“The dress for Michael,” Kat said. “John and his father’s souls for Victoria and Eric’s freedom.”
Sybil nodded and stretched out her bared hand.
It was wrong. For the first time she’d be agreeing to lead a hunter to a daemon and sealing that daemon’s fate. But for Victoria, for Eric and even for John Severne, she had no other choice.
She took Sybil’s cold, hard, immortal hand and, palm to palm, it became suddenly so hot that she cried out. She swore she heard a sizzle before she could pull back her reddened palm.
She looked down to see the red fade, but not the feeling that she’d received a steam burn. Her flesh was tight and pink and painful to the touch.
Her promise to Sybil had marked her just as Severne was marked, time after time, in angry slashes of tally marks on his skin.
* * *
“Go home, Grim. Go home,” Sybil commanded when she opened the door.
With a whining cry of protest, the great hellhound began to dissolve into the air. He rose like black mist from his back down to his paws with his bared teeth left for last, a ferocious Cheshire cat.
“No!” Kat said. She rushed to where the hellhound had been. There was nothing left but shadows and the scent of Brimstone. Tears rose up in her eyes. She’d fought them back so many times, but for the great ugly beast of a daemon dog, they fell.
He’d protected her from the Order of Samuel. He’d led her through pathways few mortals had traversed. He was a part of Severne. He was a hellish creature, but he had known the boy before he became the hardened man.
“Katherine, he isn’t gone. He’ll return. I only bought us some time to complete our business. He’ll be back, and he’ll hunt us down for John. Hurry. There isn’t much time. You must be away with your sister and Eric before John comes to claim Michael,” Sybil said.
She’d never seen Grim dematerialize. He’d always been out of sight. Sweet relief flooded her. It hadn’t been a pleasant process for him to go through unwillingly, but if Sybil spoke the truth, the hellhound wasn’t destroyed. He would be back at Severne’s side. Probably sooner than she would wish!
She had to find Victoria, betray Michael and leave l’Opéra Severne with Eric and her sister before Grim was back to interfere.
“Your sister is hiding in the catacombs. You must go to her. Michael will be with her. Lead me to them and I’ll allow you to take Eric when you flee,” Sybil said.
She led the way with a determined stride to the familiar spiral stairway Kat had taken to go down beneath the opera house’s main stage to the costume vault. But instead of turning toward the warehouse-like vault, Sybil led her to another staircase and then another.
They spiraled down, down, down until the air grew cool and damp. Drafts of dirt-scented air reached her nostrils, and goose bumps rose on her skin.
“Isn’t Baton Rouge mostly below sea level?” Kat asked. Her imagination could almost hear the Mississippi flowing above their heads.
“Nothing at Severne is as it seems or as it should be. The line between your world and mine is a veil of illusion that flutters in breezes we cannot see or feel. L’Opéra Severne is a building in your world. But my world creates within its walls an infinite labyrinth, a beautiful prison, and beneath it all, catacombs of tunnels,” Sybil warned. “It isn’t safe. A human being could wander and grow old and die. But your affinity should lead you to Michael now that you’re farther from Severne. Once I leave you here and go back to the main levels, you will find your way.”
It was true. Kat could feel the pull of Sybil now. The unmistakable magnet of Brimstone blood that had been hidden beneath her rush of desire for Severne was obvious. Much farther away was a fainter call. It tingled along her skin as awareness, an inexorable pull.
“Go. I will ready Eric to leave with you. Don’t fail. This is the only way,” Sybil said. She placed the hand that still held the heat of their bargain on Kat’s cold arm. “Our bargain is sealed, Katherine. To break it now will mean your death. My Brimstone has marked you. That daemon mark is connected to your heart.”
Kat looked down at her burned palm. There was always a price to pay. Her life was on the line. It didn’t feel like an escalation. Someone with Brimstone blood had already marked her heart.
Chapter 27
When she’d been a girl, she’d read a story about a labyrinth and a monster. In her child’s mind, she’d imagined the sort of maze a mouse might be put into to test how well it could find a block of cheese.
The reality of a labyrinthine network of tunnels was much worse.
Sybil had given her a small flashlight, but its beam lit just a few yards in front of her. All else was echoing darkness.
Kat could only follow the faint call of daemon blood and hope that she’d find her sister. She couldn’t imagine what else she’d find. If Michael was with her sister, was he friend or enemy? A lover could be either or both. She knew that now.
She missed her bracelet. It was crazy to long for its sound. To miss her pretty chains. She missed the chime of it when she moved. She missed the respite she and Victoria had managed to achieve whenever they’d escaped Reynard’s detection. Rome, Paris, London, Austin, Tokyo, Sydney, San Francisco and Savannah...they’d fled around the globe many times.
Her fingers missed her cello’s strings. It hadn’t been long since she’d played. But it felt far longer. An age since the music had carried her away from fear.
She pressed on.
She might encounter Grim or his dark master around this corner or that. She longed to see Severne again and dreaded the possible confrontation. She tripped often on the uneven floor of impossible tunnels that seemed hewn from solid rock.
There were no sconces in the tunnels she traveled. She had left them behind in the main part of the opera house. The flashlight in her hand was the only light in the labyrinth. The shadows it created leaped and cavorted on the walls in dark mimicry of the murals elsewhere in l’Opéra Severne. Her cautious figure crept along, but all around the shadow her body made, less definable shapes flew, dipped and dived with the movements of the light in her hand.
She walked for what felt like days. With each turn she chose, the maze took her farther and farther away from sunlight and life. The night she’d spent on the river with Severne was eons ago. Could it have been only hours since she’d held him in her hand? Since she’d experienced the betrayal of his true nature and purpose?
When her flashlight flickered, she stopped midstep. Her breath caught in her throat. The light came back on, and she breathed again. But her heart was racing. If her batteries died, she would have to feel her way with only the rough-hewn walls to guide her.
Feel her way.
There were no faces carved in the catacombs. There were no murals here.
The reassurance didn’t help.
She didn’t want to run her hands along the sides of the maze in the dark. She too easily recalled the cold feel of Lavinia’s wooden fingers.
Her steps were quicker after that. She hurried toward the faint call of Brimstone. It seemed to get no stronger, but she refused to give up.
Even when the flashlight began to flicker with every stride.
Where was Victoria?
Why had she deserted her only sister?
After the intimacy she’d allowed herself to share with Severne, the cold tunnel felt even more isolated and lonely.
Cold?
She stopped in the middle of the tunnel that had narrowed around her. The flickering light in her hand cast her shadow as a huge hulking shape on the wall.
But it was her shape.
She raised her other arm to be certain. Yes. The shadow moved with her. It was hers. Yet gooseflesh had risen on her skin in spite of the jacket she wore. She breathed out as a tentative test, and her quavering release of air was suddenly visible in th
e chilling air in clouds of white.
She’d walked a long way.
She was deep underground, but there was no logical reason for the cold creeping over her skin with insidious, icy fingers. She circled the light around her body. It wavered, off and on, off and on, in her hand. The tunnel in front of her was empty as far as she could see, but she’d just made a turn. The gaping mouth of the tunnel she’d left was black as pitch.
As black as a shadow she could feel but not see.
Kat edged away from the black hole.
She was too far from Severne to survive the shadow’s touch. Her respiration betrayed her fear. It was fast and light, each breath revealing the cold that foreshadowed a worse freeze to come.
If the shadow was here...
If it touched her...
Her flashlight flickered again. This time it came back on dim and low. She felt relief, but that changed to despair as the light faded, faded, like invisible, malevolent fingers dialed it down.
The dark claimed her.
The light was gone.
Her fear was too great to shake the flashlight in her hand. But even if she could have moved, she wouldn’t have, because instinct warned her to stay perfectly still as a greater cold approached. She felt its strong presence at her neck and back, and then the chill circled around to her face. She imagined the giant winged shadow crouching down to look into her wide, staring eyes that could see only endless dark.
She held herself quiet and still.
The cold was bad. To touch the shadow accidentally in the dark would be worse.
“I love you, Victoria,” Kat said through chattering teeth. It was important. If she failed to find her sister, if she was frozen to death in this spot, buried beneath l’Opéra Severne, she wanted her sister to know she’d tried. She hadn’t stayed hidden. She had come to help.
Another name was spoken by her slowed, thudding heart. She kept it secret. Her icy lips pressed against a truth no one needed to hear.
Her flashlight flickered to life at the same time the cold faded back and away. She shivered, but her respiration was no longer apparent in white puffs from her lips.
There was no shadow. None that she could see. Only her movements showed on the wall. But she blinked and tested with a raised arm again because for several seconds she thought she’d seen vanishing wings.
Kat moved slower for several yards while feeling returned to her stiff legs. The light remained strong. She tried not to think about why it might have failed.
She heard the singing long before she saw a light. An old French lullaby lilted hauntingly down the passages around her. It came from far ahead but seemed to surround her. It was the daemon call she still followed because the direction of the singing was indistinct.
She stepped quietly, afraid that her sister would run away as she’d run before. There was no mistaking the beautiful voice. Even the echo couldn’t disguise the lilting purity of tone so many treasured, including her. In spite of her determination, a part of her had been afraid she’d never hear her sister sing again.
* * *
The scene was unexpectedly peaceful when she finally rounded a last bend that brought her into a deep underground chamber. There were colorful Persian rugs on the walls as well as the floor and a fireplace where a small blaze burned, vented, no doubt, miles above their heads or into some other hellish dimension she hoped they’d never see.
A four-poster bed sat in an alcove off to the side, framed all around by overflowing bookshelves full of everything from magazines to antique tomes to art and bric-a-brac. She was certain she glimpsed the work of masters placed haphazardly beside plastic toys from fast food restaurants. Near her sister’s rocking chair was a table set with a silver tea service fit for a queen.
But it was the rocking chair, the singing, and the nearby cradle, which Victoria nudged with a gentle foot, penetrating the shocked fog that had threatened for several seconds to claim Kat’s consciousness.
There was no one else in the room.
No dangerous daemon.
No solicitous lover.
“Victoria,” Kat whispered. Horrible, wonderful knowledge exploded in her mind. The truth of why her sister had run even from a beloved sibling. She might even have begun to suspect when she’d first heard the lullaby their mother had sung to them so many times as they’d grown. Maybe her suspicions had caused her to approach slowly more than her fear of scaring her sister away.
A baby.
A precious, innocent baby.
What else would have caused Victoria to run and hide from the one other person on Earth who might have been able to lead daemon hunters to the father of her child?
An innocent half-daemon child caught up in a terrible war.
“You have to go,” Victoria said. “I knew you’d find me eventually. And I wanted to see you. But you have to go.” Kat could see tears of joy and fear on her sister’s face. Joy at reunion. Fear that their reunion might endanger her child.
It wasn’t a rejection. Together, their affinity would attract dangerous attention to the baby’s location.
“You should have told me. You should have warned me away,” Kat said.
Her throat burned. Her chest was tight. Her legs carried her numbly across the room. She had to see the baby. But she also knew she needed to run away. She endangered the baby by simply being in the room.
“It’s okay. We’re hidden well. His father saved him from Reynard,” Victoria said. “He sacrificed himself for us. I’ve waited until he’s strong enough to move. We’re going to slip away. And you’ll have to let us go, Kat. It’s the only way. Bad enough that I have to be with him until he’s older. He needs me. I can’t let him go. But it would be worse for the both of us to be together. You know Reynard always finds us more easily when we’re in the same place.”
Katherine tiptoed to the cradle and looked down. He. Victoria had called the baby he. Kat’s nephew was nestled in the cradle as it rocked. His sleepy eyes glinted in the soft light above cherubic cheeks and the bow of a tiny newborn mouth.
“Where is Michael?” Kat asked. Her mind was already formulating ways to fix this. To help them. To make the evil of the situation go away.
“You mean the baby’s father? Reynard killed him, Kat. When we realized I had conceived after a night in one of the suites of The Blues Queen, we were going to run away together. He said it wasn’t safe for the baby at l’Opéra Severne. He said we had to leave. But Reynard found us in Shreveport. He killed Michael.” Tears coursed down Victoria’s face, but her foot remained calm, carefully nudging the cradle so the baby wouldn’t be startled. “I ran away and came back here. This alcove was Michael’s secret. He said no one else knew about it. And no one has ever bothered us here.”
She continued to rock the baby, but she looked up at Kat. How many times had Katherine seen this exact look on her sister’s face after she had sung the role of Juliet? Perhaps her penchant for the part had been a dark premonition.
“We met during a rehearsal of Roméo et Juliette. The university had borrowed the stage of the opera house, and teenage performers were taking instruction from some of the singers. I had slipped up to one of the private box seats to watch them. You know how much I love that role. He found me there. That was the start of it all,” Victoria said.
No wonder her sister had fallen madly in love with a daemon. She’d been preparing for just such a star-crossed romance her whole life.
Michael was dead. But the name on the list hadn’t been marked through. Severne didn’t have another tally mark on his arm. His grandfather’s contract hadn’t been fulfilled. His father wasn’t saved.
“I’m glad I came back. When I saw you, I knew it was wrong to leave without saying goodbye. I left the bracelet where you could find it. And Mom’s letters. I put the ticket from our river cruise
in your cello case. I left the opera glasses on my pillow. I wanted to talk to you, but Michael had said to avoid John Severne and his dog. He said they were dangerous. That they would hurt the baby.”
“No. No, they wouldn’t. Never,” Kat said.
She looked down at the wiggling baby. He blinked up at her and fisted his hands.
“Sybil helped me when I went into labor. She promised she knew what to do. She’d delivered babies before. It was scary, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid to go to the hospital. Reynard might find us again,” Victoria said.
“Sybil helped you,” Kat said. The world dropped from beneath her body. She floated where she’d stood, trying to rediscover the feeling of firm ground beneath her feet. But there was nothing. No support. She was utterly abandoned by the universe.
“Her face was the first face Michael saw when he came into the world, but he didn’t seem intimidated at all,” Vic laughed through her tears. “Even though she’s always frightened me a little.”
“Michael,” Kat said, repeating the name. Wishing it was any other name.
Because she suddenly knew.
“I named him after his father. I wish you could have met him, Kat. He told me such stories. Of a time before time. Of Heaven and hell. He was very old. Very, very old. He had scars on his back where he said he’d once had wings. We were wrong about daemons, Kat. Mom knew. That’s why she risked her life to save the daemon she loved. They aren’t damned,” Vic said.
Only different. So different that a daemon woman would sacrifice an innocent baby to save someone she loved, but she’d need help to do it if she’d made a promise she had to keep. Sybil had promised Victoria that she would help her with the baby. That was why she needed Kat to deliver baby Michael to Severne.
Kat thought she might die the instant she decided to break her bargain with Sybil. Her hand did throb so hotly that she fell to her knees beside the cradle. But she didn’t die. Not yet. She assumed her heart would stop in the next second or the next.
“Please. Please let there be enough time,” she said under her breath so Vic wouldn’t hear.
Brimstone Seduction Page 21
