‘How does the journal bond work?’ Darby asked softly. She had armed herself with the knife lying beside Quinn and was gripping it in a very skilled manner. He had trained her well.
‘I do not know,’ Helen admitted, pausing for a moment on the bottom step. ‘It is built out of the blood of slain people. I would think we must offer it blood too.’
‘You should have kept the Duke’s pistol.’
Helen shook her head. She had seen what a pistol shot had done to Lawrence and there was no coming back from an ill-timed or misjudged shot. ‘I cannot bond with a corpse.’
They crept up the remaining four steps. Not that stealth would make any difference, Helen thought. Carlston was sure to be listening for them. He would be prepared for their arrival whatever they did, and it only remained to be seen whether he held on to enough sanity to recognise them. The best chance, she decided, was to make sure he knew who was coming and try to reach what was left of his mind.
She concentrated her senses, squinting with the effort, but could not find his position. A disturbing development. Had he vacated the room through a window, or was she merely failing to locate him.
Through the gap of the door, she glimpsed the booted feet and buckskin-clad legs of a long, lean man sprawled on the floor. The wooden boards beneath the body were dark and wet, the tiny channels between them red and glistening with pooled blood. Stokes.
Behind her, Darby drew in a sharp breath of horror. Helen felt it too — a sickened grief that wrung at her innards, and with it a deep sense of foreboding.
‘Carlston,’ she called. ‘It is Helen.’
She pushed open the door and stepped into the attic. Dust, stirred up into tiny currents of glittering air, tumbled and streamed through a shaft of sunlight. She registered stacked chairs, travelling trunks, an old freestanding tambour frame, and then all her attention fixed upon Stokes at her feet. His once warm hazel eyes stared up at her, glazed by death, the cause of his demise immediately apparent. A glass knife protruded from the side of his throat, the smooth, viscous creep of blood below it already flecked with dust. Helen could not move her gaze from the etched design upon the blade; the same as her own. Carlston’s knife.
She caught a flash of movement just in time to block the sidekick aimed at her face. Her forearm took the blow, the weight of it jarring through her bones. She ducked as Carlston spun into another kick, missing her temple by a hair’s breadth. Her blood surged, full Reclaimer speed riding in upon it. She leaped over Stokes’s corpse and whirled around to face Carlston, knife raised.
His dark eyes showed no recognition. They were narrowed and cunning and fixed upon her with vicious intent, his lips drawn back over his teeth like a snarling animal. A long wound at his hairline seeped with blood, streaking one side of his face like war paint. A knife had ripped through his shoulder, slicing open jacket, shirt and muscle into a sodden mess of red cloth and raw flesh. In one hand he held the journal and in the other, a long paling of wood with three iron nails protruding from it.
‘William!’ She put every ounce of urgency and need into the call. His name had brought him back from strangling the Duke; perhaps it would draw him back again. ‘William! It is I, Helen.’
He ran at her, stepping on Stokes’s body, the corpse convulsing under his foot as if it still had life. The man she knew would never have desecrated another Reclaimer in such a way. Lord Carlston was truly gone.
He lunged, the paling aimed in a low sweep at her ankles. She jumped back, slashing at his hand, but he was too fast, pulling back into an overhead hammer swing at her head. She had no time to deflect, just managing to turn so that her shoulder took the blow. Pain burst through her back and arm, her hand spasming open. Her knife clattered to the wooden floor.
Clenching her teeth, she tried to grab the paling, but he pulled it too fast. She retreated, trying to stay on her toes, flexing movement back into her hand. He was standing over the knife.
Behind him, Darby launched herself from the doorway at human speed.
‘Darby, stay back!’ she yelled as Carlston attacked again.
The warning cost her a precious second. She dodged, but not fast enough. The paling slammed into her ribs, the iron nails biting through her woollen jacket into her flesh. She gasped as he followed it with a snap-kick to her chest. She staggered back from the momentum, the nails ripping out of her flesh. Clutching the raw, wet agony, she tried to stay on her toes, Quinn’s mantra loud in her mind: A still body is an easy target.
She retreated another step, stumbling over the foot of the tambour frame. Its mahogany stand was at least as long as her leg: a weapon with reach. She grabbed the bottom of it, her hands wet with her own blood, and swung it up at Carlston’s head. The blow connected so hard with his jaw it smashed the embroidery frame off the end, the circle of wood flying through the air.
He dropped to one knee, momentarily dazed. Seeing the chance, she kicked at the journal in his hand. It spun from his loosened grip, landing with a slap on the floor near Stokes. She swung the tambour stand again, but he rolled clear, coming within hand’s reach of her glass knife. He scooped it up, surging to his feet.
Behind him, Helen saw Darby slowly reaching for the journal, caught in human momentum. If Carlston saw her, she would be dead in a second.
Helen retreated, tambour stand held like a bat, trying to draw him away from Darby’s excruciatingly slow progress. He followed, the glass knife raised. Helen felt a choking rise of anguish. Carlston would have known the knife had her protection alchemy forged into it. This man in front of her was just a savage animal, and she was barely holding her own against him.
Darby ponderously scooped up the book and clutched it to her chest, rising sluggishly to run to the safety of the opposite wall. Helen readied herself for Carlston’s next attack just as a figure stepped into the doorway. The Duke, his arm outstretched, pistol in hand.
‘No!’ Helen screamed. She could see its course — a flash of the future in her mind — but he had already pulled the trigger.
The iron ball exploded out of the smoky ignition, its aim set for Carlston, but its course blocked by Darby as she ran — so slowly — for the wall. Helen tried to launch herself past Carlston, but he was in her pathway, charging towards the Duke.
The bullet hit Darby under her collarbone — an awful wet thudding crack of metal chewing through flesh and smashing bone.
Helen arrived at her side in time to catch her as she staggered another step still clutching the journal, blood welling up through the blue pleats of her bodice. Her startled eyes found Helen’s, her breathing shortening into panting shock. Helen took her weight against her chest and lowered her to the floor, pressing her hand against the wound. So much blood.
A low guttural snarl wrenched her attention back to the doorway. Carlston picked up the Duke by his throat and slammed him against the wall.