The little baby looked up at her with nightglow eyes. He would live.
And she would die.
That was a deadly promise she had to be brave enough to make.
“What is it, Kat? What’s wrong?” Victoria asked.
Perhaps she’d felt the chill increasing around them, or maybe it was only the stark look of determination Kat could feel on her hardened face.
But as her sister stopped rocking the cradle, a shadow fell across the wiggling baby. Kat struggled to her feet, adrenaline flooding in to fill the hollow places where only shock had been. She vaguely heard Victoria call out a warning to stay away. The baby wasn’t distressed. He laughed again. He reached up to touch the frigid darkness as if it had tickled his face.
He must have been protected from the shadow’s ice by his father’s daemon blood.
His father. The ancient daemon that once had wings.
Kat saw it then. Above their heads, there was a giant winged shadow on the wall. It hadn’t been there when she’d hurried into the room. If it had been a normal shadow, thrown by the fire, it would have fallen across her sister’s lap and onto Kat. Instead, the edges of it avoided them. It stopped where their bodies began and came into being again beyond them.
Had it followed her through the labyrinth, watching and waiting to see what she would do when she found the baby? Had whatever remained of the father weighed her life in his frigid inhuman mind and decided whether or not to let her pass in the dark passages of the catacombs?
She tasted mortality then, like cold, damp ashes in her mouth.
She’d been right to fear the shadows. But she was glad she’d been bold enough to pass through them.
“I won’t betray them,” Kat said.
The shadow responded. It swelled out bigger and bigger. Then, just as she feared it might attack her to be sure she didn’t threaten the child, it diminished.
“Of course you won’t,” Victoria said. “I told him that.”
Katherine looked at her sister. The other woman didn’t cower from the cold shadow on the wall. She was used to its looming presence.
“It isn’t him. Not really. But there’s something of him left. Like a ghost, but more. I have to admit that’s another reason we haven’t left again. Michael is strong. Stronger than a human newborn would be. He can leave whenever I’m ready,” Victoria said.
Victoria’s clothing finally penetrated Kat’s overwhelmed senses. She was bundled in a thick sweater, and woolen socks showed above heavy shoes. Across her lap was draped a heavy quilt.
The shadow watched and waited.
“You need to be ready. Now,” Kat said.
“I know. I know it isn’t safe. The cold is very bad. Even the fire doesn’t warm me. Only Michael keeps it from stealing my breath,” Vic admitted.
“That’s not the only reason. He was right. It isn’t safe here. I think the shadow has been trying to warn us all along,” Kat said.
She didn’t know how far she would get before her daemon mark killed her because of the broken bargain. She would do all she could. She’d hidden for years. She had to be braver than that now. She had to fight.
Victoria was already dressed practically in jeans along with her heavy sweater. Kat helped her add to a large diaper tote bag while the baby cooed at the shadow on the wall. When Kat moved to pick Michael up, the shadow once again grew, and its wings stretched out to span the room. The warm baby in her arms diminished the shadow’s threat. His Brimstone heat was daemonic, but not monstrous at all. Only different. And adorable.
She would never hold a baby of her own.
Kat pushed that knowledge away.
“We’ll have to separate once we’re away. You can’t try to contact me. Ever again,” Katherine said. With luck, her sister would never discover that Kat had died so she and her baby could live.
She handed Michael to his mother. Victoria took him easily and cradled him close in her arms, already practiced at being exactly what her baby needed.
The shadow diminished in size again when the baby was placed back in his mother’s hands.
Kat couldn’t tell Vic about the daemon mark. Victoria feared enough for Michael. Kat didn’t want her to have to fear for her sister, as well.
She would go. She would help. Until her heart stopped. She would give all to her nephew, as she would if he was her own son. As she wished someone had given for John Severne all those years ago. To save him before he became the tortured, bartered soul he was today.
She held her bad hand against her chest. Victoria didn’t notice. She was focused on the baby in her arms. As she should be. Kat ignored the pain. They needed to find Eric and outsmart Sybil. She was certain the shadow would follow them as they made their escape. It had shrunk, but whatever was left of Michael still lurked on the wall. While they hurried from the last refuge they’d known, she pretended Grim and Severne wouldn’t try to stop them.
She was wrong.
Chapter 28
Grim materialized beside him as he ran the levee toward Brightside. He’d thought to run all the way to New Orleans, but Grim’s appearance interrupted him. The breeze off the river ruffled the massive hellhound’s fur as it came into being, first as a mist and then separating into each individual hair. It was a slower process to witness than he was used to. Something was wrong.
The dog had to will himself into being.
He chuffed. He whined. He stretched and moaned.
The sun hadn’t risen, but there was no fog. In the city lights, the sudden appearance of a giant dog that looked like an enormous mangy wolf might not go unnoticed.
Grim was always discreet. He shied away from curious eyes and often ran with Severne at the edges of his perception, unseen, amorphous.
It was terrible to see his old companion pained by this solid materialization. Severne stopped. Gravel flew in a spray that sprinkled down on the path.
“What’s happened? Severne asked. The hellhound was finally fully formed. But he stood as if uncertain where to place his paws or if they would respond if he told them to move. “Where is she? Take me there,” he ordered. There was no doubt Katherine was in danger. Otherwise, Grim would never have left her side.
He’d been running away from her, trusting that the hellhound could keep her safe. Now that Grim had come to find him, he knew he should have stayed with her. He’d kept his distance from her for too long. And now it might be too late.
The hellhound couldn’t tell him what was wrong. All he could do was lead the way. Severne ran. For the first time he ran to his heart instead of away from it. Unfortunately, the discombobulated beast didn’t lead him to Katherine. Grim led him to Sybil.
They came into the hallway outside Sybil’s sewing room with an atmospheric pop. Sulfuric stink wafted around in place of the usual Brimstone burn. Severne stumbled as his nose protested, and Grim whined an apology.
What had happened to make the usually reliable hellhound so clumsy?
The door to Sybil’s sewing room was open. She was inside. Her fingers flew as she busily picked at the seams of a pile of white fabric on her workbench.
“Sybil, what’s wrong?” Severne asked. He’d run so hard even he was slightly breathless. His lungs sucked air as he watched her continue her work. She didn’t even look up as Grim flopped down on the floor at his feet, spent.
“She said she would bring me Michael. I couldn’t take him when he was born because I’d promised to help Victoria deliver him safely. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know until she named him. I had to come up with another way to help you. Too many promises. Being an older daemon carries such a burden of promises. I’m sorry about the hound, too. I had to send him away. Forcefully.” And still she didn’t look up as her fingers continued to work.
Severne’s lungs stopped. He had to fo
rce himself to take the next breath. If he could, he would have abstained. Because now he knew he might as well be dead already.
“Michael is Victoria’s baby?” he asked. He’d lived a very long time. His life’s purpose had never changed. Fulfill the contract. Save his father. Send all the daemons back to hell.
“She promised. Bargains can’t be broken. You know there’s always a price. She shook my hand,” Sybil said. She continued to pop the seams of the garment she worked on with steady, practiced fingers.
“What have you done?” Severne asked.
The woman he’d always seen as a maternal figure now seemed a threat to all he’d tried not to hold dear.
“I’m trying to fix it. I’m trying. I know it will hurt you, and I promised your father I would watch over you. There’s always a trick to every bargain. A trap. A release. I’m trying, but I might be too late,” Sybil said. Her fingers flew. Pop. Pop. Pop. Perfect stitches in luxurious white fabric of a myriad of shades—white to ivory. And a sparkle. There. Beside a crumple of tulle.
Severne fisted his hands as Sybil stood. The beautiful ball gown Kat had worn to the masquerade was unmade. Thousands of pieces fluttered to the ground as Sybil moved. Tulle floated softly. Crystal beads fell like frozen rain.
“It might be too late,” Sybil said. “She owes me less now. That might save her life.”
“Grim,” Severne shouted. If he couldn’t save her, he would hold her where she fell, and then he would burn there, too. He wouldn’t doom her nephew to the walls. Not an innocent baby. His father had been innocent. He had been innocent. The sacrifice of innocents had to stop. He would end it now.
His promise to Kat would be that. He hoped he would reach her in time to pledge it.
* * *
The baby’s Brimstone call was faint. His tiny heart wasn’t full-grown. And the heat in his blood would be diluted by his mother’s mortality. She tried to feel Eric over Michael’s Brimstone, to hear the call of his Brimstone blood. But as they left the catacombs, there were other daemons in the main part of the opera house. Sybil. Possibly even Tess and others. The monk had said there were many daemons at the party. Severne had hidden them all from her affinity. He had completely filled her world.
Him she could feel.
As they hurried through the corridors of l’Opéra Severne, she could feel the man she loved all around, and she felt the impending loss of him, too, squeezing her daemon-marked heart.
As they climbed one of the spiral stairways up to the main hall’s level, Victoria suddenly stopped in front of her. Kat ran into her sister and then held onto her and the baby so none of them would fall. She urged her sister to step off the stairs.
“I smell smoke!” Victoria whispered urgently.
Her sister held Michael to her heart as if she could absorb the baby back into her body to protect him if she needed to.
Kat looked at Victoria and suddenly imagined her mother looking exactly the same. Fear was their legacy. She wanted to end that. To break the horrible chains that had held them to the Order for far too long.
“Kat, I definitely smell something burning,” Victoria insisted.
Kat breathed in the musty, dusty smell of the opera house. She coughed as an acrid smell joined the nostalgic smell of powder and makeup, rosin and dust. They had climbed two flights of spiral stairs. As they exited the second, they ran into a smoky hallway.
“L’Opéra Severne is on fire,” Victoria said.
“You have to get Michael out. I’ll look for Eric,” Katherine said.
Thick, rolling smoke came toward them, blocking the way. Katherine hesitated. She knew they had to get out of the building, but she couldn’t envision a way that was safe for the baby even with the Brimstone in his blood. If the building was on fire, they might be crushed by falling debris, and even Brimstone wouldn’t protect Michael from that.
As she frantically tried to think of the safest way to the nearest exit, Grim materialized out of the smoke. It clung to his fur as shadows always had, parting reluctantly, gray from black, until he was large and solid and impossible to pass in front of them.
“No, Grim, no! Don’t hurt them,” Kat ordered. The hellhound looked at her and then directed his full attention back to the baby in her sister’s arms. His prey? “Please. Please. Don’t,” Kat said.
He was a hellhound, but he was also a guardian and a provider of pathways. If any creature could get Victoria and Michael out of the burning opera house, it would be Grim.
“Grim, take them to safety. Save the baby. Save him,” she said.
She was no longer the timid cellist hiding behind her instrument. She was desperate. Smudged. Dirty. And determined.
* * *
Severne had never seen a mightier sight as he followed the hellhound into their path. And her strong heart might cease to beat at any time. In spite of what he understood about her past, he’d known her only as a ferocious protector and a woman brave enough to reach out to him through the fire of his damnation. Tonight she was even more amazing. With wild eyes and a mane of chestnut hair, she stood in front of a hellhound as if she would kill him with her bare hands if he threatened the baby her sister held. On top of that, she ordered the hound to protect the baby that he should have been prepared to attack.
He was almost sure in the seconds before he spoke that Grim would have obeyed this powerful woman. With her affinity for daemons that glowed like an aura of power around her, she was surrounded by Brimstone blood.
He didn’t wait to find out.
“Do it, Grim. Protect. No matter what happens. Understand? Michael is your master now. Lead him. Guard him and his mother from all harm,” Severne ordered.
He stepped from the smoke as he spoke, and he saw Katherine’s face. Her joy and despair at seeing him. Her understanding as his words penetrated her stressed haze.
“No,” Katherine said.
But the atmosphere had already stilled around them. Molecules of ash and dust that had swirled now hung suspended in midair.
“He will be your son’s champion, Victoria. Forever,” Severne said.
The bargain was sealed.
* * *
Severne’s gift was one only she and he could understand. Victoria might learn in time what the Brimstone-kissed master of l’Opéra Severne had given her baby. It was reparation. It was apology. It ripped his heart from his chest and sacrificed all for her family, for her.
His sacrifice sent her to her knees.
“Go. Now. I have to find Eric,” Kat shouted at her sister.
Victoria’s instinctive drive to protect her baby overcame her hesitation.
“I love you Katherine,” she said. Tears tracked down her face, already smudged by smoke. She was beautiful. She was a mother. And their mother would have been so proud.
“Love Michael. Love him and leave fear behind,” Kat said.
Grim helped. He suddenly pressed against Victoria’s legs, urging her to leave. Victoria shielded the baby’s face with a corner of his blanket before allowing the hellhound to force her away. She looked back once, and Kat tried to memorize her sister’s face before the smoke rolled closed, swallowing the vulnerable figure of mother and child. Grim looked back once, too. But he didn’t pause. The glance he spared for Severne held all the devotion he would now give to his new charge on Severne’s orders. Then he was gone.
Severne had come to her side and dropped down onto his knees to wrap her in his arms. She didn’t even know how she had gotten on the ground. She didn’t remember falling. But she would remember being held. She would remember this embrace after the fall.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I was afraid,” Kat said.
“No one has ever been bold enough to love me. I’m scarred. Hard. Damned,” Severne said, as if she needed to be reminded why she
should be afraid.
“I’m stronger than I look,” Katherine said.
But her heart disagreed. Its beats were stuttered, strange, wrong.
“And I’m more vulnerable than I seem,” Severne said.
“I know,” Kat said. She reached for Severne’s face as he leaned to kiss her. Smoke rolled, but it was Severne’s wood smoke lips she tasted.
“I will never harm Michael. Grim is my promise,” Severne said.
“I love you. I thought I couldn’t, but I do. You’re not like Reynard. You’ve been a hunter, but it was always for love. You tried to save your father,” Kat said.
“And now my father and I will burn. But not yet. First I’ll save you,” he said. “Since you saved me first, it’s the least I can do.”
He picked her up. Flames wouldn’t touch him with the Brimstone in his blood, but she was highly flammable. There was no way she would leave the opera alive. She would burn or her heart would stop when her bargain with Sybil was broken as the baby reached safety.
Either way, she would die in Severne’s arms.
Chapter 29
They didn’t have Grim to guide them. They had to press through fire and smoke. Debris fell before and behind, impeding their progress. Kat cried out several times as blasts of heat hit her face, but her cries were lost in the cacophony of destruction.
“We have to find Eric. We can’t abandon him,” Kat shouted. “I won’t leave without him.”
“You have to get out now. I’ll go back for him,” Severne insisted against her ear so that she could hear above the din.
He loosened his arms and let her slide down his body to find her feet. They were in the original corridor she had traversed when she’d first come to Severne. He had carried her far enough for her to make it out of the building alone. She nodded. She agreed. But when he no longer held her, she was suddenly bereft. It would be better to burn together than die apart.
Severne looked at her for as long as he dared before he leaned to touch his mouth to hers. It was a desperate press of their ash-coated lips, but she ignored the ash and the smoke. All that mattered was feeling the connection they shared, perhaps for the last time. She let him go when he pulled away. He ran back into the heart of the burning building to search for Eric before he was crushed beneath its collapse. She’d wanted the kiss to go on forever in case they had no chance for future kisses, but there was no time to call him back.
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