A Temptation of Angels

Helen continued her march through the cavernous kitchen, heading for a door at the end of the room. “You most certainly will. We’ll get you a bucket and some fresh rags and you’ll be on your way.”

  She was at the door, a sigh of relief already building in her lungs, when a curt voice stopped her.

  “And who, pray tell, are you?”

  Griffin stiffened beside her, one hand on his sickle, as Helen turned to find an older women glaring at her with shrewd eyes. She was the same one who had given Maude a dressing-down outside the kitchen.

  Helen composed her face into what she hoped was a mask of serenity. “I’m Helen, of course.”

  “Helen?” The old woman’s forehead crinkled with disdain. “And who would that be?”

  “The agency sent me?” Helen looked her directly in the eyes, steadying her voice. “Earlier this evening?”

  “The agency?”

  Helen nodded. “Master Alsorta is quite upset about the carriage. I’ve been instructed to give the men washing supplies immediately.”

  The woman stared at her with a puzzled expression as the silence stretched between them. Helen was already marking the exits to the room when the older woman nodded.

  “See it done, then. It won’t do to keep the Master waiting.”

  Helen nodded, turning and slipping from the door with Griffin on her heels. They kept walking even after the door shut behind them. Helen held her head high until she found a shadowed alcove. Then, she stepped into it, leaned against the wall, and nearly fainted with relief.

  “I cannot believe you just did that.” Griffin lay his head back against the wall next to her, his voice was disbelieving. “That was…” He started to chuckle. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “That wasn’t amazing. Getting out of here with Alsorta will be amazing.” She smiled, whispering. “But thank you.”

  Safe from the wrath of the kitchen crone, Helen peered out of the alcove, trying to get her bearings. A long hallway extended toward the entry in the distance, and though she could not be sure of much else, she knew they were not in servants’ quarters. The rugs and furniture were far too fine.

  A clatter across the hall made them jump, and they leaned back into the shadows.

  “Tsk!” It was the voice of the crone, and Helen wondered that it could strike fear in even her own heart when the woman had no control over her whatsoever. “Where on Earth have you been? Do you think the Master wants to shave with cold water? You’re going to hear it now! And with good reason!”

  “I’m sorry,” a small, familiar voice said. “I’ll get it upstairs right away, ma’am.”

  Maude scuttled out of the kitchen with a basin of water, letting the door swing shut behind her as she headed in the opposite direction of the front door.

  “Back stairs?” Helen whispered to Griffin.

  He nodded.

  They waited until Maude’s hurried footsteps faded before daring to follow. The hallway was empty, and they made their way with haste to the back of the house. Helen called to mind the drawing they had used to plot strategy. She saw the long, central hallway in which they now stood, the various rooms set to the left and right. At the back was a large mudroom. If Helen remembered correctly—and she almost always did—the servants’ stairs would be there.

  “This way,” she said, turning left at the end of the hall.

  Griffin followed, either because he truly trusted Helen’s instincts or because he didn’t have a better idea. Helen couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t matter. The mudroom was at the end of the back hall, and just as Helen remembered, a dark, narrow staircase was set into the wall.

  Griffin gazed upward into the darkness. “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  “Stay close,” he said.

  “What about Darius?”

  “He can take care of himself. We’ll find Alsorta and wait until Darius can join us. I have a feeling it will take all of us to bring him in.”

  He started up the stairs without another word. Helen followed, wondering how the servants made their way up and down such a poorly lit stairwell. Save for one flickering sconce halfway up, there wasn’t a single source of illumination. She had never been in the back staircase of her own home but she found herself wondering if her family’s servants had been forced to navigate the house in such conditions. She sincerely hoped not.

  Helen was relieved when they arrived at the top of the steps without encountering any of the staff. There would have been no way to avoid them, and while she had been able to fool the old woman in the kitchen, Helen was willing to bet their presence would have raised suspicion with the other servants who probably knew their coworkers by name.

  Griffin stopped at the top, looking both ways before waving her forward. They emerged into another hall, this one so richly outfitted that the entire floor seemed like a cocoon. The carpets were thick underfoot, the furniture ornately carved and gleaming. The effect was one of utter isolation from the rest of the world. It was almost possible to believe the house lay in a universe all its own, completely separate from the noise and crime and soot of London.

  Bending to the floor, Griffin touched his fingers to a wet spot on the carpet before gesturing for Helen to follow him toward the back of the house. He led her quickly past the closed doors along the hall. She did not ask if he knew where he was going, but when he stopped at a half-open door at the end of the hall, she looked down and understood.

  Droplets of water beaded on the wood floor where the carpets came to an end. Looking back, she noticed the darker spots leading to the back of the hall and knew the girl with the basin of water had come this way.

  Griffin’s eyes widened as voices sounded from within the room. They both leaned back against the wall, listening. They were completely exposed. There was no alcove in which to hide. No shadowed corner. If someone emerged from the room, they would be seen. For the first time since they had descended into the tunnel, Helen allowed herself to imagine what they would do if they were caught before Darius found them. There were surely windows through which they could climb, but it was unlikely that they would escape the sprawling grounds if Alsorta was still able to give orders to his men.

  Griffin crossed carefully to the other side of the door frame so that they could both peer through the opening. Helen leaned toward it, Griffin’s head only inches from hers as they tried to see inside without making any noise. She could only see a fraction of the room. An ornate, damask paper covering the walls. A wardrobe and washstand near a window. And a hand, dipping rhythmically into the basin, something clinking softly against the ironstone.

  “Did I miss anything?”

  Helen clamped a hand over her mouth, barely preventing the scream that threatened to escape as the voice sounded near her ear.

  Turning to Darius’s grinning face, she swatted his arm silently, scowling but not daring to say anything aloud. Griffin put a finger to his lips, pointing his brother toward the room.

  “Do we know how many are in there?” Darius whispered, close to her ear.

  She shook her head, leaning toward him. “Just a maid, I think. But we can’t be certain.”

  Before Helen could protest, Darius leaned toward the door, nudging it with his toe. To her relief, it opened a few more inches without a sound.

  They leaned farther in, now catching sight of a man, sitting in a chair with his back to the door. It was Alsorta. Helen was sure of it, even from her limited vantage point. His hair was graying as it was in the photographs Galizur had shown them, and the rigid line of his back spoke to the power he was accustomed to wielding over others.

  The maid stood by with a towel as an elderly gentleman silently wielded a razor. He ran it along one side of Alsorta’s face before dipping it back into the water, and moving to the back of the man’s head.

  Running a brush in circles across Alsorta’s skin, the older gentleman scraped the razor along the back of his neck. Helen leaned in a couple of inches closer, wondering if s
he was imagining the image slowly being revealed by the razor. But no. There was something there. Or part of something, perhaps. She waited as the barber wet the razor once more, running it smoothly over the man’s neck, revealing another piece of the picture.

  Helen peered curiously at it, trying to figure what it was. A… dragon? She thought it was a dragon etched into his skin. Or something like it. It looked to be surrounded by flames.

  She was turning to ask one of the brothers about it when she noticed Darius, backing up along the hallway, still facing the room as if he were afraid to turn his back on it.

  Griffin grabbed her hand, pulling her from the doorway as she tried to escape his grip, wondering why on Earth they would want to leave when they hadn’t even attempted their mission.

  And if all of this was not enough to give her pause, to make her heart slam against her chest like a frightened animal, the look in Darius’s eyes as he backed away was.

  It was not anger. Not sarcasm or bitterness or hatred. Any of these she would have welcomed. This time there was something new in Darius’s face. Something she had never seen before.

  Fear.

  TWENTY-NINE

  She shook her head as Griffin tugged her farther from the door.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, too confused to be silent. “Alsorta’s right there. He’s right there, Griffin.”

  They were twenty feet from the door, and still they were backing away carefully, as if trying to escape a rabid dog.

  “You don’t understand,” Griffin finally whispered hotly. “We have to get out of here right now.”

  “But what about Alsorta?”

  He shook his head. “We made a mistake. This isn’t something we can do alone.”

  But she had hidden too many times in the past. Had kept herself safe within the walls of her home as it—and her parents—had burned around her. She couldn’t hide anymore.

  “The man responsible for killing our parents is in there.” She pulled her arm away from his hand. “I’m not going unless you give me a good reason.”

  He bent down until his face was close to hers. “That’s not Alsorta.”

  She looked back toward the door. “What… What do you mean? It’s him. It is. This is his house.”

  “This is Victor Alsorta’s house and that… thing in there calls himself Victor Alsorta, but he’s not a man, Helen. He’s something else. Something far worse and far more dangerous.”

  “What?” She looked up into his face, not understanding at all. “What is he, Griffin?”

  He spoke in a ferocious whisper. “That symbol on his neck brands him as Alastor, one of the Legion’s most deadly demons and a member of the Blackguard. We’re not equipped to fight him,” he continued. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Griffin.” Darius’s voice was a warning from down the hall.

  Griffin nodded at his brother before turning back to Helen. “We have to get out of here. We’ll regroup and come back, I promise, but we have to leave now before we’re discovered.”

  The plea in his eyes told her he was telling the truth. Besides, in the short time she had known the brothers, she had never known them to back down from a fight. That they were doing so now told her much of what she needed to know.

  “Okay, but we’re coming back,” she insisted.

  He nodded, already pulling her toward Darius, now halfway to the staircase. He was still stepping backward, his eye on the half-open door at the end of the hall, when his boot came down on a creaky floorboard. The sound cut through the silence, and they froze, looking at each other with panic in their eyes before glancing back at the door.

  Helen cast a glance at the staircase. They were close enough to it now that it would be their best bet for an escape. There had been an exterior door in the mudroom. If they ran down the stairs and managed to get out the door without being caught, they stood a decent chance of making it into the woods and back to the tunnels. And maybe, just maybe, the sound would go unnoticed. Maybe it had not been as loud as it seemed in the silence of the hall and their urgency to escape.

  But even as she thought it, she heard shuffling from within the room.

  After that, everything happened too quickly. The sound of authoritative footsteps rushing the partially opened door, which flung open to reveal Victor Alsorta, his eyes glinting like silver disks. And then, his voice, as cold and smooth as ice as he spoke orders to someone unseen to Helen.

  “Intruders! Sound the alarm.”

  It took less than ten seconds for the earsplitting siren to slice through the night. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, from inside her very own mind, until she wanted to stop everything and cover her ears with her hands until it quieted.

  She had no such luxury. Griffin grabbed her hand and pulled, and then they were racing toward the stairs, turning the corner at a dead run, and bounding down the steps two and three at a time, Darius in the lead.

  “There!” Helen pointed to the door in the mudroom.

  Darius turned the lock. He flung open the door and Helen and Griffin raced through it after him. Helen barely registered the cold night air. She was too busy running for the tree line, dragged along by Griffin, still holding her hand in a grip like iron.

  Where before there had been a few sconces flickering gentle light onto the grounds, now they seemed to be everywhere, lighting up the lawn so that there were no shadows. No place to hide. It was a mirror to the other activity building around them—the voices of men shouting in the distance, the sound of racing footsteps through the trees.

  And the dogs.

  Helen heard them in the distance. She fingered the darts, still in the pouch at her belt, as she followed Griffin into the trees.

  Once the house was out of view, she lost all sense of direction. Plunged into near-total darkness, she could only hope Darius, still in front, knew where he was going. It was all she could do to keep running, trying to avoid the gnarly tree roots protruding from the ground and half covered by the fallen leaves.

  The dogs were closer. They barked ferociously, drowning out the sounds of the men shouting to one another through the trees. She heard the snarls and barks, not from the direction of the house as she’d suspected, but up ahead. She could not fathom how the animals had circled around to cut them off in the woods, but now it was a race. They would have to reach the entrance to the tunnels before the dogs found their position to avoid a confrontation.

  “How much farther?” she managed to gasp.

  “Not far.” Griffin’s voice was muffled under the barking dogs, leaves underfoot, and Helen’s own labored breathing.

  They ran until Helen thought her legs would give out altogether. Until her lungs burned. She was stricken repeatedly by low-hanging branches, leaving her with stinging cuts on her arms and face. But none of it mattered. Because the dogs were close. Too close. They weren’t going to reach the tunnels in time. The animals would cut them off any second.

  She no sooner thought it when Darius screeched to a halt just as an enormous beast flew through the trees in front of them. It landed in a flash of ebony fur, snarling and snapping at them from across the small clearing in which they had stopped.

  Darius held out his hands. “Good boy.”

  The dog snarled, shaking its head. A moment later, two more dogs bounded through the tree line. They stopped next to the first one, growling low in their throats and baring their teeth.

  “Brilliant,” Griffin said. “Now what? The men can’t be far behind.”

  Indeed, Helen heard them in the distance, saw their lanterns bobbing through the trees as they made their way to the dogs’ position.

  “Look to the left,” Darius said, hardly moving his mouth.

  Helen followed Griffin’s eyes, scanning the bushes. She didn’t see it at first, but then the midnight blue silk moved in the wind. Her ribbon. It was her ribbon. They had found their way back to the tunnels, even if it might be too late to actually escape into them.

  “Where
’s the entrance?” Griffin said softly.

  Darius moved his foot, ever so slowly, back and forth across the ground.

  The growling accelerated, and the one in the front barked in warning.

  “Darius!” Griffin said. “Stop moving.”

  “Just look down,” Darius said, never taking his eyes off the dogs.

  Griffin and Helen lowered their eyes to where Darius’s foot rested, not atop the dead leaves that littered the ground, but on the wooden cover to the tunnels.

  Griffin sucked in his breath. “We have to find a way to distract the dogs long enough for us to get inside the tunnel.”

  The dogs, as if in answer, increased their growling, inching forward to where they stood.

  “Is that all?” Darius asked.

  Helen marveled that he could be flip even in such a situation.

  A cry from one of the men, much closer this time, prompted Helen to move. Reaching slowly toward the pouch at her waist, she spoke as calmly as she could, trying not to make eye contact with the snapping, snarling dogs.

  “I’ll take care of the dogs. Just get the cover off the tunnel entrance.”

  She felt Griffin’s eyes on her face. “I’m not leaving you to the dogs, Helen.”

  His voice carried a finality that scared her. She had to make him understand. To trust her. Their lives depended on it.

  “Listen,” she said, pulling one of the darts from her belt. “I have something that will take care of the dogs, but you must open the entrance to the tunnel so that I can climb in as soon as they’re down.”

  “As soon as they’re down?” Even Darius was perplexed.

  The dogs, saliva dripping from their teeth, were getting closer with every argument.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Helen said. “I’m counting to three. And you better move and clear the ladder so that I can get in when I’m done.”

  “But—” Griffin began.

  “One,” she said softly, cutting him off. “Two…”

  Helen was relieved to see Darius’s body tense. He, at least, would do as she asked.

  “Three.”