If the things she fought did not steal his chance first. They were huge, rocklike creatures twice her size, slow, clumsy, but enormously strong and bearing weapons that could smash her, cleave her in two. She darted about her opponents, delivering teasing blows with her sword, always within reach of their monstrous claws that flashed like polished stone blades in the light.
She cried out triumphantly as her sword sank through the neck of one the beasts. Muscles tensed and strained beneath her pale skin as she pulled the blade in an arc, severing the creature’s gruesome head. Another of them gripped her arm, and a spray of her blood splattered the wall behind her.
Malachi’s mortal heart seemed to cease beating. He was close, so close to his revenge. It couldn’t be taken from him now.
The wound laid her arm open to the bone. She stared down at it for a fraction of a second, then turned her eyes to her leering enemies and laughed. It was a chill sound, a mixture of tinkling bells, rushing water and phantom wind howling in the trees. She sprang into motion, faster than before. One creature fell before Malachi could track the flame-red streak of her to him, and he realized grimly that she had not been fighting as well as she was capable. She’d been playing with them.
It was finished in such a short piece of time that Malachi felt dizzy trying to comprehend it. He leaned against the wall, still concealed by the shadows, safely away from the tiny, lethal figure bathed in the dirty glow of the bulb over her head. Frozen, sword still in her hands where it had connected with her final kill—who’d long since fallen, gurgling his death, to the ground—she appeared somehow beautiful bathed in blood.
In the next instant, that beauty vanished as her arms sagged, the injured one still flowing blood, and her head dropped forward. A harsh breath scraped from her throat. She did not look into the shadows, but she spoke. “I know you are there, Darkling.”
Her words were like the rustle of dead leaves and cracking ice, and Malachi struggled to understand them. The loss of his ability to understand stung him, opening the wounds in his wings that the Human had patched. What else would he lose? His memories seemed so far away.
“Go, Darkling,” she continued, turning her back to the shadows. She hefted her huge weapon onto her back and walked from the cone of light, deeper into the tunnel. “If I see you again, I will kill you.”
The warning set his blood afire, forced his feet to move after her. She would order him, a being crafted from the mind of God, as if he should fear her? He would crush her to pulp under his hands.
When he sprinted through the light, into the shadows, she was gone.
Ten
A yla waited in her hiding place for as long as she dared. Her wound made her head spin, made everything too bright and sharp. But she could not chance him returning to find her, injured and alone.
He wanted to kill her. He had a right to wish her dead, she reasoned. If someone had stolen the Fae from her blood—what little there was of it—she would hate them until her last breath. But he would not be able to kill her, not in the state he was in. No mortal could kill her, a trained Assassin of the Court of Mabb. Hardly a creature existed that could match an Assassin’s blade. This Darkling would try, and he would fail.
Let him. Let him try, slay him, and hold the geis. It seemed a sensible enough solution. She’d already broken her vow twice. Twice, in as many nights. After five years of utter faithfulness, of nary a temptation. For this creature.
And why? Because of pity? The word sent a crawl of disgust up her back. Pity. There was no reason to pity these creatures, these evil, twisted things that lived little better than insects in their filthy holes. When this one died, there would be one less. That was all.
Why, then, did the thought tear a hole in her? Perhaps she was losing her nerve. Perhaps becoming Garret’s mate would give her a reason to leave the Guild without answering the questions that were sure to shame her.
No. There is one solution to this, and you have let it escape! She lurched from the niche in the broken tunnel wall and pulled her sword. He couldn’t have gone far. His great wings held him back, and his mortal body would tire under the strain of dragging them. It would be nothing but a simple run to catch him, but a moment’s work to slay him.
A dagger of pain ripped through her wounded arm. She closed her eyes and used the inward sight to examine it. In her chest the trunk of her life tree glowed vibrant green, but its branches that reached toward her slashed flesh were an autumnal orange, fading to red where sparks of her life force touched the torn edges of the wound and exploded like harmless bubbles. She would not be able to heal this herself.
It would not be breaking the geis to go to the healer before killing the Angel. And it would not endanger her so greatly, either. She strapped the sword to her back and turned, giving only one last look to the way the Darkling had fled.
There was a healer on the Strip who came recommended from the Healer’s Guild in the Lightworld. At least, as high a recommendation as could be afforded to a Human, and one would ply their trade to any creature, Lightworlder or Darkling alike.
It was not difficult to escape the Darkworld, if you knew the way, and Ayla knew that way. All of the Assassins did. The Lightworld kept their borders closed and guarded to all but a few. Even the Trolls, those disgusting rock biters in the poorest slums of the Lightworld, respected this convention. Or perhaps they didn’t have the brains to protest it. The Strip was full of drugs and liquor and stimulants, the sort of prurient currency that their sloven kind dealt in, so it seemed unlikely they would comply quietly with being kept from it, unless they didn’t know better.
The Darkworld, however, seemed wholly unconcerned with the scum roiling over its borders. They allowed Humans, by the hair of Bronwyn! It was a handy thing, for an Assassin who wished to hunt their prey in the lawless confines of the Darkworld, but it made survival there harsh for its denizens.
The Strip, though, held another kind of dangerous lawlessness altogether. Ayla scanned the crowd, keeping her maimed arm close to her body. She pulled her thin vest off and wrapped it tight around her arm. It wouldn’t stop the bleeding, but it would perhaps deter the interest of any Vampires she might pass.
It wouldn’t deter the interest of the other monsters who leered at her. She used her uninjured arm to shield her nakedness as she made her way through the teeming crowd.
The jostling street traffic seemed endless and impossible. Though the sword was heavy at her back, she pushed off her feet and rose into the air. It, too, was filled with a parade of creatures hurrying up and down the busy Strip, but it wasn’t as choked as the traffic on the ground. In the distance, the comforting glow of a Lightworld healer’s symbol pulsed neon. It wasn’t right that someone not of the Lightworld should use it, but perhaps it was fortunate. Ayla’s thoughts were increasingly muddy; she might not have recognized it any other way. Blood slithered from beneath the wet leather wrapping the wound, and the tree of her life force grew dimmer at the trunk as the gentle orange crept closer. Her vision flared and darkened with her heartbeat by the time she landed on the rickety scaffolding outside the healer’s door. She did not knock, but pushed her way inside, startling a small group of robotic Humans who sat at the feet of an elderly Human on a raised dais.
“I need a healer,” she rasped in the Human tongue, the words like jagged rocks to her mouth.
Then the dark veil fell over her eyes. She was asleep before she felt the bite of the floor.
She’d left a trail. Bloody footprints that grew fainter, then renewed after a puddle interrupted the dry, dusty ground. When those footprints died, Malachi did not change his course. He knew he would find her. The certainty burned in him, driving him deeper into the tunnels. It occurred to him that he was lost and would probably never find his way back to the Human’s workshop, or to the Strip. It didn’t matter. The desire to kill pushed any potential panic from his mind, pulled a veil of well-being over his eyes as he stalked farther down the twisting tunnel.
Ahead, an echoing, sibilant whisper warned that he approached water. Fear gripped him in the darkness. If he did not see some ledge, if the tunnel floor suddenly dipped and spilled him in…He remembered the bite of dirty water in his lungs and the impossible weight of his soaked wings as they dragged him down.
Still, the rage outweighed the fear, and he moved on, dropping into a crouch to feel the ground before him as he crept closer to his goal. Ahead, the tunnel split, one reaching off to his left, the other a round frame displaying a broken stairway that led to nothing but empty air. She would have had to go down the left tunnel. He was so close.
Something darted across the opening of the tunnel, a darker shadow against lighter ones. There was a splash and a hiss full of the sound of glass breaking. His heart beat faster. She was here.
She wasn’t afraid of him. She came closer. His hands tensed at his sides. Visions of those foul creatures falling under her blade surrounded his mind like a cloud of angry smoke, and for an instant he considered running.
Then she was in front of him, her skin so white it lit up the darkness, her braid like a rope of fire where it lashed behind her as she took a last, tentative step, so close he would touch her if he only took a deeper breath.
Her arm moved, slowly, but she did not reach for her weapon. There was no weapon, he saw, his knees going weak with relief. Perhaps she’d left it somewhere to try to make a fast escape.
How she would regret that now. Malachi’s heart pounded, blood rising to his skin, fury filling him to overflowing within his chest. Her hand, so small and transparent that he could make out the white bones beneath her flesh, reached for him in what seemed slow motion. The moment she touched him, the heat of her skin sent a scorching arch through him, animated him with her hot energy. He grabbed her, his hands closing completely around the delicate lines of her upper arms. He squeezed, wanting to break her, finding her stronger than he imagined. She moaned, her head falling back as she sagged in his hold, bringing her body full against him.
A magnificent power rushed through him. Not the torture he’d felt the first time he’d touched her, but something darker that stirred his blood. He lifted her off her feet, raised her up to see into her eyes, so she could see the rage in his. So she would recognize him, would know who killed her. His lips pulled back in a smile that was painful.
And then he smashed his mouth against hers, their lips touching before he realized the perverseness of his action. He had sought her out to kill her. Not just to kill her, but to brutalize her, to shame her for what she’d done to him, to make her plead for mercy. But that desire had warped, twisted into something else, something that shamed him, instead. Still, he could not release her, and he could not stop the sudden racing of his blood, the pounding of his pulse in his ears as her hungry mouth fought back against his.
This did not disgust her. She clung to him, her arms breaking free of his hold to twine like clutching vines around his neck as her legs mimicked the action at his waist. That connection, her body pushing against the mortal part of him that strained to feel her, as if under its own power, raised some primitive drive in him that warred with the last, dying shreds of his hatred.
There is still time! the blood-soaked, vengeful monster inside him cried. There was still time to crush her, especially now, when she was off guard. But he was reluctant to break the contact of her hot mouth moving on his. Other Angels had fallen for the touch of a mortal creature. Not in the way he had, but in the way he experienced now. He’d thought them weak-willed and deeply flawed, but now he saw it was not as easy to resist as he’d believed. It was not a matter of will, but a matter of want. He wanted this, to possess her carnally, to hear more of the groans and breathy sounds she made as she ground herself against him. To feel an end to the relentless excitement building in him, though he did not want it to stop.
She pulled her head back, gold eyes flashing. Her hands gripped the front of the borrowed shirt he wore and tore it to splay her palms on his bare flesh. The ethereal white of her made his skin seem dull and so much more mortal by comparison, but as he watched, the white dimmed and darkened, blackening as her fingers turned to scaly claws.
Panic seized him. He looked up at her face, which had been so delicate and pale, now darkened like her hands. Only her eyes were luminous now, glowing red.
A shock went through him. This creature was not her. The fear that flooded his veins with ice was not fear of this wretched thing that held him, but fear at his own reaction. For when he realized that it was not the Faery that he held, he remembered his original goal, saw how he had failed, and knew that it was better to die here than to ever find her for real.
If he did, he would not kill her. It was not hatred that had driven him to her at all.
The creature opened its mouth to show its dripping teeth, and then Malachi saw no more.
The sky. Ayla had only seen it in brief, stolen glimpses through the metal grate that separated Sanctuary from the Upworld. But she knew what it was, even without those bars framing it.
She was looking at the sky, blue so bright that its shade was indistinguishable from the light spun into it. Spiderwebs of cloud writhed on a breeze she couldn’t feel.
Had she died? Was this the Summerland?
No, the Summerland had disappeared years ago. After the veil tore, as the stories were told, the Summerland had decayed. The leaves had fallen from the trees, the fields of wheat had shriveled and died, the streams had soaked into the dead earth with no way to renew themselves. Then, it had become the wasteland it remained, and no one, not even the Upworlders, went into it.
She remembered finding the healer’s shop. Where had she gone from there?
The benign blue sky offered her no answers. She couldn’t have made it to the Upworld. If their own guards hadn’t killed her, someone would have found her by now. Where was this sky?
“You’re on the Strip,” a gentle, Human voice said, speaking the Faery tongue surprisingly well.
No matter how passable it was, Ayla couldn’t stand to hear it. “Do not speak Fae to me. I understand your Human words.”
“Very well.” A weathered hand came into her view, pressed against her forehead. “What happened to you that you needed my help so badly?”
Turning her head, Ayla pushed back her hair to reveal the Guild mark tattooed from her jaw to collarbone. The woman beside her was the healer she’d seen before, her mortal skin creased with wrinkles, her white hair cropped close to her head.
The healer’s brow furrowed, kind eyes sad and liquid brown in their nest of fine lines. “I don’t understand.”
“I am an Assassin.” The Human tongue was strange on her mouth. She hadn’t used it since…
The woman nodded gently and stroked the side of her face. “Don’t think about that now. Painful memories do nothing but harm.”
It should have frightened her, that this woman could hear her thoughts so clearly. Instead, she turned her face to the sky. “It is so beautiful.”
“You know it isn’t real.” The Human’s voice was sad. “You will never see the real sky this way.”
“Until we take it back,” Ayla growled, turning her head to glower at the woman. But she couldn’t quite make herself angry enough; something in her knew the healer spoke the truth. A tear came to her eye as she saw through the illusion of the sky, to the dirty pipes on the ceiling of the concrete room. “Am I healed? Can I leave?”
The woman didn’t answer. “Who did this to you?”
“A Demon. He is dead now.” The disappointment clutching her chest was so keen, it hurt. “Am I healed?”
“Your body is healed, for now.” The woman pressed her hand to Ayla’s forehead again. “This will not be the last time we meet.”
Ayla sat up, and, realizing she’d been lying on soft, green grass, her disappointment turned to rage. “Do not insult me with your tricks! I am an Assassin. I could kill you now, before you could ever know what had happened!”
“You won’t.
We will meet again.” The woman drew her hand back, smoothed the skirt of the simple gown she wore. Her face was serene. “You are in danger.”
The illusion of the sky was no longer enough to keep Ayla calm. “I am frequently in danger.” The grass seemed to melt beneath her feet, the thin trick creating it bowing in the face of the true magic of Fae blood. “I am leaving. I do not wish to further consort with Humans.”
The woman remained where she sat. Ayla walked away from her, six, seven steps, toward the dark line of trees that muddled her perception of distance. She did not know her way out. “Where am I?”
“You are safe, for now.” The woman did not turn to face her. “That is all you must know.”
Ayla reached for her sword, found it missing. The daggers at her sides were gone, as well. “Give me back my things! Let me go!”
“I will show you the way, when you heed my warning.”
Her fists curled tight at her sides, she went back to the healer. “I understand, we will meet again. I will be hurt, then? Is that the danger you speak of?”
The woman smiled benignly and patted the ground in front of her. Only when Ayla sat did she speak again. “The danger you are in runs deeper than any wound. You have enemies, Ayla. Powerful enemies.”
There would be enemies, Ayla knew, when her union with Garret was announced. Petty jealousy was a way of life at Court, and it would be especially concentrated on anyone of the Guild class who climbed quickly into society. And for a half-Human? Ayla had already considered that.
“A man with wings,” the woman said suddenly, gazing toward the false sky as if in a trance. “I see a man with wings. He will destroy you.”
The Darkling flashed through Ayla’s mind. He’d been angry. So angry. And so powerless. “He will fail.”
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