Chapter 22
Peter looked around the house as they snuck through it. He was surprised that no servant had come for them after Miel had screamed over his broken knee, but that was beginning to make sense.
Everything here had an abandoned look to it, from the curtains that hung limply to barely cover clouded windows, to the carpets with their patterns that should have been bright but were now dull and dusty.
The floorboards too had lost their polished shine, and it smelled—worse than the rotting onions in the entrance hall.
Carl-Conrad didn’t seem to mind the smell.
He was leading them forward through a sitting room hung with landscapes, then through a dining room and library.
They took a few stairs down and came to what should have been the servants’ area of a manor house, but it was abandoned just like the first floor.
Just off the stairs, there was a wooden kitchen table, dusty and with a few chipped dishes on it. It would have been where servants ate their meals. Gertrude made a face while Laurette peered around a large, arching doorway ahead of them.
Behind it, there was the kitchen. It was, much like the rest of the house, filthy with neglect.
Also like the rest of the house, it had the bones of a well-functioning household—copper pots, a large sink, many work surfaces, a range to prepare feasts.
Close to the hearth that held only ashes, Peter spotted a recessed bed with a straw mattress, and it had been made not that long ago.
Looked like it had been in use until very recently.
“I think they made Cloudtree sleep here,” Laurette whispered. “Must’ve been a pain with those long legs. He really wouldn’t have fit.” He went to the bed and pulled a small book from under a thin pillow. “Huh. Customs from the Human Realme. With an extra ‘e’. How fancy.”
“Must’ve been where he learned about being neighborly,” Gertrude said.
Laurette grinned at the book. It was a slightly malicious expression. “I’m taking this. I bet it’s hilarious.”
He stuffed the thin volume into a large pocket of his riding pants. Carl-Conrad looked at them, then stomped his front paw, eyes going to a door in the wall off to the right.
Laurette looked up. “What, in the scullery?”
Peter raised his sword. “No. I think that’s the basement.”
Laurette very nearly hopped with excitement. “I love a basement! Onward.”
“You’re the one picking up trash, my lord,” Gertrude said.
Laurette made a thoughtful face. “True, true. But I’m all geared up for the basement now. I think you’re being too judgy about me today, Gertrude, really.” He turned to Peter. “Do you like basements?”
“They are practical.” And hopefully you’re never going into mine.
Laurette raised his Elven sword, a cross between a scimitar and a wakizashi, by Peter’s best guess.
“Aren’t they just? But the thing with basements? You never know what you’ll find in them, never know what people hide there. Be ready for anything.”
Laurette’s voice had dropped to a whisper. There was a glint in his eyes. Peter had seen that expression on those trained to kill, archers or assassins, when they knew they’d soon find a target they could hit.
“Always am,” Peter said.
Getrude shook her head in exasperation and made it to the basement door first, giving Peter and Laurette just enough time to get into position behind her. Carl-Conrad looked more than ready on the other side of the doorway. Gertrude turned the knob and pulled the door open.
Stairs led down, and Carl-Conrad went first, his paws near silent on the stone. Peter could have sped, but Faerie leeched a vampire’s strength. He followed Laurette at what would have been a brisk human pace, and Gertude followed him.
The basement was like those in older castles, stone-finished and cool. It consisted of several large rooms, and very close to the stairs, wooden shelves held preserves.
Or they should have. They were near empty, and a sour, mildewy scent hung in the air, as if one of the jars had broken and never been cleaned up. It was almost enough to cover the scent of blood.
Peter took a deep breath when he smelled it to make sure, but also because it worried him. Corvin and Michael deserved good things and happiness.
“Blood,” he whispered.
Laurette nodded once, and Carl-Conrad bared his teeth. If he had smelled it, so had the werewolf.
The basement’s floor was partially cobbled, leaving bare ground in other places. There was a central hallway, but rooms split off of it to the right. They went into the first, and it connected to another room—a maze that was bound to confuse them quickly.
Following Carl-Conrad’s lead, they went toward that connecting room, which was a wine cellar, as it turned out, that split into yet more rooms. The damp air was thick with the scent of aging barrels and opened bottles, and while the place was large, just what Peter would have expected from a rich estate, the amount of wine visible was not.
It looked as if someone had robbed the place, going more or less from highest shelf to lowest. Occasionally, there were shards of glass on the floor and stains on the walls where a bottle had been sampled, found wanting, and immediately punished for the poor taste of whoever had picked it.
A few steps into the room, Peter finally heard voices. It had to be a peculiarity of the architecture that he hadn’t up until now, and also the reason why no one had come to check on Miel’s smashed knee when he’d screamed about it.
Peter listened to the still indistinct sound, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized it as Corvin’s voice.
The seconds began to stretch then. Peter could very nearly feel that there was a fight coming, however brief. Laurette and Carl-Conrad, presumably also Gertrude behind them, were the same, moving stealthily along the rows of wine shelves.
It wasn’t long until they saw light, though not much of it, flickering across the uneven wall ahead of them. A few steps after that, the wall behind the shelves ended to reveal yet another recess.
“Come here, little human. I’ll give you food if you’re hungry.”
“Oh, fuck off already.” That was Corvin’s voice, and while it trembled, he sounded angry. Good.
The unfamiliar voice—the other Fae brother—chuckled. “You wish to observe me as I stroke myself to completion? I can do that. Does it help to get you ready?”
“Are you—for real? Oh-em-gee, I don’t want to see your cock!”
“That is only an option if you make it vanish in your hole. One of your holes.”
Laurette was ahead of Peter, and he was holding up a hand as he peered around the corner.
Peter stilled, every muscle ready to move when it was needed.
It was as if all the time spent in a courtroom and behind his desk had done nothing to dull this instinct, this calm readiness that you needed when going into battle with others.
Laurette dropped his hand, and they moved fast. Carl-Conrad was first, dashing forward like a precisely trained war dog. Then came Laurette. Then Peter rounded the corner, his sword an extension of his arm he didn’t even have to think about. Gertrude was behind him.
He had barely a second to see and understand the scene.
Corvin was bound with ropes that looked like they’d been intended for something else, and the ends were attached to a hook in the wall behind him, the wall of the recess.
Given the angle, he wouldn’t have been able to get the rope off that hook.
He’d either bitten his lip or had injured it some other way, fresh blood beading up there even now.
The Fae had set an oil lamp on the floor to his right, the glass cover filthy, and he had his dick out and in one hand. He was holding his pants with the other and turning toward them.
Carl-Conrad struck first, closing sharp teeth around the wrist of the hand that was holding the pants.
Laurette pretty much barreled into the Fae.
Peter saw him flip his sword in a split second, reversing pommel and blade so that he struck the Fae in the chest with the pommel and didn’t outright gut him.
All air whooshed out of the Fae with the crunching sound of bone breaking.
Peter, with no better use for his own sword, cut the rope right off the hook. Then Corvin screamed.
“Shh. We saved you.” Peter’s ears were ringing from excitement as well as the sound of the scream.
Corvin raised his still bound wrists. “Peter!”
“Yes. You were supposed to be waiting in the bushes by the cafeteria.”
“Well, they saw us.” Corvin struggled to his feet, which weren’t bound. “Mike? Mike! Peter’s here! Peter and a bunch of weird guys.” Carl-Conrad bumped his head into Corvin’s thigh. “Oh, a bloodhound? Good, c’mon, doggie, find Mike. Go, go!”
“Y-you…!” the Fae managed, though he was wheezing.
Laurette stepped back and let him slide to the ground. “Getrude and I have this one. You go find the other.”
Peter nodded and wheeled to get in front of Corvin. He pulled out his phone and turned on the light, for Corvin’s benefit more than his own. “Where is Michael?”
Corvin shook his head, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know. This place has so many rooms and—they dragged us both down here, and they gagged and muzzled Mike.
They only had that lantern thing, and that guy back there was carrying me because I kept trying to slow them down.
I didn’t see much.” He wiped his head with his bound hands.
“They did something to him too, something that made him stop when they saw us at the cafeteria and came after us.”
Carl-Conrad yipped and led them through another doorway.
Peter moved his cellphone light across the room.
This one was storage, old crates and tools mounted to the wall above a workbench.
Some of it looked like it had once been well cared for, but covered in dust and the first sprinklings of rust as it was, that must have been a long time ago.
“Probably magic.”
Corvin nodded. “Yeah. He was trying to lead them away, I think to be able to use his song more effectively, and—did you say magic?”
“Well, Corvin, they are Fae.”
“And all Fae know magic?”
“Normally, yes.” Except possibly Cloudtree, who looked like a prime specimen of Fae but clearly wasn’t. Which spoke well for him.
“Wow. Shit. But wow. Theo and I talked about those fae fucking books when we were at the bookstore and—” Even in the cellphone light, Peter saw Corvin’s cheeks heat and his mouth clamp shut. “I mean…”
Peter put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s reunite you with Michael first.”
Another yip had them following Carl-Conrad into a root cellar.
The smells here changed again, more earthy aromas, and it was dry.
Michael lay on his side next to a crate of what might have once been seed potatoes, arms bound behind his back, legs tied at the knees and ankles, mouth tightly wrapped with cloth and rope both.
He was pale and barely flinched when the light hit him, though Peter definitely saw him blink.
“Mike!” Corvin was on his knees and trying to work the ropes open even with his own wrists still bound.
Peter didn’t think there was any point in dragging Corvin away, so he carefully put the phone on an empty crate and knelt next to Corvin, focusing on the muzzle. He had a feeling that Michael would have an easier time breathing without it on.
“Oh, Mike, Mike.” Corvin was near tears. Carl-Conrad rounded Michael to bite through the rope at his ankles.
“We’ll have you both back home soon,” Peter said, fingers still working.