Chapter Thirty-Seven

Breathing hard, air scorching her lungs even as she fought her bonds, Topaz writhed on the table. Her ears still rang with the percussion of the steam blast fired in the confined space. The steam unit, taking her father’s orders literally, had caught her a glancing blow with it. Part of her right side, from her breast down, had been seared by superheated steam.

Some of her writhing came of pain, some from rage. Her feelings for her father rose in such a fierce wave they nearly choked her. Their relationship had always been complicated, but deep inside she’d believed that in his twisted way he did love her.

She found that impossible to believe now. Bitterness joined the anger that choked her. Frederick Hathor—the great spirit master—had chosen wealth over decency and traded his conscience to this madman with the graveyard skills. And now—now he chose his own welfare and survival over that of his own child.

It is all about survival, Daughter.

How many times had he said those words to her over the years? Enough that she now seemed to hear them in her mind.

The steamie had relentlessly closed on her, wrested away her stiletto, and strapped her down to the table—the same where Rose had been brought back to life. And would her father truly let Clifford keep her body alive, replace her spirit with another? Would he banish Rom’s spirit, as well?

Upon that thought she turned her eyes on him. Obviously in agony, his wrists strained white, he hung from the iron pipe, his feet reaching desperately for the floor. New, livid burns marked the skin of his chest, but his blue gaze reached for Topaz, vital as a touch.

She drew a deeper, easier breath. She could endure so long as she felt him, as she first had when he appeared in her room.

And when the Undertaker’s work was done, would her spirit and Rom’s join together? That alone might make her fate bearable. But, ah, she would have liked to love that body of his one more time.

The steam plant, still chugging away, drummed in her ears in time with her heartbeat. The sound blotted out the words her father and the Undertaker exchanged. That they planned the event of her death, and Rom’s, she did not doubt.

But what was death? What life? Did it end with the flesh? If Clifford could be believed, her flesh would live on, sold to the highest bidder, taken away to some far place where no one would recognize her. Her spirit, she knew, would live on also—but not a life she could easily comprehend. No sting of sleet on her cheek, no hunger or thirst, no desire. She looked again at the man who hung from the pipe. No tasting the enticing tang of his flesh or feeling him plunge into her, bringing unimaginable completeness. She wanted that—oh, how she did!

The argument, for such it was, between Frederick and Clifford grew louder. Did her father still resist after all? But maybe they argued only over methods. She pressed her eyes closed and prayed to she knew not what. She did not wish to watch Rom die. Call her cowardly, but she couldn’t bear it. Please let them kill—or banish—me first.

“Topaz.”

At first her ears barely caught the hiss that came from the direction of Sapphire’s table. When he had remained still for so long, she’d believed him unconscious. Now she turned her head to find his dark gaze, narrowed between black lashes, fixed upon her.

Her heart leaped again, this time with hope. Like her, Clifford and Frederick must have supposed Sapphire sufficiently incapacitated that they’d failed to strap him down. She didn’t know what had happened to him during that terrible psychic flash at Forest Lawn, but he had clearly regained his senses.

He mouthed something, the words making barely a sound. With the boiler hammering in the background Topaz couldn’t hear. She shook her head and stole a look at her father. Abruptly, Sapphire’s voice invaded her mind.

Join with me.

She started, and Frederick twitched his shoulder almost as if he heard. Not daring to turn her gaze back on her brother, she thought instead, How?

Mind.

That hadn’t worked in the graveyard; even together they had insufficient power to defeat Frederick. Yet what options did she have? She contemplated it as ruthlessly as she ever had a physical opponent and decided, as she always would, to fight.

She gave Sapphire one nod. When?

Now, he told her and leaped from the table.

He made not for the steamie—still armed—or for his father, but for the Undertaker. Before Topaz could blink he had the frail man in his clutches, one arm hard across his throat, the other around his rib cage, making of him a shield.

Frederick, shocked for once, stepped back. The armed steamie raised its cannon but could not shoot without hitting Clifford.

“It’s over, Father,” Sapphire said in a voice that bore no relation to his usual smooth tones. “All done. Release Topaz and her companion or I’ll crush his windpipe.”

Sapphire, who had taught Topaz to fight, knew how to make good on the threat. A man’s windpipe, so he had once told her, was nothing but a thin tube and easily collapsed—a vulnerable point, were she ever attacked.

Now he looked like nothing so much as an assassin, dark hair mussed, eyes glittering, and face intent. Frederick must believe him, yet he made no assent. Instead he attempted to speak.

“Son—you must not betray me.”

Sapphire howled a cry of pain. “Why not? Tell me, Father.” He made of the last word an epithet. “What have you ever given me?”

“Security, a strong roof over your head. Good food in your belly. A superior education, and every advantage in choosing a career,” Frederick retorted. “Far more than your forefathers ever had.”

“We are not our forefathers!”

“We are, though, son. We are the ones who were hounded and chased across Europe, whose children slept on the cold ground, who were exterminated like foxes. The ability we carry comes from them. Would you betray the memory of all they endured and what they fought to pass on?”

Sapphire bared his teeth. “You are the one guilty of betrayal! You’re selling their sacred talent to the highest bidders.”

“An easy mark is an easy mark, Sapphire—wherever he may be found.”

“So,” Sapphire sneered, “you are no more than a schemer, a user, a dirty gypsy.”

“Don’t say that.” Topaz rarely heard her father angry. He seldom had cause to raise his voice, but he did so now, and his will flared up to clash with that of his son. Topaz distinctly felt them mesh and battle, and raised her own strength to support her brother, eyes riveted to her father’s face. It flushed with rage and then drained white.

“We are the sum of our ancestors,” Frederick insisted, “but so much more. We have achieved more than they dreamed. I cannot let you toss all that away, Sapphire. You must see I cannot.”

With that, Frederick unleashed his power, hurled it like a whip, striking Sapphire in a burning lash of pain. Topaz, who caught the mere edge of it, did not know how Sapphire kept his knees from buckling.

“You think you can defeat me, Sapphire?” Frederick roared. “I, who gave you life?”

Sapphire swayed where he stood. The steamie, wholly flummoxed, posed with the steam cannon pointed at Sapphire’s head, awaiting orders.

But Sapphire and his father were locked in a battle of wills, one perhaps many years overdue. Topaz, immobile yet linked in spirit with both her brother and Rom, felt Sapphire draw strength from her, strength with which to fight.

Still with his fingers clamped around Clifford’s throat, he stared into his father’s eyes—and squeezed.

“Cut them loose,” he grated, “or by all the gods, I will kill him.”

“Go ahead,” Frederick told him. “I’ve already learned his methods and no longer need him. And I don’t think you have the balls for it.”

“Do it,” Rom urged suddenly, hoarse with agony. “Remove the blight from the world.”

At the sound of his voice, Topaz arched her body, fighting for freedom. But she could not break the bonds that fixed her to the table.

Sapphire, never looking away from his father or so much as blinking, tightened his fingers and twisted brutally. Clifford made a strangled sound and sagged to Sapphire’s feet.

“Shoot him,” Frederick commanded, and the steamie fired.