Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Iwanted a drink. I needed a drink. It was perhaps the only downside to being this many miles away from the rest of civilization.
I doubted that the cultists kept much in the way of alcohol.
All those fancy wine cellars didn’t last two years after the fall.
I wondered where Marko had gotten his and cursed him for not sharing.
When I emerged from the house, Valentina’s face fell. “None of them wanted to come?”
“They’d rather go off on their own.”
She frowned. “But I could have at least given them some fresh bandages.”
Sometimes it amazed me that this world, dark and shitty as it was, had produced someone like Valentina.
All she had ever known was this bleak, carnivorous existence—in which vampires ate humans and humans ate each other, and your only goal in life was to make sure you were the one with the teeth and not the one in the stomach.
Over the years, I’d watched the human population bare their pitiful fangs more to cope with those of the vampires, forever sharper than our own.
But not Valentina. Her naiveté was as refreshing as it was frustrating. I knew that I should stomp it out—gently, lovingly. I wasn’t sure why I could never bring myself to.
Marko scoffed. “You think we were about to hand over our supplies to some—”
I shot him a withering look, and he shut his finely squared jaw. I gave him a quick once-over. Yes, he was drunk, but he wasn’t swaying. Sober enough to be useful.
“Change of plans,” I said. “We’re going after Gaveer right now. He wouldn’t have made it far. Val and Mirie, head to camp. Marko, with me.”
Val’s brow knotted in confusion. I knew she was wondering why I’d changed my mind. But she wouldn’t question it.
“I can help—” she started.
“No. You’re bleeding. Dangerous to have you out there.”
She shut her mouth. Even she was unable to argue. Blood was the one non-negotiable truth in this world.
You can find him, I commanded Zefiah. I think escaping counts as a certain kind of injustice, does it not?
Zefiah had been created for the explicit purpose of enforcing what was just in the world. Righting wrongs, and all that. Tracking down Gaveer sure seemed like righting a wrong to me.
{Perhaps you should consider this a sign,} Zefiah said. {You are already late to complete the mission the Lady of Justice had asked of you. You were expected in Yiferis weeks ago.}
She wasn’t wrong, and she never let me forget it. Shiket had her own demands of disloyal souls to slay. I had been stretching how long I could go without fulfilling them.
I glanced at Val, then ripped my gaze away.
Shiket doesn’t pay. So she can wait for us to finish what we started.
{For five thousand years I have—}
For five thousand years you mostly stared at Shiket’s shoulder.
{I waited until the day I would be entrusted to a warrior Shiket deemed worthy of wielding me. And now here I am, being used to kill inconvenient innocents and chase down common criminals for a few pieces of silver.}
Zefiah was not one to be complimentary in the best of times. But her genuine disappointment cut surprisingly deep.
She went on, {When Ferdinan wielded me—}
That little glimmer of guilt sputtered out. Oh, fucking spare me.
Ferdinan had been Zefiah’s longest bearer, a great warrior who had held her some thousand years ago. Apparently, he had been the human embodiment of noble perfection.
We’ve both seen the kind of people Shiket has set us after, I snapped at her.
What was their crime? Failing to bruise their knees enough in supplication to her?
Let’s not pretend that you’re some kind of morally superior being, Zefiah.
You are a sharp stick designed to kill things. So let’s go kill.
“Marko.” I thrust my chin to the looming forest. “Let’s go.”
Marko and I set off while Valentina and Mirie returned to camp—far enough away from the mansion and the live distractions within, perfect soulless bait, that I was comfortable leaving them alone.
Zefiah’s godlight lit the way. Marko mounted his axe across his back and held an infinite torch—a metal cage with a ball of floating light within it, a valuable contraption that Valentina had made with the help of some practitioners of Atroxus, the fallen sun god.
The streaks of gold light cut ahead, eerie shadows dancing over the trees.
I lifted Zefiah, watching the way the light shivered over her blade.
You have him? I asked.
{It is difficult to sense him among so many others. There are many fallen ones out here. Many indeed. Perhaps we should pursue them instead.}
Those words came with a near-moan of hunger. We all hated vampires, but Zefiah hated them most of all. Sometimes, when I was trying to get her to find a mark, she would get so distracted tracking soulless or vampires instead that she rendered herself useless.
I rolled my eyes.
Priorities, Zefiah. Gaveer Iron. We find him, hack off his head, and then maybe I’ll let you skewer some soulless hearts.
{Let me? How arrogant of you.} But I felt her pleasure at the thought, and with it, a burst of focus.
My head swiveled to the left—toward underbrush so dense that even Zefiah’s light couldn’t penetrate it.
“That way,” I said.
One of Marko’s few positive qualities was that he was so stupid it left him afraid of nothing. It was nice to know that I always had a vote on my side when Mirie and Valentina urged caution. Still, even he eyeballed the darkness with something resembling wariness.
“Please, Marko. Don’t even think about letting those balls shrivel up on me now,” I said.
He was a simple man. That little taunt was all it took. “Let’s get the bastard,” he muttered, and together, we trudged through the dark trees. The forest was so thick that each step was slow, and our light near useless. A wave of howls echoed in the night. Did I imagine that they were—
Marko stopped short, and I walked into his shoulder with an annoyed oof.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I snapped.
But Marko was looking down, nudging something with his boot. I squinted, raising Zefiah to get a better look.
I saw the blood first. A pile of flesh lay mangled on the forest floor, so disfigured that it took me a long moment to realize that it had once been a human. Not all that long ago. Maybe even minutes.
The work of soulless, clearly.
“Still fresh,” Marko remarked. “They’ll be—”
Gold light burst to life along Zefiah’s length. {Here!} she bellowed. {They are here!}
Here? For a split second, I was confused. Soulless were not known for their stealth. Only when they were being directed by vampires—specifically, the vampires of the House of Shadow—could their presence be masked.
But I didn’t exactly have time to think about it.
Because seconds after Zefiah shouted her warning, the pack of soulless descended upon us.