by Gaelen Foley
What the local peasants must’ve thought to see the cavalcade of aristocratic carriages pounding past the village, dispersing through the surrounding roads to return to their own country houses so long abandoned, she could not imagine.
But, no doubt, their confusion was nothing compared to what poor Raja must be feeling.
The leopard was confined in a cage tied down in the back of the wagon behind the coach in which she and Azrael rode.
Serena now knew why her betrothed had been so quiet and grim when he had come out of his private meeting with Lord Stiver a week ago. It sickened her to think that these evil men needed him to prove their loyalty to them and to their twisted cause by personally offering up a sacrifice, taking the life of some innocent being he loved.
Even worse, he was expected to murder Raja himself. Slit the throat of the creature that trusted him so much.
She knew as he sat beside her in silence that he was infuriated by all this with a rage he could not show. He had mumbled that at least he was glad they hadn’t suggested he kill a human being.
Yet.
That likely would’ve come later in his “training” as the future leader of the Prometheans, if any of this were true rather than a masquerade.
As their carriage barreled through the village and on into the night, the full moon of late November leered down on them. Azrael sat stiffly beside her, his spine ramrod straight, his face resolute, his hands rested on his knees, his stare fixed straight ahead.
Frankly, he looked rather convincing as an evil Promethean magnate in this icy silence he’d been keeping since they’d left London. Indeed, he almost looked like his father in the portrait.
But she knew he was keeping himself in check for all that he must do tonight. She just wished, for her part, that she could’ve stopped shaking.
She hoped he didn’t notice. She was trying to keep a brave face for him. She even managed a faint smile when he glanced at her, determined to let him think she was merely shivering due to the plunge in temperature, for the night had turned somewhat frosty. But it was merely fear.
Have courage, she kept telling herself, but it was no use. She was terrified of what might happen tonight. To him. To their future.
She felt sick with foreboding that the curse that had robbed her of her sister could still rise and snuff out their fragile, newfound happiness.
If there was one boon to all this, it was that Lord Stiver and his men seemed to have no inkling whatsoever that the Order of St. Michael was behind this, that tonight was all a grand charade, and that the clock was ticking on those devils’ final moments of freedom.
Thank God, they had taken no notice of the footmen and driver, Order-trained soldiers all. Brody and Porter would attend Serena while Azrael went into the barrow to participate in the night’s arcane ceremonies.
She would’ve appreciated the sardonic presence of Mrs. Fisher to keep her company this evening, but the spy’s skills would be needed closer to the action. Instead, Serena had the responsibility of watching over the caged leopard.
Azrael’s large, exotic pet had become somewhat used to her over the past week, so much so that Serena had managed to pet him a few times by herself. She was still afraid of him, but they were becoming friends.
Raja would wait with her in her forlorn family house, supposedly until it was time for him to die in the rite. But it would never come to that.
The animal’s presence here was all for show, merely part of the ruse, signaling Azrael’s willingness to do what the villains asked of him.
In reality, the Order was not going to let things go that far. Serena couldn’t see them, but she knew they were out there somewhere.
They’d arrived several days ago, according to Mrs. Fisher, getting into position, making their preparations.
Once all of the members of Stiver’s current cell had assembled in the barrow for Azrael’s initiation, only then would the Order strike, trapping the Prometheans inside.
Serena could not bear to admit it to herself, but her fiancé’s chances of getting out of that mound alive seemed extremely slim. At least to her.
She could not believe Azrael had offered himself up as the bait for this entire operation, setting the trap to draw in scores of these Promethean villains.
How could they resist? The son of the great Rivenwood, returned to their sinister fold at last? They would come from miles around to witness that, Azrael had told her.
All of this meant that, for a time tonight, he’d have to stand practically defenseless, surrounded by enemies who would realize as soon as the Order unleashed its attack that Azrael had betrayed them.
He was so brave that she couldn’t even speak, and it made her want to weep to know in her heart that he was doing this all for her. So they could have a future together.
That was why she had insisted on coming along tonight. Not for the world would she leave him to face this alone. She would go with him as far as they’d permit her.
Besides, as she had told him, she’d be well protected. And Stiver had no objections to her waiting nearby.
Being the devil’s daughter apparently had its privileges.
Of course, she was not supposed to know much of anything yet about what was really going on.
On their second father-daughter visit a few days ago, Stiver had dropped a few hints about his secret life and how his line—including her—shared a certain ancient heritage with the Rivenwood dukes, among others.
The earl was unaware that Serena already knew a great deal more about it than she was letting on, thanks to the contents of the snakeskin box. She had played along, nodding, feigning admiration, and pretending to be intrigued, a skill she’d honed with her deadly-dull suitors.
God, she looked forward to the day when they wouldn’t have to lie anymore.
At last, the carriage stopped, as did the wagon behind it. Lord Stiver had provided Azrael with a key to the gates of the Dunhaven mansion. Brody and Porter promptly jumped down to get them open.
Ahead, she heard the rusted gates creak with a pained moan. She shivered again. Azrael glanced over at her, then laid his hand over hers as the carriage proceeded up the overgrown drive.
The ugly house loomed before them with the full moon perched atop one of the chimney pots.
At last, they got out. It was almost time to part ways. The wagon carrying Raja pulled up behind them.
As Azrael walked up to the front door and opened it, glancing around inside to make sure the house was clear, the footmen slid long poles similar to those used to carry sedan chairs into the rings atop the animal’s cage.
Working together, the two brawny men hefted the metal cage off the back of the wagon and set it on the ground. Azrael returned while Serena stood there, too scared to speak now that the moment of their parting was nearly at hand.
Azrael went over and checked on his pet. Serena’s eyes filled with tears, seeing his solicitude toward the animal. She could hear Raja’s unhappy yowls from where she stood, mingled with Azrael’s reassuring murmurs.
Stiver’s instructions regarding the leopard were to keep him elsewhere, inside his cage, until it was time. Apparently, the cage was too wide and cumbersome to fit through the narrow opening into the barrow.
Given the dangerous nature of the animal, Stiver had said that Azrael would be sent out to bring Raja in on his leash once they reached the appropriate moment.
This was to happen in the second part of their horrendous rite; there were other steps in their occult mumbo-jumbo that supposedly had to take place first. Azrael hadn’t talked much about it, and Serena didn’t want to know.
Finding out that her natural father relished such things had made the man all the more repulsive in her eyes.
Admittedly, there was a part of her that felt the pull of kinship toward Lord Stiver, especially after she had sought him for so long. Even she could detect similarities between herself and him. But after much pondering, she decided she did not feel sorry at all about
his looming fate.
He’d brought it on himself, just like Azrael’s father.
Besides, after the way the earl had cruelly used, terrified, and manipulated her mother, and all the other twisted wrongs he’d done, Serena had concluded that she cared more what happened to the leopard than to him.
Above all, though, she cared what happened to Azrael.
As she watched him, he straightened up again, the moonlight gleaming on his pale hair. He walked away from Raja’s cage and marched past her into the house, beckoning to her to follow.
She hurried after him, blinking her tears away, while the footmen lifted the poles up onto their brawny shoulders and carried Raja inside.
The musty smell of the abandoned estate invaded her nostrils. It was very dark inside, and she could only wonder how many spiders were lurking in the corners just now, studying her with their beady little eyes.
At least the birds that had taken up residence were somewhere hundreds of miles away, in a sunny clime. She envied them at the moment.
Tonight, it felt like the light would never return.
“Where do you want this, sir?” Brody asked as the two men carried the cage inside.
Azrael turned to Serena. “Where would you like to wait?”
“Not here,” she said, glancing around at the entrance hall, with its dead animal heads—no doubt Papa’s hunting trophies—staring down at her. She gestured toward the sitting room to the right. “In there will do.”
The footmen carried Raja’s cage through the wide, open doorway and into the adjacent room she’d specified. They set it on the floor while Raja hissed, then marched back outside and fetched a few extra lanterns from the coach, lit them, and set them around.
The dim glow of illumination seemed to help drive the gloom back a bit. Cold as it was, it would not have been wise to start a fire in any of the fireplaces without it first being cleaned after years of disuse, or they could burn the whole house down.
“Well,” said Azrael, with a note of finality.
She steadied herself as he turned to her.
“How long do you think this will take?” she asked, striving for a casual tone as she pulled her gray woolen mantle closer around her shoulders.
“I have no idea.” Azrael shook his head. “Just stay put. You should be quite safe here. Try not to worry. It will all be over soon.” He glanced toward her guards when the two returned from clearing the premises, and asked them if they had everything they needed.
They nodded and checked their weapons, and Azrael looked again at Serena. Her heart was pounding, her stomach in knots.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “They’re waiting for me. I have to get over to Stiver’s house.”
“I know.” Serena embraced him. While the wind whistled around the house, she clutched him to her like she’d never let him go.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her close. He rested his head atop hers, and she needed him so much in that moment that she almost begged him not to go. But she knew he had no choice if they were ever going to be free of this dark heritage they shared.
What else could it really be called other than a curse?
She looked up and captured his beautiful face between her hands. “Come back to me,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes.
He gazed down at her with the utmost tenderness, and cupped her cheek for a moment in his palm. His finely chiseled countenance seemed ghostly and celestial in the beam of moonlight streaming through the window. “You are my light, Serena,” he breathed. Then he leaned down again and kissed her passionately.
She gripped his arms in anguish, for it tasted like goodbye. No! She choked back a sob when he ended the kiss somehow and turned away.
She clung to his arm. “I will see you when all this is over,” she whispered, savoring the words like a prayer.
He nodded slightly. “And then our lives can start.” His face flooded with emotion, and he returned to kiss her fiercely once more, clutching her to him. “I love you, my darling.”
“I love you, too.” At last she found the strength to let him go. “And always remember, Azrael. You were never one of them.”
# # #
You have no idea how much I needed to hear that, he thought, gazing at her in torment.
He kissed her one last time on her smooth white forehead, then took leave of her with a small but heartfelt bow before turning away and stalking out the door.
As he headed back toward the carriage to go to Stiver’s mansion, he scanned the dark, moon-silvered landscape with a restless glance around.
You bastards had better be out there, he thought. Because if the Order agents failed him this night, he might well walk out of that cursed barrow as the embodiment of everything he loathed, pledged to evil. Everything he had sworn he would never become.
It would be his father’s greatest victory.
Indeed, it would be the last Rivenwood’s revenge on the son who had betrayed him.
# # #
An hour later, blindfolded, Azrael felt rough hands jostle, shove, and guide him through a dank, narrow space where all sound seemed muffled. He stumbled but caught himself as the weight of earth and stone loomed above him. He could feel it pressing down on the air beneath the ground, in this tomb to which they were taking him.
He could hear the rustle of the robes they had donned, the chants and jeering abuses. He could see nothing through the black cloth, but the image of their masks was imprinted on his mind.
Not even he knew yet who they all were, nor would he be permitted to know, until he’d satisfied them of his sincerity. His lineage only got him so far among these skeptical fiends.
They had cause to be paranoid. The Order had been wiping out their numbers on the Continent of late. Certainly, the agents he had met wanted blood all the more, upon learning that the foes they had fought abroad had burrowed like parasites into the very bosom of their homeland, while they had been off fighting the elite conspirators elsewhere.
More and more, Azrael felt split off from the moment at hand. A part of him pulled back, went numb, in a sense, while his body went through the motions.
Memories of his childhood began emerging from the dark vault of his mind, where it had stored some of his own secrets even from him. They flooded back in, sharper than he’d ever let them before.
In the teeth of this evil, he could no longer hold them back. Robed men, torches in the distance, the sound of chanting in strange languages.
A goblet filled with blood. Things glimpsed from the corner of his eye, studiously ignored, in his terror. The nightmarish future that had waited for him when he grew up.
Father had let him see glimpses of it as a child, but that was all.
As he was led into the cult’s midst, he heard shuffling feet around him on all sides, a distant cough. The smell of clay, the dank and damp of the barrow. He felt the pressure of the black cloth around his eyes.
Somehow he thrust away the horror and played his part in the task at hand.
Stiver’s voice went through the rehearsed series of questions, subjecting him to their little inquisition. Making him swear secrecy on pain of a slow and horrible death. Questioning him to test his fealty to the prince of the air, the light bearer who they said brought men wisdom and shared forbidden knowledge with the worthy few.
For a price.
Each response tasted foul on his tongue, but Azrael gave the answers that he’d memorized, yet even as he stood there in their midst, he felt like it was all happening to someone else.
It was enough to stave off panic, for in that moment, he knew he was as much in a cage as the leopard. How could they wish to make him kill such a magnificent creature, such a true friend? What was wrong with these people?
But he could not ponder the endless questions racing through his mind. If he was ever going to be free of this, of them, he just had to get through this.
They chanted around him, and he smelled strange smoke of some sort. Inc
ense, perhaps opium smoke, hashish.
It was hideous. He felt like insects were crawling all over him merely being in their presence.
“And now,” said Stiver, “the Initiate will swear. Put out your hands,” the earl ordered. “What is this object you feel?”
On his knees in their midst, blind, helpless and surrounded, Azrael reached forward with his palms up and felt an object that he knew at once was a sword. Perhaps a rapier. He said as much.
“Correct. You will now be pierced and make your blood oath.”
The loose white shirt he was wearing was moved aside, baring his chest. He had no idea who was touching him. He just knew that he hated them.
He braced himself as someone, Stiver, probably, pressed just the tip of the sword to the left side of Azrael’s chest, near his heart.
He held perfectly still, but barely even felt it, much to his surprise. He was so far removed from himself. Perhaps that was just as well.
In accordance with the ritual, Stiver thrust the blade in no more than half an inch. “Let this serve as a warning and reminder that your life is forfeit should you ever reveal our secrets to any other outside of ourselves. Do you understand this? Do you agree? Speak now or this blade will pierce your heart.”
“I solemnly swear it,” Azrael said. He repeated more hollow vows after Stiver, and the earl withdrew the tip of the blade from his chest.
Only then did Azrael feel the hot trickle of blood down his chest.
“Now you may rise.”
He did so, climbing to his feet, listening acutely all the while for the sound of the Order making their move—a moment that he both dreaded and craved.
He wondered how long it would take Stiver and the rest to realize it was he who’d brought them here. Seconds? A minute, maybe two?
The heart they had very nearly pierced was pounding as he waited for the next step.
“Now, brothers,” Stiver said with a note of pride in his voice, “let him be enlightened.”
With a tug of someone’s fingers, the blindfold was removed. The cloth was damp with the cold sweat that had been pouring down Azrael’s face and all over his whole body.
