Chapter 42 | Garroway #2
“Glad we’re all here,” says a raspy feminine voice, sounding like it’s coming from everywhere.
Sephania spins in place.
I hear swords behind me and glance over my shoulder to see Rirth has been delayed. The Silverknight fights another assassin just beyond the doorway. Sephania hasn’t seen him yet.
“Where is the auburn-haired menace who calls himself a lord, I wonder?” says the disjointed, floating voice.
Smoke wisps to my right—a split-second sign of danger to come—and I whip around with my daggers.
Alacine Mortis grins at me and shoves a blurring dagger into my stomach.
I grunt, shocked, and fall to a knee, swinging wildly to try and cut her throat as she lapses into nothingness again.
Pain squeezes through me as I try to get to my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the Spymistress just appeared from my own shadow to attack me. But Skartovious Ashfen, my master of decades, is the only living vampire who can do that, and it’s only because he’s tasted Sephania’s Loreblood that the power was awakened.
“Garroway!” Seph cries out. She runs toward me.
“No!” I yell.
Alacine appears from the slant of Sephania’s shadow and trips her, deciding not to stab into my mistress.
I fight back the burning pain of Alacine’s venomous blade and rush toward Seph as she stumbles along.
Alacine is too quick, and with whatever illusion or power she’s displaying—transmitting in and out of a corporeal state—we have no chance against her.
Rirth grunts behind me, a vampire squeals, and the Silverknight’s handsome face shows in the doorway. On cue, his silver dagger glints in the eerie alchemical light.
Maybe with that, we have a chance.
Wherever Alacine is now, she must notice—
Because she appears on the other side of the room, near Old Endolf and Jinneth. “Curious where a human acquired such a powerful tool.”
Endolf barks in her face, the decrepit old man smashing a beaker of green liquid onto the ground in front of where Alacine appears. Smoke fumes illuminate the body of the Spymistress and she hisses as blisters form on her pale arms from the smoke.
“Back, demon!” Endolf barks at her.
Rirth, Sephania, and I charge at Alacine from every direction, as one.
She moves in the blink of an eye, feeling our impending attacks without needing to look over her shoulder. Enraged, the damaged woman twists her wrist and opens Old Endolf’s throat in a fluid motion with her dagger.
Jinneth wails in agony. “NO!”
Endolf staggers back into her, the protective old man spewing a waterfall of blood through the ragged tear in his throat—similar as the kind of cut Palacia suffered before being turned.
But unlike Palacia, Endolf doesn’t have the advantage of age on his side. He topples sideways, twitching and falling still in a matter of seconds—before any of us can reach them.
Just as Sephania gets there first, Alacine wheels around, disappears, and smokes into existence behind Jinneth.
I watch helplessly as my honey badger’s eyes widen to a size I’ve never seen, watching as Alacine is poised to jam her dagger through Jinneth’s back and out her front.
I toss a dagger, futilely trying to ward off the inevitable, and it whistles end-over-end inches from Jinneth’s face.
Alacine ducks, dodging it as it clangs uselessly against the wall.
“Sephania!” Jinneth screams in a tearful howl—
As thin arms wrap around her middle from the back.
Rirth gets there, swinging his blade past the human woman—
Just as Alacine Mortis grins over Jinneth’s shoulder, back-steps into the shadow of the wall, and vanishes from sight in a cloud of black wisps. Jinneth dissipates with her, a final pleading claw of her outstretched hand the last thing we see before she’s gone.
Sephania stands stock-still, arms lowering. The room falls into sudden, abrupt quietness. She says nothing, staring at the wall where Alacine Mortis and her mother disappeared into.
We don’t hear Alacine’s voice again. She’s gone.
I reach out to put a gentle hand on her shoulder, worrying she’s going to break right in front of me. “Lass?”
Quickly coming to her senses, she kneels at Old Endolf’s motionless body, already bringing her shortsword up to nick her Loreblood out of her veins and feed the man.
But Endolf’s body is actually a corpse. The old man is dead. And there’s no bringing a dead man back to life, even with Sephania’s powerful blood.
She lets out a sob. I hover over her, wrapping her in my arms. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
“She . . . She took her, Garro. She stole my mother!”
Her eyes tremble with tears as she looks over her shoulder at me, imploring me, begging me to do something when she knows I have no power here to do anything.
“I know, lass, I know.” I gently shush her and run my hands over her hair.
“I am sorry about your mother, Sephania,” Rirth says, his voice cold and emotionless as he stands over us. Then he turns and heads for the door of the dwelling without another word.
“Where are you going?” Seph blubbers through tears.
He gives her a parting glance over his shoulder. “Can you not hear them?” he asks in a flat, sad tone. “There are other brothers and sisters of the Firehold still locked in battle, fending for their lives. Who knows if Antones is still alive, even. They are just as important as you or I.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with the dead alchemist at our feet and the shaking shoulders of Sephania Lock in my arms.
“All of his knowledge, his work, lost,” she whispers, looking down at the gray, widened eyes of Old Endolf. “Does that mean the silverblood concoction is also gone?”
“I don’t know.” I scan the room, noticing all the tossed vials, shattered bottles, and odd tinctures strewn across the place. “We’d better round up everything we can and hope one of these potions is the silverblood.”
She nods into my chest, falling quiet. “How . . . How did she do it? How did she steal my mother into the shadows like that, Garroway? She isn’t supposed to be able to do that.”
My mind whirls, trying to think of the possibilities and coming up short. “I don’t know, lass. I just don’t know. Shadowwalking is an ability only Skartovius has. Her being here must have something to do with the ward against his portal. We don’t have the answers.”
“My mother might. And now she’s lost to our enemy, only to be used as another pawn for her games, to draw me out.
” Her eyes lock on mine, stern and no longer wet, showing great resilience and the tenacity and stubbornness I love about this woman.
“This time, Garro, I won’t back down from the challenge. No matter the risk.”