by Thea Devine
Nothing he'd done, nothing he'd discovered, would change any of it.
And Alice's story might have no effect at all on the public perception of Tony Venable.
And everything else had just been a distraction.
Even your marriage to Angilee?
Oh, God—he moved restively, kicking the tuxedo onto the floor as he set the brandy snifter down on the table beside the bed—don't even add that into the morass. Keep it apart, keep it pure in spite of how it all started. Keep it sacred ...
Don't think about it.
He picked up the tux. What was it but a symbol of the unadulterated luxury-loving, pleasure-bent life of the sybarite. Better in Lujan's room than his.
He padded down the hallway and then paused at the door. This would be the first time he'd entered this room since he'd left London. Since Jancie and Lujan had spent time there after the deaths of their fathers.
But he wasn't going to think that way.
After all, the maids cleaned and aired every room at least once a week. Everything would be tucked and tidied, and there wouldn't be any trace of anything in that room.
Not a scent, not a breath of anything of Jancie in that room. He turned up the gas lamp just inside the door. No, nothing in that room that spoke of Jancie or Lujan at all. It was perfectly neat, perfectly decorated, perfectly bland. It was as if strangers lived there.
So he'd just put the suit in the dressing room and have done with it. There was a lamp in there as well, and he turned that up to reveal something that surprised him: an unusually full closet.
Holy saints, Lujan had a damn lot of clothing in Town. How the hell often had he come to London anyway in the two years he
had been gone?
It looked like every week, by the number of suits and shirts that were crowded in there. It looked like his whole wardrobe. It looked like another life hanging there. He pushed aside a dressing gown to make room for the tux ... and pulled back. The material of the gown felt too coarse to be a garment someone would wear naked after a bath. It felt too coarse to be something Lujan would own. Curious. He took out the gown and held it up to the light. And froze. It wasn't a dressing gown by any means. And it was the last thing he expected to see: it was a hooded robe, and it looked just like the ones worn by the brethren of the Sacred Seven.
No.
Just—no. ... SHIT ...
He lay awake all night. Was every damn fucking body in the whole of London involved with the Sacred Seven?
He had to see Wyland. It was imperative he see Wyland and
then talk to Lujan. This just wasn't possible, Lujan had reformed, Lujan had changed, Lujan loved Jancie, he loved his child. He loved his new life, and he had put all of his past behind him ...
He bad—
... had—a roomful of clothes in Town. Still coming to Town often, by the evidence. Had led the most hedonistic, indulgent, carnal and dissolute life imaginable for all those years he'd lived in London. He'd practically lived at the Bullhead, fucked every whore in the city five times over and every willing woman in the country besides; and hadn't given a shit about anything before he fell in love with Jancie ...
And maybe he didn't give a shit about anything now.
What else could it mean, this robe among his clothing?
And who had brought him to Wyland to begin with?
Hellfire and shit... goddamn it to ... he felt as if everything he'd ever known had melted into a thick viscous wax. All he had to do was just pick it up and reshape it any way he wanted, because that could just as well be the way things really were as the way he thought they were.
He didn't know anything anymore. He was sliding down that rabbit hole again.
He had to see Wyland. This was crazy. This was what he got for poking around where he shouldn't, and he should have learned that lesson a long time ago after trying fruitlessly to pin down something corrupting in Tony Venable's life.
He'd learned nothing; he'd learned that malevolence lived beyond the grave, that there was no way to suppress it and that it had a self-sustaining life of its own.
A mobility of its own. And no one could stop it.
Especially not him.
He was out the door by nine o'clock on his way to Wyland's office. He walked into a crisp, clean, clear and sunny morning, the kind of morning that burned off any form of oppressive fog and made you happy to be alive.
He wasn't happy. He didn't like what he was thinking. He didn't like the idea that somehow Lujan was involved in all this.
Lujan ivas not involved.
Hellfire.
None of this made sense. Not from the beginning.
He had naively thought he was so close to the end.
And then—son of a bitch—Wyland was in a meeting.
"I'll wait," he told the secretary tersely.
But it was a long, aggravating hour before Wyland appeared and summoned him into his office.
"Sit." Wyland motioned him to a chair. "Tell me what further you've discovered."
Everything normal, everything the same. Wyland's kind and encouraging expression. His fatherly manner. His faith, his hope that Kyger had finally found the one thing that would subvert the cult of Tony Venable. He believed Kyger could do it, he wanted him to do it, he was waiting for him to do it.
And Kyger didn't want to disappoint him.
"I found the woman," Kyger said flatly.
Wyland looked pleased. "Did you?"
"Or rather, I found a woman. And I found there isn't anything tangible to attach to Tony Venable. Except for one thing."
"Which is—?"
"The promise these virgins commit to, which is in essence the list of Venable's precepts reconfigured to apply to their situation. Except I don't think my informant knows that."
"I'll be damned," Wyland said.
"I made her an offer."
"My dear boy..."
"It seemed like the only way; I didn't think she would have come here, so I arranged to meet her for lunch today after she consulted her tutors about my offer, and I want you to come. I want you to hear what she told me, and I want to know if it's enough to discredit Venable, because there's nothing else."
But there was, there was something else, but this seemed more important now, more urgent.
"What was it she told you?"
"The precepts, as applied to her training."
"That could be enough," Wyland said, steepling his hands. "Anything that would relate back to Venable ..."
"What about the body?"
Wyland shook his head. "It's the damndest thing . .. can't trace it worth a damn. Have fifty detectives on it, and no one can find a thing.
"But this now, that you've uncovered—the precepts ... yes, we can work with that—I can see the headline in the Tatler—an intimate peek into Venable's school of sin and scandal. .. it's perfect; it's just what we need. I do want to hear this woman's testimony ..."
Kyger got up from his chair. "Then I'll meet you at Claridge's at noon..."
"But first," Wyland said, as if he hadn't said a word, "I need to arrest you—for the murder of Tony Venable."
Chapter Twenty
He froze.
He sensed movement behind him. He heard Wyland say, "Come in, my dear. You, too. Come."
He couldn't move. Arrest you for Venable's murder—what the hell?
"Well, baby brother, you are in a fix ..."
Lujan??
He wheeled around. Lujan.
And Alice.
Alice???
Holy hellfire—
"Sit down, sit down," Wyland invited them, as if he were hosting a party. "That's it. You, too, Kyger."
He watched through narrowed eyes as Kyger sank slowly and disbelievingly back into his chair.
"This is the end game, my boy. I don't make any apologies— this was something that had to be done. The timing was fortuitous—it just happened you were the one who came on scene at exactly the right moment."
&nb
sp; "Let us say," Lujan put in, "that / was the one who saw his possibilities."
"As you wish," Wyland agreed with a note of weariness in his tone. "In any event, you're under arrest, Kyger Galliard, for the murder of Tony Venable. We successfully set up his downfall; we have his killer. We have the new candidate for his seat in Parliament. I think we're all set."
What? What? Kyger blasted out of his chair, and Lujan grabbed him.
"Hold it, baby brother. There's nowhere to go. Hackford and Billington are right outside the door."
This was Lujan holding him so tightly by his shirt; his big brother, his nemesis, his adversary, his foil. His—enemy? In perfect consensus over this mad idea to arrest him for Venable's murder?
Down the rabbit hole again.
"I should explain a few things," Lujan murmured. "Not that any explanation needs to be had, but—well, it is my brother. I do feel some compunction about setting him up this way."
"So kind," Kyger spat through gritted teeth. He sent a scathing look at Alice.
"I do like to think you really would have offered that amount for someone like me," she said sweetly. "But what you will give is infinitely more valuable."
"That is to say," Lujan interpolated, thrusting him back into his chair, "your life."
Jesus God. "You've always been one of them," Kyger growled.
"Always," Lujan said, as if he ought to have known. "Here's the thing, if I may be permitted to explain it—?" He looked at Wyland. Wyland shrugged. Kyger had the feeling Wyland always gave in to Lujan on the small matters.
But the big ones?
"This is what it's all about: it's about loyalty, about an elite class that helps and boosts each other, which includes freely giving money, jobs, promotions, help for whatever one of the brethren might need—and all of it guaranteed right to the top so that slowly and carefully, we position one of our brethren in every level of government, every industry, every business, in'every corner of Her Majesty's empire, until the brethren are in a position to take over and rule."
"The brethren is one organism," Wyland said, "with one mind, one heart, guided by the Sacred Seven and allegiance to their disciplines, and united in the desire to promote and promulgate the agenda of the brethren.
"And yet there were those among us who took it upon themselves to step outside the foundation of the brethren, who thought that they were above the rules and could disregard the disciplines. They sought to set new parameters for what's permissible and what would be supported."
"Venable," Kyger guessed, hard put to keep the irony out of his voice.
"Had to go," Wyland affirmed. "He was getting too powerful, too dangerous, too autocratic. We called the Sicarian—Lujan, our enforcer—it was taken care of. But he couldn't excise the cancer that was Tony Venable, or the deification of him.
"So we came up with the idea of finding an outside party, whom we would ultimately charge with Venable's murder, to rummage around in Venable's pristine life to dig up the dirt we already knew was there. Thus, Alice and Irene, specifically planted for you to find. It legitimizes the whole thing because a brethren would never be disloyal to another brethren. That's why we needed someone outside, someone wholly unconnected with us. Someone without a wife, a life, or a purpose."
"Someone," Lujan added silkily, "whom, as it happened, I needed to be gotten out of the way—permanently." He smiled be-atifically. "All those diamonds, you know. Am I not the sole legatee of my wife and my brother? I did enjoy watching you chase down all the clues until we decided the time was ripe to catch Tony Venable's murderer. That is to say, you, baby brother."
So the tiger they thought was tamed had never changed its stripes, Kyger thought bitterly. It was all about what it always had been about: the corrosive appetite for and pursuit of power and money with no conscience, no morality, no sanctions except their own.
"Someone who could stand trial, be convicted, and whom the adoring populace can see hang for Tony Venable's death."
"Someone disposable," Kyger spat.
Wyland looked vaguely sympathetic.
"I am really sorry you married Angilee Rosslyn, my boy. I was hoping you wouldn't, because you were chosen to be the sacrifice for the good of the brethren, and that is written in stone."
He really did look sorry. And then his expression changed, and his tone hardened. "It's time."
Lujan hoisted him up. "Let's go."
He reacted instantly, ramming his elbow into Lujan's gut, pushing Alice aside roughly with his injured hand, grabbing for the door and opening it to find ... Wroth.
"Well, well. Who have we here?" He pushed Kyger backward into Wyland's office, and Lujan grabbed his arms and wrenched them behind him.
"It's time to go," Wyland said.
"But we haven't delivered the coup de grace," Wroth said, pacing around Kyger and looking him up and down as if he were an insect. "Not only will you hang for Tony Venable's murder— although his followers might feel they want to take the law into their own hands—but your wife will pay the ultimate price as well. Yes, dear Angilee, who was to have been my wife. I'm beginning to think things have worked out very much for the best. She'll be much better off servicing one of our brethren with more patience than I have.
"We're taking very good care of her, } can assure you. We've initiated her into the sisterhood of the black rose."
He saw black, white, red. Blood. He felt turned inside out. He wanted to kill, maim, destroy—
They had Angilee ... shit shit shit—and he'd left her alone with Lujan—with Jancie ...
Oh, God, Jancie ... !!
He felt Lujan propelling him out the door, heard the door close, felt Hackford take his one arm, Billington the injured, good, loyal soldiers of the brethren that they were.
They hadn't taken five steps down the hallway when they heard a shot within the office.
"Done," Hackford murmured with a certain satisfaction in his voice.
... who—?
The door opened, and Kyger twisted around to see Lujan and
Wroth emerge.
"It's done," Wroth said coolly. "The Ancestor is dead." More shock. Wyland? The Ancestor? Dead? Kyger reacted—violently, viciously—pulling, twisting, kicking Hackford and Billington simultaneously, fruitlessly.
"Take him," Wroth said. "Sit on him if you have to. We have to end this now so we can take over."
Wroth in charge? And Lujan not making a move to stop him? "I'll make certain the papers get the details." Lujan. "Cooperate, baby brother. Things will go better. And don't forget Angilee .. . you do want things to go better for Angilee?"
His heart sank. Angilee—with the pigs, with the black rose, with the orgies . .. oh, God—he had to get away from these madmen.
"What about Jancie .. . ?" he growled.
Lujan made a face. "Always Jancie. You never quite got over Jancie, did you? She'll be fine. She won't know. Things will go on just as they always have ..."
Oh, God ... Kyger could see it in a flash—Lujan at Waybury, spending his time pretending to be the meticulous gentleman farmer, getting more babies on Jancie, and then .. . then—once a month, twice—into town, into sin and sex and ... ... everybody knows—
And Angilee ... whatever future they would have had—babies they would have had ... damn it, he'd wanted babies, if he could have convinced her to stay in the marriage—and now she'd be the submissive plaything of some jaded and merciless aristocrat—
Oh God, oh God, oh God . ..
He felt his whole life sliding down the rabbit hole into that netherworld of mirrors and fog. Always the fog. Always the
seven.
And now Wyland was dead. The one person he'd thought was
sane.. .
They were out of the office building now, and they had surrounded him, and Wroth had his pistol jammed right into the small of his back.
Wroth wouldn't miss, either. Wroth wanted him dead anyway because of Angilee. Wroth was a merciless, vengeful
man.
The sun burned his eyes, the bright happy sun of this horrible day.
He had to get away. "They love the cards," Wroth said.
"Worth the money," Lujan said. "Keeps it all alive in a very subtle way, doesn't it? I say it's a nice touch, even if I came up with the idea."
Lujan. Another shock. Had Wyland known? He couldn't have, he had seemed as mystified as anyone, but then—he'd known all along that Kyger was going to be the scapegoat—
God, what a betrayal. .. what an actor ... he felt that killing anger wash over him again ...
And Wyland had been the patriarch presiding over the orgy in Venable's apartment at the Bullhead .. .
Jesus—he couldn't believe it—what a bastard .. .
... this was so unreal, these meglomaniacal sons of bitches ...
Angilee...
He couldn't give up.
Angilee—
He had to stop them .. . but their tentacles were dug so deep into the fabric of society—how, how, how . .. ?
... nobody tells .. .
It would be a sensation if he could expose it, if he could prove it—
No—he had to stop Wroth, absolutely, because Wroth seemed to have taken over as Ancestor. Wroth seemed to have some kind of strategy in hand—none of this was random, not their abuse of him nor Venable's death, nor anything that had happened in conjunction with that...
.. . keeps it alive—
Lujan had said that. He himself had thought that so many times. They wouldn't let Venable die—and he'd thought it was the public, the people who loved him, and all the time it had been Wroth and the brethren keeping him alive ...
Alive until.. . no—not Wroth .. . oh, dear God, not Wroth.
But why not? It could have been anyone who firmly believed
in patriarchal socialism and had the backing, the wherewithal, and the charisma to step into Venable's shoes.
Once his murderer was put to rest, Tony Venable could be reborn—
