Cameo and the Highwayman (Trilogy of Shadows Book 2) (18 page)

In one swift motion, the mallet struck its mark, and Black Opal felt the knuckle of his little finger shatter. He cried out and fought to get his hand back.

Lantillette chuckled.

“Shrieked like a little girl,” the man with the mallet mocked. “Nine more to go. This should be funny.”

“Don’t forget the hands.”

“No!” Opal struggled, “Don’t!”

“Be glad we aren’t using the saw.”

“Not my hands, please.”

“What difference does it make?” Lantillette smirked, “You’ll be dead in a few days anyhow. I can promise you, you’ll never have another opportunity to play another musical instrument or pick up a rapier again in your life.”

If Cameo could possibly get to him, he would be able to gut this man with a blade, but not if his hands were rendered useless. He had held out the hope that she might be able to free him. Now, as he felt the second finger of his right hand break, he knew that day would never come.

He screamed in pain.

* * * * *

Cameo awoke with a start. She sat up panting, uncertain what she had just heard. It sounded like the scream of a dying man.

There was a silhouette of a man standing at the end of her bed. As she looked into its face, she heard the cry again, and she saw what this shadow had seen: Black Opal being tortured in a tower cell.

She leapt to her feet frantically and snatched a glimpse of the dark morning outside as she dressed in haste, and then she burst out the door of her room.

Jules looked up from where he was sitting in front of the fire.

Chester was in the sitting room, scrubbing the stains from the walls, and for the most part it looked remarkably better than it had. The broken window was replaced. There were new curtains, and a new settee.

At first her anxious thoughts about finding Edel still awake were replaced with a sense that things were stable in the apartment again, and then she glanced down at the spot on the floor were Jules had been laying in a pool of blood the night before and saw the stain of his blood that Chester had not yet cleaned. Her eyes met Jules’ eyes finally. She hated Edel in that moment. She hated him because she knew that even if he were awake, he would not release her to spare Opal the pain that he was enduring, and she hated him because of the look in Jules’ eyes now. He was anxious.

He was hiding it behind a quizzical expression, but he could not root out the core of his feeling, and that core was fearful. He met her with a timid, yet intrigued, look.

“How’s your head?” she asked in a flat voice as she buckled her belt on.

“It’s all in one piece, sitting atop my neck, if that’s what you mean.”

Cameo took a step toward him. “Yes, that was the basic question.” Her eyes lingered on the floor where he had been lying for a moment, wondering how long he had been unconscious, and who, if anyone had tried to help him.

When she looked up again, he was also looking away from the stained floor and about to speak.

“Has Edel gone to sleep?”

Jules closed his mouth. He had been about to say something pertaining to his ordeal, and then he realized that she didn’t care, and he stiffened. “He left hours ago.”

“What time is it?”

“Noon?”

She rushed over to the window, it was icy. “It’s so dark.”

Jules looked down at the fire, thinking about what he had just experienced. He was just realizing that he had no one to confide in at all. He had awakened to the sound of glass breaking and subsequent banging. The room was being repaired around his nearly lifeless body. Edel literally stood over him as he replaced the window that Cameo had thrown him through.

He was nothing. No one here cared about his life. He was just refuse left lying around to be ignored.

Edel had renovated the sitting room as much as he could before dawn and had departed without saying one word to him. A few minutes before Cameo had come out of her room, Jules had managed to pull himself up and climb onto the settee. He had no idea what the back of his head even looked like, but he was alive… sort of. He was coherent.

“I have to get out of here,” she stated. “They are torturing Opal.”

“He’ll never let us go.”

She spun around, frustrated, and marched over to the bar.

He studied her as she poured herself a tall glass of whiskey and then proceeded to drink it down at a harried pace, as if she needed to silence some inner demon.

“How do you know he’s being tortured?”

She set the glass down and looked back at Jules. “A shadow showed me.”

His eyes widened. “You can see them, too?”

“Unfortunately.”

“They talk to you?”

She smirked, “Not exactly.”

“I have tried to avoid them.”

She glanced over at the corner of the room closest to her bedroom door where one of the shadows was now standing… watching. “Perhaps that’s best.”

He hesitated to follow her gaze but felt compelled to look at the silhouette of a man standing just outside of her bedroom door, and as he did it turned to face him. Jules turned away, frightened of the thing that he had just acknowledged.

Cameo’s lip turned up at the end, slightly amused by his trepidation. She poured herself another drink and then changed her mind and offered it to Jules.

He looked up at her, fearful and uncertain.

“Do you like whiskey?”

“You know I do,” he said, taking it from her.

“Oh, that’s right.”

He nearly put the glass to his mouth, then he thought the better of it and pulled it away to ask, “Does this come with a kick to the chest, or are you being genuinely kind?”

She grinned. He was obviously referring to when she had him tied to a tree in Lockenwood forest. “I’m being… kind. Although I don’t know why. You’ve given me plenty of reasons not to like or trust you.”

“And you murdered Wick.”

“And you murdered Kyrian’s grandfather.”

“Yes, I did. Perhaps I shouldn’t have killed that holy man.... It seems I’ve been paying for it ever since.” He set down the alcohol, no longer interested in it.

“Oh?”

“I’m not going to sit here explaining myself to you.” He curled back up on the settee and stared at the fire, deep in thought.

Cameo thought for a moment that he might add something to the last sentence he spoke, but since nothing came, she simply moved back over to the bar for another drink.

Chester was slowly scraping away at the burned surface of the furthest wall. She watched him for a few minutes, anxiously awaiting nightfall.

“Why didn’t you end my life?”

She turned toward Jules.

“I’ve been wondering,” he said, never shifting his gaze from the fireplace. “There were so many opportunities.”

“I don’t kill everyone I come into contact with. That idea is just part of the myth about
Cameo who lives in the graveyard
. You know, the children’s story?”

“I know the tale.” He looked up at her.

“Well, I don’t kill everyone. It’s just a silly story.”

“Yes, but what I don’t understand is why you didn’t kill me. You have slain many people who threatened you. I have been—I am—a threat to you. Why haven’t you taken my life?”

“Haffef has already done it.”

He bit his lip as if the memory of it pained him to think about, and he nodded. “He didn’t finish the job.”

“Is that what you’re hoping for? Someone to finish you off?”

He sobered. “I was just asking a question.”

There was a knock at the door.

Cameo and Jules went silent.

Chester suddenly dropped the scrub-brush that he had been using to the floor. His attention now focused on the door that needed to be answered.

Cameo felt somehow dizzy, as if this moment, waiting for Chester to shuffle over to the entry, was surreal and unending.
Who could possibly have come to the vampire’s lair? Right up the inner stairs, inside the palace itself? Opal? Could it be Black Opal?
For a moment Cameo thought that she might literally faint, she had become so anxious, so unnerved by the possible happiness that could be just beyond the entry door.

Chester yanked open the heavy door to a young man who was shaking snow from his hair.

“Hello, Cameo,” Kyrian smiled.

“Kyrian?” There was a note of alarm in her tone.

The lad regarded the creature who answered the door. This must have been the being he had seen in his dream, the one he was warning Opal about. Now he could see how wrong he was to have warned him. This was no creature, just a sad, old man imprisoned in a dead body.

Chester pulled the door completely open, allowing Kyrian to walk in, although his eyes were imploring him not to enter.

“How did you get here?” Cameo came toward him, putting herself between him and the man on the settee.

Kyrian looked over her shoulder and saw the man who had murdered his grandfather sitting there. He met the lad’s eyes for a moment, long enough for Kyrian to see the white irises, and then he bowed his head. If it were possible to avoid Kyrian at all, Jules seemed that he longed to do so.

Cameo put one hand on his shoulder. “How did you get here?”

“Cyrus brought me here.”

“Your dead grandfather?”

“Yes.” He looked into her eyes. “I’ve come to free you.”

“Free me? Free Opal.”

“I don’t know how.” He smiled, “But Cyrus thinks you could release Black Opal if I set you free.”

The door latched loudly behind Kyrian. It was an unsettling sound of permanent confinement. Cameo looked at Chester unappreciatively.

Kyrian grinned at her and took her hand. “Come on now, come with me and you can save Opal. I know where he is. He’s in the tower at the west end of the palace.”

“I can’t leave.”

The lad paid no attention to her; he simply pulled her hand harder and moved toward the door as Chester ambled back into the room.

“Kyrian!”

He met her expression, which was rather dour.

“I can only go a short distance from this apartment. Edel will not allow me to leave. I am his prisoner here. He forbids me to leave.”

“Who’s Edel?”

“He’s a vampire.”

“Oh,” he mused as he lowered his pack to the floor. “Well, then I must meet this man.”

“No! Kyrian, he’ll kill you.” She pushed him toward the door. “You cannot stay here.”

“I must.”

“Please go. I’m not worth saving, and you have your whole life ahead of you.”

He smiled at her thoughtfully and unbuttoned his new coat. “I brought some of Opal’s things with me. He has some paperwork here. I think it might be some of his speeches, you know, from when he was Francois Mond.”

She seemed disappointed.

“Anyhow, I just thought you might want them, or he might.”

“I would like them. I think Opal would probably like his cosmetic bag. Did you bring that with you?”

“Uhh, no.”

“Alright.” She wandered back into the sitting room, dismayed that Kyrian was in peril for his life.

Jules glanced over at each of them, feeling uneasy with Kyrian’s presence.

The lad followed her into the room. “Did you have a fire? What’s that on the floor there… is that blood?”

Chapter Ten

C
AMEO HEARD THE
CLICK
of
the latch and turned to look at Kyrian who was sitting at her desk.

“Is that him?”

She stood. “Don’t go out there. Let me handle this.”

“You know we can’t wait forever. Opal’s life is at stake.”

“I know,” Cameo stepped in front of the lad, “but just wait a moment, please?”

Kyrian sighed and licked the frosting off a pastry. He and Cameo had been cooped up in her room for hours waiting for nightfall and the arrival of Edel. Kyrian was ready to leave.

She slipped out of her bedroom door.

Edel was standing at the window seat in the back of the room where he liked to spend most of his time. He looked out at the clear night sky.

Jules didn’t meet her eyes when she glanced in his direction. He was haunting that same place on one end of the settee before the fire, mute and subdued.

Cameo approached the vampire, but he paid no attention to her, almost to the point where she started to think it was deliberate.

“Good evening, Cameo.” Edel turned around. His hair was pulled back into the short ponytail he always wore, tidy, perfectly tidy, actually. His entire appearance was smart and trim, and he was wearing that same dark wool suit that she had seen every night that she had been there.

“Yes, I generally wear them until they are threadbare. It’s not as though I’m trying to impress anyone at this stage of the game.”

And he smelled… well, as usual.

“Like a cemetery?”

She just looked into his eyes.

“Is there something more pressing you were planning on telling me?” he asked, a bit put off by her thoughts.

“I must go to Opal.”

An image of a man smashing Opal’s fingers came to his mind suddenly. He waved the thought away and moved around her, toward the pastry tray; once there, he stared at the cakes with the usual longing that she had witnessed many times before.

She began again, stronger, “
They
are torturing him.”

“I know that.”

“Then let me go to him,” she growled.

He looked away; for one moment he hoped avoiding this confrontation would make it end. “He is Francois Mond. You know my opinion on this.”

She glanced at Chester suddenly—he was an arm’s length away from her—and then met Edel’s eyes defiantly. “Perhaps I can persuade you.”

“I know you don’t mean that.”

“Do you?” she hissed.

“I know you don’t want to hurt me.”

“It would be just awful to watch your last descendant die, the way that Haffef murdered your children.” Her voice was spiteful, and she hoped she had hurt him as she said it.

“You have no weapon.”

“Do I need one? Chester’s weaker than I. I could break him with my bare hands.”

“Please don’t make idle threats; in the end these will never come to fruition and only sully our future friendship.”

“How do you foresee our future friendship, Edel? After Opal is executed, I mean. How will I be able to forgive you for not allowing me to save his life?”