Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

  “Why?” Arielle demanded as they dressed. “Why is he after my father?”

  “He wants your mother’s things. The Book of the Dead is sacred in ancient Egyptian culture. The book she saved for you will have passages marked in it that you must recite, probably wearing her garments, to fully harness the power of your ancestors. She left you such things?”

  Arielle nodded. “Just yesterday, I heard the servants say she left me books and a costume. My father never told me. After Madame Aurora told me they could help me, I looked for them briefly, but then Luke came and I…”

  Seth stomped into his breeches. “If Luke finds them before we do, your mother is doomed, and any power she has to help you will be forever lost. We must get to your estate now, and retrieve them before he does.”

  “Or?”

  “Or your mother’s spirit will never be at peace. Without her guidance you are more likely to fall under his thrall.” He bent to help her into her shoes, smoothing his hands over her now covered knees as he looked up at her, his face again the severe Seth who had so intimidated her in the beginning. “You realize he’s doing this partly to draw us there, don’t you? He knows we’ve consecrated our bond and the only way he can fight it now is to force you to protect her. He’s going to offer you the choice of your own happiness or your mother’s. Her eternal doom. Or your own.”

  Arielle felt the burning in her stomach know like a fist. She nodded, unable to speak.

  “But if you stay strong, even with his new ability, with the book’s help, we can still defeat him. The rituals are powerful, and Luke and I have both used them in our transformations. That’s why so much of a man’s mortal wealth was spent preparing him for the afterlife journey–the Egyptians believed it was the only way into the afterlife. An interesting way of thinking Luke has perverted with his obsession to achieve earthly immortality.”

  Dressed, they flew down to the carriage. When they were seated and Seth had lashed the horses into movement, Arielle managed, “Why did Luke kill Madame Aurora?”

  “For the same reason he wants the book, and for the same reason he snuck into the seance. He’s been systematically severing every link you have with your mother because he knows she’s trying to guide you away from her own fate of eternal death. I had paid the medium to tell you of your mother’s things and the power they could give you because I’ve been trying to keep you grounded in the human compassion Luke lost long ago.”

  There was something in his face, something so desolate that their new communion made her see what he recalled. A horrific image grew. Luke, barely formed as a lion, slashing an older man with Seth’s severe features, over and over, blood flying…and Seth, a bit younger, fully human as he tried to intervene and pull the man to safety. Luke struck him with vicious claws, ripping Seth’s side and thigh open, and Seth fell aside bleeding profusely.

  Then Luke began to feed…

  Arielle swallowed back bile.

  “I’m sorry Arielle. I didn’t intend for you to see that,” Seth apologized over the drumming of the wheels.

  “He killed your father, didn’t he.” It was not a question. “You hunted him with Luke.”

  He nodded grimly. “We were traveling through the Sahara about about two years ago when a pack of wild civets attacked our tent. We were both bitten. The change came in dreams first, as it did to you, but we found the urge to hunt overpowering. First small game, then deer and gazelles, and finally…” He trailed off, his eyes closing briefly with pain before he opened them again to swing aside from an over eager phaeton driver.

  She had to strain to hear him. “We both hated him for fathering us, then doing the proper thing, but not the right thing. He hired expensive tutors, sending us to Eton and Oxford, but rejected us and our mothers in every other way. I saw my father twice, and both times he looked at me as if I were a heathen. It was Luke who convinced me to come to England. We found our father alone one night at his country estate. I thought to confront him, but Luke, he…”

  Arielle covered his hand with hers. “You don’t have to tell me. I know you couldn’t kill your own father, no matter how badly he treated you.”

  “I tried to stop him, but the servants came, and I was wounded. But the sight of my father’s death at his own son’s hands forever cured me of the blood lust. From that day foreward, I have never killed except to eat, and I will never wound a human being.”

  Arielle closed her eyes again, trying to block out the image of her own father’s similar fate at Luke’s hands if she were not very careful. And very strong.

  Was she strong enough now she’d bonded with Seth? After the hunt, Seth had bathed her in the hot springs and made sweet love to her, the wildness of the kill counterbalanced by the poignant bonding only humans know. Whatever the truth of the legend, it was apparent he and Luke believed it. Luke had chosen the way of the cat because he was obsessed with immortality. Seth had chosen to let his human intellect rule all he did, even his lion animus. And it was his utter humanity, the softness beneath the arrogance, that drew her now and made her, for the first time in a long time, hope for a future. But she had no illusions about the horrific choices still remaining for her now she’d chosen the way of the woman over the way of the cat. Even as she twined her fingers with Seth’s, the conundrum she’d faced from the beginning drummed inside her head.

  Would good be strong enough to defeat evil?

  And where was Shelly while her father was being herded like a lamb to slaughter?

  Shelly was fuming with fury over her own stupidity. She’d tried using her werewolf strength both against the door, which was too well reinforced, and the windows, which were too small and too deeply embedded in rock.

  She swung back on Ethan with a vicious growl, for the first time in a long time her snout elongating and claws growing at feet, too, without her conscious will. She was so frustrated at her inability to help her charge when she needed it most that, for an instant, the wolf’s urge to punish Ethan for betraying the pack almost overcame her cool human intellect.

  But then she saw what he’d been doing while she prowled the room.

  He held a beaker high, mixing some viscous fluid that was darkening as he stirred. Then, he added one tiny bit of another powdered substance. The fluid went colorless. Carrying the beaker very carefully, so as not to slosh the contents, he said cooly, “Get out of the way,” and set the beaker down on the ground next to the door, right beneath the latch.

  Immediately her werewolf tendencies receded, leaving her fully human. And impressed despite herself at the cool way he’d figured out an egress for them while she’d been needlessly pacing and fuming. “Nitroglycerine,” Shelly said. “First made by Ascanio Sobrero in 1846 by treating glycerol with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid. Soluble in alcohol but insoluble in water.”

  As she spoke, Ethan had mixed one last substance in a very long spoon, which he’d lengthened further by tying it to a broom handle. “Crude, but effective,” he said lightly, as if he were mixing a recipe, not a highly volatile explosive. “As you are probably aware, the reaction produced is highly exothermic, so I suggest you take cover under the table.”

  Shelly obeyed with alacrity, for once not arguing.

  He gave her a taunting glance. “So, you can mind. I thought you could.”

  She glared at him in the shadow of the table, her eyes taking on that eerie glow.

  Smiling, he moved the heavy arm chair in front of himself, knelt in the seat, and lowered the spoon into the beaker from behind it. “Duck!”

  They both ducked, covering their ears as the explosion rocked the flat and sent half the ceiling down on top of them.

  At the entrance to the earl’s estate, several bobbies drew a barred carriage to a stop. The Scotland Yard detective got down from his own smaller curricle, scowling as he yawned, looking around at the empty road.

  “Why do you think Seth Taub will come here?” he asked the Marquis, who dismounted from a fine stallion, not even looki
ng tired. But then, reflected the detective sourly, he was accustomed to long, rough nights sipping brandy and playing cards.

  “Because he’s obviously been warned not to return to his flat,” the Marquis answered. “I also know, by all accounts, that he’s obsessed with Lady Arielle Blaylock. Where she is, he’ll follow.”

  “And she’s being chaperoned by one Shelly Holmes,” the detective replied thoughtfully. “If anyone can shed light on what’s happening with these murders, it’s she. I would not be at all surprised to learn she’s also been investigating this Seth Taub. “He squinted down at his watch in the brightening dawn. “But it’s still confoundedly early. We shall wait to approach the mansion until a decent hour.”

  He settled back in his curricle, tipped his hat over his face, and gave every evidence of dozing.

  The Marquis scowled, but he could only compose himself on his far more plush carriage seat and wait also for his revenge.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Meanwhile, in the crypt, Luke stood next to the earl over Isis’s casket, staring down at the hieroglyphs. He burned to lift the sarcophagus lid away and tear the earthly remnants of Isis’s interfering soul to shreds, but he controlled himself, knowing Arielle would be easier to turn with her mother intact. For now, anyway.

  He glanced around, but saw no evidence of a chest, or a leather satchel. He scowled at the earl. “Why did you bring me here?”

  The earl went to a blank wall and pushed on something. The wall opened outward and Luke saw a cavity. A chest. He hurried forward, shoving the earl out of the way and opened the chest. It was packed with female fripperies, a shawl, leaflets from plays, a full dance card from many years ago with the earl’s name prominent. But there was no sign of a book or costume of Egyptian origin.

  Luke slammed the lid shut and turned back on the earl, his clenched fists sprouting with claws. The earl backed away, swallowing, his hands up.

  “I…didn’t know they were gone.” But the earl couldn’t quite meet Luke’s flaming eyes.

  Luke knew it for the lie it was. “You’re stalling for time,” he hissed, sounding remarkably like a cat. “Show me, now, to the book and her garments, or…”

  The earl backed one more step, but then he stopped, the legacy of his forbears giving him strength. He stared at the entity who, in the darkness of the crypt, was so much more, and so much less, than a man. Every year of the earl’s breeding showed as he said with sad dignity, “Arielle is my only child, and if I have to die protecting her, so be it. I should have given her her mother’s things long ago, and the mere fact that you’ve killed to get them and done all you could to stop Arielle from communing with her mother’s spirit is answer enough to me of the bond between them. I broke it once. I will not do so again, now, when she needs it most, even if my life is forfeit.”

  The earl stayed put as Luke, or what remained of Luke, stalked him. The earl dashed behind a crypt, but Luke bounded over it in one leap. Death gleamed from glowing green eyes now pinpointed with red dots of werewolf madness.

  Luke had neither Seth’s nor Shelly’s moral integrity and intellect, and he could not control the urge to kill….

  Out on the road, Seth drew the horses to a halt before the last turn to the estate.

  Arielle started to say, “Why did you…” before she peeked around the curve and saw them, too.

  The bobbies. The celled carriage. And a man she recognized vaguely as a well known dissolute marquis of the ton, looking bored at the helm of an expensive phaeton while he glared at a man in a severe coat and hat drowsing in his own plain carriage.

  “They’re waiting for me,” Seth said, pulling the horses into reverse before they were seen. “We have to go in through the woods.” Seth pulled the carriage into the woods just as the sounds of a racing curricle clattered up the road. He helped Arielle down and they started to run into the trees, but they stopped as they recognized Shelly and Ethan.

  Shelly was dressed very strangely, in male pants so long they had been turned up at the cuffs and rolled. They were also far too tight across her hips. Her shirt was too long, tucked in and rolled up at the sleeves. She looked as if she’d hastily dressed in Ethan’s ill fitting garments.

  Which she had.

  Ethan and Shelly saw them at the same time. Shelly hugged Arielle, verifying her charge’s well being. She gave her a searching look, and when Arielle blushed, she glared at Seth.

  He said mildly, “I’ll do the right thing with all the pomp and circumstance I can contrive once Luke is dead.”

  Shelly and Ethan nodded, resigned if not satisfied.

  “Seth, you must be careful,” Shelly warned. “The police are after you for Madame Aurora’s murder.”

  “I know. They’re blocking the entrance into the estate, waiting for me, I suspect fetched by the dear Marquis of Brackton, who wishes me dead. But that’s the least of my worries now. We have to get to the estate and retrieve the book.”

  “The book?” Shelly and Ethan repeated.

  “Isis’s version of The Book of the Dead. She must have had it in her things.”

  Shelly and Ethan exchanged a glance. “The book!” they repeated, this time with excitement.

  “You have it?” Shelly asked.

  Ethan replied, “I thought you took it.”

  She glared at him. “No. When I left the study that night, I’m quite sure I left it with you.”

  “Had you at sixes and sevens, did I? I thought so.”

  Before Shelly could give voice to the retort trembling on her tongue, Seth broke in, “We must find it before Luke. Do you have any idea where it might be now?”

  “We had no idea it was so important,” Shelly said apologetically. “We left it in the upstairs study. The earl gave it to us to review.”

  “Come, Arielle.” Seth turned toward the woods as the sun peeked fully above the horizon.

  “Wait, Seth.” Shelly caught his arm. “Do you want me to come with you or to meet the inspector and tell him he has the wrong man?”

  Seth looked at Arielle. She stared blindly up the road, fear for her father flickering in her eyes. “He’s in danger, Seth. We have to go, now.”

  “My fate as a felon is immaterial if we cannot stop Luke,” Seth said, “but I don’t want anyone else knowing the power Arielle and I possess. If you can keep them away no matter what they hear, I shall be in your debt, Miss Holmes.”

  Arielle’s mouth had firmed and her spine was rod straight as she said grimly, “And Luke Simball has done enough killing. Only we can stop him. United.”

  Seth gave her a proud smile. He brushed a knuckle against her chin. “I can’t wait to see you in your mother’s garments. You found them?”

  She nodded.

  “You must dress in them before we approach Luke. They will not only strengthen your bond with your mother, they will give him pause.”

  Seth was walking with Arielle into the woods when Shelly called after them, “Be careful. If Luke has the traits of a werewolf, now you can only kill him with a silver bullet or by ripping out his heart. And if he bites you or scratches your skin, you could also be affected.”

  Seth smiled. “So it is said. But there are other realms you now nothing of.” And then he and Arielle had disappeared into the trees, both of them soundless on the dry leaves.

  Ethan sighed enviously. “Dash it, I’m beginning to want you to bite me just so I can walk like a ghost.” He gave her a mischievous smile. “But then, I always want you to bite me.”

  “Believe me, you would not like the emotional coin required to get that particular skill.” Shelly got back in the carriage. “As for silver, you have that aplenty.”

  When he looked at her quizzically, she said flatly, “In your tongue. And you’ll need every ounce of it to help me talk our way out of this one.”

  Before he could make the ribald comment twinkling in his eyes, she said, “Drive.”

  “Coward.” But he drove on up the road as if they’d merely been out for a dawn
picnic, waving merrily as their progress was blocked by several bobbies and three carriages, not to mention an angry marquis and determined detective.

  They were in sight of the mansion when Arielle stumbled and fell to her knees, clutching her temples. “Father,” she whispered.

  Seth closed his eyes and saw it, too. The earl, dodging around crypts as Luke, a ghastly creature, part man, part wolf, part lion chased him.

  Seth opened his eyes, the slits already elongating, as he began the change. “Go, dress in your mother’s raiments and retrieve the book in the study. I’ll stop Luke. Come as soon as you can.”

  Ripping off his clothes as he went, Seth ran toward the crypt.

  Arielle had never been so fleet of foot as she ran toward the front of her ancestral home. Her limp was totally gone, and she moved so supplely that not a leaf or twig rustled at her passage. However, she found the grounds of the mansion swarming with angry, confused servants. They were standing over a bloodied form wrapped in a sheet.

  When Arielle appeared, the housekeeper turned, wiping her wet eyes on her apron. “Miss Arielle, what be happening? Who did this? And where be the earl?”

  Arielle swallowed as she looked down at the true cost of embracing the way of the cat Luke had almost seduced her into embracing. This man had dandled her on his knee from the time she could remember, as much a part of the family as an uncle would have been. Her fury and concern for her father increased ten fold.

  “Luke Simball did this,” she spat, her own eyes elongating, though she did not know it. “And he has my father cornered in the crypt.”

  The servants all turned toward the crypt as one, but Arielle blocked them. “No. This is a family matter. My own infatuation with Luke Simball gave him the power to do this, and only I can stop him.” And, with God’s grace, perhaps her mother could help. “All of you are dismissed for the day. Say nothing to the police outside except that we’re fine and have given you all the day off. Tell them Luke is threatening my family and maybe they’ll go to his flat and leave us be.”