On the run and pursued, she was still mindful of where she was. She dipped a knee to the floor and crossed herself, eyes on the altar at the far end of the aisle. The calming scent of beeswax candles reached her; no matter what was outside, there was only this in here. Only this sense of peace.
She slipped into the pew beside her jacket and clasped her hands together, expecting Christian to enter the church behind her. He did not. Eleanor counted only five other patrons, occupied with their own prayers. Still, she listened for him, knowing he couldn’t be far. Ever since her abrupt departure from Morocco, Christian had trailed her. He turned up in the most curious places; sometimes it was as though he could read her mind. But then, if he were following the same trails she followed, it made perfect sense. Port Elizabeth wasn’t on any trail, yet here she was, stranded.
The Empress had begun experiencing difficulty over Mozambique, and Eleanor found it remarkable they hadn’t ended up in the channel. The pilots were experienced enough and welcoming to the point of over-booking their airship. While The Empress might have comfortably held twelve, she hadn’t been made for twice that number, even if most of them were children. The memory of those young, wide eyes as the ship started losing altitude hung in Eleanor’s memory and sent a chill down her spine.
She slid off the pew, onto the kneeler. “Thank you for seeing us all safely down,” she said into her hands, and then jumped when the door to the church flew open.
Only the storm, she told herself, then caught sight of the long shadow thrown down the aisle of the church. Someone too slight to be Christian. Eleanor fought to keep her eyes on her hands, but when the person stepped into the pew Eleanor occupied, she had to look.
Caroline crossed herself and then her legs, blocking Eleanor’s access to the main aisle.
“It was dreadful,” Caroline said in a voice low enough so as not to disturb the other worshippers, “watching The Empress lose altitude like that. I truly believed we would all end up in the water.”
Caroline had been on The Empress? Eleanor mentally rifled through the passengers, the suited men, the overdressed mothers, and all those children. She couldn’t pick Caroline’s face from any of them at first, then thought of the slight man who occupied a seat near a portside window. Short cropped hair hidden under a hat, the shadow of stubble against his jaw. Eleanor looked at Caroline now, spying a trace of makeup, like that an actor might wear on stage.
“It is equally dreadful,” Caroline continued, “what we only see in retrospect. I should never have offered that ring to Christian for any price, because it goes beyond that, doesn’t it? Thinking I could hide it with him . . . ”
Caroline’s voice took on an edge, her eyes resting on the altar. Eleanor studied her. How close had this woman been before—how many disguises did she wear? Eleanor and Christian had taken on a disguise or two during their time together, but none so outwardly seamless as the one Caroline had donned on The Empress. It made Eleanor question everything.
Eleanor tried to calm herself. She knew Caroline was skilled at hiding. The woman who chased her now was not the woman Eleanor had met in Morocco, wrapped in fussy blue satin with a ridiculously small hat perched atop her head. Purposeless hat, Eleanor snarled inside. Caroline was never the same woman twice.
“It’s simple, Miss Folley. You give me the ring and we go our separate ways.”
The idea made Eleanor recoil. Something deep inside said no and caused her to bristle. It was simple on the surface—it was but a ring, wasn’t it? Not to Eleanor. The idea of the ring in Caroline’s possession again was like death, giving away a piece of herself, a piece of her mother. Eleanor bowed her head and reached for her sodden jacket, stuffing arms back into it, made awkward as her blouse and vest were likewise damp.
“That looks like a refusal, Miss Folley.” Caroline moved enough to draw her revolver. “I would hate for this to turn ugly, especially in such a beautiful place. And these people? All as innocent as those children, but The Empress had to come down, you understand.”
If Caroline was bluffing, it worked to slow Eleanor’s progress with her jacket. Caroline had a hand in taking the ship down? She was capable of that? Eleanor eyed Caroline’s steady grip on the revolver, not caring that her own blouse sleeves rucked up inside her jacket sleeves. She felt the fabric tear and still didn’t care. Get the jacket on and run. Go. Go.
“This is why I never deal with amateurs.”
Eleanor laughed at that, unable to stop the sound before it rose. Caroline didn’t take kindly to the suggestion within that laugh. She moved with ease, wet trousers sliding against the wood pew so she could angle her revolver into Eleanor’s ribs. Eleanor flinched and made to move away from the weapon, but Caroline’s other arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“Don’t do this here,” Eleanor said.
“At least your soul won’t have far to go.”
Something stirred inside of Eleanor, something that took hold of her and guided her with the intent of getting out of harm’s way. Eleanor slammed the heel of her palm into Caroline’s chin, and Caroline went slack enough that the revolver came away from Eleanor’s ribs. Eleanor snaked out of Caroline’s remaining hold and dropped to the stone floor, rolling under the pew, between the slight space afforded between floor and seat.
When Eleanor came up, Caroline was in motion and screaming. She lifted the revolver, tracking Eleanor’s movement along the back of the pew. The first bullet bit into the old pew wood, sending splinters flying. The sound in the cathedral was deafening, and Eleanor flinched again. The instinct moved inside her once more. She wanted to leap for Caroline, throw the woman to the floor and beat her bloody.
Keep moving! Her mind screamed the direction, but the inner part of her wanted to confront Caroline, wanted to understand exactly why she wanted the rings. What did she know? Or was it simply a game to her? She had been bested and that couldn’t stand?
“Caroline—”
“I have five more bullets, Miss Folley.”
Eleanor had no doubt that Caroline envisioned each one buried within her. Eleanor looked up the length of the aisle, to the patrons who cowered silently in the pews—save for one woman who screamed for the priest.
“If you don’t want that woman silenced in an awful way, you will give me that ring.”
Absurd. Eleanor peered around the column at Caroline, who stood near the pew, revolver raised in Eleanor’s direction. “Who are you?” The question was out of Eleanor’s mouth before she could consider the words.
“I’m the one about to make you miserable.”
Caroline shifted her aim, sighting down the length of the aisle toward the screaming woman. The woman was perhaps sixty, her hair silver and held at the nape of her neck with a gold clasp that gleamed in the candlelight. For one terrible instant, Eleanor imagined the woman’s white blouse soaked through with blood. She leapt for Caroline.
They went down in a tangle and the revolver spat another bullet, which knocked into a pew. Patrons screamed and sought sanctuary while Eleanor scrambled to get on top of Caroline, clawing her way toward the weapon.
She didn’t expect Caroline to bring her shooting arm down. Caroline’s elbow cracked into Eleanor’s head and the room swam. The candles blurred and there were four sets of windows where there had only been one before.
The impact brought Caroline’s arm within Eleanor’s grasp and she held on for dear life—if not her own, then for the patrons of the church. Eleanor grabbed for the revolver, but Caroline wouldn’t relinquish her grip. Caroline shoved the revolver beneath Eleanor’s chin, pressing hard. The barrel was still warm, yet Eleanor felt only cold. Every part of her stilled.
“There is no reason not to kill you,” Caroline said, bringing her face within inches of Eleanor’s. “Kill you, take the ring, and—”
Caroline’s threats ended in a squawk as the male patrons of the church set upon her. They pulled the women apart and wrestled Caroline’s gun free, turning it on her.
&nb
sp; The priest looked aggrieved over the scuffle in his church, the threat to his congregation, and the damage to his pews. He demanded that the men take Caroline to his office—he had already sent a boy to bring the authorities to handle her.
When the priest turned to Eleanor, she picked herself up from the floor. She took a step backward, looking to the lady in her white blouse. Still white. No blood. But she wanted blood, God forgive her—the instinct inside her was nearly salivating for it. Eleanor felt as though she would be sick.
She brought her eyes back to the priest.
“Forgive me, Father,” she whispered.
And then, she fled.
Northern Africa ~ October 1889
Eleanor came to consciousness amid a mess of debris. She lay unmoving, not clear where she was or what had happened. Trying to sort her thoughts led her to the whiskey smell of Virgil Mallory in the moonlight, but that memory was inconsistent with her current state.
She tried to draw her right hand to her chest because her fingers ached with cold, but the hand wouldn’t budge. Her left hand was plastered against her breast with something cold and tacky, her hair spread unbound across her eyes. This gave a strange impression of what lay around her, everything shrouded in gossamer strands. She moved slowly, feeling ground beneath her, not floor, along with sharp, broken fragments of the Nuit. And then, she felt the curve of a cheek. Cold, metal, perhaps the goddess Nut herself.
“Damn.”
A gentle shake of her head cleared her hair from her eyes, allowing her to see the slanted, splintered wood burying her. It looked like she was inside a casket that had exploded. Two wooden slats trapped her right wrist; pressing on one allowed her to pull her arm free. She didn’t feel broken anywhere and calmed.
“Mallory!” There came no reply, and Eleanor wriggled to free her feet next. “Auberon? Cleo?”
There was no reply to any of her queries, so Eleanor concentrated on getting herself free. She picked out bits of paintings amid the debris, charred canvases; glass glittered in the waning moonlight, proof to her that the beautiful upper deck of the Nuit was entirely gone. Chair cushions had exploded into fluff, candles lay in melted pools, and over everything there lingered the smell of burned wood. She recalled the ball of fire, the shattering glass, and the downward arc of the ship.
When she came free of the debris, she staggered. She was slow to lift her eyes to the destruction around her. The great balloon of the Nuit was broken open like an egg, bits of her spilling a trail across the desert.
“Eleanor.”
Mallory’s arms closed around her from behind, gentle and yet firm, and warmth settled around her as he drew her away from the wreckage. She hadn’t realized she was cold until he was there. There was a great measure of comfort in his heat, in the now-familiar scent of him. She let Mallory support her and drew a shaking hand to her chest, seeking the line of her gold chain. Relief poured through her when her fingers found it and the ring still there.
“Here, sit.”
Eleanor sat on the remains of a sofa perched crookedly on a lump of other debris. Perhaps the sofa had been crimson; now, it was charred black, its cushions missing.
“Ah, God, are you injured?”
Eleanor rested against the arm of the sofa while Mallory pulled at her blouse, searching for a wound. The cold and tacky wetness she’d felt was blood, she could see that now, though she viewed it from an emotional distance. She could feel no injury and should have felt something at the too-familiar touch of Mallory’s hands on her—outrage, shock, upset, astonishment. She could hear Juliana making a list. But Eleanor felt nothing.
His long fingers moved up her arms, into the tangle of her loose hair, pressing along her scalp. She closed her eyes briefly—a little rest, she told herself. She couldn’t help but look at Mallory when his fingers slid down her neck and came to lie against her collarbone, over the line of her gold chain.
Warm fingers, she thought, feeling those without a doubt. She fancied she could feel the whorl of every fingerprint. Mallory’s forehead was gashed, and she imagined she could smell his blood on the night air too. His hair was a matted tangle, his collar speckled with what looked like ink.
“Someone wrote on you,” she murmured, her fingers lifting in an effort to touch the ink, though it seemed impossibly far away.
“Something grazed you, but it doesn’t look bad. Eleanor? Eleanor, stay with me.”
The world vanished, blackness draping everything. Funerals, she thought; pack everything away. Was it the sight of her own blood that had her swooning? She refused to believe she was capable of a swoon. She was made of sterner stuff.
“Mallo—”
She tried to swim up through the layers of pitch and thought she was succeeding when something gleamed. She reached for it, watching her own pale hand slide into a darker one. It smelled like an animal. Eleanor tried to lift her head, tried to open her eyes. When at last she did, she saw only a pair of black eyes looking back at her. Onyx, framed with strokes of gold.
“Daughter,” a voice whispered.
“Father,” she replied.
“—anor!”
The world snapped back into place at Mallory shouting her name. She stared at him without speaking, without letting go of him.
“Where did you go?” he asked in a whisper.
She shook her head in answer—she didn’t know. “Someone called me ‘daughter.’ I—Virgil, what hap—”
“Come on.” He helped her up from the couch and began to lead her away from the wreckage. “Let’s move while we talk. Gin is all right, and Cleo, but Auberon broke an arm.”
Eleanor was cautious about every step she took, because of the debris and her bare feet, but also because she didn’t feel truly present. She still felt the embrace of that hand and she didn’t like it. She stared in silence at the world around them. Auberon, Gin, and Cleo were gathered some distance away from the Nuit, with Gin running back and forth with salvaged supplies. Cleo was splinting Auberon’s arm. Her mechanical fingers gleamed gold in the light from a lamp.
“Should be in northern Africa,” Mallory continued. One hand slipped down Eleanor’s arm, to cup her elbow. “Damned lucky we didn’t hit the water, if you will forgive my language.”
Although they hadn’t landed in water, Eleanor could hear it, so they weren’t that far from it. She imagined the hulk of the Nuit in the ocean and a low shudder rolled through her. They could have been killed, drowned, and she took an uneven step into Mallory. Her bare foot came down against his own.
Water closing over them, trickling into mouths . . .
“Eleanor—Stop.”
She did as he said, feeling she had no direction of her own, and looked into his eyes. Fathomless and rimmed in strokes of gold—no.
“Breathe,” he said.
She breathed and felt the slow retreat of the hand. At its leaving, she felt cold again and burrowed her face into Mallory’s chest. He tensed only briefly before wrapping his arms around her.
“Who did this?” she whispered.
“I was hoping you would have some idea.”
Eleanor laughed and peered up at him. “Me? I would have said Mistral.”
“Still suspicious of us, then? I thought we worked past that. I told you I won’t let them hurt y—”
“Why be suspicious of an international organization of spies?”
“I’m not a spy—”
“And I’m not a tomb raider. Fine lines, remember?” She exhaled, and while propriety said she should step out of Mallory’s embrace, she was content to stay where she was. The heat of him was too intoxicating. “You admitted Mistral took the Lady, unearthed her, and locked her away. Perhaps they were the attackers too.”
She heard his voice rumble in his chest when he replied. “I don’t believe it was Mistral who attacked you at the dig, Eleanor, but yes, Mistral was responsible for restricting access to the Lady afterward.”
“Why not be suspicious, then?”
�
�Mistral wouldn’t take down its own ship.”
“Mistral would dispatch its own agents to be killed, but wouldn’t attack its own ship? Another fine line?”
Mallory considered the question in silence, then offered another question instead of a direct answer. “What do you know about the Defenders of the Protectorate?”
Eleanor pulled back a little to look at him. “Entirely fictional.”
“Entirely?”
“A secret group of warriors, from the time of the first pharaohs, sworn to protect Egypt and its treasures no matter the sacrifice? Granted, various groups have claimed to be the Defenders, but I’ve found no evidence that they ever existed, let alone continue to exist.” She had never thought that it might have been Defenders who attacked her and her parents at the dig site—they were fiction, but wasn’t the Lady, too? Her heart skipped.
He pressed the idea. “No evidence of a secret group?”
“We could talk in circles all day.” She looked upward. “Night.”
“That we could. Come on.”
He guided her toward Auberon, Gin, and Cleo, who gave them tired smiles as they approached. Mallory kept an arm around Eleanor.
“Found her sleeping under the debris,” Mallory said, and a laugh rose from them all. “Here.”
He guided Eleanor to the burned ottoman next to the broken chair Auberon occupied. She sat, thankful to rest on something steadier than her own bare feet.
“There’s no sign of anyone,” Gin reported when he returned, arms laden with more supplies. “The radiotelegraphy unit is destroyed.” He had managed to find a variety of shoes, slippers, and a pocket watch that was still ticking. He gestured to the sky. “Haven’t seen anyone up there, either.”
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 12
