Renegade (25 page)

“She knows that we have to employ special means at times, if that is what you’re saying, to do what we have to do.” Max sighed, tired of my ethical considerations. “Nonetheless, she had no ‘special abilities’ that would make her a worthy member of the Conclave. Simply put, she is a lovely and useful pet. Truth be told, I am quite fond of her. But the fact remains that there is nothing extraordinary about her. Nothing that would be an asset. The Conclave has kept her throughout the years, promising a cure. But she has become more demanding in recent years, particularly when she learned that we were offering the elixir to your mother and then to you. Our Lady of Shalott is becoming increasingly restless. She has killed several of the locals this year.”

“And William. He is my concern. What does this have to do with William?”

“Oh, that is quite the fun part.” Max smiled widely in the darkness. “I thought it would be more amusing if, rather than destroying her myself, Arabella Sharp destroyed her for me. You can slay the beast, so to speak. William is merely the bait to lure you to that place, and to put you in your best fighting form. William … ” He clucked his tongue. “Truly, Abbie, your taste in men is deplorable. It was quite easy to capture him—incapacitated with alcohol as he has been lately. A blow to the head and then some chloroform was all it took.”

Poor William. Poor stupid William.

The bell chimed again. Once. It was ten thirty.

“I had best send you back on your way to Lady Westfield, lest she think that I am not such a respectable gentleman.”

I glared. “Will she leave William unharmed until I arrive?”

“I told her not to hurt him, but I must say, the young lady has a temper. I would encourage you to make haste in your journey.”

I felt my own rage rise to unspeakable heights, but I knew losing my temper now would do no good. This was not the time for revenge. That would come later. But it would certainly occur.

Max carefully took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. “You will find directions to the island in here.”

I took the envelope from him and tucked it carefully into my handbag. “You must leave all those I love alone, including Christina and Grandmother. You must not harm them,” I said fiercely.

He gave a little bow.

Then he stepped forward, his expression no longer languid. Rather, there was something greedy in his eyes—something wildly undecipherable. He took my chin in his hand and I trembled with fury. He was only one man, yet I could not conquer him. I slammed my arm into his chest to fight him, to push him back, but he caught both my wrists, viselike. He smiled; he had wanted me to strike out against him, to remind me that he was always one step ahead of me, anticipating my movements perfectly. I gritted my teeth and, in a futile attempt, tried to push him away from me. But his grip was too strong.

Then, hungrily, he kissed me. Hard. Again, I tried to push away but I could not; he merely smashed my arms and my wrists against my skirts, immobilizing me. His kiss deepened, as if he were trying to pluck something from me, and our touch brought forth a vision of the lamia.

The vision was strong and my head ached. I saw her clearer than I had before. She was beautiful, even as a lamia, with green eyes and hazelnut hair; I saw her perched upon a high rock on her island, the Conclave’s symbol tattooed across her back and illuminated clearly under the morning sun. I tried to fight against Max, but he only crushed me harder to him. I saw the lamia’s eyes—although serpent-like and slitted, they were the most tragic, the most dangerously tragic eyes I had ever seen.

I surfaced from the vision, still unable to push Max away, and I hated him—hated him for the deep shame he inflicted upon me, the shame of kissing my mother’s murderer inside a confessional and feeling the fire of that terrible vision, feeling the psychic bond we shared. There couldn’t be a hell—because if there was one, I would be burning in it already.

At my first window of opportunity, I pulled away from him, trying to kick him hard away from me. But he spun me around, still holding me in a vise-grip so that my back was pressed against his chest. I was in a position where I could not even kick backward. And biting him was now impossible.

I thought he was going to hurt me, but instead, he kissed me lightly on the back of my neck, just above my high lace collar. “We’re alike, Abbie Sharp. Survivors. Assassins.”

“No!” I yelled, hot tears in my eyes.

But he slammed a hand over my mouth while maintaining his grip on my arms against my chest with his other hand. A plate of stale wafers rested on a small makeshift shelf only inches from my eyes. A tarnished crucifix gleamed dully on the wall beside the wafers.

“Shhh … shhh … Abbie Sharp,” he whispered lightly, as one would to a child. “We are destined to be together, my love. You are mine. Do not squander your boundless possibilities for baubles, for the sake of the brief human life you cling to and for those you love around you. They will be gone, gone in a breath. But me, I offer you eternal life.”

Eternal life? I’d assumed that the elixir must be gone, lost in the fire, but he’d said that he’d “found” something … had he located the Polidori papers? The elixir notes? Did they not burn? I remembered seeing the woman I’d thought was Mariah, that awful night in Highgate Cemetery, and I then I remembered Simon’s follower.

I fought feelings of weakness. The mystery seemed more confusing and deeply layered by the second. Despair now rose. I had done so much already, I worried that I might not be strong enough for this, for whatever was to come. I knew that I might have to kill Seraphina—that tragic girl-beast. I hated to kill, but I would kill again; in fact, I would make a bargain with the devil to save William’s life. But what would come after that? Would I spend my whole life fighting the remnants of the Conclave?

“What are you doing, Max?” I whispered tearfully in the darkness.

He spun me around so that my face was inches from his.

“Terrible, terrible, wonderful things. I am offering you something extraordinary, but I will let you die—I will kill you, Arabella—before I will let you live forsaking the gifts I offer. Do not make me do that.”

The look in his eyes frightened me.

He kissed my tear-streaked cheek, moving his lips up my jawline to my ear. “We have a jolly fun time ahead,” he whispered. I shuddered. “A bloody jolly fun time.”

I felt another great tear slide down my cheek and my emotions threatened to overwhelm me. A phantom memory of my mother’s good-sense governess advice rose within me:
One task at a time, Abbie. Simply focus on the immediate task.

That was all I could do.

I closed my eyes. “As I’ve said, leave Grandmother and everyone I love alone. Don’t go into Grandmother’s house again.”

“Of course.” He bowed a bit. I knew Christina and Grandmother were another means for him to control me.

When I surrendered completely, when I stopped struggling, he let me go, took out his pocket watch.

“Confession time is over. Shall we rejoin the land of the living?”

As quickly as he had pulled me into the Cathedral and confessional, he pulled me out into the blinding light of the street.

“Goodbye, love.” And by the time my eyes had adjusted to the blinding light of morning, he was gone.

My heart pounded and the envelope he had given me weighed heavy in my coat pocket. Quickly, I tore it open, finding a map with specific directions to the Orkney town of Bromwell, as well as directions through an archipelago of rocky, uninhabited islands to the place where Seraphina lived.

Dizziness swept over me, and I leaned into the cool shadows of the cathedral to keep from fainting. My time with Max had been overwhelming, and I couldn’t trust him. I knew that he wanted me, but I also wondered why he seemed so certain that I would slay this creature. Was this a further test? Another way for him to determine my competence as his immortal partner? And what was he planning? I thought of the graveyard murders. Who was Simon’s follower? Had Max recruited others into his schemes?

I began to walk wearily down Kensington High Street, attempting to narrow and focus all of these thoughts. But above all, I knew that I had to get to the Orkney Islands.

Twenty-one

I
was halfway down High Kensington Street, my mind racing with how to secure tickets to Bromwell and what to pack. I had no idea how to fight the creature, and, beyond what the visions had shown me, I had no certain knowledge of how she would act.

Fight.

Kill.

I hated those words. I thought of all the memories, all the nightmares I had had this year about killing the Conclave. If I had the opportunity, I knew that I would kill Max in a minute for what he’d done to my mother, and to assure that he could kill no more. And yet, if Max’s story about Seraphina was true, she was as much a victim of the Conclave as anyone else. Her mystery puzzled me entirely.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. Hard.

Startled, I turned to find Simon, his carriage stopped in the street immediately behind me.

“Dear God, Abbie, are you quite all right? I arrived at Lady Westfield’s just now and she said that you had left with Dr. Bartlett’s nephew. I have sent my driver all over the place in the past hour, looking for you—”

“I know William’s whereabouts.” I pulled out the envelope. “That place I saw, according to Max, was in the Orkney Islands. It looks from the map to be near the south islands, just over the waters from the mainland, from Caithness.”

Simon gave instructions to the driver to take us back to our neighborhood and pulled me quickly into the carriage. “Max—where is he?” he asked as I took my place on the carriage seat.

“Gone. But we need to leave London as soon as possible.” As the carriage lurched forward, I told him everything about what Max had said of the lamia’s origins.

Simon’s eyes veiled a bit. “How can you trust him in all this? How do you know this isn’t some sort of trap?”

It was at this point that I burst full force into tears. Simon was correct—I couldn’t trust Max at all. “I don’t know, Simon. I don’t know. And it all does seem like madness. But I think it’s likely that it’s true. My visions have never been misleading in the past.” Then, before I could stop myself, the true root of my anguish came out. “William was terrible, awful in fact.” I wiped my nose on a handkerchief Simon silently handed to me. “And yet my life feels shattered without him. Absolutely shattered.”

Simon remained silent, but when I looked up in the curtained darkness of the carriage, I clearly saw Simon’s own anguish. I saw jealousy in his expression; I thought of our time together the night before. In spite of his reserve, he cared about me, loved me. Now that I felt certain of Simon’s love, it was as if my heart had come to be balanced precariously on a thin bough, seriously in danger of falling. His compassion and goodness extended enough that I knew he would follow me on this mad journey, helping me to rescue my prodigal love. Last autumn, that terrible autumn, I had questioned Simon’s capacity to feel, to love; but now I knew he could feel. And he could love—that realization had come to me sudden and unbidden. Like an icy blast.

As if Simon could read my thoughts, he embraced me, pulled me to him, and I felt the strength of our bond even more painfully. Whether or not Simon was my love, he was a brother—my friend in a way that William never could be. While Simon didn’t care if William fell off the face of the earth, I knew that he would go to the ends of the earth to make me happy.

“I will go with you, on this journey, even if it is one of madness,” he whispered against my hair. His words, as always, came out soft as down.

Although Max had not forbidden me to bring Simon on the journey, I felt vaguely guilty for looping him into it. Yet Simon was already part of this. I knew, beyond a doubt, that my chance of surviving and saving William would be much stronger with a partner.

In whispered breaths, we discussed our plans. Simon would immediately go about securing tickets. I needed to pack my bags. Simon would arrive at Grandmother’s house later with an excuse to take me from her for a few days. I knew of Grandmother’s fondness for Simon, and I knew that he could persuade her of anything.

I also needed to warn Christina. She might have arrived at Grandmother’s house to begin our search for William, and I worried that, like Simon, she would panic upon hearing that I’d left the house with “Dr. Bartlett’s nephew.”

The moment Simon’s carriage reached Grandmother’s house, I stepped out, holding his gloved hand in my own.

“Thank you, Simon,” I said, squeezing his hand.

He said nothing, and a bit of his old shadowed expression returned.

His heart rests upon a bough, too.

Twenty-two

G
randmother’s house was quiet when I went inside. Ellen was running errands, and Grandmother was on a shopping excursion with Lady Violet. Richard had just returned home from his trip, but I would never have known it—he looked perfectly composed, as if he had been occupied by his household duties all morning. When he let me into the house, he told me that I had a visitor waiting for me in the parlor. For a moment I panicked, worried that my visitor might be Max yet again, but I felt instant relief when I saw that it was Christina. I was surprised to see Hugo as well, seated tall by her skirts. Grandmother must have taken Jupe with her, for the pug would have never allowed another dog in our house.