House of Corruption (20 page)

“I still have questions.”

“Tomorrow.”

He approached the door and she closed it, softly, listening to his breath and restless movement on the carpet. He was not a man to be ordered about, especially from her. Would he scream and tear at the latch? Would he rail at the servants and smash bottles against the fireplace? She had seen what Basta’s Legacy had done to her father—was Reynard LaCroix just as tormented? Would he rise up like a wild animal?

“Miss Carlovec,” he said through the door.

Go away
.

“You have not been honest with me.”

“I told you the truth,” she said.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Leave me alone.”

“This is my sister we are—!” He caught himself, lowering his voice. “There is a private balcony at the end of this hall. Meet me there in five minutes.”

“That is not—”

“Five minutes.”

“I will not be ordered about,” Kiria said, throwing open the door. It startled him. “There is nothing I can say that will satisfy you. I am as much a victim as—”

“We are here because of you.”

“We are here because you refused me.”

“I refused you,” Reynard said, his voice rising, “because your journey was marked by murder. Two men are dead. My sister is captive. You have seen what this creature is capable. How could you have traveled so long, so far with your valet and not suspect something?”

“I told you.”

“You’ve told me nothing, Miss—”

“I do not approve of your tone,” she said. “Since you continue to refuse my requests, let me be frank. You have treated me with disdain from the very first. You have offered me naught but doubt and suspicion. Mister Savoy and Mister Grant have accepted my story, but you speak to me only when you wish to order me about, or rail on me for offences I did not commit. There is nothing I can say that will satisfy you.”

“How did you learn about me?” he asked. “About my condition?”

“My father,” she said.

“How did he know?”

“Leave me alone.”

She shut the door hard, latched it.

“Tell me!” he cried on the other side.

Her heart hammered so hard against her chest she could feel it in her throat. She heard him move. She reached for an iron-wrought chair, forcing it up against the doorknob, expecting the door to thud, the hinges to squeal as he forced his body against it. She waited like a taut wire, expecting the doorjamb to break and the chair to spin away.

Nothing happened. She sat on the edge of her bed. She felt Reynard’s anger and frustration as bitterly as her own. She wanted to scream at his rudeness, his brazen indifference and lack of manners. She wanted to beg his forgiveness. She wanted to tell him he was a fool, a cruel, heartless fool at his the presumption that she was responsible for all his troubles.

But he was right. He was
right
!

What could she tell him? Nameless fears? Nightmares of dark stairs and a cavernous hell full of bones? She had agreed to her father’s mandate, her eyes wide shut, because it was her family—the very survival of the Carlovec line—that mattered. It was not her father she was trying to save, but herself, forever safe from Basta’s dreadful curse. How could she admit that every moment in Reynard’s presence—every
moment
—filled her with a choking dread, as she waited for his passions to consume him?

What could she say to him?

She removed her slippers and robe and crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up tight to her chin. She listened to Reynard pacing in the hallway.

Let him rail
.
Let him pout
!

She envisioned him grabbing the knob and leaning his shoulder into the door, shoving until the latch broke. She imagined his body standing in the doorway. She thought what she might say, how she might scream. Perhaps he would cross that invisible barrier, put his hands upon her shoulders and throw her onto the mattress. She considered the musky smell of his neck, the faint aroma of vodka and cologne, and wondered if his hands were soft.

What if he did
, she thought.

What if he did?

She clutched her pillow tight and willed him to leave.

Just leave
.

Reynard would have pounded his fists into the wall if it did not mean waking half the floor. The tension in his neck and arms had no release. Why did she refuse to speak with him?

He suddenly realized what she must have thought.

It’s not what I meant
.

The damage was done. She must have thought him a drunken lout, red-faced with lust, a genuine bastard. Here he was, standing alone in the hotel hallway, confused and stupid and angry. He considered how things had gone so badly. When it came to speaking with the female sex, it did not matter what was said. He always managed to offend them.

He placed his hand into his pocket, his fingers brushing against the misshapen remains of the silver bullet. Of
course
she thought he was drunk; he smelled like the floor of a gin parlor. Would she believe him if he said he spent most of his time just sitting, nursing drinks he never finished, preoccupied with his thoughts?

He went to his room, adjacent to hers. His luggage sat at the foot of his bed, a peppermint and card of welcome resting on his pillow. One of the windows had been pulled up halfway, allowing in cool air. He poured water into a china basin, washed his face, pushing his head into the water until his nose pressed against the bottom. To bury himself in water and never surface—it was a comforting thought.

With his towel around his neck he collapsed upon the bed and kicked his shoes to the floor. He did not bother to undress. He crunched on the peppermint and tossed the welcome card aside.

Sleep caught him without his knowing. Dreams came as a dull, heavy fog of shapeless colors. He saw a forest of tall stones, misshapen tombs rising from the mist, sepulchers carved with granite faces of cherubs staring with dead eyes. Stone angels wept, faces half-hidden by their hands, their wide, pale eyes staring at him through their fingers.

His dream-hands found the metal chain around his neck, the one holding the silver cross Savoy had given him; his skin felt warm where it rested against his flesh. Or was it the bullet, burning its hot-poker fire in his heart? Or was it the scratching, the incessant raking of claws in the back of his brain?

Renny
.

Half-formed pictures came and went: shapes of women in white dresses, hands on his face and neck and chest, and the outlines of dead faces under black sheets—a nebulous chain of incomprehensible phantasms.

Renny
.

He dreamed of a little girl, or the idea of a little girl, for he could not see her face. At times she stood as tall as he, then she became a tiny shadow on a very wide wall. He focused on her voice, concentrated on it, so he might see her clearly.

Renny
.

He opened his eyes.

He recognized his hotel room, the fireplace and sitting chairs to his right, the window to his left. Outside he heard the clopping of hooves and the rattle of a coach, fading, the cracking of a crop, the
clack clack clack
of shoes. Then it grew silent as if the city held its breath.

He looked again.

A woman stood at the foot of his bed.

The lights of the street refused to play across her, but he knew it was his sister. This did not surprise him; she often visited his dreams. At first he thought she was ten years old again, but when he blinked he she wore her long, frilly nightdress with its high collar and long sleeves, her golden hair loose behind her shoulders. He could not see her feet, but he suspected she wore her favorite pair of white-and-pink striped stockings.

“Lasha?” he asked.

Help me
.

“Where are you?”

Pray for me, Renny.

At the feet of Our Lady
.

There was much he wanted to say, to beg forgiveness, to convince her what she thought she saw in Metairie was not true. He wanted to declare that
yes
, the curse had him, but he was not a monster. He would cross the world to bring her home. He was not a monster. He would never hurt her. He had hurt others, yes, but never her.

Pray, Renny
.
Pray beneath Our Good Mother’s feet
.

Blood surged from the crook of her neck, down her white nightdress, fingering in long tendrils across her bodice, dripping until blood pooled at her feet. When she inhaled she gasped, the color in her skin so pale it was translucent, the bones of her skull gaping.

“Lasha!”

It hurts
.

Reynard sat up. “Lasha!”

Please
.

The skin of her face melted, nose and lips and eyebrows sliding off her head like hot wax to expose a mummified mask—lipless, ancient, skin pulled taut against her skull like a thin veil of silk. Her neck arched backwards with a crack, her muscles tightening. She lifted from the floor, a twisted mannequin on invisible strings.

On the shore of the River of Death
—

“Lasha! Where are you?”

—
Pray for me.

“Lasha!”

Reynard slid off the bed. She was gone. He stood dumbfounded, yet absolutely certain he had seen his sister. He touched his sweaty face and felt tears on his cheeks, and when he inhaled he smelled Lasha’s scent. It had felt so real. It had to be.

Pray
.

He knew exactly where she wanted him to go. Our Lady. A little more than a mile from their hotel stood the tallest hill of the city where, at its crest, waited the basilica
Notre Dame de la Garde
. It had been build upon a great spike of limestone, its foundations set into much older fortifications. Upon its highest tower stood the gilded statue of Mother Mary with the Christ Child in her arms. Our Lady kept guard over the sea and, for reasons yet unknown, Lasha wanted him there.

You are mad
.

Perhaps, he considered as he slipped on his shoes, but it was something. Something. Even if the horror aboard the
Kalabakang
had fractured his mind into pieces, he would rather follow the bidding of a hallucination than lie there helpless, grief-stricken, wondering every day if his sister—the last hope for the LaCroix Family—might be gone forever.

He left his room, closed the door quietly.

“I’m coming.”

21

He ran along Marseille’s dark streets, aiming for the tall hill where the basilica shone at its peak. He crossed an empty avenue and plunged into the scrubby pines of the hillside, the
Bois Sacré
, following a trail hundreds of years old. He knew the way well enough, having climbed it many times in his youth. He trusted his instincts as he raced up the broken path, back and forth up steep grades.

At the top of the hill he continued up the white steps of the stone fort—the foundation upon which the basilica had been built—and crossed the broad esplanade. He avoided the glow of electric lanterns, splashed across the basilica’s outer walls. With its alternating bands of light- and dark-colored stone, its large dome, the tall belltower capped with the golden statue of Mary holding Her Child, the church stood as a symbol of Marseille’s disparate personality: a blend of Roman Catholic and Byzantine, old world and new.

At the front entrance Reynard gazed at the familiar statues of the prophet Isaiah and Saint John the Apostle. They watched as he dared cross the threshold beneath the tympanum. He felt like a criminal.

I do not belong here
.

He
was
a criminal, invading this sacred place.

Yet he
had
been invited, hadn’t he?

He pushed against the bronze doors. They were unlocked. That should have worried him, but as they opened soundlessly, drawn forward with a strange feeling of inevitability, he moved inside. Diffused light illuminated the chapel proper, but the inverted dome and the many mosaics above his head were completely invisible. The basilica chapel felt vast in its darkness. Along the walls hung small wooden boats, photos of sailors, scraps of sails or ribbons or trinkets or old paintings, offerings of those who prayed for safe passage on the sea.

He found the tower stairwell and climbed the steps. It was a long walk, over a hundred feet past the belfry and its silent bells to emerge outside again—the Angel’s Terrace, where an angelic statue blew a trumpet at each corner. Reynard paused to catch his breath, his lungs burning. The lights of Marseille, far below, surrounded him like so many pale stars. Beyond the coastline lay a scattering of bare, rugged islands where the Mediterranean black stretched away and disappeared.

Rising in the center of the terrace lay a giant pedestal surrounded by columns, forty feet tall or more. At its top stood the massive golden statues of Mary holding the infant Christ. They gazed over the sea, indifferent to his presence.

Pray at Her feet
.

Reynard skirted the pedestal and found another unlocked door; he passed inside and climbed a short stair to a tall, cylindrical chamber. Cold air slid from between the columns. He had expected a lighthouse, a large bell, an altar,
something
—not a bare room exposed to the wind. A good leap between a pair of columns, he considered, and he could sail over the terrace rail and recite the alphabet before his head splattered across the esplanade.

He looked up, imagining the soles of Mary’s gilded feet.

Here I am
.

Fool. He was a fool! He had come all this way, only to stir from some waking dream. He considered his hands, at the city lights beyond the columns, the wind biting against his face. A nightmare. He thought certain it was Lasha, thought sure he had seen her, heard her voice. It had felt so real.

She’s dead
, came the despair.
She’s dead.

Emptiness filled the hole where his heart should have been. He put his hand into his pocket and gripped the silver bullet, squeezing it tight as if to leech the silver into his skin.