The Conquering Dark: Crown (14 page)

“I've come to enjoy the fruits of my labor,” Kate told him, the edges of her lips lifting.

Everything he wanted lay before him. “Are you sure, Kate? One night with me and you can never go back.”

Her mouth quirked and an eyebrow rose. “Oh? You think you're so special then?”

He shook his head. “I truly don't, and society even less so. Your reputation will be ruined. You know who I am. People will talk.”

Kate's head moved slightly on his pillow. “They already do, since the first day you came to Hartley Hall. Whether we did or we didn't, whether we do or we don't.”

Simon traced the line of her jaw, and said playfully, “Your prospects will be limited.”

“
You
are my prospect.”

He frowned, wondering what her life would have been like if their circles had never intertwined. “Do you regret it?”

“Hardly.” She shifted closer, her lips a scant distance from his own, and murmured, “And what about your considerable reputation? Can you settle for just one?”

Blood pounded in his ears. “I have since the first time we met. You changed me. I measure myself by you now. Every moment I spend with you makes me better.” His hand touched the brand over his heart. “We're joined, Kate. From now until our dying breath.”

Her palm closed over his and he was sure she could feel the frantic hammering of his heart.

“Today I saw you wreathed in aether,” she whispered. “Like a phoenix rising in flame. So much power. Am I different now too?” Her hand moved to hover over the rune on her breast.

“We'll never be like normal people. Not that we ever were. We'll be able to touch each other in ways we've yet to discover. But I can think of no one else I would rather caress, now and forever.” Simon's chest shuddered as she touched him, her own inhale of breath tenuous and shaking. It nearly undid him. “You're beautiful.”

“My God, you talk too much. I'm bloody well wooed.”

He waited no longer. His lips smashed into hers as she pressed just as hungrily. Her arms curled around him, light fingers tracing the emerald runes incised along his knotted muscles. Her touch burned sweetly. When his head buried in her neck licking the soft flesh there, she coughed lightly and her hands stilled.

He pulled back, fearful that she had changed her mind. “What is it?”

Her eyes were staring at the lantern by the bedside. “They're watching us.”

The brownies had stopped their chattering and were pressed up against the glass curiously.

With an annoyed curse, Simon yanked off her nightgown with a firm tug. Kate gasped more out of surprise than impropriety as the cool night air hit her bare skin. An accurate toss later, and the shift landed over the lantern, draping it completely. One by one the grumpy lights went out until the lantern was silent and dark.

Then his lips were on her again, his broad hands spreading out on either side of her as he rose over her exquisite form, marred by only one small mark. His mark. He gazed down into her eyes, as fathomless as a midnight forest. But from their depths a light shone like a candle in a distant window, calling him home. Her warm breath brushed against his skin. She raised her arms and encircled his neck, drawing him down until their bodies melded. And the world shifted.

Aether filled the room, flooding it with serene light that only they could see. It coalesced around them, filling the space, filling them, blown about by the winds of possibility.

Simon was briefly disoriented from passing through the portal, but it cleared quickly. Kate was alert, as was Penny; they had all used the portal before. Malcolm and Nick were not so fresh. Nick leaned near a shuttered window in the stifling room with an astonished grin on his face. Malcolm was squatting in a corner, groaning and sick, with a shaking hand on the back of his head.

“Steady,” Simon soothed. “It can be a bit of a shock the first time through.”

“Jesus,” the Scotsman breathed. “That's unnatural.”

“But it is a fast way to get about.” Penny rubbed his back.

“No excuse.” Malcolm massaged his forehead. “God created distance and time for a reason.” He moaned again as the room suddenly filled with sunlight.

“We're in Paris!” Nick announced triumphantly from the open window. Distant sounds of conversation and laughter wafted in. “Good God. We just stepped from Surrey to Paris.”

“Yes.” Simon joined him at the window.

Penny crowded in between them and gazed out with wonder on a vast tree-filled quadrangle bordered by columned galleries with a large fountain in the center. It was crowded with strollers and sellers.

“Charles will be so jealous!” she exclaimed, then she paused. “What am I looking at?”

Simon smiled and looked at the beautiful yellowish Baroque architecture and grey slate roof around the attic window where he stood. “It's the Palais-Royal.”

“You're damn right it is!” Nick laughed and pointed out. “The Café de la Rotonde is just there. We met many a lovely lady there. Remember, Simon?”

Kate looked out on the gardens with a crooked smile. “You've never mentioned you spent time in Paris, Simon.”

“I've never mentioned almost everything. And it wasn't much time. A few days.”

“And nights,” Nick added, still taking in the scene below.

“Quiet,” Simon warned. “Nick and I passed a week here on the way to Italy. The Grand Tour.”

Nick sat on the windowsill. “Remember Florence?”

“Florence?” Kate inquired deadpan. “Would that be the city or a chambermaid?”

“The city, darling,” Simon said as he shoved Nick aside and closed the shutters. “The chambermaid was in Grenoble. And our tour was purely functional. Nick was showing me important magical objects and locations.”

“Oh Jesus!” Nick guffawed. “Parma! I can't believe you're not still in prison.”

Simon put an arm over his friend. “I really must insist you recall I have my powers back and am capable of killing you should you go on.”

“Sure.” Nick patted Simon's chest. “Kate, I applaud your father's choice of rooms here in Paris. There is little in life a man can't find at the Palais-Royal.”

Kate arched a stern eyebrow at Nick. “Don't drag my father into your tales of debauchery. Unlike you and Mr. Archer, my father surely chose this place for its strategic location in the city.”

“Strategy.” Simon nodded. “No doubt.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Simon, please tell me we'll have time for a few gambling houses.”

“No. We're here on a mission. Our goal is to get in, scout the prison, and get out.”

Nick watched the gold key dangling from Simon's hand. “I might need to borrow that bauble at some point. I didn't know it was so convenient.”

“In due time.” Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet full of francs. He distributed them around.

Kate waved her hand. “I have money.”

“I know you do,” Simon said. “This is yours. I took it from your safe. All right, everyone, remember, we are away from the relative protection of Hartley Hall and vulnerable to Gaios. I don't suspect he has any way of knowing we're here, but his resources are immense and we should be prepared for a strike. If you are separated from the group, make your way back here. This is the only location in the city where we can activate the portal. Who has been to Paris before?”

Kate, Nick, and Malcolm raised their hands.

Penny gave a sour look and crossed her arms. “I've never been anywhere.”

Malcolm, having recovered his color, was checking a pistol. “Passed through on the way to Provence. Back in '23. Hunting werewolves.”

Simon asked, “Do you speak French?”

“I did. I was going to settle near Avignon.”

“Settle?” Penny looked at Malcolm with surprise. “Was there a woman involved?”

Malcolm holstered his pistol and buttoned his coat. Everyone waited for him to continue, which he did not. Simon exchanged curious glances with Kate. Then her eyes darted toward his hand. He looked down too and noticed a section of the gold key was blinking. It wasn't giving off the same glow as it did when activating its magical portal. Rather, a small phrase of the inscribed runes blinked several times and went dark. Simon was puzzled; he had never seen that action before.

Penny noticed it too and pointed toward the still-shimmering portal back to Hartley Hall. “Flip back to the map.”

Simon waved his hand in front of the hole in space with practiced skill and the shimmering view of Hartley Hall vanished to be replaced by a map of the world, replete with dots representing locations where the key would open its portal to allow the user to tread through time and space. He and Kate and Penny perused the world until Kate exclaimed.

“There. Batavia is back.”

Indeed, one of the dots on Batavia on the island of Java, which had vanished along with all the others when the key had been drained by Ra, was now back in place. Over the last few months, the various sites had been popping back onto the map. This was the first time they had noticed a correlation between a portal's return, and some activity on the key itself.

Simon held the key up to his eyes and smiled. “That's fantastic! We've just seen the creation phrase in the inscription. Those runes control the creation of portals, in some fashion.”

“And what does that do for us?” Penny asked with typical practicality.

He tapped Penny lovingly on the nose with the key. “It means, Miss Carter, that I may be able to create new portals. And we may be able to create new keys.”

Penny and Kate exchanged excited glances.

Malcolm gargled with water and spat into a long-dead plant in the corner. “Could we handle one thing at a time for once? We're in Paris for a purpose.”

“Marthsyl,” Simon intoned the active phrase of the key's magic, the ancient Celtic word for miracle, and the portal spun into nothingness. He replaced the key in his waistcoat pocket with a chuckle. He bowed and extended his arm to the door. They all went out into the narrow corridor. They had come fashionably dressed, although Penny's twill and heavy rucksack made her appear a bit more the laborer. Malcolm also seemed out of place with his long wool greatcoat on a warm September day. They trooped down the stairs and out into the shadows of a leisurely afternoon. Simon pulled out an English-language guidebook and the company became just another group of tourists.

They hired a carriage and set off eastward through the dim warrens and grand boulevards. It rolled out of the crowded Rue Saint-Antoine into an open square where it creaked to a halt. Simon opened the door. Penny hopped out with a whispered curse of wonder.

“Is that a bleeding elephant?” she exclaimed.

In the center of the open plaza was a gigantic plaster elephant nearly a hundred feet high including the castle tower on its back. It stood on a small rise and was surrounded by a low wall.

“Are we there?” Penny looked around in confusion. “Where's the Bastille? Am I missing it? I thought it was big.”

“It's gone,” Kate replied. “It was pulled down early in the Revolution.”

“They replaced it with a huge elephant?”

“Bonaparte,” Kate said. “He intended it to be a colossal bronze elephant fountain, but this plaster model is the best they've managed so far.”

“But wait.” Penny shifted her heavy rucksack from one shoulder to another. “The Bastille was demolished? Aren't we here to find the cell where they kept Gaios?”

“We are.” Simon brandished his guidebook again and led them through the river of carriages toward the huge elephant. They stopped at the low wall surrounding the plaster monument and Simon gestured as if lecturing from his book. “Pendragon's prisoners were bound in catacombs beneath the Bastille. We hope those cells still exist, and we're looking for a way down into them. We'll start with the elephant. It was intended to be a fountain, so I hope it was placed where they could access underground tunnels to the canals for water. If not, we'll expand our search for a passageway.”

“If we find the cell, it will help us defeat Gaios?” Malcolm didn't look at the elephant but rather studied the area around them. Lights were appearing in the windows of surrounding buildings as long shadows crawled over the plaza. It was becoming a very pleasant late-summer evening in Paris, but Malcolm didn't seem to notice. He wasn't one to notice pleasant summer evenings ever.

“I hope so,” Simon answered. “Pendragon inscribed the cell with spells to contain Gaios and his elemental powers. I hope there's information there I can use.”

He hopped over the wall and approached the giant elephant. The beast towered over them like a multistory edifice. Large sections of its plaster skin peeled and puckered in disrepair.

“So we need to get inside this?” Malcolm asked.

Simon surveyed the ground beneath the colossus. Penny rummaged in her bag, and pulled out a small pistol with a tuning fork where the hammer should have been.

“Simon,” she said, “I could use this.”

Simon said, “I thought that gun was destroyed.”

“I do make things, you know,” she replied. “I made another.”

“Excellent.” Simon stood aside. “How do you intend to use it?”

Penny thumbed up the tuning fork. “At low power, it produces feedback that changes depending on the surface the sound strikes. Like an echo. I can find a passageway to the catacombs if there is one.” With both arms extended, she aimed the pistol at the elephant's massive feet. She pulled the trigger and began to quiver slightly.

No sound came from the strange pistol, but from inside the elephant came an unnerving skittering. High-pitched squealing filled the air. A large piece of plaster from the elephant's front leg separated, pushed out by claws and wriggling snouts. Hundreds of red eyes appeared in an explosion of rats, an undulating carpet of greasy little bodies spreading out around the thick grey feet. The swarm passed by, streaming outward, causing the crowd around the elephant to shout with alarm and scatter.

Malcolm kicked out at a few grey brutes that swarmed over his feet and up his boots. “Jesus. Are we climbing into a great rat nest?”

“I hope that's all we find for a change.” Penny pointed at the elephant's foot that the rats had abandoned. “There's a void of some sort under there.”

Simon knelt beside the shattered front foot. He dug his fingers into the crumbling plaster and seized the framework of wood beneath and pulled. The backside of the elephant's leg tore free in a shower of dust and splinters. There was a clear hole in the ground inside the leg. He spat dust from his mouth and held up his hand. Penny tossed him a coil of rope she had pulled from her bag. Simon tied it off to a sturdy brace and tossed the end down into the hole. After a moment, he heard a faint thud. “Good. There's a bottom. Nick, you go first.”

Stone arches rose above them in the darkness. Their footsteps mixed with the faint sounds of dripping water. The tunnel was built with stone, not carved from rock. Quavering lights from a small lantern carried by Malcolm in the lead, and a flame burning in Nick's hand at the rear of the group, slid along the rough grey walls.

The hallway turned to the right and Malcolm suddenly shouted, “Losh!” He brought his pistol up.

Simon and Kate were immediately at his side with sword cane, pistol, and crossbow at the ready. The yellow light played over a white bony face with jaws open. There were other skulls around it, stacked along the wall in a strange pattern. In the corridor going forward, as far as they could make out, the walls and ceiling were nothing but skulls and long bones crisscrossed. Malcolm snorted with embarrassment at crying out.

Simon used the tip of his sword to tap one of the frozen skeletal screams. “Like the catacombs south of the river. The art of the dead.”

Malcolm led the way into the charnel tunnel. Black hollow eyes watched them all. Simon glanced back to check on Penny, but she was studying the surroundings as if for design tips.

Nick followed, holding a piece of bread over the flame in his hand, and grumbling, “We're in Paris, and I'm eating toast I made with my own hand. Sad.”

“We can come back anytime, Nick. That's the miracle of the key. We have our lifetimes to dine in Paris. It can be like the old days again.”

Nick suddenly took on a strange pensive look. He bit the bread and chewed sullenly.

Soon they encountered the first open room with its door torn off its hinges. Malcolm shined the lantern farther down the hall and reported several more open doorways before the corridor ended with an intact iron door.

Simon borrowed a lantern and stepped inside the first room. It was barely fifteen feet square, certainly with no windows available so far below the streets of Paris. The walls were plain and bare. He took a thick stub of chalk from his pocket and began to draw on the floor. He scribed white runes in a circle, then knelt in the center. He placed his fingers against the stone. He spoke and the runes glowed green. The cell was suddenly full of strange markings, the walls, floor, and ceiling all crowded with runic etching usually invisible to the normal eye.

Kate gasped in wonder at the intricate handiwork. “Pendragon?”

“Yes,” said Simon. “Gorgeous stuff. Incredibly powerful.”

“Was this Gaios's cell?”