Jonathan followed him, feeling relieved about the fire not being at the abbey and yet wondering what else could be burning. He also noticed the half-moon indentations of fingernails on Timothy’s naked shoulders and the sharp smell of oil and sex, a scent that only increased tenfold as they came into the turret, which had transformed from the nightmarish place where Jonathan had slain his father and his lover into a sensual bower. As they passed to the window, Timothy discreetly dropped a silken sheet over Charles’s middle. Charles himself was unconscious again, but instead of looking pale and stricken as he had last night, he now looked lush and rumpled and very, very sated.
“When did you acquire all this?” Jonathan whispered, taking in how much stuff there was in the room.
Timothy shook his head and held up a hand as he stopped at the window.
Not now
, the gesture said. “Look.”
Jonathan looked out across the moor, and he swore. Rose Cottage was burning.
“I did a quick scout below. No one has been here or tried to enter,” Timothy said, “but I am assuming we are next. I am also assuming this is your grandfather.”
Jonathan’s jaw was tight. “Count on it.” He gripped the casement tightly. “That bastard will not quit. If we don’t find a way to stop him, stay him, or at least slow him down, there will be blood.”
Timothy paused. “I could slip out. I would be quick and clean.”
Assassination. That’s what Timothy was suggesting. Jonathan’s stomach doubled over at the thought, and he closed his eyes, holding up a hand of refusal. “It’s not possible. Not here. Not him. To start, it would make me Lord Whitby, something I’m not ready for. I would also be the first suspected.”
“You wouldn’t have done it, and I would leave no way to link myself to the crime. They can suspect you all they want; they’ll be able to prove nothing.” Timothy had clearly given this a lot of thought.
“They can build a case on circumstantial evidence here,” Jonathan explained. “Even being the most likely to have killed him could damn me.”
“Then we will leave before anyone can build a case.” Timothy nodded across the moor, at the east. “We’ll go o the coast and hire a ship, and we’ll go back to the Continent. We’ll leave and never return.”
“We’ll take them straight into a war zone,” Jonathan said, but his mind was already spinning away from him. They could go to the south. He and Timothy knew where the reef islands were, and they could call in the favor the hill shepherds owed them. Just a house big enough for them all, there on the sea, nothing but peace and quiet and no one trying to kill them.
But now Timothy’s hand was on his arm. “They are coming here. They aren’t even waiting.”
Jonathan snapped out of his South Continental fantasy and looked out to where Timothy pointed, to the edge where the forest met the moor. He saw a grubby-looking band of thugs, thirty strong, marching toward the abbey carrying torches and several great barrels of what was unquestionably oil.
“If we take pistols and get to the gardens ahead of them, we can take out most of them before they come through,” Timothy said, his voice tight. “Maybe we can use their own oil against them and burn them before they burn us.”
Jonathan was already moving to the door.
Madeline was sitting up as he burst back into the room. His heart was in his throat as he rummaged through his chest for his heaviest artillery, but when he spoke to her, he kept himself even and cool. “There’s trouble below,” he said, handing things to Timothy and strapping them onto himself. “Lock us out once we’re through, and leave for nothing.”
She was already rising from the bed. “What is it?”
He wanted to spare her, but he could not. “They’ve burned your cottage, and they’re coming for the abbey. Thirty men.”
She started, shocked. “Villagers? Parishioners?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure they come from Whitby.” He grimaced and buckled on the last knife. “He is after the cup. I’m sorry that I let him know you had it. I am so sorry.”
“You can’t stop thirty men,” she said. “Not on your own. Let me go with you.”
Goddess, no
. “Madeline, these are men with torches and barrels of oil.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“We could use her spells,” Timothy said. Jonathan wanted to choke him.
Madeline was already lacing her boots—Jonathan belatedly realized he had not yet donned his. He also still needed to piss. He reached for his boots and told his bladder it would have to wait a bit longer. “I don’t like this,” he said to Timothy.
“I’ve seen her work; she stays.” Timothy headed for the door. Madeline didn’t look at Jonathan as she followed. But as Timothy banged on the study door to give orders to Stephen, she stepped back and pulled Jonathan aside.
“I need to stay beside you,” she said quietly. Jonathan bit back the tart response that he had never intended otherwise and was glad he’d done so when she added, “And I will need to hold fast to one of your hands.” She blushed at his frown. “I have no guides, as you recall. If I require anything but the most minimal spell, I must ground. I have been able to use tricks and cheats to get by, but the chaos is too strong in me now. I will need you.”
Timothy reemerged from the study. “We move,” he said, and he headed the rest of the way down the stairs.
Only the knowledge that she had confessed her weakness with great cost to her pride kept Jonathan from pulling Madeline aside and demanding a fuller explanation. That and the fact that they had to rush out to meet the thugs coming to kill them. But his head swam with her words all the way through the halls and out the front door. And when she took his hand as they ran through the garden, he couldn’t hold back any longer.
“What do you mean, the chaos is too strong?” he asked.
“When I took my Apprentice vows, I was infused with part of the Source of the Craft. The guides monitored and balanced it. They do not do so in me any longer, and so I must do it myself.” She pointed to a path and nodded to Timothy. “This way. There is less debris, and it is shorter.”
“How can you get your guides back?” he dogged her as they ducked onto the new route. “How can this be fixed?”
“It can’t.” She tossed him a look that said plainly,
This is why I did not wish to bring it up.
He glared back with one that said,
Too late. Start talking.
“We have cover ahead,” Timothy said, pointing to an overgrown hedge of shrubbery. “This is our best position.”
Jonathan stopped her from following him. “Madeline—what will happen to you if you are not reunited with your guides?”
“This isn’t the time!” she hissed.
“Then tell me quickly,” he growled back.
“Stop, the both of you!” Timothy dragged them both into the shrubbery. “
Children
.”
“What happens,” Jonathan whispered. He held tight to her hand. “Tell me. Now.”
She flushed, but she was not glaring, only defeated, and the fear in her face as she lowered her eyes made him cold. “The witches’ Council will come for me, and I will be destroyed. I don’t know why they haven’t come yet, in fact. When I disobeyed the guides, I broke the covenant. That is not tolerated.”
“You disobeyed them for me,” he whispered. He felt sick. “Madeline—
why
?”
She looked up at him, still afraid but calm. “Were our situations reversed, what would you have done differently?”
Nothing
. But he couldn’t say it. He was having a difficult time breathing. He swallowed and gripped her hand tightly. “When we finish this,” he vowed, “I am taking you away. All of us—we’re going to the South Continent. I will take you away. I will keep you safe. I will not let them destroy you.”
He expected her to tell him she couldn’t, that it was her duty, that the Council would find them. He did not expect her eyes to go soft, nor did he anticipate that she would take his face in her hands and kiss him hard and fast directly on his lips.
“Hush,” Timothy said. “They’re close.”
She pulled back reluctantly, and Jonathan caught her for one more quick touch of her lips before he took up his position with her on the other side of the hedgerow, drawing and priming his pistol. At no time did he let go of her hand. They waited in silence, ready for the battle the second the men cleared the forest.
They never came.
All three of them startled at the first cry of alarm; by the time the chorus started and the cries turned to screams, they stepped onto the path and looked to the forest. Black fog was rolling down from the tops of the trees, falling on the men like a cloud. Jonathan and the others could not see what happened inside the darkness, but they could hear the snap and crunch of bones.
“Mathdu,” Timothy whispered.
“It’s the daemon—the Elliott daemon.” Madeline shook her head, taking a step backward, looking terrified. “It can’t… It
can’t
—”
Jonathan looked out across the garden, at the entire perimeter of the abbey, and he stepped back too, but farther, tugging Madeline with him. “It’s coming down everywhere. The fog is everywhere.” His insides twisted with new fear, and he swore. “Back. We fall back
now
.”
They ran at full speed. Timothy took Madeline’s other hand, and they moved as one through brambles and over ruined pathways, not looking back but looking too often to each side as the black come closer and closer. Jonathan’s heart stopped at the dark fingers coming together over the path before them, trapping them neatly together in the heart of the garden. Then he felt a sharp tingle down his arm and through his spine to his feet as Madeline began to chant. He knew a strange moment of silence before the world shut out for a fraction of a second, and then the magic streaked out of the center of her heart like blue fire.
The smoke roared, but it drew back, and they shot through. But as soon as they were flat against the door of the abbey, Madeline stopped them both and turned around again.
“I need you both to stand very still,” she shouted over the wind, which had risen up from nowhere and was now whipping around them. “I will draw on both of you. It will feel sharp, and there may be pain.” She tightened her grip on Jonathan. “I will fall unconscious when I’m through. Take me to the tower and let me rest, and I will be fine. I am going to seal us inside. I will seal the entire abbey.”
Timothy said nothing, only nodded wide-eyed as he watched the fog coming closer.
Jonathan bent and kissed her cheek, trying not to let his own terror show. “When you are ready,” he said into her ear.
The pain came like a knife, cutting him from his head to his toes. He pushed past it, holding still as she had told him, shutting his eyes. He saw a strange dark field open inside his mind, and he saw Madeline standing upon it, arms raised as a great dragon rose before her, dripping tar and flame. It reared back to strike her, and Jonathan went rigid, forcing himself motionless to keep from reaching for her. But as the beast drew in its great breath, Madeline shouted a stream of ancient words, and a wall of blue fire erupted from her hands. When the beast exhaled, its black fire danced along the surface of the great blue dome that arced up and encompassed them as she tumbled, unconscious, to the ground.
Jonathan opened his eyes and caught her before she hit, carrying her inside the abbey as the black fog pushed impotently against the invisible wall. But once inside, he passed her to Timothy.
“Take her upstairs,” he said hoarsely. “I will be up in a moment.”
Timothy, pale and shaking, did so with a curt nod. Jonathan watched them go, then turned and shut the door. He watched the fog through the windows as he fumbled down the hallway to the kitchen privy. He watched it choke out the windows one by one, rising higher against the walls of the abbey, clawing angrily at Madeline’s spell. He heard the roars and felt the shudders as the daemon-turned-demon in the fog slammed against the spell, and he worried it would fail to hold.
He kept the door open behind him as he pissed through the wooden hole and into the pit below. He thought of how much it had taken from Madeline to box them in like this. He knew without being told that they would not be getting out.
He thought of the witches’ Council, still moving toward them, determined to destroy her.
When Jonathan was finished, he tucked himself back into his trousers. Then he let out a shuddering sigh and leaned his body against the door, pressing his hand flat against the rough wood as he let his forehead fall forward in defeat.
Chapter Twelve
androghenie
heart-child
The androghenie are the third gender created by the Goddess.
They are the children of the union of the Lord and Lady.
Charles sat in a lumpy chair in the study, his hands in his lap as he listened to Madeline speaking to their motley crew gathered around the hearth. He was thinking right now would be a good time for a few drams and a stiff drink.
He kept one eye on the others and one on the fog as it retreated slowly back to the edge of the woods and the forest, and he
was
listening, but now that the heat of battle had died down and Timothy had wiped the hardest edges of his pain away, now he felt…unsettled. As if he could sense something dark coming, something terrible, something much, much darker even than the demon outside—something he didn’t understand and could not stop.
One dram, even, and a shot.
He tried again to focus on Madeline.
His sister
. She was very pale and her hands shook as she took a cup of tea from Emily, but she was conscious now at least. Jonathan sat beside her on the sofa; occasionally Charles saw him rest a hand on the center of her back, but he was discreet. Stephen was seated on a stool near the hearth, looking nearly catatonic with his fear, and Timothy paced like a tiger in the shadows near the door. He had a knife drawn, and he twirled it agitatedly between his fingers. Occasionally he looked over at Charles, but Charles could not read his expression.
Emily appeared before him with a small porcelain cup and saucer. “Tea,” she said, almost whispering. Timothy had tried to make her sit several times, but she seemed stronger and calmer when she was moving around, feeding them. Charles nodded thanks and took the cup, but he was glancing around for the bottle of brandy, which also made him think of baetlbeth.