She heard glass smashing and wood ripping from inside the house, sounds so shocking to her ears they made her cringe. She slipped behind a tree trunk, pressing her back against it as she tried to catch her breath. They had killed, and now they were inside. They had set fire to the attics.
Somehow her father’s message had come too late. That, or the courier had given it to someone before coming to the convent. But she had seen the seal, intact—
A cry of pain broke through her horrified confusion, and Simone flew across the drive, pulling her veil across her nose and mouth as she stepped over the dead maid and went inside. A few feet down the hall an old man crawled toward her, his body leaving a wide smear of blood on the marble floor.
“Piers.” Simone went to him, crouching down to scoop his thin, frail body into her arms. Blood immediately soaked through the front of her habit from innumerable gunshot wounds in his torso. She carried him out of the smoke to the drive, where she dropped down with him and pulled up his shirt.
The old butler groped for her hand, squeezing it weakly when he caught it. “God have mercy on me, but there was no time.” His mouth became a straining O as he gulped in air. “I saw them outside the gate. The next moment they were at the door.” His grip tightened. “The master will be so angry, Simone. The master—”
“I know, Piers.”
“You must stop them. For Hel—” A sharp crack cut off his words, and his body jerked as the bullet struck his chest. He slumped against her, his last breath leaving his lungs in a thin rush.
Simone looked up at the wisp of smoke rising from the barrel of a rifle. The priest holding the weapon shifted it to aim at her head, but as his dark eyes met hers he lowered the barrel. He spoke in Italian, but not to her.
Two other men converged on her. One dragged away the old butler’s body while the other kicked her from behind, knocking her flat with such force she barely had time to protect her face. The same man grabbed her shoulder and wrenched her over onto her back.
The priest drifted closer, the skirt of his black cassock swirling with each step. The sun painted an oily gleam over his thin black brows and trim mustache, and his smile displayed his small, pearly teeth where two diamond-studded gold crowns winked at her. He handed off the rifle to the man who had kicked her, and then removed a red silk handkerchief from his pocket, using it to wipe his hands before folding and replacing it.
“Hello, Quatorze.”
Simone tried to sit up, but he planted his boot between her breasts and bore down on it to keep her in place. She did not recognize the priest’s young, handsome face, which seemed flawless. Only when he spoke had she noticed a degree of unnatural immobility that suggested he had not been born with such perfect features.
The voice, however, she knew as well as her own. “Pájaro.”
“You remember me.” He seemed delighted by this, his mouth curling up in a Cupid’s bow as he produced a dark blade and bent down to cut open the front of her robe. “I had not thought he would permit it. He made you put all the others out of your mind, didn’t he? After he cut their throats.”
“I’ve never forgotten you.” She saw the murderous glee in his eyes, and in it recognized her last chance to escape. “I am glad to know you are still alive.”
“Still the little liar.” He made a chiding sound as he bent down and used the blade to slice through her harness, stripping it from her and throwing it into the bushes. He did the same with the two pistols he removed from her pockets. “I considered taking you with me when I left, but my chances of successfully faking two deaths seemed rather improbable.” He tugged on a torn piece of her robe. “He finally gave you to the convent, I see. Has locking you up in the nunnery kept you from becoming a five-euro whore, like your mother? Where is he?”
“Helada.”
Simone looked at the man who came out of the château.
“Did you find it?” Pájaro asked.
The mercenary nodded. “In the back.”
“Recall the men.” Pájaro looked down as Simone seized his combat boot, clutching it. “You have something else to offer me, Quatorze?”
“I will go with you and your men, and do whatever they want. Whatever you want, mon frère.” The beseeching words tasted like acid in her mouth. “If you and your men will leave with me now, my body and my life are yours.”
He looked down at her with visible pleasure. “What happened to the girl who never lost a battle?”
“That is not my life anymore.”
“You sound like your mother.” Pájaro reached down and hauled her to her feet, jerking her close. His hot breath touched her face as he whispered, “I found her in Paris, you know. Yes, there she was, still peddling her diseased cunt under bridges and behind rubbish bins. I bought her with a swig of cheap wine and the promise of a needle. She pleaded for her life in the first five minutes. It took another hour before she begged me to end it.” He put his mouth next to her ear. “I was generous. I gave her another two weeks to live.”
She swallowed hard to keep from vomiting on him. “I will last longer than she did.”
“Anything is possible.” He clamped his hand around her throat, applying just enough pressure to make her vision dim. “Now, where is he?”
She had to gasp out her reply. “Everywhere.”
“Maudite garce. I don’t need you to tell me. When he discovers I have the scroll, he will run to me.” He shoved her at the waiting man. “You and the others can amuse yourselves with this one for a few minutes. She won’t fight you. She won’t fight anyone.”
The man grinned. “Can we take her with us? It is a long drive to Marseilles.”
Pájaro shook his head. “I have another slut to deal with there. When you’ve finished, gag her and tie her up inside. She can burn with the rest of the bodies.”
Chapter 3
A
fter tearing off and using his sleeve to temporarily bind his still-bleeding leg wound, Korvel limped through the gates and started up the drive toward the burning château. The broken copper blade lodged inside his flesh wouldn’t kill him immediately, but until it was removed its poisons would continue to weaken him. The cursed metal also affected his ability to move; already he felt numb from knee to hip. Soon he wouldn’t be able to remain upright, much less walk. He came up behind a large unmarked truck, using it as cover when he heard men shouting and laughing. He gripped in each hand the greased blades he had recovered from the corpses by the gates and shifted his position from one side of the truck to the other. Silently he inched forward until he had a better view of the front of the château.
On the ground lay two elderly mortals; both had been shot and appeared dead. Four other mortals stood on the drive in a quad formation, shoving back and forth between them a young female in a long gray dress and white-banded gray kerchief. She cringed and stumbled but did not resist them, her features as tight as the hands she used to clutch together the remains of her bodice. They’d already ripped open her dress.
Not a dress, he realized, but a habit. The girl was a nun.
The game the men were playing became immediately obvious as well; they pushed and snatched at her, pawing and groping her body as she tried to evade them. Their laughter and the girl’s struggles breached Korvel’s self-control, igniting and feeding a killing fury, until the rage wiped clean every calculated thought from his head. Now he wanted only to feel bones snapping beneath his fists, and flesh parting against his blades.
One of the men, apparently impatient to be the first to inflict real harm on the girl, finally caught her and threw her to the ground, straddling her as he tore at his belt buckle. He had just begun to drop on top of her when Korvel reached them.
“Animal.” With one motion he hauled the mortal off the girl and snapped his neck. As the other men reached for their weapons, he used the dead mortal’s pistol to shoot two in the head.
The last man he shot in the knee as he was running away. Grim pleasure spread through him as he hobbled over and aimed at the back of his skull.
“Please don’t shoot him,” a low, soft voice said in French-accented English.
The next breath Korvel took came with the scents of green rosemary, thyme, and something sweeter and darker, warming his chest and stirring his hunger. It came from the nun, who was no longer cowering but moved with purpose as she came to kneel beside the groaning man and turn him over onto his back.
He wondered whether she was in shock. “You would show mercy to this one, sister? He had none for you.”
“I don’t care about that.” The nun leaned forward and murmured something in Italian to the man, who said, “La serre,” and jabbed his finger toward the side of the château.
Korvel reached down to help the girl to her feet, but with one fluid movement she stood and brushed past him, running in the direction the man had indicated. “Sister, wait.”
The nun didn’t look back.
“Damn me.” He drove his boot into the wounded man’s temple, knocking him out, and then started after the girl.
The tangle of shrubbery and hedges crowding the grounds formed an impromptu yet effective labyrinth, forcing Korvel to track the nun by her scent. That led him to the open door of an enormous glass greenhouse behind the château.
Broken glass crunched under his boots as he stepped inside. The men had left the place in ruins; what they hadn’t smashed they’d knocked over or thrown through the glass panels of the walls. He worked his way back to the gardener’s benches, where the nun crouched beside a large pot that had been cracked in two. Spilled black soil and the pale green, broken wands of paper, whites littered the ground around her.
“Sister, what are you doing?”
She did not respond as she used her hands to claw through the contents of the shattered pot, stopping only when her fingernails scraped the bottom. She rose quickly and looked all around her.
“Sister.” He didn’t want to touch her, but she seemed unaware of his presence, so he reached for her dirty wrist. “Please, stop—”