Chapter 61

"What... do you mean?"

Baron's hand tightened instinctively around the trigger even as he spoke.

Reincarnation was the greatest secret of his new life, a secret he valued as dearly as his own pulse. If the wizard could not give him a satisfactory answer, he would bury the man right here—never mind the risk of the enforcers discovering them now.

Rankow had clearly not expected such a violent reaction. He lowered his voice. "It seems Mr. Constantine is unaware of his own family's secret."

"Secret? What secret?"

"The Blessing of Pain," the wizard replied.

"The Blessing... of Pain?"

The name sounded both tragic and absurd, like laughter laced with tears.

"Every historian of the ancient bloodlines knows this," the wizard murmured. "But you are a bloodless scion, and you have lived for so long on the Outside. Under the Law of Oblivion those memories may have been stripped away. It is only natural."

Jack let out a long, drawn-out "oh" and scratched the back of his head.

"You mean the power and curse that runs in the veins of the old bloodlines? Like the Lancelot family's natural abundance of spirit, or the Beowulf line's high resistance to elixirs?"

The wizard nodded. "Exactly. They are blood-curses that appear only in the oldest families—families known as Old-Blood Houses."

"Take the Van Helsing clan of Beast-path demon-hunters," he continued. "Their blood lets them shift with greater stability and strength than anyone else. But every full moon they must wrestle the brand seared into their souls."

Van Helsing—Baron knew the name. The vampire hunter who slew Count Dracula, immortalized in films starring the guy who played Wolverine, he thought wryly.

"Or the Dracoon line of Dragon-Knights," the wizard went on. "They can contract with the Red Dragon—proof of their noble blood. Yet that same nobility makes them the playthings of Fate. Demons and dragons crave their blood, and the dragon-venom eats them alive. Red hair is the mark of that slow poisoning..."

Red hair... Dracoon...

Baron's mind flew at once to Carmen—the crimson-gowned witch who burned like fox-fire, impossible to grasp.

Legend said that a century ago she annihilated her own clan, slaughtered the Lion-Pupil Knights who guarded the mad dragons, and personally slew the Red Dragon, seizing one-third of the Dragon Law. The night was remembered in Inside textbooks as the Fall of the Red Dragon and the Night of Betrayal.

The dragon's death left the Betrayer's Crag unguarded; dragons rioted and demons rose. Had the Gold Wizard Isaac Newton not intervened, the mad dragon would have led the wyrms beyond the crag and drowned the world in fire.

"And then there were the Constantines, once Knights-Templar," the wizard said quietly. "Their blessing let them walk two Paths at once..."

Rankow's eyes—worshipful or malicious, Baron could not tell—fixed on him. "And the price of that blessing is a mind split in two."

"Split personality?" Jack blurted. "No wonder the Constantine brothers always seemed a bit... off. Turns out they're nuts!"

You're the nutcase. Your whole family's nuts.

Baron crushed down the chill that rose in him; his attention snagged on the phrase "two Paths at once."

"Doesn't the Law of Profession reject every other Law? One soul can contract only one Path, can't it?"

He thought of the wizard's own work—Twinborn. And he remembered how he himself had bound two different Paths: knight and demon-hunter.

Split personality... could that let him contract two Laws?

Then if he had, say, three personalities, could he pile on wizard and saint as well?

The thought thrilled and horrified him in equal measure. Thrilled because his dual Path might not, after all, be the thing Baron Cambera had wanted to dissect. Horrified because the two voices in his head when he forced the blood-path contract might not have been imaginary.

Rankow's next words shattered the hope.

"Impossible. No Old-Blood can sign two Laws at once. To command more than one Law and be recognized by them—only the gods of legend can do that."

"I mean two professions under the same Law... Silver-path demon-hunter and blood-path demon-hunter... contract knight and Templar together..."

The wizard's breath came ragged; pain was leeching his strength, yet the Dragon-Knight and the golden-haired brute only watched, unmoved.

"So, Mr. Constantine, do you accept my terms?"

Baron did not hesitate. "I refuse."

"Why?" Rankow stared. "For you, right now, it would be the optimal choice."

Baron motioned Jack to bind the wizard with the anti-magic rope taken from Gull. "Because compared to what I've suffered, it's far too cheap."

A reincarnator who had done nothing but run and be hunted—by any measure, a disgrace to his kind. The direct cause might not have been Rankow disguised as the driver, but the wizard was far from innocent.

"I can pay more, sir. This body is already spent—a lifetime of rituals and hiding. The dragon-eaters have cast me off; their hunters want me dead. Trade my worthless life for yours."

"Survive?" Baron's voice was ice. "Why should I believe you? Because you're dying? Does a man on the brink of death always speak the truth?"

"I swear by the Wizard's Law," Rankow rasped. "If Mr. Baron Constantine accepts my terms, I will surrender myself to the police as the Bloodsucker!"

"One last time—Anthony truly wasn't killed by you?"

The wizard sighed, understanding at last. "All I know is it may have been an order from the dragon-eaters. I'm not privy to their inner circle. I only worked with them—they supplied the blood for my rituals, and I provided them a Bloodsucker's identity."

So I was just a pawn in someone else's game.

Baron said, "Then, as agreed, tell me everything you know about the dragon-eaters."

Rankow looked at him in silence. Baron understood. "I accept your terms."

The wizard nodded. "The head of the dragon-eaters is named Martin. A Spaniard."

Baron and Jack exchanged glances. Then came a long silence.

"That's it?" Jack asked after a moment.

"That's it," the wizard replied.

Baron: ......

For a moment he couldn't decide whether to laugh or to cry.

Still, he kept his word. As the wizard requested, he and Jack returned with the unconscious Eleanor's family to the villa on Westing Street to watch the souls ascend.

What he really wanted was to drag Rankow straight to the police, and he asked Jack if that was possible.

Jack muttered that while wizards were all bastards, the moment they swore on the Law they became as trustworthy as saints. Brother, do as you see fit.

Baron didn't want a cold dish of consequences, so he obeyed.

...

Inside an old panel van on Westing Street.

The wizard gazed at the still-sleeping girl and the old man, grief mingled with relief on his face.

"That's enough," he told Baron.

Baron and Jack exchanged a look. Baron leaned forward and checked the girl's and the old man's breathing—there was none. Their skin had already cooled.

As though they had been dead for hours.

"The souls?" Jack asked.

Shouldn't there be—

"They dispersed," the wizard said. "With the blood that sustained the false souls gone, they simply vanished. Master Baggin was right: when the soul disperses, the spirit follows. No ascension to the Spirit Realm."

His face was blank, like a mourner at a funeral he attended only out of courtesy.

Baron and Jack glanced at each other; neither had sensed a thing. Still, they did as promised: they helped the wizard into the passenger seat, donned gloves, and carried the three corpses plus Mrs. Eleanor into the villa's bedroom.

Then they opened the window that faced the van—the window bound to Carmen—so Rankow in the passenger seat could see Mrs. Eleanor and her family.

It was insurance: to keep their own identities hidden, and to guard against any last trick the wizard might have planted.

Fortunately the downpour kept the streets empty.

While hauling the bodies Baron couldn't help but ask Jack why he had black plastic bags on hand. In Baron's experience those bags appeared chiefly in gory movies—usually stuffed with human parts.

Jack sighed. "The economy's in the dumps. Besides my day job at Westminster I moonlight cleaning up after assassins."

Baron stared.

Jack grinned. "You didn't actually believe me, did you?"

Baron remained silent.

Given Jack's track record, Baron believed that if Jack revealed his surname were Donald, that he'd once dealt real estate in America, and that he planned to run for president—he'd still believe him.

Reputation mattered.

On the way out Baron noticed the dahlia on the table, now withered for lack of care, no longer the vicious man-eater it had been.

So the carnivorous flower had been Carmen's magic after all.

Baron mused on this as he and Jack returned to the van to wait with the wizard until, through the window, they saw Mrs. Eleanor break into wails that mingled with the rain in the lonely street.

After a moment the wizard, hands trembling like a penitent Christ, traced a cross upon his chest. "Let's go."

The van started. According to plan, Jack beat Rankow senseless after suppressing his magic, then dumped him at the police station gate before they fled.

As they drove away the bruised Rankow called after Baron.

"Tell Master Baggin we weren't wrong. Twinborn was the right experiment. The error wasn't ours—it was the world's."

Baron replied without looking back, "Tell that to the people who died because of you, you damned soul-parasite."

Rankow froze.

On the way out, Baron asked Jack why he'd done it.

He meant the part where Jack had beaten Rankow black-and-blue. That hadn't been in the original plan; Jack had tacked it on himself.

Jack lit a cigarette with practiced flair, leaned against the car window, and spoke in a low voice.

"I've been combing through all the papers about families ruined by the Bloodsucker these last few years—research for you. After a while it all blurred together. Sure, the Bloodsucker's hard to catch, but otherwise I didn't feel much. People die. Doesn't stop me from clocking in."

Baron gave a soft grunt. Jack went on.

"But just now, looking at that sorcerer's face—watching him grieve for the family he'd lost—I suddenly remembered the photos of those weeping relatives in the articles..."

Jack's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

"And I thought—why? Why should one man's tragedy become everyone else's tragedy? Even if those people were the 'villains' he talked about, who gave him the right to play judge, jury, and executioner over their lives?"

He shrugged. "I was mad. Letting him walk felt too easy, so I gave him a beating."

Baron thought, If only the Prol Court were as reasonable as you. They wouldn't have slapped me with a Timed Death Sentence without even asking for the facts.

Jack, still driving, glanced over. "I noticed you picked something up in the villa's bedroom. Valuable?"

Baron cursed the man's sharp eyes, but produced a photo frame from the Dragon-Gall ring.

Jack studied the picture: a family of five—mother, father, daughter, grandfather, grandmother. Silence stretched between them.

Finally Jack scratched his head. "Is Rankow the stepfather, or did he have plastic surgery? He doesn't look like anyone in this photo. Don't tell me he wore a mask every day."

Baron said nothing. He handed Jack two yellowed newspapers.

Jack pulled over and unfolded them. Both reported separate taxi accidents on the Outside, each caused by a drunken cabbie plowing into a family of three.

"Look at the dates and the photos," Baron said quietly.

Jack laid the papers side by side. A long moment passed.

"Bloody hell."

Two accidents—same story, different details.

The first crash's driver was the man in Baron's photo.

The second crash's driver looked a lot like the face Rankow had worn earlier. And in the second photo, among the grieving relatives, stood Mrs. Eleanor.

Jack's mind raced.

"But why ask us for that favor? That grief looked real—he couldn't have faked it—unless..."

He trailed off. Baron confirmed the unthinkable.

"The corpses of Eleanor's family are housing the souls of Rankow's own three. He was telling the truth: the blood keeps the souls tethered. But those souls aren't Eleanor's family—they're his."

Baron's voice dropped. "He turned his own family into parasites of spirit."

Parasites... Jack shuddered, finally understanding why Baron had whispered those last words to Rankow.

Baron continued. "So you still don't grasp how vast a person's hatred can be. To them, love and evil are the same coin. Revenge is simply justice wearing a darker face."

"He asked to see Eleanor one last time, not out of duty or love, but hatred. Only hatred could drive a man to murder so many, spill so much blood—just to make one person suffer."

Baron's gaze drifted, distant and cold.

"Revenge, huh... It almost makes sense. If everyone else is happy, who's left to bear the pain?"

Jack shivered again—this time not because of Rankow, but because of the Dragon-Knight's expression. So calm, so flat, like ice cracking open to reveal the blood-chill beneath.