The Ring | Part V | Chapter 33-34
The horses whinnied nervously, yet the night was still.
This is chapter 33-34 of 38. Last week, we went back to 1857, ending with Edward French’s overdue return to Britain. This week, Muldoon finds himself in the belly of the beast. Ellen faces what she’s been running from all along.
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33
Muldoon, Mrs French and Hugo sat in awkward silence for a moment. Muldoon, exhausted with the secrets, took charge of the conversation. “I want to know what I’m dealing with here,” he said, looking at them. “One of my men is missing, and the last known location was Fontini’s circus… with Ellen French.”
Mrs French, at Muldoon’s request, came down to the Main Bridewell to join them in the interview room. As new and impressive as the Special Cases unit was, it was underground, cold, and made Mrs French look twice as she descended the staircase. She felt like a criminal.
They stared at him blankly. “Who is missing?” Mrs French asked.
“Detective James Lacey. Hugo knows him.”
Mrs French moved her attention to Hugo, who straightened slightly in his chair. “I do not know him personally. I last saw him with Ellen, in her tent.”
“And then what?” Muldoon asked.
“I didn’t see him again.”
“Did you ask him to leave?”
“I did, but she stopped me. She said he was staying, and that we—that’s myself, Ellen and Thomas—were going to leave there. She said he would help us.”
“And why didn’t you leave?”
Hugo, as though he’d forgotten how to speak all of a sudden, looked at Muldoon, and back to the concerned face of Mrs French. “What was stopping you from leaving, Hugo?” Muldoon asked.
“Was it Ezra?” Mrs French asked, trying to help. Hugo shook his head.
“Yes and no,” he finally said, looking at the ceiling. “I would not even know where to begin.”
“Begin somewhere, Hugo, because I feel I’m running out of time if they have James Lacey.”
Mrs French placed her hand on Hugo’s. “Hugo, what happened to him?”
“Ellen,” he said, his voice faltering. “She found one of Fontini’s books and cast a—some sort of spell.”
Mrs French’s face, now ashen, fell into her hands.
Muldoon leaned forward in his chair. “What kind of spell?”
“I know not what it is, or which one she used, but she created a scent—a perfume. One inhalation of it and the victim is hopelessly devoted, loyal, and in love. Infatuation.”
“How long does this spell last?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Why would it result in James Lacey’s disappearance?”
“I do not know.”
“She was using Lacey to help her get out? She knew Fontini would shy away from the authorities?”
“Yes. He was young, and brave.” And not like me. “She felt he would do the right thing, and help us get away.”
“Why didn’t you all leave, then?” Muldoon asked, still puzzled by the information. Mrs French leaned back and returned her gaze to the Frenchman.
“Because there is no way that Ellen…” He shook his head, and swallowed. “She is there forever. She cannot leave.”
“She went to the park with James Lacey, did she not?”
Hugo nodded. “She can come and go as she pleases, but she can never leave. She always has to come back or…” he ran his fingers through his hair. “You have to understand that this is beyond our control. I… I tried to tell Ellen that we couldn’t leave, but she would not listen.”
Muldoon rolled a pencil between his fingers. “But you could leave whenever you wanted, if you’re not part of this cult?” he asked.
“I could,” Hugo agreed, “but I would never leave her. I could never do that.”
Mrs French looked at Muldoon, and back at Hugo.
“We searched your things, Hugo,” Muldoon said. “Everything. Letters, journals, poems. They tell me quite the story.” He leaned forward. “Lacey, before he disappeared, wrote in his diary that Ellen’s mother died ten years ago in a trapeze accident.”
Hugo and Mrs French exchanged a look. She knew, too, and looked down at the floor, wiping away her tears.
“That is correct,” she said. She cast her eyes upwards and sighed. “I have stayed away,” she continued, “because Ellen has to think that I am dead. Hugo wrote to me. I found the letter waiting for me when I returned home. I… I had to stay away.”
Hugo placed a reassuring hand on Mrs French’s arm. “It had to be that way.”
“Why?” Muldoon asked. “Why does she have to think you’re dead when you’re quite clearly alive?”
Mrs French raised her chin. “Because though I’m not dead… she is.” She brushed away more tears. “I was never on the trapeze. It was never my act. But… she can’t remember the night it happened.”
“Ellen thinks that,” Hugo began, “Ellen thinks that there was an accident the night she died, but that it was Mrs French who was crushed in the fall.”
“How is that possible?”
Hugo shook his head. “It is… it must be the magic. Every day is the same for her. At first, it was reassuring. She felt no pain… but she did not age, and the world around her changed. She has forgotten most things.”
“Like you and she being lovers?”
“Exactly that.” Hugo steadied his bottom lip.
“That’s quite the thing to forget, Hugo,” Muldoon said, raising an eyebrow.
“I agree,” Hugo said, smiling wryly. “I tell myself it is my punishment, for not catching her, or not letting her die. Either reason is bad enough, and these thoughts have stayed with me all this time. It was so hot in there,” he said as Mrs French gently rubbed his back, “and my hands… she slipped. Gone, and I could do nothing. I begged Edward French to do something—anything. He did. He didn’t want to lose her, either.” His face remained still. “We were desperate. He didn’t understand the impact of what would come next, no more than you or I. She could go about her day, travel with us, but the day she leaves will be her last. She has not had to live with that, because she knows nothing of the truth. You see, time has cast a spell on her… and she has forgotten...”
They were interrupted by a clatter of metal and shouts from the corridor. Muldoon opened the door and went down the passage to see the flushed face of Constable Roberts rushing past him. “Discipline me if you will sir,” he said, the sweat rolling down his dark brow, “but I’m not going back in there.”
Fontini’s laughter seemed to echo and bounce off every wall. Mrs French covered her mouth in horror.
Fontini lay alone on the floor of his cell staring at the wall opposite. “Mother, my eye is bleeding.” No answer. Instead, he felt the clammy, sweaty sensation of sickness on his skin. The rush of his insides rising jolted him into action. He sat up and vomited into the bucket. “Nice try,” he said, wiping the residue away with the back of his hand. “But you are me now, and I am you.”
“You don’t have to do what the ring says.”
“Ha! I do not do as it says. I am the master.” He threw his body at the wall, winding himself in the process. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”
“They’ll hang you.”
“Not without hanging you also.”
“Edward?”
Fontini stood, and crept over to the door. It was a woman. He could smell her.
“Edward, can I speak to you?”
Ellen. “Hello Mrs French,” Fontini said, placing his face against the door in anticipation. If they opened the hatch, he’d be right there, watching her with his good eye.
“I want to speak to Edward.”
“He is asleep.”
“Wake him up,” she said. Her tone was cold, and impatient.
“Say the magic word.”
“Please.”
“Elle?”
“Edward! Edward, my darling.” Her voice, choking with emotion, was music to his ears. “Edward, what has he done to you?” She turned to Muldoon, and asked quietly, “Can I see him?”
“I can open the hatch,” Muldoon whispered, “but I wouldn’t advise going in there.” She nodded. He slid it open.
Fontini wasn’t wearing a wig. Mrs French could see her husband’s single eye, his noble nose and brown-grey hair through the opening in the door. He was Edward French, and wasn’t a day older than the last time she’d seen him, in 1883.
“I can’t stop him, Elle. I can’t stop him.” He looked scared, checking over his shoulder. “He wants to kill you all, and I’m first on his list.”
“Don’t talk like that. We can sort it out. What can I do?”
“I don’t know—Elle, he’s coming back. He’s coming back and I have to go now.”
“No! Edward, you have to stay with me.” She leaned closer to the opening and clutched one of the bars. “Stay with me. Please stay with me.”
“Get away from here, Elle. Get away!”
“Stay with me,” she pleaded.
“Hello Mrs French.” She no longer recognised the face as her husband’s, and recoiled in disgust.
“No,” she said, removing her hand. “I want to speak to my husband.”
“That’s a shame.” He smiled. “I hope you said goodbye.”
“I didn’t get to say goodbye. Can I speak with him, please?”
“No.”
“Why not, Fontini?”
“He’s dying. His blood is fusing with mine.”
“No. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I will have you all.”
“Please, bring him back.”
She yelped and leapt back from the door when he smacked it with the side of his fist. First came the sound of retching, followed by a guttural, “Lac.”
“What?”
Two thumps this time, and more throated babbling. “W…lac.”
“What are you saying?”
He banged the door in tune with his chanting of, “Wur…du…lac. Wur…du…lac. Wur…du…lac!”
“Stop it!”
“WUR DU LAC.” He raised his head to the ceiling, inhaling her as much as he could. “Come out, little piggies. I’ll eat you all up.”
Muldoon pulled the hatch back and sealed it shut. Mrs French sobbed into her hands.
Hugo, hearing the shouting and the woman’s distress, came down the corridor. He reached for her elbow and pulled her away from the door, and let her cry into his shoulder for a few minutes.
They eventually returned to Gill’s office and closed the door. Fontini’s open trunk was in the corner, where Gill had had it dragged back down. Hugo brought Mrs French to the sofa and helped her sit down. He crossed the room and retrieved one of the books. “I was looking through the books before, as you suggested…” He flicked through a few browned pages and settled on one. “Is it this?” he asked, showing Mrs French and Muldoon one of the books. They looked down at a human form in the black, leather-bound volume. Mrs French, unsure of how much more she could endure that evening covered her mouth again. The drawing was of a figure—almost reptilian, with the eyes and teeth of a wolf, devouring a man it was crouching over.
“I don’t know. I don’t know—but wait—look!” She pointed to the symbol in the writing at the bottom of the page. “Do you know this language? I don’t know what it says.”
Muldoon read the Latin on the page. “The Serpent created the wurdulac. It says the wurdulac has to change his entire family… should they need to serve The Serpent when he rises.”
“When he rises? What?” Mrs French said breathlessly.
Despite the door being closed, they could still hear the banging and wailing from Fontini’s cell as he threw himself at the door. “Perhaps he has risen,” Muldoon said.
34
Ellen woke to the sound of the animals rattling in their cages. The horses whinnied nervously, yet the night was still. The elephant, old and placid, swished her trunk to swat flies away. Inside some of the tents, cages were rattling violently, but she didn’t recognise the sounds.
Wearing only her nightgown, Ellen came out into the camp and looked around. In her bare feet, she stepped on something cool and leathery, that crunched under her heel. She looked down. Skin. An entire sheath of human skin, shining like wet overalls in the open, white moonlight, its arms and legs spread out like a rug. She brought her hands to her face, but no scream came.
She froze when she saw them.
Naked, their jagged spines threatening to puncture the skin that covered them, no hoods this time; they were crawling around on their hands and knees, their pointed noses rising to the sky, sniffing. Like snakes, they had shed their skin, abandoning their once natural forms forever. Their hands, where human fingers once were, were now elongated, with long, razor-sharp claws. Where are their eyes? She thought, studying them like she would a garish waxwork at a museum; so familiar, but off-centre. They reminded her of the strange vision the night Sophia died. She knew what they were doing, but couldn’t believe it: They were searching for their next kill. Even with their newly bald heads and forked tongues, she knew them. Ears that had once been human, now rested further up their heads, pointing and listening. They didn’t need eyes. The Serpent would provide.
Oh God.
She stepped backwards slowly, hoping she would find herself back in her tent at any moment. Her stomach dropped when she realised she’d backed into something else. A solid, warm hand clamped around her mouth, stifling any attempts to scream. “Go with him.” It was Roman, barely looking at her as he scanned the vicinity. He nodded over her shoulder, where her eyes found Thomas. He was waiting to the right of her, urging her to follow silently.
“What about you?” she asked Roman quietly.
He said nothing, and raised his scimitar so she could see it. She nodded, understanding perfectly what was going to happen next, and ran to Thomas. As he reached out his hand to grab hers, she slipped, and crashed down onto the grass, cutting her knee on a large stone. The scent of her fresh, coppery-scented blood filled the air. They came running. Roman’s blade sang as it swept downward and through the throat of one that had tried to grab Ellen’s ankle. He didn’t turn to see if they’d made it to the main tent, for more were coming, and he was waiting for them.
They ran as fast as they could, Ellen limping slightly with the pain in her knee. Thomas pulled her along, his small, tight frame cutting through the air as he did so. When they reached the big top, she hesitated. “What?”
“He said this one.”
Thomas slipped inside. “Thomas—wait,” she said, but he didn’t come back. She hadn’t been in there since Sophia died.
She hadn’t been there since she fell from the platform.
She hadn’t been in there since she first saw those things that were now chasing her.
She followed him in. The world around them fell away, and they were standing in a dense, black forest, thick with the trunks of ancient oaks, beech and conifers, almost blocking the light with their lush, heavy, green crowns. Ellen looked up through the canopy, the mottled moonlight showing her that it was still night. “What is this?”
“Flummoxing,” Thomas said, turning to look at the giant ferns either side of him. They heard the hissing and the snarling in the distance.
“Where’s Roman?” Her pulse thumped violently through her body. She felt weak, and stopped for a moment, holding on to the trunk of the nearest tree. She thought she’d never be able to let go.
Thomas didn’t stop to look, and jogged ahead. “Not waitin’ ‘ere to find out. Come on.”
As much as she felt she couldn’t walk properly, they pushed on through the thick undergrowth, its rust-coloured carpet of dead leaves and branches crunching under their feet. Ellen worried that she was leaving a trail of blood on the leaves of every fern she brushed past. Thomas, as though he had read her mind, tore off his sleeve and handed it to her.
She stopped to tie it around her knee. “So much blood,” she said. The cut, surprisingly deep, and bleeding from the fleshy space right between kneecap and shin bone, was still stinging, but she tied it tight and kept walking, not knowing how they’d ended up at the foot of church steps. She looked up. An old, stone church stood in the clearing of the black forest, its steeple reaching further than the trees. “Perhaps they can’t get in here. Perhaps it’s sacred? Hallowed ground?”
“Worth a punt.” Thomas pushed one half of the perfectly arched doors open and held it open for her. “You go in. I’ll keep lookout.” She thanked him and passed him into the foyer of the church.
Ellen gasped at what she saw next. The church, warm and welcoming with its high, arched ceiling and low, welcoming light forced the tension out of her shoulders. She felt she’d been here before. Behind her, the black forest waited, but in front, she saw only light.
Her parents, sitting in one of the pews, turned around to look at her, the creaking of the bench echoing in the silent church. They were smiling, their heads covered with hats. Sunday best, and hymn books in hands.
The polleniferous faces of the summer flower arrangements decorated the ends of every pew; pungent and heavy hydrangeas, peonies, lavender and roses, wilting on strong green stems. She forced a blink, and opened her eyes again. What was once a display of nature’s paint palette had been replaced with white lilies. Hundreds of them.
There was no one else in the ornate, Gothic church other than her parents, the vicar, and a young man waiting at the altar, his back turned to her. She checked around the foyer again, to see if Thomas was in the doorway. He wasn’t. She couldn’t see him, and realised she could barely see anything through her lace veil. Her nightgown was gone, replaced with a white silk wedding dress. She brushed it with her free hand. The other held a purple bouquet, alive with wildflowers and depositing its floral perfume. The candlelight, its brilliance only possible through the sheer volume of burning wicks in the church, cast a heavenly glow on everyone’s faces.
In silk slippers, she felt herself walking slowly toward the man at the altar.
“Hugo?” She knew his ears anywhere, and the way his dark hair curled around his widow's peak, no matter how hard he wet it and combed it back. He turned to look at her, his handsome, young face trying to smile through the overwhelming urge to cry. “Hugo?” she asked again, hearing her own voice waver. It was the French boy standing before her.
The French boy who taught her to fly.
With shy, tender fingers, he lifted her veil and looked into her face.
The organ played a tune, the vibrations of each note rippling through her body. She knew it. She knew it well.
“You’d fly through the air,” she tried to sing, her quiet voice breaking, “with the greatest of ease. My daring young man on the flying trapeze. Your movements were graceful, all girls you could please.”
He smiled, the dimples in his cheeks showing, as he finished her verse, “And my heart you purloined away.”
She kissed him, knowing the shape of his lips, and the way they felt on hers.
It was Hugo. Hugo as she’d known him, and Hugo as she’d loved him.
She held his hand, only to feel the warmth of it dissipate, as though she were the snow queen, turning him to ice. She lifted her eyes to see his face melting away, and stepped back in horror. Death stood in his place, its awful, outstretched wings bearing holes where many had tried to stop it mid-flight.
She fell to the ground, but didn’t hit it. The grey stonework of the church ebbed and flowed like the tide, fading into blackness. Her fingers brushed black fur, and held on as she felt herself being carried away at breakneck speed through gas-lit streets and alleys. She could go anywhere in the world. She was finally free, and she was never coming back.
“Take me to Muldoon,” she said, feeling the cold setting into her bones.
Constable Roberts, after being ordered to get a grip by his superior, Andrew GIll, stood outside of stores—the backdoor entrance to Special Cases—smoking a cigarette. He felt, given the circumstances, he was at least entitled to a short cigarette break. “It helps keep my hands steady,” he said, building up the courage to bring Fontini another tray of food. Fontini who, hours before—according Roberts, the only witness as well as the victim—had leapt at him like a cougar and tried to bite him. Gill, needing Roberts on hand more than he’d needed any officer in the past week, let him take the liberties. It was a fair price for silence—the silence of which was tried once more by the emergence of a monstrous black beast climbing over the back wall of Police Stores.
“Jesus, fu—” he screeched, dropping what was left of his cigarette.
“Shhh, please, it’s all right,” the girl said as the huge creature put her down on the ground. “It’s all right.”
Roberts could see that she was bleeding. The girl turned to the creature and—to his horror, stroked its head—and brought her attention back to Roberts, who felt at that moment it was nothing short of a miracle he hadn’t pissed himself in front of her. She raised her hands. “I need to see Inspector Muldoon.”
“That’s James Lacey?” Gill asked, his mouth barely closing. “That thing in cell three is James Lacey?”
The creature, thanks to Ellen’s handling of it, had willingly gone into its cell.
Ellen, now sitting across from Muldoon and Gill like a chastised child, raised her large eyes to look at them, and nodded.
“What kind of spell have you cast on him, Miss French?” Muldoon said. “It doesn’t look much like a love spell, in my humble opinion, unless you’re wanting to be eaten.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” She wrung a handkerchief in her lap. “I don’t remember reading anything about… that. I thought it was infatuation.”
“Infatuation?”
“Yes,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t mean for him to—”
“How do you know it’s him?” Gill interposed.
“His eyes.” She smiled faintly. “Lacey has nice eyes.”
Gill rubbed his chin in bafflement. He’d never noticed Lacey’s eyes. He wasn’t even sure if they were green or blue. “I’ll take your word for it,” he grunted.
“And it—sorry, Lacey—brought you here?” Muldoon said. “Have you known about it—his form—all along?”
“No, I only discovered this tonight. When… when I was trying to get away.”
“Away from where?”
“I couldn’t get out of the circus, but I finally found a way. Thomas helped me escape....” She stopped for a moment, realising she’d left him behind. “Is Thomas here? We both…” she hadn’t seen Thomas for hours, “is Thomas here?”
“Who’s Thomas?” Gill asked, turning to Muldoon.
“The acrobat, I think. Is that right?” Muldoon asked Ellen.
“Yes. He was, he was helping me get away. I haven’t seen him.”
“But you’ve seen something.”
“How do you—?”
“He’s a bit witchy, Miss French. Knows stuff. So don’t bother lying to us. Comprende?”
She nodded. “It was all very strange,” she said. “I came out of my tent, and… they—I can only assume—the rest of them, were different. They were, more animal. More blood-thirsty. Hungry.”
“Wurdulacs,” Muldoon said.
“Sorry?”
“They’re wurdulacs. They are minions of The Serpent.” He paused for a moment, and looked at the open page in the book, making sure he’d got his facts straight.
“Don’t leave us hanging, Dickens,” Gill said, folding his arms.
“It says in one of Fontini’s books that The Serpent, once a noble knight, lost his way near what is now Crimea. He cheated death in battle, and wandered The Black Road. It takes you through miles of forest, and each side of the road tries to claim you; the side of the living and the side of the dead. Those who cheat death walk through the middle of it, not knowing which side they’ll fall. This fallen knight became a great sorcerer, manipulating the power of nature to bend to his will. He granted himself eternal life, and he was known as The Serpent—the one who outruns death, and for as long as he can keep running, he can walk on whichever side of the road he wants to.”
Ellen thought of the tarot cards, falling in the same direction, every day, no matter what she did differently. Muldoon continued. “They say The Serpent, in an attempt to cheat death forever, raised his own army of the undead—the wurdulacs. Now, it also said in the book that they crave the blood of their loved ones, and must convert their whole family in order to…”
Her blood ran cold. “In order to what?”
“In order to outlive death forever.”
Ellen stared at him. “Can you defeat it?” she asked. “Who is The Serpent?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Fontini seems to be… some sort of vessel. Messenger, perhaps.” He opened a piece of paper and laid it out on the desk. “He goes by this symbol.”
She fixed her eyes on the image in front of her. “That’s on Fontini’s whip.”
Muldoon looked up at her. She doesn’t know.
“Ellen,” he said. “Did your father have a whip like that?”
“Yes. That horse whip was his. He left it to Fontini when… when he went away.”
“When was the last time you saw your father, Ellen?”
“When I was seventeen.” She furrowed her eyebrows, hearing the words leave her mouth. “I am… I am still seventeen.”
Muldoon and Gill left her alone in the room. Muldoon returned with Mrs French five minutes later. “I’ll leave you both to talk for a moment.” The last he saw of mother and daughter, they were holding each other, their tears a mix of surprise, joy and sadness for what was to come.
“Well that’s easy enough. I’ll throw it in the fire and there—job’s a good’un.” Gill held the whip, inspecting it as though it was going to come to life at any moment. “So this makes him some kind of sorcerer?”
“That’s what Hugo Perrier says. He says he engineered ways to keep them there, forever.”
Gill shuddered. “Well, I’d like this to all be over and done with now if you don’t mind, Mulders.”
To their surprise, Constable Roberts reappeared, this time with Roman behind him. Gill, flustered, looked down at the blade swinging from Roman’s hip. “Is anyone going to mention the bloodied scimitar, or are we a weapon-friendly organisation now?”
Roberts grew pale. He hadn’t even thought to stop Roman from entering the building. Since the incident with the creature, he hadn’t been able to think clearly, and wanted nothing more than to hang his uniform up forever and forget anything ever happened. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t …” he swallowed, “uh, I didn’t think he was threatening.”
“Christ, Roberts,” Gill said, looking up at the ceiling. “Go and have another break. Have a coffee. Please. Go upstairs and say nothing.”
“Yes, sir.” Roberts slid out of the room past the hulk of a man standing near the doorway. They heard him clamber up the stairs as quickly as possible, shutting the door behind him with a decided clang.
“Roman,” Muldoon said. “Care to explain?”
“Destroying the whip will not work.”
“What makes you think we were going to do that?”
“Next natural step,” he said. “He always has whip. Whip with him all the time.”
“But it’s not where the power comes from?”
Roman shook his head solemnly.
Muldoon stepped forward. “Where else is he wearing this symbol?”
Roman held up his hand. He was wearing a couple of rings. “It was a gold signet ring. Given to him in Crimea. The ring of The Serpent.”
Muldoon felt his body sink under the revelation. “The ring,” he said, brushing his hair back.
“Yes,” Roman said. “The ring is eternal. Ongoing. Endless life for the one who wears it. Through the ring, the wearer wields The Serpent’s power.”
“How do you know that?” Gill asked him suspiciously. “How do we know you’re not his servant? How do we know you’re not going to slice us open and break this lunatic free?”
Roman held the sword out in his palms. Muldoon gently took it from him and placed it on the desk behind them. “You can have it,” Roman said. “But I will need it back for the—”
Gill looked from Muldoon to Roman incredulously. “You’re not going to cut his head off in my department.”
Roman, puzzled, asked, “His head?”
“Yes. He’s had it all melted into his teeth hasn’t he?” Gill said, thinking of Fontini’s golden smile. “Unless we book him in at the dentist, the head’s going to have to come off.”
“No, no,” interjected Roman. “It will not come to that. Edward French,” he put his hands on his chest, “still inside, and I could never kill my friend.”
“How do you know he’s still in there?”
“He is slave, not master. My maica—uh, how you say, grand mama? My maica—she cure him. Long time ago.”
“How did she cure him, Roman?”
“She use everything she had to suppress Serpent’s power.” His brows creased over his dark eyes as he held his crucifix between his thumb and forefinger. “She gave him the final years of her life, to… to keep him from turning.”
“That was very kind of her,” Gill remarked. “What was in it for her?”
“He was good friend to me,” Roman said, thumbing his chest. “Like father to me.”
“What made him turn?” Muldoon asked. “If she sacrificed herself to stop The Serpent, why did it happen anyway?”
“Ellen. The daughter.”
“What happened?”
“Ten years ago, Ellen and Hugo were doing show. Performance. They fly on trapeze…” he looked at both of them to make sure they understood.
“Yes, go on,” Muldoon said gently.
“Ellen slip out of Hugo’s hand, and she fall from great height.” Roman’s lips narrowed apologetically. “Mr French, so sad about Mrs French leaving, went mad with grief. I saw… I saw him do for Ellen what my maica did for him. He… he used black magic, and she still lives today.”
“But Roman, she’s… she hasn’t aged.”
“The magic could not… how you say? Revive. The magic…”
“Prolongs? Suspends?”
“Suspend. She stay the same—just before dying moment. Forever.”
“Until she finally dies.”
“Yes. She is not alive, like you and me.”
“But she’s not a wurdulac?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She is not wurdulac.”
“Speaking of,” said Muldoon, looking over his shoulder at the bloodied scimitar. “Have you been hacking them down back at camp?”
“They are down for now. The ones I could catch when changing, I lock away in cages. I kill the rest. But they will be back as long as The Serpent still living. Fontini released Serpent. Fontini puts it back.”
“Are we going to have to take off his head, Roman?” Muldoon asked.
“No.” Roman said, “the ring is on his finger.”
Would you like to know more about my writing process and some insight into the novel? You can join the Muldoon Book Club where I publish a bi-monthly newsletter with my own voice over so you can also listen at leisure. It’s never too late to join, and I always warn if there are spoilers. Here’s what’s already out from behind the scenes at the Muldoon Book Club:
Episode 1: Ominous openings.
James Lacey is back! I hope the spell, whatever it was, can be reversed!