One by one, Jon turned his gaze on them, the eyes of the Baron of Death, the pitiless gaze of oblivion. And each alchemist ruptured where they stood, skin bursting open, innards and blood flying into the air, spraying the faces of the wailing women and men who were still trying desperately to escape the carnage. With a single look, the Conjurer had painted the air in a shower of blood and bone shards, drifting robes falling to the ground in emptied heaps. To have such control, such unrefined power from the loa, it was beyond anything Marie had ever seen, beyond even the likes of Sanite’s power. And even then, she had a selfish thought.This is the kind of power you seek. It may yet be yours.
Marie could feel Baron Samedi’s power radiating from him, curling at his feet like unseen smoke. Jon stalked toward Gailon, advancing with furious intent. He had the all-consuming fire of the loa in his bones, and the flames demanded blood.
Jon would not be stopped.
Gailon stood frozen, his eyes darting about the chamber, tallying the bloodshed. She had not known the Grand Wizard to be a man easily frightened. He was bested. Judging by the pinched expression on Gailon’s face, he knew it too. This was not a fight he would so easily win with the Conjurer, not even in his own territory. Gailon settled his gaze over Jon, his dark eyes glittering with silent contempt, his teeth grit down into a snarl.
“Kill him! Do not let him leave this place alive,” the Grand Wizard spat. And in a turn of his dark robes, he was gone.
A prickle crawled its way down Marie’s spine. She turned but was already too late.
One of Gailon’s alchemists loomed over her, mid-strike, white hair hissing out from his enraged face in a magical static. Marie prepared herself for the blow, a defensive spell caught in her throat,then felt the air freeze as something faster moved through it, cutting the darkness in the space of one breath. The alchemist stilled, eyes wrenched wide as his flesh was rendered completely open in one terriblecrack!
Marie stared numbly at Jon’s hand, lodged inside the dark, gaping cavity of the man’s chest from behind. He wrenched it back in a wet, splintering thrust, the alchemist left to fall in a dullthudat his feet.
Still trembling, Marie slowly lifted her gaze—Jon stared at her, his eyes flat black. She flinched, recoiling back from him. She hadn’t meant to. He had saved her, after all. But it wasn’t Jon that frightened her so. It was the power that worked through him—raw and unbidden, something ancient and horribly divine that watched her right back.
“Take the others and run,” Jon grunted. And when she didn’t dare move, she felt his power reach for her, shaking the very air she breathed. “I saidrun, Marie!”
Marie remained a breath longer, eyes locked onto his. Then she ran.
Out she went, down the stage and into the darkness of the holding room. In a twist of her hand, the locks bent, the cages released. The men did not take much convincing, and they stumbled behind her. Marie could hear each of their trembling breaths in her ear, violent thunder that broke the quiet, as they burst out into the darkened corridor and made their way toward the great winding staircase. Heavy footfalls joined theirs. Brotherhood.
“Go!” Marie nodded toward the door. She would stay, hold them off. Just long enough that they could make their way out onto the second deck, then to Nonc Croc and his boat. The men ran through the door, didn’t dare to look back. Marie turned, saw two alchemists appear from the dark, glowing staffs aimed at her.
Marie didn’t wait. She opened her mouth, and Ogoun’s power flowed from her in one searing breath, flames springing from her throat and across the floorboards in a violent surge. The air rippled with heat, burning the alchemists until they twisted in the flame and fell into a screeching heap.
Smoke curled from Marie’s mouth. Every spell stole a piece ofher; such was the cost of Voodoo. Every bit of magic worked some part of the soul, and only so much could be cast at one time. But here? Trapped in this alchemical void, the cost was double. The magic moved through her, slow and heavy as lead, the loa out of reach. It made the realization of Jon’s power all the more frightening.
She ran, staggering up the last of the steps, and hurled herself through the door. She emerged gasping and wild-eyed onto the steamboat’s upper deck. But the upper deck was not as she remembered. The large entrance hall was gone. She was standing in a long corridor, the walls cramped and pressing in. Heavy pipes hissed steam down from the ceiling in curling breaths, their iron-slick bodies winding through the dark like coiling intestines. Sticky heat rose from the floorboards, clouding the path ahead. Terrible noises sprang out at her: the clanging of chains and pipes, the whittled echo of a distant scream chasing the dark. Only a dim redness pulsed overhead, a throbbing vein of light.
Marie swallowed, the horrible realization slowly becoming real: She had not goneup.
She had gonedown.
The truth was like cold ice down her back: Marie was inside the bowels of the steamboat. Hot steam crowded in from all sides, suffocating her. The walls breathed and constricted, womb-like, slick with dripping wetness. A flicker of movement stirred in the darkness ahead.
Someone was standing at the end of the hall.
A woman with long dark hair. She stood as still as stone. Until, very slowly, she turned her head. Like Marie, the woman wore a long black veil over her face that trailed to the floor. Steam blew in, lifting the veil, revealing the half-moon smile slowly curving across her lips. And then—
Marie froze.
“Maman?”
There was no mistaking it. It was Marguerite Darcantrel.
With that placid smile still frozen on her lips, Marguerite turned the corner, veil trailing like smoke. She walked until she was swallowed into the gathering darkness. Marie didn’t move at first. Howcould she? Every muscle in her body screamed in protest, every instinct in her mind warning her to turn back. But she followed anyway, lurching forward down the tight corridor. She turned the corner, expecting to find her mother there, waiting…
Marie emerged into the next hallway and took a breathless look around. Marguerite had gone. Just as she had when Marie was a girl. And Marie was filled with that same hopeless yearning, the pit in her stomach widening with ache. Her mother had left her again. But of course she had. Marie slapped a hand to her cheek. Because none of this was real.
Marie looked up, a prickling feeling crawling down her back. She had not emerged into a different hallway. She faced the same door marked with the same concentric circles.
Saints, she was back where she started.
“No,” Marie murmured. “No…no…no…”
She took off running. Down the same corridor, taking the same turn. Time bent. Forward. Backward. The awful truth dawning on her with each hurried step:She was running on a loop.There was dark, terrible magic at work. She could feel it, clutching her in its clawed grasp. It had no intention of letting her go. Still Marie ran, determined to find a way out of this maze, the endless dark. Steam drifted around her, parting like a curtain to reveal other rooms, other terrors…
