Thomas and James would have joined in the melee, but they were mostly concerned about getting in Locke's way. Plus, it was all happening so quickly that there wasn't much time for them to leap into the engagement. By the time that they had picked up knives from fallen attackers and were ready to join in, there was nothing in which to join. Locke was briskly striding away from a circle of half a dozen men who were lying on the floor in various stages of consciousness and blood loss, moaning and holding different parts of their body. Other servants were appearing from other directions, but when they saw the chaos that reigned in the main hall and the fact that the man who had perpetrated it looked more than ready for more, resistance melted away. The trio headed in the direction of the mural room without further opposition.
Within minutes, they were standing in front of the vast three-wall mural that depicted the entirety of the mansion. James, who had not yet seen it, let out a low whistle. “This is it, then?”
“This is it.” Locke nodded. “Quickly . . . the two of you each go to one of the spires.”
They did as he instructed, Thomas to the right, James to the middle, and Locke at the left. “Now what?” said James.
“Now we all three push against it and see if that does something. On three and one . . . two . . . three.”
Together, at their respective places around the room, they pushed as hard as they could against the raised spires. None of them were exactly sure of what was supposed to happen next.
As it turned out, nothing did.
“That was exciting,” said James dourly after long moments of no response at all. “Was there anything in the
Omnicron
about what to do if you're completely buggered?”
“There must be some trick, some mechanism to it,” said Locke, stepping back and studying the mural. “We just need to find ...”
“No. You don't.”
Slowly, the three of them turned and saw that Sabrina had entered the room. She was wearing a simple green frock. There was a look of infinite sadness in her eyes. “You don't need to find anything.”
“Sabrina,” Thomas said urgently, “it's all right. We know what he is. We understand everything.”
“No,” Locke said, “I don't think you
do
understand everything, Mr. Kirkman.”
Thomas ignored him. He went to Sabrina and took her hands, speaking as quickly and passionately as he could. “We know what your father is. We saw it. And you must know, too. You do, don't you?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice small. “My mother . . . she was his . . . his offering to the darkness . . . his pledge of loyalty to the evil that made him what he is. He didn't run from the curse; he embraced it.”
“And you've lived with that knowledge, with that evil, all this time.” He wanted to weep in sympathy for her.
“Mr. Kirkman,” said Locke.
“Not now.”
“Mr. Kirkman,” and he was more insistent.
“Shut up!”
He turned heatedly toward Locke, and then he was astounded to see that Locke had his sword out and was pointing it toward him. “What are youâ?”
“Think, Thomas. Tear the blinders of infatuation from your eyes. Do you truly think that she could exist within this house of evil all this time and remain unscathed by it? Do you not see her for what she is?”
“She is an innocent, caught up inâ!”
And suddenly James, who was standing just to Locke's right, took a step back and brought up his knife defensively. His lips mouthed, “Thomas,” but he was unable to speak.
Thomas turned back to face Sabrina, and was horrified to see her eyes, baleful and yellow, locked upon him.
“It wasn't supposed to be this way,” she whispered, even as she started to grow, fur sprouting all over her face. “We were going to be together, you and I. Father promised. He promised that I would feel so less lonely if I had someone. I hated it . . . hated what he was . . . hated what he made me . . . I told you that.” And each word became progressively deeper, more guttural. “Told you that I wanted to be something other than I was!
I told you that! Why didn't you listen?
”
The frock she'd been wearing split down the back, and she tore it off herself with her clawed hands. That same hideous sound of bones crunching and reknitting themselves filled the air, except within the confined area of the mural room, it sounded even more horrifying.
“Thomas, get out of the way!”
shouted Locke.
But Thomas remained where he was, paralyzed, frozen, trying to tell himself that he had simply gone mad, and he wasn't witnessing what was actually transpiring. “Sabrina . . .” he whispered.
“We could have been happy together!”
roared the balverine, and she lunged at him.
Thomas barely darted back in time as her claws raked across him. He screamed as his shirt shredded, and five thin lines of blood welled up on the chest that, the night before, she had been covering with kisses. He fell back even as he shouted,
“No! You don't have to do this!”
“Yes, she does!” Locke called out. “She's in thrall to them, Thomas! She has no choice!”
Locke came straight toward her, his silver sword extended, and the balverine grabbed Thomas and without hesitation flung him straight at Locke. Locke quickly flung his sword arm wide, lest he impale Thomas, but as a result Thomas slammed into him, the both of them hitting the floor. Locke lost his grip on his sword, and it clattered away.
James darted toward the sword, trying to grab it up so that he could return it to Locke or perhaps even use it himself. But he had no opportunity to do so, for the balverineâseeing the weapon lying on the floorâleaped toward it and landed between it and James. She roared at him and thrust forward with her open paw, knocking him flat. Then she kicked the sword away, sending it clattering to the far end of the mural room.
Locke shoved Thomas off him and yanked out his pistol. He took aim and would have had the balverine cold except she noticed him out of the corner of her eye and quickly yanked James to his feet. James let out a cry of stark terror as the balverine held him up as a human shield, keeping him between her and Locke's deadly pistol.
“Dammit!” snarled Locke, trying to get a clear shot and unable to do so.
And James cried out,
“Shoot through me! It's the only way!”
“I can't!”
“This is no time to worry about me!”
“I'm not worried about you per se,” Locke said tartly. “Frankly, I don't like you all that much. But if you're dead, you're of no further use to us in our overall quest.”
Despite the tenuous situation he was in, James was somewhat taken aback at that.
“Oh, well, thanks a lot! I'm trying to be noble, and you're just being a prig about it!”
And then Locke fired.
It was not a shot at the chest, because she was continuing to keep James firmly in front of her. Instead, for half a moment, James's leg had shifted and it gave Locke a shot at the balverine's thigh. He hoped that burying a bullet there would startle her enough that she would drop James and give Locke a clear shot at her heart.
In a rare happenstance, matters did not work out as Quentin Locke desired. The balverine, still holding on to James, leaped straight upward. The shot went under her, and as Locke swung his pistol around to aim again, the balverine rebounded off the ceiling and plunged straight toward Locke at high speed, still keeping the screaming James between them.
She crashed into Locke with James as a battering ram. Locke held on to his pistol, but the hammer snapped home, and the shot went wide. He tried to bring it around, and the balverine roared, grabbed him by the arm, and flung him to one side, tearing the pistol from his grasp as she did so. Locke struck the far wall with a violent thud and slid to the ground, looking dizzy and confused.
The balverine tilted her head back and let out a ululating roar of defiance, and then she came straight at Locke. Locke's blurred vision focused upon the oncoming behemoth but, bereft of weapons and still reeling from the impact, there was nothing he could do to defend himself.
And then Thomas was directly in her path, between her and Locke, and he was holding Locke's sword, which he had retrieved from the corner of the room, gripping it with two hands. The balverine saw it at the last instant, but she was moving too quickly to slow her forward motion. She slammed straight into it, the impact driving Thomas to the ground and her on top of him, in some twisted perversion of a lover's embrace. The blade drove into her heart, and she cried out, an animalistic howl that escalated into a higher and higher register until it sounded not like that of a creature but instead of a human girl.
Thomas screamed her name, and she tumbled off him. He yanked the sword clear of her chest even as James shouted to him not to for fear that somehow she would mystically be healed by its removal. He need not have been concerned. Instead, the balverine lay unmoving upon the ground, blood seeping from her chest onto the polished wooden floor.
And as the blood pooled beneath her, as if she were a balloon gradually deflating, the balverine started to shrink. The fur fell out, slowly at first but then in large clumps. Her teeth shrank, her muzzle withdrew, her arms and legs and back transformed into human proportions. The yellow faded from her pupils, and she gazed up at Thomas with limpid eyes.
Thomas began to sob as he dropped the sword and yanked off his cloak, covering her nakedness. “Help her,” he said in a choked voice to Locke. “Help her . . .”
She reached up to him and placed a bloodstained hand against his cheek. “You
have
. . . helped me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I go . . . to be with my mother . . . thank you . . . thankâ”
And then her hand fell away from his face, a bright red stain against it down which his tears were now rolling, leaving little trails in the blood smear on his cheek.
There was a deathly silence then, broken only by Thomas's sobs, and Locke stepped forward, knelt next to Thomas . . .
. . . and slapped him across the face.
Thomas reeled, almost falling over, and he looked in stunned astonishment at Locke.
“We've no time for womanish tears,” said Locke harshly. “Whatever else she was to you, she was an enemy to us, and you dealt with her accordingly.”
“You bastard,” James said, feeling pained on Thomas's behalf. “How can youâ?”
“Be quiet and think. The means to reaching our goal has been handed to us, and you two are too busy simpering or displaying indignation to see what's in front of you.” He shoved back the cloak that Thomas had draped over Sabrina and placed his palm squarely onto the pooling blood.
“What the hellâ!”
James was so outraged that he looked ready to take a swing at Locke, or perhaps try to stab him with the knife he was now holding.
“An offering,” said Thomas hoarsely.
“Ah. He understands,” Locke said approvingly.
Thomas couldn't have given a damn about Locke's approval at that moment. All he cared about was what needed to be done in order to put an end to this horror. His voice was an emotionless monotone as he said, “The spires need an offering to show the way. If great Heroes are within, then proof that evil has been vanquished must be what's required. The blood of a freshly killed balverine will likely do.” The blood was still warm as he put his hand in it, and then he said coldly, “James. You too.”
James looked as if he had never wanted to do something less in his life, but he did as Thomas bade him although he didn't look down at it, and his face was twisted in disgust.
“Quickly,” said Locke. “We need toâ”
“Quiet,” Thomas said wearily. “We know what we need to do.” He wanted to mourn. He wanted to scream. He wanted to curse the day he had ever set foot out of Bowerstone, but none of those were options now. Instead, he simply walked across to the spire on the right, turned, and waited for the others to do likewise.
Without a word, Locke and James went to their respective spires as well. This time there was no need to count. Thomas simply nodded, and, as one, they placed their blood-soaked hands flat against each of the spires.
For a moment nothing happened, and Thomas wanted to scream in frustration. Before he could, however, there was a low rumbling that seemed to be coming from everywhere around them, but mostly from beneath the floor.
Each of the spires simultaneously retracted into the wall.
There was a deafening grinding of gears, and Locke now had his sword at the ready, looking around coolly to see if another danger was about to leap out at them.
Then the source of the rumbling localized itself. It was the front section of the mansion as depicted on the mural. The paneled section of the mural upon which the front door of the mansion had been meticulously rendered detached from the ceiling and began to slide down. They watched in astonishment as it continued its steady progress down, down, and eventually it reached the floor and clacked into place.
Where a section of the wall had been, there was now only emptiness, and what appeared to be a stairway that led down to darkness.
The three of them had now moved away from the spires and stood in front of the opening, staring down at it.
“After you,” said James to Locke.
Locke promptly began to stride forward, and then, to his surprise, Thomas put a hand out and stopped him in his tracks. He did not say anything. He did not have to. Locke inclined his head toward the opening and gestured for Thomas to precede him.
He did so. Moments later, the only thing left in the room was the rapidly cooling body of a young woman who had gone to her grave with a heart that had been pierced by silver and lightened because of it.