Prologue
London 1665
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The plague mask loomed toward him like a nightmare, its long, beak-like nose jutting forward with unnatural menace. The hollow glass eyes, dark and expressionless, gave the wearer an eerie, inhuman stare—like a bird of death watching from the edge of the world. Leather-strapped and faceless, the mask turned this healer into something more ghost than man. The doctor removed the mask, his eyes fixed onGideon—the look in his eyes no warmer than the glass hollows he’d just uncovered.
“Tell methis is going to work.”
Gideon nodded his assent as he walked past cages upon cages of rats.
“It will, sir. London will be riddled with the bubonic plague by the spring. By September, it will be rampant. It will devastate London, and you and your fellow doctors will indeed make the profits you desire.”
Reaching the far side of the barn, he opened the lid of one of his latest captures. His hand hovered over the cage as the rats scattered away from the light emanating from his fingers. A pale blue mist drifted through his body, curling like smoke into the cage, the power surging through him satisfyingly.
“What are you doing?” the annoying doctor asked, clearly nervous as he witnessed the Aetheric Art he had honed over time.
“I am infecting them with bacteria calledYersinia pestis,” Gideon replied.
The doctor shifted uncomfortably.
“Magic?”
“Some call it magic.” He shrugged. “I call it science. Science beyond the understanding of someone like you.”
The doctor harrumphed, annoyed. “I am at the top of my profession.”
Gideon fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, well ... this bacterium is going to be what keeps you there.”
“When do you plan to release them?”
“My colleagues and I will begin to let the rats loose across London soon. Once you have paid us what we are due.”
“And I will be immune to the illness?”
He was tempted not to agree to that term; the man irritated him. But he was the one paying, and if Gideon’s group was tokeep its reputation, he supposed he must keep his customers safe.
“You won’t catch it. I will make sure you are unaffected.”
The doctor reached out to seal the agreement with a handshake, then quickly retracted his hand, as though afraid he might catch whatever Gideon had just spread. Foolish man.
Gideon felt nothing when the outbreak occurred. Nor did he bat an eyelash when King Charles II fled London to avoid infection. In fact, that earned his men even more money—one of his colleagues had influenced the king’s emotions, heightening his fear, which resulted in the king’s departure for an additional fee from a greedy lord who hoped to take the throne. The loss of one hundred thousand lives stirred no emotion in him, even as twenty-five percent of the city’s population perished.
As the local watchmen sealed infected houses, nailed doors shut, and marked red crosses upon them, all adding to the fear and chaos he had helped orchestrate, he felt pleased. With mass graves, the burning of belongings, widespread panic, and an entire social system collapsed, he felt elated. Even priests and some physicians fled. None of it made him feel any remorse. He only felt satisfied.
It all equaled a successful assignment.
And this time, no one Fated had been there to stop them.
Chapter One
York, England, 1940s
October 25th
Lightning flashed and rain drummed against the tall, centuries-old arched windows. Professor Isla Cole instinctively flinched away from it, causing her to smudge her carefully written diagram of root systems on the chalkboard. Loud thunder boomed soon after, and her body trembled.
She used the chalk eraser to remove the spoiled text, then rewrote the end of her sentence. Turning to her class of adults, Isla took a breath.
