Page 93 of John Eyre

“Think of your homeland. If you damage another item, I’ll come down on England like a plague. Your countrymen won’t—”

“What care I for England? It’s my own well-being I’m concerned with.” I heard him pacing outside the door. My eyes darted over the shelves. There weren’t enough artifacts left to continue smashing them all through the night. And as boldly as I spoke, I really didn’t relish the thought of setting myself on fire along with his books and papyri. What I needed—all I needed—was to hold him at bay until dawn.

He muttered something in Bulgarian, or possibly Romani. I could no longer guess. “I would have given you an easy death,” he said. “A lover’s kiss. But you’ve lost the privilege of it.”

My stomach tightened with a fear I dared not show. “What’s this?” I mused in a loud voice. “A ceremonial wine goblet?” Picking up another artifact—a cup carved with strange symbols—I held it at the ready. “From a funeral rite, I think. Pity it must meet its end.”

“No!” he cried. “Don’t harm it!”

“Then stop threatening me. Stop beating at the door. I will not be terrorized.” My words were greeted with dead silence. I was silent, too, for a time—very much concerned with what he might be planning next. And then I asked, “Why were you not injured when I shot you?”

“Your aim was poor.”

“My aim was excellent. I know I struck your heart. Why were you not killed outright?”

“I cannot be killed,” he said.

I choked on a sound of disbelief. “Nonsense.”

“Believe what you will. As long as you open the door.”

“Not at present.” He didn’t need to know that I intended to stay in the vault all night. “Not until your anger has cooled.”

“I’m not angry. Not anymore.” At that, his tone gentled, becoming almost seductive. “Remember how it was between us in Egypt? In Athens? The two of us in harmony, with none of this arguing. Remember the pleasure I gave you? It can be so again. Only open the door.”

I wondered if this was how Eve had felt when tempted by the serpent. Such was my husband’s voice—it wrapped around me, a low, persuasive baritone intent on weakening my resolve. Reiterating over and over again his single request.

Open the door.

“Enough,” I said. “You can’t trick me into acquiescing. I’ve shot you, and you’ve threatened me with a painful death. As far as I’m concerned, our marriage is over.”

It didn’t dissuade him. He kept on, pacing and muttering at the door for hours.

The best I could do was to block him out of my thoughts and to focus, instead, on what I was going to do next. In a cold sweat, I sank down into a sitting position on the Turkish carpet. Opening my locket to check the time, I saw that it was still early. I had many hours to go until sunrise. Many hours in which to formulate a plan.

Edward had said he couldn’t be killed. A fantastical claim! Yet I couldn’t fully discount it. How, then, was I to defeat this man? This creature?

I took a mental account of what I had learned thus far of his weaknesses:

Sunlight

Silver

Laudanum

Whether these weaknesses were real or imagined, I didn’t know. My husband claimed them as such. Since the first day I met him in Cairo, he’d assiduously avoided the sun. As for silver, he can’t bear to touch it. On our wedding night, he said it was toxic to him. That it caused a painful rash whenever it came into contact with his skin. Then, I’d suspected it of being a mere fancy. But now I wasn’t so sure.

Days ago, when his lips had brushed the silver chain of my locket, he’d drawn back as if scalded. His mouth had looked redder afterward. Almost scorched. And then again today, when he’d attempted to grab my throat. Had it been the silver that thwarted his efforts?

And what of his intolerance for laudanum? A strange allergy, to be sure. The very smell of it repulsed him. He couldn’t abide to be near it. I’d tasted but two drops of the stuff and it had been enough to repel him.

Of course, there was a good possibility that these weren’t weaknesses at all. That they were nothing more than Edward’s crazed imaginings. He was plainly a madman. A deviant who made his bed among the corpses of his victims.

But I couldn’t dismiss an incontrovertible fact: I had shot him and he hadn’t died. Not only that, he appeared to have suffered no injury at all. He was outside that door. Vigorous. Relentless.

I realized then that escaping him wouldn’t be enough. We were married, and I had signed away to him even that part of my fortune which was to be mine irrespective of marriage. Wherever I went, he was bound to follow, demanding his legal rights over my money, property, and person. The only hope I had was to kill him. And since that had failed so spectacularly, there was but one course remaining. I must conquer him somehow.

The prospect was daunting. I was mulling it over—imagining all sorts of outlandish scenarios—when I heard a faint scratching sound. The same scratching sound I’d heard when last I’d visited the vault alone.