Chapter LXIII: The Fires of Absolution
Sixteen hours earlier.
With the house gone quiet save for the creak of a distant stair, Rena opened her eyes and listened from her hiding place. The silence told her that she was alone now, that she did not have to face anyone. Her hands filled with emptiness, and her mind foundering on the face of a child, red and dripping with blood. Still warm in her arms. Dead like her sons, unable to speak or scream or weep.
For a time, she remembered how she had fled. She remembered the weight of her shame, the nightmare that had stripped her of honour. No longer a soldier. No longer a guard. Only flames. Screaming horses. Death. Unable to make a sound as she wandered through heat and smoke…
…following them.
Weak.
A ghost.
Barely a whisper on the outer wall, aimless and drifting until they reached the western wing: Kolya driving his people forward with the finger-less vampire behind, carrying Sabine on his back and filling the passageways with poison. She ought to have called for someone. The thought forming like breath, starting to creep from her lungs. But the sound kept dying in her throat.
So she stayed silent.
Waiting until they passed, folded in the cracks of her memories until long after they'd gone. Even then, seated in the shadows of an open window, unable to muster the strength or courage when neither had helped her sons. Each memory carrying her forward—not through the house of Alexander Kerr, but through the smoke of a burning field in the aftermath of a losing battle. She was carrying a basket, holding the bleeding fibres close to her chest, the silhouette of a half-moon making shadows on her face. She heard a slice of metal and in a daze, she stepped from the field of her memories onto a wooden floor.
Crossing the room until she stood before a fireplace, vacantly staring until the rain began. The thunder making her drift away from people…questions…sounds, trying to escape, trying to mimic what she had seen when they disappeared. Running her hands over the mantlepiece, pressing the stone leaves until a latch gave way and she was rewarded by the creak of wood, the sound of a panel opening to her right. A hole leading into darkness, making her thankful as she drew the passageway shut and let herself sink to the floor.
Guarding herself from the things she had seen. Cobwebs and dust lining her throat. Hearing a voice bellow her name in the distance. No longer a nudge of melancholy, but a grating howl of loss. Glass breaking, teeth clashing. So close he could smell her. But she had fallen through the cracks and until someone pulled her from her hole, she would remain where she was. Unable to make the whispers that could call for help. The fireplace holding her close, keeping her safe like a secret behind the walls.
A forgotten creature whose carcass would become an effigy of failure. Lost in a waking dream, wandering the corridors of a world where mothers died before their children. A world where she could fight her fears and snatch their hands, once so small, back from the jaws of war.
But she had not moved in hours.
She could not.
So she allowed herself to drift. Lifeless in her hiding place. Listening in the hours that came after and dreaming of her children. Arms wrapped around her shoulders, wishing she could remember the scent of their hair. The soft noises they made while they slept. The memories sinking like stones in a lake of turmoil. Reminding her not of the sons whose severed heads she carried for days, but of a child. Desperate and shivering. The fading scent of Sabine, more fragile than her children, telling her to rise up and follow.
The journey taking all of her strength…her breath…her pain. Past the spy-slits of a corridor. Down an old staircase and through a locked door, stalled for the time it took her to break through rotting wood. Wandering through a catacomb she had never seen before. Crawling in fits and starts until the scent led her to an industrial sector. Heat and sweat drawing her to places where they had lingered and left, leaving her to crouch on the floor, sniffing rope and sawdust.
So many scents.
Sweat. Urine. Blood. The trail leading her to the crossroads, a place where she sucked her breath in and ducked behind a corner, closing her eyes when she heard him coming.
Kolya.
His shadow striding up and down the tunnels, his knife clacking against the walls. Weaving the smell of Lucian's blood through the air while Grace scoured the bricks, cleansing the place where the scents diverged. The tunnel filling with smoke, making her throat burn. The trail keeping her back. Unable to go back. Unable to go forward. Trapped on the wrong side of the stand-off. Knowing it was fear that kept her alive. Knowing that she would be dead if she tried to stop them…
…so she became like a child. Taught to run. Taught to hide. Never face an enemy unless you had the moon on your side. She became the space between walls. The forgotten dust beneath the stairs. Marking his movements. Settling into the dark crevices. Listening to the screams and the yells, the sound of matches being burned. Lingering near the sunken monastery until Grace could no longer smell her. Until the shadow of Ewan Saunders became small. A cat murdered and the fourth skin taken. Counting the minutes, the movements as Kolya swept from the underground, eager to deliver his quarry.
For sixteen hours, Rena bided her time…
….and she followed.
o…o…o
Meanwhile…
For Reinette, it was during her next hour of imprisonment—the fourth for Lucian—that she began to notice the disturbing presence of an eye staring at her from the grate above. So fleeting as to make her question its existence, it would appear…then disappear, the estrangement of its presence prompting her to determine then that the eye belonged to Hrafn and he had become like the ravens of Odin, forever spying on her from his perch. His shadow occasionally dancing over the grate, causing her to sheer back, too wise to stay in the open, yet instinctively trying to skirt the bloodied surface of the walls.
For a time, it made her fight harder. Leaving her corner before the shroud of bleakness could overwhelm her. The nearness of Lucian, even his silence, at first giving her courage. It did not occur to her that his nearness might become a problem eventually or that his silence, while lasting, might be something she'd soon crave.
So she fought.
Pounding the bars with her fists. Shaking the door before digging her nails into the lock, trying to reach whatever mechanism lay inside. Shock and adrenaline guiding her movements. Her exertions lasting no more than fifteen minutes before she again found herself on the grimy floor of her prison, feeling the shame of her own ineptitude.
Fearing her memories, her youth, as much as she desired them. Refusing to look upon or speak to Ewan Saunders—as though keeping herself nameless could somehow erase his memories of that woman, the callous creature in the red kirtle who saw no difference between the fingers of a man and the wings of a fly.
It was also during this hour of ineptitude that she began to realise she'd made a mistake in assuming that things could not get worse. The change occurring in the other cell imperceptible at first and then, quite rapidly, impossible to ignore.
True, he had been silent since his admission of Sabine's safety. His head hanging. His breath seeming to rasp from lungs that had been stripped raw. Yet his request for water seemed unremarkable. So much so that she got to her feet, asking it of Ewan Saunders, only to be met with a dull shake of the head. The answer expected, leaving her to return to her corner, closer now to the other cell. A sense of camaraderie settling on her shoulders. The request suggesting he might have forgiven her transgressions enough to speak to her again; only for that hope to flicker out as his words rapidly descended into what could only be described as an admonishment over her inability to 'slake' the heat properly.
This soon dissolved into a hazy deliberation on the number of apprentices he thought they could take in the next quarter; that in time, each apprentice could be expected to take on as many as three—each tasked to become a master in his metal until they could forge, heat, bend, and weld with the same ferocity, if not precision, of their original master. All of which would have been fine had he not been calling her "Janus" the entire time.
He then began to comment on the bars that she had been pounding. That the cages would need to be made of lycan-wrought steel if she expected them to hold twelve—that each bar would have to be hammered and drawn a multitude of times, creating a composition of great strength with just enough slag to handle any battering.
For an hour, she watched him sweat in the dark. Seeing his delirium unfold with every spasm until even the words were unintelligible. His tongue dry as he forced his mouth to move, whispering to himself in a language she had never heard. The sound of it so familiar to her, the intonation somehow…close…to her mother tongue.
He was begging for something. Seeing things. At times, his voice sounding like a prayer, rising and falling, sometimes stuck on one line. Héja, he would whisper. Yſa. The same sentence in fits and starts. Over and over. Yſa pur eſ chomuv uogmuc. Repeating it over and over until she wanted to scream at him. Beg him for silence. The sight of the fallen lycan-master giving her pause, making her wonder if she was mad to be fighting for such a future.
o…o…o
Her true test came in the fifth hour. Hrafn took his pound of flesh, as though carving a pig, and in the minutes that came after, she heard nothing. Desperation setting in, dragging her forward until she was kneeling before the bars. Lonely for his voice. The hope she had felt, even in these dire circumstances. But his skin had gone ashen, his eyes looking past her…past all of them as though even torture could not dissuade the ghosts that haunted him. The vampire forcing back the head of his victim, thumbing back the eyelids, making her wonder yet again whether he was dead…
…making her sick for the laughter that came next. The assurances that Hrafn gave her. It would not matter if he died. They still had the dynamite. The dogs would not prevail. He would make sure of this. He would send Ivan with her to the ship and follow after. The words accompanied by a splash of fuel like a priest performing a benediction.
His steps fading into the distance and Ivan…Ewan…starting to pray into his hands as though it could stop the avalanche he had unleashed upon them all. Knowing they were trapped and for all her work, scratching at a grimy floor, neither of them was escaping this prison. The bulk of her rage and ability…a thousand years of survival…and in the end, all she had was a pile of stones.
Tiny…insignificant…stones.
All of them as useless as a seed without water. Forcing her to confront herself. Forcing her to see how weak she was. How angry that it had happened again. That she had to choose—that to have her youth, she had to become like that…
…monster.
Her hand tightened upon the stones and then scattered them viciously across the floor. Twenty years in a catacomb. She could feel her palms dragging through the pile, each pebble collected from the floor of her prison, pushing it forward and back. Drawing her rage in for nothing. No daring escape. No strength to break her way out of lycan-wrought bars that had been made to hold twelve. Each stone a mark of her failure. For that was what she represented. Not strength or decency. She was no lady of the blood. She was foulness and dirt. Reinette of the Rock showing herself for what she was.
Weak.
The stones began to hit the bars. The ceiling. The pews in the distance. Causing the rats to screech as a pebble ricocheted off the side of a wooden pew. Striking everything around her with these foolish…insignificant stones. One of them reaching as far as the stairs, only a foot from a dynamite stick, causing Ewan Saunders to leap off his stool.
The movement causing her lips to curl as he finally…finally looked at her…and then ducked his eyes in shame. Ewan Saunders, who was avoiding her gaze as much as she was avoiding his. Her fingers tightened on the stone she was holding…and then in a fury, she started to gather the rest of the gravel into her skirt, carrying it closer to the bars, and pelting him. Stone after stone. Her knuckles white with rage, but her nails too weak to grow. Always too weak.
Always trapped.
She could feel tears on her face. The door to that memory starting to open again. Fear, anger, and rage. The knowledge that she did not want to remember this man. She did not want to remember what he knew…about cages. And keys. And darkness. He tripped back, upsetting the stool. Uncertain. Jerking back again as another pebble hit him on the shoulder. Hit him in the knees, his torso, his face. The pebbles were flying out of her hands now.
She hated him.
She hated all of them.
He raised his hands. "Please, lady, you must…"
Before another stone could leave her hand, a broken copper pipe inexplicably tore through the back of his skull. Slicing through his jaw and splaying his teeth, the impact enough to bring his body—now lifeless—to his knees, spewing blood out of neck and torso. It was…absurd.
The severity of it.
The dullness of the sound.
In a daze, Reinette stumbled back. All her stones…her tiny, insignificant stones…falling from her skirt in a cascade as she lost her grip. The last rock falling from her fingers and her mouth falling open as she gazed in wonder at the carnage. For a moment unable to process what she was seeing.
A miniature cloud of dust rising from where he'd fallen, leading her eye to the space behind him, the pew from where the pipe had come. Seeing an eye—that disturbing eye—appear then disappear as it came out from its hiding place. An unlikely figure starting to rise from the floor. Not lanky…but solid. Sturdy. With only a whisper to tell you she was there.
Rena.
Her hands went to her mouth. Praying that she was not seeing things, that the wound in her head had not created a mirage to soothe her own passing. The woman had blood on her head. A dark cut above her brow which had healed in dirt and filth… Rena. She was trying to form the name. Trembling as she reached for the bars, nearly slipping as she knelt before the cage door. Trying to say it.
She was sorry.
She should have warned her. She was not worthy.
But her voice was missing. Like a river that had gone dry. Letting her hands fall. So ashamed of what she had done. Fearing what it must look like. Remembering the times Rena had seen her in his company His eagerness to keep her close…and all the while, Rena's eyes watching in that tunnel in Paris, watching them speak as comrades on their way to London. Knowing how bitter she had been after the questioning, the beating. The hatred she had felt, the cruel insults she had muttered, knowing that she did not belong in their world. That she was shaking it. That when the dust settled, she would have no place here.
That she was just…
…a blood.
Her understanding of their world turned on its head as she finally felt the insult of the word. Not honourable. Not better. She had proven it with her actions. Less than trustworthy. Less than lycan. The silence of her fear and shame seeming to go on for hours. As though night were passing into day, day passing into night.
Yet through it all, the tawny eyes did not blink. Appraising her in the dark. Watching in stillness. The voice barely there as Rena knelt beside the body of Ewan. Searching for his keys. Her voice, her words seeming to exist in a space between the cracks.
"We should leave now," she heard from the dark. The words quietly spoken. As though for Rena, life took its path and whether her charge was in her room or in a prison beneath the ground, she would do her duty as expected. Unable to fathom the journey Rena had been on.
o…o…o
Two minutes later, the locks to both cages were open and Reinette stepped over the threshold. Unable to ignore it any longer, the stench coming from his wounds.
"Lyosha," she whispered. Urgently trying to wake him, all the while trying to hold fast to the contents of her stomach. Dried blood. Rotting flesh. Vomit. Like walking into a cesspit rather than a cell, her throat starting to gag on the proximity of it all, yet her years in the catacombs having given her some measure of tolerance in the midst of filth.
Blood, let them not be too late, she thought. Begging the Fates, pleading with them. She started searching for a third key, trying to unlock the manacles from his wrists. Cursing as she realised the key was not there. That Hrafn had only left Ewan with enough power to open the cages in the event of fire. It meant they would have to break it. Fast. Dropping the keys, she looked over her shoulder. "Rena, you need to help me…"
But Rena had not moved towards her.
Instead the woman stood silently. Pondering the situation. Looking at the keys she had dropped…the cage door…and then the staircase. Something was holding her back. And then without speaking, she turned, studying the placement of the dynamite. The wires threaded through the column and ceiling. Her every movement seeming to take an eternity of thought.
"Rena?"
Leaving the manacles, she began pulling at the first knife and then the second. The blades wedged deep, as though Odin himself had wedged them into the rock. Her hands soon slipping on the handle, the knife covered in blood. Trying to understand why Rena was not helping her. Why the woman would not even enter the cage…
…and then unable to mask her irritation when she heard it…and understood. A whisper of intent. Words that were solid and sure, the sound of all that was honourable and utterly foolish.
A glance over her shoulder telling her all that she needed to know, the woman having ascended the stairs long enough to return with a knife.…
…and a wooden box.
Empty…
…but soon to be full. Rena moving swiftly by necessity, ripping cloth from the nearest source, the blood-stained shirt from Ewan's body, starting to pad the bottom and sides of the box. It was a foul creation, one that she could only hope would be strong enough to hold the last card sitting in Hrafn's deck.
Blasting caps.
Six crates of dynamite, a half a dozen canister of fuel and the only thing worthy of an explosion was the size of a finger. One that could easily blow up in Rena's face.
They were going to die here, she realised. Scrubbing her face with a shaking hand, the tears making her want to cower as she returned to her task. Trying to ignore the sound behind her. As quiet as a deer stepping in freshly fallen snow, she could hear Rena stepping over wires. Every snip and saw of the wire making her shudder as though it were her own flesh rather than the wire being cut. Holding her breath at the faintest scrape of particles rubbing against each other. Each blasting cap coming free from the dynamite and slowly making its way into the box.
One by one, knowing there was nothing for her to do but focus on her task. Refusing to look behind her as she pulled on the handle of each knife. That was all she could do. She could not help him by checking his pulse. Or counting the minutes.
All she could do was pull.
And whisper.
We are getting out of here, she told him. Her voice a breathless whisper, a mantra of hope, as she worked. The weakness of a mortal holding her back. Edging each knife from its hole. Bit by painful bit. Seething the words as though she could eat through the silver with her rancour. Every word carrying her to the next breath. Every syllable tinged with the fear of discovery, the sensation that Hrafn might be watching them.
Every stolen minute until finally, with a jerk, the first knife came loose. And already, she could hear it. His muscles stretching, his bones cracking as though they had not moved in days. He was alive. He was moving…and if she could just get the silver out, it would fix everything. Her victory beckoning her towards the future, the possibility of all that might be…
…and suddenly the world gone to hell behind her. An explosion of stone, blood and teeth scattering across the floor. The bulk of a shoulder crunching into the side of Rena. Her back breaking, and her spine struggling to absorb the hit, barely reforming before she hit the ground.
It was Hrafn.
His face contorted in rage. He scraped a pew off the ground, ready to fling it across the monastery…and for a moment, there was a choice. Rena…or her.
Only seconds.
Rena.
"Go," she cried. Hoping to blood Rena could hear her. And like a rat ousted from her hole, Rena did not wait. Tearing forward, she sprinted towards the staircase and hauled the blast caps into her arms. Claws scraping their way up the staircase, the woman fleeing with the box…
…and Hrafn looking towards her in fury. Calculating. Seeing the body of Ewan. Grace. The wires cut on the staircase. The bulk of his plans ruined by chance and betrayal. The dance out of hand, and the music no longer playing. She would pay for this.
The pew dropped.
No.
She turned towards the other knife. Desperate. Trying to focus. Trying to see things as he would see them. There was no time. The second knife was stuck. The chains would not break easily. She could hear him coming. In seconds, Hrafn would reach them. The knife would remain stuck, the chains would stay unbroken.
And he would burn.
He would burn and she would go to the north. Forever caught in the eternal dance, doomed to her fate like the moon falling before an eclipse. The thought forcing her hand, for whether out of fear or desperation, it was all she had left. Her wrist sliced open and the blood, the last of her strength, starting to drip down his throat. His name on her tongue.
Not Lyosha. Not Aleksey.
Lucian.
o…o…o
He heard her.
Somewhere in the haze.
The barest crack of silver as his eyes started to open. Awake. Grasping. The veins beneath his skin straining, twisting, black and swollen…
…and in the same moment, she realised it. Something was wrong. His neck suddenly twisting in her direction. As the silver dropped with a loud clunk.
It was too late.
Even Kolya stopped at the sound. Like a man walking upon ice as it began to crack. His black eye creasing in concern. As though even now, even after all the pain, he still wished for her safety. His hand raised in silent warning…beckoning her towards him. Softly. Swiftly as though she were far from the edge and needed to take his hand.
No.
She stood.
Keeping her eyes on Hrafn and taking a step back, forcing herself to trust. Trust that she was on the right side of this battle. Trust that all would be as fate would have it. Her voice struggling not to shake, knowing that Hrafn would attack if he saw weakness. "Lyosha, you have to get up…now…"
His voice was a croak. "I can't…"
"You have to…."
"No, I…can't stop…it…" He cringed, curling into himself. His lungs breathing in…faster…and faster until his breath began to betray him. The world moving too fast. "…Go…" she heard him groan. Not with the voice of a man…but a blood-chilling growl formed out of torment. The crack of bone and sinew...
...until with a sickening snap, his spine broke through his neck.
She screamed. Falling over the chains, her flesh scraping on the stones as she backed away on her palms. Petrified. Unable to take her eyes off what she was seeing.
It was grotesque.
His skull contorting in a dozen places, tearing his skin, bones, and teeth forward with the force of an avalanche. The chains torn off and the beast towering above her in the next breath. Blood dripping from skin still raw from every cut. A monster formed of man with fur sleek and black as a moonless night. Drawing her fear out with its gaze, causing her heart to stop, her knees to become water.
She had thought herself brave once.
Capable of meeting death in the eye. But there was a whimper trapped in her mouth. A scream made of terror and nowhere to hide it. Caught between the dangers of her past and her present. Telling herself to trust. To remember what might come from trusting him. Forcing herself to breathe…
…to stop, rising before her fears. Her hand shaking as she stumbled to her feet and held it out. Praying to the fates that he would remember her voice.
That he would know her.
"Lyosha?"
The creature whined at the sound, its ear pricked in her direction. It was in pain. Swaying on a leg that would not bend properly. Sniffing the air. Leaning forward as she stared into the eyes of the beast. The wolf. One whose claws scraped against stone, readying itself for attack. Its jaws peeling back with a gruesome promise.
She breathed in…
…and fell to her knees, throwing herself towards the closest knife. Reaching it, then immediately ducking out from beneath a swipe as the beast lunged forward to snap. She could no longer hear the sound of her voice, whether screaming or silent, only the rage of an animal trying to tear open her throat. She had to reach the door. Like a hunted fox, barely out of reach, pulling herself up, trying to escape before he caught her.
She was too slow.
Hrafn was suddenly there. Pulling her out, forcing the door shut behind her. Turning his back on her and yelling something. His form moving too quickly for her to comprehend. No time to scream. The cage door obliterated as the beast broke out of its cage…
…followed by a storm.
She heard a pew smash into pieces above her head. Their shadows fighting across the walls, the shapes forming a hellish dance out of their blood. They were behind her. Above her. Around her. Trampling the aisles, leaping from pew to pew, battling upon the gravestones of the dead.
He had told her he was not a silver-back. And yet whatever he was…it was worse. Vicious. Carnivorous. They fought, and she cowered. Escaping to the far cages and sliding through the door of the first one. Yanking it shut behind her, then scrambling back to the furthest corner of the cell. Her small pitiable world. Clutching onto her knees as though they were a lifeline.
She was an ant among giants. Trying to find air in her lungs. Trying to see beyond her fears, the unbridled nature of what she'd unleashed. Only for a tremendous cry of pain to sound, like a bell tolling the hour, before silence fell. The battle over and the victory meaningless for there was no way to unyoke herself from the choice she had made. For it was not the footsteps of man that she heard next…
…but the gait of a beast.
The sound of its approach causing her to cover her ears as it circled her cage, baring its teeth. Growling suddenly. Its fur dripping with paraffin oil, the fuel soaked through its mantle, its skin, its teeth. Its claws scrabbling through the bars, trying to reach her neck,. Snarling until she cried out.
Screaming for it to be over, praying to her ancestors that it would be quick—that she would be dead before it began to maul her. Every scream paired with the blunt sound of bone striking against iron. Blood dripping from the bars. Over and over until the iron crumpled like paper.
She had doomed herself.
The cage open and her eyes shut in terror as she became still. Breathing in. Out. Waiting. Praying until she heard it. A keening sound. Pain. The scrape of its right leg, the creature forced to limp as it retreated down the nave. Starting to pace on all fours. Back and forth. Back and forth, until she dared face him again.
The monster…the man suddenly shuddering against the stones. Bones cracking and breaking. Its spine snapping in two, collapsing like a great tower into its neck. The great mantle of fur shedding to reveal its back…his back…as he suddenly…horribly…tried to raise himself to his knees. His eyes silvery black, fixed and unseeing, in the final moments before he collapsed. The door to her cage torn off, and the Change soon passing like a fever in the night.
Yet she could not move.
Precious minutes passing as she waited, cowering in a cage that was no longer barred. Of Hrafn, there was no sign. The abbey abandoned. Their path open. Yet she still could not move. Disgust trying to take hold, filling her blood with memories of a voice whispering hatred in her ear. He was an animal. A beast. A monster. Stripped of his manners and dignity, he was all of those things and more.
The words holding her in a vice until she crept forward, keeping the knife gripped between fingers that could not stop shaking. Stepping with care over the crumpled iron and the blood and gore of Grace's remains. Passing his clothing in shreds across the abbey floor, coming to kneel before him. Fearing the skin of his back, the future that might come for what she did.
She reached out.
The hand on his shoulder causing him to snarl, jerking back as though from a whip coated in silver. His fingers, clawed and misshapen, raised in warning. Every muscle tensed. Squinting, searching, air passing through his lungs too quickly, like a man blinded by light. Silver orbs wading through the scent of blood, the spaces where Grace's head and Ewan's carcass still lay.
Her gaze steady, even if her voice wavered. Lowering the knife to the ground before again reaching out. The necessities of circumstance giving her focus, the ability to see beyond that which she feared. Abomination. Nerves, that desire to look, to gaze upon everything in its entirety. "Can you walk?"
The question took him aback. His eyes glancing from her face to the outstretched hand. Cautious, as though he could smell poison. Steeling himself for a blow, a stabbing, a backhanded death which never came.
He took the hand.
Not a resounding yes, but it would do in place of a different answer. His arm snagged around her shoulder, the bulk of his weight threatening to unbalance her. Every step draining him until they reached the wall. The escape only a staircase away before gravity took its toll. Bits of stone crumbling beneath their feet. The climb seeming impossible as they were forced to rest.
It could not last.
She left him on the landing, climbing to the top of the staircase, peering out through the opening. Listening, knowing Hrafn could be toying with them, lying in wait until they were close before he struck. The fear drawing her back toward safety, the steps taken two at a time.
Lucian had not moved.
He did not ask if she had seen anything. Instead his eyes were shut, his back curved against the wall as though he needed it for warmth. She could feel her heart pounding. That he could change without the moon, she knew, but…he was shivering. Cold…how could a lycan be so cold…
"Why do I smell Rena," he whispered suddenly. His voice hoarse as though the muscles in his neck were still strained.
"She opened the cages," she said. Dimly. In short, for there were no other words she could think of to describe the tangle of cut fuses and the carcass of Ewan Saunders lying with his skull split in two.
He nodded weakly as though he expected as much…and then grimaced, weathering a cough. The act seeming to take more than he was capable of giving. Forcing her to wonder if they could even make it.
She swallowed…and then sat, looking over her shoulder at the top of the staircase. Knowing it was wrong. Knowing that it could not be so simple. Trying not look at where Ewan Saunders was lying. Trying not to feel the unexpected guilt. "Is it always like this?"
He had folded up against the wall again. "What?"
It was difficult to say it. But to talk was to diminish the horror awaiting them in the tunnels. The prospect of fleeing Hrafn, that he might not be dead, lending itself to her tongue moving for no better reason than to avoid thinking on what lay ahead.
"Your Change."
He shook his head without looking. Teeth chattering, the bones in his hand healed, but the rest of him stripped as though a fever had taken root. His desire to discuss his recent Change apparently low on his list of priorities. That or he knew precisely what the situation was and he was by virtue of that, avoiding the topic.
Fortunately, she had no such prerogative. "Opium?"
He cracked an eyelid open. A shaky laugh escaping his lungs. "Are y-you asking or offering?"
She snorted, rising from her heels, taking that as a sign that they were ready to move again. He did not complain. The wounds still retreating into his torso, the scrapes drawn like veins upon muscle, but his legs at the very least, willing to straighten. The unsteady path taking them up to the top of the stairs.
The space holding more items since the last time she'd been there. No longer just the dynamite crates, now empty, but also the tools of Grace. The lanterns and lye used to orchestrate their escape. The silver blades of Hrafn's torture. Sabine's bag of trinkets left in a heap upon the stairs. The way open. The world telling her to trust that for once, she was safe.
Of course it was not to be.
She had time to cry out before her throat constricted. A crimson hand seizing her by the neck and casting her back across the floor. The world growing dim and dark until all seemed quiet. Her pulse starting to slow. Drifting as though she were the sea and he the tide pulling her far from shore. Darkness looming above her head, coating her in shadow.
Hrafn brutal in his movements, turning on Lucian, pinning him against the floor. The vampire was missing a hand below his right wrist, but still holding him down. The attack occurring before she could stop it. In the split second before, Lucian fighting to get a hold on the knife. His arms locked above his head, shaking with the effort of holding it back, the silver blade only an inch from his right eye. He was weak. He was wounded. Yet he was holding it. Pushing it back even…
…and suddenly straining in his neck. A flicker of understanding crossing her mind as she saw it. The handle of the blade wrapped in cloth. Hrafn leering above the knife, his hand wrapped in cloth as well, before twisting forward with vicious intent. Knowing what was about to occur and powerless to stop it. The drop teetering along the edge until it fell from the blade. A single ferocious drop seething along his iris.
It was a cruel tactic.
A cloth soaked in poison. Acid. Or in this case, the lye solution from Grace's tools, ready to squeeze over the eyes in a moment of weakness. Her memories telling her this was not the first time she had seen this. Knowing that she had done it herself. That she had learned it from a master. The necessities for winning a battle when your opponent might be stronger. The point of the blade to be driven into the skull as soon as the victim flinched…
…only he did not flinch.
Even as it started eating his eye. Burning like the sun. The right eye straining to shut itself, but the knife refusing to budge. Another drop…and then another. Clamping his jaw shut, holding his teeth against the pain. Every drop searing like fire until he roared, suddenly using his knee to jab Hrafn in the wrist holding him down, shoving the weight off his chest. The shove causing the blade to shriek across stone, sliding into the darkness, the force enough to break off the attack.
Only for Hrafn to pick himself up first. Dragging himself to the staircase, a silver blade ready at hand. Clutching his arm to his chest as he unsheathed it. His teeth pulled into the rictus of a smile, seething into the damage. Beating his chest with his remaining hand. Powerful. Strong. A torrent of rage crashing into the side of Lucian, shoving him across the floor.
A voice in her soul wishing she could call out to him. Tell him that she had tried. That she wished he could forgive her. But there was no time. She could see it now.
He was fast.
So very…very fast.
But Hrafn was faster. Quicker. Every cut drawing more and more blood. His knee refusing to bend properly, forcing him to use the wall at his back. Shielding himself from the blows with the edge of a broken crate. Both of them wary of the game, knowing he would lose, but refusing to give an inch until it was over. The wood suddenly shattering in his hands, splintering as the blade rose to deliver the final blow.
No.
"Wait," she cried. "Please, Kolya, if you can hear me…" Desperate, she threw herself between them, kneeling. Her arms raised in supplication. "…he may have your memories, but you were alive once. You do not have to do this." Grasping at words, throwing them forward in a frenzy. "We are friends, are we not?"
It was the question that did it.
The blade suddenly frozen in the air. The hand hovering with its blade, perfectly still as though his fingers were made of marble. For it was no longer Hrafn who stood before her, but Kolya. The sweet seraph whose joy it was to help them. Kolya whose face like a dark angel could stop her in her tracks. His eyes starting to blink in confusion...then rove towards the staircase, the ceiling, seeing the blade in his hand.
The faintest glaze of blue rising in the black of his iris as though he were seeing for the first time where he was. Curious. The strangest smile of madness resting upon his face as he examined the edge of his wrist. The space where his hand been torn off.
"Please," she whispered again. Behind her, she could hear Lucian coughing up blood. Wheezing into his pain. Each moan shallow and born out of agony. The eye still burning from the lye. Until they found water, it would still burn.
But they had to survive first.
Putting herself at his mercy, carefully, she reached her hand out. Trying to lower the blade. Bowing like a worm before her master. "I will go with you, beloved, but…please…I beg of you, please let him go…"
The angel waiting.
Listening…
…and then choosing.
He struck her across the face. The impact causing her head to snap back, her jaw colliding with the stones as she fell. Tasting blood. Reaching her hand out. Unable to breathe for a moment. Watching the black eye gleam as he smiled down upon her.
Hrafn.
Not Kolya.
Like trying to hold onto a shadow. The world starting to spin as she tried to crawl after him, watching him sweep towards the staircase. Long enough to drop the blade and retrieve the forlorn bag that he had dropped. Sabine's bag of trinkets clattering to the floor until he found his prize. The last box of matches clutched between his chest and the wrapped stump of his arm. True to his promise.
True to his beloved.
Lurching forward, he raised the match, brandishing it high before bowing his head once in honourable favour. "I am thanking you for your service, Mr. Itzhak." It was the voice of a madman. Slowly starting to edge his quarry forward. Forcing Lucian back towards the hole, his face glowing as he struck the final match. "My lady and I will be leaving now."
No.
She could see it.
The fuel pooling beneath the hole, the flame about to fall…and her future about to burn. Lucian on his back, his hand still clutching at the burning eye on his face. His head meandering on the ground. Searching. Even now, searching for an escape. And then, a single eye finding her through all the blood and the gore. Finding her…and whispering something. Trying to reach something, his fingers grasping at the air.
She looked over her shoulder. Sabine's bag and all its petty trinkets lying at her feet—tobacco, a cigarette case, perfume, her journal, and Rena's iron-ring puzzle. All of it useless. Useless now that the matches were gone. His voice and the grey eye leading her fingers down, compelling her to search for what he sought. The small bottle of perfume. It had to belong to Allegra. The words 'Seulement l'amour' written across the label. Holding it in the palm of her hand, her eyes met his…
…and then the match.
Perfume.
She reacted without thought. Smashing the glass top against the floor and thrusting the open bottle towards the face of Hrafn. The match still held between his fingers. The perfume catching fire as it splashed lightly through the match and across his skin. Like a moth flickering at the edge of her sight. Barely a touch of fire, yet enough to make him jerk back. Lashing out with his claws. Losing his balance. The match falling as he tried to grasp the edge of the hole, the edge of her hand.
But it was too late.
He fell.
Plummeting towards the ground, his speed giving him poise in the last second. His shadow sweeping down like a bird touching briefly upon water. The match falling beside him. Causing the fuel to ripple beneath his feet, the sight filling his face with confusion. Such confusion as the flames swept up his legs, starting to lick at his clothing like tendrils upon a marble statue. The pain failing to register. The man staring at his hand and then raising his face, his beautiful face lit by flame, as though even at the last, his only desire was to look upon her.
"Beloved," he whispered.
His beloved.
The word turned into a scream. The vampire clawing at his skin and face, a creature of flame grappling beside the pillar. Screaming something. He was screaming her name. A name coated in fire and ash…
…and she could not hear it.
Adrenaline telling her to run, but shock holding her in place. She was swaying. Trying to hear it. Her ears ringing with screams, while the heat threatened oblivion. She had betrayed him, she realised. A feeling of madness descending upon her. The need to end it. Follow him. Flee with him to the North. Lungs moving faster as she drew a breath in. Reaching forward, mesmerised by the sound of her lover. Her beloved, her lord of blood, calling her towards the flames…
…and a callous hand suddenly darting forward, taking a vicious hold on her wrist. Lucian. Staggering from his knees, he pulled her away, dragging them back towards the crumbling hole in the wall. He had the look of a man running from the devil, dragging her forcefully towards the tunnels as she looked over her shoulder.
It was an inferno.
The lower levels of the abbey rippling with flame, heat, and light, causing shadows to dance upon the wall. She could see the floor starting to crumble…
…and silver glinting in the corner of her eye. A rumpled coat folded on the floor. It was on the far side of the room, across the grates in the floor. An ocean of space, its presence almost obscured by the dynamite boxes.
The flask.
Youth.
She wrenched her hand out of his, darting back into the fiery room. Hearing him curse as she sprinted forward. Tearing across the stones, her hand closing on the fabric. She had it. His grip stronger than hers, yanking her back towards the tunnel. He was yelling something. Both of them stumbling out of the hatch, down the tunnel, through the twists and turns, his ability to track leading them up, left, and then right. A door suddenly rising up on the side of one wall.
He growled, shoving his back against the door, forcing it open and dragging her inside. It was the room of burning bones. The butcher's table in its centre and the fire gone out. With the door shut behind them, he shoved the table onto its side, pushing it sharply against one of the corner walls…and then breathing hard as he slid down beside it, forcing her to do the same.
His words bitter, tinged by the pain of the wounded eye, its surface milky white and red, starting to glaze in its socket. "For bloods' sake, 'Nette, I told you there was no time."
"I'm sorry," she said. She felt haggard. Tired for what they had been through, but still failing to see the need for such turmoil. "Rena took the blast caps. I thought the dynamite would just burn."
"How many?"
She swallowed. "As many as we found."
He gave a hollow laugh. Leaning back against the wall. Clearly trying not to curl up and rage, scream at the pain that kept him on the wrong side of death.
Not today.
The one eye crusted shut as the other stared intently at her. "You're missing my point," he whispered. Grimly. His words so quiet before the storm. "At last count, there were six crates of dynamite and forty sticks in the walls. If each crate has twenty, then what the fuck do you think he did with the rest?"
From behind, she heard a rumbling. The sound of rocks falling, the ceiling of the abbey caving in. She looked at him. Her eyes going wide. The sound getting closer. Louder.
It was coming from below.
The room exploded.