Brimstone Seduction (22 page)

“Do I have any other choice?” she asked. “You always find me. I'm tired of running. I'm tired of hiding.”

There were always choices. And being helpless never had to be one of them.

She led the way with Reynard's sharp knife close to the small of her back. He still didn't sheathe it. He was too used to her slipping away. He didn't know that this time she was determined to face him and fight him and put an end to it all.

Had Eric been found? Had Severne been able to help the small boy get away? The stairs and halls were deserted as they made their way toward an exit. Smoke became an impenetrable wall. It blocked their way, this way and that, but Reynard pushed her forward through it in spite of coughing and choking and streaming eyes.

He must not have noticed the change in the mural on the wall.

Katherine had assumed the great shuffling she'd heard above her head while she'd been in the warehouse had been people evacuating. But now she saw a different explanation.

Every figure on the walls had moved to face outward. They stood side by side by side. They lined every corridor in a great unending row of lost souls doomed to burn. Nothing could free them. They would be consumed by flames when the opera house burned.

As Reynard hurried her along, it wasn't only smoke that made Kat's eyes stream.

She hoped Eric had been right. She hoped Lucifer's Army didn't blame her for their imprisonment and their impending demise.

The opera house seemed to be fully evacuated. Every door they passed hung open. Every room was empty. There was no one running around them in the halls. Distantly Kat could hear sirens, but she could also see flame. It licked around the ceiling's edges. If she didn't get out soon, it would be too late.

“Hurry,” Reynard urged. Even a madman could see they didn't have long before the building came down on their heads. Heat had joined the smoke. Tears evaporated off her face as they fell.

Finally Kat saw what she'd been straining to see. Hundreds of daemons were carved into the walls, but she saw Michael easily because he stood by Eric's mother, a face she would never forget. Lavinia looked at her. Michael was tall and beautiful beside her. Not as beautiful as Severne. Her human lover was all the more attractive because of the vulnerable edge to his hardness. The fact that he'd claimed his perfection with sweat and blood and determination in the face of fear made it even more striking, a human achievement of the most divine. But Kat could see why her sister had fallen in love with her baby's father. His angelic face was angular and sad. His long hair swept back from his cheeks. The absence of his wings was obvious in the scars on his shoulders. Michael stood as if the weight of his wings was still down his back.

Her sister had loved this daemon. And even though his ghostly shadow had almost chilled her soul to death, Kat thought he might help her now. He was Victoria's immortal Romeo. He had died for her. He had helped her beyond his death. Would he continue to help her now?

She stepped closer to Michael and Lavinia. Reynard followed. The monk was so used to stalking her, he didn't think to be cautious now. When they were close enough, Kat pretended to stumble. She fell into Reynard, risking his blade to press his body against the figures on the wall. She didn't know what mighty manipulation of will they'd had to use to move, but she imagined they had waited for an opportunity like this.

Wooden hands closed around Reynard's neck and arms before he realized what had happened. She saw them move in the same way Lavinia had moved to grip her hand, but faster, as if they had stored their energy for this moment. Did Reynard immediately feel the cold begin to leach his life? His blade fell to the ground at Kat's feet.

“What are you doing? The Council will avenge me. I've been their instrument for decades,” Reynard shouted.

Kat bent to pick up his blade, but Severne stopped her.

“Don't touch it. It's a daemon blade. He must be the one who injured Grim,” Severne said.

“I tried to follow that beast after he delivered one of my men back to the Order half-dead from fleeing his evil jaws. He turned on me. I cut him, but he got away,” Reynard said. He continued to struggle against his wooden captors. They held him without expression. Completely still and impossible to dislodge.

“He would have died without Sybil's blood. She saved him. I think she also saved you, Kat. She unmade the dress. I've never seen her so...emotional,” Severne said.

Kat had been using her bad hand. It was no longer painful and useless. It no longer curled against her chest. Her heart beat quickly because of the circumstances, but it no longer pained her with every thump.

“Eric is waiting with Sybil outside. Everyone is out. The building is lost. It will fall,” he said. “There isn't much time.”

“We can't let him burn,” Kat said.

Reynard cursed and shouted above the sound of crashing plaster. Deep beneath their feet, the catacombs moaned as air was compressed by the weight of the building preparing to fall.

“If what he says is true, if he's the Council's man, he sold his soul. Just like my grandfather. He will burn. No matter what. Just like me,” Severne said.

“Samuel had the affinity. We used it for decades. But then he refused to help me any longer. He said we'd been wrong. I had to make a deal with the devil to continue our quest,” Reynard said.

“Samuel refused to go along with your agreement,” Kat said.

“He was my partner for years. We killed so many. Then he decided it was wrong. He went against all we believed,” Reynard said.

“Against you,” Kat said.

“We fought. I stabbed him,” Reynard said.

“But he passed his gift to my grandmother before he died,” Kat said.

“He betrayed me. I created the Order of Samuel to make things right.”

“You retroactively made him a collaborator in your mad scheme,” Severne said.

The opera master reached to pick up the daemon blade, but Kat moved to take it from him. Severne protested, but when her hand closed over the hilt, he grew suddenly silent. He released it to her fingers. She could feel its great heat in her hand, but it didn't burn her skin.

“I can't save you, Reynard. You'll still burn. But I won't leave you here to burn alive.”

Katherine D'Arcy plunged the blade that Reynard had used to kill her mother into his Brimstone-tainted heart. As the knife entered his chest, a great winged shadow she'd seen before swept out from the carving of Michael on the wall to engulf Reynard's writhing body. She'd seen daemons consumed many times, but this was hotter and brighter. She fell back from the conflagration as her would-be rapist burned and Severne caught her to keep her from falling to her knees.

“My name is Katherine,” Kat quietly said to the man who had respected that fact all along.

She would hear Reynard's screams for the rest of her life. It was a horrible sound, but a fitting end.

The intense burn as damnation claimed him to nothingness cleansed her mother's blood from the daemon blade. The winged shadow disappeared at the same instant that Reynard's ash disintegrated in the air.

Severne lifted her into his arms. She didn't protest. He could run faster, and the building was beginning to fall. She touched the carving of Michael's face. It had been blackened by the burning struggle with Reynard. She brushed Lavinia's hand. The chill in the wooden fingers was gone.

Severne pulled her away from the bas-relief mural. She could see the fire already flickering up the walls. Then she was enveloped in an explosion of lava-like flame that should have resulted in horrible scorching pain.

But didn't.

She was in Severne's arms. It was where she most wanted to be. He took her through the flames to the other side.

Chapter 30

F
ire and rescue personnel had responded to the blaze on Severne Row, but no training could have prepared them for a conflagration of hellish proportions. When Kat's eyes fluttered open, ladder trucks were fully deployed, and fountains of water fell on nearby buildings to keep them from going up in flames. The great light of l'Opéra Severne created thousands of leaping shadows everywhere she looked.

Later there would be speculation about the miraculous localization of the fire. Grizzled firefighters with enough experience under their belts to recognize the impossible would cross themselves years from now when the fire was mentioned. The habitual muttering of prayers whenever Severne Row had to be crossed would become a tradition for all department captains.

Tonight, as water fell like a soaking, soothing rain, Severne held her. His embrace was like an answer to her prayers that he would live.

L'Opéra Severne continued to burn.

It had been given up as lost. The roof had caved in, and flames blazed into the night sky.

Kat looked up at Severne. His black hair dripped. His white shirt was plastered to his muscular frame. He was altogether glorious. She suddenly remembered the others and looked around to see hundreds of performers, musicians and technicians milling around.

The conductor was tended by paramedics. He wore a blanket as if it was an evening cloak. Tess carried steaming cups to the artists she usually helped in other ways. Supportive as ever. When she looked Kat's way, her eyes glowed, but it was only the reflection of the fire. She was human even if her abilities as an experienced prompter were inhumanly brilliant.

Finally, as Kat had begun to lose hope, she saw Eric. The young daemon boy was cradled in Sybil's arms in the shadow of an ambulance. Kat extricated herself from Severne's hold. He had to loosen it to let her go. She rose and steadied her legs before she approached the daemon woman who had almost killed her. Severne rose to follow her, but he didn't interfere.

“You would help him now?” Kat asked.

“I've always tried to help him, even though I let him wander the halls more than I should have. I didn't know he planned to burn l'Opéra Severne. I would have tried to stop him. They should never have asked such a sacrifice from a child,” Sybil said.

Eric had turned his sooty face toward Katherine. He'd been crying. The water from the firefighter's hoses didn't account for his reddened eyes.

“They?” Kat asked. She couldn't believe the daemon boy had started the fire that burned what was left of his mother.

She reached out and Eric took her hand, but he didn't release his hold on Sybil with the other.

“Lucifer's Army. They used Eric to burn the opera house so they could be freed,” Sybil explained.

“Now they're nothing but smoke and ash,” Severne said. “Why would they choose death over imprisonment?” His fists were clenched. His jaw was tight. He was helpless to save the daemons he'd captured.

“No,” Eric said. He shook his head. To Katherine, he continued, “They aren't dead. Some of them will die in the fighting, though. They warned me I might not see my mother again.”

“He freed Lucifer's Army to attack the Council. They were taken and imprisoned one at a time, but they were released all at once. They planned a surprise attack to take the Council unawares. It will be a horrible battle,” Sybil explained. “He weeps because of that, not because of the fire.”

Katherine let go of Eric and backed into Severne's arms. Here, a huge historic building burned. There, in the hell dimension, a daemon war would rage.

“You'll be safe with us,” Kat said. She meant Eric would be safe, but she included Sybil, as well. She didn't trust the daemon woman, but she didn't want her to have to go to war.

A loud roar shook the air around them, and the ground trembled. A woman screamed and the whole crowd cried out together, their exclamations blending into a great sound of dismay, punctuated by embers of cherry ash falling from the sky.

L'Opéra Severne was gone. John Severne watched its final collapse, flames and shadows dancing on his stark, handsome face.

His eyes weren't red, but his face was wet. They were all soaked from the fire hoses' rain. Still, water and tears ran together so no one could tell where one became another. Kat turned and buried her face in Severne's chest. He pulled her closer. Sybil hugged Eric, protecting him from the falling remnants of the building no one would ever know he'd burned.

It hadn't been arson. It had been a revolution. One even a small boy couldn't escape.

Sybil had never intended to endanger him. Her bargain had been a bluff. Kat could tell the daemon would have helped Eric no matter what she'd done.

“Katherine, you aren't burned. The building was engulfed in flame when I carried you out. I couldn't avoid the fire. You should have died. You aren't even injured,” Severne said.

He ran his hands over her damp skin, checking for burns that didn't exist.

She remembered the heat. She remembered how he had been afraid for her to touch Reynard's blade. But neither his knife nor the fire had burned her.

“Brimstone protects you from flame. The danger to Eric wasn't from the fire, but from the building's collapse,” Sybil said.

“Kat has no Brimstone in her blood,” Severne said.

“But the baby she carries does,” Sybil said. “Brimstone isn't always a curse. It can be a gift. Tonight, Brimstone helped protect you. The baby will be human as you're human, but the Brimstone will make her or him a little extraordinary, as well.”

It should have been too soon to feel a stir, but at Sybil's words, Kat felt a quickening in her womb. It was a fluttering to life of warmth she and Severne had created. The early movement was proof that their baby would be special. Sybil was right.

“No. It isn't safe. I can't endanger a child with my cursed blood,” Severne said.

But he held her closer.

He would never let her go. She trusted him completely. He'd come back for her. He'd let Michael go, safe and sound. He'd even given Grim to the baby to guard him and her sister.

He only needed time to discover the love he already held in his heart.

“Who knows whether the Council will be able to hold a contract over your head after tonight? They have their hands full facing Lucifer's Army,” Kat said.

She put one hand over the place where she'd felt the baby move. She promised him or her that it wouldn't matter. She would protect the baby with all she had even if the Council wasn't defeated.

But her promise was interrupted.

Severne cried out and sagged against her. A blazing light flared from his arm. It burned through the wet material of his shirt. Steam rolled as if boiled away from the fabric. The man she loved fell to his knees. Had the contract claimed him? Had freeing Michael hurt him after all?

She couldn't watch him burn now. Not when their baby was just beginning to grow.

Kat sank down beside Severne.

“Get back. Get back,” he warned.

His shirt was burning away. She couldn't hold him. Even with the protection of the baby's Brimstone, the heat was too great. They watched his shirt turn to ash and fall from his skin. But as the ash fell, the tally marks on his arm glowed. It was the marks that had flared, blazing to life and burning the shirt away.

Kat reached toward him, but he held her away.

Eric sobbed. Steam rolled. The rest of the crowd was too busy gawking at the collapsed opera house to notice Severne burning.

But before his skin ignited, the tally marks changed from flame, to fierce ember, to charcoal, to pale gray lines she could hardly see.

Severne held his arm up in disbelief.

“Kat...they're fading,” he said.

He didn't stop her this time when she reached to feel his rapidly cooling skin.

The daemon marks were gone.

* * *

Crews dug for hours for the chest that had been in Severne's rooms. When it was finally found, they brought it forward as if they were frightened to touch it. Everything else was gone. Only the chest remained.

Severne and Kat opened the chest in private. Inside, the cask still smoked, but when Severne lifted its lid, the contract inside was gone.

Only ash remained.