“I should let you tidy up . . . ”
He murmured the words, as though they were an afterthought to a longer conversation. He crossed to Eleanor and knelt to loosen the ropes that bound her, though once free of the chair, she discovered she was still secured at her wrists. Outside a small room holding a basin and pitcher, Irving untied her hands and took the gag from her mouth. Eleanor lifted a hand to her jaw, feeling as though she had been struck there, so deep was the pain.
She closed the door in Irving’s face and stood there, looking at the dried blood that covered her clothing. Christian’s blood. She fought to keep the world from slipping away then, from giving in to the anger that wanted to claim her. It would do her no good. She had no idea how many men crewed the airship, or where they were.
Nor where Mallory was.
Eleanor cleaned up as best she could, washing the blood from her hands and face, from the cuffs of her blouse. She could do nothing about her trousers, so left them as they were, splattered with Christian’s blood. Christian’s blood because Irving had killed him. Killed him and—
She pushed the anger back.
“Michael, please give me strength.”
A sharp knock sounded against the door. “Come now, Miss Folley, we haven’t all day. There’s no way out of that room other than this door.”
Eleanor dried her face and hands and opened the door to stare again at Irving. Now that the exhausted old man within him had been revealed to her, she couldn’t help but see him. He looked like the kind who would be more comfortable sharing cigars with her father than abducting people and bending them to his will. Christian’s body was no longer present. Christian . . .
“I hope you don’t mind I’m holding on to this.” Irving lifted a hand, showing the carnelian ring that gleamed on his middle finger. She was jerked away from further thoughts of Christian Hubert.
If he meant the ring as a taunt, Eleanor let it go. It would be too easy for the jackal to pick it up and tear his throat out. Eleanor hoped she sounded perfectly at ease when she spoke. “You may as well, being that it’s the only ring you possess.”
Irving smiled a smile that made Eleanor’s blood run cold. “This is why I do love puzzles,” he said. “You may think a picture will never emerge, and then come to discover you truly did have all the pieces after all.”
What had Irving done? To the rings; to Mallory, Auberon and Gin? Eleanor closed her hands into fists and strode past him, back toward the chairs. It wasn’t a large airship, though larger than the Remous. Eleanor looked through the door into the compartment beyond the one they occupied. There seemed to be no way out of this compartment, while the other possessed a singular staircase spiraling upward.
“Don’t consider it, Miss Folley,” Irving said from close behind her. “You couldn’t take this vessel on your own.”
She turned and offered Irving words that were more confident than she actually felt. “You did speak of patience earlier.”
She knew she could not, in all practicality, take this ship on her own; knew too that biding her time until they were on the ground in Egypt again would likely be her best chance for doing anything against him. She suspected Mallory and the others would know that as well—not wanting a repeat performance of the Nuit’s crashing. She told herself they were all right, that when conditions were better, she would see them again.
“Oh, you are awake!”
Eleanor turned toward the female voice, staring at the petite woman who entered the cabin. She was nearly Caroline Irving’s mirror image with her white-blond hair and shocking blue eyes. She was dressed in a tidy ensemble which mirrored the colors of the desert, her skirts more narrow than wide. She had to be Caroline’s mother, which both baffled and concerned Eleanor. What was she doing here? Eleanor might have all of the puzzle pieces before her, but couldn’t yet fit them into a proper pattern.
“My wife,” Irving confirmed, “Sabrina.”
Eleanor said nothing as Sabrina strode forward and clasped Eleanor’s hands. It took an effort not to pull her hands away, to not recoil from the woman’s clammy grip.
“Miss Eleanor Folley, what a genuine pleasure it is to meet you at last.” Sabrina’s smile was kinder than it had a right to be, but then Eleanor supposed this woman fully understood her husband’s plan. His madness. “I cannot thank you enough for your continued cooperation in this endeavor. Why, without you and the rings, we would be at a complete loss!”
“It was more coercion than cooperation, Mrs. Irving,” Eleanor said and then did free her hands with one firm tug. “Perhaps you can elaborate on exactly what you want of me.” But Eleanor felt she knew, knew as surely as she had when her father had first told her about her mother’s theory.
Sabrina Irving settled herself into a chair, tucking her feet under her skirts. “Only your blood, dear,” she said. “Only your blood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Loire Valley, France ~ October 1889
Of all the things Virgil Mallory was indeed acquainted with, he wished he could eliminate this item from the list. The gruesome sight of bright blood spilled across the chapel’s marble floor made him draw up short. Auberon stepped into the saint’s chapel, but Virgil couldn’t make himself do it, not at first.
Instead, his hand curled around the ring in his pocket. He didn’t know whether the blood on the chapel floor was Eleanor’s, but if it was—
The fury that took hold of him left his hands shaking. He focused on Auberon and the way his partner moved around the chapel in an attempt to ascertain what had happened there. He paused before a bloody handprint that marked the floor. Small enough to be Eleanor’s hand, Virgil thought, and met Auberon’s steady gaze. He tightened his hold on the ring.
“Don’t lose your focus,” Auberon said. “I need you on this.”
Virgil stepped into the chapel and silently prayed for calm and reason, but the closer he came to the blood, the more disturbed he felt. He told himself Gin was scouting outside, that danger would not arrive unannounced yet again, but the wolf wanted out. He wanted to track Hubert and Irving and—
What had he told Auberon—that he meant to embrace the wolf, that it was not a thing separate from him, but part of him. To that end, could he tap into the wolf’s senses even in his human form? There was still so much he didn’t know and hadn’t experimented with. He eyed the splatter of blood against the gray stone, then crouched beside Auberon.
The chapel smelled of beeswax and incense. He guessed the incense had not been burned here in the last day, and tried to reach beyond those lingering scents. There—there it was. The blood had a strange musky note to it, and no typical iron overtone. It smelled like a dying animal to him, a thing easily traceable if it stayed on the ground. He looked to the droplets of blood that led out of the chapel. No footprints.
“It doesn’t smell like Eleanor,” Virgil said. He realized such a statement might sound foolish, but Auberon only relaxed.
“All right. She comes to the church,” Auberon said, pacing a circle around the pool of blood. “Comes into the chapel, where she waits. We know Hubert was either already here or en route, because by the time we reach the shipyards, he’s nowhere to be found and we have only a handful of Irving’s men in his place.”
“Two handfuls, if you want to be precise about it,” Virgil said, rubbing a hand across his jaw. It still ached from the punches he had taken. Not giving in to the wolf during the fight had been a challenge, one he struggled against as intently as he had the men in their effort to claim the rings.
“Eleanor wouldn’t have fired on Hubert without good cause, and not here,” Virgil said, “but this . . . ” He trailed off as he reached for one of the bloody handprints. He spread his hand above it, knowing well the size of Eleanor’s hands. “It’s messy, as if it was not planned . . . Hubert would not intend to be shot, of course, but . . . ”
“Perhaps they weren’t alone, as we were not,” Auberon said. “Let us presume that Christian arrived wit
h the fourth ring, and let us presume that he presumed Eleanor would come with those she had. Perhaps he still has a certain faith in her, based on what he knows of her from the past.”
“And while we’re doing all this presuming?” Virgil asked.
“Let us also presume that another interested party, say one Howard Irving, made presumptions of his own, and presumed to take advantage of this curious meeting—in addition to leaving men at our presumed destination, in case Miss Folley was wise enough to not bring the rings with her.”
Virgil grunted, but looked around the chapel again. “Someone carried the bleeding party out of this room,” he said. “If it’s Christian’s blood, she could not have carried him. If it’s Irving’s, she still couldn’t have carried him, but I would wager we would be looking at a body now, and not simply blood.” Virgil looked to the small altar, the image of Michael, and the coins scattered over the lace.
Eleanor would not have been so reckless as to shoot Christian here of all places. He remembered enfolding her hands within his own as they had prayed at Notre Dame and knew she would not desecrate a church. But what might Irving do if he believed all four rings were in this chapel?
“Irving has taken them to Egypt.”
The words came from Virgil and Auberon in the same instant. It comforted Virgil to know he wasn’t alone in the belief.
All roads led back to Egypt, where this adventure had begun with the unearthing of the Lady. Even before that: Virgil thought of Tau’s journal and Sagira’s own encounter with the rings. What had it been like for Tau to lose her? His journal had maintained a scientific distance from such emotions. What had it then been for Renshaw Folley to face the possibility of losing his own wife—and then his daughter—to this thing? Virgil could say only what it was to face the loss of Eleanor to Anubis and his Glass. It was a thing he would wish on no other man.
Virgil followed Auberon from the chapel, but not without a final glance to the bloody handprint on the stone floor. He wouldn’t lose Eleanor to this; if she went, he would do everything in his power to go with her.
Deir el-Bahri, Egypt ~ October 1889
Irving was in a fouler mood when the airship set down just outside of Deir el-Bahri. He stalked from the ship, leaving Eleanor in the hands of a tall man who was disinclined to give her his name. Still, he was more muscle than the petite Sabrina Irving, whom Eleanor might have overpowered to escape. The lackey held her wrists—bound once more—keeping to the shade of the airship.
“What’s all that about?” Eleanor asked Sabrina as Irving met the pilot of one of the accompanying airships. He gestured wildly, cursed, and at last struck the man hard across the face. The pilot crumpled to the ground, and Eleanor flinched.
“I won’t apologize for him,” Sabrina whispered.
Eleanor looked to Irving’s wife at her side, hearing a strange tone in her voice. Her scent said that she wasn’t afraid, but rather sad.
“Soon,” Sabrina continued in that same whisper. Despite the heat of the afternoon, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “This will pass and she will be returned to us and every terrible thing we have all endured will be forgotten. You will see.”
Eleanor felt suddenly cold herself. “She?”
Eleanor asked, but deep down, feared she already knew. The she in question had to be Caroline, Sabrina’s daughter. As to being returned, Eleanor looked toward Hatshepsut’s temple and felt the growing presence of Anubis. It seemed to spread outward from his chapel, a cold that pierced the Egyptian afternoon.
“Sabrina, this won’t—”
“You shut your mouth!”
Sabrina’s hand cracked hard across Eleanor’s cheek. Eleanor bit her cheek under the impact and tasted blood. The blow was so hard she staggered and would have fallen were it not for the man holding her roped hands. She saw two of him for a moment, and spat blood onto the ground.
“Leaping straight to resurrecting the dead, then,” Eleanor said, “and you’ll tamper with time later?”
“You . . . ” Sabrina’s voice trembled now. and she closed her hand into a fist. “Shut. Your. Mouth.”
Eleanor did fall to silence, only because she didn’t know what else to say. The idea of resurrecting a dead daughter was staggering, and the more she tried to hold on to it, the more it slipped away.
She lifted her eyes from Irving’s wife to the ramps leading to Hatshepsut’s temple. Though the wind whipped her hair across her face, Eleanor could see a long shape resting at the top of the final ramp. A coffin, still coated with dirt.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, feeling her legs begin to tremble. How could Irving have done this to his wife? Given her this hope? Or had it been Sabrina who concocted the plan? “Sabrina. This won’t work. You must know that.”
Sabrina began to walk toward the coffin and temple; the man holding to Eleanor pulled her along after as though she were a dog on a lead.
“I know nothing of the sort,” Sabrina said. “Anubis had the power of life and death—”
“He—” Eleanor was at a loss for words. Anubis had been considered the god of the underworld, but surely he couldn’t bring a person back from death? Isis perhaps, collecting a person the way she had the pieces of her slain husband, but not Anubis. “Sabrina, he can’t—”
“Caroline has paid enough for the double life she led! She has suffered enough . . . we all have.”
The anguish in Sabrina’s voice was far too familiar to Eleanor. What was it about mothers and daughters; Dalila had pursued Sagira, she had pursued her own mother and now here stood Sabrina, still grieving for her dead daughter, convinced she had found a way to bring her back.
Eleanor’s vision blurred with tears, tears that were whipped away by another hot uprush of wind. While the air was warm, Eleanor was so chilled by the idea Sabrina had voiced she would have sworn they were walking through a winter’s day in Dublin.
“You knew?” Eleanor stopped walking and stumbled when the man pulled her back into motion, up the ramp. “About your daughter’s deceit?”
“Who do you think she took her orders from?” Sabrina continued to march up the ramp; strands of her fair hair whipped out of her chignon, whisking behind her in the wind. “Who did she report to?”
Her voice hitched, and then her revelations ceased as she reached the coffin. Sabrina fell to her knees in front of it, bending over to embrace the dirty wood.
Eleanor looked away. Of all the ways this could have gone from bad to worse, this was the one she hadn’t imagined. This was the thing she never would have believed, and perhaps should have always looked toward first. Mothers, daughters, unbreakable bonds. What lengths would she have once gone to, to get her mother back? To embrace her again and know that everything and everyone was back where it was meant to be?
She was pulled from her thoughts when the man holding her rope transferred it to another set of hands. Irving. Irving, who had controlled his daughter to her destruction. Eleanor didn’t presume she could convince the man his methods were insane, not having had any luck with his wife, but the words still came.
“Caroline is dead, Irving. Let her rest.”
Irving’s hand across her cheek was harder than his wife’s. Eleanor did fall this time, spitting more blood onto the dusty ground as her knees cracked against the stone. Her hands splayed in the dirt, ropes biting into her wrists.
“If I have to beat every drop of your blood from your body, I will, Miss Folley. I would rather it not come to that, all things being—”
Whatever Irving had been about to say was cut off. He joined Eleanor in the dust, sprawling flat on the stony ground in an inelegant heap. Eleanor stared at him, his wide eyes, and then heard gunfire. Hope lodged in her heart.
“Howard!”
Eleanor thought the gates to the underworld had been opened or that she was hallucinating, for strange figures began to emerge from Hatshepsut’s temple. The people were wrapped entirely in black cloth, and as they moved, Eleanor spied the jeweled
bird masks she had seen during the attack on the Galerie des Machines. The birdmen came to Irving, raising rifles to defend the temple and the Irvings’ position. The rifles roared, over and over, toward two more arriving airships.
Eleanor reached for Irving and the knife he wore at his waist, her sharp elbow in his ribs sending him toppling. She pulled the knife free and sliced across Irving’s midsection. Sabrina cried out and lunged for her husband. Eleanor let them tussle so she could exchange her grip on the knife and turn it against the ropes that bound her.
“Your boys aren’t coming, Irving!”
It was a familiar voice that growled above the thundering rifles, and Eleanor’s head jerked up. Familiar people crossed the dusty plain before the temple. Auberon, Gin, and—
“Virgil,” she whispered.
The relief that flooded through her was short-lived as she ducked to avoid the crossfire of Mallory’s incoming party and Irving’s. She worked the knife between the ropes again and began to saw.
“Bastard.”
The curse came from Irving, and he leapt upon her, wrestling her to the ground in an attempt to reclaim the knife. The knife stuck in the ropes, and the angle of Eleanor’s hands wouldn’t allow her to pull it free. She watched Irving’s hands close effortlessly around the familiar hilt, but instead of pulling the blade toward him to free it from the ropes, he pushed inward.
With his weight against her, Eleanor could not avoid the blade as it slid into her side. The pain was sharp and bright, but doubly so when Irving ripped the blade free. Eleanor screamed as Irving lunged for her again.
“It’s your blood we need, girl,” he said and jabbed again.
Eleanor rolled to dodge the second thrust. Irving found himself suddenly beyond her and turned for another attack. For an older man, he moved well, but then the desire to return his daughter to life was foremost in his mind; surely it would keep him moving, no matter the circumstances.
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 37
