Seduction Page 30

  Swallowing hard, I tried to remember, but it was pointless. I would have to choose one passageway and hope for the best. Taking a deep breath, I took the middle path and loped along, very conscious of the fact that I’d lost time and might lose a lot more if I’d picked the wrong path.

  The candle was getting low. I covered the flame with my hand to protect it from the air, which was swirling now as the passageway widened. Was that a good sign? The ground had leveled out, but there was more debris in my path now. Still, I couldn’t slow down. I knew from the final chapter of Azrael’s book that Belmondo was more than human, and that Azrael and Peter together were no match for him.

  I was running at a fairly steady pace now, hearing my breath and wishing I could stop but not daring to, when I tripped over a rock and fell sprawling on the ground. I saw the candle fly out of the holder, its wick glowing for an instant as it tumbled end over end through the air, and then fell into the darkness.

  I could see nothing. Uselessly, I swept the ground with my hands, but the candle was nowhere within reach. And even if I found it, I thought, what good would it do me without a match to light it again?

  I’d smashed my knee against something when I’d fallen, and when I touched it now, my hand came away wet with blood. My face and elbows had suffered a good scraping too, not to mention my neck, which was so bruised from Belmondo’s stranglehold that I couldn’t even breathe without pain.

  I tossed the candleholder aside and, for a moment, lay my head on the ground in despair.

  Then I saw something. It was so faint that at first I believed it was my imagination, but as I continued to stare at it, I knew what it was: a light. A glowing, flickering light from an oil lamp.

  I’d found my way to Azrael’s cave.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FIFTY

  Let me be in time. Let me not be too late.

  The first thing I saw when I reached the cave was Peter’s face, and I screamed when I saw it. He was ashen, and worse. His features were pinched and pulled forward as if his skin were made of rubber. His eyes bulged out. A strangled sound gurgled from his mouth. His arms dangled helplessly at his sides, his bony hands trembling.

  And above him stood Belmondo, powerful and cold as a reptile, gripping Peter’s throat and sucking the life out of him.

  Peter’s eyes flashed toward me for an instant, and I knew he was trying to tell me to leave.

  Not today, I thought as I cast around the room for a weapon. There wasn’t much time to be choosy, so I concentrated on the first thing I saw with any weight: Azrael’s teakettle. With my mind, I lifted it off the cookstove and sent it flying into Belmondo’s head with as much force as I could conjure.

  It struck with a sharp thump and a splash of water as the lid popped off. Belmondo gaped and reeled backward, still gripping Peter’s neck. Even though a thought was taking shape in the corner of my mind—Where is Azrael?—I knew I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted. Not if I was going to have a ghost of a chance against this beast.

  Beast. Yes. Now I understood why I’d felt nothing when I’d tried to read Belmondo. It was because he wasn’t human. And now, at last, I recognized him. Whatever he was calling himself these days, he—It—was someone I knew rather well. Well enough to be scared witless.

  “Ah. Katarine, my sweet,” he said, “I was hoping you’d come.” He touched the blood trickling from his forehead, tasted it. “Your bodies are so fragile. I really don’t know how you manage to keep them as long as you do.”

  I kept my eyes on him, but my mind was glued to a bin where Azrael stored his kitchen knives. They were levitating now, finding direction.

  Belmondo shook Peter like a terrier would play with a rat. “As much as I love you, my beauty, I’m frankly insulted that you would consider choosing this . . . this boy over me,” he said. Then, with an expression of utmost disdain, he spat in Peter’s face.

  Moving objects with my mind is something I’ve been able to do since I was a child, but never had I been so grateful to have that ability as at that moment when I blinked and set those knives sailing across the room.

  They would all have struck Belmondo in his chest if he hadn’t seen them coming. But he did. With a lazy tilt of his head, he dropped Peter and raised his hands to catch the blades, one, two, three, four. He moved out of the way of the others, even though they were traveling only a fraction of a second behind the first group.

  “Very good,” he said admiringly. “My, you are a talented little thing, aren’t you? And you taste like . . . candy.” He licked his lips.

  “Slimeball,” I muttered as I threw my energy at every item in the room with any weight. Books, furniture, dishes, artwork—everything swirled around in a low arc as if the room were caught in a tornado that was picking up speed by the second.

  “Run, Peter!” I screamed, feeling my throat burn with the effort. “Get out now!”

  Looking dazed, Peter picked himself up off the floor, blinking in bewilderment.

  My magic was wavering. The objects I’d raised in my cone of power were beginning to fall away. “Hurry, Peter,” I said. “Before it’s too late.”

  “Yes, go.”

  It was Azrael, shuffling into the light. He was covered with bruises. He staggered as he walked and held one hand against a bloody spot on his forehead, as if he had only recently become conscious.

  “He beat you,” I said as I started to move toward him, but he waved me away with a feeble gesture.

  “Please,” he said, his face contorted in pain and panic as the last of my flying objects hit the floor. “Leave now, little one. Run as fast and as far as you can—”

  “I told you not to show yourself!” Belmondo bellowed, pulling himself erect.

  “Drago, I beg you. Let her go. She has done you no harm.”

  “Let her go?” Belmondo laughed. “Are you mad? How long do you think I’ve waited for someone with as much magic in her as she has? She is perfect, this one. Perfect.” He looked at me and winked.

  “Yes, and so you must not kill her, Drago.” Azrael spoke quickly but calmly, as if he were talking to a child holding an assault rifle. “You must let her go, son, and her friend, too. You must—”

  Belmondo swatted him away. The old man fell against the bookcase, hitting his head. A burst of red blood spread over his temple.

  “Azrael,” I cried, running to him. He was squinting and blinking against the blood that was pouring into his eyes. I did my best to clean it off with a tissue I had in my pocket.

  “Oh, my poor dear,” Azrael wheezed. “I should never have allowed you to come back.”

  “I thought you were afraid of robbers,” I said. “But it was him, wasn’t it? All along you knew what he wanted.”

  “I’m so ashamed,” he said. “Forgive me for my cowardice.”

  “The regret of the helpless.” Belmondo shook his head in disgust.

  That was when I noticed Peter disappearing behind the big cherrywood bookcase that stood near Belmondo. Azrael must have spotted him too, I realized; he’d been talking to me in order to distract Belmondo.

  A second later the bookcase came crashing down. Belmondo didn’t even flinch. Without so much as a look behind him, he shot out one arm to block the bookcase as it fell. Then, beneath a rain of books, he threw it, as if it weighed nothing, in the other direction. Peter tried to move out of its way, but it was moving too fast. The heavy bookcase glanced off his back, knocking the breath out of him before it smashed against the far wall.

  I scrambled to get up. “Leave him,” Belmondo ordered. “Unless you want me to kill him now.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  He retrieved a book that had fallen on his shoulder and tossed it aside with a sigh. “You’re becoming an annoyance, Peter,” he said.

  This time when Peter got up, he was limping and blood was trickling from his nose. “Don’t,” I pleaded. “For God’s sake, don’t fight him!”

  The only one who stood a chan
ce against Belmondo was me, even though my magic had been steadily waning since my frenzied entrance into the cave. Nevertheless, I managed to assemble the broken pieces of the wooden bookcase into what I hoped would become a fusillade of flying stakes.

  But the magic was working slowly, and Belmondo saw what I was doing. “I wouldn’t try it, Katy,” he said, “unless you’d like to see young Peter here skewered with a few dozen of those.”

  The stakes fell. But Peter kept moving toward Belmondo, this time with a kitchen knife in his hand.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. I knew Peter. He was slow to fight, but once he started, nothing would stop him.

  Peter swiped at him with the knife.

  “So you want to cut me?” Belmondo taunted.

  “Get away from my girl,” Peter said.

  Belmondo grinned. “That isn’t going to happen.” He smacked his lips. “I’ve got plans for her.”

  Peter lunged at him, but with a single, effortless motion, Belmondo snatched the knife out of his hand and drew it swiftly across Peter’s chest.

  I screamed as a thin line of blood appeared through the slit in his shirt and cascaded down in a sheet of red. Peter stared in disbelief at the wound.

  “Didn’t you think I’d at least defend myself?” Belmondo asked as he sliced into Peter’s arm, and then his leg. He pierced the webbing between Peter’s fingers. He cut a gash in his cheek. Through it all, Peter never made a sound.

  “Stop it!” I shouted at last, slamming into Belmondo with all my weight. I tried to yank the knife out of his hand, but he was too strong for me. “Just go!” I shouted, but Peter kept coming, his steps leaden and slow, his face bathed in his own blood.

  “Do as she says,” Belmondo said, casting aside the knife. He scooped his arm around my waist. “I’ll spare your life if you leave now.” He cast a glance at me. “For Katy.”

  Peter stumbled forward and fell to his knees.

  “This is a one-time-only offer, Peter,” Belmondo reminded him.

  “Do it,” I whimpered. “Please go.”

  But Peter just kept coming, crawling on all fours. I should have known that he would never leave without me, even to save his own life.

  So there was only one thing I could do.

  Concentrating with every molecule of magic left in my mind, I pushed Peter. He flew backward as if struck by an invisible beach ball going a hundred miles an hour, sending him hurtling through the cave’s opening. Then I summoned all the broken pieces of wood from the wrecked bookcase to fill the opening so that Peter wouldn’t be able to get back inside. They stacked themselves like a pile of kindling for a great bonfire. I tossed in two of Azrael’s chairs for good measure.

  When I was fairly certain Peter was out of the way, I sank back, exhausted. “Now you’ll only have to fight me,” I panted. That was pure bravado. My magic was nearly spent, but now that I knew Peter had a chance of staying alive, I didn’t mind what was surely going to happen next.

  The Darkness always won. But I wasn’t going to give in easily. I would fight the way Peter did, until I couldn’t take another breath.

  “Don’t waste your magic,” Belmondo whispered, holding me even more tightly. “Save it for me.”

  I struggled to stay focused. Knives, I thought, forcing all the blades that had fallen to the floor, including the blood-spattered one that Belmondo had used on Peter, to stir. As I willed them, they levitated off the stone floor slowly, uncertainly.

  “It won’t work,” Belmondo said, twisting my hair around his fingers. “Your magic’s gone.” He forced my neck back. “You should have listened to me, before you diminished yourself.”

  I scratched his face. He inhaled sharply as four red welts appeared beneath his eye, and I felt a shift in his attitude. When Belmondo turned to face me, the movement was like a snake’s, sudden and total, as if his head could swivel completely around if he’d wished it. Then he fixed me with an ice-cold stare that had nothing to do with any human emotion.

  His grip tightened around me. Talons seemed to take the place of his fingers, enormous talons that formed a cage around me. I say that things seemed to change because, even as it was happening, I wasn’t sure whether the transformation I was seeing was really occurring or was just something his hypnotic, inhuman eyes were causing me to imagine.

  As I watched, transfixed by his glowing, slitted eyes, I felt the floor recede as he grew larger, and larger still, his clothing taking on the scaly sheen of a snake as leather wings sprang from his back and slowly opened, nearly filling Azrael’s cave.

  I forced myself to turn away from him, willing my arms to hit him again, but they felt as if they were submerged in molasses.

  “Don’t fight me,” he whispered in my ear. “I want you whole.”

  I watched as my slow-motion hands struck his face, as my feet kicked, as a distorted scream poured out of my throat like a scarf being pulled from a magician’s hat.

  How foolish you are, he said. Or I thought he did. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing him or my own thoughts. Because deep inside, I was afraid that the Darkness already possessed me. That fighting It was fruitless. That nothing I did could make any difference to me or anyone else.

  That there was no such thing as forever.

  Suddenly I heard a loud noise coming from beyond the barricade I’d erected over the cavern opening. In an instant I was back near the ground while Belmondo, once again looking like himself and not the reptilian monster I’d imagined, stared at the doorway as Peter burst through.

  My heart sank. Even though blood was pouring from his mouth and hands, Peter had come back for more punishment.

  Belmondo dropped me then. His eyes snapping, he strode toward my friend—my foolish, reckless love!—prepared to finish him. And Peter stood there, teetering on his wounded legs, his jaw set, ready to die.

  I ran over to stand next to him, ready to fight alongside him to the end. But to my surprise, Azrael stepped between us and the madman who was planning to kill us both.

  “My son, this must stop,” the old man said quietly. The cut on his head had congealed, but he still looked battered and pitiful as he begged Belmondo to allow Peter and me to live.

  “Get out of my way,” Belmondo said.

  Azrael reached out with his open arms. “No, you must listen. Hold my hands, Drago. Please.” Belmondo made an impatient gesture, but allowed the old man to grip his hands. “Now be still, my child,” Azrael said. “Be still.”

  For a moment the two of them stood facing each other, their hands clasped between them. “Yes,” Azrael said somberly. “Yes, like this.”

  “Like this?” Belmondo repeated gleefully. Azrael gasped. Belmondo’s hands had turned into claws—the claws I remembered from what I’d believed to be some sort of dream—and their five-inch-long talons had impaled Azrael’s palms. “Is this what you meant?”

  Blood was dripping from the old man’s wounded hands. “Yes,” he said, speaking with the same calm, clear voice despite the pain he must have been suffering. “We shall remain like this. Together.”

  Belmondo rolled his eyes in disdain. “Hardly,” he said. “Senile fool.” He tried to shake off the old man, but Azrael refused to let go.

  “Get away,” Belmondo spat, but his voice no longer conveyed the confidence it once had. As he tried to pull away, his shoulders twitched. His eyes opened wide. The talons retracted. “Let me go!” he demanded, sounding frightened.

  But the old man only stood there, holding his son’s hands with his own.

  Peter glanced over at me. He hadn’t noticed Belmondo’s elegant white cuffs. They were taking on an unearthly golden sheen that spread upward, crackling like fire as it moved steadily up his arms.

  “What . . . what are you doing?” Belmondo demanded, twisting violently, his belly heaving while his limbs, heavy as the metal they were becoming, remained rooted to the spot where he stood.

  “What I must,” the alchemist said. He was creating gold.

  “No. No, d
on’t do this,” Belmondo urged as the sound of flesh becoming metal grew louder. “You won’t be able to live with yourself.”

  “I don’t plan to,” Azrael said.

  Belmondo’s golden fingers were splayed, curved as if he were about to strangle someone. But they would never move again.

  “Help me!” Belmondo screamed. He tried to turn toward me, but his neck was stiffening with the metal that was engorging it. “My darling, please!” His voice sounded strangled as his throat slowly turned to gold. “Please,” he whimpered, all pretense of control gone. “Help me . . .”

  The crackling continued as inch by inch Belmondo’s living flesh was replaced by gold. His eyes darted wildly toward Azrael as he screamed at last, high and terrified: “Father!”

  Tears coursed down Azrael’s face as he watched his son die, but he never let go.

  He had honed this magic for a thousand years. It would not be reversed.

  Soon, whatever other words Belmondo might have spoken were lost, reduced to a harsh rattle before the profound silence. The expanse of gold creeping up his chest seized his heart and stopped it. His brain fell into frenzied activity which showed only in his wildly rolling eyes, the last part of his body to succumb, the eyes of a steer at the moment of slaughter.

  And then nothing. The man was gone. The monster was gone. Only a golden statue remained, its expression almost innocent in its surprise, its lips still forming the last word Belmondo had spoken: Father.

  Finally, Azrael released his son’s hands.

  I covered my face. During the long life of Jean-Loup de Villeneuve, the only thing he had ever needed his great gift for was to kill his own child.

  In the dim light of the cave’s few remaining lit candles, I saw something like a wisp of smoke leave Belmondo’s golden mouth and float lazily into Azrael’s.

  “His last breath,” I said.

  “No,” Peter said, grabbing my arm. “It’s the Darkness, finding a new home.” He shoved me toward the cave opening. “Hurry,” he said.

  “Yes, hurry,” Azrael rasped behind us. “Soon I will not be able to stop this thing inside me.”