“Gone,” said Cardinal Black.

Lash did not answer. Black gave the old man and woman who clung together on the floor a look of disdain. He wiped his watering eyes with the back of a long-fingered hand, coughed a few times to clear his lungs and then picked up the musket he had his boot on. He walked into the hallway the vice admiral had just entered, and there he saw the picture.

Lash had knelt down beside her body. He had one hand in her hair, supporting her head, and the other against her cheek.

“This is a damnable mess,” said Black.

Lash was silent. His huge body gave what might have been a shiver of either anguish or rage.

“They’re going for the other coach,” said Black. “Whatever happened here cannot be changed.” When Lash still did not respond, Black prodded a bit harder. “Lioness and Merda may be able to stop them in the woods but if they slip past, Hodder will be no match for Devane.”

Lash gently laid her head to the floor. He picked up the gun he’d set aside, stood up and stared at the open back door. Smoke was whirling through the hallway, drawn from both the burning barn and one of the window curtains that had caught fire. When he turned his gaze upon Cardinal Black again his face was a blank mask but Black recognized in the vice admiral’s piercing blue eyes the writhing flames of Hell.

He strode into the front room. The Autreys clung to each other on the floor, surrounded by little blue oil fires that shimmered on the stones. When Lash had thrown the last oil bottle in and followed it by breaking the door off its hinges with a tremendous kick, he’d found a musket pointed at him. He’d stopped dead still and bellowed I am a vice admiral in the Royal Navy, madam! The statement had so unnerved Greta that before she could compose herself Cardinal Black was in the room, and had driven the musket to the floor with his boot.

The flame-bearded Lash, a towering and terrifying presence, stood over the couple with his pistol at the ready.

“Please, sir,” said Oliver, “we want none of this.” His voice broke. “Please, sir.”

“Allow me,” Cardinal Black requested.

Lash’s voice was like a doom bell. “Make haste.”

Black drew from his raven’s-wing coat his ceremonial knife, its hooked blade marked with the symbols and lettering that to him spoke of absolute freedom in the name of Satan, which to the mind of the normal person would mean all forms of the darkest, most brutal evil without regard for consequence or conscience.

Black was on Oliver Autrey even as the man put his arms up in an effort to protect his wife. The blade slashed across Autrey’s throat, a target upon which Black had had much practise.