A glance at the yawning black sky only made Eleanor feel ill. She pictured that hand, and heard that voice calling her daughter, and felt the world tip out from under her again. Her hand tightened around Mallory’s and he sat beside her, brushing loose hair back from her cheek.
“You’ve got a scratch or three.”
“Here.”
Cleo passed a damp handkerchief to Mallory and he stroked it carefully across Eleanor’s scratched cheeks. “I’m no doctor,” he said as he worked to clean her up, and Cleo and Auberon both laughed.
“He’s better with a gun than a needle,” Auberon said.
“Do you need to be shot?” Mallory asked him.
“Not that far gone. Yet.”
Still, Eleanor thought Auberon looked ready to pull away from Cleo as she continued to wrap a length of cloth around his arm and splint.
Eleanor closed her eyes. The darkness behind her lids was no better than that which arced above them. She sought grounding in Mallory and the other agents, but her attention returned to the debris littering the ground. The idea that someone had taken the Nuit out of the sky sent a chill through her. The attack called to mind the assault on the Galerie, and she decided Mistral was hammering another point home.
“Any idea where we are?” Cleo asked. She tied a knot in the fabric at Auberon’s wrist to secure the splint, then nudged him back against the broken chair. Gin offered up a bottle of whiskey that had survived the wreck, but Auberon shook it off.
“Should have been . . . ” Gin cocked his head. “Hundreds of miles west of Cairo yet.” His voice held a questioning lilt, as if he weren’t entirely sure where they were.
“Any ideas, Eleanor?”
The question came from Mallory, and she looked around the vast expanse of desert in which they found themselves. There was nothing to immediately distinguish it from any other stretch of Egyptian desert, but she closed her eyes and listened.
“I can hear the ocean,” she said and flinched when Mallory drew the handkerchief away, “but this desert looks like any other.” Still, this close to Cairo, her thoughts couldn’t help but take an uncomfortable turn. “If your theory is right, Mallory, that the Defenders shot us down, what are the odds that they’ll be on us to be certain we’re dead?”
“If such a group exists, I would say pretty good odds.” Mallory folded the handkerchief into his pocket and withdrew his revolver, checking its ammunition.
“Wait.” Cleo raised her hands as though she could slow everyone down. “We’re in the middle of who knows where, without transport, limited supplies, an injured man, and now you’re telling me the Defenders of the Protectorate may have shot the Nuit down and are on our trail?”
Eleanor was pleased at the tone of Cleo’s voice. She was annoyed, but also sounded eager to get going. Eager to be moving and doing something. Anything was better than sitting still, and Eleanor shared the sentiment. This was her old life, laid open and bared once again. This was the world rushing to meet her, and her opening her arms to it.
“It’s a working theory,” Mallory said.
“I hate your theories,” Gin said as he returned with more supplies.
“Almost like Moscow.”
Auberon didn’t bother to stifle his groan. “At least it’s not snowing.”
Snow might have been preferable to the desert heat they would soon know, Virgil thought two hours later as they crested another mound of sand and yet another stretch of desert spread endlessly before them.
Mistral policy dictated that in the event of a crash, if agents believed themselves in imminent danger, they were to secure, destroy, or collect anything of value before evacuating the site. Contact was to be made as soon as reasonably possible.
If they were hundreds of miles out of Cairo, it would be a long damn time before they could make contact. They carried the remains of the radiotelegraphy machine with them, but Virgil had no hopes they would be able to fix it.
He didn’t have much hope at all as they walked on. The beast inside him clawed for escape and, having no opium, he fought to keep the thing contained. Be still, he told it, but every step was agony and the farther into the desert they walked, the more he shivered.
He should have found it amusing, five adults crossing the desert in their nightclothes, mismatched shoes and slippers for footwear. Robes and bed linens draped their shoulders, and each person carried several canteens of water. They had taken the entire cache of water, knowing it was their most important possession. Virgil ranked the bed linens as second most important, for they would provide shade when the sun rose. He hated the idea of sunrise, of traveling in the day’s heat. It was likely that whoever shot them down would seek the remains of the ship, which eliminated the wreck as a place of safety and shade.
He prayed they would find a settlement soon. A small oasis, one tree to grasp so his arms could stop shaking. He turned his attention to the others in an effort to ignore himself and the monster inside.
Gin and Cleo helped Auberon by turns, while Virgil kept an eye on Eleanor. She maintained a good pace despite the overlarge slippers she had inherited. It was fortunate none of them had broken a leg, and Auberon only an arm. Arms were more expendable when it came to trekking a desert.
At least none of them were barefoot.
Earlier, his eyes had lingered on the curve of Eleanor’s foot. Small and pale and probably cold, smudged with soot and dust, and he’d wanted nothing more than to protect her from everything that had befallen them this night.
Ahead of them, Gin dropped to his knees and splayed full out, nearly unconscious by the time Virgil and Eleanor reached him. Virgil couldn’t have asked for a better distraction; the sight of Gin’s downed body made him momentarily forget the claw of the wolf inside.
Virgil uncapped his canteen and dribbled water over Gin’s lips as Eleanor supported his head. Gin sputtered water everywhere.
“Think I . . . need to rest,” Gin whispered.
“If you say so, boss,” Virgil said, hoping his concern didn’t show through. Gin was a Mistral agent and while he had trained for such circumstances as these, he had never actually crashed an airship and found himself on the run. In this situation, reality was entirely different than theoretical preparation.
“We’ll all rest a bit,” Auberon said, and nodded to Cleo.
She drew a length of linen from her bag and set to making a tent to shield Gin from the cool night breeze and the dust it lifted into the air.
“Why would the Defenders shoot down an airship?” Cleo asked as they got the makeshift camp together, and Gin settled. “Presuming they exist. Sirocco has no evidence they do.”
Virgil knelt by Gin’s side and smoothed the young man’s hair back before offering him another sip of water. The light breeze teased the fabric around Gin’s shoulders, making it whisper. The low voices of the others rose above the whisper, giving Virgil another anchor. The beast lay down, not content but also not pressing.
“Prescribing motive is never entirely accurate,” Auberon answered, his eyes on Virgil, “but think of the Nuit. If they looked up and saw such a ship, perhaps they thought to bring her down for her treasures.”
“Presuming they exist,” Eleanor said. “According to legend, the Defenders are said to swear at a very young age to protect the whole of Egypt, from whatever source of incursion. Be it by land, air, or sea.”
Eleanor’s mention of incursions guided Virgil’s thoughts to his first invasion by the beast, and he bit off a short curse. He looked at Auberon, who was still staring at him. Because he knows, Virgil thought; found me in that awful den and he knows. Knows what my body craves—the cloying embrace of the dragon or the bittersweet dissolution as the beast inside claws its way out.
“Wasn’t—”
Virgil turned his attention to Gin as he fought to speak. Virgil hushed him, but Gin struggled to push himself up on his elbows. He stared at them through gummy eyes. Virgil settled for supporting him, since he wouldn’t lie back down.
“Didn’t come from below,” Gin managed.
Cleo shifted her attention from Auberon to Gin. “What didn’t come from below? The attack?”
“Was . . . ” Gin took the canteen Eleanor offered him. “Up there, with us.” He drank deeply, water trickling down the corners of his mouth to course through the dust coating him and wet his collar.
A cold dread settled in Virgil’s belly, and even the beast retreated. “Another airship,” he said.
“Defenders aren’t known to have airships,” Cleo said as she folded an extra bundle of linen into a pack. “They protect the land and remain on the land, at all times.”
“So, if it wasn’t the Defenders,” Eleanor asked, “then who?”
Virgil appreciated Eleanor’s restraint in asking only that. He didn’t want her coming back to the idea it had been Mistral. That answer didn’t make sense to him. Yes, they had threatened once, but destroying the Nuit was surely beyond their scope. He knew the investment such a ship demanded. Yet once, he would have sworn the same of Caroline: that she was incapable of betrayal.
That there existed people who enjoyed wreaking havoc for the sake of havoc remained senseless to Virgil. Caroline possessed some of that spiteful spirit, living life for only what she could gain. But in the end, what had it brought her? Little good. And still, not every memory of Caroline was tainted—and that sometimes made her more challenging to remember. It might have been easier had she been fully criminal, and not a person who had laughed and cried in his arms.
“Here.”
Virgil looked down to find a canteen in front of him. He peered up at Eleanor. She pressed the canteen into his shaking hand.
“You need to drink,” she said, and settled onto the ground beside him. She pulled her robe and bed linens around her, as graceful as any woman Virgil had ever seen. Tangled hair and mismatched slippers only added to her charm.
“If you think Cleo and I are hauling Auberon and Gin to Cairo on our own, you’re mistaken.” She grinned at him then and Virgil laughed, bringing the canteen to his mouth. Gin had settled back down. Cleo and Auberon were in conversation across from them, debating how fictional Defenders could fund the acquisition of an airship.
Virgil drank slow and long. His mind turned back to wolf-him at the lake, taking long drinks of cool water. The water had tasted strange against that queer tongue. Water lilies, there had been water lilies.
“You could carry Gin over your shoulder, make good time,” he eventually said.
“Have you seen her?”
The sudden shift in topic made Virgil shake his head in silent question. He waited for Eleanor to elaborate.
“The Lady,” she said.
“Should have guessed.” Before he could reply, Eleanor charged ahead, so he kept his answer to himself that, yes, he had seen the Lady.
“The museum wouldn’t even admit that she existed,” she said. “They didn’t care who I was—mocked me, in fact, when I mentioned my father. Didn’t care that I helped find her. They always denied it, which only fueled my theory about her, that she was too dangerous to admit to.”
“How long did you look?”
The night breeze caught her nutmeg curls, throwing them across her cheeks. “Not long enough. If I’d kept on a little longer, if I’d pressed a little harder—looked a few more places . . . ”
Virgil recognized the regret in Eleanor’s voice. He felt the same thing with Caroline. If only he had looked a little closer, had listened to the voice whispering in his ear. He might have known she worked for another agency and meant to twist every Mistral mission to her own benefit.
“And Hubert?” He was too curious after reading the half-stories within her file. Had they been lovers? Deep inside, the beast snarled. Virgil wondered if she would dodge the question, or take it to mean other than what it did.
“Originally the means to an end, eventually more than that. In the end, nothing what I had thought.”
The admissions surprised Virgil. “I would like to hear more about it sometime, if you are so inclined,” Virgil said and screwed the lid back onto the canteen. “When we’re not sitting in the middle of the desert. In our nightclothes—” He broke off as dust kicked up along the horizon and then streamed away, revealing shadowed riders on horseback. “With a dozen or so riders approaching.”
Virgil recognized the expression that crossed Eleanor’s face, equal parts exhilaration and horror as he fitted his revolver into her palm. He moved past her, toward Gin who was trying to pick himself up from the ground.
“Bloody—” Gin sputtered. “I did find revolvers in the wreckage—I did! Cleo, did you—Oh, thank you, God.”
The quintet moved as if they had worked together before, to face the approaching riders. Their weapons were meager and their number small compared to the fierce riders thundering out of the barren desert, but Virgil didn’t question any of them. They were injured, but each was trained for this.
“Surely we’ve all been in worse,” Eleanor said.
Her grin caught Virgil by surprise. Was it for the coming conflict or the second revolver Cleo offered her? They were old friends, Eleanor and that gun. When Eleanor offered his own back to him, he shook her off; the dual wield would give her twice the ammunition. He envied the apparent ease with which Eleanor stepped back into this life and wished he possessed the same when it came to reaching for the beast inside him; it wanted out.
“Chances are, we’ll see worse before this is done,” Auberon said. He shifted a revolver into his left hand, and while not his shooting hand, Virgil knew it would more than suffice.
Virgil caught and held Eleanor’s gaze as the ground seemed to tremble beneath them with approaching thunder. “We ride it out?”
The question went beyond this moment; it spoke to the entire mission. Was she in this? Was she with them? Virgil could taste Egypt on his lips now, ancient and dry and deeply mysterious, the group of riders nearly upon them. He saw only confidence in Eleanor’s eyes, the same as he would see if he looked to Auberon or Cleo, or any other agent he had been partnered with. The beast inside him strained at the leash. It wanted to run.
“We ride it out,” she said.
Alongside Eleanor, Virgil turned with guns drawn to face the coming horde.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eleanor Folley was not a lady—leastwise not a lady polite society would acknowledge as one of its own. She was reminded of this as the cloaked riders came out of the desert and she trained her revolvers on them. Her arms were steady, her stance the same, even if she looked like she belonged in the circus Mallory had mentioned. Wrapped in nightclothes and bed linens, her hair all aflunters, the circus could be the only proper society for her.
The horses were something out of a nightmare for Eleanor, the familiar sound of creatures bound in clockwork. Metal hooves struck the ground with a ceaseless fury. Eleanor concentrated on one target, but noted the rider carried only a spear. She looked at another to see he had but a sling. While the men held their weapons aloft, they made no move to use them.
She eased her fingers off the triggers and pointed her revolvers to the sky, walking slowly backward as the riders closed around them. Mallory did the same, and they now stood with backs braced together. Auberon and Cleo traced a circle around them, keeping the mechanical horses at bay with raised rifles. Gin was doing good to keep his feet, a revolver waving from one rider to another; he was the color of old paste in the wan desert light.
It felt strangely natural to have Mallory at her back as the horses closed in around them. No matter that her knees began to shake as old questions and fears rose up—did they have the rings, would the portal open and whisk them back in time?—she knew Mallory would be there. Wouldn’t let it happen. She told herself this over and over as one rider separated himself from the others. The rider ducked under the joined spears of his men and came into the circle’s confines.
Eleanor kept her revolvers raised. Mallory turned behind her, his chest flush
against her back, and trained his revolvers on the man, over Eleanor’s shoulders. Eleanor didn’t stop him.
“You offend the oldest gods,” the old man said to them in Egyptian. He pointed his spear at them, and Eleanor realized it was actually a staff. A small jackal perched at the staff’s head, while its base was sharply forked. A scepter of Was? A cold chill slid down her back. This man might be a priest, someone with great power among his people.
“It is our place to remove you, to defend the homeland.”
The rider spoke in Arabic, a language Eleanor had learned at her mother’s side. While its familiarity might have comforted in other situations, the words themselves told her this would not end well.
The riders surged forward as if under some silent command, and Mallory never got off a shot. There were too many spears, horses, and bodies. The men slid from the horses to wrestle their group to the ground. Grasping hands and pressing bodies reminded Eleanor too closely of that day long ago and she screamed.
His mouth was not human.
Eleanor jerked away and pulled the trigger of her revolver. Three men leapt back and she rolled, clumsy in her nightclothes. Panic flowed over her.
That these men were like those from long ago settled so firmly into her mind she expected to be tackled and bitten. Expected her hands to run with blood until sand coated them. She felt a strange disquiet inside of her—something wanted out, but she couldn’t pinpoint what.
At the swipe of a spear across her already-scratched face, she yelped. Another spear came at her, striking her across the legs. She crumpled into the dirt, panting as a coarse black sack was yanked over her head.
Not yet, Eleanor.
The bag, coupled with the voice in her head, was overwhelming, suffocating. She thrashed in panic and lifted both revolvers. Doubled fists slammed the guns from her grip and the bag pulled taut against her neck.
Eleanor spat out a curse and drew her arms to her chest, still trying to twist out of the man’s hold. Every attempt she made, whether it was a twist or a stomp aimed at his feet, only served to increase his grip on her.
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 13
