“And what about Berry? How do I know those two won’t … you know … take advantage of her condition?”

“Nash’s wife needed a replacement for her unfortunately deceased daughter,” Fell answered. “I understand it greatly benefits her own state of mind. I can also assure you that Frederick may be many things but he won’t do what you’re thinking. I’ve already broached that subject with him and told him that—mayor of this village or not—he is risking his head if I get a whiff of impropriety … and I have others checking on her, you may be sure.”

“I don’t think I can be sure of any damn thing,” Hudson said, with as fierce a scowl as he could conjure.

“Well … I thought you might have that attitude.” Fell reached into an inner pocket of his robe and brought out two small cards. He held them up so Hudson could see the fingerprint impressed in dried blood on each. “Do you know what these are? I’m sure you do, working with Katherine Herrald as you have. As I told Matthew, I have intended to send these to two people both you and he know—Gardiner Lillehorne and Minx Cutter—for their transgressions against me. The reality is that I presently have no messenger to spare to get these on their way, and I have—as you realize—more important matters on my plate. Therefore, as a gesture of good faith—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but instead held first one card and then the other over the flame of the nearest taper. When the flames had consumed the blood cards nearly to his fingers he dropped the charred remnants into his soup bowl, where they hissed like little snakes.

“What say you?” Fell asked.

Hudson thought about it for a moment. God help Matthew out there in the wilds … and with one of Fell’s killers at his side, too. Time was of the essence for Berry … but how the hell was the boy—no, the man—going to get that book of potions and a chemist away from a murderous demoniac—Satanist, to be exact—who had gathered a gang of probably like-minded deviates?

Damn, he thought. This was not just a pickle, it was the whole barrel.

But at the moment, in these circumstances, there was only one utterance that made sense.

Hudson held his glass up and said, “Pass the bottle down here.”

Three

3 Days Previously …

In the distance, many miles away, stood a line of blue-hazed mountains. For several hundred yards around Fell’s village the land was an unsightly morass of dark gray bogs streaked with brown and yellow, patches of knee-high grass likely hiding quicksand pits, and a few scraggly wind-sculpted trees reaching up as if for mercy from the brutal earth. The road that stretched from southeast to northwest was no more than a hardly recognizable track across the ground. Ahead, in the direction the two riders must travel, the track curved into forest.

They had gone only a short distance when Julian Devane reined his horse in and turned the animal to block Matthew’s progress.