Without warning, the silhouette reached out and grabbed my arms, dragging me up the final steps. And suddenly, I was face-to-face with Mitchell T. Baylarian. The Night Gentleman. The mass murderer.
I’d seen his picture. I’d seen him that day in the Ritz with Hadley. But staring into his feverish dark eyes, I realized I’d also seen him numerous other times since arriving in Paris. Dancing at Fitzgerald’s book party. Drinking at Closerie des Lilas. Walking down the sidewalk in front of Stein’s house. Entering the milliner shop. He had always been there, right under our noses.
Baylarian dragged me to the front of the balcony. The entire box was deserted, as were the adjacent ones. There was no one there. No one to stop him from hurling me over the side.
“I went to a lot of trouble to get these seats,” Baylarian said conversationally, as if we were on a date and he wanted me to know the lengths he’d gone to impress me. He had one arm wrapped around my waist, holding me uncomfortably close to his side. Though I wanted nothing more than to shove him away, to shove him over the ledge, my limbs refused to comply with my brain’s screaming commands.
“Quite a few patrons were disappointed when they were told the private boxes were all unavailable. Do you even know how many tickets I had to purchase?” he continued. The killer gestured to the left and then the right. It wasn’t just the surrounding boxes that sat vacant. The entire balcony level was empty. “It was worth it, though.”
“You have me. Now tell me what you want,” I wheezed, infusing as much bravado into my words as a scared-shiteless girl could muster.
Baylarian took a step away and stared down at me. His expression was puzzled, as if the situation should have been obvious.
“I want you to witness my final performance, of course,” he said. “Someone needs to tell the world what happened here tonight.”
Confusion swam through my mushy brain.
“Aren’t you going to kill me?” I mumbled.
The Night Gentleman laughed. That same cackling laughter that had been taunting my mind through the Rosetta was even more terrifying in person.
“Of course not,” he replied, nearly gleeful. “You are much too important to kill, Stassi.”
A glint of red light drew my attention to Baylarian’s left hand. The madman was twirling something between his long fingers. With my head tilting unsteadily, it took me a minute to realize what it was. Once I did, the molten lava swirling in my belly turned to stone. Even by the tiniest measure, the revelation returned some degree of my control over the champagne’s effects. It wasn’t enough to stop him, though.
The Night Gentleman was holding a small black box dominated by a round red button. A remote detonator of some type. He was going to blow us all up.
I let out a long, shuddering breath.
“Why?” I asked despondently. “What did these people do to you?”
“Nothing,” Baylarian said simply. “They are merely necessary casualties. Pawns in the game, if you will. But important pawns. Do you know who is here tonight? This show brought out more notable people than I’d even hoped for. The Duke of Westminster and his mistress. Two princesses of Greece. A Russian Countess. Playwrights. Fashion designers. And of course, your friends. Ernest Hemingway, himself. Hadley Richardson. Your amour, Charles DuPree. Can you imagine? People who matter, Stassi.”
He peered down at me in the darkness, imploring me to understand.
“Killing them ensures me eternal infamy. Each of these lives secures my place within history. Isn’t that what we all want? To never be forgotten?”
Baylarian gently stroked the switch with his thumb. He bore down with just enough pressure to make my heart stop. But not enough to detonate his weapon. My horror shoved aside the densest of the fog in my brain. I needed to get control of myself. I needed to stop him.
I stilled the rocking of my body with sheer will alone. I clutched and unclutched the purse in my hand, demanding that my body follow the commands of my brain.
Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release. Miraculously, my fingers complied.
The killer closed his eyes. His hands raised. He began waving them in time to the music, like a conductor leading his orchestra down the final stretch of a piece. With utter horror, I realized that was exactly what was happening.
The building crescendo would climax with the final notes of so many lives.
I had to act. Now.
Eyes still closed, lost in his own world, Baylarian hummed quietly as he swung his arms to the beat. He thought I was too weak to put up a fight. He thought me too complacent to take action. Or maybe he truly believed that I was grateful to be the sole surviving witness to his act.
Whatever it was, the killer was wrong.
The music poured from him right up until the moment I smacked him across the face with my purse.
Sure, it wasn’t the most elegant defense. But the clutch was the only weapon at my disposal. And I was resourceful.
Baylarian stumbled. The detonator slipped from between his fingers. We both dove for it, our heads colliding. Stars shot across my vision, flashing a blinding sheer white. Somehow, only explicable by pure luck, the switch and my outstretched fingers connected as I tumbled down. I fell to the ground at the front of the balcony, the detonator gripped tightly in my hand.
Don’t squeeze. Don’t squeeze.
Baylarian landed on top of me, his weight crushing my ribs. The little remaining air in my lungs rushed out through my parted lips in a strangled scream. Nails raked at the hand holding the switch, tearing desperately at my skin. I held on as though every life in that theater depended on it.
And it did.
I kicked and thrashed erratically, willing the killer away from me. But Baylarian was bigger than me. And stronger. And not suffering the effects of whatever poison he’d put in my champagne.
He had me pinned on my back in no time. His knees dug into my thighs, rendering my legs useless. A blur of movement flew towards my face. I turned my head, just in time to avoid taking the blow full-on. Baylarian’s fist clipped my cheek, the brunt of the force landing on my ear. Then his forearm was on my throat, cutting off my air supply.
Guess he doesn’t need a witness all that badly.
My vision was going dark. The hand holding the detonator was slick with sweat. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. With my last ounce of fight, I arched my free hand into a claw. My nails dug mercilessly into the arm at my throat. But it had no effect on the madman.
Desperate to breathe, I thrashed my head from side to side. My cheek hit something smooth and soft. My purse, I realized through the ever-darkening shadows of death. That damned evening bag was still with me. A sharp prick of pain parted the dusk, bringing dim hope.
Baylarian’s attention was focused on the switch in my right hand. The arm at my throat lifted a fraction, allowing one shallow breath before it resumed its torturous pressure. Millimeter by millimeter, he was pulling the device from my fingers. I gave up on the arm at my throat and went for the purse. In the fall, the clasp had come undone. Another stroke of luck.
My fingers inched into the bag, fumbling to find my salvation. My last dredges of hope ignited when I felt the sharp bite of jagged glass in my palm.
With a sound more animal than human, I plunged the broken glass into Baylarian’s arm. The pressure on my windpipe ceased as he yanked back instinctively. I sucked in the precious air that burned my lungs with reprieve. My hand was sticky and slick with a mixture of my blood and his, but I maintained my excruciating grip on the glass. Even as it dug into my own palm, I pulled the shard from Baylarian’s arm.
I swung with every ounce of energy in my being. I aimed the makeshift weapon at the killer’s hand, which was milliseconds from freeing the detonator from my own weakening grasp.
Howling like a wounded wolf, Baylarian gave up the fight for the switch. He reared back, holding his injured hand. As he hurled obscenities at me, I braced for another fist flying at my face. Sure enough, Baylar
ian’s came barreling at me. I flung the hand holding the glass towards his, praying his momentum would make the two connect.
I’d guessed wrong. It wasn’t his hand that struck the blow. It was his head.
For a long, dazed moment, I thought he’d head-butted me on purpose. But Baylarian wasn’t moving. His body was deadweight on top of mine. Dizziness overwhelmed me, and bile rose up in my throat. I was an instant from blacking out.
Did he really knock himself out? I thought wondrously, hanging on to consciousness for dear life. My eyes closed, the weight of the lids too heavy to fight.
Just as I was drifting away, the weight lifted off of me all at once.
Shant. He’s alive. He’s going to blow this place up.
No adrenaline came. No fight. No will to live. I couldn’t have moved if a hundred lives depended on it. My final thought was whether I would live to feel the fiery explosion.
A bright light was suddenly shining directly into my eyes. The white light of the afterlife. Unfortunately, I was too dizzy to handle it. Would I be forgiven for vomiting on the pearly gates?
“Too fast,” I moaned. “Slower. Please...”
“Stassi? Stassi?” Saint Peter called. “Open your eyes. Bane, get Dr. Merriweather. Now.”
They died, too? I thought with immense sadness.
With a touch as light as butterfly wings, fingers eased my eyelids open. Two impossibly green dots consumed my vision.
“I’m sorry, Peter,” I whispered. “I’m going to throw up on you.”
“Stassi?”
“Who’s Peter?” a voice asked from somewhere far away.
“I’m here, Stassi. I’m so sorry. Just lie still. Help is on the way.”
“Cyrus?” I asked, wondering if I was only dreaming his voice.
“It’s me. I’m right here, just stay with me.”
I licked my lips and tasted salty, coppery liquid.
“Cyrus?” I repeated, my voice a soft whisper.
I felt someone lean in over me. “Yes?”
“If I ask later, lie and say that was my blood I just tasted.”
And then, I passed out.
TIME PASSED IN a blur of fog, shadows, and disorientation.
Two days later, I was still in my bed at the townhome, recuperating from the fight with Baylarian and sleeping off the effects of the drugs. In a fleeting moment of clarity, Merriweather told me that the champagne had been laced with a large dose of a strong muscle relaxer and habanero pepper oil. Fortunately, the concoction hadn’t caused any permanent damage. With rest and lots of ice cream, I was scheduled to make a full recovery.
The cut on my hand from the broken glass took twelve stitches to close. In time, I’d have a kickass battle scar to go along with the not-so-kickass story to tell my friends. The bruise on my cheek from Baylarian’s fist was already fading. It didn’t hurt too badly, and I was even eager to show Gaige that we now had matching black eyes.
But the purple and blue patches that encircled my throat like a tie-dyed scarf were not so easy to joke about. Every time I was shuffled to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, the tender, discolored skin reminded me of how close I’d come to dying. And every time Cyrus’s gaze landed on my neck, his jaw began to work back and forth. The one positive result of my injuries was that my boss had been waiting on me hand and foot. He was clearly burdened with misplaced guilt about the last-minute rescue.
“Baylarian knew we were watching you,” Cyrus told me, once I was finally able to stay awake. “The guy Wick spotted was a decoy. He led us right to a bomb as a distraction, so he could get you alone. I should have known better. I should’ve realized what was happening. I am so sorry, Stassi.” Cyrus paused, his expression heartbreaking. “The worst part is, the bomb he led us to was only one of ten we found in our sweep of the theater afterwards. He played us, and I almost lost you.”
I drank my milkshake through the pink twisty straw someone had procured upon my request. The cold, sweet deliciousness felt amazing on the blisters of my abused esophagus.
“I didn’t know you cared so much,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Cyrus had been beating himself up since finding me on the balcony. Though his self-reproach did have some perks, I hated seeing him so sullen.
“Come on, Cyrus,” I said, when he didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You did the right thing. My life isn’t worth the lives of all those people in the theater. You had to take the chance.”
An unreadable emotion played across his expression. My boss took my uninjured hand in his.
“I am so sorry, Stassi,” he repeated, his voice wavering. “I never should have put you in that position.”
We fell silent. I slurped more of the milkshake, trying to think of something that would turn my boss’s frown upside down. More than anything, I wanted to put the events on that balcony behind me. Until everyone stopped treating me like an injured bird, that wasn’t going to happen. Ignoring it all might not have been the most emotionally healthy response, but that was how I’d coped my entire life.
My rescuers—Cyrus, Bane, and company—had not killed Baylarian. When they’d finally found us on the balcony, Cyrus had shot him with a tranquilizer dart. Dressed as medical staff, a team of alchemists had removed his unconscious body from the theater. They’d gone straight to customs, where Bane and his goon squad had jumped back to our time with the serial killer. When I asked what would happen next, Cyrus clammed up.
“The Founders will convene to decide how to handle the situation,” was all he would say.
Vague yet ominous, the statement left me oddly uncurious as to the possible outcomes and subsequent fate of the villain known as the Night Gentleman. The glint of grim determination in Cyrus’s piercing gaze told me all I needed to know: if Cyrus got his way—and he always did—Mitchell Baylarian would suffer greatly for his crimes.
Dealing with the situation within the syndicates, instead of handing him over to the Parisian authorities, left one very big problem. My partner was still in a jail cell.
“How’s Gaige doing? Any word on bail?” I asked Cyrus.
My boss smiled. “He’s fine. He’s worried about you, though. Damn near broke his cuffs when I told him what happened. We’re still working on bail. Hopefully, he’ll only be in the jail for another day or two.”
“Days?” I moaned. “Gaige is not a killer. We found the killer. It’s not okay that he is stuck in an ancient prison.”
“Once he’s out, he’ll need to jump back immediately,” Cyrus continued, patting my hand. He didn’t comment on the fairness of the situation.
I sat back, moping. Gaige and I had made a Herculean effort on this run. Ending it this way was woefully depressing. Cyrus had confirmed earlier that he didn’t find the final piece of Blue’s Canyon during his search of the Hemingway’s home. Bane’s men had managed to swap out the forgeries of the two sections Gaige and I found for the originals. Too bad “close” only counted in bocce and bison bombs.
“I’m sorry that you’re going to have to deal with the unhappy client,” I said. “I’m sorry we didn’t complete the run. We had it locked up before the serial killer came along. We were this close.”
“Don’t be,” Cyrus said, waving off my apology. “Besides, the Hemingways are still in Paris. Hadley was so worried about you, she insisted on delaying their trip. She’s called numerous times to check on you.” He paused and eyed me critically. “She isn’t the only one.”
A girly flutter went through my abdomen and I flushed.
Charles.
I had a small stack of phone messages from him, a large bouquet of flowers—Charles had no idea how much the sight of a flower delivery had terrified me—and I was told he’d dropped by several times. Officially, I’d “taken ill” during the performance, supposedly suffering from a wicked case of food poisoning. The numerous witnesses who’d seen me wheeled out of the theater into a waiting ambulance supported this version of events, though it was alchemists, not p
aramedics, who’d taken me.
I wanted to see Charles. Cyrus had forbidden it. My bruises, stitches, and overall just-got-the-shite-beat-out-of-me appearance were not in line with food poisoning. Too many red flags. As a peace offering, Cyrus had at least given me the messages and flowers, but was firm on my lack of contact with the outside world.
“I still think it’s best if you return to the island as soon as possible,” my boss said, drawing me from my thoughts of Charles. “You can finish recovering in your own bed.”
This was an argument we’d had multiple times. Cyrus wanted to jump home with me immediately after the theater. Initially, Dr. Merriweather declared it wasn’t a good idea for me to travel through a vortex in my condition. Once I was conscious, my tenacious refusal to leave Paris while Gaige was still in prison delayed my departure.
I shook my head. “When Gaige is free, I will go. You can’t make me go before then.”
Cyrus sighed.
“Please don’t make me go before then?”
My boss eyed me for a long moment. I did my best to look as resolute as possible, hoping that my injuries would add to the tough façade.
“You’re a stubborn one, you know that?” Cyrus asked, a hint of a gleam in his eye.
I nodded.
“Against my better judgment, someone will be coming to stay with you,” he said. “I need to get back, and deal with the mess Baylarian has made. But I don’t want you to be alone.”
“No. No, no, no. Please don’t stick me with Ines,” I groaned.
The gleam grew into outright amusement on my boss’s face.
“I know she means well,” I continued my plea. “But, Cyrus…that woman drives me crazy.”
“I know the feeling,” Cyrus replied with a laugh. “I’m not sticking you with Ines. I think you’ll be happy with my decision.” My boss stood to leave. “For now, get some rest. Focus on getting better.”
Cyrus started for the door.
“Wait,” I called. “Aren’t you going to tell me who it is?”
The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1) Page 44
