A Study in Ashes (64 page)

Evelina was all too aware that Magnus was starving her, probably waiting until she was good and hungry in every possible sense before giving her someone to eat. And then, if he used her like he had Serafina, he’d wrest that energy from her, leaving only scraps. It had driven the doll mad. Evelina might last longer, but eventually she, too, would be a ravenous, mindless feeding machine, her only purpose to keep her master plump with stolen lives.

She had to find a way out of the castle, but the only way in or out of the attic room was the main staircase. That would take her past Magnus’s quarters—too risky. Instead, she mounted the stairs to the battlements, hoping to find another way down.

Cautiously, she peered out the door. From the sky, she could tell she’d spent a long time getting out of her room. The last streaks of sun shot through the clouds, looking as if something had cracked the firmament and blood had leaked through. She cursed the fact that she hadn’t brought a lantern.

There was no one there. She closed the door behind her and began an immediate search for an alternate route down to the bailey.

The merlons rose along the edge of the roof like broad, sullen figures. Evelina felt an instinctive urge to shrink away, as if they might reach out and grab her shoulder. Nonetheless, she forced herself to creep along through their concealing shadows, wary that a guard might yet appear and surprise her. Somewhere above, the sea wind moaned through a chink in the stone, a counterpoint to the lashing sea below.

Of course, it was in the shadows that the Others hid. A squat figure sprang from nothing, one moment not there, the next mere inches away. She cried out in disgust and scrambled back, raising the poker like a club.

Even that close, it was hard to make out, as if it defied her eyes to make sense of what it was. The head seemed to be collapsed onto the shoulders as if it had rotted from the inside. Only twin pits remained where the eyes should have been.

She wished she’d learned how to crush them like Magnus did, but she was stuck with the tools she had. She took a two-handed swipe with the poker, but the weapon passed right through it.

Cold iron doesn’t hurt us
.

The voice spoke directly to her mind, exactly the same way devas did. But it wasn’t the same kind of voice. It
hurt
—not in terms of physical pain, but she felt her heart tear as the cruel, dry whisper ripped through her.

Evelina dropped the poker, and it clanged on the stone. “Get away from me.”

She’d never encountered one of the Others this close before. They’d always stayed just out of reach, lurking in corners.
It grabbed her arm, maybe with a hand or a tail—she couldn’t be sure. Cold shot through her—a pain that struck the gut and radiated clear to her jaw.

You don’t get to leave
.

She wrenched away, seeming to surprise it, and slammed it with her boot. It staggered back with an angry shriek.
If you can hurt me
, she thought,
I can hurt you back
.

And then it opened a slash in its head that was lined with a double row of jagged, pointed teeth. A dark, shadowy tongue lashed out, longer than it had any business being, and the thing hissed with the sound of a shovel scraping on Evelina’s grave.

She bolted. And as if losing her nerve was the signal for mayhem, the parapet swarmed with Others. At first she thought there were just many of them, but then she realized it was a boiling sea of shadow rearing up in waves of grotesque limbs and sightless eyes, as if they’d melted together and heaved as one. Hands and mouths and things that had no name shot from the mass to trap her legs, to pull her under and devour her. Evelina screamed in sheer disbelief. Such things did not belong in a rational world. But this was Magnus’s world.

The only part of the roof free of Others was the end with the iron grill where Magnus had used his seeing stone. She made for that, stumbling when something caught her foot, but she kicked loose and surged forward, grabbing up her skirts so she could go faster. But it was a roof, and it ended. She banged against the merlon beside the grill, catching herself with her hands. For a moment, all she knew was the terror of prey.
Oh, damnation!

She whirled around, only to see the hideous tide rushing at her. Without thinking, she jumped to the ledge of the crenel, backing against the grill. She felt the back of her legs against the iron, but inched further away as the first Other separated itself from the clot of its fellows and loomed toward her, somehow growing taller and thinner as it came so that it could grope upward, the shadowy hands—with far too many fingers—all but touching her face.

Evelina shrank away, arching her back, and then was dimly aware of a chiming sound, like metal grating on stone. She had a brief memory of the grill’s rusted bolts, and then she was sailing backward, somersaulting through space toward the foaming surf.

IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING, AND EVELINA KNEW COLD
.

Her perception had narrowed down to a spark sheltered deep inside herself, the merest pinprick of life. Cold was the only concept she could find a word for. The was no question of moving. She couldn’t feel individual things like arms and legs. They were useless to her now.

That wasn’t the worst outcome. There was none of that thing called pain, just a growing darkness that told her the pinpoint of her life force was about to be snuffed out. Then she wouldn’t even have to worry about the chill.

She was fairly sure she’d drowned, but there were other things wrong, too. The waves had been harsh, tossing her against rocks before they finally vomited her up here. Her legs had never bent at that angle before now.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Long enough the sound of the water grew less and something many-legged tracked across her body. Gulls began to gather in the faint gray of the dawn, crying like the disappointed dead.

Then she heard feet crunching across the stones, the rhythmic step of a man stuck in the track of his routine. “Lor’ what’s this, then?” And the steps turned into a jog, stones crunching louder with each heavy slap of a boot.

A hand, rough and cold, touched her throat. “Miss?
Miss?
”

Another hand pulled the wet curtain of her hair away from her face and the sun hit her eyes. The spark flared, alert. From beneath her lashes she could see a face was near hers, lined and forested with a thick gray stubble. Breath smelled of strong tea with a drop of the good stuff to keep
out the morning cold. The face turned, an ear close to her lips to catch any faint sigh of life. Evelina wasn’t sure if he would feel anything or not.

The face turned back, wrinkled with sorrow. Within the weathered face, his blue eyes were surprisingly bright, like a flash of sun on a pale blue sea. The hand left her throat and pulled off a shapeless black cap. “I’m that sorry, miss. A bad end for a pretty girl.”

The words sang with the lilt of the countryside, and she thought as last rites went it could be worse. At least it was heartfelt.

She wasn’t expecting it when the dark power struck, swift as a cobra. It lanced up from deep inside, arrowing through her too quickly for conscious thought. Suddenly she was sitting and her lips were on his, tasting that tea and smuggler’s brandy, and devouring the man’s life with savage, thirsty gulps. Life coated her mouth and throat, soothing like honey until it hit, sweet and burning, in her core. She felt the healing strength of it stretch out through salt-logged lungs and crushed bones, stitching her torn body anew. But more than that, it rippled through her veins with heady pleasure, drawing her up to her knees so that her mouth could get a firmer fix. Her mind was staggered with it, blinded, so she was as helpless as her prey as she sucked and drank, shuddering with the intensity, the shattering fullness of so much power ringing through her. She was gorged, and then almost sick with it until, finally sated, she fell away with a sigh. Only then did she let the man go.

Evelina rocked back on her heels, reeling as if drunk. Ideas were slow to arrive. The gulls had flown away. The sun was warm on her face even if the rest of her was waterlogged. She wasn’t cold anymore, and all her limbs worked as they should. She closed her eyes and opened them, bringing the world into painful focus.

Where am I?
She turned her head slowly, the world sloshing a little as she did it. Her back was to the ocean and Magnus’s tower was far to her left. To her right was a lone cottage and a dock thrusting into the water, a boat tied at the end. A fishing vessel, she thought, and then she remembered the man.

With a gasp, she looked back at him, alarm and guilt confusing the part of her that had deemed him prey.
I survived. Now I should just run
. But she stayed.

He’d fallen on his side when she’d let him go. Evelina crawled over to him, her mind still squabbling about what she should do. In a reversal of roles, she reached for his throat to feel for a pulse.

He sat up with a cry, grabbing for her wrist. His grip was weak—she’d taken all his strength. “Devil!”

“I see you’re all right.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, cool and detached.

“You came from the castle,” he hissed, fumbling with his free hand inside the neck of his threadbare shirt.

“Have you had problems with the castle before?” she asked, still in that distant way.
I’m in shock
, she thought.

“The Lord Magus set his fiends on us in my grandsire’s time.” He held out a silver medal stamped with the image of Saint Peter, patron of fishermen.

“Magus. Magnus,” she muttered. The same Symeon the Mage, perhaps, from the ancient writings? Just how old was the sorcerer? She found herself staring at the medal the man thrust toward her, and felt a twinge of temper. Saint Peter didn’t bother her, but the fact that he was waving the medal at her did.

She pulled away easily, rising to her feet. The fisherman rose and scrambled backward, putting some distance between them. “Please,” he said. “Take me but spare my wife.”

Evelina’s jaw dropped, but then the full realization of what she’d done broke through. The man was pale and breathing hard, unsteady on his feet and trembling as if he had a violent fever. She’d clearly hurt him—might have done some permanent damage. If he’d been anything but the tough fisher stock, she could well have drained him dry.
But I was nearly dead
. What she’d done was pure instinct, as reflexive as fighting for air.

The why of it didn’t matter. This was how Magnus kept coming back, and back, and back. He’d done it so long he couldn’t let go even when he’d gone off like old cheese.

She put a hand to her mouth, sick—but it wasn’t the kind
of sickness a simple spasm of her gut could fix. She had passed some point of no return, the darkness in her now stronger than the rest. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”

The man took another step back, still brandishing the medal. “The demon has you in his thrall. Heaven save your soul but please don’t come back here.”

“I won’t.” She hoped that was true. She had no idea what she might do. Evelina began backing away, hoping that meant this poor man would escape her.
He called me a thrall. Just like Magnus did
. And then she turned and began to run. She’d lost her shoes, but her feet flew over the rocks and sand as if they barely touched them. Her limbs moved with an ease they hadn’t had since she was a child, her hair streaming behind her in a wild dark mass. She ran and ran, barely touched by fatigue, leaping up the rocky tumbles of the cliffs as if they were no more than the shallow steps to a ballroom floor. As she ran, the sun broke fully into the sky, spilling orange and pink flames across the rippling sea.

One thought filled her mind.
I’m no man’s thrall
. And as she thought it, her feet turned toward Siabartha Castle. She had tried to run to avoid activating these powers, but that had happened anyhow. Escape hadn’t solved a thing.

And she needed a solution. She’d finally got a stitch in her side by the time she’d reached the wall of the castle. Her clothes were dry, though they were stiff and stained with salt. Her skin and scalp itched. Otherwise, she felt strong, almost invincible. She hated what that stood for.
I’m not like him. I’m not!

She arrived at the castle gates. She tried the postern first, but it was locked. Then she tugged fruitlessly at the enormous main entrance. Apparently her extraordinary stamina didn’t extend to tearing doors off their hinges.

“Magnus!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs. The word faded too soon, answered only by the keening of a gull. “Magnus!”

And then she saw him, leaning out of the window of the gatehouse tower. “Gone for a wander, kitten?”

“And I’m back,” she snapped.
Back to stop you, once and for all
. Most miraculous of all, she thought she knew how it would happen.

He gestured to the smaller postern gate, and she heard it unlock.
Always a showman
, she thought darkly, and flung through the door. He caught up with her as she strode across the bailey.