Immortal Muse (44 page)

Emily found that she wanted to put a perfumed handkerchief over her nose against the stench of the place, but her dress and bearing, and the fact that she'd arrived in a hansom (which had taken off as hurriedly as it had come) were already attracting too much attention. There was evidently a wake underway in a building across the street from the brewery, with people in mourning dress descending a stairway liberally draped with cheap black crepe.

There were two men leaning against the supports of the open brewery door with their arms crossed over their chests. They pushed off with their shoulders and started purposefully toward Emily at the same moment that she noticed them. They, like Emily, were dressed too well for the area, both of them wearing worsted suits with collars and ties, and fashionable bowler hats. Their shoes were polished. The eagerness in their eyes as they approached made her stop. She reached into her reticule and pulled out her pistol. She deliberately and showily cocked the weapon, pointing it at the nearest of the two.

At the sight of her brandishing the weapon, the men on the stoop stood up and hurried up the steps; the children stopped their play and pointed. But the two men both laughed. “Are we supposed to be afraid, Miss Pauls?” the closest one asked. He spread his hands, exposing the starched white shirt with a waxed collar under his coat. “Don't you know you can't kill me with that.”

Her answer was to press the trigger. The pistol bucked in her hand with a puff of noxious smoke and the smell of gunpowder assaulted her nostrils. The man clutched at his chest as blood bloomed on the white shirt. He looked at her startled, and went down. She cocked the second barrel, sliding her finger down to its trigger. “Your turn,” she said to the other man as he hesitated, looking at his companion; she fired again. He crumpled to join his companion on the street. She reloaded the pistol as she walked over the bodies toward the open door. There, she hesitated. The smell of hops, yeast, and alcohol was nearly overpowering in the dim room beyond, crowded with tall vats and teetering racks stacked with bags of barley, various malts, and hops. After the gunfire, there was no need for stealth. “Polidori!” she called into the brewery. “Nicolas!”

She heard movement behind her and laughter above. A shoe scraped wood at the doorway and she turned. Both of the men she'd just shot were standing there, their shirts bloodied, their jackets and pants filthy from the muck in the street, but very much alive. Again.

She knew why: Nicolas had given these men the version of the elixir written down in her ancient notebook. As it had for her mice, it rejuvenated them if injured—at least for a time.

Which was one of the reasons she'd reloaded her pistol. She cocked it again even as she turned, firing once, then recocking and firing again, her wrist sore from the savage recoils. Both men staggered and dropped once more, and she looked around the brewery quickly, not certain what she was looking for but knowing when she saw it: an ax, leaning against the wall near one of the racks, the blade gleaming from having been recently sharpened. She lifted the ax, grunting at the weight of the steel, and went over to where the two men lay. One's eyes were still closed and he didn't yet appear to be breathing; the other was groaning and glaring at her. He spat at her as she approached. “You're a fool,” he told her. “You can't kill us.”

She shook her head at him, sadly. “If that were true, there'd be no hope at all,” she answered. “Forgive me.”

He tried to rise up, but she swung the ax at the same moment, the massive weight of steel driving into his neck even as he tried to turn. Blood spattered out as the head lolled on the shoulder, half-shorn from the neck. She could see the white of the spine in the deep wound. She raised the ax again and brought it down with all the strength she could muster. The blade bit into the wooden floor as the head rolled clear. The amount of blood surprised and horrified Emily, much of it flying back to spatter on her clothing. She could smell it: an iron tang in the air. The severed head gaped at her, the mouth open in a silent scream. Most horrifyingly, the eyes blinked once at her before closing forever.

Emily felt the gorge rising in her throat, burning. Her stomach turned and she had to hold back the vomit that threatened to spill. She retched, spitting. The head lay at her feet like an accusation.

Emily sobbed as she lifted the ax again in arms that now seemed leaden and uncooperative. She stood over the other man, wondering if she could really do this again. She brought the ax down hard. This time, one stroke accomplished the feat: the head rolled away a few feet as blood fountained and spilled in a great, dark mass on the floor, dripping through the gaps in the floorboards. She left the ax there, the handle at an angle and the blade stuck in the planks of the floor.

She could come back for it later. For Nicolas.

Deeper within the brewery, someone applauded, the sound echoing down the open staircase at the rear of the building. Emily moved that way, her hand now on the small flasks in the pocket of her cloak. “Nicely done . . .” Nicolas' voice seemed to shimmer in air as she reached the bottom of the stair. She looked up to a large, high-ceilinged room crowded with massive wooden-slatted vats and piping, and the huge casks upwards of twenty feet in height. “They were such exquisitely nourishing deaths, too,” he added as she began to climb, the stairs creaking under her weight. “I didn't think you were capable of such savagery, my dear.” As she approached the top of the stairs, Emily prepared the simple warding spell in her mind—certain that Nicolas would attack her quickly as soon as she was in sight, before she could do anything with her own preparations. She hoped it would be enough to turn whatever spell he cast; the preparation had been exhausting enough for her. She reached the top stair. She caught a glimpse of a chair and a woman tied there: Catherine, though there was something wrong with her appearance that Emily couldn't quite place. Catherine inclined with her head toward the nearest vat.

“As I told you, we're quite alike.” With the words, Nicolas stepped into view from behind the vat. She heard him speak a quick phrase in Arabic and lift his hands. Emily spoke the warding spell in the same moment and raised one of the flasks to throw toward him, but her barrier couldn't hold against the rumbling darkness that slammed into her and bore her down.

 * * * 

“
No, she's not dead, Mrs. Blake,” she heard Nicolas' voice saying as she returned to consciousness. “You needn't worry yourself. It will take more than that to kill her.”

Emily opened her eyes enough to look through her lashes but remained still. Nicolas was standing next to the chair to which Catherine had been tied. Emily saw now what had made her wonder at Catherine's appearance: her graying hair was now a rich, dark brown, and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth had vanished. Emily felt despair at the implications: Nicolas had already given Catherine the elixir—
his
elixir. He had given her youth, but he had also guaranteed her an agonizing death.

The black lightning had burned and scorched Emily's clothing; she could feel that her skin was blistered and raw, and the stench of brimstone and smoke filled her nostrils. Now that she was fully conscious again, it was difficult not to scream from the pain that she felt. Her hand was trapped underneath her body, near the flasks. She tried to unclench her fingers, to lift herself enough to put her hand in the pocket without Nicolas noticing.

The pain of movement was a new fire. She couldn't keep inside the shriek that tore from her throat, echoing among the huge vats.

“There, you see, Mrs. Blake?” Nicolas said casually. “She's returned to us already. Miss Pauls, you seem somewhat charred, my dear. I do apologize, but I had to make my point.”

The cloth against her skin felt like she was dragging her hand over a steel file as she reached into her pocket, still trying to hide the motion from Nicolas. She could barely feel the smooth ceramic of the flasks or the cork that stoppered them. She wondered whether she could summon the flame spell that would also be necessary, whether she could drag the words from a mind overwhelmed with just trying to deal with the pain.

“What have you done, Nicolas?” she managed to grate out. Her throat was raw, as if she'd swallowed fire. “You promised me that you wouldn't harm Catherine if I came here.”

“Harm her?” Nicolas answered. “Why, I've given her back her youth, haven't I? She'll have that for the rest of her life, even if that's unlikely to be all that long.” He laughed again. “We're the same, after all. We're both beyond promises, Perenelle. We're beyond
any
morality and any laws. We needn't bow to any mere mortal's concept of right or wrong.”

“You're mortal, Nicolas,” Emily spat. “
I
know how to kill you.” She forced her hand to close around one of the flasks. She wondered whether she could throw it hard enough to break it.

“As you've just demonstrated with my friends downstairs,” Nicolas acknowledged. “But we are decidedly not ‘mere,' my dear. We are extraordinary.” He moved to stand alongside the chair to which Catherine was bound. “What's also extraordinary is the amount of torment someone can withstand before they simply go mad from the experience. Perhaps your friend would care to demonstrate for you.” Nicolas produced a folding razor from underneath his jacket. “Why, now that she's tasted the elixir herself, I could flay Mrs. Blake alive, ever so slowly, timing each cut so that the first is starting to heal even as I start the next. Can you imagine how that might feel, Perenelle, knowing that the torture could conceivably last for as long as I wish it to last?”

She saw Catherine's eyes widen. “No,” the woman breathed, the word nearly a sob. “Please, in God's name, don't.”

Nicolas smiled down at Catherine as Emily watched. “I love it when they beg. It only makes the pain sweeter.” Then he looked at Emily. At Perenelle. “I asked you to give me the true elixir,” he said. “Have you changed your mind, my dear?”

Emily shook her head. “I can't.” She looked more at Catherine than Nicolas, desperate.

“Can't? Oh, I'm afraid that's the wrong word. You mean you won't—because it
is
a choice you're capable of making. Very well, then; I'll see if I can change your mind.” He lifted the razor and placed it against Catherine's neck. He slid it slowly downward, a thick line of red following, her skin parting and gaping in the wake.

“No!” Emily pulled her hand from the pocket, ignoring the pain. She brought her arm back and threw the flask. It landed several feet away from Nicolas, near the foot of one of the vats, breaking into several pieces. She could see the dark powder spilled on the floor.

Nicolas chuckled, glancing back at the flask. “A poor throw,” he said. “Really, I thought better of you . . .”

He stopped as Emily spoke a single Arabic word:
“Nahr!”
A small flame bloomed in the palm of her hand, and she threw that as she'd thrown the flask: as Nicolas dropped the razor, as he started his own counter spell. The flame hissed in the air and touched the powder on the floor.

The flash blinded her, the concussion made her scream again. As Emily blinked, as she forced herself from the floor, she heard the groan of the metal supports around the vat, heard the
ping-ping-ping
as rivets shot away from the over-stressed iron bands. Then, in a moment that seemed to stretch impossibly, the slats pushed outward, the entire floor groaning as the vat collapsed, as the heavy weight of the thousands of gallons of porter it contained struck the vats alongside it, and they too collapsed like a line of bone stick tiles on a gaming table. Nicolas, nearest to the first vat, was overwhelmed in a foaming brown flood, his arms upraised. The building shook and seemed to shriek as if mortally wounded as the remaining vats went with the first. A wave of seething porter engulfed them all, the floor collapsing underneath them, the flood bearing Emily away. She fought for air, her mouth and nose full of the stench of beer. In the torrent, she glimpsed Catherine, still bound to her chair, and she reached for her, caught the chair with a hand and managed to hold on as the new, raging river battered them. They struck something—one of the shelves from the lower room?—and she very nearly lost consciousness again. Emily was shouting, but she couldn't hear her voice against the sound of the flood . . .

... She glimpsed light; she gulped air, then went under again. Rocks (cobblestones? Were they in the street?) tore at her dress and skin. Catherine's chair hit something hard, breaking off one of its legs. The world rushed by them, or they were hurled through it, bouncing and rebounding from buildings and carriages, battered and beaten. Emily felt her right arm strike a metal pole, heard the snap of bone, and she screamed, taking in a mouthful of beer. She couldn't breathe, could no longer hold onto Catherine or the chair . . .

... But the tumult was passing, depositing her broken and gasping on the street two blocks away from the brewery, the street still running with an ankle-deep stream of beer. The world slowly came back into focus: she could hear people screaming and shouting all around her, and the shrilling of police whistles. The street reeked of porter; it pooled in the cobbles, potholes, and gutters of the street. Several of the houses nearby looked to have been destroyed; one of them was afire despite the flood; in the light of the flames, she could see bodies on the street around them: limp and drowned. People were dragging themselves from the rubble. She could see the chair and Catherine, across the street. Emily forced herself to stand, to limp over to her. “Catherine?” She thought for a moment that the woman wasn't breathing, then Catherine's eyes opened and she took in a deep, gasping gulp of air before throwing up an immense quantity of beer. Emily tore at the remnants of the woman's bonds with her good hand. She helped Catherine up: her clothing ruined, drenched, her hair plastered to her face, the wound inflicted by Nicolas' razor still gaping and flowing red, but already starting to close.