Chapter 7 #2
Celia had been bitten by a dog once. A foxhound belonging to one of her father’s friends.
It had been hunting season and the creature was hungry and Celia, with her tender ten-year-old heart, had stolen some raw bacon from the kitchens to feed him.
The hound had snapped the whole lot up, including her offering hand.
Everything had happened so quick—young Celia hadn’t even realized she was bleeding until she was in her father’s arms. The dog had screamed louder than she ever did, thanks to the beating from its embarrassed owner.
This sphinx was not so swift. After its fangs pierced that first fragile layer of skin, the statue’s bite halted, teeth half inside Celia’s hand.
It felt as if she was holding a live coal.
She had to swallow back fire. This couldn’t be what Hugo had to go through every time he wanted to grab a fancy new toy… Surely not.
Her blood was starting to drip down the statue’s chin, but it didn’t glow when it hit the floor. The second half of the door stayed dim. The sphinx’s pupilless eyes narrowed in on Celia, and she felt the statue’s incisors press deeper, into tendons and bone that were no match for stone.
Shit.
Sinclair or not. It didn’t matter.
The sphinx was going to crush her hand.
“No! Wait!” Ezra rushed up behind Celia, placing his bloody palm over the statue’s clenched lips. “She’s with me!”
She was all too aware of the man’s closeness, how his hip pressed into the beaded constellation at her waist. Paired with the hot graze of breath from his neck, this almost made Celia forget the pain she was in.
Almost. Blood dripped down the sphinx’s face—for though it was carved like a human’s, there was no humanity in it.
No reason for the statue to listen to Ezra’s plea.
The stone had been spelled by the Order to protect the hidden wing from thieves, and that’s exactly what Celia was.
It didn’t matter that the objects she sought belonged to her in the first place.
The sphinx would rip off her hand before it let her take them.
And she would deserve it.
Always overeager. She could hear her father’s soft laugh from years back. Patience is a virtue, dear Celia.
Not that she’d ever been particularly virtuous…
Ezra’s breath grew hotter on her neck as he pressed even closer to the statue, wedging his hand over Celia’s.
The sphinx’s teeth started to relax a bit, bringing a fresh wave of pain that caused Celia to gasp.
Then her palm was free. It slipped out of the sandstone—all red.
More droplets hit the floor, where Ezra’s blood was once more starting to glow.
The second sphinx had accepted his offering, biting down on the scholar’s hand so that more ruby liquid scrawled out into the wall.
Celia cradled her hand as she watched the second half of the door take shape.
When this engraving was finished, both sphinxes stepped back, releasing Ezra as the museum’s wall began to bend.
“The vault’s opening!” All of Celia’s pain vanished at this. “It worked!” She glanced down at her mess of a hand. “Why did your blood work?”
Ezra was busy tearing makeshift bandages from the bottom of his toga. He handed the first strip of fabric to Celia with a shrug. “You keep insinuating that I’m a magician.”
“Yes, but you’re not an Order magician.”
“Neither are you.”
Celia hadn’t expected these words to hurt.
She certainly didn’t want to be an Order magician, but she did want doors to open for her…
They usually did. She brought her injured hand to her necklace, watching Ezra carefully as he wrapped a bedsheet bandage around his own wound. The fabric bloomed crimson.
“But why would you go sticking your hand into the mouth of a clearly carnivorous statue?” she pressed.
Ezra’s green eyes gleamed as he gazed back at the sphinxes. “I felt a draw.”
“A draw?”
“Yes. One of those weird feelings, like déjà vu, or when you swear you’ve seen a moment in a dream. I don’t know how else to explain it. I just knew I had to place my hand inside the statue’s mouth. And it worked!” He gestured at the open doors with his bandaged palm.
That it had.
Through the gap in the sanguine filigree, Celia could see a vast chamber.
Far vaster than the Egyptian gallery they currently stood in.
The vault’s glass-paneled ceiling stretched on as far as the eye could see, braced on either side by giant Corinthian columns.
Beneath these sat hundreds of cases, each displaying a treasure the Order had acquired over the past several centuries.
At the vault’s entrance Celia could see a suit of armor, engraved with a wounded lion—the beast shot through with three arrows. Grim. Even for the Dark Ages. This piece had to be from the earliest days of the Order, Celia reasoned. Did that mean the rest of the vault was arranged chronologically?
Her hand throbbed, matching her hasty heartbeat. She hadn’t expected to get this far with Ezra… Certainly not on their second night together.
“Do you need help wrapping?” the scholar asked. “Or do you know some handy spell to stitch yourself up?”
“Magic is a give-and-take,” Celia informed him as she held out her hand. “Healing gets tricky. Wounds don’t just disappear. They have to be redistributed. In order to heal my hand I’d have to cripple someone else’s…”
“Ah.” Ezra had a gentle touch—what you might expect from someone who handled so many delicate documents—but he knotted the torn bedsheet around her wound with surety. Again, what you might expect from someone who’d survived such an awful war. “That sounds like it could get messy.”
“It does.” As eager as she was to rush into the vault, Celia recognized this opportunity.
Can Ezra really be as clueless as he claims?
She watched the young man carefully. He was so focused on wrapping up her wound that he didn’t notice.
“It’s not just injuries either. Most Sancts live longer than normal humans…
several centuries or so, thanks to the extra anima they work with.
But there are those who’ve worked out how to extend their lifespans indefinitely by feeding off others’ souls.
” Celia kept staring into Ezra’s eyes. In the strange light beating off the door, they seemed endless. “We call them Ageless Ones.”
Ezra didn’t flinch. There was no sign of recognition beneath those sweeping lashes.
“They’re very powerful. And very dangerous. They’re the reason the Order maintains such a tight grip on the way magic is exercised on British soil,” Celia explained.
“You told me that was because of Jack the Ripper.”
“It was. He was ripping out those poor women’s souls.
Doing a nasty job of it, but according to my father, he was working with very rudimentary instructions.
They recovered a papyrus scroll in his belongings with part of a spell written out on it.
It’s probably in here somewhere…” Celia glanced back at the rows and rows of glass cases.
There had to be hundreds of years’ worth of material.
Fingers crossed they’d be sorted by date or some other handy cataloging device she could use to track down her inheritance.
Otherwise they’d have to make a return trip, and she didn’t think Ezra’s hand would appreciate the second mauling. “Shall we?”
Ezra nodded and followed her inside, letting out a gasp that echoed down the ceiling’s glass panels.
It was easy to be overcome by the vault’s magnitude.
Celia knew that the Order had been safeguarding its relics for centuries, but whenever she’d pictured what might appear past the door, she’d imagined a normal-sized gallery that sported a crown or two.
Excalibur, perhaps. And maybe a special blend of Old English tea thrown in for good measure.
But this collection went far beyond British history…
There were cases of Mexican fire opals and Paleolithic bone flutes.
Mahjong tiles and matryoshka dolls. Mayan sundials and diamonds as big as a fist. There was plunder from every single corner of the world…
each one seized by a British magician. Their names were inscribed on small placards accompanying each item.
Tribal mask: offers power over plants, but if used for too long it will turn its wearer to wood. Acquired by P. Smart. East Indies, 1832.
Chatelaine: the keys on these chains open a door to everywhere. Acquired by R. Fisk. France, 1914.
Jade elephant: provides supernatural strength. Acquired by A. Whitmore. China, 1805.
Diamond necklace: gives the wearer flawless skin. Acquired by J. Mirren. France, 1790.
Ezra paused by the very first display—with the armor and its lion standard pincushioned with arrows. There was no formal label for the piece. No telling what it might do if you tried to put the breastplate on…
“There’s so much here,” he murmured.
“And yet it’s never enough.” Celia fought back a shiver, still trying to gauge the depths of the room. “The Order started out as a hunt for the Holy Grail, back when people believed in such things. Knights rode out far and wide, searching distant lands for the rumored relic.”
Ezra tilted his head to the side. “Did they ever find it?”
The Mudlarks’ Mum had never gotten to that part of the story. There was always some interruption—a mudlark battling a seagull or a customer creeping up rickety stairs to come look at her silt-covered wares.
“Healing isn’t that easy. Remember?” There was a lump forming in Celia’s throat. It was very hard not to think of her father here—of that last day by his deathbed. If the Grail had been in reach, things might have ended differently.
And if it was locked away here?
Then all of heaven and earth could not hold her wrath, her rage like the snarl of that wounded lion. Only, Celia wouldn’t be a knight. She’d be a goddamn nightmare.