Marley sighed and paced. “That sounds like Persephone. Stubborn to the core, and absolutely right to do so.”
“We lived in a cottage on the edge of the town of Falstone, alone. There was no one else to tend her except me once she came down with consumption. And when she died, we buried her in Northumberland. And I went to London on my own. When I came to the address she’d given me for my grandfather’s grand house, I knocked on the front door, and the butler informed me that the duke didn’t have a granddaughter and slammed the door in my face. I roamed the streets, living off what I could until I picked Le Renaud’s pocket. She took me on her ship.”
Marley thumped his fist against the side of his leg, clearly unsure of what to do. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to stay with me then,” he said, his tone sheepish. “If you wish to,” he added.
Octavia ran at him, practically bowling Marley over in a bear hug about the neck. “Thank you! Thank you! That’s all I’ve ever wanted since mother passed away.”
Marley gingerly wrapped his arms about the girl, as if she were fragile glass. Maybe it was because he felt so fragile in this situation.
“I think we ought to leave these two alone to get better acquainted before we go into battle tomorrow,” Remington suggested. Winn and Colt nodded in agreement. Family was sometimes all a man had. And to discover that he wasn’t all alone in the world had to be a big jolt for Marley.
Glancing at his two brothers, one on either side of him as they walked toward Marley’s house, Remington realized how important the bond he and his brothers shared really was. It had sustained them when their parents had died. It had given them a shared mission that had brought them back together when times were toughest. And in the end it would be all three of them who had to sacrifice to close the Gates of Nyx.
Remington wasn’t sure he wanted to tell them that part yet. Tomorrow would come soon enough.
Chapter 23
China couldn’t wait to get out of Rathe’s personal domain. The moment she could, she’d focused on Remington and the ethereal thread that connected them so she could locate him and transport herself there.
Her body reformed from the dark particles of transport on a desert bluff at mid-afternoon. The welcome familiar scent of creosote and desert sage tinged the air, and the sun beat down on her hair and shoulders, warming the chill that had seemed to seep into her bones while she’d been in Rathe’s presence.
She peered at the strange house with hooks and telescopes and mechanical arms that stuck out of the roof every which way, and the even stranger galleon airship docked nearby. She shook her head and smiled to herself. “You gotta give them credit for bein’ a different sort of family.” But it was the difference that appealed to her; it was what made Remington special.
With caution she approached the door. If Remington’s stories about Marley were right, the inventor had Darkin detectors galore around his place.
As if on cue, a siren began to blare, and a panel in the roofline slid open. Out of it rose an enormous gun that looked like the big brother of the Blaster. The hum and buzz of it powering up to full strength shook the ground. Didn’t Marley realize if he shot the thing he’d likely collapse the entire hillside and start a landslide that would wipe out the town in the valley below? A female mechanical voice began a countdown. “Ten. Nine.”
The door opened, and Remington came strolling out and swept her up into his arms, swinging her around. “You made it! I’m so glad to see you.”
“Eight.”
“I, yes, um, Remington, the cannon?” She nervously glanced up and pointed at the Tesla cannon now aimed at both of them, the barrel throbbing with blue light.
“Seven.”
“Marley! Your cannon is about to fire,” he yelled.
“Six. Five.”
In the doorway appeared a wiry man a bit shorter than Remington, with a stained leather apron over his work clothes and snow-white hair that didn’t match his dark brows or the youth of his face.
“Well of course it is; she’s bloody well Darkin, isn’t she?”
“Four. Three.”
Remington set her down, firmly wrapping his arm around her waist. “She’s also on our side.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
“Two.”
“Yes!”
“Fine.” Marley pushed a button by the door, turned on his heel, and walked back into his house, leaving the door ajar behind him. Remington shook his head, and his warm gaze connected with hers. “Trust me he’ll warm up to you once he gets to know you.”
“That’s not what Colt said.”
“Colt likes to think he knows everything.”
China raised a brow. “And you don’t?”
His eyes sparked with mischief. “Ah, but that’s the difference. You see, as soon as you tell me about the Gates of Nyx, I will know everything.” He brushed a kiss on her forehead, and her heart sped up in response. Just having him touch her made breathing easier again. “Have I told you how glad I am to see you?”
She gave him a smile that came straight from her heart. “You might have mentioned it.”
He laughed as they walked together into Marley’s house. “Welcome to the strangest home on Earth.”
Inside, Marley’s house was packed to the gills. Bits of his tinkering and experimenting lay piled up and stacked on nearly every surface, leaving a trail between teetering stacks from one room to another. “I thought you said this was a home. It looks more like a laboratory exploded everywhere.”
Remington gave her an affectionate squeeze. “The man’s work has been his life until now.” He steered her into the kitchen. There, sitting around a great oak worktable on bar stools, were Colt, Winchester, and Marley. With three big men in the kitchen, plus her and Marley, it was a cramped space.
Colt pulled at the brim of his hat. “China. Good to see you in one piece.”
China snorted. “You’re just saying that ’cause I brought your brother back in one piece.”
He grinned. “True.”
Remington glared at his little brother. “We’ve got more important things to discuss. Did you get anything out of Rathe?”
China gazed at the Hunter who held her heart. She wished she had better news; she really did. But she offered him everything she could. “He said the location of the Gates changes daily at sunset.”
Remington cursed and slammed his fist down on the table, making Marley’s instruments jump. “Then how are we supposed to locate the damn thing?”
“The Book of Jezriel,” China and Marley said in chorus. They looked at each other, surprised to have such knowledge in common.
Marley pointed at her. “You know about the Book of Jezriel?”
China shrugged. “Rathe said his once brother archangel had written down how to find the Gates. I guess he’s like some anti-Rathe.”
Remington noticed Marley’s fingers close around the small iron key Octavia had given him. “You’ll all excuse me for a moment.” He hurried out of the kitchen, leaving them to stare across the worktable at one another.
Winchester locked gazes with him. “What do you make of that?”
“I think Marley’s a bigger piece of this than we realized.” He glanced at China. “You’re absolutely certain that’s what Rathe said?”
She nodded. “Where are the other Darkin?”
“Tessa and Lilly are aboard the airship, pulling together weapons and preparing for us to travel to the Gates, once we know where they are.”
There was a great crash. They all ran. Marley was sitting on the floor. From the look of the chaos surrounding him, he’d knocked over a stack of boxes, which had toppled an array of cogs and gears into a selection of brass tubes and metal plates, sending all of it scattering like dominoes.
Remington offered Marley a hand up from the floor. “Marley, you need a housekeeper.”
“Not a chance. I’d never be able to find anything, old chap. Did I ever tell you I was always the neat one in the family,
until I lost Sephie?” Marley shook his head and frowned at the toppled boxes. “What the devil were those boxes doing there?”
Octavia’s face peered around the edge of a doorway in Marley’s hallway. She bit her bottom lip, her blue eyes big and worried. “I’m sorry. I was trying to get to the power coils you had on the shelf,” she said softly. “I didn’t put the boxes back in place.”
Marley twisted and looked at her with affection. “Not to worry. It’s precisely what I would have done. Octavia, can you join us for a moment?”
He carried the locked, battered metal box to the table and laid it down. Thump. Octavia followed on his heels. The girl was wrapped in a work apron several sizes too large for her.
Marley glanced at her. “Did you ever see your mother unlock the Book of Jezriel?”
Her eyes darted between Marley and all the rest assembled there, and she shifted uncertainly on her feet.... “Are you sure—”
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “If it is to be of any use in saving the world, this is the time.” He pulled the chain with the key she’d given him off his neck and handed it to Octavia.
She inserted the key into a keyhole in the box and twisted it twice to the right, then pushed a button cleverly hidden in the etched design of the box, and turned the key once counterclockwise. A series of metallic clicks sounded. Snick. The lid unlatched.
Marley didn’t make a move to lift the lid. He glanced at them, each in turn. “Persephone was the keeper of the Book of Jezriel. Maybe the Hunters have had the knowledge of how to close the Gates far longer than they realized, but were waiting for the Chosen to do it.”
“That’s a damn sorry-ass excuse for not saving the world,” Colt muttered.
Remington pinned his little brother with a look. Colt could be flippant because he didn’t know that putting the Book of Legend back together required their blood sacrifice.
Winn leaned in closer. “So this will tell us how to reunite the Book of Legend and how to find the Gates of Nyx?”
Marley nodded.
They all held their collective breath as he lifted the lid of the box and pulled out the fragile pages. The book was like nothing Remington had ever seen. Instead of being written on paper, it was written on thin metallic sheets of gold, held together by rings.
“I can see why they boxed it up,” Winchester said softly. “That’s not something you just let lie around without people taking notice.”
Marley carefully flipped the pages and frowned. “I can’t read this. It’s in some sort of code.”
Remington groaned.
“What about Balmora? Could she decode it?” Colt suggested.
Everyone turned and looked at him. “What? It’s a good idea, ain’t it?”
Marley clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s bloody brilliant.” He turned to Octavia. “Can you transcribe these pages onto paper for me?”
She beamed. “Of course I can.” She dashed out of the room and brought back parchment and a fountain pen and sat down at the table.
Colt stretched. “Well, looks like all we can do for a bit is wait it out.”
Remington frowned. “How long do you think this will take, Marley?”
Marley’s brows drew together over the rims of his glasses. “Once we have the transcription, I should be able to feed it into Balmora’s decoding apparatus, and given the complexity of the coding, and the initial scan of—”
“How long, Marley?” Remington persisted, cutting off Marley’s long-winded explanation.
“A few hours.”
China sat on a tiny corner of a dusty settee in what must have been Marley’s parlor before it had been taken over by his collection of experimental materials and books. There wasn’t room in the kitchen with all the men, and she wasn’t about to go make friends with the other Darkin ladies, so she’d left about the time Marley had gone to retrieve the Book of Jezriel.
While she’d been curious, she didn’t doubt that her contributions at this point would be minimal. Better to give them space to do what they needed to. Despite what Remington had said while they’d been in the caverns below the temple, they were the Chosen. And they certainly didn’t need her to finish the job they were destined to do.
Colt ambled out of the kitchen, stretching his long, lean body, arms over his head. He navigated the paths between the piles and stacks toward her. An uncomfortable embarrassment slid through her gut as he approached.
She’d pursued him so hard; it was ridiculous when she thought of it now. He stopped in front of her and crouched down, bringing them face-to-face.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked.
She gave him a weak smile. “Goin’ to Rathe didn’t help us much.”
He grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. The zip she had once felt when he touched her was no longer there. It felt more . . . brotherly.
“Now don’t go talkin’ like that. It helped. You got Remington to Diego and, by the looks of things, a whole lot more. But I’ve been meanin’ to talk to you since the airship took off in Tombstone.” He glanced sideways as if trying to figure out how best to phrase his words. “You and me, we weren’t right for each other.”
China just stared at him. She knew that. Now. What she’d had with Colt had been only an illusion of intimacy and a relationship. A kid playing at being in love. But with Remington it was different. It reached soul deep and resonated within every cell in her being. She would do anything, be anything, to keep him alive and well. It wasn’t a competition; it was a joining of forces, and it made them both stronger than they were apart.
“I know,” she said simply without explanation. How could she tell him all that had passed between her and Remington? How she loved his brother. China realized with a start that it was the truth of it.
She loved Remington. And perhaps for the first time she felt loved in return, regardless of whether he had actually said it.
His eyes widened a bit with surprise. “Okay. Good. That’s real good.” He lifted a brow. “You’re in love with my brother, ain’t you?”
She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her lips. “There’s just somethin’ about you Jackson boys.”
Colt chuckled. He lifted a hand as if taking an oath. “I tried to warn him about you, I swear.”
Remington found China talking to Colt. But unlike before, when there was a snap to the air, this was easy, light. Old friends. He hadn’t realized his stomach had hardened into a Gordian knot until it released.
“We’re getting ready to try the code in Balmora.”
Puffs of dust wafted into the air as China rose from the couch. She coughed and waved her hand about to dispel the dust. “I hope Balmora is better kept than Marley’s house.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that none,” Colt said. “He kinda fancies Balmora.”
China shifted her gaze to Remington, questioning him with her eyes. He lifted his hand. “You’ll see. She’s really quite marvelous as far as inventions go.”
Remington slipped a hand around China’s waist as they followed Colt through the stacks and down a hallway to a back room guarded by a bank vault door. China paused for a moment to look at the door. “That’s some pretty heavy hardware to protect an invention.”
“You haven’t seen Balmora yet.” For that matter neither had he. He’d only heard over-flowery descriptions from Marley as he’d worked on the machine.
Besides the glass-fronted bookcases that lined the walls, this was the most vacant room of Marley’s home. In the center sat something large beneath the covering of a pristine white sheet.
Marley whipped the sheet away to reveal a mechanical woman who sat at an elegant polished cherrywood table. China gasped.
“She’s beautiful,” she murmured.
And she was right. Marley had outdone himself. Balmora was more art than machine. Flawlessly smooth silver skin formed a set of aristocratic features looking eerily similar to those of Miss Octavia, even down to the wide blue glass eyes. Her fat copper c
urls were held in an elaborate cog and jewel clasp. And while she was dressed in the fashion from twenty years ago, it was refined, made of polished brass, right down to the elegant edging of detailed brass lace. Set into her chest sat a red, heart-shaped jewel that began to glow once Marley had set the clockwork in motion by turning the large key behind Balmora’s chair.
Her head lifted, and she blinked.
Marley came around from the back and clasped the papers in his hand. “Good day, Miss Balmora.”
She turned to him in recognition. Over the sound of gears and clockwork clicking, they heard a tinny but musical female voice. “Good day, sir.”
“We have a puzzle for you in code. Can you please translate? American English, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Marley fed the papers one by one into the narrow slot on the top of the cherrywood table. The gears and clockwork whirred, and everyone held his or her breath.
“She’s amazing,” Octavia said, her voice full of admiration, her eyes fever bright. “And she looks so very like Mother.”
A slight mist clouded Marley’s eyes, making Remington’s chest ache for him. Clearly Marley had created Balmora after his memory of his lost love. It was a bittersweet thing.
Balmora cocked her head to the side and blinked as if listening intently to something. “It is not in code, sir, but another language. Language: unknown. Shall I continue to translate?”
“Yes, please.”
“The sooner the better,” Colt muttered under his breath.
China shushed him with a finger to her lips. Remington tried not to smile.
There was the clacking sound of typewriter keys flying over paper. It fed up through the slot in the table into Balmora’s metallic hands. “Shall I read the first page, sir?”
The Chosen Page 27
