Specters of Nemesis: (Shadows of Asphodel, Book 3) Read online

  Specters of Nemesis

  by Karen Kincy

  Specters of Nemesis – copyright © 2018 – Karen Kincy

  First edition

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To all the readers who loved these characters.

  1914

  One

  Walking around New York City without a sword felt like tempting Fate.

  Ardis reached for her hip, fingers clenching and unclenching. She tried not to imagine a maid feather-dusting her blade back at the hotel.

  Breathing deeply, she steered clear of rich ladies shopping for fripperies. Ostrich feathers bobbed from their hats, shading their bland faces. At least in Manhattan, nobody looked twice at her tawny hair and Chinese eyes. An electric streetcar barreled down the avenue, brakes squealing. Sparks rained from the trolley pole and fizzled on the wet asphalt. She shielded her eyes, though not one New Yorker flinched.

  God, she was supposed to be enjoying herself.

  She had survived assassins, an airship crash, and the invading Imperial Russian Army. This stupid feeling of vulnerability had to be the fault of pregnancy. Hadn’t the nausea been enough punishment? The whole zeppelin flight to America, she had paid homage to a toilet, though she felt less sick on solid ground.

  Two months down, seven more to go. Maybe the war in Europe would end first.

  Right.

  Navigating the crowds, she walked a few blocks to Bryant Park. London plane trees waved their bare branches over the grass. Pigeons jumped, wings clapping, from the bright marble of the New York Public Library.

  Where was Wendel?

  He had promised to meet her for dinner, though promises weren’t his strong suit.

  The perfume of roast chestnuts drifted on the breeze. Her stomach growled. She spotted an old man, probably Italian, and rummaged money from her pocket. With a tobacco-stained smile, the old man handed her a brown paper packet of chestnuts that heated her hands.

  Ardis returned his smile. “Thanks,” she said, glad to be speaking English.

  Her German was decent, but it was never precise enough for Germans.

  She sat on a bench and cracked open the hot chestnuts. Their sweet taste reminded her of maple syrup. She rolled the last of the chestnuts between her fingers, rubbing her thumb over its glossy shell, and frowned at the street.

  Still no sign of Wendel. Where the hell was the necromancer?

  Like a scrap of burnt paper, a raven floated overhead and landed in a tree. “Krampus?” Ardis squinted at the bird.

  Where Krampus was, Wendel was never far behind. Black feathers bristled at the raven’s throat when he croaked hoarsely. He flew from the tree and landed by her feet, pecking at her boots before yanking her shoestring.

  “Krampus!” Ardis shooed away the raven. “Stop being a brat. Where’s…?”

  The question died on her lips.

  Wendel crossed the street with his hand inside his coat. He staggered, his breath fogging the winter air, and coughed.

  Ardis clenched the chestnut in her fist. “Wendel?”

  He sank onto the bench, unsteady on his feet. Was he drunk? If she had to bet, her money would be on Enderman’s, that German beer hall. Wind ruffled his black hair. He combed it with his fingers, his white skin stained red.

  “Blood?” Her voice sounded brittle. “Wendel!”

  He looked sideways at her. Daylight glinted in his eyes, shifting them from green to gray. “I should have never left the Hex.”

  Why would he care about a curse thousands of miles away? Unless…

  She yanked aside the lapel of his coat. Under the black wool, blood crawled over his shirt, leaking from a gunshot wound.

  Her breath stopped dead in her throat. “You got shot.”

  “Evidently.” His smile was unconvincing, his hands trembling too hard.

  “We have to get you to a hospital.”

  “Not the hospital.”

  “That wasn’t a suggestion.” She grabbed his arm. “Who shot you?”

  “No one.”

  “This isn’t the time for sarcasm!”

  He leaned heavily on her as they stood. “Ardis, I don’t think I can make it.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  Wendel wasn’t lying. Only a block later, his knees hit the street, dragging her halfway down with him. He clutched his ribs, fighting to stay upright, before he slumped unconscious. Ardis grabbed his shoulders, trying to shake him awake, but his head lolled in the dirty slush. Strangers gathered to gawk down at them.

  “Someone get a doctor.” Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “Now!”

  ~

  The tiny hospital room stank of bleach and sickness. Outside the only window, rain streaked the evening with gloom. Wendel lay in bed with his fists clenched over the sheets. Could he sense the dead and dying, even while sleeping? Ardis rubbed his knuckles, though his hands didn’t relax under her touch.

  “Wendel,” she whispered.

  He hadn’t woken since the ambulance brought him here. The doctors injected him with a sedative before they pulled a bullet from between his ribs and stitched him up. Blood dripped into his veins via a needle in his arm.

  Dread wormed in her stomach. She hated seeing him so weak.

  Ardis hunched in a chair by the bed, her elbows on her knees, and pinched the bridge of her nose. A headache throbbed behind her temples; her eyes felt gritty from her refusal to cry. The police would come knocking and ask questions she couldn’t answer. Maybe it would be better if Wendel didn’t wake so soon.

  When the door opened, with the whine of rusty hinges, she didn’t look up right away.

  “Ardis.” The voice, more gravel than honey, grabbed her by the throat.

  Wendel?

  He stood with his hand on the door, his black coat dotted with snow not yet melted. His face looked blank, even his eyes unreadable. There was something wrong with his hair; it wasn’t ragged, hacked short, but longer than his shoulders. When she stole a glance back at the bed, Wendel still lay sleeping. The other Wendel wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times she blinked like she could wake from a bad dream.

  “I know who shot him,” Wendel said from the doorway.

  The heat drained from her face and left her icy. “Who are you?” Her voice rasped on the words, and she swallowed hard.

  “You know who I am.”

  She held up her hand. “Do not tell me Wendel has an identical twin brother.”

  His rough laugh shivered down her spine. “Not to my knowledge.” His gaze wandered to the bed, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.

  “Give me more of an explanation than that.”

  Wendel crossed the room, snow drifting from his coat, and dragged a chair to the bed, where he sat opposite Ardis. He kept glancing at himself sleeping. “I remember this hospital. The moment I woke. And everything after it.”

  “I’m asking one more time.” She leaned away; he was too close. “Who are you?”

  He met her gaze, his eyes shadowed. “He is my past. I am his future.”

  “You traveled through time?” When he nodded, she swallowed hard. “How?”

  “The archmage’s temporal magic. The last thing he built before… before I ca
me here.” Something in his hesitation wasn’t convincing.

  “What happened to Konstantin?”

  He smoothed his hair from his face. “He tinkered with technomancy he shouldn’t have.”

  She studied his face with intense scrutiny, noting how a scar slashed his cheekbone, how the lines across his forehead had deepened. The clash of strange and familiar unnerved her. “How far have you traveled?”

  “Too far.” His eyes darkened. “Too long.”

  Cold scuttled through her stomach. “Why did you come back?”

  “The war.”

  Of course. She wanted to know what happened, which countries joined the fray, but she wasn’t sure he would tell her the truth.

  “Ardis.” He reached for her hand before stopping himself. “We need to go.”

  “Why?”

  Wendel glanced at a clock on the wall. “We have three hours to find the man who shot me and kill him first.”

  She pushed herself from the chair to pace. “Murder somebody?”

  “Self-defense.” He shrugged. “Retroactively.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Why three hours?”

  “Because I’ve read the police records. That’s when the NYPD question him.”

  “Won’t killing him make the future worse?”

  “Better.” He tilted his head. “Hopefully. I can’t predict every possibility.”

  “Then why time travel at all?”

  “To try again.”

  Shaking her head, she combed her fingers through her hair. “God, Wendel, who is he? Why did he shoot you in the first place?”

  He swept his arm toward the door. “Let me show you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t just leave him–you–there.” She waved at the bed.

  His lips bent in a smile. “I’ll live.”

  “Of course,” she muttered. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

  “Rest assured, I won’t wake until the morning, thanks to the morphine.”

  “How do you–?”

  “I remember.”

  She held his stare. “What happens if I don’t help you?”

  His smile vanished. “Far too many will suffer. This time, we do things right.”

  ~

  Rats rustled along the street in the shipyard, fleeing from Wendel’s footsteps. Ardis touched the Chinese jian at her hip–Chun Yi hummed with sleeping magic. The enchanted blade had an insatiable thirst for blood.

  Wendel halted her in an alleyway. “You didn’t need to bring that sword.”

  “I’m not about to walk into a fight unarmed.”

  He twisted his mouth. “A burning sword isn’t what I would call stealthy.”

  “Fine.” She peeled her sweaty hand from the sword’s pommel. “I won’t draw Chun Yi until we blow our cover.”

  “What makes you think we will blow our cover?”

  “Wendel.” She looked at him for a long moment. “We always do.”

  “Speak for yourself.” From a pocket in his coat, he drew a dagger of black Damascus steel, inlaid with silver flowers.

  “Amarant,” she said, her stomach tightening.

  Wendel cocked an eyebrow. “Shall we?”

  He took her hand and she shivered. Shadows rushed from the dagger, spinning cobwebs of darkness over their skin. When the magic crawled over her face, she held her breath while fighting the feeling of claustrophobia.

  “Much better,” Wendel murmured.

  Nearly invisible in the night, they walked toward the water. Transatlantic liners and cargo vessels lurked off the coast. Black waves sucked at the docks with a glopping noise. The air stank of creosote, saltwater, and dead fish.

  “Who are we looking for?” she whispered.

  “The man who shot me.”

  She sighed. “Describe him.”

  “Short, balding, smug.”

  “Smug,” she repeated. In the shadows, Wendel’s face faded in and out, impossible to read. Was he being sarcastic?

  “He shouldn’t be too hard to kill. We have the element of surprise.”

  “Can I ask why he shot you?”

  He cleared his throat. “All this talk of American neutrality is a lie.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “See that freighter? The Reliant.” He pointed at a hulking silhouette. “Loaded with weapons, made in America. Bombs, firearms, and ammunition. All of them bound for Russia.”

  They had fought the Tsar’s men there, on battlefields dirty with blood-soaked snow. They had narrowly escaped death at the claws of the Russian’s clockwork dragon. But she expected him to abandon the war across the water.

  “Why get involved?” she said, frowning. “Wasn’t Königsberg enough?”

  “Money,” he said.

  Her frown deepened. “You lied to me. Told me you were looking for honest work.”

  “Did I?” He managed a smidgen of innocence. “It’s hard to recall.”

  “Who’s paying?”

  “Nemesis.” His eyes cold, he stared at the Reliant.

  “Whose nemesis?”

  “No, the Greek goddess.”

  “Of revenge?”

  “Of justice.” His mouth thinned. “The name appealed to a group of saboteurs and spies with loyalty to the German Empire.”

  “I didn’t expect loyalty from you,” she muttered.

  He ignored her comment. “Nemesis first approached me in America. Recruited me at Enderman’s. They found my talents as an assassin and necromancer irresistible, not to mention my fluency in both English and German.”

  She snorted. “You haven’t gotten any humbler.”

  “Not even I can stop a bullet.” He rubbed his chest as if remembering the gunshot. “But I can stop the police from arresting me.”

  “By killing the man who tried to kill you?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You still haven’t said why he shot you.”

  “I boarded the Reliant to steal the ship’s manifest.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “In broad daylight?”

  “Dockworkers change shifts at four o’clock. That commotion provided me with cover. I boarded without incident, but the guard caught me in the captain’s quarters. In my infinite wisdom, I brought a dagger to a gunfight.”

  “God, Wendel. Your arrogance will be the death of you.”

  “Though the bastard won’t expect me to return for an encore performance.”

  Her fingers tightened around his. “So we kill the guard and get the manifest.”

  “Without anyone seeing us.” Wendel’s low voice raised goosebumps on her skin. “You distract him; I attack from behind.”

  “Quick and dirty?”

  “Exactly.”

  They halted behind a warehouse and peered around the corner. Light from a street lamp gnawed at the shadows cloaking Wendel; he couldn’t go any farther without being seen. A stocky guard hunched on the boardwalk, the end of a cigarette glowing red between his knuckles. He took a drag and flicked ash into the water.

  “After you,” Wendel whispered.

  Ardis hesitated. “Hold this.” She unbuckled her sword from her belt.

  “Why–?”

  “I need a cover story.”

  She untied her braid, raking her fingers through her hair, then tugged down her neckline. Wendel frowned. Unarmed, she stepped from the darkness. The guard’s shoulders tensed, his head low like a bull ready to charge.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “are you in charge here?”

  “What’s it matter to you?” His hand gripped the edge of his coat. He had a gun inside, she was sure of it.

  “I want to talk to the boss.”

  “Really?” He spat a glob of glistening mucus at her feet. “We don’t hire women.”

  She raised her eyebrows, her hands at her waist, and jutted out one hip. “Sure you don’t.”

  �
��You aren’t pretty enough to be turning tricks for the boss.”

  Her jaw clenched, but she kept her tone sweet. “Don’t have to be pretty in the dark.”

  He grunted. “How about I cut you a deal?”

  “Try me.”

  “Give me a little taste of the goods.” He lumbered toward her, his hands on his belt, leaving the safety of the light.

  Her heart hammering, Ardis stood her ground. “You sure about that?”

  Wendel sidestepped from the darkness. His dagger flashed as he slit the man’s throat. Amarant sliced flesh like a knife through cake. Dark, slick spurts gushed from the wound. Choking on his own blood, the man dropped to his knees, clawing at his neck. He thudded flat on the boardwalk. His boot twitched once.

  “Here.” Wendel returned the sword to Ardis. “You might need this next time.”

  She thanked him with a nod, buckling on the scabbard. “This way was faster.”

  Wendel edged around the widening pool of blood, careful not to dirty his boots, before crouching by the dying man. He sighed, clearly impatient, waiting for the man’s last gurgling gasps to end. A moment later, he touched the corpse between the eyes and brought him back from the dead–a minion under his control.

  “You shot me.” It wasn’t a question. “Did anyone else see it happen?”

  The undead man spluttered, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t–know.”

  “Remember.” The necromancer’s face looked fierce with concentration. Ardis knew this magic taxed his strength. “Who else?”

  “Maybe…” The dead man’s dull eyes stared skyward. “Maybe Jack.”

  “Jack who?”

  “Jack Beaumont.”

  Wendel cursed and released the corpse. It looked toward him, awaiting further orders. “Take a long walk off a short pier.”

  The dead man lurched to his feet and shuffled down the boardwalk. Without hesitation, he stepped into the space beyond and tipped into the water. He sank without a single bubble, a man with no need to breathe.

  “Damn.” Wendel knelt on the boardwalk and bent over the water. Glowering, he washed the blood from his hands. “I forgot to ask him what Jack Beaumont looks like. We can’t leave another witness blundering around.”