The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(127)

"Thank you!" she gasped.

Ned inclined his head in acknowledgement and retreated up the steps to command the high ground. Coby went back to pick up her pistols, shaking her head in despair. If bullets were so little use against the devourers, what was she to defend herself with next time?

Mal spitted another devourer on his rapier and withdrew the blade as the creature collapsed into a tarry heap on the floor. He was breathing heavily now, and the sword felt like lead in his hand – no, that was just the illusion the devourers were trying to force upon him. He closed his eyes for a moment and brought to mind the hollow in the hills, the way Olivia had taught him, but the image would not come. Had the devourers destroyed it when they had come through? He opened his eyes again. If magic would not avail him, he must force his flesh to obey his own will and not theirs.

There was no time to put his earring back in. Blood and iron, that would break the spell just as easily. Gritting his teeth he swiped his left little finger down the rapier's blade, feeling metal grate on bone. The pain brought him wide awake. With an incoherent shout of fury he charged the thickest knot of shadows and the devourers fled from the cold light and colder steel. One, trapped between a crate and the far wall, folded in on itself until it was no bigger than a cat. Mal advanced on it, grinning, but as he prepared to lunge the creature flew up, claws slashing at his face. Mal raised the lantern, splashing them both with the glowing fluid, but the devourer was already gone. Blood streamed down into his left eye where one of its claws had opened a gash from eyebrow to scalp. Cursing, Mal wiped the blood away and turned to pursue his attacker.

A cry rent the air. Charles had dropped his sword and was now grappling with something that looked like an emaciated horse with the spiny carapace and eyestalks of a crab. Mal sprinted across the storeroom – too late. The creature's jaws snapped around Charles' throat and blood fountained over them both.

"No!"

Mal slid his rapier under the carapace, twisting the blade as he went. The creature squealed like a boiling lobster and released its prey, then dissolved into acrid smoke. Coughing, Mal knelt and tried to stem the blood flowing from his brother's neck.

Charles' eyes fluttered open, and his lips moved silently. Mal hushed him, swallowing past the lump in his own throat, but he knew it was hopeless. His hands were already slick with warm blood, and if he stayed here, another devourer might finish them both off.

"I have to go," he said. "Sleep well, brother."

Charles nodded and closed his eyes again. Mal wiped his bloody hands on his doublet, picked up his sword and lantern and got to his feet.

"Come on then, you craven skulking night-spawn! What are you waiting for?"

Only silence greeted him. After a moment he realised that the oppressive miasma was gone too. Four dead, but at least one had slipped past them in the chaos, probably more. He backed around towards the archway leading to the staircase. A clear trail now led through the debris, revealing cracked and worn treads, but the stairs looked sound enough. Well, there was only one way to find out. With a prayer to Saint Michael he made his way cautiously up to the piano nobile.

? ? ? ?
Ned stood at the top of the bridge steps, watching for Mal to come out of the palazzo. He had to come out. They hadn't come all this way to die at the hands of some foreign witch's hell-spawn. He edged a little closer to Gabriel, wishing his lover had stayed behind at the embassy and yet glad he had not.

A scream, faint but all too human. Hendricks leapt to her feet and ran across the square to the palazzo gate.

"Come back, you stupid wench!" Ned shouted after her.

"Let her be," Gabriel said softly. "Would you hold back if it was me in there?"

"No, but – Christ's balls!"

Another devourer leapt over the wall, landing light as a cat halfway across the square. A second followed, and they flowed around one another in an eye-deceiving blur of smoky black, snaking across the open space towards the bridge.

Ned advanced down the steps, hefting his sword. "Come on then. Which of you's first, eh?"

"Don't be an idiot, Ned! Get back up here!"

Ned descended the last step into the square. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gabriel leap down to stand beside him.

"What are you doing? Get behind me."

Instead Gabriel stepped forward, his cudgel held to one side as if about to discard it.

"Leave him alone," Gabriel said softly. "It's me you want."

"No!"

He dashed forward, putting himself between Gabriel and the devourers. The dark shapes swerved in opposite directions, curving round to try and slip past them and over the bridge. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his lover, Ned braced himself to stop the nearest one. The creature dodged his blade, claws scrabbling for purchase on the canal bank.

"Can't swim, eh?" Ned kicked it in the side of the jaw and followed up his attack with a roundhouse swing of the sword. More by luck than skill he severed a leg and it toppled into the water, squawking.

He turned to see if Gabriel need help with his own attacker, and something hit him square in the chest. A devourer. Ned fell backwards, winded. Teeth like daggers of ice closed around his right wrist and he dropped the sword with a scream.

"Ned!"

Gabriel's iron-shod cudgel smashed into the creature's eyeball, through its skull and out the other side. The cruel teeth withdrew as the devourer faded into nothingness, but Ned's arm still burned as if branded. Gabriel's pale face loomed over him.