Chapter 39
Evander and Rufus climbed through the monastery in tense silence, every faint creak of the ancient floorboards setting their nerves on edge.
The building groaned faintly around them, the walls buffeted by the storm raging outside. Snow had found its way through gaps in the window frames, dusting the corridors with white powder that crunched softly beneath their boots.
Evander kept his senses extended, probing for the taint of dark magic even as he tried not to breathe in its foul smell.
It was everywhere, soaked into the walls and pooled in corners like stagnant water.
But there were fresher traces amid the general corruption.
Signs of more recent dark magic activity.
The first floor was clear of people.
They came across a trio of guards upon reaching the second floor.
Three men stood near a window in the corridor leading off the staircase, their backs to Evander and Rufus as they conversed quietly in German. Evander could taste the faint signature of dark magic clinging to them.
He caught Rufus’s eye and held up three fingers where they crouched low on the stairs. The inspector nodded and drew the pistol Richter had given him, the weapon enchanted to fire silent stunning bolts rather than bullets.
Evander gathered his wind magic, climbed the last steps, and struck.
The first man never knew what hit him. He slammed headfirst into the window with a sickening crack and dropped like a puppet with cut strings. The second man had time to turn, eyes widening in alarm, before Evander wrapped his head inside a giant sphere of water and bound his limbs with wind magic.
Rufus came up beside Evander and fired his pistol twice at the third man. The projectiles whizzed through the air, caught him square in the chest and abdomen before he could shout out a warning, and extended spider-like legs that sank into his flesh. They each delivered a bolt of crackling energy.
He convulsed violently before crumpling, his eyes rolling back into his head.
Evander levitated the dark mage he’d bound toward them as they reached the landing.
He grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him against the wall.
“The two women you kidnapped tonight at the Opera House?” Evander hissed in his face. “Where are they?!”
The dark mage struggled violently against his restraints, muffled gurgles escaping him. Corrupt tendrils seeped from his hands.
Evander raised a ball of fire magic and applied it to the rippling, liquid cage surrounding the man’s head. The dark mage screamed silently, his skin reddening as the water sizzled.
A gargled “Stop! I’ll talk!” escaped him.
Evander retracted his magic, his heart thundering inside his ribcage.
“Down the corridor, to the right,” the dark mage gasped. “There’s a room where they’re being interrogated.”
Evander clenched his jaw. “Rufus, if you would please do the honour.”
“My pleasure,” the inspector said darkly. He fired his gun point-blank at the man’s chest.
They watched dispassionately while the dark mage spasmed uncontrollably and collapsed to the floor. Evander and Rufus dragged the three bodies inside an empty closet and pressed on.
The corridor soon branched in two. Evander extended his magic once more. To the left, he detected nothing but the general miasma of corruption. To the right came the fresh stench of dark magic.
Evander motioned to Rufus. They headed in that direction, hugging the shadows along the walls. Voices reached them a moment later. Even muffled by stone, one of them was unmistakably female.
Beneath it was a sharp edge of pain.
Evander’s blood turned to ice when someone screamed.
Shaw!
“You bastard!” Ginny raged in the distance. “Leave her—!”
A sharp sound cut her off.
Fear and rage constricted Evander’s throat in equal measure. He and Rufus accelerated, the inspector gnashing his teeth.
The voices grew clearer as they approached a door at the end of the passage. It stood slightly ajar, wan light spilling through the gap along with the acrid scent of blood and burnt flesh.
“—tell us what we want to know and this stops.” A man’s voice, cold and deadly. “Your friend has already proven most uncooperative. You do not want to suffer the same fate as her, do you?”
“Go to hell,” Ginny snarled.
Another crack echoed through the door, followed by a pained grunt.
Whoever was doing the interrogation had just smacked Ginny again.
Evander’s heart clenched when he heard Shaw whimper.
“Such spirit,” the man sneered. “I can see why Winchester wanted you kept alive. But my patience has limits, Lady Hartley.”
Evander peered through the gap in the door.
The room beyond was a converted prayer cell, the once clean stone walls now stained with substances he didn’t care to identify. Torches guttered in iron brackets, casting flickering shadows across a scene that made his stomach turn.
Shaw was slumped against the far wall, her lip and cheek bloodied from being beaten and her left arm hanging at a sickening angle. She was conscious but barely, one eye glazed with pain, the other swollen and closed.
Ginny knelt in the centre of the room, her wrists bound behind her back and her chest heaving from anger and fear.
Her emerald gown was torn and bloodied, exposing the swell of her bosom and her abdomen.
Livid bruises darkened her stomach and right breast where she’d been kicked and punched.
Her left cheek was discoloured and a gash in her temple oozed a crimson trickle.
The two dark mages flanking her held her up by her dishevelled hair, their fingers digging cruelly in her scalp as they bent her head at an impossible angle, exposing her throat.
A third man—the one who’d been speaking—stood before her with the casual posture of someone accustomed to causing pain.
“I’ll ask you once more,” her interrogator said. “What did Ravenwood discover about the Codex fragments?”
Evander was about to storm inside the room when Ginny’s interrogator produced a thin blade that glinted in the torchlight. He pressed it against her throat.
Evander froze, his instincts to protect Ginny from further harm warring with the wrath bubbling hotly through his veins. Rufus grabbed his arm, his face a mask of fury even as he stopped Evander from doing something foolish.
Ginny lowered her head with agonising stubbornness. A thin red line formed on her skin where she deliberately leaned into the knife. Her green eyes blazed with contempt despite her injuries and the threat to her life.
“I’ll tell you what the duke discovered.”
Her interrogator narrowed his eyes. “That’s more like it.”
A savage smile curved Ginny’s lips. “He found out that your mother was a tavern whore and your father the village idiot. Which explains quite a lot, actually.”
One of the dark mages holding her snickered.
Her interrogator’s face turned blank.
He backhanded her violently across the face, splitting her lip.
Evander fisted his hands and swallowed a sound of rage as Ginny’s head snapped to the side.
She shook her head dazedly and blinked.
Their eyes met briefly through the gap in the door.
Something shifted in her expression, there and gone so swiftly the dark mages didn’t notice. She spat out some blood.
“Wait,” Ginny gasped, her defiance crumbling into apparent terror as she gazed pleadingly at her interrogator. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. Just, please—”
The dark mage paused, a cruel smile stretching his mouth. “I knew you’d see reason eventually. Now then. What does that damn duke know?”
Ginny mumbled something.
The dark mage frowned. He leaned closer. “What?”
Ginny lunged, her teeth sinking into his nose with a sickening crunch.
The man screamed and stumbled backward, blood streaming down his face and a piece of flesh now missing from his physiognomy. The other two mages gaped in shock.
Evander moved.
The door exploded inward on a hurricane of wind magic. The first mage holding Ginny went flying into the wall before he could react. The second mage managed to summon a shield of shadows which shattered like glass when Evander’s ice lance punched through it and caught him in the shoulder.
Rufus was right behind him, his pistol cracking in quick succession. Stunning bolts caught the interrogator and the wounded mage, dropping them both.
The man Evander had sent flying first staggered to his feet, dark energy crackling around his fingers.
Ginny twisted and swept his legs out from under him with a brutal kick before Evander could hurl the ice and stone lances he’d manifested. He fell, but not before she drove her foot into his temple with enough force to knock him unconscious.
“Took you long enough,” she said shakily as Evander rushed over to free her, her voice muffled by the blood still dripping from her mouth. She spat the chunk of skin and tissue she’d taken from her interrogator onto the floor. “God, that was disgusting.”
Evander cut through her bonds with a blade of ice, his heart thumping hard and his stomach churning with guilt. “I’m sorry we’re late.” He helped her to her feet, steadying her when she swayed.
They headed over to Shaw.
Rufus was crouching beside the forensic mage, his expression grim as he examined her arm.
“I’m afraid it’s broken, sir,” Shaw said through gritted teeth, the words coming out thick. “On the other hand, I did manage to kick a couple of the bastards in the family jewels when they grabbed us at the opera house.”
Fury burned through Evander’s veins when he saw the ugly cigarette burn marking her exposed ankle.
“Save the jokes for later, Shaw.”
“The chair.” Ginny indicated the corner of the room. “We can make a splint with the leg.”
Evander propped Ginny against the wall and snapped the leg clean off the chair tucked under a desk.
Ginny ripped a strip of cloth off her gown.
They used it to make a splint for Shaw’s arm, the forensic mage biting down hard on her lip so as not to make any sound beyond a single agonised moan.
Rufus carefully lifted her in his arms.
“There are more prisoners,” Ginny said urgently as they headed for the door. “In the dungeons below. I’m pretty certain they are the mages and researchers who’ve gone missing.”
“Viggo, Solomon, and Fairbridge are down there right now.”
Relief flickered across Ginny’s face at Solomon’s name. “Good.” She gripped Evander’s arm. “There’s something else. Something I overheard while they were bringing us up here. The mages, they were talking about the convergence!”
Evander stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“The place Molyneux and Princess Elo?se mentioned,” Ginny confirmed grimly. “It’s real. And it’s here, right in this very monastery. They mentioned a chamber beneath the main chapel.”
A chill swept through Evander that had nothing to do with his ice magic.
His pulse quickened with trepidation as he pulled out Schmidt’s map. There was nothing on it to indicate a room below the chapel.
Ginny frowned. “Maybe whoever built it made sure it never got on any of the floor plans.”
Blood pounded dully in Evander’s skull.
A low rumble rose from the depths of the monastery, startling them.
The building began to shake.