The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(126)

He strode up to the door of the palazzo, planted one foot against it and pushed. The great bronze slab teetered for a moment then fell edgeways onto the marble floor with a deafening crunch. He tensed, blade at the ready, half-expecting the creatures to charge them, but no sound came from the palazzo except the dying echoes of the door's fall.

"They won't approach the light unless cornered," Charles said in a low voice. "Be careful."

Mal clambered over the fallen door, lantern held high. The swaying light reflected off polished marble surfaces, trailing dark shadows in its wake. Directly ahead an arched doorway gave access to the piano terreno, shrouded in darkness. To their left a flight of marble steps led up to the piano nobile, its treads half hidden by a thick layer of plaster debris and dead leaves. No tracks disturbed the carpet of decay. So, the devourers were down here. Mere feet away, perhaps. He took a deep breath and advanced through the archway.

The unearthly skrayling light gleamed on pale marble pillars veined with dark reddish brown like dried blood. Broken crates and barrels littered the store-room floor, but enough remained intact to hide a score of devourers. Mal held up his lantern, keeping it well out of his eye line. A dark smear of blood and fur halfway up a pillar suggested he wouldn't have to worry about rats.

"There!" Charles leant around him, pointing with his blade.

"Where? I saw nothing."

"A movement, I swear."

"It was probably just your lantern. Hold it by the neck, like this. It won't burn."

He advanced into the storeroom, yard by yard, the scraping of grit under the soles of his boots barely audible over the gentle lap of the canal outside. He drew in an unsteady breath and forced himself to loosen his grip on the rapier's hilt. Sweat trickled down his back and yet he felt cold as death, as if the damp air were leaching the life from his bones. Every movement became an effort, like wading through honey…

"Look sharp, lad!" His brother's voice cut through the fog in his head.

Mal tried to shake off his lethargy. They were here all right, their nightmare miasma bending nature to its will, making everything seem unreal. All the shadows in the room were moving now, and not just because of their lanterns. He tried to count the moving shapes but his eyes slid off them as if not wanting to see. Six? Eight? A dozen? It didn't really matter, as long as they didn't leave here alive.

"Hold the doorway," he called over his shoulder. "I'll try to flush them out of hiding."

He flung his left arm in a wide arc, sending glowing droplets of lightwater splashing across the wall. A devourer shrieked as if scalded and ran past Mal in a sooty blur. He heard Charles scream, though whether in pain or fury, he couldn't tell.

"Come on, then," Mal growled at the shadows, holding up the lantern, "who wants some?"

It was an empty threat; he could not spare much more and have enough light left for his own protection. He circled round the broken wreck of a gondola and lunged towards the darkness pooling inside its black-painted cabin. A shriek split the air as the point of the rapier penetrated something brittle, like a dried-up corpse. Maggots flowed out of the gondola cabin in a pale stream, spilling around his feet. Cursing, Mal stamped on a few before backing off. They squelched underfoot and disappeared.

"One down, methinks!" he called back to Charles.

"Two!" Charles replied. "But another got past me."

Coby crouched at the foot of the bridge steps, staring at the palazzo. She heard shouting from inside, and her stomach flipped over. It took all her self-control not to climb over the wall and join the fray, but she knew Mal was relying on her to hold the line. She glanced briefly towards Ned and Gabriel, who crouched shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the steps. Neither of them was a fighter, any more than she was. What use were any of them against demons as strong and deadly as lions?
A moment later a dark shape bounded across the garden and leapt up onto the wall. It hesitated for a moment in the glare of the lanterns. Coby raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.

For a horrible moment she thought the creature would move before the gunpowder caught, but then the pistol kicked in her hands and the devourer flew backwards off the wall as if punched. Coby blinked through the smoke, her ears ringing. Was it dead?

She laid the first pistol at her feet then drew the second. Not a moment too soon. The devourer reappeared on top of the wall. She cocked the pistol and fired. A thump and rattle of claws as the creature hit the cobbles – then it sprang up and bounded across the square, its neck snaking as it sought her out. She forced herself to stare at the ground. It won't attack unless you look at it. She didn't know how she knew this, but it felt right and true. Sweat prickled in her armpits and her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst from her ribs. Slowly she put the pistol on the ground next to its mate and reached for her dagger.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, almost too fast to see. Unable to help herself she looked up. The devourer swiped at her with claws the size of meathooks. She rolled sideways, crying out with pain as a lock of hair was torn from her scalp, but came up in a fighting crouch, dagger in hand. The devourer gathered itself for a pounce. Too late. Ned ran up behind it and hacked at its neck with his sword. The heavy blade caught in the creature's flesh and the two figures struggled for a moment.

Ned tore his blade free and struck again, severing the devourer's head this time. Dark blood splashed across the cobbles and disappeared with a hiss like water on hot iron. The creature collapsed in a heap only inches from Coby and began to dissolve. She scuttled backwards up the steps as the pool of black fluid spread towards her, but it seeped away through the stones and was gone. Ned helped her to her feet.