Chapter 10 The Angel of Death
Daphne
The Angel of Death
Alice and Anne led me to that gray, empty room where I had been locked up after my arrival.
“There is no escape, darling. Adapting is your only chance of survival,” the tarot reader had told me.
To hell with this.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw the dress spread out on the stained, bug-infested mattress. The cut was old-fashioned, yet it would still make any debutante proud.
It was a deep, vibrant explosion of color among the sad walls: the color of old wine and dried blood.
“I’m not wearing this,” I said, pointing at the corset. Alice grinned.
“Oh dear, yes, you are.”
No fucking way I put that over my bruised ribs.
“Sure,” I said instead, grinning and putting my hands on my hips. “Try me. I can keep you busy for hours.”
They exchanged looks.
“Leave it,” Anne whispered to Alice. “We need to get her to Doctor Vexley’s office NOW! She’ll be dead by the end of the night anyway—why bother?”
Alice eyed the satin garment, then shrugged and tossed it back onto the bed.
Encouraged by this minor victory, I let them dress me.
They took off the tattered nightgown and pulled a silk petticoat over my head, hemmed with rich black lace. The soft velvet of the dress was pleasantly warm.
Funny how appearances influence our attitude.
When Alice and Anne walked around me to inspect their work, I felt like Daphne Draymoore once again—an heiress to an old family, a princess locked up in a tower by an evil mind. And maybe I’d get my chance to escape.
“Too bad we cannot do anything about her hair,” Alice said, and the other woman shrugged.
“Do you think the monster cares? I heard he’s tearing them all in half.”
They cackled.
A cold shudder ran down my spine.
Am I being prepared as an offering to some monster? What was Vexley’s friend planning for me? The warning of the woman in the refectory sounded terrifying. I swallowed hard.
“Here, your old shoes,” Alice tossed my boots before me, and I slipped them on, struggling to keep my face cold and impassive.
“Now hurry. Doctor Vexley and the Grandmaster are waiting for you.”
The Grandmaster? Like in some secret society? I listened to their chatter, hoping they’d say more, but they didn’t.
Pale moonlight filled the empty corridors as we walked to the doctor’s office. All the other patients were already confined to their quarters, and the damp walls echoed with distant sobs and wailing.
“Come on, inside you go.” Alice cracked the door open and shoved me inside.
“Pity for that dress, Anne,” she said as she closed the door behind me.
My blood froze.
I had pulled Death from that tarot deck.
Maybe the reading showed the terrible truth. She was right about my past and present, after all.
Vexley’s office didn’t look that threatening in the warm light of the fireplace and the dozens of candles.
It smelled of tobacco, ink, and something sickly sweet—like the aftertaste of medicine meant to keep you pliant.
The golden light flickered off the polished wood, glinting against the decanter of amber liquid, the sharp edges of surgical instruments neatly arranged on a side table, and the ledger Vexley held open.
Sweet Mary and Joseph, what were these two planning for me?
Across from me sat Vexley, drumming his fingers against his desk—a patient spider in its web.
The man who’d met me in the refectory stood beside him.
The angel of death.
He was leaning against the fireplace, one hand resting lightly on the handle of his ivory-topped cane, watching me as though I were an experiment he was unsure would survive.
His clothes were immaculate—a deep midnight coat, gloves that concealed his hands, the glint of gold at his cufflinks.
His eyes unsettled me. Too cold. Too knowing. The kind of gaze that cataloged and measured, that assessed a soul’s worth before discarding it.
The silence stretched, the only sound the distant ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
“Are you sure you want her to try? I’m very positive that Jeremiah—” Vexley started.
The man the nurse had called Grandmaster scoffed. “Jeremiah won’t make it through the entry hall. You remember what happened to the last one?”
My jaw clenched, but I said nothing.
Once again, I stood in that cursed room while someone else decided what would become of me.
The Grandmaster shifted, exhaling through his nose.
“Shall we begin?”
Vexley nodded. “Miss Draymoore, you will leave St. Dismas and my care.”
My pulse stuttered. This was some test, surely—some trap.
“Nothing is free here,” the tarot reader had warned me. Yet I couldn’t help my curiosity.
He continued. “We have a task for you—a matter of utmost importance. One that, should you succeed, might ensure your return to the world beyond these walls.”
A task. So now it was time to learn what I had to pay.
I forced my face to remain impassive.
The nurses’ macabre comments about a murdering monster were still ringing in my head.
And I remembered all too well the disemboweled body in that foggy back alley—and the flying demon who did it.
“And if I don’t?” I asked, my eyes darting between both men.
“Then you return here if you’re lucky enough,” Vexley said, pouring some of the amber liquid into a faceted glass.
The blond stranger pushed off the mantle with a graceful shift.
His steps were unnaturally quiet.
Some deep chill emanated from his body as he slowly circled me.
“You’ll succeed, Daphne. You’re the perfect choice despite Doctor Vexley’s prejudice. What we try to achieve proved impossible with brutal force, so now we’ll try a more... subtle approach. And the ravens were curious about you.”
The ravens in the garden? How was that relevant? I turned my head like an owl, trying to follow him.
Letting him out of my sight gave me chills.
“And what’s expected of me? What is this task?” My throat was dry, but I sounded confident.
Fortune favors the brave, as Grandfather said.
Rotting and playing their game, as the tarot reader suggested, would destroy me.
The silence stretched, interrupted only by my ragged breathing and the crackling of the flames.
Vexley took a long sip of his drink and cleared his throat.
“There is a manor. A grand, ancient place. Duskmere Manor. Within it lives a man—a dangerous man, one who holds knowledge that is... valuable.”
Duskmere Manor?
Everyone knew of this place. It was a myth. An urban legend.
The Penny Dreadfuls were full of stories about it: once a sanctuary for scholars and mystics, built on the edge of a blackwater mere said to swallow the light of the stars.
Its master had quite the reputation of a ruthless man and a womanizer before he had vanished along with his entire household after digging too deep into forbidden knowledge, leaving the estate abandoned and whispered about in dread.
Now they were telling me it was all real?
“A dangerous man?” I squeaked.
Sweet Jesus, what horrors had they unleashed into that house?
Then I remembered the hollow eyes of the patients, turned into shadows, the bleeding wounds on Jeremiah’s temples.
Anything would be better than rotting here.
Anything would be better than losing my name, my personality.
If there were a monster waiting for me in that cursed mansion, I’d take my chances.
I’d been living with one for years and managed just fine.
The blond man still paced around me, turning my insides into a knot.
“His name is Emrys. You will gain his trust. You will find his maps, his personal notes, anything he has on the ley lines.”
His voice was smooth, but there was something razor-edged beneath it.
Ley lines. I noted the word very well. It settled like ice in my veins.
Vexley stood up, searching for something among the piles of papers on his desk.
“He might call them otherwise. But seek all notes, books, or artifacts that seem valuable to him. Copy or steal them. Deliver everything you can get your hands on to us.”
“L... ley lines?” I stuttered.
“It’s a very basic esoteric concept—lines connecting places with certain powers across the globe.
Humanity knew of these places in ancient times.
Educated and clever as you are, Lady Draymoore, I know you’re thinking of the pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge—but there are many, many more.
The knowledge of them has been long lost. Nearly lost. It landed in the hands of one self-appointed Knowledge Keeper. ”
He called me by my title, I noted. His eyes drifted away, and for a moment, he looked lost in a dream, nearly innocent.
“I know that Emrys has this information. You shall look not only for locations but also a sort of calendar. An astrological map, marking different dates, connecting them to the locations.”
His voice was soft now, polite as if we were having tea in some parlour.
If it weren’t for that gnawing feeling at the base of my spine, I might have mistaken him for a gentleman.
But something deep inside me warned otherwise—an ancient instinct from the ages of campfires and caves, warning me I was in the presence of a dangerous predator. That he might strike at any moment and hurt me in unfathomable ways.
“Do not hold any illusions, Lady Draymoore. We’re sending you into the lair of a beast. This man was hurt, tormented, cornered, and trapped. But he could be extremely manipulative. Stay safe. Keep a cool head. Guard your heart.”
“That’s why I think sending a woman is a nuisance—” Vexley began, shaking his head.
But he couldn’t finish his sentence.
Against all natural laws, the angel of death was at him—his gloved right hand around Vexley’s throat, lifting him clean off the floor as if he weighed nothing.
His feet kicked the air, and I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing right.
No human could do this.
The blond man’s posture showed no strain. His left hand still casually held his cane.
“Consider this a final warning, Vexley. Do not forget your place in all this. Contradict me once more, and you’re going to Duskmere Manor next.”
The shadows around him shifted, and for a moment, I thought I saw again the flash of those wings.
He dropped the breathless doctor and looked away.
“And if you’d seen as much as I did, you’d have learned to never underestimate women.”
Well, that was one point we agreed upon.
While Vexley struggled to stand up and brushed his coat, paler than death, the Angel loomed over me again.
“I know I’ve made quite an ill impression on you, Lady Draymoore.”
He had somehow removed his gloves.
His knuckles traced the side of my neck, his touch electrifying.
I parted my lips, struggling against the sudden urge to lean into his touch.
Was this magic, or was this man able to make any lady’s knees weak at will?
“But I assure you, we’re doing this for the good of all humanity. You have no idea what we’re facing in our battle.”
“We?” I rasped.
“It’s more than the two of us fighting for this cause. We are a legion.”
He tapped the head of his cane, where the morbid skeletal snake and cracked skull flashed with some odd light.
His hand slid down, brushing the black lace framing the deep neckline of the dress.
A touch so indecent that I struggled to slap his fingers away—or do something, anything—but I couldn’t.
I stood there, hypnotized by those otherworldly eyes, unable to move a muscle, unable even to speak.
The pressure of his index finger over the swell of my right breast became painful.
A sharp, searing pain pierced me.
I bit my tongue to muffle a scream so hard that the metallic tang of blood filled my mouth.
The smell of burned flesh made my nostrils flare.
I looked down in horror.
The dark symbol—the snake and the skull—was burned into my skin.
My knees buckled.
Panting like a cornered beast, I opened my mouth to ask what the hell he had done to me.
But then, the scarred red edges softened and disappeared, and my skin was intact again—except for a few freckles.
And he was back to leaning against the mantelpiece, watching the flames with cold, indifferent eyes.
“You’re marked now, Lady Draymoore. This symbol will reveal itself in three weeks. And when it’s visible, you’ll die.”
His voice was even, as if he were discussing the weather. Not my death.
“Three weeks to get us the information, Daphne,” Vexley chimed in, adjusting his tie.
“If Emrys suspects anything about your mission, any connection with us, you’ll die much sooner. Be very, very discreet. I’m sure you can come up with some story.”
I swallowed dryly.
“Who are you?” I finally managed.
Without looking away from the flames, the stranger chuckled.
“I’ve lost most of my names over the centuries. The last one I used—before an impostor claimed it—was Count Cagliostro. That’s what you’d hear Emrys whisper in his nightmares when you share his bed.”
My cheeks flushed. “I’m a lady, and I have no intention of—”
He smiled, the firelight glinting off his cruel mouth.
“Of course you don’t. But I’ve seen more than one lady turn into a whore around him. I don’t care about your methods. Just get me the information. Your time is ticking, Lady Draymoore. You’d better go now.”
He was right. The faster I got out of here, the better. “How do I find you when… if I get it done?” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry, Daphne. We will find you.” Vexley grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the door. “Your carriage is ready.”
Moonlight filtered through the tattered clouds as we reached the unmarked carriage, pulled by two black horses at the entrance.
“Our people are watching the manor day and night, Daphne. Don’t try anything stupid.
They’re instructed to shoot on sight. Nothing leaves Duskmere without my permission.
And if you try anything foolish,” Vexley leaned close, his breath sour against my cheek, “you’ll find death at Emrys’s claws a mercy compared to what we’ll do. ”
He shoved me onto the cold leather seat of the carriage and slammed the door shut.
My fingers brushed my right breast where the phantom pain of the Renegade’s mark still burned.
The wheels creaked into motion.
The asylum—those black, stained letters of St. Dismas—faded into the night.
Through the barred window, I saw a single face.
The tarot reader.
As soon as our eyes met, she crossed herself as if she had seen a dead woman walking—and then she faded into the gloom inside.