A Study in Ashes (65 page)

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“Your pets chased me off the roof. I went for a swim.” He caught her arm and she wheeled on him. “Take your hands off me!”

She half expected retaliation, half desired it, but his look grew speculative instead. “You’ve had an adventure,” he murmured, and his dark eyes glistened with hunger. “Tell me.”

“I stink of fish. I need a bath.” She turned and started walking. Magnus followed two steps behind.

“Fish or fisherman?” he asked.

She didn’t reply, for once having the upper hand. She kept going, her shoulders squared, praying he wouldn’t outwit her just this once. It was all she could do to keep her hands steady as he unlocked her bedroom door, letting her enter.

It looked clean and neat. Someone had rearranged her trunks and put her things away.
He knows how I got out
. A moment of panic seized her as Magnus stood between her and the door. She could end up a prisoner again. She hadn’t thought through every detail. She was flying on rage and a gambler’s confidence. Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer and turned back to him.

He gave her a gentle smile. “I left that loose board. I was curious to see how long it would take you to find it.”

Shock made her flinch, and then anger drove her forward a step. But she clenched her fists, forcing herself to be still. Was he telling the truth? Did it matter? “I trust I met expectations?”

“That depends.” He took a step toward her, then another. “What did kitten bring me?”

She was going to gag if he called her that one more time. But she stayed mute, gritting her teeth to stave off the revulsion she felt as he drew closer. He smelled wrong—a putrid,
gangrenous stench that set every particle in her straining to get away. As he bent close to her, she could see how the flesh wasn’t quite adhering to his bones anymore. She’d seen the walking dead once they’d begun to go off. Magnus was well on his way.

She closed her eyes, bracing herself, and then pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to stop the impulse to vomit. Even though she knew it was coming, the touch of his lips on hers sent a deep shudder through her core. And then she felt the tug of his power on hers, prying the life she had stolen from her grasp.
No
, she thought.
This is mine!

Her dark power sprang to life, snarling, but his roared. Whatever she was, Magnus was a thousand times older and more cunning. She clutched her prize hard, but he twisted it from her grasp, reeling it in as easily as if she had no more strength than a babe.

Fury made her writhe and she wrenched it back, surprising him for an instant, but then he stopped being gentle. His power slammed against hers, tossing her back.
I’ve beaten you before
, she thought frantically, but it was only once, and it was quite a different kind of fight.

But she only needed once.
Come on
, she thought to her power.
Where are your fangs now? You struck out this morning, fast and hard. Do it now!
Locked in a desperate struggle, she tried to think of what she’d done to the fisherman, how it had felt. It was no use. What had happened by reflex wouldn’t come on command.

And it was hard to fight when all she wanted to do was squirm away. Magnus was just so
revolting
—and she didn’t really want to have to see this through. But that was the one thing that had been different with the fisherman. Her magic had taken command, and it hadn’t hesitated.

She couldn’t flinch now. And so she threw herself into the moment, summoning all her magic, all her desire, all her anger. She leaned into the embrace, grasping Magnus’s face in her hands and pulling him close. She kissed him like he was her long-lost husband back from the wars.

Once she had committed to the act, it took only a moment to learn that she was the stronger. His strength was spent;
hers was brand-new. And so she pulled the stolen life back into herself—and then she kept going, drinking what was left of Magnus down. It tasted bitter and black, like the sandy dregs of cold, strong coffee gone to tar.

She faltered when he began to struggle, but then some predatory instinct took over as she dragged out the remnants of his strength, feeling the terrible deeds he had done brush against her soul. There was remorse and pain and loneliness in him, as well as the pride and madness she had come to know. And when she had felt the last shudder pass through him, she tasted his death. Then she finally released him, staggering back as vertigo rushed through her.

Magnus dropped to the floor in a boneless heap, already dead. Evelina wiped her mouth with a salt-encrusted sleeve. He wasn’t getting up again. She’d made sure there wasn’t one drop left.

Southwest Coast, October 13, 1889
SIABARTHA CASTLE
3:10 p.m. Sunday

THE
ATHENA
ARROWED TOWARD THE COORDINATES HOLMES
had provided. They’d been delayed by a skirmish and a bit of a chase with some of the Scarlet King’s dirigibles. It would have been fun, except for the urgency to reach Evelina. Now Nick stood at the front of the ship, watching out the large windows. Digby, his russet head bent in concentration, studied a series of brass gauges and adjusted the huge ship’s wheel a degree.

The ash rooks had flocked around the ship and paced it now, their vast wings occasionally blocking his view of the coast. More had joined them since they had reached the ocean—Nick suspected this part of the Empire was their native territory—and now they spread like spilled ink across the clouds, metal flashing from the helmets and neck chains that marked their status as warriors.

More had joined them, but when they had veered close to the area where they’d sighted the red dirigibles, three more rooks had been killed. Gwilliam was growing reluctant to deploy scouts, and that would be a problem once they returned to enemy territory.

“Anything?” Striker said, coming up beside him.

“The castle should be dead ahead,” Nick replied.

No sooner had he spoken than the flock split in two, birds
veering right and left to give the ship a clear view. Nick saw a claw of rock thrust into a thrashing sea and the black castle rising above it like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. Dread rose from the place, as much a palpable mist as the ocean spray. Nick’s chest tightened as he leaned against the window, trying to gain a better view, even as every fiber in his body yearned to turn away.

Magnus
. Nick knew what the sorcerer could do, and felt the creep of fear along his bones. But Nick would crack the place like an egg before letting Evelina spend another hour behind those stygian walls.

Striker looked down and gave a huff of disgust. “Nice place.”

“I’m going in to get her.”

“Of course you are.”

Digby cleared his throat. “Captain, there aren’t many places to take a ship this size down, and anchoring in this wind adds a complication, even with Her Ladyship’s assistance.” He nodded respectfully toward the panel where Athena was housed.

Such good manners
, the deva said approvingly.

“What about the roof?” Nick asked, disliking the idea the moment he said it.

“Maybe,” Digby said. “It will be a bit of tricky flying to get close to those towers.”

I shall inhale
.

Striker stabbed a finger at the glass, a scowl on his dark-skinned face. “That’s all well and good, but where are his defenses?”

It was a good question. Nick hovered between caution and a deep desire to get in and out before dark. The roof would be fast, and there was no evidence of guards or weapons up there. In fact, the castle looked utterly deserted. Was that good or bad, or did they just have the wrong place?

He made a decision. “We’ll give a roof approach one try, but back off the moment the ship is in danger. I’d rather walk a mile if I have to.”

Striker gave a derisive snort. “If someone lives in a castle
like this, if you don’t take him by surprise, you don’t take him at all.”

“You can’t sneak up on someone in a steamspinner,” Digby pointed out. “It’s not that kind of ship.”

“I rest my case,” Striker said darkly, stomping from the bridge with his coat swinging behind him. “I’m going to the weapons locker.”

The
Athena
slowed, and they drifted closer, the deva’s uncanny ability to hover under her own power giving the enormous vessel a precision that would otherwise be impossible. One thing Nick noticed was that steering the new, larger vessel required more teamwork between the helmsman and the air spirit. The engines quieted as they made the final approach, the crenelated battlements sweeping into view.

The ash rooks circled, almost but never quite in the way. But then they shot out from under the ship, sweeping upward in a chorus of croaking so loud that Nick could hear it through the glass.

“What is it?” he asked.

There is something below
, Athena replied.
The ashes of souls
.

Nick had no idea what that meant, but Evelina was down there with it. “How do I get through?”

Only darkness will allow you to see them. Look into the darkness and refuse to fear what you see
.

That sounded more than usually vague, even for a deva. “Any practical advice?”

Take Mr. Striker’s special blue weapons
.

By the time the ship was in position, gray clouds were rolling in from the water and making an early dusk. Striker groaned when the ladder unfurled from the ship’s hatch—he had never been a fan of heights, and was even less so after the wreck of the
Jack
—but he made no move to back out of the mission. Nick descended first, his gaze sweeping the rooftop for anything suspicious. Above, Striker crouched, weapons drawn for covering fire. The rooks clung to the rigging of the ship like a ragged cloak, loath to leave its shelter.

When Nick’s feet touched stone, he drew his own weapons,
covering Striker while the other man made a laborious descent. The guns were of Striker’s own design, shaped like a gourd that had mated with a cannon. Nick thumbed the switch that activated the weapon’s charge, and it hummed slightly as a crackle of blue light snaked around the barrel in a continuous double helix.

Striker landed with a grunt, and the ladder began to ascend. The crew was on standby, waiting for the signal to send reinforcements.

“What now?” Striker asked.

Nick pointed to the door in the top of the tower. They started forward, their boots scuffing on the stone. Nick could see nothing unusual, but he could feel something there. It wasn’t even as literal as eyes watching from the shadows. It was a scent, or a mood, or a taste in the air that was wrong, as ephemeral as the tension in a room after a fight.

Striker reached for the door handle, but hesitated, swore at nothing in particular, and then yanked it open. “I hate this damned place.”

Refusing to look afraid, Nick went through the door first. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he pulled out his chemical light. Striker did the same. But then his eye caught something just as Striker twisted the brass tube and began the chemical reaction that gave off a thick, greenish glow. “Wait,” Nick said urgently. “Turn that off.”

Without argument, Striker snapped the shutter closed. Nick squinted, trying to make out what he thought he’d seen in the near darkness. Not much met his searching gaze—just boxes and crates stacked on the wooden floor and a spiral stair leading downward. Even castles, it seemed, needed rooms for miscellaneous storage.

And then he saw it. At first he thought it was a shadow, but it shouldn’t have been there. To his eyes, it looked simian—the limbs out of proportion, the head low and jutting, the eyes sunken pits of black. There might have been six limbs, or three, or perhaps more than one head, but the one overriding fact was the menace that rolled off it like smoke. “Black Mother of Basilisks,” he swore softly.

“What?” Striker snapped, clearly unhappy. “I’m just an ordinary bloke. I don’t see a thing.”

“I believe I’ve found the sorcerer’s guard dog.” But the moment he said it, he realized there was more than one. He saw them wherever the room was darkest. He watched one move, vanishing as it flowed across a feeble ray of sunlight, only to reappear on the other side. Light didn’t hurt them; it cloaked them. “There’s a whole pack,” he amended.

“Where?”

One sprang at Striker. It thumped into him, baring needle-sharp fangs. The man roared in disgust and alarm, firing the magnetic gun. The blue charge slammed into the thing, exploding it into black droplets that faded before they reached the floor.
Athena said to take the magnetic weapons
. The electric charge scrambled whatever the things were made of.

That made the others creep backward, pressing themselves to the walls. Nick heard, more in his mind than with his ears, a soft muttering eddy around the room.

“You saw that one?” Nick asked.

Striker was breathing hard, but the gun was steady in his hand. “Just as it was about to bite my face off. What the hell was it?”