by Mia Marlowe
Meg gasped, wishing she could run to him but a distraction of any sort might be deadly, so she forced herself to remain rooted to the spot. But she prayed. She prayed the most excellent prayer she could and hoped to heaven it would be answered.
Samuel scrambled to his feet, but one arm dangled uselessly.
Numbed by that vicious kick at the least. Might be broken. Meg’s chest constricted smartly and she struggled to draw breath.
“First blood to you then, Naphil. Guess your race isn’t known as mighty hunters for nothing.” Grigori ran his human hand along his horsy chest. The ribbon of red dripped down his black coat like drizzled icing. “Perhaps, I’m going about this wrong. I’ve given you too large a target. Something smaller, I think.”
The centaur began to collapse in on itself, until there was only a small creature in its place. It was a rat. A common rodent with a sleek, dark body, sharp black eyes, and even sharper-looking yellow teeth.
“Careful, Samuel,” Meg called out. “It’s a trick.”
The rat wiggled its whiskers at her and then began to dart about as if unsure which way to go. Samuel lowered his knife and followed its movements, but didn’t seem to know what to do either. The contest was strangely lopsided, a man with a blade against a small naked rodent. Somehow, Meg knew all was not as it appeared.
“Strike!” she shouted.
“He’s not armed.” Samuel made the mistake of glancing toward her.
In that instant, Grigori bolted around him and leaped to the back of Samuel’s knee. He sank in his long incisors. Meg heard a pop as Samuel’s hamstring zinged, his thigh muscle convulsing in a bunch. The leg buckled under him. With a loud groan, he went down heavily on his good knee, letting the crippled leg jut unnaturally to the side. Samuel brought his blade down, but only managed to sever the long hairless tail from Grigori’s body. The rat scampered away, but the tail squirmed like a headless snake for a moment before it lay quiet.
“I say,” the rat said from a safe distance. “That was rude. I don’t like having my personal tail cut off. I’ve been insulted. It quite offends me.” His voice grew deeper and colder with each word. “And I won’t tolerate it any longer.”
As Grigori spoke, he Shifted, passing through various predators of the animal kingdom, changing from wolf to leopard to a Kodiak bear that stood ten feet tall on its hind legs, its razor claws slashing.
“No,” he said with a growl in his voice. “Even this won’t do.”
He continued Shifting, spitting light in flashes until he finally arrived at his final form. With a glimmer of green scales and a click of claws, Grigori had gone dragon.
“God help us,” Meg whispered.
Grigori’s eyes burned red as he looked down at his crippled opponent, but he seemed in no hurry to continue the fight. Smoke drifted from his nostrils in grayish-green puffs with each long breath. He reached over and picked up the rat’s tail, letting it dangle from his long-taloned claws.
“Not much to look at as tails go, is it?” he admitted. Then he reached around and affixed it to his dragonish bum, where it promptly grew into a long snaky appendage, covered with glittering scales and barbed at the end with horny spikes.
“Now that, my son, is a tail.” Grigoi thrashed it about with relish. “Want a closer look?”
He whipped it around and smacked Samuel with it, clipping him with the barbed end. Samuel toppled over, blood pouring from a wound that gaped on his forehead, but he struggled back to one knee, slicing with his knife in a counterstroke. His blade clattered harmlessly along the dragon’s scales.
“You are trying my patience, Naphil. No more love pats.” Grigori swung his tale back and connected with Samuel in a ringing blow that knocked him to the ground.
Meg clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her cry. This time, he didn’t get back up. He was either knocked unconscious or…
“Too easy.” Grigori tipped back his dragonish head and blew a string of self-congratulatory smoke rings into the air. Then he inhaled noisily and loosed a stream of fire after the smoke rings. The blast was like a flame thrower, the acrid stench like a whiff of hell. “And now, for the coup de grace.”
He stood straighter and sucked in a deep breath.
“No!” Meg bolted to Samuel. She fell upon him and tried to cover his body with hers. Realizing the futility of that, she cradled his bleeding head in her lap. She found a thready pulse under his jaw.
Just unconscious, then. She sighed with relief.
The way his leg stuck out at such an unnatural angle, she suspected he couldn’t walk, though. His shoulder was already darkening with a deep bruise. She dabbed at the open cut on his forehead with the hem of her wrapper. Though the wound still bled profusely, Meg could see that the cut was shallow, stopped by the hard white bone of his skull. He’d have the “mother of all headaches” when he woke.
If he woke. She leaned over him and pressed her lips to his in a soft kiss.
“Why did you defend me?” she whispered. “You stupid, stupid man.”
“Naphil,” Samuel corrected. He eased his eyes open, grimacing in pain. “But I won’t disagree with the stupid part.”
He pushed himself into a sitting position and ran a hand down his ruined thigh, wincing in agony.
“Hush,” she said, arranging herself on her knees behind him so he could lean back against her. She looked up at Grigori, who was glaring down at them. “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t kill him. Please.”
“No,” Samuel said through clenched teeth. “Meg, don’t.”
“If you die, I die,” she said.
“And if you give yourself to him, I’m dead already.” Samuel’s gray eyes warmed to the color of burnished pewter. “You’re my life, Meg. My only love.”
“Then we die together.” She looked back up at his father. “Do your worst. Destroy us if you must, but you cannot separate us.”
“Two in one blow.” Grigori bobbed his horny head. “Don’t mind if I do.” He sucked in another breath.
Oh, God! This is it.
They were going to be incinerated. She buried her face in the juncture of Samuel’s neck and strong shoulder. Regret crushed her. She wouldn’t live out her days with the man she loved. They’d never make a home together. They wouldn’t grow old, hand in hand, until one of them laid the other in the arms of God. Squeezing her eyes shut, Meg held her breath, waiting for the hot blast.
It didn’t come.
She peeked up and saw Grigori still poised to destroy them, but he was strangely motionless. His dragonish eyes glittered dangerously. Then great drops of steaming liquid fell from them. Suddenly, he shrank back down into his human form, and collapsed to his knees. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His shoulders shook.
“I’d have died with her too, you know. Atara, I mean,” Grigori said between sobs. “If I could have.”
“Then you know what love is,” Samuel said quietly.
Grigori nodded. “I haven’t seen it in millennia, but it’s hard to mistake. None of my other sons loved their wives so much that they’d die for them. And their wives were more excited about being Lady Badewyn than being married. But you two have the love I can never have again.”
“There are different kinds of love,” Meg said. “The love of family. Of friends.” If he stopped being so hateful and controlling to those around him, even Grigori wasn’t beyond that brand of affection.
“But not the all-consuming love that binds two together so tightly they become one.” Grigori wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. “Atara is gone. I’ll never have that again.”
“She lives on in you, Grigori,” Meg said. “You carry her spirit with you.”
He hung his head. “If that’s the case, she’d be ashamed of me over this night’s work.”
“I don’t think so. Not completely,” Samuel said. “After all, you spared us.”
He smiled sadly. “She’d have wanted me to. That’s the only evidence that what you say is true, that she’s still
with me. If I had the grace to stop, it’s because something of her still lives.” Grigori rose, walked over to Samuel, and bent down to touch his knee. Immediately, Samuel was able to move the damaged leg. “She’d have wanted me to do that, too.”
“You have been very alone for a long time. I see that now.” Samuel stood and extended a hand to his father. “I haven’t been the son you wanted.”
“No, but you’ve been the one I needed,” Grigori said. “The only one who could help me break the Grand Cycle.”
Samuel pulled Meg close and she slipped her arms around his waist. “Then you will not meddle with Meg once we’re married?”
Grigori shook his head. “None of my other sons loved the women they wed as you love her. Love like that is too rare, too…holy. I may be hell-bound, but I’ll not interfere with that.” He turned away.
“Where are you going?” Meg asked.
“Nowhere. Anywhere. Some place where I can figure out what to do with my alone-ness.”
“You don’t need to be alone,” Samuel said. “If you are willing, there is a group of people who may welcome you. Come with us to the Duke of Camden’s house. Meg is already a member of the Order of the M.U.S.E. With any luck, they’ll accept a Nephilim and his father as well.”
“I am a monster. No one knows that better than you, son.” Grigori stopped and without turning back to face them asked, “Why? Why do you care what happens to me?”
“We are all monsters, one way or another,” Samuel said. “Derelicts and misfits abroad in the world, trying to find our home. There isn’t a soul on earth that doesn’t have dark places in need of restoration. Love does that.” He looked down at Meg. She smiled up at him, in encouragement. She’d convinced him he had a soul. It shone in his eyes. “We are your family, Grigori. We care because that’s what families do.”
Meg didn’t have much experience with her real family, but the Order had filled that gap. They’d accepted her despite her lowborn status, despite the fact that she’d been a common thief. No one really deserved love, but everyone needed it. Even fallen ones. Or maybe especially fallen ones.
“If you let us, Grigori,” Meg offered, “we’ll learn to love you, too.”
She didn’t know how he’d react. After all, he’d been set to immolate them both. He seemed not to have heard her at first. Grigori’s chin tipped up and he gazed steadfastly at the heavens. After about half a minute, he turned around. Tears fell unabated down his cheeks. “I never thought to hear it again.”
Meg looked up. The stars were brittle pinpricks in the black vault of the sky, but she heard nothing but the breeze in the treetops. “Hear what?”
“The music of heaven,” Grigori said. “‘The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.’ I may be cast out, but I am not forgotten. Love does that.”
Samuel hugged Meg tighter. “That and so much more.”
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
~John Milton, from Paradise Lost
Chapter Twenty-two
One month later
“Hurry it up, why don’t ya?” Rowney hissed. It was a moonless night, but there was no cover for them as he and Oswald stood knee-deep in the Duke of Camden’s garden fountain. Should any of His Grace’s servants peer out a window they might be discovered before they had even accomplished anything criminal. “If we can’t make it into Camden House this way, we may have to give up and start hoofing it to Wales. Either that or wait for Meggie to come back to London on her own.”
“Keep your britches on. I’m working as fast as I can.” Oswald bent to unscrew the bolts that held the thick glass to the bottom of the fountain. As it turned out, not all of the duke’s servants were as discreet as he might like. After exhausting all the usual points of entry for a burglary and finding them inaccessible, Oswald had wormed the information about this secret entrance to the house from a gullible scullery maid. Apparently, there was a shaft that ran from the submerged window in the fountain down to His Grace’s souterrain. It was meant as a way to provide natural light to the basement, but the man-sized shaft would also make an unexpected point of entry for a pair of determined burglars.
“There, now,” Oswald said. “The glass is loose. Once the water’s drained, we’ll have no trouble lifting it.”
The duke would have a damp cellar since all the water gushed down the sloping passage. “Should make sliding down it all the easier,” Rowney said. A wet ride down the slope was a small price to pay for entry into such a rich storehouse of goods.
As soon as the last bit of water was gone, Oswald worked the bolts completely free and lifted the thick glass from its cement casement.
“After you, nephew.”
The younger man didn’t have to be told twice. He wiggled into the shaft and disappeared from sight. Rowney could hardly wait to see what treasures someone like the Duke of Camden might have squirreled away in his souterrain. No doubt there would be more than a few bottles of wine he and Oswald could liberate. The Duke of Camden was wealthy beyond reason. Rowney figured a wall safe wasn’t near enough space to house His Grace’s stash of coin and jewels. Such fine stuff was easily portable and Rowney had a fence in a sketchy part of town who would ask no questions.
Rowney tapped his toe with impatience as he waited to follow his nephew down. He’d enter the shaft once Oswald had a head start so they wouldn’t get jammed up, but he wouldn’t emulate him completely. The younger man had slithered head first into the damp opening.
“Bollocks to that!” Rowney was still the brains of the outfit. He started down after his nephew feet first. He’d only slid about ten feet when he heard the first scream. It was horrible. And it was Oswald making the ungodly sound.
Rowney dug his fingers into the moss-furred walls of the narrow space. He tried to catch a heel on one of the mortar joints, but the soles of his boots were so worn, he could gain no purchase. There was a time, and not so long ago, that he’d have been unable to even fit into this shaft, but his stomach had been empty more often than not of late. Now he could bend his neck and see over his flat belly.
There was light below—a ghastly, yellowish light.
The screams didn’t sound like Oswald any more. It was like a cat being turned inside out. Still, Rowney was sure his nephew was the one making the noise. His heart threatened to pound out of his chest. He tried bending his knees to wedge himself in place, but he kept sliding downward, inch by unavoidable inch.
It was no use. He couldn’t stop his descent to whatever evil befell his nephew. And just when he couldn’t imagine anything worse, the screams stopped.
“I discovered them when I brought down Mr. Pascal’s breakfast tray,” Mr. Bernard said. “As you can see, Your Grace, the miscreants are still here.”
“But not quite unscathed, are they?” Camden peered through the iron bars that held the time thief prisoner. Andre-Simon Pascal was seated at the harpsichord Camden had provided for him, playing a Mozart sonata as if nothing untoward had happened.
Some months earlier, Pascal had sacrificed his youth to give back time he’d stolen from Lady Stanstead, a member of Camden’s Order of the M.U.S.E. Now the time thief no longer had the appearance of a man approaching middle age. The silver was gone from his hair. His frame was trimmer. Only his hands were unchanged. They were as supple and talented as ever. Pascal finished the last cadenza with a flourish and then turned on the swivel seat to face Camden.
“Ah! Your Grace,” he said with evident pleasure. “It is some time since we last played a game of chess. I have missed you.”
“I have been unavoidably away from London.” Camden gave him a quick bow from the neck. Just because he was holding the dangerous entity captive didn’t mean he couldn’t be civil to him. “My apologies. I trust your needs have not gone unmet in my absence.”
“Not at all.” Pascal tugged on his trademark pair of scarlet gloves and flexed his fingers. “Thes
e two have given me a bit of diversion you never could.”
Camden glanced at the would-be thieves, who cowered in the corner of Pascal’s cell. Both men were balding and frail-looking. He’d supposed Miss Anthony’s Cousin Oswald to be much nearer her age than her uncle’s. “Which of you is Rowney Jackson?”
“That’d be me.” The younger looking of the pair hauled himself to his feet and tottered to the cell bars. He lowered his voice to a frantic whisper. “Get us out of here, Your Grace. Throw us into Newgate. Have us transported. Do what you will. God knows, we deserve it, but nobody deserves this. For Christ’s pity, don’t leave us here with…that.” The man shot a terrified look at Pascal and crossed himself.
Pascal laughed, but sobered quickly when Camden shot him a warning glance.
“What happened to them was their own fault,” Pascal said. “They came down the skylight shaft as I slept and that one”—he pointed to Oswald—“attacked me. I merely defended myself. I cannot be held to account if my touch took a couple of years from him.”
“A couple of decades, it would appear.” Twenty or thirty years at the least, perhaps more, Camden estimated. Pascal was a boyishly handsome man again. He’d look completely at home sitting for any class at Oxford or Cambridge.
“I did not lay a hand on the other fellow,” the time thief said. “If he appears older, it is from shock only.”
“May one point out to Your Grace that Mr. Pascal did not, in fact, initiate this encounter?” Bernard said. “He did not continue to siphon the life away from these two common brigands when he might have easily done so. And he was actually defending Your Grace’s home, and perhaps your very life, by intercepting the invaders and detaining them here.”
Pascal rewarded the steward with a toothy grin.
“Perfectly true,” Camden said. “It seems I owe you a debt of thanks, Pascal. Will you allow us to take charge of Mr. Jackson and his nephew, at this time?”
