Chapter 36 Sanguinagi
SANGUINAGI
ELYRIA
Elyria had to try very hard not to roll her eyes behind her closed lids at the soft creak of the door opening, at the careful footsteps padding across the floor.
She felt them more than she heard them, the innkeeper’s plodding weight vibrating through the wood, each step like a drumbeat in her spine.
Miraculously, she did manage to maintain the facade of sleep, however. She kept her breathing even, one arm thrown lazily over her face. The other lay beneath the blanket, shadows swirling under her hand.
The man moved with confidence, and Elyria might’ve been somewhat impressed at how well he’d played the role of the jovial, welcoming host earlier. Not now, though. Now, he was a man with purpose, exuding threatening energy as he stalked toward his target.
She counted the seconds between each creak of the floorboards. Listened to his whispered murmurs, just under his breath. He sounded proud. Excited. And why wouldn’t he be? The Revenant was subdued. Contained. He was the threat in this room, not her.
Elyria was delighted at the thought of being able to prove him wrong, even as a pang of concern burst in her chest, zipping down the tether from Cedric.
Oh, Sir Worrywart. So predictable, she thought, working to keep her lips from turning up in a smile.
She could feel the innkeeper’s presence looming over her now, could smell the stink of sweat and blood on him.
Blood that wasn’t his.
Elyria’s shadows under her palm coalesced into something smooth and sharp, just as she heard the rustle of cloth, the soft rush of air.
Now.
Elyria’s eyes snapped open to see the silver glint of a blade rushing toward her. She rolled across the bed, the innkeeper’s dagger plunging into the mattress as he released a savage yell.
“No! You’re supposed to be—”
Elyria leapt to her feet, staring the man down from the other side of the bed. “Sleeping? Helpless? Dead already? Sorry to disappoint.”
“Fairy witch!” he yelled, tearing the dagger from the mattress, feathers showering down around them both.
Elyria grinned. “So they call me.”
He lunged across the bed. Shadows erupted from Elyria, vipers that reached out from beneath the bed, lashing around the innkeeper’s wrists and ankles, yanking him back with bone-wrenching force.
They hauled him backward until he was propped up against the headboard, arms splayed to either side, legs bound together.
His dagger clattered to the floor, and the innkeeper released a slew of curses that, from the sudden rage vibrating through Elyria’s chest, Cedric did not seem to appreciate.
She threw her eyes to the wall where he hid, giving a subtle jerk of her chin.
Now was his chance to go help the others.
Though, there was a fleeting flash of disappointment that crossed her mind, even as she encouraged Cedric to leave.
This was her favorite kind of game. Seemed a shame he wouldn’t get to see how well she could play it.
A ribbon of darkness slunk up from the footbed, slithering over the innkeeper’s body like a snake, even as he writhed against the ones holding him in place.
He eyed it warily, his mouth going slack as it slid over his chest and looped around his shoulders, then his neck, a necklace of night that came to rest just over his chin—waiting.
Elyria clucked her tongue, flipping the shadowdagger she’d formed from hand to hand.
“And to think we breezed right on past introductions, earlier. You are Audaxus, are you not? The man who meets with Varyth Malchior when he comes through this village? Or is that your card-playing friend from downstairs?”
The innkeeper’s eyes went wide, and Elyria thought he understood. But he merely started mumbling under his breath, phrases like “rising sun” and “dark vessel” jumping out in between strings of incoherent words.
“What vessel?” Elyria asked, brow arched. “I’ve had just about my fill of sanguinagi ritual shit.”
He pressed his mouth into a hard line, as though physically restraining himself from further muttering.
She sighed. “Oh, sure, now you have nothing to say.” Raising her hand, her shadows lifted him clean off the mattress. Elyria kicked the bed aside with such force that the headboard cracked in half when it hit the far wall.
The innkeeper yelled in pain as she dropped him right on top of the bloody rune, shadows still binding his wrists and legs together, the vicious sound of some small bone splintering like music in her ears.
“Shall we talk about this, then?” She leaned down, her voice low, deadly. “You trapped me in here. Used blood magic to bind my power. Tried to kill me in my sleep. Seems like an awful lot of forethought and planning went into this.”
The man whimpered.
“What is your master trying to achieve here?’ Elyria continued, pointing her shadow-forged dagger at him. “This feels a touch more personal than just not liking having Arcanians in your midst.”
He said nothing.
“Tell me,” she growled, power pulsing.
The innkeeper’s eyes darted toward the door, which was suddenly wide open, and the fact that Cedric had actually listened to her made Elyria’s shoulders drop in relief.
It shouldn’t have.
Because just as she started leaning toward the innkeeper again, two cloaked cultists burst through the open doorway.
They lunged directly at her, a red crystal scimitar clutched in one of their hands, swinging in a wide arc.
Elyria leapt back, narrowly avoiding the cut of the sanguinagi weapon.
But the other cultist was right there, running up behind her.
Elyria whirled, recognizing the face of one of the women from the tavern.
The woman thrust forward, blood magic surging forth like a crimson whip, wrapping around Elyria’s wrist.
Elyria cried out as the tendril of magic bit into her, stinging, cutting through her skin. Blood ran down her hand, dripping from her fingertips onto the floor, her shadowy dagger falling from her grip and dissipating into mist. The cultist woman was so fast.
But Cedric was faster.
He leapt from the shadows like a storm, Ashrender drawn, slashing down, spinning, drawing the blade back up in one fluid motion.
There was a gurgled scream.
Blood sprayed.
And the whip of blood magic cutting into Elyria’s wrist fell away, nothing more than a limp red ribbon drifting to the floor next to the cultist that had summoned it.
The dead cultist.
Elyria pulled her dagger from her waist with one hand, while the other summoned her staff with a burst of shadow from where it rested against the wall.
“I thought I told you to go help the others,” she said, gratitude pulsing through her as she drew up tight to Cedric’s side, weaving a wisp of healing magic over her wrist to stem the bleeding.
She wouldn’t feed these monsters further with her blood.
“Yes, well—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his thought.
Not as a feral scream rang through the room as the second cultist—the other woman from downstairs—realized what happened to her comrade.
She’d stopped to help the innkeeper, but suddenly her scimitar was arcing through the air, aimed right for Cedric’s chest.
“No!” Elyria yelled, and strangely, it sounded like she wasn’t the only one who did. Pure instinct had her raising her staff just in time to parry the blow, red sparks spraying as the weapons clashed. The scimitar’s path was deflected to the wall beside them, where it embedded itself with a thud.
“You fool!” yelled the innkeeper, and Elyria realized that she hadn’t imagined the second voice shouting when the cultist hurled her weapon at Cedric. “He is not to be harmed!”
“Will wonders never cease,” Elyria said, rage pulsing against her ribs as she stalked forward, shadows trailing down the length of her staff as she pointed it at the cultist. “Looks like we actually agree on something.”
“The only thing,” sneered the innkeeper, and any questions Elyria might have had over why Cedric had been deemed off-limits would have to be held for another time.
Because it turned out that when that bloody whip had bit into Elyria’s skin, her shadow-forged weapon wasn’t the only thing that returned to the ether.
The innkeeper’s bindings were also gone, and the second cultist had snatched up the dagger he’d tried to kill Elyria with earlier.
“Motherfuckers . . .” Cedric said, shoring up his grip on Ashrender’s hilt as the two cultists rushed them.
A growl split the room.
Elyria watched in awe as Sid appeared in midair, a blur of smoke and claws launching from the darkness, latching onto the neck of the innkeeper.
The shadowcat crashed into the man with such unholy force that he stumbled straight into the window—no, through it.
Glass shattered and wood splintered; the innkeeper released a mangled scream as the two of them fell.
“Sid!” Elyria screamed, just as the sound of a wet whump reached her ears. But she couldn’t look to see if Sid was all right. Not with the silencing ward suddenly broken, the room flooding with sound—screams, shouts, clanging steel. Chaos.
Elyria stumbled from the sudden onslaught on her senses, her hand shooting to her temple, her shadows rippling around her as if they might protect her against the noise.
Cedric was still fighting off the final cultist, who was little more than a stream of unintelligible screams as she came at him over and over with the dagger, clearly unconcerned with the innkeeper’s warning against harming the knight.
Elyria watched with blurred vision as he raised Ashrender in defense, slashing a long cut down the woman’s forearm.
Blood dripped onto the floor.
The cultist smiled.
And despite the blaze of sound still clouding her mind, and the rebound of power now that the runes binding the room were broken, Elyria launched herself into motion.
She thrust her staff forward just in time to block the new blood weapon that the sanguinagi had conjured—a mace with a spiked head that looked as though it had been carved from ruby.
Once again, red sparks burst as the weapons clashed, forming an X in the air as Elyria pushed against the cultist’s dark strength. Cedric didn’t waste the opportunity she gave him. He thrust Ashrender through the bottom of the X, piercing the cultist’s chest. Her heart.
The woman’s lips formed a circle, a wordless “oh,” as she sank—first to her knees, then to the floor.
For several moments, Elyria and Cedric stood there, drawing in heavy breaths. Then, she remembered.
“Sid!”
Elyria ran to the blown-out window, peering over the edge.
She saw the crumpled body of the innkeeper on the ground below them, mayhem all around.
His crashing back onto the scene outside had given the captive Arcanians a much-needed distraction, it appeared.
No longer were the five of them kneeling at the feet of their captors.
Thraigg and Shep had gotten free of their bindings, and each fought a cultist with fists and elbows. Ollie, too, was unbound, wielding a long spear made of ice in one hand, his other outstretched, raising a wall of water that held several cultists back.
It wasn’t all good news, though. Jocelyn was still tied up, fighting against her restraints as the others tried to get to her. And Sephone had collapsed on her side, blood soaking the ground around her.
“Shit.”
There was no sign of Sid. Elyria blew out a long breath, readying herself to jump into the fray below, trying to subdue the panic spiking in her chest. She could only hope the cat had leapt back into the shadows before the innkeeper’s body hit the ground.
“Are you ready?” Elyria asked Cedric, who had finished wiping the blood from his sword, placing it back in its scabbard as he cast a pitying look at the two dead cultists laying on the floor before him. Elyria’s heart clenched; he did not delight in killing.
“Ready for what?” he asked in response.
Elyria didn’t answer. Only slung her staff over her back and sheathed her dagger before launching herself at him, her wings bursting forth in a shimmer of purple and green.
“What are you—Elle, no—no, no, fuck!”
But Cedric’s words—and screams—were lost to the wind as she slammed her body against his, wrapping her arms around his torso, securing them under his shoulders, and propelled them both through the open window.