by Karen Chance
A wash of light- headedness assaulted me, the room spinning dangerously. I had to get out of this, had to get upstairs to tell her. But my vision was already going dark, and beating at the glasslike arm was doing no good at all.
I let go of it with one hand to fumble around on my belt, a flicker of panic sizzling through me as my throat constricted further. Knives, guns, potions—all useless against a thing like this. I had enough weapons to kill a platoon, and not a single damn thing to so much as hurt a Manlíkan—which was fair, as I’d never even heard of the things before tonight.
And I was running out of time. Multicolored spots were swimming in front of the darkness, and none of my struggles moved that damn arm one iota. I needed iron or I was dead—something, anything—and then I spied a linen-wrapped handle sticking out from under the rag pile.
I couldn’t tell what it was attached to, but I pulled at it with my foot anyway. A huge medieval-looking mace slipped out onto the floor, a couple of its spikes caught on a grimy pair of socks. I slid a toe under the small space between the handle and the heavy iron ball and gave a jerk, catching it just before it turned my face into hamburger.
My strength was almost gone and my angle was lousy and I was as likely to hit myself as anything else. And I didn’t care. All I could think about was air, and dragging in even a single breath. I slammed the club against the heavy arm trapping me, again and again, feeling a sharp spike of pain from a glancing blow. But then came the sound of cracking ice, and I was abruptly released, falling to my damaged knees with a thud.
Dizzy and gasping, I tried to clamber to my feet, but my useless flailing nearly cracked my head open on the edge of a nearby trunk. So I settled for crawling instead, moving away from the wall and the puddle beneath it as fast as possible over the frost-slick concrete floor. I’d made it about halfway up the stairs when something grabbed me.
My body was jerked back down so fast I didn’t even hit any steps on the way. I kicked out, even as it dragged me to my feet—and slammed me back into the wall hard enough to daze me. And then again, this time with the pressure concentrated on my right wrist. I felt the stabbing pain and heard the snap as my wrist broke, and then the mace clattered away over the floor.
Both hands were pinned over my head as the creature slowly drew closer, in a flowing, serpentine movement unlike anything flesh could mimic. Pale, colorless eyes looked directly into my own. They reflected the lightning outside the cellar’s high, narrow windows, flashing silver bright for an instant. But that wasn’t what had my skin crawling up my body.
The face had been fairly amorphous, just vague indentations for eyes, a lump for a nose, a slash for a mouth. But the features slowly coalescing in front of me were more distinct. And more familiar.
“You’re supposed to be in prison,” I said, staring at a coldly beautiful face I’d hoped never to see again.
“And you are supposed to be dead.” The “mouth” ofsubrand’s doppelgänger hadn’t moved, but the words shimmered in the air around me. A projection of his power, much like the body. “It seems that neither of us is very good at following others’ plans.”
“How did you get out?”
There was no answer. Instead, both of my hands were transferred to one of his, grinding the bones of my wrist together, making me bite my lip to hold back a scream. The move seemed to make no difference in the power holding me in place. I struggled, but I doubt he even noticed; my limbs were suddenly as wooden and unresponsive as a mannequin’s.
A translucent hand, watery bright, pushed up my tank top. The move bared my chest and the thin ridge of too-sensitive skin that ran from breastbone to belly button. His mark, which had never entirely faded.
A single finger traced the impression, leaving a chill, watery outline behind. It highlighted the difference between the slightly slicker, redder tones of the old burn and my unmarked skin. “Do you know what this is, dhampir? Have any of your Dark Fey friends dared to tell you?”
“A scar,” I spat, remembering clearly the excruciating pain that had created it. I’d thought I was dying, that my very flesh was being burned from my bones. But he’d wanted information from me, and letting me die would have been counterproductive.
So he’d just made me wish I could.
“It’s more than that. An animal that gives particularly good sport is marked by us and released, to be hunted again. It is a sign to others of my kind that you are my prey alone.”
“I’m honored,” I said, refusing to give in to the panic that was leeching up my spine.
“You should be.” The finger moved across my chest to circle a nipple, its icy-cold peaking the tender flesh.
“Give me what I want, and perhaps we will hunt again someday.”
“Go to hell!”
He smiled, fingers grasping my breast, suddenly so cold they burned. “You first.”
His head lowered the last few inches, and I froze at the first touch of his mouth, soft, cold and wet. A clammy tongue ran deliberately over my lower lip before nudging for entrance I was too shocked to deny him. And a frozen thickness slid past my lips.
It was inhumanly cold and impossibly long, freezing my tongue as it coiled around it in a parody of affection. I twisted my head, my gut roiling with revulsion, but the hand on my breast moved up to my jaw, jerking me back to face him. Fingers dug into my flesh as that terrible face paused, mere millimeters from mine.
“Last chance.”
I stared into those strange inhuman eyes and knew he wasn’t bluffing.subrand had never pretended anything but contempt for humans, or for most of the fey. He hadn’t been joking with the animal comment. I was no more than that to him, and he would kill me with no more conscience than he’d slay a deer.
I was suddenly profoundly grateful that I didn’t know where Aiden was.
“Nothing to say?” he mocked.
“I hope Caedmon kills you slowly.”
He laughed. “Do you know, I am almost sorry to have to end your life?”
But apparently not sorry enough to stop. The pressure on either side of my jaw increased, forcing my mouth open. And, immediately, that terrible protrusion was back.
It was slimy, cold and spongy, totally unlike any human flesh as it pushed into my mouth. And everywhere he touched froze. My breast where his hand had rested was hard and cold, like a mound of ice, my lips were numb and my tongue felt thick in my mouth, too heavy to talk, too heavy to scream.
I thrashed, but he pressed against me, grinding our hips together as that icy snake of a tongue coiled into me. It widened as he poured more of himself into it, distending my throat, threatening to choke me. Starbursts of bloody violet flared behind my eyes as a fury rose up in me, my body aching for motion, to act and to strike….
But I couldn’t move as that frozen mass worked its way downward, like an icy stake headed for my heart. But the heart wasn’t the target, I realized dully, when it suddenly liquefied. Granite wetness filled my mouth, my nose, and gushed into my lungs, until I could see nothing, hear nothing, except my own frantic heartbeat.
I felt him suddenly explode around me, the rest of his form drenching me in icy water as his hold released. I felt myself falling, felt my half- frozen body hitting the hard concrete of the floor and splashing in the icy puddle of his doppelgänger. Then nothing but darkness.
CHAPTER 7
I came back to consciousness with someone whacking me on the back hard enough to expel my lungs. Or at least what was in them. I rolled to the side, ripping myself free of the ice I lay on, coughing and retching a pink-tinged flood.
It went on for a while, me trying to draw in a breath in between eruptions and only making it half the time. Then my stomach decided to get in on the act. A hand held my hair back from my face, as I gagged and retched and choked.
I finally looked up to see Claire haloed in the wash of light spilling down the cellar stairs. Her red hair was everywhere, curled untidily against her neck and stuck to her skin. Her right hand and arm wer
e still armored with iridescent scales as if she’d simply forgotten to change it back. Her left hand gripped mine hard enough to threaten the bones.
My lips moved, but for a moment, no sound came out. It felt like there was a rubber band inside my throat, pressing. Or a hand.
“Dory!” Claire leaned over me, her curls tumbling into my face. “Dory, say something!”
I cleared my throat. “Don’t slap me,” I told her, worried about the talons at the end of that paw. And then I threw up some more.
She dragged me against her, holding me almost too tight for me to breathe, sobbing out things I couldn’t quite understand. Gessa was there, a slash across her forehead drizzling black blood into her eyes. She smeared a line of it onto my face, grinning, before heading off upstairs.
“I take it we won?” I croaked.
“They’re gone,” Claire said viciously, wiping a hand across her eyes. “I think creating the storm drained a lot of their power, and when they couldn’t get in—” Her arms tightened.
“Please don’t squeeze,” I said thickly.
She let me go, and I sagged back against the concrete for a moment, waiting to see if my stomach planned an encore. It was cold but reassuringly solid, a nice, hard surface against my back that damn well stayed that way. There was no horrible shifting and sliding into something completely—
“I guess there’s a reason we’re not all dead?” I asked, to cut off my own thoughts.
“Manlíkans are just wards encasing an element,” Claire told me distractedly. “They were used for war games back in Faerie, like practice dummies, and—” She waved frantic hands. “Why am I even talking about this? I disrupted them.”
I rolled my eyes up at her. “Not to sound ungrateful, but you couldn’t have done that earlier?”
“I thought if I started attacking them, the house wards might fall, too. And then it would take minutes for them to cycle back on and the Svarestri would get in—”
“They were already in,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t as she burst into tears. “It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re all okay. Aren’t we?”
“I can’t find the children,” she told me, her voice shaking. “I’ve looked everywhere! “They must have taken them—”
“I don’t think so.” I pushed myself into a reclining position with my good wrist as Gessa trotted back downstairs. She had a blanket and a bottle of water, and I accepted both gratefully. I washed out my mouth and spit on the floor because, really, it couldn’t get any worse. Then I wrapped the blanket around me and tried sitting up.
My stomach stayed more or less where it was supposed to be, but something crunched under my butt. I fished the remains of a fortune cookie out of my pocket and read the tiny scrap of paper inside: Your guardian angel got laid off.
No shit, I thought, and started laughing, even though it hurt.
I looked up to find Claire gaping at me, eyes huge and horrified. I sobered up, wiped my lips and levered myself to my feet. The room spun alarmingly, but she caught me around the waist. “Upstairs,” I told her, grabbing the banister.
“They aren’t there! I looked everywhere. This was the last place I checked because I’d already been down here. That’s why I almost didn’t find you in time—”
“But you did,” I reminded her, as the room steadied somewhat. “And I think I might know where the kids are.”
Claire hauled me to the top of the steps, pretending that I was doing most of the work. I didn’t need the ego validation, but the supporting arm was nice. My throat was on fire, my legs were throbbing and I was soaking wet. But nothing else had come up, so that was something.
The living room was oddly normal- looking, maybe because it still had a roof. That was more than I could say for most of the hallway. There were holes in the old wallpaper, and a miniature waterfall down what had been the stairs and three stories of destruction overhead. It was still raining, and a light drizzle filtered down to wet our hair and to splash on the already soaked floorboards. A clump of half-melted snow followed it, smacking onto the ground at my feet.
I knelt and felt around until my fingers hit the indentation for the trapdoor. It was coated in a thin rime of ice, like the myriad pools that had collected in depressions here and there. But the heel of my hand broke through and the heavy piece of wood came free with a crack.
I pushed it up, sending a miniature flood against the wall, and looked inside. And then had to shy back when a hairy little head popped out. Huge gray eyes blinked blearily at me, before the face cracked into a lopsided grin.
“The smugglers’ hole!” Claire knelt and snatched Aiden out of the depths of the small space, hugging him fiercely. He was still clutching a chess piece, which fell to the floor and scampered away down the hall as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.
“It seemed a good guess. They’d just seen it.”
Claire ignored her son’s protests over how hard she was squeezing. From the look of things, it might take amputation to get him away from her. “I can’t believe they were in there through all that!”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about their recall,” I said cynically, watching Stinky trying to crawl out of the hole.
Usually, he hopped around, over and up the furniture like a miniature acrobat, but not today. One long-toed foot made it over the edge and stuck there. He stared at it in some surprise, as if unsure what this strange new thing might be. Then the toes wiggled, and he broke down in helpless giggles, falling back against the rows of bottles he hadn’t yet drained.
“I don’t think they’re feeling any pain,” I told Claire.
Her eyes roamed over the devastation before meeting mine. “For now.”
“Now’s good.”
She stared at me a moment and then nodded, still clutching her struggling son. He scrunched up his face, looking vaguely like Stinky for a moment, but not out of fear. He wanted to chase the escapee and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
I left the kids with Claire, and went to assess the situation.
As I’d suspected, the house was pretty much unlivable, but the wards had held, including the glamourie that hid the destruction from casual passersby. From the street, everything looked perfectly normal—or at least no more dilapidated than usual. Except for the front yard, which was already becoming a swamp as the house started to expel some of the four feet of snow it had collected.
I watched the overflow tumble into the water-slick street and drain down already busy gutters for a moment, pondering alternatives. But there really weren’t any. The fey didn’t seem to find human wards all that impressive, and I strongly suspected that the only reason they hadn’t been able to get in was the recent upgrades Olga had done.
The house now boasted a combination of human and fey protection that would be hard to top anywhere. It might be a trash heap, but it was a damn well-guarded trash heap. We were going to have to make the best out of it, like it or not.
I went back inside. The living room and the kitchen were the only areas on the ground floor that could be considered livable. Claire was in the former, but not bedding the kids down as I’d expected.
She must have been upstairs, because she’d changed into dry clothes, a black T-shirt and jeans, and she had a small suitcase at her side. She was struggling to get Aiden into a rain poncho when I came in the door. But he wasn’t having it, fat little hands batting it away as she tried to push it down over his curls.
“What are you doing?”
She looked up, guilt and resolution in about equal measures on her face. “Getting out of here before I get you killed.”
“And get yourself killed instead?” I asked, grabbing the suitcase.
She grabbed it back. “I’m hard to kill!”
“So am I!”
She shook her head. “You didn’t see yourself down there. You didn’t—I won’t be responsible for that!”
“I’m a big girl, Claire. I’m responsible for myself.”
I d
on’t think she even heard me. “This whole thing… None of this was meant to happen,” she told me wildly.
“I’d planned it all out—I was supposed to have a couple of days before everything went to hell. And then Lukka died and then—”
“Life rarely cares about our plans,” I told her cynically. In fact, it had always seemed to delight in screwing up mine.
“Life can suck it!” She started for the door, dragging Aiden after her, still caught in his plastic prison.
I got my back against the door, which was stupid. Claire could move me—along with what remained of the wall—if she felt like it. But she’d seemed kind of upset at the thought of me dying, so I was trusting her not to squash me like a bug.
“So what’s the plan now? Run off into a night filled with known enemies?”
Claire gave me a frantic, frustrated look, and pushed bushy red hair out of her face. All the moisture in the air had turned it back into a huge fuzz ball. “I’m not stupid, Dory. They expended a lot of power on that storm, and more making those damned things. They’re exhausted. It’s why I have to leave now.”
She started to push past, but I didn’t budge. “They seemed to be doing fine until a few minutes ago. And if those things re-form and you’re gone, it’ll leave the rest of us defenseless.”
Claire shot me a look that said she knew exactly what I was doing, and it wasn’t going to work. “They can’t re-form, at least not right away. Iron only disrupts the field, costs them time while they rebuild it. I didn’t do that. I drained away the power they need to make the creatures to begin with.”
“So once it’s gone, it’s gone?”
She nodded. “At least until they rest up. And considering how much energy creating that storm must have used, that will take a while.”
“Assumingsubrand used everyone in the attack, which we don’t know,” I pointed out. “He could have left a few of his people out, hoping you’d panic—”
“I’m not panicking!”
“—and run, making their job easy.”
“To do that, he’d have had to assume that his initial assault would fail,” she said impatiently. “Andsubrand is far too arrogant for that.”