A Temptation of Angels (26 page)

The maid stood by with a towel as an elderly gentleman silently wielded a razor. He ran it along one side of Alsorta’s face before dipping it back into the water, and moving to the back of the man’s head.

Running a brush in circles across Alsorta’s skin, the older gentleman scraped the razor along the back of his neck. Helen leaned in a couple of inches closer, wondering if she was imagining the image slowly being revealed by the razor. But no. There was something there. Or part of something, perhaps. She waited as the barber wet the razor once more, running it smoothly over the man’s neck, revealing another piece of the picture.

Helen peered curiously at it, trying to figure what it was. A… dragon? She thought it was a dragon etched into his skin. Or something like it. It looked to be surrounded by flames.

She was turning to ask one of the brothers about it when she noticed Darius, backing up along the hallway, still facing the room as if he were afraid to turn his back on it.

Griffin grabbed her hand, pulling her from the doorway as she tried to escape his grip, wondering why on Earth they would want to leave when they hadn’t even attempted their mission.

And if all of this was not enough to give her pause, to make her heart slam against her chest like a frightened animal, the look in Darius’s eyes as he backed away was.

It was not anger. Not sarcasm or bitterness or hatred. Any of these she would have welcomed. This time there was something new in Darius’s face. Something she had never seen before.

Fear.

S
he shook her head as Griffin tugged her farther from the door.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, too confused to be silent. “Alsorta’s right there. He’s right there, Griffin.”

They were twenty feet from the door, and still they were backing away carefully, as if trying to escape a rabid dog.

“You don’t understand,” Griffin finally whispered hotly. “We have to get out of here right now.”

“But what about Alsorta?”

He shook his head. “We made a mistake. This isn’t something we can do alone.”

But she had hidden too many times in the past. Had kept herself safe within the walls of her home as it—and her parents—had burned around her. She couldn’t hide anymore.

“The man responsible for killing our parents is in there.”
She pulled her arm away from his hand. “I’m not going unless you give me a good reason.”

He bent down until his face was close to hers. “That’s not Alsorta.”

She looked back toward the door. “What… What do you mean? It’s him. It is. This is his house.”

“This is Victor Alsorta’s house and that… thing in there calls himself Victor Alsorta, but he’s not a man, Helen. He’s something else. Something far worse and far more dangerous.”

“What?” She looked up into his face, not understanding at all. “What is he, Griffin?”

He spoke in a ferocious whisper. “That symbol on his neck brands him as Alastor, one of the Legion’s most deadly demons and a member of the Blackguard. We’re not equipped to fight him,” he continued. “Not here. Not now.”

“Griffin.” Darius’s voice was a warning from down the hall.

Griffin nodded at his brother before turning back to Helen. “We have to get out of here. We’ll regroup and come back, I promise, but we have to leave now before we’re discovered.”

The plea in his eyes told her he was telling the truth. Besides, in the short time she had known the brothers, she had never known them to back down from a fight. That they were doing so now told her much of what she needed to know.

“Okay, but we’re coming back,” she insisted.

He nodded, already pulling her toward Darius, now halfway to the staircase. He was still stepping backward, his eye on the half-open door at the end of the hall, when his boot came down on a creaky floorboard. The sound cut through the silence, and they froze, looking at each other with panic in their eyes before glancing back at the door.

Helen cast a glance at the staircase. They were close enough to it now that it would be their best bet for an escape. There had been an exterior door in the mudroom. If they ran down the stairs and managed to get out the door without being caught, they stood a decent chance of making it into the woods and back to the tunnels. And maybe, just maybe, the sound would go unnoticed. Maybe it had not been as loud as it seemed in the silence of the hall and their urgency to escape.

But even as she thought it, she heard shuffling from within the room.

After that, everything happened too quickly. The sound of authoritative footsteps rushing the partially opened door, which flung open to reveal Victor Alsorta, his eyes glinting like silver disks. And then, his voice, as cold and smooth as ice as he spoke orders to someone unseen to Helen.

“Intruders! Sound the alarm.”

It took less than ten seconds for the earsplitting siren to slice through the night. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, from inside her very own mind, until she wanted to stop everything and cover her ears with her hands until it quieted.

She had no such luxury. Griffin grabbed her hand and pulled, and then they were racing toward the stairs, turning the corner at a dead run, and bounding down the steps two and three at a time, Darius in the lead.

“There!” Helen pointed to the door in the mudroom.

Darius turned the lock. He flung open the door and Helen and Griffin raced through it after him. Helen barely registered the cold night air. She was too busy running for the tree line, dragged along by Griffin, still holding her hand in a grip like iron.

Where before there had been a few sconces flickering gentle light onto the grounds, now they seemed to be everywhere, lighting up the lawn so that there were no shadows. No place to hide. It was a mirror to the other activity building around them—the voices of men shouting in the distance, the sound of racing footsteps through the trees.

And the dogs.

Helen heard them in the distance. She fingered the darts,
still in the pouch at her belt, as she followed Griffin into the trees.

Once the house was out of view, she lost all sense of direction. Plunged into near-total darkness, she could only hope Darius, still in front, knew where he was going. It was all she could do to keep running, trying to avoid the gnarly tree roots protruding from the ground and half covered by the fallen leaves.

The dogs were closer. They barked ferociously, drowning out the sounds of the men shouting to one another through the trees. She heard the snarls and barks, not from the direction of the house as she’d suspected, but up ahead. She could not fathom how the animals had circled around to cut them off in the woods, but now it was a race. They would have to reach the entrance to the tunnels before the dogs found their position to avoid a confrontation.

“How much farther?” she managed to gasp.

“Not far.” Griffin’s voice was muffled under the barking dogs, leaves underfoot, and Helen’s own labored breathing.

They ran until Helen thought her legs would give out altogether. Until her lungs burned. She was stricken repeatedly by low-hanging branches, leaving her with stinging cuts on her arms and face. But none of it mattered. Because the dogs
were close. Too close. They weren’t going to reach the tunnels in time. The animals would cut them off any second.

She no sooner thought it when Darius screeched to a halt just as an enormous beast flew through the trees in front of them. It landed in a flash of ebony fur, snarling and snapping at them from across the small clearing in which they had stopped.

Darius held out his hands. “Good boy.”

The dog snarled, shaking its head. A moment later, two more dogs bounded through the tree line. They stopped next to the first one, growling low in their throats and baring their teeth.

“Brilliant,” Griffin said. “Now what? The men can’t be far behind.”

Indeed, Helen heard them in the distance, saw their lanterns bobbing through the trees as they made their way to the dogs’ position.

“Look to the left,” Darius said, hardly moving his mouth.

Helen followed Griffin’s eyes, scanning the bushes. She didn’t see it at first, but then the midnight blue silk moved in the wind. Her ribbon. It was her ribbon. They had found their way back to the tunnels, even if it might be too late to actually escape into them.

“Where’s the entrance?” Griffin said softly.

Darius moved his foot, ever so slowly, back and forth across the ground.

The growling accelerated, and the one in the front barked in warning.

“Darius!” Griffin said. “Stop moving.”

“Just look down,” Darius said, never taking his eyes off the dogs.

Griffin and Helen lowered their eyes to where Darius’s foot rested, not atop the dead leaves that littered the ground, but on the wooden cover to the tunnels.

Griffin sucked in his breath. “We have to find a way to distract the dogs long enough for us to get inside the tunnel.”

The dogs, as if in answer, increased their growling, inching forward to where they stood.

“Is that all?” Darius asked.

Helen marveled that he could be flip even in such a situation.

A cry from one of the men, much closer this time, prompted Helen to move. Reaching slowly toward the pouch at her waist, she spoke as calmly as she could, trying not to make eye contact with the snapping, snarling dogs.

“I’ll take care of the dogs. Just get the cover off the tunnel entrance.”

She felt Griffin’s eyes on her face. “I’m not leaving you to the dogs, Helen.”

His voice carried a finality that scared her. She had to make him understand. To trust her. Their lives depended on it.

“Listen,” she said, pulling one of the darts from her belt. “I have something that will take care of the dogs, but you must open the entrance to the tunnel so that I can climb in as soon as they’re down.”

“As soon as they’re down?” Even Darius was perplexed.

The dogs, saliva dripping from their teeth, were getting closer with every argument.

“We don’t have time for this,” Helen said. “I’m counting to three. And you better move and clear the ladder so that I can get in when I’m done.”

“But—” Griffin began.

“One,” she said softly, cutting him off. “Two…”

Helen was relieved to see Darius’s body tense. He, at least, would do as she asked.

“Three.”

Everything seemed to slow down while the blood raced through her veins. She had the oddest sense of euphoria as she pulled the first dart from the pouch. It was a signal to the dogs that the waiting was over, and they started forward, sliding a
little on the dead leaves as Helen took quick aim at the one in front and let go.

She heard the tiny motor whir to life, saw a red light come on at the flight of the dart. It picked up speed remarkably fast. She was almost surprised when it hit the dog’s muscled chest, just as Galizur had said it would. She was already letting go of the second dart when the first dog fell to the ground with a twitch. Helen hadn’t had time to aim properly, but it didn’t matter. The second dart hit its mark just as the first one had.

One more
, she thought, holding the third dart in front of her, watching the last dog close the last few yards between them.

She let go, expecting to see it whir toward its intended target like the others. But something went wrong. The dart sputtered, emitting a dry cough as it flew erratically for a few feet and then crashed to the ground.

The dog was perilously close by the time she pulled the fourth dart from the pouch. So close that she could smell its hot, rancid breath. She took an extra second to level her aim, and then she let go, already moving and praying the dog would fall.

A second later, it did. Helen raced forward, bending over the paralyzed dogs.

“Helen! For God’s sake! What are you doing?”

She looked over at Griffin. He had not followed Darius into the tunnel. He sat at the mouth of the tunnel entrance, his legs dangling into the abyss. As promised and despite her wishes, he had not left her.

She pulled the darts from the dogs’ fur, shoving them back into the pouch on her way to the tunnel.

“I told you to go!” she shouted.

“And I told you that I wasn’t leaving you here.”

Helen heard in his voice that there had never been any question of his abandoning her, but there was no time to argue. That would come later. Now the men were almost upon them. She felt for the top rung, settling her foot on it and beginning to descend.

Her head had almost cleared the ground when another dog burst through the trees with lantern light just behind him. She counted the darts she had thrown.

The first dog. The second dog. The defective dart. The third dog.

Four darts used.

Reaching into the pouch, she closed her fingers around the last dart. It was out and flying through the air before the dog had crossed half the ground between them. And then Helen
was climbing down the ladder as fast as her feet would allow, pulling on Griffin’s legs until he, too, began his descent.

He pulled the cover over the tunnel entrance and the world fell into darkness.

I
t’s an anagram,” Helen said softly, looking out onto the street through a gap in the parlor curtains.

“What is?” Darius asked from behind her.

“Alsorta.” She turned to face him, avoiding Griffin’s eyes.“It’s an anagram of Alastor.”

The revelation had come to her, suddenly and without forethought, when they had arrived back at the house.

Darius took a deep breath, running his hands along the stubble at his jaw before slamming his hand down on the tea table. A silver dish and cut glass candlestick rattled against his outburst.

“I should have checked.” His voice was laden with self-recrimination.

“You couldn’t possibly have known.” Helen was surprised to find herself sympathetic. Feeling anything other than annoyance
toward Darius was new. “You thought he was a man. We all did.”

She felt him seething in the silence that followed. And then Griffin spoke, asking the question that she had been expecting, however much she hoped he wouldn’t.