CHAPTER XXXIV
Once Coby had retreated to a safe distance Mal prepared to enter the palazzo. He checked both his blades, and then removed his earring and stowed it in his pocket. Tonight he would need all his faculties, more than he needed the lodestone's protection. At least if the devourers ate his soul he would be spared the torments of Hell. A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
"What's so funny?" Ned asked.
Mal shook his head. "Give us a boost over the wall, will you?"
Ned crouched and laced his hands together.
"Just like old times," he said with a grin.
Mal vaulted onto the coping, sitting astride the wall, and Ned handed him up a lightwater lantern. What had once been an elegant paved courtyard surrounded by evergreen shrubs was now waist deep in weeds, its topiary outgrown and curtained in tangles of wild rose and woodbine. He scanned the shadows for movement. Nothing, not even a pigeon or rat disturbed by the light. He transferred the lantern to his left hand, swung his other leg over the wall and jumped down. Still nothing. He drew his rapier, slow and silent, then glanced back through the gate. Charles stood frozen, his face pale as the stucco'd wall.
"Art craven, brother?" Mal said quietly.
Charles pulled a face. "Don't teach thy grandame to suck eggs. I were hunting these creatures before you were breeched."
"Then come on over. And be quick about it."
Two hands appeared on the stone coping, then Charles hauled himself over the wall to land with a crunch on a frost-shattered flowerpot.
"Jesu–!"
"Quiet!" Mal glared at him. "Or would you fight them all at once?"
His brother gave him a sour look and drew his own sword. "After you."
Mal picked his way through the weeds and toppled statuary towards the palazzo entrance.
"Door's shut," Charles whispered. "Perhaps they climbed up the vine and went in through a window."
Mal followed his gaze.
"I don't think so. Take another look at the door. No–" he barred Charles' way with an arm. "Don't go any closer. Just look."
"It's slightly askew," his brother said. "And there are scrapes along one edge."
"Torn off its hinges by clawed hands," Mal said, "and put clumsily back in place to keep out the light. It'll be a bastard to open quietly."
"It's the only way in. Unless you fancy climbing that vine?"
"I think the time for stealth is over. Let's announce ourselves, shall we?"
He strode up to the door of the palazzo, planted one foot against it and pushed. The great bronze slab teetered for a moment then fell edgeways onto the marble floor with a deafening crunch. He tensed, blade at the ready, half-expecting the creatures to charge them, but no sound came from the palazzo except the dying echoes of the door's fall.
"They won't approach the light unless cornered," Charles said in a low voice. "Be careful."
Mal clambered over the fallen door, lantern held high. The swaying light reflected off polished marble surfaces, trailing dark shadows in its wake. Directly ahead an arched doorway gave access to the piano terreno, shrouded in darkness. To their left a flight of marble steps led up to the piano nobile, its treads half hidden by a thick layer of plaster debris and dead leaves. No tracks disturbed the carpet of decay. So, the devourers were down here. Mere feet away, perhaps. He took a deep breath and advanced through the archway.
The unearthly skrayling light gleamed on pale marble pillars veined with dark reddish brown like dried blood. Broken crates and barrels littered the store-room floor, but enough remained intact to hide a score of devourers. Mal held up his lantern, keeping it well out of his eye line. A dark smear of blood and fur halfway up a pillar suggested he wouldn't have to worry about rats.
"There!" Charles leant around him, pointing with his blade.
"Where? I saw nothing."
"A movement, I swear."
"It was probably just your lantern. Hold it by the neck, like this. It won't burn."
He advanced into the storeroom, yard by yard, the scraping of grit under the soles of his boots barely audible over the gentle lap of the canal outside. He drew in an unsteady breath and forced himself to loosen his grip on the rapier's hilt. Sweat trickled down his back and yet he felt cold as death, as if the damp air were leaching the life from his bones. Every movement became an effort, like wading through honey…
"Look sharp, lad!" His brother's voice cut through the fog in his head.
Mal tried to shake off his lethargy. They were here all right, their nightmare miasma bending nature to its will, making everything seem unreal. All the shadows in the room were moving now, and not just because of their lanterns. He tried to count the moving shapes but his eyes slid off them as if not wanting to see. Six? Eight? A dozen? It didn't really matter, as long as they didn't leave here alive.
"Hold the doorway," he called over his shoulder. "I'll try to flush them out of hiding."
He flung his left arm in a wide arc, sending glowing droplets of lightwater splashing across the wall. A devourer shrieked as if scalded and ran past Mal in a sooty blur. He heard Charles scream, though whether in pain or fury, he couldn't tell.
"Come on, then," Mal growled at the shadows, holding up the lantern, "who wants some?"
It was an empty threat; he could not spare much more and have enough light left for his own protection. He circled round the broken wreck of a gondola and lunged towards the darkness pooling inside its black-painted cabin. A shriek split the air as the point of the rapier penetrated something brittle, like a dried-up corpse. Maggots flowed out of the gondola cabin in a pale stream, spilling around his feet. Cursing, Mal stamped on a few before backing off. They squelched underfoot and disappeared.
"One down, methinks!" he called back to Charles.
"Two!" Charles replied. "But another got past me."
Coby crouched at the foot of the bridge steps, staring at the palazzo. She heard shouting from inside, and her stomach flipped over. It took all her self-control not to climb over the wall and join the fray, but she knew Mal was relying on her to hold the line. She glanced briefly towards Ned and Gabriel, who crouched shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the steps. Neither of them was a fighter, any more than she was. What use were any of them against demons as strong and deadly as lions?
A moment later a dark shape bounded across the garden and leapt up onto the wall. It hesitated for a moment in the glare of the lanterns. Coby raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.