The Cursed Blood, стр. 76

“You found her?” White Owl asked, to which The Doctor merely nodded, a serious, contemplative look on his face as he settled his cigar into a ruby skull shaped ashtray—that moments ago hadn’t been there—where it sat, sending a steady stream of rich, fragrant smoke from its glowing end. He added another generous measure of rum to his tea, sniffed it, smiled wolfishly, and took a sip.

“More accurately, the girl found me,” he added before he drained his tea then filled the cup entirely with rum and gulped that down, too. “She scares me, more than any demon in the pits or any Wizard on this earth ever ’as. The fools that imprison her knows not the danger they are in or the danger they place us all in, as the tether on her is slipping… I think you ‘ave somefin’ to do with that, yeah?”

I gulped and he smiled. “Ah yes, there it is. I can smell her blood in you… Strange, you don’ seem to mind it there, do ya? Interesting. Interesting, indeed. Perhaps you and I shall be friends. Yes, close, close friends in the days to come?” He smiled.

Again, I gulped and White Owl turned to me and gave me a dark scowl that turned wistful as I was sure he was reading me, right down to my very soul. After a moment a ghost of a smile slipped onto his face that was gone so quickly, I almost convinced myself I’d imagined it.

The Master folded his arms and glared at the Arch Demon with a cold intuitiveness as he watched him nurse his drink and smoke his cigar. “What does she want?” he finally asked after a long uncomfortable silence, his question eliciting a throaty, otherworldly chuckle from our fiendish visitor.

“Only one thing in the whole wide world, though I tried to dissuade her of it—even offered her anything she desired in her black little heart, but she is quite stuck on it. Though now I can see it’s mutual, yes?”

The Demon’s smile broadened as he nodded to me. Somehow, I knew I didn’t have to answer. He just knew what was in my heart. Even though she scared me I liked her. I wanted her to be free. The Doctor chuckled dryly and smiled a predatory smile filled with dark delight as he winked at me in a way that more than eluded that my suspicions were correct.

“What does she want? Out with it then, if you please,” White Owl repeated icily as he looked one to the other with growing trepidation.

“Not what. Who. Obviously.”

“Who then?” White Owl asked even though I have my suspicions he knew the answer already, though I hadn’t a clue what the tough, unreadable, and taciturn old man made of it.

“Him, of course.” The Doctor pointed at me with his cigar and smiled through a thick cloud of tobacco smoke that eddied about the low timber rafters. “And, I don’t think it be wise to try to further dissuade her. She be meaning him no harm.”

White Owl sat back in his chair, which creaked as it strained to support his weight as he put his chin to his chest, seemingly lost in thought. “And you thought it best to come here to tell me this and not his grandfather. Why?”

“She wished me to deliver this,” he replied simply, pulling a crisp white envelope from his sleeve. He sniffed at it and shuddered, a hint of fear in his eyes as he extended it to me with a long nailed and many ringed hand. White Owl appeared as though he wanted to intercept it but seemed to think better of it and settled back down in his chair with a creek of protesting wood, his lined face unreadable.

“Go on, take it. It’s just a letter.” The Doctor’s smile was far from reassuring. I stared at it and him for long past what was polite and finally took it with a very shaky hand. Again, he winked at me and went back to blowing cigar smoke from his nose and silently staring as if he found it all highly entertaining.

The envelope was warm and smelled of lilies. My name was scrawled on it in a flowery, curly, pink inked script. It wasn’t sealed with wax or licked shut like a post envelope. It was just folded over. I opened it carefully and pulled out the paper inside. The Doctor’s red flecked eyes never blinking as he watched.

Dearest One,

I’m being held in Camelot; I think they know everything, and I fear for us both.

There isn’t much time…

Free me, my Darkling,

Morgan Le’Fey

I don’t know how or why, but I felt the cold settle over me and something else that was warm and constricting and harsh. Then the letter burst into terrifyingly familiar infernal flame as I held it, tiny imps consuming the paper in a sinister dance that had both The Doctor and White Owl sliding back in their chairs from the table so quickly that their chair legs screeched along the hardwood floor and they both nearly toppled over.

“’Well, that was unexpected.” The Doctor straightened his tie as he stood and backed away. “Yes, I like you Benjamin Von Bright. It is decided, no? You and I shall be friends, the greatest of friends,” he repeated with a harsh laugh as he vanished into a cloud of buzzing blackness like a swarm of evil flies that left only a smell of sulfur and his echoing laugh behind him after they buzzed out the nearest cracked window and was gone.

I remember I was breathing hard, and my hand was shaking as the last of the note turned to grey floating ash that fluttered to the table. White Owl later told me that my eyes had gone all black like oily pools of the abyss. It took a great deal of heavy breathing to regain my composure as the Master stared at me