“I am rather busy.” I tugged Darcy’s wrist and headed to the Egypt room.
The museum researcher caught up on my other side, his stack of papers held in front of us like a fluttering figurehead. “When shall I give my lecture on the dagger?”
“We had planned that before the dancing—” I began, then I noticed the thickness of his sheaf of paper. Social self-preservation stopped me in my tracks. “Isthatyour lecture?”
He smiled modestly. “I am afraid that the last pages are mere bibliography. For those who wish additional study? But the lecture should fill an hour.”
“An hour!” The room would be glazed stares in minutes. For one irrational moment, this seemed more important than chasing great wyves.
Then a chill like filthy, dripping slush ran down my back. The skin on my arms pebbled. I knew this sensation—from the wyfe on the frozen pier, and from fighting Lydia. I grabbed Darcy’s arm and whispered, “There is danger,” then closed my eyes.
This time, I held my awareness within, resisting the beacons of nearby draca minds. To my senses, the draca were scattered shining presences throughout the building, but a room away, oily darkness was seething. Blind to my surroundings, I turned in that direction, then opened my eyes. I was facing the wall separating us from the dagger’s exhibit room.
Darcy had managed to send the museum researcher away. To find Mary, apparently. She would probably advise adding a chapter. As Darcy turned back, I said, “A wyfe has been dosed with crawler venom. Tell Lord Wellington.”
“I must remain with you—” he protested.
“No! Lord Wellington and I have planned for this. He must be told. Go!”
Without waiting, I bumped and squeezed back the way we came. Every fine coat seemed to block me. Every smiling face smirked at my delay. I fought to the middle of the exhibit room, the rough location I had sensed, then slowly spun. I saw polite conversation. Lace and tailored coats. Cups of punch and brandy balanced in poised fingers. Frustrated, I closed my eyes, opened my mind, and turned toward a towering fountain of black filth. Unwelcomememories of my final battle with Lydia stirred, dragging up shreds of buried guilt.
Aligned, I opened my eyes and faced the back of a well-dressed lady five paces away. She was approaching the ropes surrounding the dagger. I rushed after her and shouted, “Stop!”
She turned. This was not a filthy face like at the river, just a modestly pretty young woman with nicely styled light brunette hair and classic white muslin ball attire. Only her eyes showed the effect of the venom, her pupils stretched into huge, coal-black pools.
A man’s voice shouted commands in the foyer. Heavy doors slammed—the museum’s entrances. Lord Wellington had received my message. Every exit was being locked and guarded.
The woman’s heart-shaped face and bony nose were familiar… a sketch… the pamphlets Mary had shown me. Although the face had changed. Her happy plumpness was thinned and gaunt.
“You are Miss Rees,” I said. Her eyes pinched oddly.
I closed the distance between us. She waited passively. Cautiously, I took her hand. Her arm lifted bonelessly.
“You have been missing for weeks,” I said. “Were you abducted?” An empty stare. “I am Mrs. Darcy.”
A spasm climbed her spine, jarring her head and clicking her teeth. Her fingers clenched mine with manic strength, grinding my knuckles.
Her blank stare became a mindless grin. “I have you.”
Black, foul strength flooded past me, crossing the room as swift as dark lightning. There was a scramble on a packed stairway. A body fell. A scream.
I cursed myself for being off guard. Then my urgency, my frustration, and the grating pain in my hand were all washed away by delighted fury.
Battle. At last.
The locations of draca aligned in my thoughts. Two behind me and one on the stairway were caught in this wyfe’s oily, black tentacles of command. One by one, I crushed the tentacles with my mind. Through our gripped hands, I felt Miss Rees quiver as each snapped.
“You have me,” I whispered. “And I haveyou.” My strength was swelling fantastically, unlike anything I had experienced. I swept up the black potency around her and crushed it back into her. She was making sounds now. Gasps and whimpers.
Alarm was spreading through the assembly, but not panic. People helped agrimacing young man to his feet on the stairway. No one understood what had happened. The draca who clawed him, a lindworm, had retreated to sit on his haunches. Waiting.
The eerie blue of draca flame flashed from another room. Even that indirect reflection threw heat on my cheek. I released Miss Rees’s hand—her grip had weakened to water—and she collapsed to her knees as I turned to the new threat.
Shouts erupted in the other room, and pounding, running feet. The orange flicker of mundane fire grew, and the entrances to the room jammed with panicked guests. Bodies collided, sending men and women reeling.
I reached my awareness through the wall and sensed another wyfe boiling with black strength.Twoopponents. I bared my teeth, ecstatic, excited by the chaos of running people and spreading smoke, then shredded her oily trails of command. One trail I ignored. She had attempted to seize control of Jane’s wyvern, and my mind sensed a glowing silver orb surrounding the wyvern, sizzling the attempt into nothing. Wyverns had their own defense, much like our Longbourn firedrake had used against Lydia, but even more potent.
“Elizabeth!” A broad hand took my arm. I looked up at Darcy, his jaw set, a smudge of soot on his temple. He looked very severe and grave.
