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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

The whiffle dust had become a tornado of thorns. With brutal efficiency Count Pellegar drove a knee into Julian’s midsection and slung him around in a circle before crashing him over the nearest sidetable. By this time Matthew had already taken another glancing kick to the side that he feared had broken ribs, but he got an arm up to ward off the kick that would’ve caught him in the face. He was trying to stand up when Brux grasped the back of his neck and under an arm and threw him with surprising strength into the harpsichord, which collapsed underneath him with a musical groan and caterwaul of splintering spruce and snapping wires.

Pellegar picked up Julian’s pistol, quickly examined it with true interest, and then walked across the room toward his fallen opponent as calmly as if strolling in the park on a summer’s morn. He kicked the shambles of the broken sidetable out of his path and leaned down to put the barrels against Julian’s head as Julian struggled to his knees.

“I don’t think,” Pellegar said, “that anyone here will begrudge my killing of a common robber.”

Baron Brux cried out in pain.

The baron had been coming in to deliver another more deadly kick when Matthew had twisted around in the ruins of the harpsichord and found his hand closing over a wire broken loose from the soundboard. The thickness of it indicated a use for lower notes, but Matthew thought it would now serve a higher purpose. He lunged forward, whipped out with it and drew a crimson line across Brux’s pallid forehead.

With the baron’s sharp cry, Pellegar’s attention ticked toward the source and Julian chopped the gun hand away and hit him in the right knee with everything he had. Pellegar staggered sideways, his small teeth clenched and red whorls coming up on his cheeks, but he still had hold of the gun. At once Julian was up, mindful that if he let his pain slow him he was dead, and smashed Pellegar in the jaw with his fist, following that with another blow to the temple. As Pellegar fell backward against the wall he swung out with the pistol to crack Julian’s ribs but Julian was already upon him and trapping the pistol with his weight.