Chapter 6
The Deatheaters had spent so much time in the city's lower depths that they had declared themselves lords of the runoff and damp. There was a sky beneath the world. Its stars twinkled in neon on the precipice of the doorways, exit signs of taverns, and falsely lit entrances that turned into sweeping meeting rooms and chambers below the sacred houses; lights so dim that they had to be double-checked to ensure they were not cracks in the roof that allowed the headlamps of cars streaking through the city to shine in. Despite the light's synthetic nature, if one clamped their eyes near to shut, they could make out constellations formed on the ceilings.
There was Gemini on the rotted wood of the Leaky Cauldrons doorway. Sagittarius swept his bow over the ceiling of the Nott residence, a twinkle in his eye as he watched a woman being dragged by her hair and thrown into a locked broom closet. She would cry out as if the apple had been on her head when the great archer let his bow fly. Unaware that the stories of heroes and great men were not spoken beneath the ground. The arrow that struck her was Crucio, and she would find comfort in his silent brother, Imperio.
“Silence now,” A stomach-churning voice boomed through the ether. And silence there was.
Leo led the way to the grate that was most easily accessible to the outside world. The stars Formosa and Moriah stood watch as three figures took the form of smoke and ash, hammering through the iron bars and out into the city. It was Regulus’s preferred exit—as he could send one singular glance back toward the constellation that held his namesake, a constant opportunity to say goodbye to himself.
A girl with hair of flame stood on the bustling street corner of Leicester Square. Well, she was half there, anyway. The rest of her was in a waft of emerald that concealed the back half of her body and the edges of her form. She wore a white dress that had taken some severe spillage to it. Crimson coated her high cheeks, dotted the freckles on her nose, and lay passive in the cracks of her clavicle like puddles of reddened ichor. She was impressive in her concealment; great swaths of people milled past her with grocery bags swinging and eyes set toward the nearest operating watering hole. Regulus could not outright tell if her eyes were green or blue, hazel or a brand of darkness that was more akin to the absence of light rather than the appearance of black. When she blinked, they were opaque and then red. That was what it looked like when she watched enemies in her mind's eye.
It was not much fun to pin her up against the cobbled stone. Her chest hardly emitted a huff as he pressed the cold of his hand into the ice of her shoulder blade. She was expecting an attack, which took the enjoyment out of doing so.
Regulus grasped her hand in his, squeezing at her frail knuckles to roll the balls of them about like playing marbles. She did not cry out from the pain. A shame; the previous days had held far too little enjoyment.
“This time,” he spoke, “I’m not letting your hand fall before I can shake it.”
Tommy Crane gripped back. She wasn’t strong, but her conviction was there. Regulus Black enjoyed women. Some might even argue that he enjoyed them at an alarmingly fast rate. He liked fighting beside women, even fighting with them. He liked to hear them sigh and toss their hair over their collarbones; he liked the nectar in their voices that turned to sap when he sent them away. He even enjoyed it when they argued with him. However, that was mostly due to the fact that Regulus simply enjoyed all forms of argument.
He didn’t like this one. She was made of barbed wire and bleach, and her voice stung like gravel rubbed into an opened wound. Her eyes were green.
“Terms have changed,” she whispered. “I won’t play the assassin while you relax on silken pillows. You’ll help me kill Vittra, and then you’ll give me the mask.”
Regulus sneered, “What’s stopping me from killing her myself and keeping the mask?”
“One, you don’t have it yet,” she spat, “and two, if you thought you could get to her yourself, you wouldn’t have approached me in the first place. This brings me to my third point: there will be a temporary truce. Whatever plan you have of sending me on a wild goose chase away from the Ouroboros so that you can infiltrate and slaughter the rest of us in the night, cast it aside.”
Regulus did not cast it aside. It hadn’t exactly been his consideration in the first place, but he enjoyed the idea. Perhaps he did like her. She talked of treachery with such a smooth cadence.
“Are you stupid or mute?” She asked, clutching his hand. “Agree or don’t.”
He didn’t like her.
“What about my additional terms?”
“You don’t get any extras.”
Regulus made a mock pout, “That’s not much of a deal. What if I come up with something that also benefits you?”
“Then I would call you a liar, as this settlement is already verging on too good to be true,” she huffed back. Her torso pressed against his chest as she did. She was much taller than she had looked on the train, more fleshed out and limber. Still, he dwarfed her by half a foot and could have crushed her fingers like a roll of foil.
Regulus argued, “What part of this deal keeps my own safe? We’ve established your end of the truce, but how am I to know that you will not send your own after me once we are high in the mountains looking for light? There are vampires out there, and they belong to your Enoch.”
There was a brief flicker in Tommy’s eyes. Her breath hitched so shallow that he wouldn’t have been able to catch it if he hadn’t locked his own gaze on her soft throat.
“Oh,” he mused and flicked the index of his free hand over the blood that had coagulated on her chin. She still smelled like lavender beneath the tinge of rot. “I hope you didn’t swallow any of that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but seemed on the verge of spitting from the memory. “Who’s to say this isn’t the blood of one of your friends? Maybe I wanted one last go at the Deatheaters before I made the deal.”
Regulus smiled, “I know what all of their blood smells like.” And he did, as he had spent the last five years spilling it over friendly scuffles and markedly less friendly punishments.
“So what do you want?” She bit at him, pearly teeth gnashing inches from his jawline.
“Now that I know we’ll be safe from vampires, my ask is that I should be able to call on you for one last agreement when the time is right,” he mouthed the words slowly, aware that Caius Avery and Lucia Mulciber had made their way down the darkened street and well into earshot. “With no questions.”
“Too bold, too vague,” she said. “No chance.”
“Trust me, you’ll want to agree. Think of it as a parting gift for poor dead Gawain.”
“Even Gawain didn’t have my trust. I’ll give you this. When this time comes, ask me. Then you’ll receive an answer.”
Regulus didn’t enjoy hearing Gawain’s name on her poisoned tongue. He should not have brought the fallen boy up in the first place. He had already forbidden the others in his troupe to speak it. Every time the name Gawain was uttered, he imagined what the crack of a sternum against the oil-slicked cement would feel like.
He cut his eyes to the wall behind her and then back to her pouted lips. “A truce then. With such minor stipulations.”
“Truce,” she mouthed.
He shook her hand and dropped it before her scent lingered on his cloak. She was on the verge of dissaparating. He thought of doing so himself. The Deatheaters did not fare well above the ground. The city was made of darkness and smoke, which worked well enough for concealment. However, muggles packed into a living corridor had a stench about them. They milled past, eyes locked on some unseen goal that he could not measure. They worked and toiled despite the end of the world, wholly unaware that there was another world entirely out of the corner of their unblinking gaze; they rummaged around in their pockets for coins to pay parking meters and cashier clerks. They never bothered to save a cent to pay the ferryman who would usher them into the underworld when it all came crashing down. Spiteful, clueless little creatures that hardly opened their lids to see truly, let alone closed them to think truly.
It made him sick or angry. Either way, his stomach turned as a man bumped his shoulder and spun around to check the placid air for an invisible entity he had walked into. The man saw only smoke. Perhaps he had even caught the cerulean tint of two iced-over eyes peering at him from beyond a veil too thick to traverse. He kept walking.
“We leave tomorrow,” Regulus said. Do not bring anyone, and do not tell them where you are going. We will meet at St. Paul's, first bell. Don’t be late.”
“You’re not bringing anyone either, then?” Tommy narrowed her eyes. “It would be a poor show of character to trap me into traveling alone amongst evil men.”
Regulus turned to peer over his shoulder at the evil men in question. Caius flittered a blade between his fingers, the sheen of it catching the moon's light that hung like pearl bone above them. It was a shocking gesture. Typically, he carried a much larger weapon. Caius wasn’t noble in his torture, only in his words. Regulus had never met a man who spoke of honor and virtue so highly while simultaneously carving flesh from muscle. He was some reincarnated knight of a god-forsaken kingdom who had lost the majority of its men to famine and war. With that being said, every time Caius opened his mouth, it was actually his father that seemed to speak.
He stayed silent, but his fingers spoke as they rubbed the dull edge of the knife.
Regulus then turned to his other compatriot. “I will be alone. But, for the record, Mulciber is not a man,” he lowered his voice to Tommy. “She is a bit evil, though.”
Lucia didn’t drop her cloak hood, but Regulus could smell the citric perfume in her hair as it wafted beneath the dark fabric. If Tommy could see her, she would call Lucia beautiful. Regulus didn’t know the heir of the Ouroboros well, but he knew she was the type of person who appreciated powerful things. Lucia didn’t require a knife or a sneer to be taken seriously.
“Where’s the other one?” Tommy asked. She pressed against Regulus. Her eyes roamed curiously over the troupe.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The one with the honey-colored eyes from the train,” Tommy whispered. Then, she sharply decreased her wonder, her gaze downturned.
Regulus blew air through his nose, “how romantic. Do you have a crush on him?”
“He looked familiar,” she returned. “What’s his name?”
“I don’t peer longingly into my comrade's eyes. I would have to get back to you on that,” he returned. His mood had suddenly soured. The smog above ground had brought on a headache.
The street quieted enough to hear each passers footsteps as if they were an anvil. Regulus didn’t sleep through the nights and would stay awake through this one. An impromptu venture out of the city would need some disguising. He considered how to word his departure and how best to sneak through the grate system without a peep of it falling back into Voldemort's ears or, worse, his father's. Caius would come up with an excuse for him. He had gotten quite adept at filling Gawain’s shoes.
Regulus turned his attention to the rainfall, which puddled like ink between the cement and roadway. The water runoff smelled like blood. He imagined the puddles warped into the form of a boy.
“Tomorrow then, alone,” Tommy nodded.
Only then did he recognize how tightly his hold on her wrist had grown. She would feel that tomorrow. He relaxed and braced his lips to reply, but she had already fled. Tendrils of emerald smoked down the rolling roofs and spires of the black city. Its shadow cast on the highest building like a cursed comet raining down omens. Tommy Crane was certainly an augury. He had known that upon meeting her the first time.
He wasn’t at all comforted by her promises. Nor was he shocked that she had ordered more from him than she was willing to give. He supposed it didn’t matter much. Her odds of living through the upcoming ordeal were low.
“What are you gawking at?” He asked, spinning on his heel to find the other two with their eyes locked on the circumvented skies. “Focus. There are miles to go before we sleep.”
It was something his father would have said.