“What? We’re only stealing the damn Night Blade, and you want to give it to your aunt?” The vision of his blank-eyed parents standing in the middle of their slaughtered coven hovered at the edge of his mind, but he pushed it away. He’d find a way to make Reis pay for that, eventually. Right now, he had to figure out what she was up to. “What does she want with it, anyway? The sword?”
“Hell knows,” snapped Lix. “Maybe she wants to hang it over her mantelpiece. Maybe she wants to melt it down and make earrings. She can paint it pink and name it Shirley for all I care. I just want the money.”
“No you don’t,” he said. “With you, it’s never only about the money. What has she promised you? A full pardon and a return to the inner circle? And you really think she won’t fuck you over once she has what she needs? Grow up, Lix! She’s poison, you know that. You shouldn’t trust her.”
Lix flushed, cheeks red. Ben knew he’d hit a sore spot. She stepped forward, getting right in his face. “You think you have the balls to lecture me?” she spat out. “You left us. You don’t get to march back in and start acting all high and mighty. And Livia is my blood, May’s blood. She’s not going to ‘fuck me over,’ as you so charmingly put it.”
“That’s what she does, Lix. She does it to everyone. You know that.”
“Gabriel,” Lix said. “This is about my cousin, isn’t it? You’re pathetic, Ben. You should have known better. You were never going to be allowed to keep him. You knew that from the start. Have you seen him lately? Did he show you his pretty little engagement ring?”
Ben could feel his magic gathering at the tips of his fingers, could feel the desire to lash out. He took a deep, shuddering breath as he fought for control. He wasn’t Lix, wasn’t Livia. He was better than that. He closed his eyes a moment, and when he opened them he was calmer.
Lix was watching him, a cruel glint in her eyes. “He loves you, you know that, right? The little idiot would have thrown everything away for you. Do you know why he accepted the engagement? My aunt threatened to have you framed for murder. You’d be executed by the Court, just like your parents, if he didn’t do as she said.”
Ben’s stomach clenched as though he’d been punched in the gut. He’d been so angry with Gabi for giving in. But faced with that sort of ultimatum, he’d have done the same thing. Lix smirked at the look on Ben’s face. “Hate her, go on, she deserves it. But she also deserves to be a few million dollars poorer. Let’s finish the job. You can take the money and get the hell out of New York, out of the USA if you want. You could go anywhere, Ben. Start a new life.”
Ben didn’t answer. He was drowning in a sea of feelings: love and hate, regret and sadness, all rolled up in one complicated tangle. He shouldered his pack again and pushed past Lix without looking at her. “Let’s just go,” he said over his shoulder, his voice rough. “Let’s get this done.”
The last stretch of their carpet wasteland hike was suspiciously uneventful. May stopped as the cliff approached. “Does this seem off to anyone? Where are the booby traps, the guardian spells?”
“Count our blessings?” said Ben dubiously, even though he didn’t believe his own words.
“The Baron is saving his firepower for after we get whatever we came for,” Raze replied grimly. “That’s my guess.” She gave Lix a look. “You’re quiet. You know something, don’t you?”
“Not really,” Lix answered, a little hesitantly. “But I have my suspicions. I think it has to do with how the warp spell works. I think perhaps the blank and empty spaces we’ve passed mean there’s something there in real time and space. Perhaps Winslow can’t overlap the enchantments?”
Ben frowned. “So you’re saying that once we get the sword, and the warp spell ends, we could find ourselves in a small cramped room with hell knows what between us and the door?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.” Lix shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that except be prepared. I’m thinking that if things get bad, we could use that fire potion of mine. I couldn’t risk it before, but it’s only a few steps to the door without the warp in place. So, the plan is, Raze grabs the sword, and we come out of the warp all guns blazing. Uh, no pun intended. Everyone clear?”
“I wish Gareth was here,” Ben muttered. Gareth’s shields were legendary. He’d have been a welcome addition to this idiotic job.
“Well, he’s not,” snapped Lix. “Come on, we’re wasting time and we need to keep moving.”
“And whose fault is that?” Ben couldn’t help replying. “Hiring a damn Guild agent? Smart move, Lix.” She didn’t answer, she just glared at him and started walking, setting a punishing pace that had May struggling to keep up. Ben’s long legs caught up easily, but Lix ignored him and stared ahead at the carpet cliff instead.
Finally they reached the base of the cliff. This wasn’t like the canyon they’d encountered before. This was a flat expanse of vertical carpet, without a single handhold in sight. Raze ran a hand over the surface and then drew back.
“No way to free climb that. I’m going to need equipment.” She set her backpack on the ground and drew out a large bundle of flat metal pegs with loops at the end, and a hammer. She reached up as high as she could and rubbed the carpet. When she found what she was looking for, she set one of the pegs against the cliff and tapped it smartly. It went in easily. She tested her weight on it, swinging by one hand.
“Well,” she said, “good news is, I won’t need to drill in bolts. The flat bit of metal? That’s called a piton. I slid it in between the floorboards that must run under all of this carpeting.”
“And the bad news?” asked Ben.
Raze grinned and poked him in the arm. “Bad for you, not for me. You’re my belayer. If I fall, you get to use those boxing muscles.” She reached into her pack again and pulled out a bunch of other things: a rope, some metal carabiners, and a climbing harness, as well as what looked like a couple of mini rope ladders. She stepped into the harness and buckled it. She scooped the remaining pitons into a bag and clipped it to the harness. The carabiners went on the other side, and the hammer was clipped on, too. Raze exchanged her hiking sneakers for a pair of slim climbing shoes, and did a couple of warm-up stretches.
Ben eyed the shoes. “Not going barefoot this time?”
“Nah. Bare feet won’t be any sort of advantage on carpeting. Come on.” She tossed him a second harness. “Gear up.” Raze adjusted his harness and gave him instructions, showing him the basics of what he was supposed to be doing. Then, without any further ceremony, she started working on the cliff face.
The process was simple, but tediously slow. Standing on the top rung of one of the ladders — aiders, she called them — she’d reach up as high as she could and hammer in a piton. Then she’d fix the second aider to the new piton. As soon as it was in place, she’d step up onto the lowest rung, clip the belaying rope to the piton she’d just left, and remove the lower aider. Raze repeated the process, over and over.
It took forever, but at long last she pulled herself over the ledge that held the two cabinets and the sword. She looked over the edge. “Don’t let go,” she called out. “Who knows what will happen when I take it, and I still need to get down.”
Raze unclipped both the aiders and tossed them down, then attached her rope to the very top piton. She held a hand over the sword. “Ready?” she shouted.
Lix gave her a thumbs-up. “Ready.”
Raze visibly steeled herself. Ben craned his neck, watching, while still keeping the rope tight. Raze reached out and grabbed the sword. Everyone held their breath. But nothing happened. Raze lifted the sword up in victory, grinning, and then she tied a spare line to it and lowered it carefully to Lix’s waiting hands.
Ben barely glanced at the sword Lix was examining. On the ledge, Raze checked her rope. “Ben, remember you’re controlling my drop,” she called. And then she was swinging over the cliff face, feet keeping her off the side.
Ben let the rope out slowly, watching her move down the cliff, her s
hadow black as pitch against the tan carpet. He idly wondered if the light was stronger up there, since no one else had a shadow in the gray-white haze that lit up the space warp. He pushed the thought away to focus on keeping Raze’s descent steady. He was concentrating so hard on his job that he barely registered the first tremors. Then the room began to shake, really shake, the tremors hard enough to knock the piton that held Raze loose and send her plummeting down the last third of the cliff. Ben had a split second in which to react. In the next instant he was moving, body curving forward in a wild dive for the falling werewolf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Ash
“What?” Ash’s startled exclamation was loud in the silence that had fallen after Camille’s outburst.
“You’re correct,” Elana said, looking at Camille. “Del is Rowan. Or rather, part of Rowan, reborn as Del.” Truth. Ash’s sentinel instincts screamed at him that Elana actually believed what she was saying, however weird it sounded.
“The bloodline curse, that’s what it is, right?” Del’s voice was a little breathless, her eyes wide in the dim lighting of the alcove. She turned to Ash. “Like the witch said, last summer.”
Elana was quiet for a moment, giving Del space. Del took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. All right. So if I’m Rowan, I was cursed by my own coven. That’s what the visions are about. Except they’re not visions, they’re flashbacks. Memories.”
“Yes,” the witch answered quietly. “You betrayed your coven, and most of them died for your mistake. In punishment, you were set a task, and were trapped in an eternal cycle of rebirth until it was completed.”
“Harsh,” Camille commented dryly.
Elana gave her an annoyed glance. “Yes, well. It was considered appropriate at the time.”
“Who did I betray them to?” Del asked, her fingers catching at Ash’s sleeve. He gently shook her loose and slid his hand up until his fingers tangled with hers. She gripped his hand, hard.
“Don’t you know? Can’t you guess?” said Elana.
“Shade,” Del whispered. She bit her lower lip, worrying it between her teeth for a moment. “It was her, wasn’t it? Shade? That’s why she turned me. It’s my only real memory from my human life. From this human life. I asked her if she was going to kill me, and she answered, ‘Not this time.’ But why kill me, over and over? What does she stand to gain from it? She clearly had no idea I was going to become the Heart Bearer.”
“It has nothing to do with the Heart Blade,” said Elana patiently, as though explaining things to a small child. “It has everything to do with the curse.”
Ash caught a blur of movement at the edge of his vision. Only his countless hours of sparring practice saved Elana as he raised his sword on instinct and blocked the soul blade driving straight toward her back. The alcove was a sudden mass of movement and bodies, as three half-demons came at them from different directions. He pushed Del behind him, and parried another thrust aimed — again — at Elana. “Do something!” he yelled at the witch.
Elana crouched low, a knife in her hand. “I can’t do combat magic,” she hissed. “I make plants grow, I don’t kill things.”
The demons pressed in closer, still focused on Elana. “Shade’s lot,” Camille grunted, her blade moving so fast it seemed to flicker as she nimbly evaded the two demons she was fighting at once. “And they’re after the witch.”
“And you too, rogue,” the closest demon said nastily. “You’re dead, you packless whore.”
Camille gave a complicated twist of her wrist, her blade snaking its way in against the demon’s sword. Ash was battling his own opponent too fiercely to pay attention to Camille’s technique, but whatever she did sent the demon’s soul blade flying and she sliced his wrist, opening him up as far as his elbow. The demon screamed and backed away to summon his blade again. Now they were evenly matched, Camille and Ash each against one demon. The demon he fought was swift, and although Ash kept countering strike after strike, he couldn’t find an opening to turn the attack. He was a second too late in avoiding a particularly vicious thrust, and the demon’s soul blade caught him in full, tearing his Guild surcoat and glancing off the Kevlar he wore beneath.
Two more demons joined the fight. Ash’s skin prickled, a wave of cold chilling the sweat on his skin. There was no way he and Camille could outlast them all. He cut and blocked, barely thinking, relying on the split-second reactions drilled into him over the years to save him from the preternaturally enhanced speed of their attack. Behind him, he heard glass break, and icy air flooded the alcove.
A blast of green cut through the fight, slamming one of Camille’s opponents in the side and dropping him immediately. Ash heard her curse as the demons fighting them both faltered mid-strike. The fallen demon’s soul blade shattered and he slumped to the floor, already turning to dust as his aura blinked out all at once. Ash looked up to find a group of witches approaching. He recognized one of them. This was the Reis coven, the ones who had set the nix on Del. He took a step back, his heart beating wildly. He and Camille, it wasn’t enough. They were outnumbered. He couldn’t protect Del, not against all of this.
The remaining half-demons abandoned their cornered prey and advanced on the new threat, kicking aside the broken remains of their pack mate’s sword. Del grabbed Ash’s arm and dragged him away, Camille following closely. He stumbled over something and looked down. Elana lay in a heap on the carpet, eyes blank and aura gone. “That green spell hit her,” Del said in his ear over the shouts of the battling demons and witches. “She’s gone. Come on, jump!”
He turned and found the window smashed wide open, a broken chair beside it. “Are you nuts?” he said. “It’s too far.”
“I’ll heal you,” she said. “Just go!” She took him by the hand, tugging at Camille with the other. The three turned and climbed over the remaining shards of glass onto the ledge outside, and then Del was leaping, tumbling down to the snowy garden below, Camille right behind her.
Ash shoved his grandfather’s sword back into its scabbard and jumped, his Guild surcoat fluttering out around him as he fell. He landed hard in a clump of evergreen shrubbery, gasping as his leg twisted beneath him. But Del was already reaching out. He felt a jolt of warmth, and knew his skin and bones were mending at her touch, the power of the Heart Blade seeping into his skin and remaking him.
“Your chest?” she asked, a hand over the torn cotton.
“I’m fine. Body armor saved me.” He had his father to thank for that, for giving it to him and making him wear it. “Camille?”
Camille stood up shakily. “I’m all right. Just bruising. I’ll mend on my own. Come on, we have to go. Shade’s pack doesn’t want Del dead, but the witches do. We need to move while they’re keeping each other busy.”
From above they heard shouts, and saw green spell-light flicker across the alcove ceiling. “Come on,” Camille repeated, “while they’re distracted.” She set off at a limping sort of run. The gardens had artfully-placed floodlights illuminating the walks and plant arrangements. As they ran, they dipped in and out of the glare, sometimes wrapped in shadow, at other times brutally exposed.
Camille had her cell phone out, already punching the screen. As they reached the corner of the main house she spoke urgently. “Alex, get your ass down here now. Reis’lot are after us. We’re outside, at the back of the building, heading for the east wing.”
She shoved her phone into her pocket and looked over her shoulder. Ash looked, too, to see two witches burst out of the ground floor doorway and into the garden. Camille immediately stopped running and pushed them behind a giant clump of laurel clipped to look like a prancing horse. In the dark, it looked like a nightmare beast.
“Shouldn’t we keep going?” Ash whispered.
Camille shook her head. “They haven’t seen us yet. They don’t know which way we went. One of them, the one who hit Elana, has some sort of powerful life magic. Elana was dead before she hit the floor. We can’t risk it; who knows wha
t his range is?”
Del was shivering, and Ash wrapped an arm around her. “They’re after me,” she said quietly, eyes searching Camille’s face for answers. “Aren’t they? Reis wants me dead, for some reason.”
Camille answered without looking, eyes steady on whatever she could see from her vantage point at the side of the laurel bush. “It’s not you, it’s the Heart Blade. Reis wants it out of commission, I think. If you die, the Blade disappears once again for who knows how many hundreds of years.” She held up a finger in caution, and Del fell silent.
Ash pushed up against the bush, peering through a thin patch of leaves. The witches had been joined by three others. The five witches split up, prowling outward from beneath the broken window. Ash exchanged a worried look with Camille. Their hiding place wouldn’t be good for much longer. They’d have to move soon. He tensed, readying himself to run.
The sound of voices cut through the still, cold air. A laugh. He blinked, startled, and looked to his left. From around the corner of the building, Alex emerged, blond hair a bright splash of gold under the floodlights. And he wasn’t alone. There were two other people with him. One he recognized as the High Baron, Cornell Winslow, the elected Chair of the Court. The other was…
“Livia Reis,” he breathed. What was Alex playing at?
Camille grinned. “Clever.” She straightened up, tidying herself and tucking a wayward strand of Del’s hair behind one ear. “Smile,” she said. “Look as though we meant to be here.” She stepped out from behind the bush, leading Del by the hand. Ash followed.
“You should see it in summer,” Camille said, loud and clear, as though continuing a conversation.
He caught on to what she was doing a split second after realization dawned in Del’s eyes. “I’ve heard the flower gardens are amazing,” he said. “Do you think they allow visitors when Court isn’t in session?”
“I’d love to see this place in spring,” Del chimed in. “It’s my favorite season.”
Night Blade: Blade Hunt Chronicles Book Two Page 21