Ruxandra nodded, though she didn’t look at him. “Where will we meet?”
“Outside the north gate.”
“All right.”
Ruxandra stepped over the bodies of the magicians and headed for the stairs to the surface.
The streets were still near the church. No one marched, and few people wandered the streets. The fire still burned, its black smoke cloaking the city thickly enough to hide the sun. Ruxandra, cloak over her head, skin covered with cloth, moved like a gray wraith through the streets. She didn’t bother turning unnoticed. She had no need of it.
She went by the Kremlin and the enclave. Belosselsky’s and Khilkoff’s troops marched together, or huddled behind barricades. Cannons stood in the streets, their barrels pointed at the Kremlin walls. Horses whinnied and stomped, sensing their riders’ nervousness.
There were fewer troops than before. Ruxandra expanded her mind and discovered more men frantically shoring up barricades and manning the outer city gates against the Imperial Army on the other side.
She found Delfino, hanging from a hook on the side of the bridge. His plump body sagged limply, his face frozen in a scream of agony. A bloody patch of open flesh sat between his legs where his genitals used to hang. The last of his blood dripped down his body, over his face and arms, to fall into the water below.
Princess Khilkoff got her revenge, then.
Ruxandra walked past the Kremlin, past the enclave, to Alexi’s warehouse. The trapdoor stood open. She shed her clothes and cut away the cloths covering her body and then descended into the darkness.
Naked, she walked the length of the tunnel, her bare feet making no sound. She listened as she went, reaching out with her mind. The radius of her ability underground was much shorter than above, but it was enough. There was no one in the tunnel, and only the two guards on the other side.
She turned unnoticed and picked up her pace.
By the time she reached the end of the tunnel, she was moving at full speed. She hit the door with the full force of her body, smashing it from its hinges. It slammed against the wall and bounced off the steps. Ruxandra jumped and raced up the stairs.
The guards were still drawing their swords when she killed them, her talons tearing out their bellies. The Beast howled in anticipation, then snarled in fury when Ruxandra left them to die where they lay. She bounded up more stairs until she stood in Terem Palace.
She extended her mind. She found Anna at once, in a room full of nervous men. She found dozens of others—servants, cooks, guards, and housekeepers going about their duties.
Then she felt Ishtar.
The woman was practically glowing with anticipation and bloodlust. She was in a room at the rear of Terem Palace. She felt relaxed and happy, as if she did not have a care in the world. She also had company, and judging from the lust radiating off him, both were going to be distracted, at least for the next few minutes.
It was more than enough time.
Ruxandra slipped up the stairs and through the halls, dodging the occasional patches of sunlight and moving unnoticed past the few courtiers she saw. Ishtar’s room was unlocked when Ruxandra reached it. She turned the handle and pushed on the door. It swung open silently.
The room on the other side was huge, easily twice the size of Prince Belosselsky’s study. Pale-yellow wallpaper with a hand-printed pattern of green and white flowers covered the walls. Yellow curtains covered the windows, hiding the black smoke outside. A white couch and two white chairs stood before the ornately decorated fireplace. A fire blazed, heating the cold room.
An oversize bed with white sheets and furs and a white cloth canopy dominated the far end of the room. Ishtar lay on it, mouth open, eyes shut and knees spread wide as a man moved between her thighs. Ishtar gasped her breaths in rhythm to his hard thrusts. Ruxandra didn’t recognize the man, though judging from the uniform pieces spread over the floor, he was one of Anna’s soldiers.
Ishtar’s dress lay on the floor as well. Four round silver disks had been sewn onto the front of it. The sight of them set Ruxandra’s hackles on end and threatened to make her snarl. She stifled it and slipped across the floor in silence. The man inside Ishtar increased his pace, grunting with the effort and making the bed shake.
Ruxandra grabbed his ankle and threw him across the room.
The man’s sudden withdrawal brought Ishtar’s eyes open. The crash and his shout of pain as he hit the far wall made her sit up. Ruxandra didn’t watch. She grabbed Ishtar’s dress and threw it in the fire. One of the silver medallions touched her skin, raising a blister and making her swear.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the man on the floor shouted. “I’ll kill you!”
Ruxandra brought out her fangs and talons and snarled. Inside her the Beast screamed, wanting to tear his throat out. The man went whiter than the sheets he’d been on a moment before.
“Get out,” Ruxandra said. “Now.”
He crawled out the door, dragging one leg behind him.
“I assume you are going to offer to take his place,” Ishtar said, “since he will be useless for the rest of the day.”
“You should have let us send you back.” Ruxandra kept her voice calm, despite the fear she felt and the snarling Beast inside her. “You shouldn’t have killed them.”
“Why not?” Ishtar scooted across the bed, reaching for a robe. “Did the skinny woman mean that much to you?”
“Did I ever tell you what I was like when Elizabeth found me?”
“An animal.” Ishtar stepped out of the bed and pulled the robe onto her shoulders. “Incapable of controlling yourself. Starving to death. Killing anything that moves. I saw, my dear. I watched the way you butchered those girls. Very amusing.”
“The Beast,” Ruxandra said. “To survive, I created the Beast—a wild, hungry animal that lives inside me and is completely separate from me. When I become too hungry, it breaks free and kills whatever it can.”
“I know.” Ishtar walked across the room, took up a chair near the fireplace. “Though why you think I should care is beyond me.”
“Because it is still here.” Ruxandra followed her, stood before her. “And I am very, very hungry.”
Ishtar leaned forward in her chair. “Whether or not it is separate from you, whether or not you are starving, the Beast is as much my child as you are, and once it meets me, it will not be able to harm me.”
“No.” Ruxandra brought the tips of her fingers and her thumb together on each hand, making spikes with her needle-pointed talons. “It won’t be able to harm you if it sees you.”
Ishtar frowned.
It was the last thing Ruxandra saw before she plunged her talons into her eyes.
Then she set the Beast free.
Chapter 24
The Beast screamed agony into the darkness. Its body contorted and changed, the arms growing longer, the legs shortening, the spine shifting. It was free—free from the dark prison of Ruxandra’s mind—only to be thrust into a different sort of darkness. It dropped to all fours and howled.
Something in the room moved.
The Beast froze. It heard harsh breathing, sensed warmth in the cool air of the room, and smelled the scent of desperation.
Human.
It felt the beat of a pulse, the vibration of blood flowing through veins, sweet and warm.
Food.
The Beast leaped.
The human twisted, its feet skidding on the floor. The Beast’s talons grazed it but did not catch it. A blade slashed into the Beast’s leg. It snarled and swung its claws, but the human was already moving, running toward the lit fireplace.
The Beast spun, leaped, and this time smashed into the human, taking them both to the ground. The human screamed. The blade slammed again and again into the Beast’s stomach. The Beast roared in pain and reared up, swiping with its talons. It ripped into flesh, caught on bone, and tore free. The human screamed.
Then it hooked a leg over the Beast’s and twisted, revers
ing their positions. The blade stabbed down a dozen times into the Beast’s face, its neck and its chest, faster than any human the Beast had ever hunted.
But not fast enough.
The Beast felt the air vibrate as the knife plunged. And when it pierced the Beast’s flesh again, the Beast grabbed the arm that held it. Its talons dug into flesh, twisting and ripping until it found the elbow joint. It drove its claws into the spaces between the bones. The human screamed again, pain and rage together. It shifted, and the Beast smelled something—flesh burning.
A flaming log struck the Beast full in the face.
Now the Beast was the one to scream. It twisted its talons and ripped. Flesh parted as the human’s arm tore in two. The human fell away, and the Beast rolled and rolled, batting at its hair and face until the flames died.
“You animal!” The words meant nothing to the Beast, but Ruxandra, trapped inside it, heard Ishtar screaming them. “What have you done?”
The Beast smothered the last of the flames and rose to its feet. It growled, the vibrations coming from deep in its chest and filling the room. The Beast hurt. It no longer cared about just feeding. It wanted to destroy.
“Stay away,” Ishtar said. “I mean it, stay away!”
Kill her, Ruxandra told the Beast. Kill her and drink her.
“I will end you.” Ishtar’s voice held no fear, only pain and fury.
The Beast roared its fury and charged. Ishtar swung the burning log, but the Beast felt it coming and ducked under. Its talons lashed out, sinking into Ishtar’s leg. The Beast used the grip to pull itself up her body, wrapping its legs and arms around Ishtar in a vicious parody of an embrace and bringing them both to the ground. The flaming log burned into the Beast’s back. It dug the talons into Ishtar’s shoulder, twisting and ripping.
Ishtar’s teeth sank into its neck.
It didn’t stop the Beast from tearing her arm off.
The Beast howled in victory, pulled its neck free, and slammed its forehead down, hearing bones break.
The human tried to bite again. The Beast twisted away, drove its talons into the human’s rib cage, and used them to push itself down the length of the human’s body. It wrapped its arms around the human’s thighs, pulling them apart. It could smell the human’s sex, freshly used and still wet, in front of its face.
The Beast turned its head, opened its mouth wide, and sank its fangs deep into the artery buried in the human’s thigh. Blood exploded into the Beast’s mouth.
It wasn’t human blood.
It smelled like human blood, felt like human blood as it burst into the Beast’s mouth, but the taste was different. It was sweeter, stronger. It poured down the beast’s throat, filling it with power. The Beast gripped the thigh tighter and pushed its face against the human’s leg, sucking as much as it could. It could feel its injuries healing; feel its eyes growing back. The black turned gray, and it began to see shapes.
“That is ENOUGH!”
The voice roared loud enough to burst the Beast’s eardrums. A hand grabbed it by the neck, threw it across the room. The Beast smashed through the wall, plaster and wood giving way, and landed in the hallway. One of its arms broke and it screamed.
Ruxandra surged forward in her mind, shoving the Beast aside and taking over. The Beast, sated on blood if not on life, sank back into the depths of her mind.
Ruxandra’s eyes cleared just as Ishtar fell on her.
The fallen angel stood eight feet tall. Its white skin was covered in black leathery armor that clung tight to its flesh, covering everything but hiding nothing. Her wings spread wide, filling the hallway. A wickedly curved sword hung from one hand, and from the other dangled a three-headed scourge, razor-sharp stones woven into its twisted ropes. Ishtar’s eyes burned bright red, and her open mouth showed row after row of razor-sharp teeth.
“Your turn,” the angel said.
Ruxandra rose to her feet. She knew she could not attack, no matter how much she wanted to, not even to defend herself.
Ruxandra turned and ran.
Ishtar’s scourge lashed out, wrapped around one of Ruxandra’s legs and hauled her back. Ishtar flicked her arm and Ruxandra went flying again, through the wall, through Ishtar’s room, and out the window. Glass shattered and wood splintered, and all of it embedded itself in Ruxandra’s flesh. Sunlight, dim in the smoke-filled air, blistered her skin. She twisted in the air, landed on all fours, and jumped to the shade of the nearest building.
Wings flapped, and the whip hissed through the air, smashing her sideways against the wall. Ruxandra gritted her teeth from the pain, rose to run away.
The Angel’s blade sliced through the air, and Ruxandra’s feet came off.
She toppled face-forward to the earth. The wounds burned as if acid were being poured into the freshly opened flesh. Ruxandra screamed in agony. She tried to pull her body forward, digging talons into the cobblestone square.
The sword chopped down and her hands came off.
Ishtar’s foot, wrapped in black armor and tipped with a gleaming black point, slammed into Ruxandra’s body, rupturing her organs, splitting her open and sending her across the square to slam against the Kremlin wall.
Ruxandra was vaguely aware of guards running from the parapets, of men and women screaming. But her attention was collapsing, focusing only on the pain.
Ishtar grabbed her by her head, hauled her into the air, and dangled her there like a doll.
“Happy now?” Ishtar asked. “Thrilled with your victory?”
Ruxandra couldn’t answer. Ishtar’s sword sliced twice and Ruxandra’s forearms flew away from her body. Ruxandra howled with pain.
“I gave you power, you stupid bitch,” Ishtar shouted over Ruxandra’s screams. “I gave you the strength to rule this world. And what do you do? You go to the opera. You buy pretty dresses. You dress in drag to hunt in the streets like a common murderer. You act like humans are your friends instead of your playthings. You are a stunning disappointment.”
Her blade hacked sideways, taking off Ruxandra’s legs at the knees.
“I am going to kill you,” Ishtar said. “I am going to rip your body to shreds, and then I am going to send your soul down to hell, where I will spend eternity torturing you in ways that will make this feel like pleasure.”
She shook Ruxandra, hard enough to grab her attention. “Do you hear me?”
Ruxandra heard. And she remembered, in a vision as clear as if it were happening, a day hundreds of years ago. Adela and Valeria and she were in the convent barn, and Adela said something to make them blush and giggle. The vision faded, and Ruxandra stared into Ishtar’s furious face.
“Menj be a szájába nyitott csapások erdejébe,” Ruxandra said. Go walk into a forest of cocks with your mouth open.
Ishtar threw her at the ground.
Ruxandra hit and the world went white. Ishtar’s scourge whistled through the air and slashed Ruxandra’s flesh, rising and falling faster than even Ruxandra could see. The skin peeled from her flesh, the muscle from her bone. The pain was so great that Ruxandra could not see, could not hear, could not feel anything except the agony in her flesh.
Then light.
White light, pure and blinding, streamed down from above.
The whipping stopped. Ruxandra managed to open an eye and squint against the brightness. She saw Ishtar stumbling back, her arms across her eyes.
“I am forbidden to stay on this plane,” Ishtar had said when she was first summoned. “As Ruxandra told you, this circle does not contain me, only summon me. But while summoned, heaven cannot detect me, save if I use my powers.”
A terrible noise, like stone tearing itself apart, filled the air. The air turned so cold that it froze and burned at the same time. A smell of smoke and sulfur filled the air.
“No!” Ishtar screamed, the word nearly lost in the sound of the black hole opening in the air beside her. “No! Not yet!”
Wind hit her, and only her, a furious gale battering her f
lesh. Ishtar braced herself, dug her shoes into the earth. Her wings flapped, and her hair flew. She screamed fury and defiance.
Her feet flew out from under her. She clawed at the ground, slowing but not stopping her inexorable fall into the black hole. She glared at Ruxandra, hatred on her face.
“I win,” Ruxandra whispered.
Ishtar’s scourge lashed out and wrapped around Ruxandra’s leg. It burned into her flesh as it hauled her toward the black hole. Ruxandra tried to dig into the earth but had no hands, no feet. The stumps of her arms and legs left a trail of silver blood on the ground. The open flesh of her stomach and breasts, peeled by the same scourge that now dragged her to hell, blazed with agony as she slid.
“Come to me!” Ishtar taunted, yelling to be heard over the noise of the wind. “Come with me forever, Daughter!”
Ishtar stopped resisting and let the wind pull her into the darkness. Ruxandra picked up speed, the cobbles of the square tearing at her ruined flesh as the scourge pulled her to the dark portal and hell beyond it.
The white light blazed again, so bright that Ruxandra could see nothing at all.
And when it vanished, she was lying broken in the sun, before the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael.
She should have died. Had it been a bright, clear day, she would have died. But the smoke from the fires still dimmed the sun, and the last of the afternoon was already fading away. Her body broke out in blisters, but it was nothing compared to the pain she already felt.
A soldier stepped into the square, his weapon at the ready.
“Come here!” Ruxandra commanded. “Now!”
***
Kade found her three days later, in the dirt cellar of a kabak in the outer city.
She had drunk the first soldier dry after he dragged her out of the sun, and a second soldier who had come looking for him. The third and fourth she made smuggle her out the Kremlin through Alexi’s tunnel and to the outer city.
She drank them and six more men before the wounds on her stomach closed up.
Now Kade watched, eyes wide with surprise, as hands and feet grew slowly off her stumps.
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