by Kayleigh Sky
“Enough,” Rune growled. “You aren’t coming.”
Mal laughed, flung the door open, and strode out.
26
A Girl In The Dark
“Shit!”
Camiel yanked on the wheel of the van they’d picked up and slammed on the brakes, throwing Rune into the dashboard. Sonofabitch.
The tires screamed, and he glimpsed a shape flying into the trees on the other side of the single-lane road. Something slammed hard into the side of the van as it rocked to a stop.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Camiel muttered.
He sat stiff-armed in his seat then twisted around with Rune, who swung an arm behind him and leaned into the back. “Everyone okay?”
Isaac nodded. “I am.”
“Mal?”
She waved him off, sitting on the floor with Isaac and Anin. “What the hell was that?”
Anin gave her a hand back to her seat, and Isaac peered out of the window. “Is that Uriah?”
Camiel pointed, and Rune spotted the big vampire running into the woods. “Stay here,” he ordered and raced after him.
Rune!
He ignored Isaac’s call as he whipped through thin branches and followed the crash of Uriah’s pounding steps. Dappled sunlight glared through the canopy, and shadows hid against the tree trunks. The pop of a gun firing ricocheted through his chest. He flew down a slope to a dry creek bed, leaped across it, and darted up the next slope. On the other side, the trees thinned and an empty field rolled toward a distant shopping center. It looked abandoned, but whomever Uriah had been chasing couldn’t have run that far with the few minutes’ head start he’d had. They’d lost him in the woods.
“Forget him.”
Uriah swung around. “I was too late, sire.”
Dread stirred in Rune’s belly. “Too late for what?”
“To save him,” Uriah said simply.
Rune groaned. Mal’s colleague. He’d sent Uriah ahead of them in case the Adi ’el Lumi somehow got there first, but he hadn’t believed they would. How had they? Who had tipped them off? Was it magic? Camiel? “We have a spy.”
Uriah nodded. “More than one probably.”
“We can’t trust anyone now,” Rune added.
Uriah holstered his weapon. “I never do.”
“Is there anyone else in the house?”
“I don’t know. I’d just gotten there. I heard the struggle and broke down the door. From the sounds, there was more than one.”
“Let’s go.”
They trudged back to the van where it idled in the middle of the road. Camiel peered through the windshield, but the setting sun hid most of his face from Rune’s view. Was it you?
A strange part of him didn’t want it to be.
He passed his door and circled around to Camiel’s side. His window was down. “Is everything all right?” Camiel asked.
“We’ll see in a minute. Keep the engine running and tell Anin to join me.”
“I can help.”
Rune ignored that. “Uriah will stay with you.”
He turned away before Camiel replied, and Uriah dipped his chin. Rune wasn’t sure he trusted Anin either, and Uriah would die before he let harm come to Rune’s family. A moment later, Anin followed him into the woods on the opposite side of the road. A few yards away, a ribbon of pavement wove through the trees, but Rune stayed back and kept his eye on it from inside the foliage. Anin said nothing but gestured with his chin when the house came into view. He formed a half circle with his finger, indicating the back of the property. Rune nodded.
The house was two stories with a peaked roof and two chimneys. White plaster with rough-hewn trim gave it a cottage look, but it was large with a wing that extended to one side. If there were neighbors, they were nowhere near. No lights shone in the windows. Anin pulled a gun when they approached the splintered back door and stepped in first. He crossed a utility room, gun clasped in both hands and held low, Rune behind him. The next room was a kitchen leading to a central hall. Faded sunlight flowed like water on the hardwood. Anin glanced back at him. Rune held a finger to his lips, pointed at the ceiling, then at Anin. Anin nodded and took the stairs to the second story while Rune continued down the hall.
He had no desire to be shot, and by the time he reached the study at the front of the house, he was a mist in the ether. His emotions floated on the air, a part of him, but not. Not good or bad, wanted or unwanted. He drifted through the ground-level rooms—living room, library, dining room—before he returned to the study. His sorrow at the sight of the body on the floor flowed through him without an edge. But his rage was there, waiting to tear through him as soon as he took form. The old man’s assailants had beaten him, most likely with a gun. Blood saturated the fancy rug he lay on, garish against the white flecks in his matted hair. Bone, most likely.
Rune returned to his body at the sound of Anin on the stairs, and the scent of blood hit him in a rush. Hunger burned in his stomach. He needed Synelix soon.
He swiped at his forehead as he turned.
“Nobody,” Anin murmured.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I don’t know if they got what they wanted.”
“What did they want?” Anin gestured at the body without looking at it. “Information from the looks.”
“Yes.” If they’d only wanted to silence him, prevent him from helping Rune, they’d simply have killed him, but they hadn’t. “I don’t think they know what we have.”
Anin’s face remained still, but his tone was curious. “What do we have?”
“The professor was supposed to tell us. Go get Uriah and the others. We need to do something with the body.”
“Ought I to report it?”
Could Rune trust anybody?
“I don’t know yet.”
Anin nodded and took the front door outside. Upstairs, Rune found the linen closet and returned to the study with a sheet. Anin and Uriah appeared a moment later. The rumble of the van grew louder. Uriah closed the front door, and Rune shook out a sheet.
“Help me with him.”
Uriah nodded and squatted at the foot of the body. He positioned the legs together and stood again.
Rune had seen the dead swaddled too many times. At his worst, Qudim had taken some perverse pleasure in watching his enemies rolled in sheets and dumped into a pit. Rune had never known why he bothered with the sheets, except maybe it had prolonged his satisfaction, but Rune doubted if he’d enjoyed it, and often wondered if he’d remembered wrapping his dead wife in a sheet and laying her in her grave.
They carried the body into the garage.
On the way back into the house, Rune stopped and gazed across the kitchen. A large farmhouse table dominated the center of it, and a heavy cabinet filled a nook in the back of the room. The cabinet cast a shadow on the floor and hid a door tucked into the corner. Another shadow flew past him, swooping on the floor like a wing—Uriah, who pushed past and approached the nook with his weapon in his hand again. When Rune stepped forward, Uriah gave a small shake of his head. “Allow me.”
“Just open the door first, and stand back.”
Uriah nodded.
The knob was wide and flat, set on a spindle that projected only an inch from the hub. Crammed into the narrow space left by the cabinet, Uriah stood back against the wall, turned the knob, and pushed the door away from him. It swung into the dark and tapped a wall. No sound came from below. Uriah twisted to the other side of the door and peered into the space. “Basement,” he murmured. “No light.”
Uriah started down, and Rune followed him. He’d accepted years ago he would die a violent death, no matter how much Uriah wanted to protect him. It would come with all the agony and blood Qudim had promised him, though Qudim was gone, so why not meet his fate in a dead stranger’s basement?
The steps ended a foot away from the facing wall, the only entrance to the rest of the space through an opening to the right. Uriah bent his head and stepped into another space. It was dark, not
a sound, and too quiet. Uriah looked back at him, and Rune nodded. Somebody was in there. Very still. Barely breathing. They made their way past shelves with packages and canned goods, a water heater, and a washer and dryer. T-shirts hung on a rack. Uriah passed through another door.
“It’s a bedroom,” he whispered.
Somehow the threat of danger was gone, but the back of Rune’s neck still tingled. Gray squares of windows sat below the ceiling. The walls were finished, and a fluffy oval rug in a floral pattern covered the hardwood floor. There was a puffy chair with an ottoman and a coffee table and loveseat on the other side, bookshelves and an old-fashioned record player, paintings on the walls. A large bed, dresser, nightstand, and wardrobe occupied the other side of the room. In the ghostly light, the floral carvings stood out on the wardrobe doors. The furniture was solid and had once been expensive. Rune crossed the floor. Another door led into a spacious bathroom with a tub and separate shower and more shelves.
Strange.
Was it a servant’s room? Why not upstairs, and why all this luxury?
Uriah straightened from peering under the bed. He shook his head. Rune scanned the space again, turning, gaze settling on the wardrobe. He looked at Uriah, who nodded. Together they approached the piece of furniture and stood on either side of the doors. Uriah reached for a knob and yanked open the wardrobe on his side. Nothing happened. Rune opened the other door. Clothes filled the space. Trousers, shirts, dresses. All pressed together. The dresses and trousers brushed the bottom of the compartment, the shirts hung higher. Rune slipped his hands between the garments and thrust them aside.
A girl sat huddled, hugging her legs, large eyes shining with terror.
27
Questions
“Maybe we should get rid of the rug,” Camiel suggested with a tip of his head to the study. “Might go a ways to creating a peaceful environment.”
Rune kept the girl in his gaze. Little of the study was in view and none of the blood on the rug, but the look she turned on Camiel was grateful. Still, Rune had enough on his mind without housekeeping duties. “We aren’t at peace, Nezzarram, but if you feel the need to redecorate, do it. Take Anin.”
The girl sat on the couch in the front room. Mal perched on the coffee table in front of her, Isaac behind the couch, Uriah in the doorway. A few table lamps lit the room. Camiel had moved the van off the road, but Uriah’s vehicle was nowhere to be seen. He was still as a statue, but Rune sensed a peculiar disquiet in him. Did he miss his fated?
Not something Rune wanted to think about. He approached the coffee table, keeping behind Mal, while a few grunts and a scrape of furniture on the floor drifted in from the study. The girl lifted her head and fixed him in her gaze. Her damp eyes were dark as lapis lazuli in the dim light, tendrils of flaxen hair clinging to her face. She was probably in her early twenties. Isaac’s age. Her face was plain, her features regular, her skin faded to a uniform pallor, but she was compelling anyway. She swallowed. Afraid of them, but not petrified. She’d climbed from the wardrobe when it was obvious she couldn’t run anywhere.
Her whisper had drifted on the air. “What do you want with me?”
“Answers,” Rune had said.
Now was the time for his answers. “What’s your name?”
“Clara. Clara Bloom.”
“What is your position here?”
“My position?”
Her lips made the words, but there was hardly any sound behind them.
Mal glanced back at him and shook her head. She faced forward again. “I don’t know you. Stefan was a colleague of mine. I was one of his students years ago.”
A tiny smile flickered on Clara’s lips. “Not years ago.”
Mal laughed her throaty laugh, and color showed up on Clara’s cheeks. “I’m older than I look. It’s been fifteen years. Stefan had such an astonishing talent with languages that I had to study with him. A human who was fluent in both Celes and Ono was unheard of.”
“He learned them before.”
Mal nodded. “Yes.”
“Before what?” Rune said.
Clara swallowed then met his gaze. “Before the Upheaval.”
“He was well aware of us,” Mal added.
Clara’s eyes brightened. “I was his student too. When I was a teenager, I snuck into his classes after they started. At least I thought I was sneaking. I didn’t think I’d ever have the money for school, but I love Ellowyn art. I guess I wasn’t very clandestine, though. He saw me and found me a job as a clerk on campus. I was only sixteen, but he helped me get a scholarship too, and I studied with him. Stefan was fascinated with the way the Ellowyn incorporated their language into art, and when he took a sabbatical to work on a book about it, he asked me to be his personal assistant. I don’t have any family, and Stefan was a generous…” Her face crumpled, the tears falling from her eyes. “Generous man.”
Rune raised his gaze. Isaac wasn’t looking at him, though. Wasn’t looking at any of them. He stared out of the window, though it was too dark for a human to see anything but reflections. Wen had been generous enough that Isaac had signed a contract with him. Was it his only way off the streets? He was a tough kid, but he’d never gotten as lucky as Clara. Humans couldn’t blame anybody but themselves for the Upheaval, but Isaac had been a victim of a fallout Rune couldn’t protect him from. Why had he ever thought he could protect anyone? That he could end a war? End hatred? What an idiot.
But a part of him didn’t want to stop trying.
He returned his attention to Clara. “I’m sorry to push you, but we don’t have much time. Do you know what he had that they wanted?”
She swiped her eyes and bit her bottom lip before she shook her head. “I have no idea. I was in my room. I just hid. I didn’t—”
“You couldn’t.” Mal took her hands. “You couldn’t do anything except sacrifice your life for no reason.”
“Why didn’t they find you?” Rune asked.
When Mal turned her head and glared at him, he glared back. For fuck sake, what was with her? He narrowed his eyes questioningly, but she looked away.
Clara wrung her hands. “Do you think I helped?” She had a faint lisp that stumbled over th sounds.
“Did you?”
“No.”
Again, her lips moved, but no sound emerged. Still, it was odd that they hadn’t found her. Odd that she lived in a basement.
“Why is your room down there?”
“It’s my own space. People gossip about teachers and students all the time. But it wasn’t like that with us. Stefan was kind.”
“Sire,” said Uriah. Surprise flickered in Clara’s eyes. Rune shifted his gaze from her. “I interrupted them, I think. I came as soon as I…” Uriah’s jaw tightened for a moment. “Maybe they didn’t have time to search the house.”
“Maybe not,” Rune agreed. “It doesn’t look like they did.”
A door closed in back, followed by footsteps in the hall, and Camiel breezed in a few seconds later. “I’m hungry.”
Anin stopped beside Uriah and dipped his chin. “It is quiet.” He glanced at Uriah. “We should patrol the grounds though.”
Rune nodded. “Arrange it between yourselves.”
Uriah crossed the room, and he and Anin departed.
“I might as well cook something,” Isaac said.
What Rune needed was Synelix, but he said nothing, and Isaac left too.
Rune gazed at Mal. “What now?”
“I don’t know. Would they have been looking for something tangible?”
He shook his head. “Information. Whatever it is they wanted from him, it wasn’t something they even tried to search for. It was something he knew.”
Clara’s brow pinched tight over her stricken eyes. “Language? Art?”
“Language,” Rune said. “Specifically Onopiel or one related to it.”
“Onopiel? That’s dead.”
“I know.”
“That’s interesting. There are fi
ve nonextant languages that we know of,” said Clara. “Three have modern counterparts. Onopiel is not related to Ono, as was commonly thought, but to Celes. The two languages split almost a thousand years ago. Fa’halith simply died out. We don’t know what took its place. It often appears in Ellowyn art, but it’s so obscure it’s seldom recognized for what it is.”
“So,” said Rune. “How familiar with the professor’s work are you?”
“Very.”
“Then you’re lucky they didn’t find you.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Rune’s smile brushed against the tips of his fangs. “I have a feeling you know more than you think.”
He turned away at the sound of water running in the kitchen and gazed at Camiel, who’d deposited himself on the far end of the couch. “I wouldn’t make yourself too comfortable.”
Camiel grinned. “Catch where catch can.”
Mal met Rune’s gaze. “You should rest too. Deciphering the map isn’t going to happen soon.”
It had to, but he didn’t argue. He strode into the hall and glanced into the study as he went by. The bare floor shone pale where the rug used to be. He looked away and continued to the kitchen where Isaac studiously ignored him, head poked into the refrigerator. Rune passed behind him and went out of the back door. The cool air was crisp and fragrant with leaves. His hunger burned in his gut though, and he imagined the scents of blood on the breeze. Swallowing, he let his gaze sweep the dark tree line. An engine had started a few minutes ago, and there was no sign of Anin or Uriah. He stepped off the patio onto dirt and leaves. Sounds came to him. Leaf fall. The slither of insects. Wings whispering. Breath, soft and regular.
“Who is your family?”
Anin emerged from the shadows. He wore no jacket, his holster strapped over a dark knit sweater.
“Hadil, sire.”
Common.
“You served the Nezzarrams?”
“Yes.”
“What is Camiel to you?”
Anin’s face came into view. He was the same size as Rune, his face neutral, though his emotions seemed visible somehow, as though they were an energy source flowing under his skin. He wore his hair in a single braid. Though he looked nothing like him, he reminded Rune of a young Uriah. The best of what it was to be Ellowyn, or Rune had always thought so.