Scar Night Page 0,56
at once, didn’t know which way was down or up. Flames spun and howled and tore at her exposed hands and neck.
“I hear you,” Carnival growled.
Rachel caught a glimpse of the angel: eyes screwed shut, wings smouldering, face livid with scars. Then everything around her was smoke and fire.
With a final push, she heaved herself through the gap, through the severed net, and out into fresh air. Cobbles and stars swam before her. The city wheeled drunkenly, rings of light and darkness. She felt Carnival grab her foot, kicked out at her, and then she was free and falling.
One moment she was sinking towards the heavens, the next towards grey slate roofs. Blissful silence but for the rush of wind, and so cool, the air silken. Exhaustion enfolded her, wrapped soft arms around her body. Rachel closed her eyes.
She hit something solid, felt her hip jar, but distantly…heard a crash, then she was falling again. Another collision, then more falling. Finally she landed with a thump in something soft. Grit pattered against her face.
“Mother!” The shriek sounded as though it came from another world. “Mother, a woman fell through the roof!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Another voice, this one from even further away.
“She’s here in my bed!”
“Get to sleep. I won’t tell you again.”
The Spine assassin smiled, but didn’t open her eyes. The second voice was right: she desperately needed to sleep. And nothing was going to wake her until the morning.
* * * *
Why are you doing this to me?” the girl pleaded.
Devon stopped reading to glance at her. The poor thing was a mess: her eyes were red and choked with tears, her face much paler now, almost translucent, but slick with sweat and veined with inky hair. She still wore her blue and white striped scullery apron, now sprayed red up one side from his struggle to get the needle in. Purple bruises bloomed darkly on the white of her arms where he had manacled her to the chair, and again on one wrist where he had inserted the tube that leached the blood from her.
“I am looking for God,” he said.
When the girl started crying again, Devon wondered whether he ought to administer more sedative. The bottle sat to one side of the scattered pages on his desk, the syringe still protruding from its top. The flask at her feet was almost two-thirds full of blood, so he decided against it. There was too much at stake and sedation would only extend the purification process further. He could not afford to spend any more time on this. The previous flasks were set to one side against the wall, deep red and safely out of reach. He’d moved them there once she’d started kicking.
Beyond the heavy shutters, Scar Night’s darkmoon would be rising over the city, and Carnival would be out hunting vermin in the cold streets. But here in Devon’s study it was bright and warm. Rich with waxed wood and oil wicks smoking behind crystal, it had been transformed into an ad hoc laboratory. Firelight played across a clutter of glass receptacles, the steel distillers, and the brass clamps and stands that crowded every surface. Several gilt-framed oil paintings of long-dead scientists leaned neglected against the wall beneath the scrawled charts that had replaced them.
Only one portrait remained hanging on the wall. It depicted an elegant woman, austere in expression but for her soft amber eyes and the trace of a smile on her lips. His beloved Elizabeth. Devon looked deeply into her painted eyes, as though for reassurance.
Will the Spine come for me? Are they stealing up the steps to my apartment even now, blades oiled, crossbows coiled and ready?
No. Someone powerful was protecting him. Someone had already provided him with the means to save himself.
Someone high up in the Church.
It had happened seven months ago, when Devon had returned to his apartments to find an innocuous package: the ramblings of one of his chemists, he’d presumed. He’d left it for a while and almost forgotten about it, but when finally he’d opened it he’d been shaken to the point of terror. In his hands he held the journal of the Soft Men: three scientists named as Mr. Partridge, Mr. Hightower, and Mr. Bloom. It contained pages and pages of notes, hundreds if not thousands of years old. In archaic script the pages outlined the process for making angelwine.
There were no clues as to who had delivered this package, but Devon had developed his suspicions. The