I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her tight against me, alarmed and delighted by how she arched close, spurring my need higher. I had expected her to be hard and cold, but the feel of her against me was quite the opposite. I spread my hand over the small of her back, reveling in her warmth and the supple way she responded. Her hand rode up my chest and over my shoulder, drawing me down and deepening the kiss. Lust, driven high by the rush of retrieving the Eye, had me tangled in physical needs and wants. But I sensed her pulling away as much in my mind as with her body. We slowed, bodies parting, our lips the last to separate. Sadness returned to her eyes, and all at once I wished I hadn’t shown her how much I wanted her.
“I don’t normally prefer older women.”
It had been the wrong thing to say. She instantly pulled out of my arms, cast a glance at the wall painting, and turned her back on me once more. I had a talent for ruining perfect moments.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” I didn’t know what I had meant. This place, this madness, her. I couldn’t clear my head enough to think clearly.
She held out my dagger, and a hint of a smile brightened her face, so not all was lost. “Here. For this to succeed, you must hold on to the blade as I do.”
After I’d taken the blade in my right hand—hoping she didn’t see how it trembled—she moved around behind the Eye and knelt, beckoning me to do the same opposite her. I did, noticing she’d set the cup down in the center of a mosaic pattern of spirals and wedged the Eye inside.
“Are we doing magic?” I asked.
“Yes, thief, we are doing magic.” She took my hand in hers.
I was so caught up in her eyes that I almost missed the sting of the blade. She did the same to her hand and clasped mine in hers, holding it over the Eye. Our mingled blood dripped onto the emerald, slid over its slick surface, and began to fill the cup.
“Listen to my words. Do not break my grip, no matter what you feel. Trust me. I have yet to steer you wrong.”
“I do trust you.” I wished I didn’t; it would have made stealing the Eye from her so much easier.
She smiled and bowed her head. Her dark hair spilled forward, framing her pale face. “Touch your blade to the Eye.”
I copied her, so both our daggers touched the Eye while blood swelled in our joined hands.
She began whispering words I had little hope of understanding. Her voice blurred into one stream of whispers with barely a breath breaking the flow.
It began as a small pressure in my chest, a tiny point of pain that grew like the firelight had grown from the dark. A sense of something powerful loomed over me, but Shaianna’s grip on my hand stopped me from looking. The pressure built, the weight pushed down, and fear flickered at the corners of my thoughts. Her voice streamed on, beckoning me with it until my eyes fluttered closed and I lost all sense of the tomb, the taste of the dust in the air, and the impression of time. On and on her words tumbled and down the weight pushed, crushing all around.
I tightened my hand on hers and felt her squeeze back, but she didn’t let up with the words. I was drowning and being pulled apart, all at once. Fear demanded I pull away, break the bond, and run—run as far as I could. Running was all I was good for. I once ran from the Inner City guards, from the sounds of the screams in my head and the smell of the pyre.
The Eye stopped my thoughts dead. It blazed ahead in the dark, just a single green glow. It watched … Like the presence in my dream, it watched me fall farther and farther into nothingness, where death would surely devour me. I reached out, pleading for it to show me the truth of my fear. It did. Not one, but two eyes speared me, and out of the dark a beast rose, embracing the world with its wings.
A pistol shot punctured the dream. I jerked awake and blinked up at the tomb’s ceiling high above and watched with detached numbness as a crack snapped and twitched its way through the rock.
“Get up, thief.”
I wasn’t sure if she had spoken in my head or out loud and didn’t care. Other lightning cracks in the ceiling joined the first, snapping and arching across the entire cavern. It was only when a rumble shook the floor that my body filled out and became mine again.
I rolled onto my side and blinked through my blurry vision at the man with the wide-brimmed hat approaching. His long riding coat flared.
“Where is she?” he hollered. Why was he shouting? Why did the ground shake?
“Vance, for the sake of the gods, man! Get up before this place falls down around us.” Tassen hauled me to my feet.
“Your laughing woman?” I swung a glance about me and swayed on my feet. To my right, a chunk of ceiling slammed into one of the statues, shattering the head and shoulder. “She was here.”
“The mages … Come now or die here.”
Mages…? I saw them then, like huge black spiders swarming across the wall art, turning it black beneath them. I scooped up the Eye and my dagger and looked for Shaianna, but there was no sign of the sorceress. “Shaianna!”
Tassen fired into the mages. We made it up the steps to the passageway in time to see a huge section of ceiling break away. It shattered against the dragon’s snout and rained onto the floor, obliterating the elaborate mosaics.
“Go!” Tassen caught my coat and shoved me into the mouth of the passageway. “Run, fool!”
I retraced my steps from hours before, running my hands along the dark walls. There was only one way out, but I feared the walls would close in and trap me in the dark forever. A shaft of light flowed ahead. I heaved myself from the hole, coughed up grit, and fell to my knees in the cool, damp grass.
Hot dust blasted up from the hole with a deafening boom and then silence fell.
She hadn’t been inside. I hadn’t just left her to die … had I?
“Where is she, Vance?” Tassen snapped from a few strides away as he pulled off his hat and patted it free of dirt. A small dust cloud floated into the early morning light. Behind him, through the towering ruins, a pale blue sky taunted. “I saw you both go in. Did you kill her?”
“What?”
“Did you kill her? Huh? You got your emerald. Maybe you didn’t need her anymore? Am I right, thief?” He snarled the last word like an accusation and strode to where he had tied my two stolen Calwyton horses.
“She was there. She was with me.” Fragments of a dream flitted through my thoughts but slipped beyond my reach when I tried to recall them.
I didn’t understand … anything. Why would she leave the gem? Why would she leave me?
The cup, the daggers. I clutched at my chest, right over my heart. The bond was gone, replaced by an emptiness I knew all too well.
“Well, my journey is a wasted one without the woman to trade for payment.” He hooked his boot into a stirrup and swung himself onto the horse.
“What did you see?” I mumbled, wetting my hands in the dewy grass and running them over my face. The bite of cool water roused some of my senses, but I still felt numb. Part of me was missing.
Tassen turned his horse side-on. “I saw you, on your knees, staring at that gem like it had all the answers. You were about to be set upon by those creatures. I shot one, scattering the rest. Had I not arrived when I did, you would be a dead man now, be it crushed or killed. You owe me, Vance. And as payment, you’re returning to Brea as my witness. You can explain how the woman vanished. Maybe the man who hired me will believe the both of us.”
“I can’t leave her,” I muttered.
He sighed, thumbed his hat up an inch, and wiped dust from his forehead with the back of his hand. “If she was inside, she’s as dead as the rest of this place. Think of it as a blessing, Vance. That one was more trouble than she was worth. There are plenty other folks to keep a thief in business.”
I noticed the laces of my right boot were still undone, as they had been when I crossed the mosaic floor and kissed her. Had she left me? I’d trusted her and she had left me there to die. Had it all been a lie?
I looked into the Dragon
’s Eye, now nestled in the grass beside me. Either the bond had been severed, or it hadn’t. Either she had deliberately left me, or she hadn’t had a choice. Whatever the answer, sitting in the grass waiting for the truth wouldn’t solve anything.
I coughed, dragged my aching body upright, and trudged toward the remaining horse. The cup was lost, but I still had the Eye. I still had a plan. Nothing had changed … except me.
Part II
With a good sword and a trusty shield
A faithful heart and true
King Jacobie’s men shall understand
What thieves of the past can do
They have fixed the where and when
And shall Brea die?
Here twenty thousand Brean folk
Will know the reason why.
~ Brean folksong.
Chapter Twelve
Wind pushed a swirl of snowflakes in through the Inn’s open door, causing a few nearby locals to grumble. The woman who had let in the winter growled back at the crowd, tugged the door closed, blew into her hands, and stamped snow from her boots. Her gray eyes finally settled on me, but before making her way over, she ordered a drink; it’d be something rich and syrupy with enough alcohol to keep out the cold.
“This winter is a bitch, Vance,” she said, sliding her generous build into the wooden booth opposite me. Snowflakes melted in her bush of wiry hair.
“Then you should feel right at home, Agatha.”
She grinned and rubbed her hands together. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Master Vance. And lookin’ so well too. Thought you’d gone done yourself some disappearing?”
“The best thieves are those you never see.”
“And you were always my best.” She grinned. “You owe Lyn a payment.”
“I told your brother I’d get the gems.”
“And he knows you’re a good thief, but that was over a month ago. Winter’s blown in and looks like it ain’t going nowhere soon. He needs your payment.”
“I’ll have the gems soon, but you must do something for me, Agatha.” I leaned an arm on the table, moving in nice and close. “A good little earner between you and me.” She’d do it. She couldn’t resist the chance to earn a little on the side.
“My pockets have been much bereft in your absence.”
“I need you to put word out to a few select antiquity buyers. Try Lord Fallford first. I have something I doubt he’ll be able to pass up. Tell him it’s priceless and may even be too rich for his blood. In which case, there are always other more discerning buyers.”
Her eyes widened. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Oh, Vance. You are a wicked tease.” She plunged her fingers into her nest of hair. “What’s my cut?”
“Five percent.”
“Five percent of what? I have a house to run. I can’t feed my girls on meaningless numbers.”
I held those steely eyes of hers, eyes that had witnessed many disservices over the years. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”
She replied with a laugh and muttered something about how when she found me on the street, she would have tossed me back had she known I’d be such a player, but my own words rebounded and hooked into a memory, and my mind wandered to another woman who had said those very same words.
“Vance? You’re not in any trouble, are you?” Agatha asked. “You know me an’ the girls will always help. It might not be much, but we look out for our own.”
That wasn’t strictly true. She looked out for herself first, her girls second, and kept her finger on people of interest who sometimes paid off, like me.
“No trouble. Just get the message to Fallford next time he visits one of your girls.”
“There’s always a place for you in my house.”
I laughed and leaned back. “I prefer to have my fingers in locks, Agatha.”
She laughed along, but her shrewd eyes were watching me more closely, searching for weakness, a tell, something she could use to bring me back into her fold. “I’ll tell Fallford. How can I reach you? You’re not at your old place. Not since the boy’s body was found …”
I caught her tone, sly as it was. “Before you start thinking you can twist my arm for more gems, the boy’s death was not my doing.”
“You have to admit, you leaving seems mighty suspicious. City guards were asking after you, not by name, of course.”
“I left because it was time.” She knew I rarely stayed in one place long enough for the locals to remember my face, making it an odd question to ask. I stood, pulled my scarf tight, and my cloak closed. “I’m nearby. That’s all you need to know. Leave word with Saul, the barman here. And don’t worry. There’s enough value in this job to keep you and the girls in the warm. Lyn too.”
Outside, the winter air nipped at my face. I trudged through the slush lining the street, took a few necessary detours should Agatha try to tail me, and headed back to the small room I was renting. The one window overlooked parts of the Inner Circle and afforded a marvelous view of the spire. Gray snow clouds had blocked much of the spire for days, but on nights like this one, the Inner Circle and its spire twinkled on the hillside.
I kicked off my boots by the door and hung my cloak and coat up, then set about lighting a fire to chase away the biting cold. Somewhere outside, a baby’s cries pierced the quiet.
With the fire spitting and popping, I propped myself up against the headboard, dagger in my lap, and stared through the slightly open window, across rooftops, at the Inner Circle wall and the glittering Inner Circle.
I had never given much thought to revenge. Somewhere inside all the deep-seated guilt, there was a chance I had believed my action in the Circle had been just. But with Shaianna came the truth. I had reported my parents to the city guards, my beliefs a lie, and they had died for my willful ignorance.
And my sister had despised me until the day she killed herself.
Magic was real—I knew that now—and if it could heal, what else could it do? My mother had used diamonds to heal my father. What else could they heal? I should have thanked my mother, not betrayed her. I couldn’t tell my parents I was sorry, but what if I could make it right? What if magic could be revived?
I left the window open, as I did every night, and drifted off to asleep with magic in my thoughts.
The first clear skies in weeks broke over Brea the day I received word of Lord Fallford’s interest and an invite to his residence. His home was a three-story townhouse, part museum, part one man’s obsession with valuable trinkets. It stood proudly in the middle of a grand terrace, far from the reek of the docks. I climbed the sweeping steps, boots crunching against frozen snow. I had been here once before, but only as far as the hallway.
Molly, Fallford’s housekeeper, answered the door. Slim as a broom, she had a mop of orange hair and a smattering of freckles on her pale cheeks. Her light, quick hands scooped my cloak from around my shoulders and whisked it onto a coat stand.
“Milord will be down in a moment, Master Vance.”
I trailed snow across the polished hardwood floors. She muttered an obvious curse that I may have taken personally had I not heard her do the same to Fallford. She would have more colorful things to say should she see the dagger tucked against my back.
“Molly, stop pestering the man. Go on with you.” Lord Fallford descended the flourish of a staircase in a few long-legged strides and offered his hand. “Mister Vance, what a fine pleasure. Welcome to my home. Please, keep those quick fingers of yours to yourself though, sir.” As a tall man, his slim-fitting burgundy vest, silk puff tie, and black trousers gave him a harsh, angular appearance—as though he were all hard edges and no give. The kind of man whose pockets I would pilfer on market day.
We shook. His grip was firm and uncompromising. A small dart of pain shot from the scar left by Shaianna’s dagger.
“Of course,” I smiled. “I rarely steal from my clients, Lord Fallford. It’s not conducive to business.”
>
“Rarely?”
“I’m a man of opportunity, sir.”
“Of course you are.” He laughed, sharp and loud, and clamped a hand on my shoulder. “It is of opportunity we speak. I’ve heard you have something of great worth?”
“I do.” I cast a glance at the housekeeper fussing beside the coats.
“Ah, yes, in private. Molly, would you fetch Mister Vance and me some tea. Good-good.”
Fallford strode into a fine reception room, his steps quiet on carpet so thick my boots sank deep into the pile. Gold-lined curtains and brightly colored flocked wallpaper declared the room one for entertaining. I had seen gaudier rooms, but then I had never been one to critique the wealth of others. Steal it, yes.
Fallford beckoned me to a glass case. I smiled at its contents and remembered the bronze bull it contained, and how, while riding through the forest, I’d explained to Shaianna its meaning.
“It has brought me much wealth, Vance.” Fallford’s face lightened with delight. He had faith that the bull was lucky. I wasn’t sure if that made him brave or foolish.
I smiled back. “I’m pleased to see it appreciated.”
“Oh, indeed. Indeed. And this parchment …” He stepped to the next glass case. “Written in a language we do not understand, and yet so beautiful, do you not think?”
I swallowed, careful not to reveal my surprise. The parchment’s faded artwork resembled the art I’d seen on the Arachian tomb walls. The intricate interwoven symbols coiled around beautiful figures; some resembled a blend of man and mythical creature. Although terribly faded, I could make out a pair of wings arched wide, as though embracing the lines of foreign text.
“Beautiful,” I agreed. “Do you know its origin?”
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 55