Free Immortal Devices by Kailin Gow Page B

for it, so they do not shut it out in the way that they normally would do.”
                “So it is a place for the mortal and immortal to meet?” Scarlett asked. “Like the night market back home?”
    Cruces nodded with a faint smile. “It seemed nicely ironic for us to use these tunnels to avoid meeting a bunch of immortals. Now we just have to stay down here long enough that they all lose interest.”
                Scarlett couldn’t help smiling, especially as she heard the sounds of pursuit go past. Yet there were more things to worry about than even a collection of immortals determined to catch up with them.
                “Cruces, that vampire before… he had the mark of the Order tattooed on his skin.”
                Cruces nodded            . “The Order knows that we are here. I sensed the vampire, Brutus, while you were retrieving the walking stick. I thought I could lead him away from you.”
                “How old was he?” Scarlett asked, remembering back to the fight Cruces had had with the creature. “He seemed so strong, even compared with you.”
                “He was one of the Order’s enforcers. Their assassins. He was very old, but more than that, his kind devote their whole beings to violence. He became far stronger and more dangerous than a normal vampire his age should have been.”
                That made sense. The vampire had seemed utterly inhuman, more animal than a thinking being. Perhaps that would make it stronger. Still, its very presence raised some worrying questions. It seemed too big a coincidence that the Order should have sent a vampire like that after them the moment they tried to follow Rothschild and Cecilia. Scarlett knew she had to ask.
                “Do you think that Rothschild sent him?”
    “Perhaps,” Cruces answered. “That would explain how he was able to show up here. To get here, into ancient immortal Greece, any non-immortal would need a ring like my own.” Cruces raised his hand to emphasize the golden ring on his finger. Scarlett could remember Rothschild’s identical one all too easily. “Unless our sister Lydia has decided to become involved, or unless one of the other two rings has been recovered, neither of which seems likely, then Rothschild is the most likely way for Brutus to travel here.”
                “I still don’t understand why you felt the need to draw him off, though,” Scarlett said. “If you had only said something-”
                “Cruces did not want to endanger you,” Tavian said. He sounded approving, though Scarlett had a hard time believing that Tavian would ever approve of something Cruces did.
                “Why not?” Scarlett demanded. “I can fight. I fought, when we ran into Cruces and this Brutus.”
                Cruces shook his head. “I did not want to risk it, Scarlett. Particularly since I believe that Brutus was sent across to this world specifically with your death in mind.”
                “Why would he be sent for that?” Scarlett demanded.
                Cruces shrugged. “It surprised me too. I was under the impression that Rothschild needed you alive. That he wanted you alive, and planned to take you for his own. Perhaps that is it though, perhaps he decided that if he could not have you, then no one would. It would certainly be a good way to cause me pain.”
                Scarlett did not know what to say to that. Once again, Cruces was reminding her all too forcefully of how he felt, even though he knew that Scarlett did not feel the same. Could not feel the same.
                Tavian spoke up again then. “Perhaps it was not he who sent the assassin. The Order does not just consist of Rothschild, after all.”
                “That is possible,” Cruces said, “though then there is the question of