Alchemist's Kiss (6 page)

He wasn't fool enough to believe that he would ever have a normal life. No wife to cook his meals and care for him in his dotage. No children to laugh with and pamper. He would be lucky to love Cora from afar and die in her arms.

He poured another drink and watched the sun peek from behind the clouds. Though he knew he couldn't have those things, he nevertheless dreamed about them every night. His Cora in her wedding dress, and heavy with their child. Smiling at him with love in her eyes instead of anger. He grinned against his glass. That might truly be a dream, but it was still worthy of wishing for. He poured his bourbon down his throat and let it numb the stark white pain that was reality.

***

“He's locked himself away again.” I ground my teeth in frustration as Archimedes looked up from his newspaper.

“He carries a heavy burden, Cora.”

I narrowed my eyes at the muddy footprints marring the beauty of my Parisian rug. “He's too stubborn to allow us to help.”

“He's scared, Cora. Give him time.”

I sat on the arm of Archie's chair, dropping my arm around his shoulder. It was a truly unladylike gesture but the man was one of my closest friends. “You're far too wise for your years, Archie.”

He looked up at me with a grin. “Someone has to mediate your squabbles. I fear you'd have maimed each other years ago if I didn't.”

“True.” I laid my head against his. “He makes it so hard to love him.”

“Don't give up yet, Cora.” He patted my hand where it lay against his shoulder. “He's worthy of the time.”

“I know.” I kissed his cheek and stood with a sigh. “I just wish he'd realize it sooner rather than later.”

“Nothing can be achieved by antagonizing him.” Archie winked at me and I laughed.

“It's far too easy.”

“What do you want him to do, Cora?”

I stopped and turned around with a frown. “I want him to burst into my room and tell me to stop being angry. I want him to be passionate for once. He's so cold that I don't know how he feels most of the time. I want to
know
he wants me, Archie.”

“Then you need to tell him.” Archie stood and folded the paper. He slipped on his coat and kissed my cheek. “As powerful as he is, he doesn't read minds.”

“I.....” I trailed off as Archie laughed.

“You can't.” He shook his head. “You two are just the same.” He clapped his bowler to his head and opened the door. “I'm off to the apothecary for mandrake.”

“Be careful!” I called, and he nodded. I moved to the sofa and sat, picking up my tea. I dropped in a cube of sugar and stared into the flames.

“When this is over,” I swore to myself, “I'll tell Icarus exactly how I feel.”

“Cora.”

I opened my eyes to find Icarus bending over me. He'd changed and his hair had dried in ringlets around his ears. He shook my shoulder as I blinked and stared at him.

“Cora. Where is Archimedes?”

I sat up with a yawn, pulling my shawl over my shoulders. I'd fallen asleep and the fire had burned low. Shadows crawled across the floor. I looked at the clock.

“He's not back?”

“Where did he go?”

“The apothecary. For mandrake.” I grabbed Icarus' hand as he moved away. “That was hours ago, Icarus.”

He squeezed my hand, but his lips were pale white slashes. “I'll find him.”

He left me and went into his laboratory, only to return a moment later with his map and scrying glass. I moved aside the forgotten tea service as he spread out the map. He reached for my hand again as he knelt by the table.

“No.” I pulled my hand away. “I always block you.”

He pulled my knuckles to his lips, shocking me with the sweetness of the gesture. “I need you, Cora. If Archimedes is in trouble, he will need us both to help him.”

I reached for The Hand and held it tightly. It amplified my connection to the aether, and Icarus removed his glove and placed his scarred palm directly on the corner of the map. He placed the scrying glass, a clear marble with one flat side, onto the map at the spot that indicated our hotel.

“Close your eyes and concentrate on Archimedes.” he instructed. I breathed deeply and slowly, exactly as he'd taught me. I felt myself open up to the aether, and the ribbons of sentient power washed over me and all around me.

“It's working.” Icarus whispered. “Ask the aether where Archimedes is.”

I asked, and the aether swarmed around me, brushing against me as it whispered in my ear. I struggled to make out the words, but Icarus hissed as our palms grew hot where they touched. As he broke our connection I was pulled away from the aether.

I blinked. “What happened?”

He picked up my hand and showed me the red irritation where our skin had touched. “There are wards blocking Archimedes from us.”

“We could have kept going.” I felt the fear churning in my gut. My head grew light and I leaned against Icarus.

“No.” He smoothed the hair from my cheeks and shook his head. “Archimedes will need us both healthy. The longer we scryed for him the more dangerous it would become.”

“What can we do?” Icarus was warm next to me, and I let go of The Hand to clutch him closer. I wrapped my fingers in his shirt.

I expected him to push me away, but he wrapped his arms around me. “We find our friend.”

“How?”

He pulled back to look at me. “Am I not the warden of London? The wizard responsible for the safety of all the people in this city?”

I nodded.

“I taught you about magic, did I not?”

“You did.”

“Well, dear Cora,” he rose and held out his hand to me, “it's time we put that magic to work for us. We have more at our disposal than a mediocre scrying spell.”

“What do we have?” I asked, taking the hand he offered. He pushed open the laboratory door and I followed him inside. He waved his hand and the lights rushed to greet us. I gasped at the rows and rows of spells he had bubbling merrily on the counter. Every inch of the room was covered in books and magical equipment.

He grinned at me as he looked around the room. The last time I'd been allowed inside all of his equipment had still been packed away from the journey from America.

“We have me.”

***

Archimedes was no stranger to torture. Every moment of every day of his life was torture. Every time the clockwork ticked he knew pain. What he had never known was fear. Even unto the moment of his death in that alley he had not met the reaper with fear in his gut.

Now, though, Archimedes was afraid. He'd come around the corner from the apothecary shop with his mandrake root and a box of chocolates to ease Cora's ill temper when a spell of great power had wrapped around him. Unable to move he'd been hauled away in the back of a dirty tanner's wagon to this place.

He opened his swollen eyes and looked at his surroundings again. It was a wares house of some kind, near the water. He could hear the river lapping at the walls to his left. They'd taken his coat, and gods damn them, his bowler, and he shivered in the wet fog off the Thames. The floor was covered in moldering hay, and the stink of it made his stomach turn. He sniffed. Come to think of it, that might have been the smell of his own flesh burning that made him nauseous. His captors had little imagination when it came to pain.

He raised his head as one of them came toward him. The skinny one with crooked brown teeth and an evil grin. Archimedes vowed to kill the man as he spied his bowler sitting over top the man's greasy, unkempt hair.

“He's awake.” The man's voice still surprised Archimedes. It was low and smooth, in stark contrast to his visage.

“Leave him be, Gecko.”

As much as Archimedes wanted to kill the rat-faced man for wearing his hat, he was doubly invested in killing the other man who stood in the shadows.

“Show yourself, Baiandelio.” he demanded.

“Oh dear, Archimedes. I'd hoped you would be surprised to see me.”

Archimedes stared at the man he'd once served. No longer was he young or handsome. He wasn't clothed in his customary silk and velvet and his perfectly manicured hands were now wrinkled, twisted claws.

“Time has not been kind, Thomas.”

The man's eyes were filled with hate as he moved from the shadows. “To say that I was surprised to hear you'd survived our last meeting would be an understatement.”

“As much a surprise to you as it was to me.” Archimedes answered dryly through the throb in his jaw. The rat-faced bastard had a mean right hook.

Baiandelio kept to the shadows, his face hidden. Archimedes could smell the stench of the dark magic rolling off the man.

It wasn't the fear of death that churned in Archimedes' gut. He could die at any moment and he might go with some regrets but not much else. It was the fear that what was coming for him would force him to betray his friends that tasted like ash in his mouth. The magic that restrained him was festering with power and dark intent and it had to belong to a very dark wizard. Victor Kane; he would have bet his absent bowler on it.

“What awaits you is much worse than Georgio's afternoon delights.” Baiandelio slithered from shadow to shadow, avoiding the light.

Archimedes could feel blood on his face from the smaller man's beating. His teeth were loose from the repeated blows to his head. His back was raw from the burns the other man had inflicted upon him. Those
afternoon delights
would have killed a weaker man. As it was, Archimedes could not access his magic, and his mechanical arm was held fast by his magic bonds.

His head came up as the oppressive stench of black magic grew heavier. It shrouded him, clouded his mind. His thoughts went fuzzy around the edges as a tall man swept past Gecko into the room.

“I see you found him.”

“Kane.” The words were thick like gruel in his mouth.

The handsome face was angular and sharp. His hair was blonde like Icarus', but had already grayed at the temples. He kept it long, pulled back from his face. It could have been an angel's face, Archimedes thought, except for the fires of hell that burned in his dark eyes. He carried his strength on the surface, but the true depths of him were a roiling black void. He leaned close to Archimedes and smiled.

“I didn't know snakes could smile.”

The grin did not falter. “My son has done well in his apprentice.”

“I won't let you hurt him.”

Kane laughed. It was a foreign sound to him, it was clear, and it burst from him in rusty guffaws. “What makes you think I want to hurt my only son?”

Archimedes fought the press of Kane's magic. “Why else come to London?” he ground out. He could feel the dark bastard draining his magic. When it was gone he would have no defenses against them. His wards would go down, and Cora and Icarus would be vulnerable.

“Oh, no, dear mechanical man.” Victor leaned close with his mouth to Archimedes' ear. “Don't leave us yet.” He pressed his thumb into a particularly painful blistered burn on Archimedes' neck. The sizzle of electric pain made his head clear. Victor chuckled.

“I'm not here to harm my son. When science is destroyed, and magic is all that's left, the people of London will need a wizard like my son to turn to.”

“Science cannot be destroyed.” Archimedes felt the tunnel of darkness closing in on him again, but Kane's finger on his wound made him hiss in pain.

“Wrong.” Kane pressed harder, grinning as Archie held back a scream. “It can, and it will. And when it's gone, we will be left to pick up the pieces.”

Kane released him and Archimedes slumped forward, the relief as intense as the pain.

“Dump him.”

Baiandelio hissed. “No! He's mine!”

Archimedes had the bleary impression that Victor was smoke on the air as he lifted Baiandelio in the air with one hand. The man flailed in Victor's grip as the stronger mage squeezed his throat.

“He is mine!” Victor shook Baiandelio. “They are all mine! You are mine!”

He dropped the man to a heap on the floor and turned to Gecko, who bowed low and nodded. “We'll dump him in an alley.”

“Take care with him. I want my son to know that I still care for him. I'll return his apprentice to him as a show of good faith.” Victor narrowed his eyes at Gecko. “And return him in one piece.”

He was gone as Archimedes struggled to hold on to his consciousness. Baiandelio gripped his hair and pulled his hair back savagely. “Our time will come, Archimedes. Be sure of it.”

Archimedes couldn't help the smile that crawled across his lips. He was dying anyway, Victor's edict be damned.  “I hope Icarus cuts off your balls and feeds them to you.” He managed a bark of pained laughter. “And I hope you choke on them.”

He couldn't hold back a scream as Gecko's white-hot brand hit a fresh patch of skin on his back. Baiandelio pushed him over and kicked him, kicking him harder and harder until the world finally went black.

***

It was a rare dry night as Icarus held up the bowl. The smoke drifted left and right, writhing.

Cora was shivering next to him, her breath fogging in the air. She gripped his arm, her eyes wide with fear and worry.

“
Ostende mihi platearum.”
he whispered to the bowl. The smoke curled around his arm and then darted away down the street.

“It's going to take us to him?” Cora asked as they followed.

“It will.” He reached between them and picked up her hand. Her fingers curled so trustingly around his. He found it easier to touch her, show her affection, when she was too distracted to notice. Too distracted to question it, or him. To want to talk to him about what it meant.

The smoke took them weaving down streets and through alleys. He saw, here and there, the tell-tale signs that the High Coven's wizards were about. Their wards and the lingering smell of their magic let him know that the Grand High Master had not lied to him about his support.

Cora was quiet, her eyes watchful as they moved through the crowds of night dwellers. London had its share; those who were more comfortable in the dark of the approaching midnight that in the light of the sun.

Icarus rounded a corner near Henrietta Street and steadied Cora as she stumbled. He felt her fingers tighten on his when she saw the crowd before them. A group of dirty non-magics, covered in coal dust from the steam mill, were blocking the mouth of the alley.

“Well, well. What do we have here?” The speaker was a young man, nineteen or twenty and brash in the way of the young. He swaggered up to them to bow a low, exaggerated bow. “It's our grand adept himself.”

“What's going on here?” Icarus kept his voice even as he moved slightly in front of Cora.

“We were just meeting to discuss our problem.” the young man said, looking over his shoulder to snicker at the men behind him. They shuffled. A few seemed scared, their eyes wide as they edged away from the main group. Those would live, Icarus decided. These others, perhaps not. They had violence on their minds, and they were severely impeding his search for Archimedes.

“And what problem is that?”

The brash man's face grew hard with hatred. This is what the Grand Master had tried to warn him about, Icarus realized. Every problem or perceived injustice these men had ever faced would forever be the fault of magic. And of magic users. There was nothing they could say to change it.

“Our families starve while you wizards live in your palaces!”

The crowd roared with approval as the man raised his fist.

“We pay every penny we earn for the privilege of allowing you to light our homes and protect our families!”