Lord of Sin (25 page)

Deborah flew up the stairs. Ioan remained behind with Sinjin.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“No. Nothing.” Sinjin started for the stairs.

“If you will permit Lady Orwell to stay with Lady Charles, I will take a room at the village inn.”

“I have rooms enough for you both.”

“I thank you, Lord Donnington.”

Sinjin had no more time to waste on the boy. He followed Lady Orwell up the stairs and stood outside Nuala’s door, listening to the soft drone of Deborah’s voice. Begging Nuala to come back, just as he had done. Speaking of the Widows, and how eager they were to have her return to them.

Only let her live, and I’ll never see her again
.

Deborah emerged an hour later, bumping into the doorjamb as she half stumbled through the door. “Lord Donnington,” she said in a choked voice.

“Did she—” he began. “Was there any sign…”

She shook her head, picked up her skirts and rushed past him. He didn’t go after her. There was nothing he could do to help her. He couldn’t help anyone.

He went into the room and locked the door. The rasp of Nuala’s breathing was like the grinding of a
saw on coffin wood. He sat beside her, stroked the hair away from her face, murmured the same apologies he had offered again and again.

Nothing. She was dying. He could think the word and know it to be true.

He laid his head on her waist, choking on his own silent tears. Her heartbeat was slow, fading.

Take my life. Mine, not hers. Let the name of Ware die with me
.

“But it is not your life I want, boy.”

Carefully Sinjin raised his head, smoothing Nuala’s nightdress with a gentle palm. “Makepeace.”

“You do not sound pleased to see me.” Makepeace materialized beside the fireplace, stretching his arm casually cross the mantelpiece.

Sinjin rose from the bedside, amazed at his own composure. “You lied to me.”

Makepeace shrugged. “I told what you were ready to hear.”

“You always intended for me to kill her.”

“You were my last hope of justice.”

“Justice? What justice requires an innocent woman’s death?”

“No woman is innocent.” He smiled, and Sinjin wondered how it was possible that he had failed to see the unadulterated evil in Makepeace’s eyes. “Since what was done cannot be undone, I see no reason why you should not know. My father hanged the witch’s sorcerous consort for acts against Man and God.”

“Then you were a witch-finder,” Sinjin said, his stomach heaving.

“My father and I helped rid the world of Satan’s spawn,” Makepeace said. “They could never be saved. Scripture is clear. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”

“And that is why you hanged them,” Sinjin said. “Not because they hurt anyone else, but because of your own fanatical hatred of something you couldn’t understand.”

“They bespelled innocent villagers into believing that they had done good works, healing the sick and aiding in the growing of corn and livestock. But such acts are the province of God alone. He does not permit Himself to be mocked.”

Sinjin remembered what Nuala had told him of her people at the dowager’s garden party. Perhaps they had made mistakes, as she had. Perhaps they had sometimes misused their magic, as she had. But now Sinjin understood that they were not gods, only people with abilities as natural to them as spinning was to a weaver or fashioning coats to a tailor.

“
You
made a mockery of God,” Sinjin said. “Nuala never harmed any of my family, did she?”

“It was her doing. I was forced to punish my descendents when they failed to keep the vow to destroy her.”

So Makepeace had been the one to arrange for the “accidents” that had befallen so many Ware heirs. “My brother?” Sinjin asked.

“I never made myself known to him. He brought about his own death.”

Not Makepeace, not Nuala, not Sinjin himself. Giles had died of his own fatal misjudgment.

“You knew that Nuala was at Donbridge,” Sinjin said. “Why didn’t you approach me then?”

“The time was not right. You were bound to another lover. But when you met the witch again in London…”

The attraction had been immediate, though Sinjin had been too blind with anger and resentment to recognize his own desire for her, or hers for him.

“You became helpless under her spell,” Makepeace said. “I saved you, and you fulfilled the vow. Now it is over.”

Sinjin fell to his knees. “Let her live. I will keep her close. She’ll never harm anyone again.”

“
You
will keep her?” Makepeace sneered. “No mortal man could hold her. Find yourself a humble, God-fearing woman, boy, and know that you have done your sacred duty. Let that comfort you to the end of your days.”

Sinjin was moving before he realized that his knees had left the floor. He threw himself at Makepeace, felt the shock of cold envelop him, the shudder of astonishment as Makepeace absorbed the attack.

The room turned end-over-end. Sinjin’s brain seemed to shatter inside his skull, his bones turn to powder.

He found himself in a village square, standing among men in sober dress. Behind him, a crowd of villagers, eager and apprehensive, watched for the witch-finder’s next move. Before him stood a gallows, made to hang several men or women at once but now bearing only a single victim.

Comfort Makepeace spoke briefly to the good,
upstanding men who had worked alongside him to bring the fiends to justice. The condemned prisoner shifted on the scaffold, perhaps attempting to free himself of his bonds. He had been a handsome man, Christian Starling, before the interrogation.

Martin glanced about the square.
She
had not come. He had wanted her to see what came of defying him, of denying him what he had wanted so badly.

No. You have broken her spell
. He was no longer in her thrall. She had already lost many of those she called family. Now she must feel her consort’s pain and know that her vile seduction had been exposed for the evil it was.

Comfort Makepeace bowed his head and led a prayer of thanksgiving and benediction. When the last words were spoken, Comfort nodded to the mayor, who in turn signaled to the hangman.

Starling did not weep. He didn’t beg for mercy as they positioned him above the trap door and fitted the noose around his neck.

Comfort watched, smiling. His back was turned to the alley when Nuala emerged, her face flushed, her hands raised as she chanted her spell.

The scream came not from Starling’s throat, but from the man who had condemned him. Martin felt hot liquid gush down his thigh. He couldn’t move, even as the flames consumed his father from the inside, even as Comfort turned to meet his son’s gaze and pleaded for his life. In minutes it was over, and nothing remained of a great man save ash and bone.

Martin cried out, cursing Heaven itself. He knelt
beside his father, weeping uncontrollably, mingling his tears with his father’s remains.

The sober Puritans stared in shock, frozen, useless. Martin got to his feet, swaying like a man sotted with drink.

“Seize her,” he snarled.

Several young men started reluctantly toward Nuala. She made no move to escape. She cast her gaze over the astonished observers, glanced at Makepeace and looked at last on Sinjin.

That was when Sinjin knew he had entered some kind of shared dream, not merely a memory brought to life by Makepeace’s enduring hatred. Sinjin stood apart, an observer, and yet his body was solid, real.

“You must go,” Nuala cried out to him as the men drew slowly closer. “Leave this place. Forget you ever knew me.”

“Leave you? Never.” He tried to go to her, but his limbs were heavy and useless. “Run, Nuala! For God’s sake, save yourself!”

Martin Makepeace turned to stare at him. “Do you think you can save her?” he mocked. “She escaped me once, but now it is too late.”

“No!” Sinjin fought for mastery of his legs and lunged toward Nuala. The young men reached her first. They seized her limbs and beat her down, dragged her unresisting toward the gibbet. Sinjin spun and ran at Makepeace, who languidly raised his arm. Sinjin fell, his muscles so rigid that his bones threatened to snap.

“Sinjin!” Nuala screamed. “Sinjin!”

“Perhaps you wish to die together,” Makepeace said to Sinjin, ignoring her. “Would that suit you, boy?”

Sinjin fought his unseen bonds until his joints began to pull free of their sockets. “You wanted her,” he gasped. “It wasn’t just your father’s death that made you hate her. You desired her, and she rejected you.”

The witch-finder’s mouth had become a pit of blackness, his eyes empty sockets. “She was Delilah, Jezebel, Lilith. She was female evil incarnate. She was—”

“A woman you could not have. Did you threaten her family, Makepeace? Tell her you’d kill them, kill her husband, if she didn’t give herself to you?”

“They deserved to die!” He sliced his hand downward as if to sever any remaining ties between him and his many-times grandson. “You are of no further use to me. I will see you hang before another of our name falls to Satan’s whore.”

“I will not let you,” Nuala said as the men struggled to force a gag over her mouth. “You will not have him!”

“You have no power to enforce your will,” Makepeace said. “Your lover saw to that.”

“Take me!” Sinjin rasped. “She can do you no harm. Let her go!”

“Let her go? When I have waited so long for this moment? When I gave my life to studying the blackest arts, turned my back on all I believed, for the sole purpose of destroying her?” He nodded toward the waiting crowd. Three villagers approached Sinjin, their faces hard and grim. “Take him to the gallows.”

“No!” Bright, flickering light rose in an aura about Nuala’s head, and her captors fell back. “I say
no!
”

Makepeace blanched. “It isn’t possible! The spell—”

“You have forgotten the one thing that can overcome the blackest of magic.” She drove the men away with a blast of flame. “Let him go, or I will do to you as I did to your father!”

Sinjin fought to lift his head from the earth where he had fallen. “No, Nuala! The first time nearly destroyed you. This time you will lose your soul!”

“It is worth it.” She gazed at him from across the clearing, her eyes so awash with love that Sinjin could scarcely catch his breath. “If
you
will live…”

With a great roar of rage and despair, Sinjin leaped up, scattering the three strong villagers like bowling pins. His feet never touched the ground as he ran to Nuala, grasped her hands, held her still.

“No,” he said gently, pressing his forehead to hers. “I will hold Makepeace while you escape.” She began to shake her head, but he caught it between his hands. “You must, for I cannot live knowing you have sacrificed your soul.”

They gazed at each other, so bound in the moment that the world stopped its spinning. “I…” Nuala gasped and closed her eyes. “We have only a little time, Sinjin.”

“I know.” He stroked her hair, kissed her brow, her cheek, her lips. “Go.” He turned her toward the wood. “Go back. I will always be with you.”

Her eyes snapped open. Her hair burst into flame. And then she collapsed into his arms.

Makepeace laughed.

Sinjin lifted Nuala and faced the witch-finder. “You haven’t won. Not so long as there is breath in my—”

An icy wind struck his face and blew through him, whipping at the heavy folds of Nuala’s skirt. He staggered, and the ground gave way beneath him.

He landed on his feet, the walls of his own room closing in around him. Nuala was no longer in his arms. He fell back, struggling to force air into lungs crushed by the vast weight on his chest. Makepeace’s body, restored to its ghostly form, wavered and shimmered before him.

“Nuala!” Sinjin cried. He spun toward the bed. Nuala lay there, unchanged, beneath a blanket that had not been disturbed.

“Nothing has been altered,” Makepeace said with a skull’s naked grin. “She is as she was. If you had permitted her, she might have saved you both.”

“Not at the price she would have paid,” Sinjin said, letting the tears fall unchecked. “She has atoned for what she did so many years ago. You’ve lost that chance forever.”

With a high wail of madness the ghost sprang at Sinjin. The impact stunned him, weakening him at the exact moment that Makepeace seized control of his body. He felt his limbs go numb, his head fill with thoughts not his own.

We will finish this together
.

The ghost jerked him toward the bed. Nuala had not stirred. She seemed strangely at peace, as if she had anticipated and accepted this end.

Sinjin leaned over the bed, extending hands he no
longer recognized. His fingers reached Nuala’s slender throat.
She would die at his hands. He would feel the life leave her, feel her soul shrink to nothing as her beautiful, wicked body drew its last breath
….

Deep inside his mind, Sinjin fought. He regained mastery of some tiny piece of himself, a spark of will Makepeace could not break. And he realized, as the spark caught and began to grow, that Makepeace had made a fatal mistake.

“You have forgotten the one thing that can overcome the blackest of magic.”

With a wrench that seemed to split Sinjin’s flesh in a hundred places, Makepeace broke free. “Yes,” he hissed. “There is but one key to her survival, and you do not possess it. You are like me, Sinjin Ware. You will never possess it!”

“I can do one thing, you filthy bastard. I can send you to Hell.”

“You have not the power. You—”

Sinjin plunged his fist into the mist of Makepeace’s flickering form and closed his fingers. He felt something solid, something that gave as he tightened his grip. Eyes bulged in the withered mask of Makepeace’s face.

“You…you cannot—”

The slender cord in Sinjin’s hand snapped. Makepeace screamed. His face thinned and lengthened like pulled taffy and dwindled to nothing. The mist funneled inward in ever-tightening spirals, draining like some dark liquid into Sinjin’s fist. Makepeace’s dreadful cry grew faint, begging mercy of someone
Sinjin couldn’t see. When Sinjin opened his fingers, his hand was empty.