them decayed into dissolution was a whisper fit to haunt nightmares.
There was a brief starry period of blackness, and when Gabe regained consciousness he found himself lying under a cloudless sky, the stars a river and a graying of dawn in the east.
There was a wooden shape to one side, and two slumped corpses that were probably horses, drained to feed Robbie Barrowe’s unholy thirst. Jack didn’t care. He lay for a little while, until, blinking away dirt and crusted blood and nastier decaying fluid, he found the last gift Robert Barrowe-Browne would ever leave.
It was a second grave, dug just to the side of the freshly turned earth with the charterstone at its head. All Jack had to do was crawl, and pull some of the dirt over himself.
It should be enough. He prayed it would be enough.
His right arm hung useless, and the gun was left behind. He clutched the knife, its blade running with bubble-smoking black ichor, in his left fist as he crawled, scratching along the pan of the flats under Heaven’s uncaring vault. In the predawn hush, the scrape and rattle of his boots digging against damp earth were loud as trumpets. When he tumbled into the hole, the sides gave loosely, scattering over him.
He set the fine-honed edge against his own throat, and arranged his feet. His right arm throbbed and screamed, but he disregarded it. All it would take was a single lunge, jamming the hilt against the side of the grave, and he would bleed out.
But he had to do it before the sun rose.
Jack shut his eyes.
“Cath—” he whispered, and his legs spasmed, pushing him forward.
Chapter 36
San Frances was a simmering bowl of smoke, dust, filth, mist, corruption, lewdness, and outright criminality.
It was, Cat reflected, merely Damnation writ large.
Her arms were too thin; she had not yet recovered from the agonizing thirst of the desert. She no longer felt the dreadful heat, and every drop of moisture they had been able to scavenge had gone to Li Ang and little Jonathan. One of the horses had died, so they traveled at night, Cat’s boots slipping and sliding as she heaved the wagon along like a mindless undead in a quarry. Next to her, the other horse had lost its fear of her predator’s scent, and had merely endured that terrible passage.
The thirst had consumed every excess scrap of flesh, leaving her slim and breastless as a boy. Still, she possessed enough inhuman strength to lift both heavy trunks, and settle them on the wagon. It was a far finer vehicle than the one that had carried them out of the desert; the bars of un-cursed gold from the claim had proven
How Robbie would laugh.
Not only that, but Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne and Robert Heath Edward Barrowe-Browne, both deceased, had named Jonathan Jin Barrowe-Browne their heir, and all papers were in order.
Mother would be horrified, and Father might be angry…but it was
Her dress hung on a too-wasted form, scarecrow-thin as Robbie’s. Now that the thirst raged through her, she understood a little more of his bitter laughter. She refused to think on the slaking of said thirst, of the lowing of the cattle and the stink of the slaughteryards. Overcoming her disgust at such feedings would help her survive…but dear God, it did not completely erase the terrible burning. Another manner of blood was called for.
Human. It was a mercy her parents were dead.
She sighed as she surveyed her work and found it as proper as she could make it. “It’s safest this way, Li Ang.”
The Chinoise girl, heavily veiled and mutinously quiet, shook her head. There had been argument, and the throwing of a butcher knife…but really, it had taken only one instance of Cat standing over baby Jonathan’s new cradle, shaking and dry-weeping with the urge to sink her newfound, pointed and razor-sharp canines into the tiny, helpless pulse, for Li Ang to become convinced of the wisdom of Cat’s plan.
Little baby Jonathan, tucked safely in his mother’s arms with charter-charms on red paper attached to his swaddling, was fast asleep. Cat stepped back, not trusting herself, and bit her lower lip.
But gently. The teeth she now sported were
She had expected Robbie to follow her before now. That he had not, and that he had not met her at any of the appointed times…well, it did not bear thinking of.
Li Ang refused to answer. She did accept Cat’s help into the wagon, and Cat melded into the shadows as the nervous horses were chirruped to and the whip flicked.
But it was too dangerous, when she could hear the mortal heart working its cargo of precious, delicious fluid through Li Ang’s veins.
It was no great thing to pass unnoticed, her shawl over her head, keeping the wagon in sight. She did not ease her vigilance until the veiled woman carrying her baby was helped aboard the huge, steam-snorting train by a solicitous conductor, and Cat moved aimlessly with the crowd at the station, the soft press of their flesh and the many heartbeats a roar of torment until the cry of
There was nobody to remark when the shawled woman vanished. One moment there, the next gone, as the next train heaved and screeched its way forward to disgorge its weary passengers.
Chapter 37
It was a fairly respectable boardinghouse, and the rooms were at least clean. Nevertheless, a fastidious hand had been at work among the draperies and at the two beds, and there was a space between a large armoire and the washstand just large enough for a cradle. The marks on the floor showed where the armoire had been pushed aside, no doubt by two strong men.
Or by an entirely different strength.
A key rattled in the lock, and the darkness was complete. It was silent, though the street outside throbbed with catcalls and wagon wheels, clockhorse hooves—for here, the citizenry could afford the pens to marry metal to living equine flesh and bone, instead of the wilderness where plain flesh was good enough.
She sighed as she stepped through the door, locking and barring it with swift habitual motions, and shaking out her shawl. There was a heavy mist from the bay tonight, and its salt-smoke scent clung to her skirts. A dark,
