‘Non vi combatto,’ he said, backing away. I do not fight you.
The declaration checked her for an instant — why would none of them fight her? — but right then it was an advantage she would take. She gathered her strength again and spun, driving her foot into his gut, the impact doubling him over. Regaining balance, she shifted her weight forward, hooking her arm around his throat into a headlock. He grabbed at the choking hold, fingers ripping at her arm. She dragged him towards the dressing room door, the fight between Carlston and Stokes still raging in a punishing trade of blows.
Quinn hauled himself upright, his body bent over the ominous gut wound. ‘Do you need help, my lady?’ he panted.
‘No. Help Stokes contain Lord Carlston.’
‘Stokes is not trying to contain him, my lady,’ Quinn said.
Helen sent a wild glance over her shoulder, keeping her arm locked tightly around Lawrence’s neck. Quinn was right: Stokes was not holding back.
‘Stokes!’ she yelled. ‘Do not kill him.’
‘I have my orders, Lady Helen!’ Stokes yelled back, ducking a vicious punch aimed at his throat. ‘And he is trying to kill me!’
There was no time to argue. ‘Quinn, protect your master,’ she ordered and heaved Lawrence another few steps towards the door.
The Deceiver grabbed for the doorframe, abruptly stopping their progress, straining against her momentum. She rammed his injured leg against the frame, his flinching pain giving her the moment to rip his hands free and drag him into the bedchamber.
Quinn slammed the door behind them. She knew she was delivering Lawrence to his death, but it was the only path to Carlston’s cure.
‘Here,’ the Comte gasped. He held a pistol — retrieved from a brace on the table — the weight of it making his hands shake. ‘Bring him here!’
Yells and footsteps ascended the stairs to the third floor; the fight had shifted upstairs. She had to get the cure and get it up there as soon as possible.
‘Traditore!’ Lawrence yelled at the Comte. Traitor.
He lunged, his body weight rocking Helen forward. She tried to tighten her hold upon his neck, but pain exploded through her foot as he rammed his heel onto her bones, then jabbed his elbow into the soft apex of her diaphragm. She doubled over, breath locked into a choking gasp, her hold loosening enough for him to leap for the gun. He was trying to finish his task.
He clamped his hands over the Comte’s bony grip and slowly turned the barrel towards the old Deceiver’s face.
Gulping for air, Helen lunged for the wildly weaving gun, finding a handhold around the top. She yanked, but could not pull the gun free; Lawrence’s strength matched her own. All three of them grappled for control, straining to point the barrel. To find the trigger.
The Comte was all but spent, the hollows of his face greyed by the shadows of death, but perhaps he would have enough to tip the balance in her favour.
‘Comte, together,’ she gasped.
The old Deceiver’s eyes hardened with intent as she focused all of her Reclaimer strength.
Inch by inch she felt the barrel turn, its aim slowly shifting to Lawrence’s face. His hot, panting breath smelled of sharp alcohol and juniper, and his dark eyes bulged from the strain of fighting against their combined effort.
Helen slid her finger down, feeling for the rounded shape of the trigger guard. There! She jabbed her finger through, finding the smooth curve of the trigger. A little more to the right and … The blast boomed in her ears, juddering through her bones. The brutal recoil threw her back against the bed table, and flung the Comte against the bedhead, his skull connecting with a sickening crack.
The lead ball smashed through Lawrence, the force sending out a spray of blood and bone, twisting him upon his feet so that for a moment he faced Helen. She caught a nightmare vision of blood and bone and teeth where his mouth should have been, and then he crumpled face first to the floor.
Silence. Even the struggle upstairs had stopped. Helen grabbed the edge of the table for support.
Gun smoke hung in the air, its acrid stink mixing with the meaty smell of burned flesh. Helen wiped sticky blood and bone grit from her face, trying to fight back the burning rise of vomit. Good God, she had shot the man’s face off.
Lawrence’s body suddenly heaved with light, his skin glowing with an orange-hued incandescence as if lit from within by an infernal fire. A sound rose, horrifyingly akin to the howling she had heard from the Ligatus.
‘Mors Ultima,’ the Comte whispered, a grim smile on his bloodless lips. ‘He is no more.’
Helen had never seen the final end before. Lawrence had no offspring to shift into; she had truly destroyed him. Two deaths on her soul now: one human, one Deceiver. Lowry had been right. She was killing like all the other Reclaimers.
The light swarmed from the body and hung for a moment above the tumbled flesh form. A dark speck in the centre expanded, the size of a pinhead, a button, a penny, growing and growing, pulling all the swarming light in until it seemed to collapse upon itself with an awful screaming keen, leaving just a corpse with a ruined face and blood creeping through the carpet.
‘Murder! Murder!’
The cries from the street broke Helen’s horror, and the startled hiatus above them. She heard the sound of wood smashing and a low gasp of pain. Carlston. She looked up at the ceiling: was Stokes getting the upper hand? Every part of her wanted to run upstairs, but she had to learn the cure from the Comte before he died. Everything hinged upon the cure.
Voices were already calling below. She and the Comte would not be alone much longer. She stepped around the gruesome remains of Lawrence and leaned over the old Deceiver.
‘Lawrence is dead, Comte. What is the cure?’
Above his coiffed white hair, blood smeared the bedhead. His breath came in short gasps.
‘Tell me, what is the cure?’
He frowned, struggling to fix upon her face. ‘You are the cure,’ he said, the words almost lost in the wet wheezing. ‘Cause and cure. You should be bonded, but you are not.’ He lifted his hand and tapped her chest with a trembling forefinger. ‘The Grand Deceiver is not one of us, but two. A dyad. Same for the Grand Reclaimer. A dyad: you and Carlston, bonded in blood. That is the cure.’
She stared at him. At the rout he had said it would take both of them — herself and Lord Carlston — to defeat the Grand Deceiver. Even then he had been telling them that they were meant to be bonded. That they would be facing two Deceivers working together.
Why did no one else know that the Grand Deceiver was a dyad? Perhaps he was lying. Carlston had said he did not trust the Comte. But where would that take her? Nowhere. God help her, she had no choice but to believe him — it was the only hope she had.
‘Comte, how do we bond? How do we become a dyad? Is it a ritual?’ She caught his shaking hand, trying to focus his dying mind. ‘How do we do it?’