoarsely.
They moved to the end of the vile ossuary, sticking close together, to the only part that didn’t have bodies, a space along the wall about five feet wide. Anne tried the talisman and a gap opened. It led into a long torch-lit corridor with dozens of doors on either side. Jacob blew out the match. Anne sealed the door behind them.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lawrence,” Lucas said, giving her a baleful look. “I shouldn’t have killed him. It was hard to see anything. He attacked me and—”
“It’s not your fault, though I rather wish you hadn’t, too.” She drew a deep breath. The stench of that room clung to her skin. “We’re running out of time to search this place.”
“Let’s split up,” Julian said.
Anne shook her head. “There’s only one key and I’d bet wherever they’ve got him doesn’t have a regular door.”
“How the hell do we find it then?”
“Bekker would leave a guard outside,” Jacob said.
“Sound logic. Do we all agree with Mr. Bell?” Anne looked at Julian and Lucas. They both nodded.
“Good. We need to cover a lot of ground fast.” She flexed her toes and leaned forward like a sprinter at the starting line. “Try to keep up, will you?”
24
Balthazar detected movement at the shadowy far end of the chamber. Axel and Daan were stuffing the dirty pictures into their pants. Someone was here. For a moment, he allowed himself to hope it might be Anne Lawrence, a bloody sword in her hand, but instead it was a grey little man who looked like an unemployed bank clerk.
He wore a cheap ill-fitting suit and round, foggy spectacles. His complexion was pallid, as though he rarely saw the sun. Five necromancers, including Constantin, flanked him as he trudged into the chamber. Three carried black leather cases. One pushed a rolling steel trolley of the sort they used in autopsy suites.
Gabriel grew instantly alert. So did Balthazar.
“Which one of you is Monsieur D’Ange?” the grey man asked politely.
For a moment, Balthazar pictured them both answering, “He is!” and stifled a bark of unhinged laughter.
“That one,” Constantin said, pointing to Gabriel.
“Very good.” He gestured and Bekker’s men set the bags down on the trolley. They made a faint clinking sound. He removed his spectacles and massaged the lenses with a stained handkerchief, then put them back on, blinked owlishly, and peered at Gabriel like he planned to fit him for a new suit. “I am Vorstmann. Secure his feet, please.”
Balthazar watched with helpless dread as the manacles around Gabriel’s ankles were locked to eyehooks in the floor, leaving him completely immobilized. Gabriel didn’t bother to fight them. He was saving his strength.
Vorstmann took out a mottled apron and tied the strings. It was too long and made him look like a wizened child playing dress-up. “Before we begin, perhaps you’d prefer to tell these gentlemen where you obtained the sword?”
Gabriel stared at him. “You poor bastard,” he said. “I—”
One of Bekker’s men cuffed him hard across the face. Vorstmann paid no attention. He was selecting items from the bags and arranging them on the steel trolley. Mostly scalpels of varying sizes, but also things Balthazar had no name for. Long, slender things with serrated hooks.
“If it sets your mind at ease,” Vorstmann said in a clipped accent, “I am happy to explain the procedures beforehand.” His voice assumed a patient, lecturing tone. “With necromancers, one is at liberty to make incisions that would cause a regular man to bleed to death in minutes. You would heal quickly, of course, allowing the cuts to be made again and again. But I am told time is of the essence.” He glanced at Gabriel and there was no animosity in his dishwater eyes. “So I think we must proceed directly to the later stage.”
Vorstmann examined one of the scalpels, then set it back down at a precise distance from the next. “Do not fear, Monsieur D’Ange, you are in safe hands. I am a devoted student of anatomy.” He gave a cheerful smile. “But my studies are not limited to modern textbooks. Not at all. The ancient Egyptians knew more about the secrets of the human body than half the physicians graduated from the most prestigious medical academies today.”
He began to line up glass jars filled with clear liquid. “Particularly in relation to the internal organs. Heart, liver, kidneys and so on. Edwin Smith found a remarkable papyrus in Luxor relating to surgical techniques in trauma cases that’s most enlightening.”
Vorstmann wiped the hooked device with his dingy handkerchief. “But to understand precisely how necromantic magic and anatomical science intersect, one must work with living subjects. Happily, Mr. Bekker has given me many such opportunities.”
He stroked the instrument with a finger, a crescent moon of dirt visible beneath the yellowed nail, and Balthazar suddenly remembered where he’d seen a similar device. It was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York the year before, at a special exhibition of relics unearthed in Alexandria.
“Until the brain stem is severed from the cervical spine, you will not die — not in the typical sense of the word,” Vorstmann continued. “Sensation and thought continue, even in extremis.”
Balthazar glanced at Gabriel, who had gone pale and silent.
&nb
sp; “Edwin Smith,” he managed, his mouth dry as a crypt. “That was back in sixty-five, wasn’t it?”
Vorstmann’s mild gaze turned to Balthazar. “Sixty-two.”
“Yes, right. I dabble in Egyptology myself.” Anything to keep this maniac talking. “Isn’t that….?”
“A cranial crochet.” Vorstmann looked pleased. “Indeed it is. For the removal of the brain matter through the nostrils.”
Constantin shifted uneasily. One of Bekker’s men turned a little green around the gills, but the other three seemed immune to Vorstmann. Maybe, Balthazar thought, it wasn’t their first time.
“How old is that one?” he asked with frantic eagerness. “Which dynasty?”
“Alas,” Vorstmann replied. “As much as I appreciate your interest, I cannot afford to indulge it at the moment. Monsieur D’Ange awaits and it would be cruel to prolong the anticipation. Better to simply commence.”
He set the cranial crochet back down and Balthazar twitched with relief. But then Vorstmann chose one of the scalpels and shuffled forward. He held it delicately, between thumb and forefinger. His spectacles were starting to fog again, as if he conjured up his own humid ecosystem. Constantin looked on the verge of saying something, Balthazar could see the struggle on his face, but in the end he remained quiet.
Vorstmann halted at the center of one of the great scales inlaid in the floor. “Any last-minute change of heart?” he asked, slicing through the front of Gabriel’s shirt as if it were gossamer. The unfortunate parallel to Balthazar’s recent fantasy was cringe-inducing. Vorstmann’s clinical gaze moved across Gabriel’s abdomen, darting here and there as he mapped out the vivisection. “I will remove the liver first. Then the small intestine, followed by the kidneys and lungs. I’m afraid you’ll experience some discomfort.”
He lifted the chain dangling from the collar and draped it over Gabriel’s shoulder. “There we are,” he said gently.
Gabriel swallowed. Sweat slicked his torso. “Are you a married man, Vorstmann?”
He seemed unsurprised by the question. No doubt he’d heard everything in the course of his career. “As a matter of fact I am, Monsieur D’Ange. Twenty-three years now.”
