Flight of the Crow (11 page)

The second member entombed in this chamber of horrors was an English Duke who traveled to Paris frequently to enjoy the perversions he required. Bryn opened an enormous locked trunk with another key from her belt and pointed. “Pull the Duke out. I believe he's ready to be taken to room three.”

Room three possessed a bath and a hose that sprayed water from a steam-powered pump. The Duke would be very dirty having been in the trunk enjoying his suffering for a day and a half. It never failed to amaze Bryn at the dark secrets and places in the hearts and minds of humans.

Vicky aided the Duke to stand. He was naked save for a large diaper and a blindfold. Bryn stepped back to allow Vickie to remove his blindfold, collar him, and lead him on shaking legs out the door and down the stone corridor. Meanwhile, Henri had released
le Compte
. The French aristocrat was moaning but not with pain. His long incarceration had him so aroused, his need for release was great. Bryn shook her head. “Take him to the large bathroom, clean him, flog him and he will spew without any other help.”

Henri nodded, his face stoic. He did not betray a single scrap of emotion and Bryn noted this. Henri had for the moment jumped into the lead as her choice for
Chat's
successor. He seemed unmoved by the disgusting smells or the pitiful condition of these two very special clients. Their fees alone could keep the club running for a month.

With these two clients out of the dungeon, a not very well-known feature of
le Rouge
, Bryn went back to her office. Her work was finished here for the night. She now needed to visit an old friend, a witch who had lived in Paris for centuries and might be able to tell her where Priest had taken refuge. Now that his hiding place had been discovered, he would have to find a new hole to crawl into.

It was after midnight, much closer to dawn, when she left the club. The witch lived on the edge of the city. Her name was Katherine. There were rumors circulating among the witches of Paris saying Katherine had been mistress to Charlemagne. She lived on the east side of the city right outside the
Porte de Vincennes
. Bryn hailed a hack waiting outside her club for the clients they knew would soon be leaving and gave him the address.

The ride through the dark city took twenty minutes. When the hack pulled up outside an old cottage nestled between a meat market and a bakery, the entire cottage wavered before her eyes. Katherine had placed guards on it to deceive anyone who couldn't see through them.

“Wait for me,” she told the jarvey. She handed him a gold coin and he nodded. She slipped across the noisome street and scratched at the ancient wooden door. For a moment, the door disappeared and she saw only a farm gate and a pig sty, then it solidified and was abruptly thrown open.

“You!” Katherine snarled.

“Yes, it is I, my friend. Let me inside.”

Katherine was very old. Her life had been extended by her magic, but she was not an immortal. Her back was hunched, her thin gray hair pulled into a knot at her scrawny neck. Her hooked nose and pointed chin made her look exactly like the witch she was.

“Come in then. You were ever a pushy little bitch.”

Bryn laughed. “It's good to see you as well.”

She entered the mud and wattle cottage and was taken back four hundred years in a moment. Nothing had changed. The cottage was fragrant with herbs and a huge cauldron bubbled and boiled on the hob. A fresh layer of straw was spread over the floor, a rough-wood table sat against the back wall and looked out over a garden bursting with herbs, rare and strange plants, some very poisonous. It was too dark to see the garden, but Bryn knew it was still there. A curtained doorway led to the cottage's other room.

When Bryn was inside and the door closed behind her, Katherine gave her a warm hug. “You never come down here to see me unless you want something,” she moaned. “What have you been doing?”

Bryn returned the hug and walked across the straw to take a seat at the table. “I am so tired, old mother. I still chase a cure for my curse and Draak Priest still haunts my path.”

Katherine snorted. “Him! A pimple on the ass of a horse. He should catch fire and burn for all eternity.”

“That would be lovely, but he seems to be able to avoid all my attempts to make it happen.”

Katherine knelt close to the open fireplace and stirred the contents of the kettle. “He is an evil man and will find his destiny soon enough.”

Bryn sighed. “How I wish he would find it now. Have you run into Lazarus, old mother?”

Katherine stood up, crossed herself and kissed a small cloth bag hanging around her scrawny neck. “Do not speak his name.”

“I see you know him.”

Katherine glanced nervously at the door. “I know of him. He rules the vampires of this city and the world. What business do you have with him?”

“I must find Priest and steal Lazarus's dagger from him. Or, if I'm very lucky, kill the bastard and take the dagger off his dead body.”

The old witch cackled. “I was hoping you just wanted a love potion.”

“Do you have anything that will help me to make love to a man and not kill him?” Katherine was very familiar with Bryn's curse. In the past, she'd helped Bryn circumvent certain aspects of it.

“One time only,” Katherine said. “I can release you from that part of the curse, for just one time.”

“What will it cost me?”

“I would have a lock of Fenix's hair and a vial of her tears.”

“For that price, you should tell me where the lair of Lazarus is and also where Priest could hide until the full moon.”

Katherine cackled again. “Lazarus is easy. He sleeps under Notre Dame in the tomb of Cardinal Dubois, when he sleeps. I have heard he no longer needs such a thing as rest. Priest, hmmm, he could be anywhere.”

“Think, Katherine, I must get that dagger. And killing him would make my life so much easier.”

The old lady took a bowl and filled it with the fragrant liquid boiling in the pot. She placed the bowl on the table, stood over it, chanted and held her hands in the steam rising from the bowl. She moved her clawed fingers in circles and the steam took on the face of Draak Priest. Bryn gasped and almost fell out of her chair.

“Shhh!” Katherine hissed.

The face of Priest morphed into a dragon and took flight into the air above the table. Katherine breathed into the steam and the swirling mass became a picture of the city. The picture faded and changed until it suddenly cleared, giving Bryn a precise location. The dragon swooped past the Eiffel Tower and into the Exposition where he landed on the roof of a huge building, the
Galerie des
Machines
. “He's hiding at the Exposition,” Bryn snarled. “Sam and Tomlinson have been going there every day.”

Katherine sat down in the empty chair. “So, now you know where he is. I would have my fee.”

“The charm?”

Katherine grumbled, pulled her ancient body erect and limped through the curtain into the other room. She came back with a small velvet bag. “You will pay me?”

“Of course. I'll send Fenix herself with the payment if you wish it.”

Katherine cackled. “I would like to see the chit again. How old is she today?”

“Lazarus made her into an adult. She was an infant.”

Katherine's old, faded black eyes grew round. “She could die on you at any moment. His powers are great but they always come at a price.”

“No, I won't listen to you,” Bryn cried. “She has to live her full cycle. The curse has not changed for a thousand years.”

“Send her to me and I will perform a seeking. If the angels smile on me, we will see what he has done.”

When Bryn got home, she found Quinn sitting in the morning room with his boots resting on the bricks of the fireplace. In his lap was the skull Priest had taken from the tomb of the evil Cardinal Malenfant. He looked up when she came in. “This is my key to capturing Draak Priest. If he must have it for his ritual, he will try to retrieve it.”

Exhausted, Bryn sat next to him on the small settee. “I'm not sure what role he had planned for the skull. If, indeed it is of importance, you are right, he will try to get it back.”

“We must be ready for him.”

Bryn rose and rested her hand on Quinn's shoulder. She'd come to love this man. He was faithful and true and a steady influence in her life. She prayed she would not have to watch him grow old while she remained ever young. “I am very tired, my love,” she said. “I'm going up to sleep. Has Fenix come in yet?”

Quinn inclined his head toward the staircase. “She went up not ten minutes before you came in.”

“I need to speak to her but it can wait until I get some rest.”

Quinn slowly stood up. “May I sleep with you?”

Bryn allowed him to wrap his arm around her. She rested her head on his broad shoulder. “I would welcome your strength and your warmth.”

Together they climbed into her big bed, curled up under the down quilt and went to sleep.

Fenix lay in her bed unable to close her eyes. She counted every swirl on the damask canopy, following each as though it were a pathway out of darkness. Her heart was weighed down with guilt. It was her fault Mistress
Chat
was dead. It was her fault Bryn was burdened with stealing the dagger from Draak Priest. Everything was her fault.

She heard Bryn and Quinn come up to bed and made a decision. She would do a scrying on her own and find him. She'd been in his room. She'd taken his hairbrush. There had been three hairs in it. She would use those hairs and her connection with the evil man to find him.

She dressed in black, a color she rarely wore, covered her hair with a black silk scarf to shield its brightness, and went down the stairs and into the basement.

Sam's lab was empty. Bryn's friend and lover was obsessed with the Exposition. Sam and Tomlinson spent every day there talking to other inventors while they studied the crazy new machines on display. She crossed the lab and entered a small room connected to the lab by a narrow corridor. It was shaped from the living rock into a circle with a pentagram, a five-sided star, etched into the floor. At the center of the star a small altar supported a huge crystal. It was a foot tall and as clear as spring water. When Fenix wrapped her hands around it, she felt the energy it held pulsing through her veins and it began to glow.

She took the three hairs out and laid them in front of the crystal. The bright light the crystal emitted became a beam of white fire focused on the three hairs. Fenix created a fireball in her hands and passed it around the crystal three times. The crystal's glow turned yellow as the heart of the crystal burned with the intensity of the flames. When the crystal's heart seemed to be alight, Fenix grasped it in both hands and stared into it.

What she saw made her gasp. Draak Priest was slowly stalking Samantha. He was inside the
Galerie des Machines
perched high on one of the massive girders supporting the roof of the huge building. Below him Sam and Tomlinson were taking apart a huge steam-powered generator. Tools and parts lay everywhere and both Sam and Tomlinson were covered in soot, grease and sweat. As Fenix watched with her hand over her mouth, Priest dropped from the rafters and snatched Sam. While Fenix watched, Priest tossed Sam over his shoulder, leaped back into the rafters, ran down a huge girder, out a window and onto the roof.

She hung onto the vision refusing to let Priest out of her sight. When he was on the roof, his head suddenly came up and he looked right into Fenix's eyes. He took a rosary out of his pocket and wrapped it around Sam's throat with a huge grin on his ancient features. He kissed the cross and began to tighten the rosary. Sam's eyes were wide and terrified as the connection suddenly broke.

Fenix fell back with a cry and lay on the cold stones panting. She had to do something. Should she rouse Bryn? In her heart, she knew that was the right thing to do, but she wanted to do something on her own. She yearned to show Bryn she had what it took to handle Draak Priest without help. She needed to prove herself. With this primal desire driving her, she ran out of the house and transformed into a phoenix. As the bright bird, she leaped into the air and flew toward the Seine and the Exposition. She spotted the Eifel Tower in minutes and winged her way toward it and the huge structure known as the
Galerie des Machines.

Her heart raced. Turning into the phoenix could accelerate her aging. She had no idea how old she was because of Lazarus's interference in her natural cycle, but she cared nothing for that. What froze her blood in her veins was the fear Priest would murder Sam before she could get there.

Her enormous golden wings took her over the massive roof of the building. She spotted the place where Priest had stood moments before with Sam in his arms. He was gone.

She circled, crying out in the screeching voice of the phoenix. Where had he gone? She could have ruined everything by trying to save Sam on her own. She circled lower, despair filling her chest. She had almost given up when she heard the roar of a dragon and Draak Priest in his dragon shape rose to meet her with Sam clutched in one talon.

She screamed and the dragon responded with a roar and a belch of fire. Fire was Fenix's special element and she could not be harmed by it. She gathered the stinking sulfurous flames into a ball in her claws and threw it back at the dragon. The blazing fireball hit the dragon in the snout and spread across its head. The dragon roared, dropped Sam, and shook fiery globs of melted dragon skin onto the roof of the building. Fenix dived on Priest. She grabbed the dragon's long neck in her claws and pulled the beast off the roof of the building and high into the dawn sky, as far to the east, the sun began to light the edge of the city.

The dragon fought, squirmed around and clawed at her. Fenix had to drop it when one of the dragon's talons raked her breast scoring her flesh through the plate of feathers. Priest took the opportunity to make his escape. The dragon took off like a shot toward the city center. Fenix ignored the searing pain of her wound, righted herself and dived after the fleeing dragon.