Chapter LI
LI
I honestly don’t know what answer I would have given. I don’t know what answer I would give today, offered the same choice.
I suppose it doesn’t matter; I never got the chance.
“Sebastian, stay down!”
The Beast looked up with a snarl as Antoine’s voice broke the silence in the grand salon.
Something smooth flashed through the air, like a glass bottle filled with moonlight.
A quicksilver globe.
It smashed on the floor right beneath the Beast with a heavy, wet explosion, stripping chunks of flesh from his legs. Avstamet roared and recoiled, collapsing against the wall. Two more globes followed, obliterating swaths of Versailles parquet as well as the mighty front door.
Well, that settles it, I suppose, said Sarmodel, not without some regret. Go!
I covered my mouth against the fumes and sprang to my feet, leaping down the stairs in a blur.
“Cover your ears, Antoine!” I called over my shoulder.
And then I drew a deep, deep breath.
The Word was an Arcane nightmare, a manifest crisis of energy and matter that would cast a shadow if I spoke it in the daylight. The Tartaric syllables blasted my mind and pulled the air from my lungs.
I had little fuel to give the Word—Enneval’s anima was consumed in an instant, and the sweet liquor of my lovemaking with Antoine burned with the briefest flame.
In my Arcane vision, a point of terrible stillness settled in the air between Avstamet and me. It was tiny, no greater than one of the snowflakes that flew through the night outside.
But it was enough.
For a moment, it was as though all of the life had been drawn from the room. There was no sound and the firelight was suddenly cold. The Beast glared his rage at me across what seemed a cosmic void.
And then the world collapsed.
The windows and their wooden shutters were sucked into the grand salon, the blizzard pouring in behind them. The fireplaces coughed explosively into the room, spraying the publican’s priceless collection with burning embers.
At the dreadful center was the Beast. He seemed to skew somehow, his form distending like clay as plasma erupted from his wounds. His eyes bulged from his skull as the forces I had set in motion first pulled him upright and then crushed him to the floor.
I was not immune.
As the final syllable left my lips, I felt a terrible crack. There was a red explosion in my head.
I cried out and fell to my knees, clutching at my face.
Sarmodel! My mouth! I spat bloody fragments of my teeth onto the floor. My jaw had snapped like a wishbone. The pounding in my head told me I had also likely fractured my skull. Help me!
It can be fixed! It can all be fixed! he barked. I felt him frantically scraping at my mind, erasing the last traces of the Word; it would be dangerous to hold it even in memory. Finish him! Quickly!
Yes. Yes!
I nodded. I did my best to ignore the pulpy ruins of my mouth and the astonishing pain in my head.
I drew my pistols, relying heavily on Sarmodel’s strength; with his help, my hands flickered like hummingbirds through the movements of loading and priming the weapons.
It was still too slow.
Avstamet was already on his feet, his ravaged flesh striving to repair itself.
But the amphisbaena venom had done its work. His healing was sluggish, and his blood flowed freely. Where Avstamet would normally have shrugged off all but the gravest injury to his mortal vessel, he was now vulnerable.
And he knew it.
The Beast took one look at the pistols in my hands and then bolted through the shattered doorway, out into the night. I went after him, lumbering across the burning floor as Sarmodel’s boons began to falter.
At that moment, the sound of screaming reached us from the rooms at the back of the lodge.
I stopped in the doorway.
Oh.
I had forgotten all about Soeur. She had found her way into the servants’ quarters, it seemed.
What a night of monsters it was for the good people at the Bow and Brace.
I turned around and saw Antoine at the top of the stairs. Gathered behind him were Mademoiselle Mimet, her uncle and several of the young hunters. And behind them was the unmistakable bulk of the Bishop of Mende. They all had the same wide, disbelieving eyes, their terror naked on their faces.
From the courtyard, I could hear with dreadful clarity the slaughter taking place in the servants’ quarters.
In my pounding head, two singular thoughts circled each other, like bubbles rising slowly to the surface. The first was how curious it was to see all the guests gathered there together in their nightclothes, when I had specifically instructed Antoine to keep them in their rooms.
The second was that they would assuredly all be dead soon.
Around me in the grand salon, the publican’s beautiful furnishings were burning heartily, a bonfire fanned by the wind now rushing into the room.
The staircase was already ablaze; the rest of the building would go up like brushwood.
Even without the imminent peril of Soeur, it would be certain death to remain inside the lodge now.
And outside.
Outside were the Beast and the blizzard. What hope did they have?
Someone was saying my name.
“Sebastian! Sebastian! You can’t go out there!” Antoine shouted down at me, as the fire began to roar up the staircase.
The others joined him in desperate protest.
“Professor! What is happening?” shouted Rosalie Mimet. “You can’t leave us here!”
“Is it the Beast? Where is Lord Bauterne?” demanded the Bishop of Mende.
“Come, sir!”
“You must help us!”
“Please!”
Their wailing merged into a gibbering cacophony and I held up a hand for silence. The terrified nobles stared down at me while death closed in on every side. There was no way to reach them.
Sarmodel’s voice was like a hand on the back of my neck.
Come, my love. No more foolishness. This is our last chance.
I know.
I held my swollen jaw and called up the stairs, as coherently as I could.
“Find a way out! Antoine, get everyone into the courtyard! Stay away from Soeur, if you can—I will return!”
He didn’t like it, but he nodded. “We will find a way.”
Michael! I called silently.
There was no response, but I detected the flicker of green facets and the flash of golden blades through the flames.
Save them, Michael, I sent. Give me time. You have missed your chance, and your Chosen is out of contention—this victory will be mine. But if you love your Father’s creation as you say, then do something to save them. I will take care of Avstamet.
Then I stepped out into the darkness.