The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (29 page)

But the only other Elliott left was Madeline. And she had pulled the demon out of him.

Could it come back to claim its reward: his soul?

Would she come for hers?

He pushed off the casing and braced himself against the sill, addressing the soft tendrils of smoke from the cottage.

“I’d submit to you.” He rubbed his thumb against a nail protruding from the rotten wood, watching it scrape against his skin. “I’d give you as much blood as you required.”

He paused, then pushed his thumb sharp against the point, not even wincing as it broke the skin, watching impassively as the blood burst out, then ran in a thick, slow river down the side of his hand. He looked back to the cottage, holding his thumb away from his clothes as he rooted through the folds of his shirt with his clean hand, drawing the medallion free, lifting it high in front of him, as far as the string would go.

“I’m staying. I’m staying here until you hear me, until I’ve paid for what I’ve done to you.” He pressed his bloody thumb against the stone, smearing it with the blood, staining the black silk of the cord even darker. “I give you my blood, Elliott. Freely. Do with it what you will.”

It was crude magic, cruder than most kitchen maids could manage, but it was the best he could do. It made him feel better. Unconsciously he reached for his sword stick with his bloody hand.

“I’ll fight with you, Madeline,” he whispered. “I’ll stand by your side and fight with you, for you—whatever you want.” His grip tightened farther, then went slack, and his voice softened too.

“Whatever you want, Madeline,” he said. “Whatever you want. Just so long as you let me stay.”

The wind picked up across the garden, and he watched the rush come toward him. He shut his eyes as it hit his face, and in a private, quiet fancy, he imagined it was her kiss come across the moor to him, sealing their agreement.

* * *

Dirty, ragged, and shaking, Charles stumbled up the back stairs of the inn, fumbled with the knob to Smith’s room, then fell inside, landing on the floor facedown.

He had run all through the night, wandering aimlessly and half-mad from all the drugged brandy. He’d been sick all over himself so many times that twice he’d been sick just from the smell, but he felt far worse when the potion wore off. For then he could remember. He remembered everything that had happened: everything from the inn, from the moor. His dream. Madeline.

Timothy.

He’d been four miles east of town when Smith’s charms began to overtake him, forcing his body back, making his legs take him to the inn instead of to the next town. He’d fought it, fought tooth and nail, fought until he had passed into a strange sort of dream state, which brought the nightmares back. Except these were new, and they were worse. This time when the wraiths were before him, he could smell their blood, and he could taste it on his tongue.

This time Timothy Fielding died with them, and it was Martin Smith who cut his throat and made Charles drink from the vein.

There were voices too, and they didn’t stop, not when the drug wore off, not for anything. Dark voices. Light voices. Madeline’s, Jonathan’s, his father’s, Timothy’s, Smith’s. The demon’s voice from the lake. Ones he didn’t know at all. They were a mad chorus inside his mind, and they would not stop.

You are strong. You are weak.

You can save the world. You can destroy it.

Let me help you. Let me protect you.

Let me kill you.

Be careful.

You’re worthless.

You have so much power.

You are mine.

You are your own, quiera.

He tried to push himself up from the floor, but the voices weighed him down. Charles gave up and curled into a ball, crying quietly to himself.

A strong hand pulled him up by the collar of his shirt. Charles blinked and turned his head sideways. Smith.

“Had an adventure, have we?” he said with amusement, but it was amusement stretched very thin. He had bruises all over both sides of his face, and he looked haggard. His gaze zeroed in on the charm Madeline had given Charles, and he sneered. “Foolish girl. She has no idea of my power. But we will deal with that in a moment. First—” He shoved Charles back to the floor, reaching for something from the table with one hand as he grabbed Charles’s waistband with the other. “On your knees, you stinking pig.”

He was fast and hard and brutal. Very, very brutal. He used every tool in his bag and some Charles had not remembered him having administered before. They hurt. They
ached
. They burned. He felt pain across his back, then sticky wet as blood began to run down his sides, down his hips, everywhere. True to his word, Smith did not so much as break his skin, but his magic was so strong now that he could make Charles bleed without making a single scratch. Twice Charles started to sob, but Smith slapped the side of his head so hard that his ears rang, and after that he concentrated on not being in his body, of deliberately losing consciousness. He thought of his dream where he had left his body, and he fixated all his heart on that feeling, trying to bring it back again. Anything to escape what Smith was doing to him.

And then, like mist fading away, he was floating on the ceiling. But when he looked down at what was happening to his body, he startled, and he felt himself start to fall.

Soft hands pulled him back and led him away to sit on the top of the window. As it had in Rose Cottage, the ceiling lifted to accommodate his head and that of whoever had reached for him. Charles heard himself scream below, and he shuddered and shut his eyes.

The hands touched his face gently.
“Hush. It’s all right. Hush.”

He knew that voice. He looked up, wishing he could cry out, but he was too weak, too tired, too full of despair. He could only whisper.

“Goddess.”

She smiled—so beautiful—and leaned forward to kiss him.

There was another scream from below. Charles startled so hard he nearly fell off his perch. But the Goddess only drew him in close, pulling him against her shoulder, tucking his face tight against her breast.

“I tried to run,” he whispered. “I tried to run, but I couldn’t.” He gripped her dress, feeling its strange fabric shimmer beneath his hands. “I don’t want him to find the others. I don’t want him to find Madeline.” He swallowed hard and shut his eyes so tight he saw stars.
“Timothy.”

She kissed his hair.
“You have already won, my beloved. You’ve pulled part of yourself away. He will bind you tighter to him now, yes, but he cannot bind this part of you. And it is because of this you will defeat him.”

“I should have stayed with him,” Charles whispered, his heart aching. “With Timothy. I was a fool to run. I should have stayed with him.”

“Hush, my love.”
She stroked his cheek.
“Hush.”

He heard a crack and a sickening snap as Smith began to beat his body again. He let his head fall onto the Goddess’s transparent shoulder and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Soon,”
she whispered, kissing and stroking his hair.
“We will be together, beloved. Very, very soon.”

Chapter Eight

sho

male

The male is the second gender created by the Goddess.

The male expands, always seeking.

The male moves in a straight line, and he moves quickly.

The male is the energy of change and motion.

Jonathan was waiting for Madeline.

It had been some time since she’d healed him with her spell, but he had yet to see her. He assumed she would come and check on him as he was her patient, but he had yet to encounter her since that night in the tower despite making several trips across the moor to find her. Emily Elliott had politely told him her sister was not at home, and her tone had implied that even if she were, she wouldn’t be to him.

So he’d stripped to his shirtwaist and started scrubbing the abbey.

For weeks Jonathan made the abbey his project: he cleared debris, applied stone plaster to the front stairs so that it wasn’t a risk of life and limb to use them, and did anything else involving manual labor that needed to be done. His body was wasted from years of disuse, but it responded as it ever had to good, hard work, and when it had been almost three weeks since he’d arrived in Rothborne, he felt almost as fit as he had when he’d left. It felt good.

Timothy worked beside him at the abbey off and on, though he was oddly silent. He still seemed bothered by something, but he would not speak of it. He also took frequent trips into town, often for hours on end, and he returned nearly exploding with frustration. Jonathan was concerned, but he decided to let it be, for now.

There had been nothing further from the alchemist. Timothy said he’d looked for him, but he’d found nothing, not even a trace that he’d been there at all. Jonathan assumed the weasel had gone back to Boone, and he was glad for it.

His brother Stephen was something of a puzzle. Despite his request for a serious discussion, he had not approached Jonathan for anything other than oddly stilted chats. He was still in the parish, staying at Whitby Hall, but why, Jonathan did not know. He wasn’t precisely clear on what his brother was doing in the north at all, in fact, short of reminding Jonathan daily that their grandfather was unhappy he was here and wished he would go. But Whitby himself, despite repeated threats in writing and hints through Stephen, did not appear.

And this was fine. As Jonathan told Stephen and urged him to tell Whitby, he was going nowhere.

He hoped the news made it all the way around the gossip chain back to Madeline.

Eventually, he reasoned, she would have to come to him, or at the very least they would run into one another in town or on the moor. And so every day, after a morning of making order of the house, Jonathan made order of his body, hauling up the water for the bath himself as the plumbing was rotted, ironing his own shirt and polishing his own boots. When Jonathan considered himself sufficiently made ready, he would take a walk into town, come back through the moor, linger near Rose Cottage and the Goddess tree, and at last would retreat to his study, where he would spend the afternoon leafing through the ledgers, sipping a brandy, and glancing constantly out the window toward the moor, watching to see if today would be the day that Madeline would come.

On this particular afternoon, when Timothy had been gone less than half an hour, Jonathan was leaning on the casement when he heard the door to the study open and close, and his heart kicked up a beat. No horse had been heard in the drive, no carriage, and he hadn’t even heard a footstep on the stair. That was Madeline’s way, and that meant she was here at last. He turned around, ridiculously giddy at the prospect of seeing her again.

But it was not Madeline who stood before him. It was his grandfather.

Augustus Perry, Lord Whitby filled the doorway in height and girth and also in mere presence, a trick Jonathan had early identified as a handy skill and spent much of his life attempting to emulate. He had come close, but he never quite managed the pressure on the back of the throat his grandfather could elicit simply by being present. Old Whitby, it was often bragged, could frighten the Continental Pope without even trying.

He was more than trying now. Whitby never gave in to his anger. He wore it instead, letting it radiate from him like a foul fog. At best his hand would tighten against the silver knob of his cane, his jeweled rings glistening, his knuckles sharp against his fists. He did not frown or scowl, but rather, the more furious he became, the more bland and calm he seemed, like a snake retreating before it snapped and went for your throat. As Whitby stood in the doorway, his expression was so absent he seemed made of glass. On his cane, his knuckles were white.

But this was always the problem with family. Others might very well tremble at the sight of Lord Whitby in full court mode, but Jonathan had grown immune to the sight by the age of four. He scowled, slammed his ledger shut, and waved a hand at his grandfather before turning away.

Whitby said nothing. He simply prowled the room, his jowls rippling softly as he bore himself along, his cane punctuating the heavy creak of the great wide, ancient planks. He stopped at the window and shoved the worn old drapes aside before planting himself before the opening, staring out across the ruined gardens.

“Why the devil did you come here, you stupid fool?” Whitby demanded.

Jonathan glared at his grandfather’s back. The old bastard must have had his driver let him off at the road, which meant he’d known Jonathan would try to duck out if he heard him arrive. He’d likely waited until he knew Timothy was out as well.

“I sought the witch,” Jonathan replied. “I couldn’t stand the pain any longer.”

“The
witch
.” Whitby snorted derisively. “I wish I had known this earlier. If your aim was to come here, you’d have been more use to me dead.”

“I tried to die. It didn’t work.” Jonathan crossed to the fireplace and kicked idly at the coals.

“Pity.” Whitby reached for his snuffbox and took a pinch. He regarded Jonathan with visible distaste. “Did you even
think
before you came up here? You came to an
Elliott
to be cured?”

“I came for the Morgan, but she was dead,” he snapped.

Whitby laughed. “Yes, and you played directly into Smith’s hands.”

Jonathan did not enjoy being reminded. “You cannot seriously be concerned about Martin Smith. He’s a fifth-rate alchemist. He couldn’t even pass the standard license exam.”

“No, he couldn’t—which is why he is so dangerous.” Whitby replaced his snuffbox and smiled without humor. “He has nothing to lose. He seeks power, and he intends to drain all the Houses of what they have left.”

Jonathan snorted. “There is no power. We are all nothing now.”

Whitby’s answering smile was thin. “You look fit, boy. Some might say younger than when you left.”

Jonathan reached for his brandy and gave Whitby a dark smile. “Is that your veiled way of asking how I look this good while carrying a demon?”