“Grenville. Hey, Grenville. Ash.”

It was Navarrete’s voice, low and tense, next to his ear. Her hand took hold of his, the one gripping his fork. He recoiled from the touch.

“Ash,” she said again. “Come on, put this down. Let’s go.” She pried the fork from his grasp.

“Where?” he whispered.

“The fucking drawing room. Come on, get up. We just have to get through this.”

Ash forced himself to raise his head, just in time to see the rasping what-was-left-of-a-man being dragged out of the dining room. His stomach gave a twist.

“Who is he?” he murmured, part of him at the same time really not wanting to know.

“He’s the reason two of Dreyfus-Meillassoux’s top guys are dead,” said Navarrete.

“Are they going to kill him?”

“That’d be the best thing for him at this point, don’t you think? Just…whatever happens in there, just fucking keep it together, okay?”

It floated through the background of Ash’s thoughts that he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or herself.

She tugged him to his feet. He stumbled after her on autopilot, between the guards at the doorway; became vaguely aware of Betancourt walking beside them, Miles Winter’s crutches thumping behind. Dreyfus-Meillassoux, Ishaan Ram, and “Sicko Mode,” as Navarrete had called him, seemed to have already gone ahead of them.

The drawing room was dark now, except for the blinding blue light of the ever-burning fire (Burn, boy, burn! Creuch heckled whenever Ash looked at it), the alchemical globes illuminating the two shrines, and the faint scarlet glow of the runes on Dreyfus-Meillassoux’s black violin.

Puck took one look at the grisly entourage as they entered, jumped down from his bed, and scurried between their legs out of the room. Ash gazed after him. It took every ounce of his willpower not to follow.

During the dinner, a St. Andrew’s cross had been erected in front of the shrines. Dreyfus-Meillassoux directed the men dragging the wounded man toward the contraption with a wave of his bow. A part of Ash compulsively tuned in to the agonizing sounds of the man being chained up on the cross, even as he kept his eyes intently fixed on Dreyfus-Meillassoux.

With Ram at his elbow, the ganglord approached the massive portrait of the woman in the garden, placed his hand over his heart, and bowed low to it before gesturing with his bow to another servant, who grabbed a rope on a pulley system to draw a pair of huge black velvet curtains over the painting, obscuring it from view.

He then turned. “Maréchal.”

Betancourt bowed low, crossed the room and seated himself at the harpsichord.

Dreyfus-Meillassoux moved to stand in front of the cross, between the two shrines, with Ram close beside. Sicko Mode and Winter positioned themselves ceremoniously some distance from either side of the cross. Winter looked uncomfortable on his crutches; his eyes kept rolling up to rove around the ornamental ceiling. Sicko Mode didn’t look amused like he had earlier. Now there was something intense, almost hungry in the way he stared at the battered man.

Dreyfus-Meillassoux gazed on each of the shrines in turn, lingering especially long on the portrait of the fine-boned man with the warm-yet-close-lipped expression labeled Takayuki Murakami.

“Sylvan Zachry,” he pronounced, turning to face the man on the cross. “For your part in the deaths of these two men who were dear to me, you will pay with your own contemptible life.”

The wounded man moaned something unintelligible. Ash thought it might have been please.

“No amount of recompense will ever fill the vacancy they left behind,” Dreyfus-Meillassoux went on, once more gazing at the portrait of Murakami. “But I swear on my life, everyone who took part in their slaughter will pay. Your life’s blood, Mr. Zachry, is but the first paltry drop in the bottomless well of my just retribution.”

He looked over at Betancourt, inclined his head. The Maréchal began to play a few slow, gentle repeating bars, an accompanist waiting for the soloist to begin.

Dreyfus-Meillassoux closed his eyes, his bow tracing an Aetheric seal in the air. “Awaken, Bolmul, bearer of my soul’s vengeance; let there now be blood for blood.”

He put bow to strings and played.

The daemon seal began to spin in midair, grew brighter, throwing off sparks, while the rest of the room turned dark—except for the blue flames of the ever-burning fire, which seemed to leap even higher. A cold chill gripped Ash, tiptoed icy fingers down his spine.

As Dreyfus-Meillassoux continued to play Corelli’s Violin Sonata Op. 5 No. 3 in C Major, the seal opened up into a portal and grew, larger, and larger still, till its diameter stretched from ceiling to floor. A static charge filled the air, making flyaway strands of Ash’s hair stand on end. He could sense Creuch getting upset—the imp kept gibbering softly in the Aetherite tongue.

Ash heard Dreyfus-Meillassoux’s daemon before he saw it—its roar rattled his bones. Creuch’s agitation mounted to a panic. Bolmul, Bolmul, it kept muttering, between bouts of wailing and manic laughter.

The man on the cross, despite his ravaged state, seemed to muster some adrenaline in the face of what was clearly coming; stretched his mangled jaws in inaudible screams, strained his broken body against the thick chains that bound him.

None of what came before prepared Ash for what stepped through the portal, with footfalls that vibrated the room.

Bolmul was one of the more humanoid-type daemons, but monstrous, massive—it had to duck not to bash its great head against the domed ceiling. Its muscles bulged; its trunk, its limbs, its gruesome visage were wound throughout with scarlet sinews.

But what truly struck terror into Ash wasn’t Bolmul’s hideous appearance.

It was its inconsolable, world-shattering weeping.

Abject grief contorted the daemon’s face. It howled, roared, tore at the sinews crisscrossing its skull. Clutched its head, doubled over, writhed, grotesquely almost in time with the music.

Creuch’s turmoil by now was like raw static in Ash’s ears—made him wish he could crawl out of his own skin. He wanted desperately to look away—but couldn’t—as Bolmul loomed over the helpless man on the cross.

What happened next happened so fast it didn’t seem real. The wailing daemon’s huge, clawed hand closed around Zachry’s trunk and ripped it loose from its chained limbs. More blood than Ash had ever dreamed a human body could contain sprayed from the four stumps—splattered Dreyfus-Meillassoux and his violin, Ram, the two shrines.

With a mighty howl of anguish, Bolmul hurled the limbless man across the room—into the ever-burning fire.

BURN, BOY, BURN, Creuch started screeching, over and over.

As the inexorable flames began devouring the dismembered Zachry, Ash felt himself snap. Suddenly his own body, too, was on fire, with a spontaneous excitatory gnosis—raw energy rushing between his mana seals, swiftly building power.

He aimed his left palm at the ever-burning fire: killed it. Sucked all its oxygen away with a schwick, leaving the chamber lit only by a dim, eerie red glow.

Spun—shoved up his sleeve to bare his left arm, his tattoos blazing the incandescent scarlet of conductive aurichalcum. Aimed his left palm at Dreyfus-Meillassoux, right hand poised with its tattooed fingertips over the tattoos on his left arm, ready to activate alchemical arrays in a lethal sequence—only distantly aware that he was screaming STOP over and over at the top of his lungs.

All his built-up mana flooded his central seal, transmuted with a flash of heat—turned his whole world, for one second, blinding white.

Out of nowhere, Ash found his arms pinned useless against his body by a powerful arm, a scintillating blade pressed uncomfortably tight to his throat.

As his vision returned, he saw that Ram no longer occupied his place beside Dreyfus-Meillassoux—where he’d been standing just one second ago.

The ganglord himself hadn’t budged, except to lower his violin and aim an inquisitive look at Ash. Betancourt, too, had stopped playing. Bolmul now knelt silent, unmoving, its huge face buried in its hands.

“You realize that in putting out the flame,” said Dreyfus-Meillassoux mildly, “you’ve only prolonged his torment?”

The only sound in the room now was the wheezing of the half-melted thing in the fireplace. It grated on Ash’s ears.

All his charge fizzled like his seals had been doused with water. Ash sagged in his captor’s embrace, his refrain of STOP, STOP, STOP replaced by a whimpered no, no, no…

The ganglord banished Bolmul back to the Aether with a flourish of his bow. “Vernon, finish it.”

Sicko Mode snapped his fingers, and Sylvan Zachry became a splatter of gore in the fireplace.

Ash started bawling like a child.

“Release him,” said Dreyfus-Meillassoux.

At first, Ash’s captor didn’t comply.

“Go on, Ishaan,” the ganglord persisted, softly. “It’s all right.”

The viselike grip let go; the blade lifted away from Ash’s neck. Ash sank to the floor, to his hands and knees, his body heaving uncontrollably, sobs searing his throat.

Creuch. Make me stop.

His own right hand lifted and boxed the side of his head, hard, twice.

Stunned into silence, he sat down on the spot, emptiness roaring, the chamber reeling around him.

After a moment, he laid his left palm flat, searched the rug beneath him.

All he could seem to focus on, though, was the many years’ accumulation of dried blood.

… But what is blood?

Amino acids. Proteins. Lipids.

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Sulfur. Phosphorus.

“Mr. Grenville.”

Ash followed the summons back into his body: a constricting sarcophagus. Reluctantly opened his eyes.

Soren Dreyfus-Meillassoux was down on one knee in front of him, gazing intently at his face. Behind him, Ram stood gripping his unsheathed enchanted cane-sword.

Dreyfus-Meillassoux handed Ash his glasses, which must have fallen off when Creuch had struck him. “I hope you’ll forgive the unpleasantness, Mr. Grenville. That man”—he gestured toward the fireplace—“took something very precious from me. In so doing, he sealed his own fate.”

With trembling hands, Ash restored his glasses to his face. Fixed his gaze numbly on the floor.

The ganglord tutted. “Dear boy…the Black Pyramid must be hell for you. Perhaps you’d like something for your nerves?”

“My coat,” said Ash, his voice seeming to belong to someone else. “I have medicines in it.”

“Wilhelm, bring Mr. Grenville’s coat. And a glass of water.”

Ash rubbed away his tears with his sleeve.

Dreyfus-Meillassoux peered at him; lowered his voice so only Ash could hear. “You are no daemonologer, as I understand it. So may I ask who bound the Grenville family imp to you?”

Ash’s eyes snapped up. “You can see it?” he whispered.

“I see the realm of Aether through Bolmul’s eyes.” The ganglord was silent a moment. “Was it your father? Does Scipio Grenville employ the daemon Creuch to monitor and manipulate his own son?”

Ash stared at him hard. “That’s a family matter, Mr. Dreyfus-Meillassoux.”

Dreyfus-Meillassoux simply inclined his head, then waved over a pair of his men. “Escort Mr. Grenville to the Begonia Room, please, and make him comfortable.”