Catherine must have been telling the truth about everything. If this woman truly was Arhyen’s sister, she’d been . . . altered to the point where she was no longer human. Fighting her might be like fighting another automaton. It might be like fighting Hamlet, but she had to try.
Without warning, she launched herself forward. Hazel effortlessly dodged the attack, but Liliana had predicted the move. She halted mid-lunge, hopped on her right foot, then launched a kick at Hazel’s midsection. She would have liked to launch it at her face, but Hazel was several inches taller than her, and Liliana was no trained fighter.
Hazel tried to move, but the kick grazed her ribs. Not enough to knock her down.
Liliana dropped to the ground and rolled away before Hazel could launch an attack at her back.
“You cannot best me,” Hazel growled. “I’ve been bettering my body for years. My faculties are far superior to those of a standard automaton.”
Instead of replying to the taunt, Liliana launched a left-handed punch, using the movement to draw attention away from her right hand as she worked a dagger out of its wrist sheath. Arhyen could do so in one smooth movement, but she was not as practiced as he.
Hazel dodged the punch, launching one of her own. Pain exploded through Liliana’s temple, knocking her flat to the ground, though she managed to maintain her hold on the dagger.
She rolled aside as Hazel brought a delicate boot down toward her face, then hopped to her feet behind Arhyen’s sister, flinging the dagger effortlessly. She might not have been the most skilled at retrieving daggers covertly, but she’d taken quickly to throwing them. The knife landed with a solid thunk in Hazel’s back, lodging itself right beneath her shoulder blade.
Hazel whirled on her with a feral growl, obviously not slowed down by the blade. Liliana launched another, emptying her second wrist sheath, but Hazel swiped her arm through the air and deflected it.
Liliana gulped and backed away. She had one more dagger concealed at the small of her back, but didn’t go for it since the first two hadn’t done much good. She’d need to save it until an opportunity arose where she could do more damage.
Hazel crept toward her, her arms held out defensively. The grass tugged at the hem of her dress, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were intent on Liliana. “Time to end this,” she muttered, then dove for Liliana.
This time Liliana intentionally stayed in place as Hazel lunged, knocking her to the ground, but since she was prepared for it, she had time to withdraw her final dagger before she hit the dirt.
Hazel came down on top of her, seeming a bit stunned that she’d captured Liliana so easily, and did not react with an immediate attack. It was the only opportunity Liliana needed. She thrust the dagger into Hazel’s throat and twisted. Blood gushed forth, splattering across Liliana’s face and chest. She hardly noticed as Hazel continued to fight, raking her fingernails across the side of Liliana’s face and neck as she struggled against the dagger, still grasped in Liliana’s hand.
Ignoring the fresh pain, Liliana twisted the dagger again, then tore it sideways, butchering Hazel’s throat. Finally Hazel slumped to the side and rolled off her.
Liliana stumbled to her feet, dagger still in hand, and took several steps away from Hazel as the woman slowly sat up, somehow still alive. She thought there might actually be some fight left in her, then Hazel slumped forward, bracing her upper body against her knees.
She glared up at Liliana, ignoring the blood dripping down to stain her dress. “You-” She took a deep, rasping breath, then coughed up blood. “Cannot-” This time, she was unable to suck in another breath. She sputtered, then slumped to the side, never finishing what she wanted to say.
Liliana’s entire body was shaking. The bloody dagger dropped from her hand into the dirt. A scream erupted from within the farmhouse, startling her back into action. Still trembling, she hurried over to her satchel and knelt beside it. She couldn’t help glancing repeatedly at Hazel’s still form as she shuffled through its contents, placing several corked vials into the pockets of her trousers. All she wanted to do in that moment was collapse into a sobbing heap, but Hamlet and Arhyen needed her help.
She stood, leaving the satchel in the dirt. She considered retrieving her bloody daggers, but couldn’t bring herself to go near Hazel again. Instead, she turned her back on the corpse, boosted herself over the low fence, and sped toward the farmhouse.
At some point the cows and goats had fled the scene of battle, and were now all huddled near the back of the building. She consiered using them as some sort of distraction, but quickly dismissed the idea. Hamlet and Arhyen might be running out of time.
As she reached the wide barn doors of the structure, she removed one of the vials from her right pocket. It contained oil of vitriol, diluted enough to not eat through its glass container, though it would eat through the cork given the time. At the concentration she’d managed, it should burn skin on contact, but not to the level of disfigurement. Her only aim was to surprise and distract possible assailants, not to mutilate them. In her other pocket were her version of smoke bombs, as of yet untested, and hopefully not damaged by her dip in the Thames.
Her eyes scanned the closed doors ahead of her, then the rest of the building’s face. There was a partially ajar window to her left. The front half of the building seemed dark, but there were lights further within, evident by a soft glow.
Hoping for the element of surprise, she moved away from the door to peek through the window. The entry room seemed normal enough for a farmhouse, with coats hung on the wall, and a row of muddy boots beside a low bench. Seeing no guards, she opened the window a little further and hoisted herself through, landing gently on the wooden floor within. For once, she was grateful for her size, as a larger subject would not have fit through the narrow opening.
Gripping the contained, diluted oil of vitriol in her left palm, she crept forward. All had been silent since that last scream, but now she heard a loud thump on the second story. She crept down the hallway leading further into the farmhouse, taking the time to peek into the dark rooms along the way. Most of the rooms seemed like perfectly normal bedrooms, though none were inhabited. Eventually she reached the kitchen, the source of light. The room was entirely painted crimson. Blood dripped from the countertops and walls, staining the floor around multiple corpses. Three men and one woman. None that she recognized.
Trembling with fear and apprehension, she crept onward, away from the horrific sight. Soon she reached a set of stairs with blood trailing upward. She tip toed onto the first step, then froze as the wood let out a long creak.
“Hazel?” a man’s voice called.
She didn’t answer.
“Go check,” another man said.
Her breath hitched. It was now or never.
She raced up the stairs, uncorking her vial on the way up. A man met her at the second-story landing. Not taking the time to observe him, she splashed the liquid on his face and he screamed. A few droplets seared the skin of her fingers, but she ignored it, tossing the empty phial aside as she reached back into her pocket with her free hand.
A pistol fired as she rolled across the floor, then tossed a smoke bomb. Glass shattered, and the room filled with dense vapors. She tried to quickly rise to her feet, but slipped in something wet and went down hard. Glass crunched in her pocket and she thought she might get a nasty surprise, then realized it was her left pocket. Just a smoke bomb. She retrieved another vial of vitriol just as someone’s hand clamped down on her shoulder and yanked her up. She tossed the liquid in the general direction of her captor, and was promptly released.
The smoke began to clear, just in time for her to see a narrow blade erupt from the chest of the first man she’d burned. The blade withdrew, but the victim did not go down. Instead, he whirled on his attacker, still concealed within the smoke, though judging by the blade, it had to be Hamlet.
Not wasting time, Liliana leapt to her feet, registering that the liquid she’d
slipped on was blood puddled around a corpse with a knife in its back.
She leaned down and tore the knife free, then flung it at the man who’d been stabbed, imbedding it near his left kidney, just as the longer blade pierced him again, this time going through his front to come out the back. The long blade withdrew, and finally the man slumped to the floor, revealing Hamlet standing above him. The smoke continued to clear, but the other man, the second one she’d burned, had apparently fled.
Hamlet seemed to be bleeding from his entire body, though he’d somehow maintained his mask, now splashed with crimson. He staggered toward her, nearly falling. “They seem to be automatons, or something like it,” he explained, his speech more disjointed than usual. “One seems to have fled, but there may be others.”
He fell to his knees. “I don’t believe-” he slumped further.
Liliana rushed toward him and knelt by his side, absorbing blood into her trousers . . . not that they weren’t already covered. “Don’t move,” she pleaded. “How can I help you?”
“Eliminate,” he coughed, spewing more blood onto the floor. “Threat. I will. Recover.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the second story. They were on a large square landing with another set of stairs leading upward, and two hallways branching off to either side. She hadn’t heard the extra man going up the stairs, so he must still be on the second floor. The only question was, which way?
“Follow-” Hamlet began, then took a rasping breath. “The footprints.”
With a start, she realized he was right. One hallway appeared clean, while the other hosted a set of bloody footprints. “Will you be okay?” she asked softly, turning her gaze back to Hamlet.
He snickered, then coughed up more blood. “Odd,” he rasped. “No one has ever asked that . . . before.”
Hoping she wouldn’t regret it, she patted him gently on the arm, then stood, prepared to follow who she hoped would be her final assailant down the hallway. Once she’d dealt with him, she could find Arhyen. She would find Arhyen. She blocked out thoughts of what Hazel might have done to him. She just had to.
Patting her pockets, she crept down the hallway. She only had one smoke bomb left, and her adversary would already be prepared for it. These men seemed more than human, just like Hazel, and were perhaps even automatons themselves. It would have been a fair fight if she were larger and trained in combat. As it was, the odds were not in her favor.
The footprints ended at a closed door. She paused with her hand near the knob, wondering if the man had laid a trap for her, and had made himself easy to follow on purpose. Else he was gravely wounded and truly trying to escape.
Hoping for the latter, she turned the knob, then concealed herself behind the outer wall as soon as she pushed it open. Nothing happened.
There was a gentle glow coming from within the room, though it seemed too dark to be an overhead light. A shaded lamp, perhaps? She took a deep breath, then turned and dove into the room, staying low in case the man had a pistol.
A shot rang out as she hit the ground, then scurried toward a nearby desk, topped with a small lamp on one end. She hid behind the desk as the man cursed at his missed shot.
“It’s just the girl,” he muttered.
“Where’s the other one?” asked a woman.
Oh hell, Liliana cursed silently. There were two of them, as if the fight wasn’t unfair enough as it was. She fingered the smoke bomb in her pocket as the man and woman argued over which one of them should retrieve her.
She was preparing to throw the final bomb when another pistol fired from the hallway. Someone fell to the ground with a thud. Liliana peeked around the desk just in time to see a woman fleeing through a door adjacent to the hall, leaving Liliana’s previous assailant dead on the wooden floor with part of his skull missing.
She pulled herself back behind the desk, listening as someone stumbled into the room.
“Come out,” a voice said. “If you are another prisoner here, I will not shoot.”
Liliana practically died with relief. She quickly stood, then realized she should not have moved so quickly as Arhyen swung a pistol in her direction. He wore nothing but a long, white shirt, leaving the lower half of his legs and feet bare. He blinked at her for several seconds, then lowered the pistol.
“How-” but he was cut off as she flung herself at him, wrapping him in her embrace.
He grunted in pain, and Liliana quickly pulled away. “Are you injured?”
“Not sure,” he replied through gritted teeth. “How did you get here?”
“Hamlet and I-” she cut herself off with a hand raised to her mouth. “Oh no, we must see if he’s alright.” Then she glanced over her shoulder. “But that woman . . . ”
Arhyen looked in the direction the woman had fled. “She wasn’t anyone in charge. Let’s just get out of here,” he muttered. He looked down at Liliana again, then gently pulled her into his arms. She thought she felt him kiss the top of her head. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he whispered, then quickly pulled away.
Feeling slightly stunned, she followed him out of the room, then directed him down the hall toward where she’d left Hamlet.
Reaching that room, Arhyen paused in front of the bloody corpses. “He did this?” he questioned, clearly appalled by the scene.
Liliana nodded, glancing between the corpses, but . . . where was Hamlet? “I left him right here when I came to look for you. Do you think someone took him?” She glanced around for any new bloody footprints until she found a set leading down the steps. She was quite sure they hadn’t been there before.
“Does it matter?” Arhyen questioned weakly.
Liliana looked over her shoulder at him, prepared to argue for Hamlet’s sake, until she realized Arhyen was barely maintaining his upright position. He looked pale and ready to keel over.
She hurried back to him, avoiding the puddles of blood, and took his arm.
He smiled appreciatively, then looked down at his clothes, or lack thereof. “You didn’t happen to see any clothing-filled closets on your way up here, did you?”
She shook her head. “There were bedrooms on the first floor, so perhaps we can find some. There are coats and boots near the door, at the very least.”
“And . . . Hazel?” he questioned, cringing in pain, though whether it was pain of the mind or body, she could not tell.
She bit her lip. Should she tell him? “She attacked me outside,” she explained. “She told me she had taken you, and I-” she hesitated, lifting her free hand to the scratches on her cheek and neck.
Arhyen reached his arm around to gently touch the wounds, then met her eyes. “She was no longer my sister,” he explained. “Things were done to her-” he cut himself off as pain crossed his face. “Well, she just wasn’t who she used to be. She underwent procedures not only to improve her body, but her reflexes and instincts. I believe some of the operations messed with her mind.”
Liliana nodded almost frantically, fighting the tears that had welled around her eyes.
He touched her face again to stop her frantic nodding. “Let’s get out of this den of horrors,” he said softly. “Well discuss everything once we’re someplace safe.”
She nodded again, then they made their way down the stairs, her thoughts still on Hamlet. In his condition, anyone could have taken him, but she didn’t think anyone in the building was left alive except the woman who had fled. They wouldn’t be escaping so easily otherwise.
Would the woman have stopped to gather up Hamlet while fleeing for her life, or had he gone on his own? She shook her head in wonder as they reached the first floor. There was nothing she could do about it now. Perhaps once she got Arhyen someplace safe, she could search for him.
Reaching the landing, Arhyen gawked at the blood-spattered kitchen. Not speaking, he shook his head and walked on. They checked a few of the bedrooms for clothing, but found nothing, and instead settled on making away with a long coat and boots from th
e entry room.
With Arhyen as clothed as he was going to get, they opened the heavy barn doors and stepped outside into the night. At some point it had started to rain, rewetting Liliana’s mostly dry clothing.
She didn’t mind the moisture. With Arhyen hobbling at her side, the cool droplets melted the blood from her skin, washing away the signs of violence.
Now if only she could wash them from her insides too.
Chapter 17
Even with his newly acquired boots and long jacket, the cold rain made Arhyen’s bones ache. He forced his feet forward, one after the other, only finding the strength to carry on through Liliana’s presence at his side. He still couldn’t quite believe she’d found him. Part of him thought perhaps he’d died on that operating table, and her presence was only a fanciful dream in the afterlife. Yet, her small frame felt entirely real beneath his arm as she helped support him across the open field.
Their boots stuck in the mud with every step, sending little thrills of pain through his entire body. It likely would have been a good idea to search the farmhouse for more anesthesia before departing, but he hadn’t wanted to remain there for another moment. Luckily, the black coat he’d procured was long, hitting him below the knee to shield most of his legs from the rain. Still, he knew he would not be able to continue on for long. “We need to find shelter!” he called above the thunderous sound of the rain.
With his arm around her shoulders, he gazed down upon Liliana. She craned her neck awkwardly to turn wide eyes up to him. The wounds on her face had been cleaned by the rain, but still stood out in angry red lines. She had a large bruise on her temple too. It made him ill to know that Hazel had caused the marks. Hazel, who was once his spitfire little sister, long since warped into something that barely resembled a human.
“Where is she?” he muttered, knowing Liliana would likely understand to whom he referred.
Clocks and Daggers (The Thief's Apprentice Book 2) Page 16