Chapter 9

"We should be able to do something" Joe said, with irritation.

"But what? I hate it as much as you do. I hate feeling impotent. I hate to see George hurting. But what can we do?"

"Yeah, what can we do?"

"I am going to miss Barnabas."

'You speak of him as if he was... dead. As if you never expect to see him again."

"Do you expect to see him again?'

"No." Joe admitted. "But out of respect to George."

"Face it, Joe. Only Megan and Angelique could do it, and they do not want to. So, we have to accept what it is."

Angelique was so involved in her reading that she did not hear Megan's approach. There was so much to learn in those jumbled up notes, things that she had never suspected existed. She had done some of that, true, but she had never understood the reasons behind them..

Megan laid her hands on Angelique's shoulders. "How is it going?"

"It is fascinating. He knew a lot more than I did. yet he never used it. He could have, but he preferred to write it down instead of trying to practice it on his own."

"I knew it would be so." she bent over Angelique's throat. She had not fed yet, and Angelique would not mind.

She did not mind, and Megan wondered about the notes and the fascination they held for Angelique. She had never seen her so excited before.

The Old House was empty, deserted. Urien avoided coming back except to sleep. Barnabas' absence weighted on him. He had been away when it happened. Not that he could have stopped them, but he had not even been here.

George came in. Looked at the rooms, wondering how big it was, how much stuff that Barnabas had never gotten around to organizing or gotten rid of...

And now would not get to do it.

George sobbed. It was stronger than himself. He was helpless. For the first time in many years he was helpless and did not know what to do.

There should be a way... There should be...

But what? They did not even have Stokes' notes. And without them, they had nothing...

He would never see Barnabas again...

Angelique almost shouted with joy. At last she had found it.

Looking through Stokes' notes without her powers would have been a thankless task. She had the means of highlighting keywords so that they jumped at her, and she could pull at the notes. More importantly, she had built a "signifier" link that would make anything that was related to that particular egg jump at her.

And it did. An article about Vassily Petofi and magical jewelry.

Vassily Petofi. The Petofis were a large and troublesome family (not as troublesome as the Borgias, of course). This Vassily was no exception. He was a sorcerer in pre-Revolutionary Russia. He had employed one jeweler whose craftsmanship rivaled and even surpassed Faberge, but kept him out of the public eye. Probably bespelled so that he did not work for anyone else.

Vassily had disappeared just before the Revolution. Not emigrated. Just disappeared. And Stokes had written down a story that had reached him.: Vassily knew that bad times would be coming for such as he. He would become an exile, and he did not care for the life of an exile, even less than he liked the prospect of a Bolshevik firing squad. He would go to a country that suited him, one that he would create himself.

He had friends who would share his kingdom if they consented on becoming his subjects. They did. As for the country, that was for his bound jeweler to make. His jeweler who had created so many magical objects for him. His jeweler whose tongue had had silenced when he talked too much...

So the jeweler had created a country for him. And he peopled it with his friends as subjects, and recruited as many servants as he could. Servants were needed to keep his beautiful country running and tidy, to grow the crops, to draw the water, to keep the fires burning. To do all the tasks that were not fit for the hands of fine lords and ladies. Serfdom, which the softheaded Alexander II had abolished, would return, as it was the correct system in his view.

There was little else about that world that Vassily had created. But they had the name of the jeweler, the one who had recorded the tale that he could not speak of... Vassily had forgotten to forbid him to write. On with him gone, the jeweler could at least tell his tale.

Amy and Jessica had been given the task of keeping Barnabas' body clean and comfortable. For Vassily, Barnabas was a piece of machinery to be kept in good repair, and that involved some basic maintenance.

"What have they done to him?" Jessica asked.

"They drain off his life force to power all the machines" Amy explained. "they leave only enough to keep the body alive. And they keep him fed with blood. My blood, yours. Any blood."

Jessica looked at the bottle of blood hanging over him. She remembered Zeb's struggles when it had been his time to be bled. And it all went there, to keep the infernal machinery running.

"What would happen if we smashed the bottle?' Jessica asked.

Amy considered it. "He would not die quickly enough. We might be punished by having all our blood drained and fed to him."

"I do not want to kill him." Jessica said "but he would not want to live like this. He would not want his life force used the way it is being used."

"No, he would not want it. Anymore than we want to do what we do. But we have to. Help me turn him over to his side."

With some effort they changed Barnabas' position and began scrubbing him, removing the dirt that had accumulated on his body, and oiling the skin.

"How could they do this to him?" Amy said with bitterness "he is so strong. yet they caught him and they did this to him."

"They are stronger.." Jessica answered "there is no escaping them. And fighting them as Zeb tries to do, only gets you beaten."

"He was trying to help us. That's why they caught him. And now he helps them... If I thought I could succeed, I would kill him. Spare him this. But they will never let us try."

"I heard that they are not going to be kidnapping people for a while. Instead they will make us have babies. All of us. They are going to breed us, like animals... We will have to produce children who will be slaves, like us. More servants to them, more blood to be fed to this... machine...Yes, he would rather be dead than this way..."

It was probably true, Amy thought. A breeding program would keep the machinery running efficiently for as long as Barnabas lived (subsisted, rather) And that could be forever. Maybe she should try and kill him, anyway. It should be done with one blow, because she would not get another chance. Barnabas would certainly want that... No more being used to keep his enemies in comfort and oppress his friends...

But it could not be done easily. And maybe there were other ways.

She was still Nastassia's chambermaid, until Nastassia got tired of her. Nastassia kept some of the silvery stuff in her room. She could get some and see if she could escape with it.

She said nothing to Jessica. The less people knew of it, the better the chances for success.

Angelique had drawn the five pointed star. She had learned some things about the jeweler and there were other things she wanted to learn. She purposefully emptied her mind of any thoughts of Vassily and the egg. She was doing it for herself, to obtain more power. She focused her thoughts on a magical object that Stokes had described and which was believed lost. If some of the thoughts reached Vassily, they would not alarm him. Sorcerers look for powerful objects all the time...

There was blood mixed with the wax in the candles. Her own. What too many penny-ante devil worshippers missed was that point. They thought that the blood of infants and virgins was needed, thus indulging their sadistic impulses, but it was the sorcerer's blood that mattered. The one that represented the self-mastery that the sorcerer had achieved, before he or she went ahead and tried to master the world.

The self-mastery was the key. Few sorcerers achieved the true renunciation of self. Many just learned to postpone their pleasures, not renounce the unworthy ones. Even she... no, specially she, who in 1795 had had too much power and no self-control, thus bringing destruction to all, including herself. It would be a long time till she achieved the state when she was no longer a witch but a wise woman, such as Bathia Mapes... But she might one day.

She placed the inverted bowl in the middle of the star. Her thoughts, subject to her discipline, concentrated on the goal she had told them was to be thought in this ritual. She sprinkled power over the candles and waited for the smoke to rise.

Nastassia had been impatient with her chambermaids. They did not do her hair as she wished and she boxed their ears repeatedly. Amy had had two such blows already, but she guess that the anger was not directed at her this time, but to the other girl, a tall girl, who was too pretty for Nastassia's taste. Prettier than Nastassia herself.

Nastassia had turned to the girl and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her away to what she called the punishment closet. Soon enough the screams of the girl could be heard, along with the rhythmic blows of Nastassia's whip.

Amy knew enough about Nastassia to know that the girl would not just be beaten but would have a cheek slashed so that her beauty was marred. And no one could stop her. They were serfs, slaves. They were property, and Nastassia used her property as she saw fit.

And she had commented once on how Tammy should "get over it"... Not when she could hear stories from her parents and grandparents...It had been like it for her family...

In any case she had taken advantage of it to sweep her sleeve over the silvery dust and put some of it on her pocket.

Now, alone in her cot she brought the powder , sprinkled it on herself and waited.

...And she was not in her cot anymore. She was in a large, very large room. And a gigantic woman towered over her.

"Hello, Amy." Angelique said.