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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

Someone had begun to slide the parlor door open, an inch at a time.

“Elizabeth?” Lash called. And again, more urgently: “Elizabeth?”

Matthew turned and ran.

Four: Squirrels and Cats

Four

Squirrels and Cats

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four

“What are we to do?”

Samson Lash did not answer. He sat at his desk in the study. Before him was a white clay cup bearing the brown ashes he had gathered from the desktop. The remnant of parchment paper he’d found on the floor lay under the fingers of his right hand. Every so often his fingers trembled.

“What are we to do?” Cardinal Black asked again, through the bloody cloth pressed to his battered nose. Both his eyes had turned a shiny shade of purple.

“Do,” said Lash after another moment of silence. His voice was distant, his eyes unfocused. “Yes. We must do something.”

“The others want to know! We must get after them! Every minute we dawdle, they—”

“Hush,” Lash whispered, and though it was only a whisper it was enough to make Cardinal Black shut his mouth in obedience, for beneath the soft voice was a sound like a blade being sharpened on a grinder. Lash turned the cup of ashes between his hands. “Bring the Owl to me,” he said.

Black left the study, and the vice admiral sat alone turning between his hands the cup of his burned dreams.

Not quite one hour ago, Lash and his guests had emerged from the parlor. “Elizabeth!” Lash had cried out, and when no answer was given he knew the worst. Then, upon the realization Elizabeth had been taken by Devane and Corbett, he had seen on the floor at his feet the most horrible thing … the thing that stole his voice and made his heart hammer and killed something in his soul … for immediately he knew what it was, and running at breakneck speed to his study there was the rest of it scattered atop his desk, and at that moment an icy cold and frozen grip seized upon him that was like falling from the world he had held under firm control onto the threshold of another where chaos and insanity ruled. Thus he was made small and shivering as he stared down upon what had been mockingly left for him to find.