by Bec McMaster
"Is there anything we can do?" Miss Martin asked.
Lady Eberhardt's smile was dangerous. "Stay out of my way and keep them off my back."
Glass shattered somewhere near the side of the house. "I've got it," Bishop declared, striding toward the noise. As he went, a pair of blue-white daggers formed in his hands, flickers of lightning dancing off them.
Dangerous. Lucien watched him go. He wasn't sure who, or what, the man was, but he knew a predator when he saw one, and he could still see the after-image of the man stepping inside the house, flashing again and again in the back of his mind, as if it had been burned into his retinas.
More glass erupted, this time from the back of the house.
"Go!" Lady Eberhardt told them, and a ball of pure energy began building in front of her, a mage globe of red light.
Definitely time to leave Lady Eberhardt to her own devices. She clearly knew what she was doing.
"Guard my back!" Miss Martin panted as she grabbed Lucien's wrist and hauled him past the stairs and toward the back of the house.
Lucien primed one of the pistols he'd confiscated, feeling incredibly useless. What was he supposed to do? His magic was useless to him in this situation, his legs felt like lead, and an imp would swallow his bullet and spit it straight back at him. "Can you handle this?"
"Watch me." Miss Martin flashed a grin over her shoulder before she pushed a door open and strode into the kitchens, her lavender skirts swishing around her legs.
An imp leapt on top of the kitchen table, hissing at them. Its skin gleamed a dull bronze color, and though it wore the coat and trousers of a boy, there was no mistaking those all-black eyes, or the razor-sharp teeth in its face as it leered at the pair of them. A thin tail lashed out behind it, back and forth, like a cat anticipating its prey.
A Lesser Demon, it could still wield an enormous amount of power from the Shadow Dimensions it came from. Lucien aimed his pistol directly at the creature's forehead and fired.
The imp hissed as the bullet slammed into its skull, a black hole glaring back at them like a third eye. Then the hole began to mend itself, vanishing into smooth, unblemished skin.
"What part of 'guard my back' did you not understand?" Miss Martin took a stance in the middle of the room, flinging her arms out to the sides and muttering power words under her breath.
The room turned cold, and the imp hissed as a mage globe the size of Lucien's fist sizzled to life in front of her. It gleamed like blue lightning. Dangerous, but not bloodthirsty, the way Eberhardt's mage globe had been.
Lightning lashed off the globe, spearing toward the imp. It sprung, claws clinging to the hanging pot rack above it, then twisted as another spear of lightning arced toward it, and leaped toward the sink. As it went, it threw a variety of utensils at Miss Martin. Lucien grabbed a frying pan, using it to bat away the knives and pots that the creature flung. He was less than useless, but at least he could do this. Miss Martin needed to concentrate.
"Where did you learn... that?" he gasped, as more lightning sizzled, leaving smoking welts on the scarred timber benches. Most battle globes were simply balls of energy to be flung at one's opponent. Her grasp of telekinesis was impressive.
"Drake." Her eyes gleamed with power. "My affinity is with telekinesis, as opposed to telepathy."
Where his own strengths lay. He had learned how to manipulate telekinesis, but telepathy was his first natural calling and his strength.
The imp cast cunning eyes their way, then grabbed an enormous cast-iron pan. Instead of throwing it at them, it launched the pan like a discus toward the mage globe. Electricity sparked and crackled, staggering them both backward, as the mage globe collapsed in upon itself at the touch of metal.
"Miss Martin!"
"I'm fine." She blinked at the magical backlash, then shoved him out of the way, "Watch out!"
Claws thunked on the wheeled kitchen trolley and it hurtled toward them from the force of the creature's momentum. The imp launched itself into the air, leaping over Miss Martin as the trolley took her legs out from under her.
"Ianthe—"
Miss Martin went down. The imp sprang off the wall, aiming for her back.
Lucien didn't think. Just reacted. An enormous battle globe of flickering red flung toward the creature from his hand. The plaster cracked as the imp exploded into nothingness, and Lucien staggered as power leeched out of him and he realized what he'd done. Every piece of glass blew out of the windows, and pots and pans and knives thunked into the wall or onto the floor. Coppery ectoplasm was smeared across the plaster.
The world swayed, and he was leaning heavily against the bench. Lucien blinked. His entire head felt stuffed full of molten lava, and his nose was numb. Ears ringing. The world... too bright. Too loud. Miss Martin's gloved ward that had blocked out his sensitivities seemed to have faded.
"Get down! There's another one!" Skirts fluttered, and then a warm body collided hard with his. He went down in a spill of violet silk, just as an imp sailed past where he'd been. It skittered on the tiles, its claws slicing into the floor and peeling up curls of terracotta tile as it slid to a halt.
It launched itself at them. Lucien tried to roll Miss Martin out of the way, and—
An enormous stone lion leapt out of nowhere, its teeth crunching over the imp's head and shattering it. Shaking its head, the lion sprayed droplets of molten, coppery liquid up the walls and on the roof. Ectoplasm sizzled against Miss Martin's flickering wards, sliding down the transparent dome that protected them and forming small puddles on the floor.
"That was close," she gasped beneath him.
Lucien looked down. There was a blind spot in the vision of his right eye and a sharp aching numbness behind it. He wiped at his nose, and his hand came away bloody.
"Are you all right?" Miss Martin asked, reaching up to touch his cheek. Fingertips grazed the stubble there. Her ward slid over his skin again, blocking out the worst of the pain.
"I'm fine," he replied crisply, levering himself up onto his knees as the world stopped spinning. He could see again too, no more double impressions of everything. Christ.
"Rathbourne... You used Expression."
It had been a desperate surge of power he'd flung at the imp, rather than the carefully formed ritualistic sorcery they were taught to practice. Expression was tied to emotion, and hence, dangerous. But which emotion had overwhelmed him, stripping away all of his years of study and ritual?
He saw it again. Miss Martin knocked off her feet, the imp bouncing off the walls toward her, its claws extended, his heart in his throat—
Lucien shook his head, forcing it to subside. He'd sworn to protect her. That was all, but the very violence of his thoughts at the time shook him a little. He didn't like the idea of her under attack, but that was something to digest later.
"It won't happen again," he told her. "I need time to recuperate my strength, and meditate."
"Do you think—?"
"Are we done in here?" Lady Eberhardt flung the door open and peered inside, viewing the carnage, and saving him from Miss Martin's questions, thank goodness. "Look at this muck. Poor Maxwell and the maids shall have quite the day of it."
The lion butted its head against her thigh, nearly knocking her over.
"We're done," Lucien replied, offering a hand to Miss Martin to help her up. The look she returned him said she hadn't quite finished with what she was saying and that they'd revisit the conversation later.
Over his dead body, perhaps. The last thing he wanted to confess to her was his fear that he'd never wield sorcery properly again. Or perhaps explain that something about that image, about her under attack, had driven him to regress back to his youth, when Expression was all he knew.
Reaching out, Lady Eberhardt grasped the hilt of a knife and tugged it from the wall. "Good. Perhaps we ought to convene in my library again? Now that the immediate threat is out of the way, I think we all need a spot of tea and some cake and biscuits. I don't know ab
out anyone else, but I'm famished. Nothing like battling beasties from the Shadow Dimensions to give one a good, hearty appetite, no?"
"If you give us a moment to clean up, we'll meet you there," Miss Martin replied.
Lucien however, pushed through the doors with an eagerness to escape that wasn't lost on any of them.
* * *
THE LIBRARY LOOKED like the scene of some great safari rampage. One of the marble lions lay in shattered pieces all across the room, its shards embedded in the roof and walls, as if it had exploded, and there were three molten puddles of coppery ectoplasm that betrayed the fate of some of the imps.
"Poor Aurelius," Lady Eberhardt murmured, sweeping marble gravel off the daybed. The other marble lion laid a sad head upon her lap as she sat, as if sensing her grief.
Lucien exchanged a look with Miss Martin, whose face remained impressively smooth.
"That's the last of them accounted for," Bishop said, striding into the library. It was unnerving how silently he moved for such a large man. Lucien watched him like a snake. There was no sign of that sensation he'd felt earlier when the man first stepped into the house, but a certain knowing fused his blood, a taste of Foreboding.
This man was dangerous, and whatever Luc was about to learn here, would set them both on a dangerous course.
"Tea, sir?" Maxwell asked.
Lucien nodded, but didn't take his eyes off Bishop as the other man sat directly opposite him. Bishop's hands rested on the arms of his chair, that black chip of obsidian in his prime ring winking at Luc. An adept of the Darker Arts then.
"I feel as though we've met," Bishop said in that scar-rough voice he owned. "Though I'm certain I'd remember you."
"You haven't met." Lady Eberhardt's hands moved briskly as she served them all thick slices of ginger cake with clotted cream. "It was decided that it would be best if you were kept apart until necessary."
"Kept apart?" Lucien asked.
"This is Adrian Bishop, the Prime's bastard son by Mrs. Amelia Bishop, born several years after Drake's divorce," Lady Eberhardt purred, sitting back with her tea and staring him down. "Adrian is one of the Order's Sicarii, and was my apprentice once upon a time."
"Agatha," Bishop said sharply, as if betrayed.
Prime's bastard. Lucien froze. The words echoed in his head like ringing steel, a sense of incredulousness raining about him. Lady Eberhardt had to be joking. She had to be. For that meant that this man was his younger brother.
Not only a... a brother, but a dangerous one too.
A sickle in the shadows, an assassin. Something Luc had never encountered before, but heard plenty about. There were said to be five of them within the Order, those sorcerers whose calling belonged to the Grave arts, who dealt death to serve their Prime. Few knew their identities.
Bishop's lips thinned. "I presume that was necessary?"
"Oh, indeed." Lady Eberhardt clearly hadn't finished yet and gestured toward Lucien in a way that made him suddenly nervous. "And this, Bishop, is Lucien Devereaux, the Earl of Rathbourne and the Prime's firstborn bastard son." Lady Eberhardt's smile was positively cattish. "Say how do you do to your brother, boys."
Bishop's gaze cut sharply toward him, incredulousness sliding over his features and twisting the scars at his temples.
Scars... It was the only resemblance the pair of them had.
"What do you mean, he's my brother?" the other man demanded.
"Why was it decided that they should not know each other?" Miss Martin added. "Who decided such a thing?"
"The Cassandra at the time, Lucien's mother, laid a foretelling upon his birth. Drake would seed three sons, but never know them until it was too late, nor would they know each other. The moment any of his sons met, disaster would begin to befall the Order and the boys." Lady Eberhardt took a sip of her tea, watching them all over the rim of the cup.
"Disaster? Why on earth did you allow this meeting?"
"Because the disaster is already here," Lady Eberhardt replied, her voice deepening until it sounded not at all her own: "When the red comet rules the skies, the Prime shall fall. A new Prime shall Ascend to the head of the Order. Three sons. Three relics. Three sacrifices. Only then can the Prime be torn down.
"There is but one chance to save them. The Snake at the Breast shall cast the first roll of the die, setting the Game into motion, but might be all that holds back the pall of madness. The Thief shall wear a false face, but wield a true heart; and only the Blind One can see how to save the heart of the Mirror."
Silence settled over the room like a mantle, highlighting the steady tick of the clock on the mantle.
"And all of that means...?" Bishop asked.
Lady Eberhardt shrugged. "Clear as muck, I know. Divination usually is. I've been meditating on it for years, and the only thing I've been able to clarify is the fact that the sons refer to Drake's children, and that if they are sacrificed, presumably using the Relics Infernal, then Drake shall fall."
Silence fell.
Over the course of the last year, since discovering the truth of his birth, Lucien had dreamed of one day seeking his revenge. Sometimes those dreams had seen his father fallen at his feet, but now, upon hearing the words, he wondered if they had truly been dreams, or merely his Divination coming into play.
His father, crawling over a field of skulls, his skin drawn and ragged as he clutched at Lucien's boots. Three altars dripping the blood of two men whose faces he could never see. "Run," the Prime would whisper. "You should not be here. You should never be here to see this."
Always the same dream. Lucien swallowed. It was one thing to wish his father ill, quite another to realize that he had a part to play in it.
Miss Martin paled. "Drake said the ritual to invoke the Relics Infernal required a grave sacrifice to open a Gateway to the Shadow Dimensions. If they bring a Greater Demon through into this world, without the usual limitations, they could easily tear Drake down. Nobody would have the power to stop it."
"Indeed," Lady Eberhardt said enigmatically.
"Who is the third son?" Bishop's dark eyes narrowed.
"Alas, he was forced from his mother's womb many years ago." Lady Eberhardt set down her teacup with a sigh. "Too early to live."
"Then one son has been sacrificed," Bishop said thoughtfully, as if unconcerned by the fact that he was possibly next.
"Two to come." Lucien's voice thickened and their eyes met.
"I am not so easy to kill," Bishop replied.
No, but right now he was. "Everyone can be killed."
"Time for that later, perhaps." Lady Eberhardt's fist curled tightly around her pearls. "I called you here for a reason, Bishop. Morgana is back, and she's after the third relic, the Chalice, of which I happen to be the current guardian. I need you to take it and protect it with your life."
"And what about you?" Bishop demanded. "She'll come again, if she thinks the Chalice is still here."
Lady Eberhardt waved a dismissive hand. "I can handle myself. You just worry about your own hide. It is precious to me, dear boy. I would not see you harmed, but it seems that there's nobody better suited to handling the relic than yourself."
"Agatha..." he warned.
It occurred to Lucien that there was a great deal of fondness between the pair of them.
"It's decided," Lady Eberhardt said, and her voice had a ringing sound of finality to it. She turned those piercing eyes to Lucien and Ianthe. "Good luck finding the Blade. I think you'll need it. And keep me apprised. If it comes time to hunt down Morgana, I've got quite a bone to pick with her."
CHAPTER 6
SHADOWS LENGTHENED, the sun turning into a thin gold line on the horizon for several seconds before it stretched out and vanished.
"Night," Lucien murmured. His eyes glinted gold in the darkness of the carriage, full of secrets... and truths.
There was a faint twist within Ianthe's chest, the magic leash she wore streaming back the other way. Toward him. Ianthe clapped a hand to he
r chest with a faint gasp as her corset seemed to tighten.
"And now you're mine."
Ianthe licked dry lips. He didn't move, but tension tightened the muscles in his thighs, the fabric of his trousers rustling as he shifted slightly. All day she'd been too distracted by her dilemma to think of this, but images sprang to mind following his words—of her on her knees in the carriage, her gloved hands sliding up the lean muscle of those thighs whilst Lucien watched impassively. What would he ask her to do? She could only imagine.
"Summon a mage globe," he told her, stretching both arms along the seat back, "so that I can see you."
A small white orb stirred out of the shadows, just large enough to brighten the carriage. Reaching out, he tugged the blinds down. Just the two of them now. Locked together. Her body felt flushed and full, threatening to burst at the seams.
"You have kept your word today, so I will keep mine. I'm no gentleman in bed, Ianthe, but if you truly do not wish to perform any of the acts I ask of you tonight, then all you have to do is say so."
"I will insist upon a sheathe," she replied.
"I—"
"It's not open to discussion, Rathbourne. I will not risk a child." Her heart stirred dully in her chest.
A slow nod. "That suits me as well."
Breath catching, Ianthe rested her hands on her lap, waiting. Every second stretched out the tension between them. Her pulse began to race as her body remembered what it had felt like to have him kneeling above her in her secret chambers, his fingertip painting that blasted mark between her breasts. Even now, the mark began to sink into her flesh, as if some sort of sorcery worked its magic between them.
"Pull your skirts up."
So he liked to be in charge, did he?
Ianthe breathed in, then out, making her own quiet decisions, and then slowly, slowly curled a fistful of her skirts in each hand.
