Chapter 8 #2
I ran to the corner, drawing them in to a small room.
They were easily led, and now encroached upon me like hungry wolves.
They seemed almost vampiric, like this—silhouetted in the dark in a way that hid their most monstrous features, their reflective eyes open and trained upon me.
They were closer to animals than people most of the time, but with their attention sharply fixed on their prey, their bodies upright and teeth bared, they revealed a shade of their makers.
You ready, Zef?
Zefiah didn’t even dignify that with a response.
Light burst from the blade, drenching the tiny, dank space in searing gold godlight. And with the light came the screams—shrieks of agony as the soulless scurried backward like insects seeking the shelter of rot. But there was nowhere to go. I’d lured them into a trap.
The stench of burning flesh filled my lungs. One of the soulless, near the back, managed to drag itself back out the broken window into the night beyond. The rest collapsed into twitching masses on the ground, their sallow flesh eaten by purple and black burns. Not dead yet, but harmless.
Zefiah’s glow faded. My eyes adjusted to the fresh darkness, burning with the afterimage of her light. It was a trick she could only use so often, but a useful one.
Silence, save for the distant echoes of screams from other buildings in the city.
But I still sensed something. An uncomfortable sense of not-alone-ness.
I turned slowly, brow furrowing.
Zefiah whispered, {Kyrene, someone is here.}
A streak of darkness.
An unmistakable pressure on the back of my skull, like someone was prying open my thoughts with a crowbar.
Shadowborn.
I spun around. The vampire was barely visible. Darkness wrapped around them—a skill of the Shadowborn—obscuring their features save for the glint of their delighted grin.
Come here, a voice crooned into my mind, and every muscle begged to comply. Come here, come here, come here.
I threw my energy into resisting. I surged forward at the exact same moment they did, Zefiah raised—
A silver bolt whipped past my face, nearly brushing my nose.
The Shadowborn staggered, fluid grace disrupted. The shadows around them flickered, revealing a tall, dark-haired man, dressed in House of Shadow green. The very same man I’d encountered before. Miles. He turned, peered over his shoulder.
“Wait—” he started.
TWACK, as another bolt went straight through his chest.
He slumped to the ground.
An oddly familiar silken voice said, “You are terribly hard to keep alive.”
Zefiah let out a disapproving hiss as a figure stepped into a ray of silver moonlight. Fair hair, broken-glass eyes, and impeccable white clothing.
Septimus.
He cast the dead Shadowborn a vaguely disgusted glance and tossed the crossbow to the ground like it was repulsive.
There were many useful things I could have said, but the words that flew out of my mouth were, “I didn’t need the help.”
“Of course you didn’t.” He frowned at a spot of blood on his sleeve. “We don’t know each other well enough yet for you to understand how significant it is that I keep getting my hands dirty for you.”
I scoffed. “You didn’t get your hands dirty. You pulled a trigger.”
“Usually I have other people pull triggers for me.”
{How kind of him to admit his own weakness to us,} Zefiah said smugly. {Let us take his heart now.}
I could have. He was right there. A burst of godlight, especially so soon after the last, wouldn’t be strong enough to kill a full vampire, but it could stun him.
Push him up against the wall. Blade through the heart.
Easy. It would be especially poetic if I used the crossbow to end it.
If you like other people to pull the trigger . . .
But I was nosy by nature, and that vice won out against my violent impatience.
“What are you doing here?”
“Keeping an eye on you. Since you seem intent on ensuring your own demise.” He ran his hand through his hair, pushing silver strands back only for them to fall right back into place over his forehead. “I told you not to come here.”
“Because the formidable Shadowborn were after me.” I stared down at the corpse, unimpressed. “Is this it? This is the terrifying army that was supposed to take me down for good? Funny, you warn me that I’m being stalked, and yet the only vampire I see standing here is you.”
{For goddess’s sake, Kyrene. Kill him!}
Septimus laughed softly and withdrew a cigarillo from his breast pocket. “I think I understand now how you’ve made it so far. Balls and luck.”
I couldn’t bring myself to find this offensive.
I pointed Zefiah at him, a threatening glow shuddering along her blade.
“Why are you following me?”
“I just hate to see talent wasted. Though you’re right—apparently you are doing just fine on your own.
I really did think I was going to have to spin some kind of lie to get the Shadowborn off your scent.
But no, you did the job for me by being the most blasphemous divine warrior I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
” He drew in a long, thoughtful inhale and let it out with a plume of silver smoke.
His eyes sparkled with curiosity, like he was genuinely intrigued.
“Tell me, Kyrene, who did you sell the gauntlet to? Some poor traveling trader? Or maybe one of the warlords who placed the bounties you’re always chasing? ”
I hoped, prayed, I had misunderstood him. I blinked. A bolt of unease shot through me.
Still, I kept my smirk affixed to my lips.
“The gauntlet?” I said lightly. Casually.
“You weren’t in Hegaella. So who was?”
Hegaella.
My extremities went cold.
Even Zefiah was silent.
I managed, softly, “Why are you asking me about Hegaella?”
Could a vampire hear the way my heartbeat stuttered? Smell the way my blood curdled in my veins? His expression flickered—half a shade of interest, or perhaps pity, as he pieced something together—barely there before it was gone again.
I lurched closer, Zefiah’s glow dousing the elegant panes of his face in gold. “How do you know I wasn’t in Hegaella?”
My voice cracked despite my best efforts.
He inhaled deeply, and let it out. There was an agonizing wait before the answer.
“The Shadowborn are innovators of magic,” he said.
“Adept at tracking methods. But they need to be creative, when the sword you bear shrouds itself, and you, from prying eyes. The gauntlet was touched by the divine, a mark of the Vindica Ultis—and yet, weak enough that it could be tracked. Just enough evidence of your whereabouts that Queen Egrette could be convinced to go to Hegaella, not Yiferis.” He nudged the dead Shadowborn with the toe of his boot.
“This was the scout. Sent ahead just in case you came here after all, when they were unable to find you in Hegaella.”
I barely heard him over the buzz that had risen in my ears. My hands trembled. I stood there, staring at him, not speaking, not breathing.
Stuck on those words.
On the horrific scene they stitched together.
You weren’t in Hegaella.
Queen Egrette could be convinced.
The queen went there.
No.
The Shadowborn queen, and her army, went to Hegaella. Went to the very place I had sent them for protection.
No.
Outside, the screams of the soulless rose to a crescendo.
My mind wasn’t steeled against their fear.
It crashed over me in a horrific wave—images of my own past and an imagined future weaving together, a painting of blood and guts and severed limbs and children crying out for their mothers and the Shadowborn queen covered in blood and and and—
I no longer cared about my unspoken question. I no longer even cared about carving out Septimus’s heart.
I cared only about getting to Hegaella as fast as I possibly could.
Septimus said something that faded into the static of the background. I ignored him.
As the soulless let out another wave of wails, I turned and I fucking ran.