A second rifle shot sounded, followed by the hissing pops of flintlock weapons. The handrail exploded into splinters, and a painting plunged from the wall. Lenoir crouched with his arms over his head, his thumb cocking the hammer of his own flintlock even though it was pointed uselessly at the ceiling.
There was a pause, silence. Lenoir glanced up, but all he could see was smoke. It drifted and curled at the top of the stairs, as languid as an opium cloud, lending a strange aura of serenity to the scene. Then someone shouted—a strangled, horrified cry—and the air hummed with the sound of a whip. The floor shuddered beneath something heavy—a body going down, Lenoir guessed. At least one set of footsteps pounded up the stairs above his head. Then more shouting, cursing, and inevitably, screaming. Lenoir sat frozen on the stairs, unable to move, unwilling to bear witness to the horror taking place a few feet away. His scars seemed to itch and squirm, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could hear someone thrashing just above, boots thumping and scraping against the floor.
Vincent would wade through them easily, one by one, driven not by rage or bloodlust, but by whatever power animated his long-dead limbs, whispered in his long-dead ears. He would not stop until Lenoir was the only mortal alive in these apartments.
He will kill them all, and I will never find Zach. The thought came to him suddenly, with perfect clarity, and it was like oil applied to a rusted hinge. Lenoir’s knees unlocked. His head came up. His lungs drew air, slowly, unsteadily, until he was ready. He crested the stairs.
He was no longer worried about gunfire. Zera’s men had spent every barrel on Vincent, and there was no time to reload. Lenoir’s was the only pistol left in the equation, on this floor at least. He leveled it over what was left of the handrail and surveyed the scene.
Vincent was stooped over a body at the far end of the room, unwinding the coils of his scourge. He glanced only briefly at Lenoir, but he did not seem to be wounded. He had obviously been hit multiple times; his clothing was in tatters, his white skin glowing through the bullet holes like a galaxy of stars on a moonless night. Yet whatever injuries he had incurred were already gone. Lenoir recalled how quickly Vincent’s flesh had regenerated that day in the street, when the sunlight had melted the tissue from his bones. The screams of Zera’s men echoed anew in Lenoir’s mind, a sound of incomparable terror as they watched their bullets tear ineffectually through Vincent’s flesh. Had there been blood, he wondered? Driving the thought away, he surveyed the rest of the room.
Another body was draped over the back of a chair near the bay window, a pistol beneath each hand. It was too dark to be sure, but it looked as though the man had been shot, probably by one of his own. There was a third man lying prone near Vincent, partially concealed by a sofa. A rifle lay on the floor nearby. This had been the sharpshooter, the man who had taken the first shot. From the way Vincent’s body had moved, Lenoir guessed that the ball had taken him in the shoulder, but the spirit had seemed to feel no pain. Certainly he was not feeling any now, neither in his limbs nor in his soul, for he surveyed the scene with his usual dispassion, coiling his cursed whip around his arm.
“There are five more of them,” Vincent said. “They fled up the stairs.”
“We need to leave at least one of them alive,” Lenoir said sternly. “Do you think you can control yourself?”
Something like irritation flashed through the spirit’s eyes, and Lenoir wilted a little. “I cannot stay my hand against those who have defiled the dead. But I can delay their execution. You know this to be so; otherwise, you would not be standing here.”
Only a supreme effort prevented Lenoir from showing his dread in the face of this reminder of his impending execution. “Good,” he said as evenly as he was able, “because we need to question them regarding the whereabouts of their leaders.” This time, he did not bother to mention Zach, instead focusing on what Vincent wanted. He hoped it would be enough to persuade the spirit to exercise some restraint.
Lenoir fetched the flintlock he had dropped on the stairs, and they headed up to the third floor, Vincent leading as before. This time Lenoir anticipated the shots, dropping to a crouch as soon as they sounded. Even as they rang out, a heavy set of footsteps took the stairs to the fourth floor. Coward, Lenoir thought, even though he knew he would do the same. Where will he go, anyway? The only way out was in the opposite direction. Or was it? It occurred to Lenoir that the man might be able to escape onto the roof, and from there to a neighboring building. The town houses were built close enough together that even Lenoir would not have much trouble jumping between them, provided they were roughly the same height. The thought brought a lurch of panic, for Vincent might consider the man who fled to be the token survivor, the only one he intended to leave alive. If the survivor escaped, they would be right back where I started.
Lenoir waited until the last of the shots died away before charging up the remaining few steps. Smoke obscured his view, but he could hear what sounded like swords being drawn. There was movement in the haze, and someone lunged at him. Lenoir squeezed the trigger without thinking. His gun went off with a flash and a puff of smoke, and the man grunted, dropping his sword and clutching his chest. His momentum carried him into Lenoir even as his knees started to give way. Lenoir flung the dying man aside, leaving him to tumble down the stairs.
Cursing, Lenoir pointed the barrel of his weapon at the ceiling. The last thing he needed was to pick off targets of his own; Vincent did not require any assistance in that department. Yet if he stayed where he was, he would be forced to defend himself, and he was not skilled enough with a gun to be sure of merely wounding. Better to go after the coward, he decided. He spun around the rail and headed up, leaving Vincent to deal with the chaos below.
He paused on the landing, gazing up into the gloom. The stairs ended just ahead; this was the top floor. It was only now, as he planted his back against the wall, that it occurred to Lenoir that he might be walking into another ambush, or that some of the men below might follow him up. He could hear nothing over the shouts on the third floor, and could see little for the veil of smoke that continued to drift up the stairs. Vincent was occupied below. Lenoir was on his own.
You are dead anyway, he told himself firmly. You do this for Zach. Thus armored, he crept to the top of the stairs.
It was a bedroom, presumably Zera’s. It looked to be the only room on this floor, and had sloping walls that suggested an angled roof. That was well; it would make it more difficult for the coward to escape that way, especially if the adjoining buildings were of the same design. Lenoir glanced toward the windows, a pair of which divided the wall opposite him into three sections. Dark curtains concealed the view of the street, making it impossible to tell whether the windows were open or closed. There was no chill, but that proved little; the windows might only have been opened moments before. The stillness of the curtains was similarly unreliable, for the plush material obviously weighed a great deal. It was safest to assume that the coward remained in this room and had not yet escaped onto the roof.
The hearth lay dark against the far wall. A dressing table sat between the windows, with a massive bed opposite. The most likely place to conceal oneself, Lenoir concluded, was behind the bed. He leveled his pistols at what he judged to be chest height. Then he called out, “I will not hurt you.”
A flurry of movement and a telltale click alerted him to the impending shot, and he dropped to the floor. Splinters and dust showered him from the wall above. Instinctively, he squeezed off a shot of his own, but fortunately he missed by a wide margin. The coward ducked behind the bed again.