A Charm of Magpies 03 Flight of Magpies (14 page)

The high window exploded inwards, with a shower of glass. Pastern went tumbling off the ledge and back, somersaulting in the air, as Jenny Saint plunged through, teeth bared and fingers like claws. Pastern leapt backwards and up, scrabbling for invisible handholds, and Saint reversed direction in mid-air with impossible grace and kicked him in the head, sending him hurtling away. He recovered himself and lunged for her. She dropped like a rock and ricocheted up from underneath him, snarling.

There was a rush of something invisible, and the battling windwalkers flew apart. Pastern hit the wall hard; Saint tumbled, grabbing at the air to catch herself. Lady Bruton stood, eyes angrily alight, arms stretched wide. Stephen looked at her, and then beyond, and had to stop himself from crying out.

While the aerial battle had transfixed everyone else, Crane had got his handcuffed arms in front of him, and they were now around Fairley’s neck. Crane was pulling back, using the iron chain between the cuffs as a garrotte, its links digging into the plump man’s throat. The Councillor jerked and thrashed, face livid with trapped blood, unable to fight back physically or magically. Crane’s face was set in a snarl of savage concentration, lips drawn back. Stephen rarely saw the Vaudrey family in his face any more—he saw only Lucien, himself alone, not his brutal father or murderous brother—but as he watched his lover throttle a man, the hated resemblance was there, stark and vicious, and Stephen was darkly glad of it.

The sketch.
The thought crashed into his mind. He looked over urgently to where Newhouse, the painter, stood quite still in an awkward pose, almost slumping. His hand, still holding the paper, lolled by his side, harmlessly, and the red muffler around his throat looked oddly wet. Stephen remembered that it had been white just as Newhouse slithered downwards to the floor and he saw Merrick behind the dead man, knife in hand.

Crane looked round, without releasing the man he throttled, and shouted, “Oi! Dead painter!”

Lady Bruton shrieked, a sound of sheer rage. She hauled back, dragging power to her, and sent a wave of force through the ether that set Stephen’s hairs standing on end even through the deadening iron. It was aimed at Crane, but Merrick was running to him, or at Fairley, and it was Merrick who was picked up and flung sideways by the etheric blow, rolling over and over, smoke and a smouldering smell rising instantly from his body.

Crane cried out in ferocious desperation, hauling back on the iron chain with sudden strength. A terrible satisfaction began to bloom on Lady Bruton’s face, but as she threw out her hand to attack again, there was a banshee scream and Jenny Saint crashed into her from above.

Saint had Bruton on the floor, lashing out with fists and knees. Crane was lifting Fairley right off his feet, bending back to take the man’s weight, arms curled up, biceps straining his sleeves to their limits. Fairley’s legs kicked desperately, and then there was a squeaking, squelching noise of cartilage and tearing flesh, and his head flopped too far forward.

Pastern, ignored by everyone else, was by the painter’s body. He rose now, standing with a blood-spattered sheet of paper in his hand. It was Crane’s pencil portrait, and sudden horror swept through Stephen.
No, Christ, no—

Before Stephen could cry out, the windwalker ripped the sketch in two.

Stephen screamed, a howl that tore his throat. It hurt, blindingly, far more than Lady Bruton’s attack. More than he had known anything could hurt.

He could not look. Crane’s death would be as horrifying as Rickaby’s, and anything he saw would be seared into his mind forever. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t bear it.

He had to.

Tears blurring his vision, Stephen forced his head round and saw Crane, with Fairley’s corpse at his feet, standing tall and whole, and staring at Pastern with an expression of outraged fury.

“You
shit
,” Crane said.

“It didn’t work. The painter’s dead and it
didn’t work
.” Pastern’s voice rang with unholy glee. “They’re just pictures now, so
you
, you can go to hell and rot there, you demented harpy—woah!” He leapt sideways, away from Lady Bruton’s etheric attack. She lashed out again as she rose, face bloody and teeth bared, leaving Saint crumpled on the ground. Pastern rocketed upwards, scrambling up the wall and away, and as he did so, he fumbled in his pocket and threw something at Crane. It hit the floor with a metallic chink, glinting gold.

Crane flung himself forward, snatching up the ring as it bounced. Lady Bruton screeched and leapt at him, hurling a wave of vicious power that Stephen could feel even through the numbing iron, that there was no way to stop now—

Crane shoved the ring onto his finger.

He’s never done that before
, Stephen thought dreamily, as the noise and movement and the smell of burning stopped.

Everything stopped. The air was thick and oily, shimmering with etheric force, and Stephen was standing in the middle of the room, a lot higher off the ground than usual, staring at Lady Bruton’s distorted, ruined face through Lucien’s eyes as she ran at him with dreamlike slowness. He could see the savage strike coming at them, feel the ether sleeting through his tall, powerful body.

We
, whispered Lucien, and Stephen’s mouth moved too, or perhaps it was the other way around, and Stephen reached out with his mind and swept the etheric attack away.

Lady Bruton’s scream rang dully in the slow air. Her hands reached for Lucien’s chest, crooked into talons for a killing strike, and Stephen, dreamlike and drifting, did what came naturally, and called on the magpies.

They erupted in a cloud of black spray with an oily shimmer to it, bursting from Lucien’s skin. Lady Bruton staggered back, clawing at her face, her fawn gloves instantly stained black, and then the cloud seemed to be drawn into her with her breath. She tried to scream, a sucking sound, but her mouth was full of black liquid that bubbled and gargled. Her wide eyes implored Stephen in terror for a second, and then they darkened, filled up with black and blue. Ink began to drool from the side of her mouth.

She’ll die.

Yes.

If we take the ring off…

No.

They stood and looked down as Lady Bruton choked and jerked and retched black and blue ink in a shimmering puddle on the floor, until her body slumped at last.

The power pulsed through them, shifting, fluttering. Stephen reached out tentatively and felt the rustle of feathers on his senses. He put pressure on the iron of the cuffs round Lucien’s wrists. The metal fell away, and they cried out as the Magpie Lord’s power lit up his descendant like a torch.

They didn’t hear anyone come in through the birds screaming in their ears, but they heard the voices, vaguely, from a distance.

“What the— Great Scott. Esther!”

“Hell’s teeth. What is it?”

“Oh God, it’s his lordship, he’s got that bloody ring on. Steph? Can you hear me? Steph!”

“Get it off him. Danny, get it off him
now
.”

“Don’t try,” Lucien/Stephen said, and two sets of lips moved, two voices spoke.

“Did you see that?” Dan Gold demanded, sounding more than a little frightened. “Oh sweet God, look at Steph’s eyes.”

“Look at Crane’s,” Esther said.

Stephen/Lucien looked. They saw the small form kneeling up on the dais, back stiff and rigid, eyes blazing magpies in his bruised face, so precious, so desirable, so much needed. They saw the tall man standing like a king, commanding the ether around him, every muscle and tendon tense with power, eyes black and white and blue. They saw Dan and Esther, staring at them, and at each other.

“We have to get it off,” Esther said.

“No,” the Magpie Lord said. “You will not.”

“I don’t think he wants—” Dan began, sounding just a little afraid, and Esther marched up to Lucien’s body. Her face was sallow and lined with exhaustion, her hair was greasy and tumbled, her dress was unflatteringly tight on her rounded stomach, and her deep brown eyes held an implacable determination.

“You two take that ring off right now,” she said, “or I am going to take this one’s hand off at the wrist, and you will have to kill me to stop me.”

The Magpie Lord’s blood surged at that—
who are you to give orders, you will not take this from me
—but even as his anger rose, Stephen struck out from within, forcing his own submerged, separate determination over the roiling power. The Magpie Lord’s indomitable, arrogant will hit Stephen’s own, dead on, but nobody would harm Esther while Stephen lived, and he stood rigid against the wave of command that rolled over him and broke.

Crane pulled off the ring and dropped it to the floor. He stood still for a fraction of a second, and then he folded at the knees, toppled slowly to the ground and started throwing up.

Stephen, abruptly back in himself on the dais, gasped for breath, clenching his fingers together in an effort to control his own stomach. The earlier beatings were nothing to this. His blood felt bruised. His hair hurt.

“Steph?” Esther demanded, hurrying over. “Are you all right?”

“Lucien—” he managed.

“No,
you
. Are you all right? If that’s not you in there—” She grabbed his face.

Stephen twisted away. “Fine. I’m fine. Really, Es.” She glared at him. He managed a weak smile. “Good I had iron on, just then.”

“Yes, just a little. Dear heaven, Steph, if I
ever
catch either of you putting that blasted thing on again—”

“You won’t,” Stephen said with soul-deep sincerity.

“Good.” She looked around. “What the devil happened here?”

“Just a moment.” Stephen braced himself, and used the fast-draining remnants of power to flick open the iron cuffs at his wrists and feet. It took disturbingly little effort.

Esther helped him stand, making a face. “Oh, Steph. You look terrible.”

“So do you. How on earth did you get here?”

“Well, we could scarcely stay home, with Mr. Merrick and Saint running off to the rescue,” Esther said. “But they moved faster than we did, and I had to stop twice to be sick.”

“Mr. Merrick,” Stephen said urgently, looking to where Dan Gold was kneeling over Merrick’s body. He took an unwary step off the dais, not realising how numbed his legs were after kneeling for so long, and almost fell. “Oh God. Mr. Merrick? Dan?”

“He’s fine,” Dan said, without looking up. “Inexplicably. Here, up you come.”

Merrick sat up with Dan’s help as Stephen approached. His face was blackened with smoke and his shirt was scorched and burned away, but under it his skin was unmarked—tattooed, scarred and smoke-stained, but whole. Around his neck hung a leather thong with the smouldering remnants of what looked like some kind of pouch. It reeked of spices.

“Vaudrey?” he mumbled.

“Undamaged. He just needs a moment’s peace.” Stephen could still hear Crane retching behind him. “How on earth did you survive that?”

“That thing round his neck seems to have deflected the attack,” Dan said. “What was it?”

Merrick shook his head, as if to clear it, and put his hand to the charred pouch. “This? Yu Len gave me it one time, back home. Protective, he said it was.”

“He was right,” Stephen said. “Good Lord. I thought we’d lost you.”

“Yeah? I thought we was all buggered, to be honest, sir. Fuck me, my head hurts. Where’s Jen?”

“Over here,” Esther said from behind them. “Dan, I need you for her.”

“Shit.” Merrick lurched to his feet as Dan hurried over to where Saint’s small form lay crumpled on the floor. Stephen grabbed his arm to steady him, and almost toppled over as he took the man’s weight. “Jen!”

“My sodding arm,” Saint said, voice thin. “Frank—”

Merrick dropped down by the girl. Stephen hesitated, and was firmly waved off by Dan Gold. “Go away, Steph, you’re radiating all kinds of uncomfortable things at me. Go and bother his lordship.”

“Yes, do that,” came Crane’s voice, somewhat raw, from behind, and Stephen turned and saw him.

Crane was hauling himself to his feet, away from where he’d been sick, wiping his mouth. He looked drawn and sweaty and about five years older, and Stephen didn’t even notice himself crossing the intervening space before he was in the man’s arms, inhaling him with every breath, feeling the ether roil around them. Crane wobbled and went back down to his knees, and they clutched each other on the dusty floor.

“Christ,” Crane said at last. “Is it always like that? I feel as though someone worked me over with an iron bar.”

“It is never like that,” Stephen assured him. “Don’t put that ring on again.”

“I thought it might go in the bank vault.”

Stephen’s ideas had run more to locking the damned thing in an iron chest, welding it shut and throwing it in the Thames, but he nodded. “Don’t even pick it up now, we’ll get Mr. Merrick to do that. He’s fine,” he added, reading Crane’s look. “I think Saint’s got a broken arm, but Dan can handle that. How on earth did you manage to get them here?”

“A lot of luck.” Crane brushed a damp straggle of curls from Stephen’s face. “Merrick and Saint went to be shouted at by Mrs. Gold this morning. I also went for a word with Dr. Gold, so I was there when Pastern accosted me. My lawyers’ agents had found Lady Bruton’s whereabouts this morning, and I had the address. So I passed the papers to the nurse there to be given to Dr. Gold at once and then to Merrick, and I made sure she heard me name Pastern. Then I just had to hope that Merrick would realise I’d passed all that on for a reason. And that he and Miss Saint were still there. And that my agents had been right about the address. And that I could delay Pastern long enough to let Merrick get in place and work out what to do before I arrived, without Lady Bruton losing the remnants of her sanity and killing you. Oh Jesus.” He pulled Stephen forward, fingers tight on his shoulders. “I can’t do this any more. I’m sorry. You’ve brought me to my fucking knees. I can’t…”

His expression was raw. Stephen stared at him, fear clutching at his throat. “What? Lucien, what are you saying?”