Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology, #1)(80)

Bacchus shrugged. “Is there a purpose to watering stone?”

“I’d love to feel warm rain,” Miss Josie said dreamily. “Even in the summer, the rain isn’t warm.”

“I think,” interjected the duke, “that it is. Perhaps one day a year. Next month we might be lucky.”

The duchess smiled behind her napkin.

“I think,” Master Merton began, but a thud from elsewhere in the house—Bacchus thought it might have been the front entry—vibrated up the exterior hall. Everyone paused in their dining and turned toward the door. There were sounds of an argument, though Bacchus could make out only one speaker, and it was a woman.

A few of the words carried through the silence that filled the dining room: “—don’t understand! . . . see him . . . might die!”

Bacchus stood. Elsie?

The duchess followed suit. “I think someone is bullying Baxter,” she said, naming the butler.

The moment Bacchus took a step toward the door, he heard a soft curse behind him. He turned, but the foul word had not come from any of the dinner guests. He peered toward the heavy curtains drawn across the windows.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway. The opposite door burst open, and sure enough, Elsie toppled through, her hat askew. Her wild blue eyes found him. “Bacchus! You have to—”

Lightning shot out from the drapes.

Bacchus dived, and the electric bolt blasted through the backrest of his chair. He hit the carpet, tasting static in the air. Both daughters screamed. Master Merton cried, “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Get the duke!” Bacchus shouted, grabbing the chair in front of him and throwing it back toward the windows. The air prickled again, and lightning raced across the room, flashing bright in his vision.

“Fire!” Miss Josie shouted.

Cursing, Bacchus turned toward the second ruined chair, which had fallen on the fine carpet, a small blaze springing up from it. He crawled toward the fire, intent on putting it out, and at the same time Elsie screamed, “I know who you are, Abel Nash!”

That voice cursed again, this time louder, and a man dressed in all black, his face hidden save for his eyes, leapt out from the curtains. The duchess pulled the duke toward safety, and Master Merton ushered the girls toward the rear exit. Baxter rushed into the room.

But the man—Abel Nash—had eyes only for Bacchus.

Wielding a lightning staff, the thin man charged and flung its head forward.

Calling upon a spell, Bacchus threw up his hands and demanded the air to move.

The lightning flew just over his head as a gust of wind slammed into Abel Nash’s body, shoving him back toward the curtains. It wasn’t enough to knock him against the wall, and the assailant proved surprisingly nimble, flipping over upon landing, returning to his feet in an instant.

It was then that Bacchus realized this man was an assassin—the assassin—armed and ready to take out a master aspector. To steal yet another opus.

Bacchus was his next target, and somehow Elsie had known it. Had her shouts called this criminal from his hiding place early?

There was no time to think of it.

Bacchus darted toward the fire and calmed it with another spell, then grabbed a broken chair leg. He armed it with a spell for speed and hurled it at his attacker. The wooden missile whistled through the air like a bullet. The assassin disintegrated it with a burst of lightning and ran forward, closing the space between himself and Bacchus.

The duchess screamed.

Bacchus sprinted to meet the man, causing him to hesitate; Bacchus was by far the larger opponent. Before they collided, Bacchus dived to the ground and pressed his hand to the carpet, willing the floor to open.

It did, but not quickly enough to send Abel Nash into the basement. Nash leapt out of the way and pointed his lightning rod.

It sparked as Elsie collided with him, knocking them both to the ground. The lightning grazed Bacchus’s leg, searing his skin and igniting the fabric of his trousers. He clenched his teeth and snuffed the embers with his hand.

Turning, he saw two servants in the doorway, Master Merton gaping, and Miss Ida still at her side, tugging on her sleeve. “Go!” he bellowed. “Now!”

Master Merton’s gaze flickered from him to Elsie to the assassin. Perhaps she hesitated because she wished to help, but spiritual aspecting would do no good in this situation, unless she had a curse ready and could get close enough to Abel Nash to touch him.

She grabbed Miss Ida’s forearm and jerked her toward the door.

Bacchus looked back just in time to see Elsie take an elbow to her face as the assassin flung her away.

The burning in his leg blazed to fill his entire body.

Flying to his feet, Bacchus grabbed another chair and, bespelling it with speed, flung it at the man. It went wide, but the assassin ducked, nevertheless. The chair bullet crashed into the wall, ruining a portrait as it smashed into hundreds of splinters.

From a kneeling position, Abel Nash aimed his lightning staff and sent a fiery bolt for Bacchus’s head.

Bacchus jumped to dodge, only to realize he was on a path to collide with the dining room table.

His hands touched it first, and the entire center leaf shifted from solid to liquid as his master spell overtook it—shifting it directly to gas would have been the equivalent of setting off a bomb. The lightning bolt soared overhead and cracked as it struck the opposite wall. Bacchus dropped into a puddle of strange woody liquid that was already beginning to resolidify. Pain surged from his head into his shoulders, not from the landing, but from the sudden and extreme use of the spell.