Thank God he's blind. "Gabriel, I'm a little wiped out from the ride, and you need blood," Nick said, trying to turn him around. "Let's head into Toulouse. We'll come back tomorrow after sunset." That would give her a day to think of what to do next. He couldn't stay here. "Come on."
He wasn't paying attention to her. "This is odd, but I don't remember the house smelling like this. Dalente must be keeping all the windows locked. He needs to take out the garbage, too." Nick tensed, and his grip tightened on her arm. "What is wrong?"
Everything.
"Nothing." How could she tell him his place had been gutted and turned into flophouse for junkies? "You said you had some money and papers stashed here. We should get those first." That way she wouldn't have to bring him back. "Where are they?"
"In the library." He pointed toward the opposite hall. "The third door on the left."
Nick had a hell of a time guiding him around the accumulated refuse left behind by the squatters, but she managed to get him to the library without a stumble or a mishap. She couldn't do anything about the smell of garbage, but the cold air coming in from the broken windows brought with it the scent of wild herbs and flowers, which helped to mask it.
"Here." He switched on the light switch, but the room remained dark. "I know, it must look like a university library to you, but I like to read."
The shelves were empty, the books and furniture gone. Cigarette burns had rendered the lovely old Persian carpets scattered on the oak floor worthless. All that was left were some old tapestry curtains that had been stuffed into a missing windowpane to keep the cold wind out.
"You stay right there and tell me where it is," she said, her heart breaking for him, "and I'll get it."
"I must telephone my tresora." Gabriel released her and, before she could stop him, crossed the room, his arms out. "Dalente always loved to rearrange things." He stopped. "Where has he put the desk?"
Nick scrubbed her hands over her face. "Gabriel, there is no desk in here. There's no furniture in here."
"Of course there is. Dalente wouldn't put the furniture in storage; he—" Gabriel bumped into a bookcase and steadied himself before moving his hand across the empty shelf. "My books…" He groped his way to another shelf and felt it, and did the same to a third. His tone changed from puzzled to bewildered. "Nicola, where are my books?"
"They're gone." She should never have brought him in. This was going to kill him. "All of them are gone."
He turned around slowly. "C'est une blague ou quoi?"
"No, Gabriel." She swallowed against a tight throat. "I wouldn't joke about something like that."
"What else has been taken?"
"I don't—"
"Tell me."
"It's all gone. The books, the furniture, the statues, all of it. They cleaned you out. From the dust and the cobwebs, I'd say it happened a while ago." She didn't have to tell him about the signs of drug users and squatters. "Let's get out of here, okay? I'll spring for a nice hotel in town, check into what happened up here. Maybe your guy put everything in storage."
"No." He went from shelf to shelf, stirring up dust and feeling for the books that weren't there. "They must have discovered that this was my home."
"You mean the holy freaks." Nick kicked one of the ruined carpets aside, and saw that one of the oak floor panels under it didn't match the others. "Wait a minute." She used her crowbar to pry up the wood and found that a space had been chiseled out of the cement foundation under it. "There's a long metal box here. It's not locked, but it has a red cross on the top of it."
"Open it."
Inside the box Nick found a bundle of papers, a thick padded envelope, and a long, dark-colored sword. The envelope contained several thousand dollars in cash, five passports, two velvet pouches, and a typed letter.
Nick poured the contents of one of the pouches into her palm, and found herself holding a handful of diamonds.
Temptation made her fingers close over them for a moment. He couldn't see; he'd never know. But she couldn't steal from a blind man, especially not one who had lost everything that mattered to him.
She was a thief, but she wasn't a fucking thief.
She tipped the diamonds back into the pouch as she described the rest of what she had found in the box, reading the names off the IDs and out of the passports.
"There's a handwritten note here, too. It's in English, and it's dated about a year ago.""Dalente preferred to write to me in English; none of the household staff understood it." He came over and crouched beside her. "Would you please read it to me?"
She opened it, trained her flashlight on the loose scrawl, and began to read out loud:
My lord Gabriel,
Forgive my brevity; I believe that I do not have much time left. Lord Tremayne has sent word that you were executed by the Brethren, but I do not believe it. Our bond is such that I am convinced that I would have felt you passing from this world to the next.
This morning your enemies came to the estate to question me. They speak of you as if you are dead and this house now belongs to them. They demanded that I turn over the contents and the property to them and vacate the premises.
I pretended ignorance, and showed them the deeds, as always, but despite this I expect they will return and try to take possession by force. They know I cannot risk summoning the authorities without betraying you and the Kyn. I am old, but I vow that I will not surrender without a fight.
I also know that it is unlikely that I shall survive this skirmish. That is why I must write of the disturbing news I have learned from our friends across the Atlantic. Angelica betrayed you—as well as Thierry, Jamys, and the Durand family—to your enemies. I fear that she has been in league with your enemies from the beginning.
I will place this cache where your enemies cannot easily find it. Angelica's betrayal means that there is no place in France where you will be safe. I beg you go to Ireland and take sanctuary with the high lord.
I am grateful for the long and happy life I spent in your service, and the many pleasures I have known in our long friendship. I remain, as always, your loyal servant, Paolo Dalente.
Nick folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. "He sounds like a nice man."
"He was." Gabriel rose and moved to the center of the room. "He is dead."
He sounded as if he didn't care, but Nick understood. What you couldn't handle, you had to disconnect from. "You don't know. Maybe he got away. Maybe—"
"If he lived, he would still be here, as would my possessions." He turned around slowly. "The property—everything I own—was in his name, not mine."
The holy freaks had killed the old man to take the stuff from the house. While they had been burning and hurting Gabriel. Was there anything they wouldn't do to hurt the Kyn? "I'm so sorry."
"Maudit." His voice went low. "He deserved better than to die at their hands, Nicola. I should have known. I should have taken measures to better protect him in my absence."
Nick moved the flashlight toward him and saw the way he stood, a fighter left in an empty ring. "How could you have known? You were grabbed and locked up, remember? This wasn't your fault. It was them."
"Dalente wasn't Kyn. He posed no threat to them. He was seventy-three years old and growing frail. He spent most of his days planting and weeding in his garden. He should have lived out his life doing the same." He turned his head, and a faint, scratching sound came from outside the room. "They killed him for the things I had, things that he cared for in my absence. He died for serving me."
Nick didn't need her flashlight to see his face. The light from his blank eyes illuminated his features with an eerie green glow. "We should get out of here, you know? We could…" She wasn't sure what to do.
"No. I will see it all. All of it."
Something clicked and scratched all around her, and when Nick angled the flashlight down, it showed her hundreds of huge black beetles erupting from the space in the floor.
"Shit. This place is infested." She scrambled backward and to her feet, just in time to see what was left of the library windows implode. "Gabriel, look out."
Clouds of wasps flew in swarms through the shattered windows, streaming across the room and slamming into Nick. She covered her head with one arm and backed up to the wall, only to see something slithering. Jerking the flashlight, she illuminated countless worms that had bored their way out of the panels and were oozing down the walls.
"Gabriel," she shouted again, but he and the wasps were gone. Something deadlier than a wasp whizzed from the window past her face to bury itself in the wall. She flicked the flashlight up and saw termites pouring out of a brand-new hole. "God, this place is coming apart."
Something in the distance cracked, and what was happening finally registered when plaster exploded by her face, showering and cutting her as a second hole appeared in the wall.
Someone outside was firing a gun into the house.
Gabriel strode out of the library, drawing the many around him and forcing them to show him the destruction of his home. What had been his only retreat from the worlds of man and Kyn had been reduced to a haven for addicts and wanderers, scarred by their indifference and painted with their contempt. Filthy epitaphs, piles of desiccated shit, the sour stink of despair. The art of desperation and disgust. They had filled his house with it.
And for this, Dalente had died.
What the Brethren had inflicted on Gabriel he had accepted as the price of his immortality. But his beloved tresora had been made yet another martyr in the war, as innocent and blameless as all the others who had given their human lives to serve the Darkyn.
The many flew into the marble room, showing him the stripped walls and drug paraphernalia left behind by the addicts who had used the house. They found scatterings of marble chips and dust that hinted of the fate of Gabriel's statues.