Time pulled out like midnight taffy and held itself together with sticky and trembling elastics as I tried to work out the wash of emotions that swept over me in those instants: fear, pity, the anticipation of battle. Except for Uriel’s welfare, I shouldn’t care what happened to Ari or how many of his comrades decided to take him out, yet I couldn’t swallow for thinking about it.
Uriel, I told myself. Focus. He was the one I had to worry about. Uriel and the fact that if I didn’t react right then, I’d be lost to the boy because there’d be nothing left of me to protect him. I knew it like I knew my own breath.
So I let the emotions go. They were useless. While I had lost my calm before as the grim ones attacked, I had full control of my faculties this time. Every movement I made drew itself ahead of me as clearly as a trail of magic. My hand snaked out for Gus’s as it stretched toward me. I wrenched his fingers backward until I heard a snap. The sound of it made me nauseous. I swallowed down a flush of water. It was nothing. Just the body’s natural reaction to hearing breaking bones. I wasn’t going to be sick. Not today.
There was still time to wrestle this situation back into some sort of control. It didn’t have to go to shit.
I kept up the pressure until he fell to his knees at my feet and scrambled forward, too stubborn to give up or cry out.
“You’re a slow learner, Gus,” I said with practiced calm. My voice held no panic, no disappointment. Good. I had found my normal equilibrium. That meant I had control. When I wrenched his fingers backward further, I expected him to squeal, but all he did was grunt.
It was one thing to break the nose of a grim one or thrash about in the mouth of a kraken, slimy and screaming, until I finally tore myself free, but it was an entirely different thing to feel a human being’s flesh and bones break and bleed beneath my hand. It didn’t matter that this man was something foul that needed to be stopped; he was still a creature with a conscience and with a light inside that I was supposed to be working to save.
I wrestled with my own sense of conflicting values. I didn’t want to have to hurt him. Yet, at the same time, I wanted to hear him admit to his weakness beneath me because he was such an awful creature. I felt almost manic with the desire as I glared down at him. My lips curled of their own accord as he sneered, the shadows of the room from the various lumens playing on his face and turning it into a rictus mask of fury. I pressed more, planning to flick his arm over his head and use the motion to spin myself to face the next brigand, because I knew there would be another. Once they were done with Ari, they would come at me until I was either compliant beneath their filthy hands or dead at their feet. And then where would the hollow be without anyone to protect the chosen child? Regardless of how much pain I had to bring to these humans, I had to think of Uriel above all else.
“Call your men off,” I said.
He laughed at me. Laughed. A slow barking sound mixed with pain and fury. My calm cracked, and anger leaked through. My skin itched with the desire to fly into motion until there was nothing left of the man but the echo of that derisive laughter.
“Damn you, you bastard,” I said, knowing every second spent fighting him meant one more that Uriel was in danger. “Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”
He made no response except to tug with that injured hand so I stumbled and had to catch myself by yanking backward. He grunted in pain, and something in me winced.
“Fool,” I said.
I’d broken half a dozen bones in Gus’s vulnerable places, and I wanted to hear him cry for mercy because my own belly was trembling with the thought of being subjected to that much pain.
“Let it go, Gus,” I hissed at him. “Just give in.”
What I heard instead of Gus’s plea for mercy was the shuffling of struggles somewhere to my left, along with the sound of blows being landed on yielding flesh. Uriel whimpered. I had the horrible image of someone pressing a palm over his mouth and yanking him backward into the shadows as Ari lay limp and lifeless on the floor.
I yelled before I had the chance to think.
“Leave the boy alone.”
I heard panic in my voice. The taste of blood filled my mouth, and I realized I’d bitten my lip. That was it. I couldn’t keep the fear at bay anymore. I had to end this.
Instead of flicking Gus’s arm upward, I spun into it, twisting it around my waist and using the thrust to throw him over my shoulder. He landed with a thud that sent the air from his lungs hissing toward the ceiling. If he cried out, I was roaring too loud to hear it.
“I swear,” I said. The note of panic in my voice made me cringe because I couldn’t afford for them to know I was losing my calm. “I’ll kill you all if you touch him.” I staggered about in the dark, searching for another body to launch myself at, but ended up swinging at nothing but shadows.
Someone grabbed me from behind, their grappling hands jamming beneath my shirt and yanking me against hard flesh. I felt a cold palm on my naked breast and smelled the sour stink of old fish from over my shoulder. Gus’s feet swept into my ankles, and he laughed as my feet tangled up in his and I stumbled.
I was going down, and I knew it.
“Fuck you,” I said as I pitched forward. He expected me to fall and leave myself powerless—they all did—but my assailant’s hands were still up my shirt and I ended up fetched by the material that clung to his hands, hanging with my face just inches from Gus’s chest.
“And fuck you,” I yelled as I sent my fingers into Gus’s eyes. The wet sort of squishiness made me retch even as he lit the room with an agonized squall that pierced my eardrums.
Several hands were on me by then, righting me for just one moment before lifting me and spinning me around. Blurs of faces ran across my vision, mixing with shadows and distorting them into something monstrous. Thick fingers roamed my inner thighs until they found the crevice between them and then they pressed cruelly into my mound.
More fingers tore at my shirt. I heard the material tear. The tang of toilet waste assailed my nostrils and wafted over me as the shirt was yanked over my head.
The sharp intake of air my lungs gagged on sent prickles of pain into my tear ducts.
This wasn’t going to happen. This couldn’t happen.
My feet went from beneath me, and a tiny voice cried out. It was such a strange and high-pitched keening sound that I didn’t recognize it.
Uriel. Had to be. Someone was hurting him. It didn’t matter that my throat was tight and burning, that I was being smothered by the brigands, one holding my arms out to the sides, my cheek smashed into the tiles. I had to get to him. I had to stop that horrible sound.
Stop, I called out to it. Please stop.
It didn’t stop. It kept going until it sounded like sobs so wet and pitiful I strained to put my hands over my ears to shut it out.
Two of the brigands pulled at my feet, trying to spread them apart.
I quaked all over. I couldn’t count on anyone to help me. I never could. The only person who ever cared enough to help was dead and moldering without the rightful praise that had been her due because she cared. All I had was myself. It was all I’d ever have.
I went deadly still. Myself. Me. Alone.
The trembling stopped. Part of my mind bid me let them have the tension, let them think I was done resisting. I’d show them all then just what power could be found in vulnerability and weakness.
“Take it, then,” I whispered against the tiles, praying to Miriam they’d grab for the bait of an easy victory. “Just take it.”
I almost felt elation when one of them chuckled and gripped the heel of my boot, his other hand brushing aside my other thigh. Somehow, I found the strength to smile even though it felt like a grimace.
“That’s it,” I said with my lips pressed against the floor, tasting the dirt of a thousand boots and the dusty trails of hundreds of cockroaches. Just one more moment. It was all I would need. And then I would wait for his grip to go slack and use that impotent tension
to gather spring into my muscles.
And just like that, it did. I grunted against the tiles, recoiled with as much power as I could, and then thrust my leg backward, hard, as hard as I could, and that someone who was one inch too close lost a cheekbone to the sole of my boot.
I laughed and realized the keening sound had stopped. Instead, it was replaced by an equally unnerving war cry. I squirmed then, using their surprise to worm my way sideways. I was clear. So clear. Two more inches and I’d be on my feet, swinging around and throwing punches at whatever came at me.
But fingers tangled into my hair and my scalp burned with the pressure of their grip. I froze, afraid to move for the pain.
“No, you don’t, boot girl,” Gus rasped into my ear.
“You’re dead,” I hissed. “You just don’t know it yet.”
He couldn’t hold me long, not if I rammed my elbow into his broken hand. And then I would hold back nothing. Human or not. He would die beneath my hand before his heart could beat again. They all would.
Except it wasn’t a broken hand that met my elbow. It was hard and unyielding floor. I moaned out loud and rolled to my side, pulling my arm against my chest, cradling the jolting pain still sprinting to my collarbone.
I expected Gus to be on me then, and I scooted backward on my bum, pushing myself with my feet as I tried to find the wall with my back. The shadows were already claiming me, and Gus was already coming at me with a leer that would have been visible in the shallowest of light. As it was the light of his lumen made him look monstrous. I caught sight of several forms on the floor, one of them holding onto his cheek, and I knew I had taken down at least two of them.
“Stay away from me,” I said. “If you know what’s good for you—”
I didn’t have time to say more. Ari blinked into the light behind Gus like one of those ancient flickering movies. He wrapped his arms around Gus’s neck, yanking him backward into the shadows.
I heard a gurgle and several hollow thuds of boots against the floor. Those men who had fallen pushed themselves to their feet and swayed just at the perimeter of the darkness. They went rigid with whatever it was they saw.
Two of them backed away out to the kitchen door. The third one swung on me, his eyes white circles. He shook his head conspiratorially. Put his fingers to his lips.
I found a wavering stand. He was like a cobra in a basket as I weaved my way toward him. The sounds in the shadows had stopped. Someone coughed.
“Tell him to stop,” the man rasped out. “I would never—”
What he planned to say was gone with him as he, too, was yanked into the shadows. I could just make out the glint of a knife before he disappeared.
Moments later, Ari stepped into the light of the men’s waning lumens. Disheveled and panting, he ran a trembling hand over his hair, smoothing it back as though he were preening for a woman. I swallowed hard. The cords in my neck felt taut with an unexplainable emotion.
“You killed them,” I said, surprised to hear how monotone my voice was.
He shrugged. When he pulled his hand from his man bun, I could see it was covered in blood.
“Why did you do that?” I demanded. “I had them.”
“Sure you did,” he said.
I wasn’t sure whether I should feel relief or agitation. I could’ve taken them, after all. I didn’t need him. And yet, my legs felt weak with what I knew was relief. Damn him. I shouldn’t be feeling anything except victory. How dare he steal that from me?
I put my palm against my thigh, feeling the quivering and trying to still it. Something was wrong. Unusual. It wasn’t just my annoyance at being rescued when I had it all under control. It wasn’t relief. It couldn’t be. I hadn’t needed him. I was perfectly fine.
“I did have them,” I said. “I didn’t need you.”
“I know,” he said.
I took a step toward him, swallowing hard and telling myself I was testing my muscles more than anything else, not fighting off a hard urge to fling myself at him and hug him. Because that wasn’t possible. I hadn’t hugged anyone since Freya. I clenched my fists at my sides. It was agitation, then. That was it. I forced myself to glare at him.
“Then why did you stop me?” I demanded.
He reached into the shadows and pulled Uriel into the light. The boy had his hands over his eyes.
“You can take them off now,” Ari said to him. The boy pulled his fingers away from his eyes, blinking up at Ari like a duckling would its mother. I felt an irrational jealousy seethe its way through my chest and choke off my throat.
“Well,” I demanded through tight lips. “Why did you stop me?”
He said nothing for a moment, just tapped his chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, truly irritated now. My stomach gurgled with something akin to hunger pains and I sucked it in, knowing food wouldn’t be possible for hours yet, if at all. The adrenaline was leaving my body and my muscles felt weak enough that all I wanted to do was lean against the wall.
“Well,” I said.
“You’ve still got light,” he said.
I did lean against the wall then, because I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me any longer. My shoulder bit into a hook meant to support a picture back in the day when there was enough natural light to see things and to enjoy a pretty picture. He knew. That was it. That was that strange thing my body had figured out that my brain hadn’t. He knew the source of my light was magic. I felt my heart stutter. He knew I was different and exactly why I was different.
“So?” I said, hedging. “What does my light have to do with executing a few awful men?”
He hitched Uriel onto his hip, and the boy snuggled into his chest with his cheek pressed close against Ari’s bloody shirt, his eyes little owlish saucers staring out at me.
“So?” I demanded again. If he knew, I needed to confirm it. I didn’t want to think about what I would have to do to him once I did.
“Tell me,” I said. “What do a few less nasty men in this hollow mean to me?”
Ari swung his penetrating stare my way. When he swayed sideways to better leverage the boy against his body, he moved out of the light. His voice came from the shadows with a dark rasp that made my breath suck in.
“Because murder is something your light can’t come back from.”
Chapter 11
One involuntary step backward put my feet butted against the outstretched limb of one of the dead brigands. I felt a finger squash beneath my boot and squeezed my eyes closed because I couldn’t bear to think they were hot, living flesh just moments earlier. Whatever I felt for the dead man, it wasn’t pity. I should feel sorry for the man’s death, but I couldn’t. All I could think about was the way those fingers had scrabbled up beneath my shirt and pinched my nipple. I was glad he was dead. This man standing in front of me had killed him. Without remorse. And I was glad of that, too.
I wrapped my arms around my midriff, thinking relief had never felt so damned uncomfortable before. It almost staggered me. My knees had become bags of shadow-root tea complete with its gelatinous threads of mulch that soaked into living tissue and paralyzed it from the inside out. I tried to swallow and found my throat tight.
It was only when I caught sight of the boy’s lumen that I realized what it was Ari had said.
“Not come back?” I said. “What does that mean?
He swayed into the light again, long enough I could make out a wary look to his gaze. It was a question I shouldn’t have had to ask, if I was human. I realized the mistake too late, but he answered as though it was a normal thing to wonder.
“You kill anyone human,” he said with a conspiratorial note cloaking his already-husky voice, “and you start going dark pretty quick. You have to feed your lumen more often just to keep the darkness at bay. But it never quite feels the same. Never quite goes back to what it was.”
There was a long moment when his gaze pinned itself to mine and my stomach squirmed with a peculiar tingling
that transmitted all the way to the base of my spine. I caught my breath because I felt as though I was diving into the depths surrounding Avalon. Then he jerked his eyes to the floor at his feet and the moment was gone. I felt something different then. Shame, maybe, but not for anything I had done. More like shame by proxy.
“You sound like you know what it’s like,” I said, trying to get through the thick clot of emotions that were choking off my throat. Too many of them, I realized. Too many damned unfamiliar feelings spilling through my mind, my chest, and into my stomach. It was all making me queasy.
He tugged at Uriel’s curls as though he needed to do something with his hands. The boy stuck a finger in his mouth while he stared at me with a furrowed brow. I got the sense he knew I was different but was trying to decide how. Wondering if Uriel saw me as threat or aid, I stared back at him, working at sending the right words to my tongue that could put him at ease. Chewing at the problem made me realize I had jammed my pinky between my teeth and was gnawing on the nail. I yanked it out with and peeked at Ari to see if he’d caught me tearing the nailbed to shreds.
I wasn’t sure what to think when I noticed he wasn’t even looking my way. I flicked my gaze to Uriel, confused and uncertain. He grinned at me. It took me a moment to smile back. Even then, it felt lopsided.
Ari let go a long sigh and plopped the boy on the floor. “Well,” he said, all business and efficiency. “Looks like you’re in the merry band after all, little one.” He toed the bare shoulder that stuck out from the shadows. For a second, I thought I saw it move, but I couldn’t be sure. No doubt the light and the shock were playing with my mind.
I surveyed the floor and the bodies that littered it, feeling squeamish when I fully registered they were dead. Whatever I thought of Gus and his comrades, they were human. Human. With the exhaustion of adrenaline and the end of the danger, I could see things for what they really were. I could’ve killed them. I would have. If not for Ari, no doubt the killing of them would have doused my power in the same way as it would now for him.
Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10) Page 10