by Kat Ross
Balthazar’s staring eyes fixed on the ceiling. He seemed unable to close them. Every muscle had locked down tight in trembling outrage. His body felt like a dispossessed house with an aged, stooped butler trudging through the rooms, blowing out the candles one by one. But his vision was unimpaired and now he saw a twisted face loom above him.
“I’ll burn you for this,” Bekker snarled. “Over a slow fire.”
Balthazar tried to draw breath, but his lungs were frozen. He heard the slither of iron links unfurling.
Bekker’s own breath was panting. Clotted with rage. “Or I’ll keep you as my pet. Yes, that would be a better punishment. To show the others. Maybe we’ll pass you around. You can be the Duzakh’s new mascot.” His eyes flicked toward the door. “Come along into the gate now. I’ll take you back to Boma.”
“Lucas….” The word was hardly audible, more a hiss of air, but Bekker gave a dry chuckle.
“Dead. Mr. Marchand was a bit outmatched.”
Balthazar felt a suffocating despair. He no longer cared what awaited him after death. He only wanted Bekker to know the truth. Needed him to comprehend the depths of his treachery and loathing. “Name’s not Marchand,” he croaked. “It’s Devereaux.”
Bekker dropped to his haunches, gaze narrowing. “What are you rambling on about?”
He didn’t even remember.
Balthazar sucked in a thin, wheezing breath. “The ring you stole from me…. The family you slaughtered…. You left a boy alive.”
Bekker frowned. Then a slow smile broke across his face. “Your man Lucas.”
“Yes.”
“You saved the little brat. How touching.” Bekker polished the black stone on Balthazar’s shirt and held his hand up to the light. He closed his fist. “Well, the omission has been remedied.”
“Always hated you.” Balthazar’s head fell to the side. “Always.”
“Do you think that wounds me?” He snapped the collar shut around Balthazar’s throat, then seized his chin in a crushing grip, forcing his face up. “I always hated you, too. Thought you were better because you shared her bed.” He meant Neblis. “But that almighty bitch is dead and so are the rest of them. Except for me. Why do you think that is?”
Balthazar stared mutely. He wished he could spit in Bekker’s face, but even that petty act of defiance was beyond him.
“Because I care for no one. I have no weaknesses. It doesn’t matter that you killed my men. I can find new ones. I thought you were the same, but you’re here because of a dead boy. A worthless little mewling thing you should have left behind. Should have finished off yourself.” Bekker’s lips curled in disdain. “But you tied him to your apron-strings and now the weight of him is dragging you down to a hellish, lightless place where—”
Bekker never finished the sentence because there came the high, humming scream of the tachikazi, the sword wind, and his head flew from his shoulders. Lucas towered above him, a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. Then he crumpled, slowly, and lay still.
Balthazar’s heart raced in the cage of his chest. He knew what was coming next. Lucas’s sword lay just out of reach. His fingers twitched, reaching….
The revenant emerged from the pool. Balthazar closed his eyes. He heard the drip of water, sloshing against the edges as it waded out. The point of its iron sword dragged on the marble tile. The smell hit, not just decay and rot, but the cold, airless dank of crypts buried beneath mountains of ancient stone.
He hadn’t feared revenants in a long time. They were huge and hungry but simple for a swordsman of his caliber to dispatch. Now his skin prickled as he heard it move closer, blade scraping. It made a snuffling sound. Dry leather creaked. He could sense silver eyes crawling over his body.
He stopped breathing. Held still as a corpse. Then he thought of Lucas. What if it…? Balthazar was about to stir when the heavy footsteps moved away. They plodded out the door and the icy stench lifted.
Balthazar gritted his teeth. Tried to roll over. To sit. Even dogs could do that.
I’m terribly sorry, the butler intoned. But all the staff has been let go. This structure is officially condemned.
“Bollocks to that,” Balthazar muttered, channeling Vivienne Cumberland. Drawing on the force of will that had kept him alive for more than two thousand years – or, more likely, the excesses he’d indulged in London before coming here – he dragged himself to Lucas.
The injuries were horrific. No wonder Bekker had written him off. Even the revenant was fooled. Balthazar couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to stand, let alone lift a sword. Blood oozed from his mouth and nose. From many, many places. It pooled beneath him in a spreading crimson tide.
“Just hang on a minute,” Balthazar whispered.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, he snapped the open manacle of the chain leading from his own neck around Lucas’s wrist. “Can you feel it? The life? It’s just there, Lucas. Just there, waiting for you to take it.”
Lucas lay unmoving. Unresponsive. Balthazar pressed an ear to his chest and heard the faintest heartbeat. He gave Lucas a brutal shake. Lucas cried out, the piercing, agonized sound of a dying animal. “Damn you, you have the spark. Use it! Take me. Reach for me. I’m just there…” Balthazar gasped as an alien intelligence took root in his mind. “Yes, yes, that’s the way. Keep going. More.”
He shuddered to his marrow as his life seeped away through the collar.
So this is what it’s like.
Not pleasant. No, not pleasant at all. But a smile spread across Balthazar’s face as the wounds began to close, the bones to knit, the color returning to Lucas’s waxen skin. It was like watching a terminal illness in reverse. Even the wings of white at his temples darkened to a chestnut brown.
I should probably stop him now, Balthazar thought distantly. But of course he couldn’t. And part of him wondered if it wasn’t for the best. Let Lucas go on without him. Perhaps his time was over. Had been for a long time even if he didn’t want to admit it. A strange calm came over him. Maybe there was nothing after death. Just peace and quiet. Balthazar blinked languidly, considering this. Might be a bit boring, after all….
Lucas’s eyes flew wide. He popped up like a jack-in-the-box. Looked down at his arm, then at Balthazar, with an expression of horror. The draining ceased immediately. The thread between them snapped.
“My lord,” he said faintly. “What have you done?”
Balthazar flopped to his back, the chain rattling. He waved a limp wrist. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Lucas peered at him with astonishment. “My lord…. You’re weeping.”
“Don’t be silly.” Balthazar stared at him. “I don’t weep.”
“Cry?”
“Not that either,” he replied coldly. “I have a mote in my eye.”
“How do I get this thing off?”
“Give it here.”
Lucas held his arm out and Balthazar flicked the hidden catch. He stared at his own hand with distaste. It had wrinkles. “I’ll definitely have to pay for sex now,” he muttered, suddenly afraid to look in a mirror.
“I killed Jorin Bekker,” Lucas said in wonder. “I actually did.”
“Would you mind checking his body for the key?”
“Oh God, yes. Sorry.” Lucas trundled off and returned with the key. He unlocked the collar from Balthazar’s neck and kicked the chains away. “Thanks for that.” He swallowed. “Really.”
Balthazar gazed at him fondly. “Don’t mention it. Will you take me home now?”
“Of course. Which one?”
“London.”
Lucas Devereaux scooped him up like a kitten. He looked happier and more … well, full of life than Balthazar had ever seen him. “Some brandy will do you a world of good, my lord.”
“Yes, brandy. And a nice shag. Don’t worry, not with you.”
That earned one of Lucas’s rare laughs. “I’m glad to see your spirits are still robust.” He waded into the gateway.
“They always are, Lucas.” Balthazar’s eyes slid shut. “Though as for the rest of me….”
He must have slipped away for a bit, because the next thing he knew, he smelled the clean linen and beeswax of his bedroom in Mayfair and Lucas was pulling the sheets up to his chin.
“Read me a bedtime story?” Balthazar murmured, burrowing deeper into the goose down.
His lips twitched. “I think you’d better rest.”
“Yes, Mother.” Lucas bent over the candle and Balthazar grabbed his arm. “Leave it burning.”
“Of course. I’ll be just down the hall if you want me, my lord. I’m … I’m not at all tired.”
Balthazar made some reply, his eyes already closing again.
Part of him feared a cameo appearance in his dreams by the bespectacled Vorstmann and his cranial crochet, but this proved to be unfounded. The candle burned low and his silvered head didn’t stir from the pillow.
For the first night in a very long time, Balthazar slept like an angel.
Chapter 25
Anne trembled as she pressed her cheek against Gabriel’s in the darkness, felt the scratchy tickle of his beard and his warm, living body in her arms. He was still in one piece, still sane…. Or, at least, sane within the parameters of his own brand of lunacy, which in view of the horrors she’d seen that night, was starting to make perfect sense.
It had been a bravado performance—Why don’t you practice on me first?—but when she walked into that chamber and saw the rolling steel cart and the instruments laid out on it and the ghastly little man with the apron and the scalpel in his hand, she couldn’t help thinking of what she would have found if she’d come a few minutes later.
“Hello?” a voice whispered somewhere to the left. “I’m sorry, but would it be too much trouble—”
Balthazar. Anne used a trickle of earth to unlock his chains. She heard him call for Lucas Devereaux.
The collar that had circled Gabriel’s neck lay at his feet. He reached down and picked up the chains, snapping the manacle around his own wrist. “You can see better than I can,” he muttered. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“There’s two of Bekker’s men still standing,” she said, squinting down the long hall, where she could just make out grappling forms. “No, make that one. Jacob just killed his.”
“Constantin?”
“I don’t see him.”
Gabriel limped toward the dim glow of necromantic chains and Anne followed. Fire suddenly flared and she threw a hand over her face.
“Sorry, Miss Lawrence,” Jacob said. “I thought we could use some light.”
He’d taken a torch from one of the brackets and lit it with his matches. Her eyes adjusted and she saw Julian standing over the last of Bekker’s necromancers. His chains were slick with blood and so was he, but whatever wounds he’d taken were already healing.
Balthazar and Lucas were gone. Anne supposed she couldn’t blame them.
“Constantin probably fled through the gate,” Gabriel said tersely. “Balthazar told me Bekker planned to return. He may still, if he hasn’t been warned. I’ll wait for him there.”
“I’m coming with you,” Anne said.
Gabriel met her eyes and nodded. She was pleased he didn’t hesitate. “We’ll take him together.” He turned to Jacob and Julian. “Deal with the revenants. Find us when you’re done.”
“Be careful, boss,” Jacob said, his eyes fixed on the widening crack in the mosaic floor, right where Vorstmann had stood at the center of the balance scales, where four revenants were hauling themselves out. Gabriel walked past, ignoring their growls and grasping hands.
“The portal is this way,” Anne said, turning right when they reached the corridor. “We passed it looking for you.” She paused. “We found another hidden room. Where Bekker kept his victims. It was….” She shook her head, knowing the memory would haunt her forever. “It was bad.”
Gabriel looked at her, his face carved from stone. “There won’t be one more, Anne. Not one more.”
She hurried to match his long strides. “How did he take you at the museum?”
“Black lightning. He got lucky.”
“And if he uses it again?”
Gabriel gave a grim smile. “He can’t. Not if we’re waiting inside the gate.”
Her eyes widened. The limbo used for Travelling also attracted the restless dead, spirits that sought to return to the living world as ghouls. Spending any length of time in that shadowland was dangerous. Neither necromantic nor elemental power worked there. But having seen Bekker’s shrine of death, Anne was willing to risk it.
The corridor opened into a gallery with a row of tall stained glass windows on one side and a passage leading from the other. “It’s that way,” she said, heading for the passage.
A tall figure stepped into view before one of the windows. Soft dawn light filtered through the colored glass, outlining it in shadow.
Gabriel halted. She heard his heart speed up.
Constantin stared at them, his face a mask of hatred. He unbuckled the sanctus arma and threw it aside. He rolled his shoulders. And in the blink of an eye, his form changed. A bear towered on its hind legs, eight feet tall with powerful limbs, each tipped with a black claw the length of Anne’s hand. Small, cunning eyes glittered above a long snout. Constantin bared his fangs.
Before Anne could react, Gabriel was streaking toward him. He’d assumed his cat form, black with jagged gold stripes. A fierce creature — and half the bear’s weight soaking wet.
Anne’s fists clenched. She knew Constantin was playing to Gabriel’s temper.
He’ll tear him apart.
The cat’s hindquarters bunched. It slammed into the rearing bear, driving it backward. Glass exploded as they tumbled through the window.
Anne tore the length of the gallery, heedless of the shards slicing her bare feet, and looked out. They’d cleared the stone balcony below and were rolling across the lawn toward one of the reflecting pools. Brown and tawny fur blurred together. Cat and bear were locked too tightly in combat and moving too fast for her to use the power.
She cursed and picked her way across the razor teeth of glass jutting from the metal frame. Anne lowered herself over the window ledge, probing the stone for toeholds. She heard an ear-shattering roar from the bear, an answering snarl from the cat.
I could have killed him, Anne thought furiously. But she knew Gabriel wanted Constantin for himself. That he needed to settle it alone.
This insight didn’t make her any less angry.
She dangled by the tips of her fingers, stretching, and her left foot brushed the gilded oriel of the window below. Anne braced herself and found a decorative frieze with one hand. When her weight rested fully on the oriel, she turned and dropped down to the balcony. The impact drove a shard of glass deeper into her foot. She grunted with pain as the ankle gave way, twisting.
The reflecting pool roiled with waves. The bear raised a paw and swept it down with brutal force, shredding the cat’s flank. Anne limped across the lawn, eyes locked on Constantin. She threw a weave of breaking power at his skull, but he lurched aside at the last moment and it flew wide, knocking chips of stone from the marble fountain.
The cat crouched in the water, bloodied sides heaving. One paw hung limply. Anne saw the white of bone poking through. Constantin roared and rose to his full height. Then eight hundred pounds of muscle crashed down. A red stain spread through the water.
Anne drew a sobbing breath and staggered for the pool, leaving her own bloody trail across the grass. When she reached the edge, she saw no sign of Gabriel. Only the massive bear, floating on the surface. She waded in and grabbed the huge shoulder, rolling it over. Its throat was gone, the spine severed. As she shoved it away, the bear dissipated like mist. A man with a black beard and sightless eyes drifted among the lily pads.
Anne reached into the red murk. She sank to her knees, groping along the slimy bottom. Then she felt an arm. She hauled Gabriel to the e
dge, grimacing at the deep slashes covering his body. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t breathing. She rolled him to his back and pumped his chest until he weakly coughed out a mouthful of water.
Gabriel gasped. His eyes opened to slits. “Merde,” he muttered. “That hurt.”
Anne took his hand, utterly weary. They lay on the grass without speaking as the sun rose and the sky lightened to a pale blue. Birds sang in the trees beyond the fence. A bee droned past, circled three times, and settled on a patch of clover.
“It didn’t feel as good as I thought it would,” Gabriel said at last.
Anne turned her head to stare at him. They were both streaked with blood. Gabriel looked like death warmed over. No, not even warmed over. Served cold on a dented tin plate.
She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You should be glad it didn’t feel good. Whatever he became, Constantin was your friend once. Me, on the other other hand….” Her laughter faded. “I expected I’d feel worse after killing all those men. Not the necromancers, the others.” She gave a vague wave. “They’re around here. Twelve of them. Twelve, Gabriel. But I didn’t. I felt nothing.”
He gazed at her with a troubled expression. “Don’t start with that monster business again.”
“No. Bekker was the monster.” Anne frowned. “Do you really think I have an evil temper?”
He dragged a hand through his hair, massaging the scalp. “You heard that?”
“Right through the stone wall.”
“No, I don’t think you have an evil temper.” Gabriel smiled. “Certainly not compared to mine.”
They both looked over as Julian shot out one of the balcony’s French doors. His steps slowed as he saw Constantin floating in the pool. “I hope he rots in hell,” Julian declared in a loud voice.
They rose up to their elbows on the lawn.
“We just found Bekker dead at the portal.” Julian gazed down at them, a question in his eyes.
Gabriel looked startled. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “Balthazar and Lucas. It had to be.”
