That was how it began, wasn’t it? The golden shadow appearing during her dances for Azrael, acting as a mirror to her every move. Gradually their connection had gone from tenuous to direct. Eventually the golden shadow had been able to come to her outside the dance. “If she’s using my choreography, can I track it somehow?”
Madeline looked pleased. “Now that is thinking outside of the box, girl. Good for you.”
She turned her attention back to her books. Isela fought the urge to check the clock as she thought of Tariq’s promise. She could always telepathically shout down at him, but knowing Tariq, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had eyes on her.
At last Madeline removed her spectacles, letting them dangle from the gold chain around her neck and onto her ample bosom. She closed her book, shaking her head.
“All godsdancers have something special, something that makes them different from any other dancers,” she said firmly. “Trouble is nobody knows quite what it is. You can only train so far. It’s why so many who begin fail to advance. And you, Isela Vogel, were the best of the best. A ballerina’s going to need a little help to get anywhere near what you did. Whatever they give her to cross that bridge is going to kill her, if the god doesn’t do it first.”
Madeline watched her face. Seeing something that satisfied her, she began gathering her books.
“Better hurry, ma chère,” Madeline called over her shoulder as she maneuvered into the stacks. “Lover boy is getting impatient downstairs.”
“The phoenix was singing in Russian when we ran through the streets,” Isela said as Tariq whipped the car into traffic.
Premature winter darkness had settled while they were inside, leaving the city illuminated and shining in the reflected streetlamps and signage. He took a left, heading for the Štefanik Bridge.
“Yana, the recordings… I’ll bet if they find the source of that hack, it’s Vanka. And this all started with the phoenix. We’ve got to get him to talk.”
Tariq paused at the red light. The flashing light from the tram crossing illuminated his face in the dim car. “But your friend is not a godsdancer.”
“No, but she was an easy one to snatch because of her family’s connections,” Isela said, pounding the dashboard. “And she’s connected to me.”
Tariq opened his mouth to speak. The light changed, and he started across the bridge instead.
Headlights shone through his window. Isela’s mind struggled to make sense of why a car would be coming at them from that direction as her throat constricted on a warning. Tariq jammed the brake and jerked the wheel, taking the brunt of the impact on the driver’s side. The front tire and panel crumpled and the airbags went off at once, cocooning them in white.
The other car kept coming. They slid sideways. Unlike the stone bridges crossing the river near the oldest parts of town, the Štefanik barriers were metal and cable. The posts screamed with tension. Another smash and the door panel squeezed her into Tariq. Cables snapped. The car tangled briefly in the metal posts before being forced over the bridge.
They hit the surface upside down, floating briefly as water began to pour in through the smashed passenger-side door. Isela shook Tariq, limp in his seat belt. In the dim light, she could see blood pouring down his forehead and the shining bit of white that must be skull showing through. The car rocked as it sank. The display and lights flickered. Soon they would be in darkness.
Scrabbling through the glove box, she found a little hammer designed to break glass, exactly where Rory had promised it would be. The opposite end held a little blade under a hook, and she slipped it around her seat belt with a yank. The fabric gave, dumping her onto the roof of the car. She reached up, fingers slipping in the water, and fumbled for Tariq’s. He fell out of his seat and into the accumulating water. It was icy—already she felt her body beginning to shudder.
Need heat, she thought, and immediately felt warmer. Her fingers scrabbled for the pulse at his throat, but he was already coming around. He groaned, a hand going to the bloody gash on his head.
Even with the airbags, the impact should have crushed bones. She felt the current tugging on the car; unbelievably, they hadn’t hit the bottom yet. She batted the airbags out of the way to see through the windshield. The water pressed into her chest. Headlights illuminated the murky depths, which were thick with flotsam. The bumper hit something and the car spun, careening out of the main flow and into an eddy. Now might be their chance.
What she saw next froze her in place.
Illuminated as they were by faltering headlights, she first mistook them for misshapen people covered in mud. But that couldn’t be. For one thing, they were all just standing motionless, oblivious to the current or the cold water.
Her mind instantly went to an image from a Chinese emperor’s tomb full of a life-sized terra-cotta army. Hundreds of clay men and horses all lined up in rows like toy soldiers.
The car bumped into one, breaking off the head and arms. The broken limbs spun off in the current before dissolving into river muck. There had to be a hundred here. Perhaps more beyond the beams of the headlights. They didn’t move or respond to the car or its occupants in the slightest, but she had the eerie sensation that they were somehow aware of her.
“What the fuck?” Tariq’s words drew her attention back.
Isela’d never been so relieved to hear another voice. The water was up to their necks. The car appeared to be stopped now, snagged just off the field of mud men. Tariq stared out the windshield
“It’s the creepiest shit I’ve ever seen.” Isela tore her gaze away to check him. Already the cut on his head was no longer pouring blood. No need for stitches. “What if we woke them up?”
“I think we’d know by now. Time to go.”
Isela shivered at the image of the silent, water-shrouded army. Drowning in the broken car sounded extraordinarily appealing compared to swimming through mud men. If she could drown.
“You’re not afraid to get dirty, are you?” His words burbled as the water lapped his lips. Isela sealed her mouth shut and glared at him. Immortal or not, she was not taking any chances on the river water.
His mental voice filled her head. One, two, three!
They dove. The last of the air bubbles dissipated into the murky river. He pushed her out of the ruined car. His legs still weren’t working properly, so she wrapped her arms around his chest, kicking as he stroked. She spared one more glance at the twisted metal folded among the ghostly shapes they left behind.
The mud men never moved, but she couldn’t shake the sensation that they were being watched.
They broke the surface south of the bridge, halfway to the older Čech Bridge that crossed the river from the Jewish quarter to the bottom of Letná Park. In the distance, lights and the faint noise of the crowd gathering marked where they’d gone over the Štefanik. Here the cobblestone walkway was below street level, and the heavy shadows were broken irregularly by circles of light from the street above. She started swimming for the east side of the river. Tariq held her arm as they approached the shadowy hulls of the boats moored along the walkway below the street level. This time of evening there would be a few lovers strolling or tourists returning from a dinner cruise. Farther down, music poured from one of the boats that had been transformed into a bar, but here the dark was oppressive. Unable to shake the image of those motionless figures below the surface, Isela tugged free. She wanted out of the water.
At the bank she gripped the edge and dragged herself up onto the stone path. She turned to look back for Tariq. Something out of the corner of her eye flickered. Instinct drove her to roll as a blade passed through the air where she had been. It clattered onto the stone, sending up sparks. She cried out, but her body already fell into a counter, slipping the blade from the small of her back without thought. She rolled to her feet, skittering backward.
Gregor’s voice came, embedded in her muscle memory. Know your opponent. What they are will tell you how they fight. And how to f
ight them.
Three men moved between her and the river, dressed in black with the telltale lack of breath and the scent that meant they were undead. She would have known right away if they had been Azrael’s. These belonged to another necromancer. She scanned them, searching for some sign of whom they called master. Unlike the movies, Isela knew the last thing the zombies wanted was to eat her brains. The first thing seemed to be to see her dead. She put her back to the stone wall.
Her adversaries were utterly silent, their faces blank except for the grotesque expressions of delight. She knew the most useful zombies were the ones whose natural aptitude in life matched their service in death. From the way these moved, lightly on the balls of their feet and with no extraneous movement, they had been killers before being turned.
Isela flipped the blade in her palm. “Come on then, you ugly fucks.”
A blade connected with her own as she blocked a strike, the vibration rattling up her arm with a high-pitched whine as she slipped sideways away from the second blow. He was strong, but she was faster.
Learn to feint, to give only enough to lure. Gregor again, a memory as familiar as the taste of her own adrenaline-tinged blood in the back of her throat. Keep something in reserve.
She dropped her shoulder, sliding backward. The wielder of the bladed staff fell for it, darting in. The weapon’s reach could be deadly, but he overextended and she slid in close, jamming her short blade into the soft spot below his chin. She blocked his staff arm with her elbow and drove her second blade between his ribs. He jerked backward when she yanked both blades free, twitching as he collapsed to the cobblestones.
A glancing blow struck her shoulder, nothing compared to the ones that had knocked her to the sand of the sparring ring. She didn’t flinch, following the strike and spinning to plant one blade in the second zombie’s armpit, severing tendons and rendering the joint useless.
Two proved a challenge. She used them against each other, tangling them up as she avoided blows. She lost a blade, twisted in the rib cage of one of the two remaining zombies. She cursed her mistake—zombies didn’t feel pain, and though they could be mechanically disabled by broken bones or severed tendons, the only way to really stop one was to silence the brain. Decapitation worked well. She suddenly understood the Aegis’s preference for big bladed weapons.
Isela spun and planted her short blade in the second’s eye. He twitched, rattling to stillness. She relieved him of his sword, taking his head in one long strike. The body stumbled into the last zombie. She took advantage of the traction, plunging the sword into his chest and aiming a kick at his jaw. The brittle snap of his neck vertebrae sent him to one knee.
Tariq staggered forward with the bladed staff and severed the zombie’s head. He braced the blunt end of the staff against the cobblestones, leaning heavily on it.
“This is why I wanted you—,” he panted, one hand on his ribs, “—to wait for the all clear.”
Isela retrieved her blades but left them bared. “Can we skip the lecture?”
Her wet clothes and hair clung to her. They heaved, back-to-back in the reprise. If she concentrated, she could sense the spots that represented an absence of life. Zombies. She whirled her senses around them. Two more headed their direction from the north. And something else—something not human but not zombie either.
“Demon?”
“Maybe,” he said, pleased. “We keep moving.”
“Are they tracking us the same way?”
He shook his head. “Zombies can’t. They work by smell. The other, perhaps. Let’s go.”
Tariq limped hard and his shoulder didn’t quite sit right. She knew from experience that expedited healing didn’t dull the pain. They ran straight into a second trio of zombies. Isela swore, dropping into a defensive stance.
Before she could engage, two went down, taken from behind. Gus moved like a gymnast, running up her opponents like obstacles on a course and riding them to their doom. The third spun too late. A long black braid whipped around as its owner cartwheeled, dropping the zombie with twin kicks before doing away with its head. She paused to glare at them both.
“Excellent timing.” Tariq jerked his chin behind them. “We’ve got company.”
“Get her to the Čech. The others will meet you there,” Gus ordered, starting back the way they had come. Turquoise flares swirled between her fingertips and down to her slim, deadly blades to lick the pavement like waves. The river water churned against the bank as she passed. She glanced back once. “What are you standing there for? Move!”
Tariq dragged Isela toward the street level.
She resisted. “We can’t leave her.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” he said.
“That thing, coming—”
“Gus is more than capable of handling herself.”
Isela resisted for a stride or two, then fell in, running beside him. The night was reduced to the cold air bristling in her lungs and the uneven cobblestones beneath her feet. They followed the easy curve of the riverbank south until the Čech Bridge loomed before them, narrow stairway rising toward the street level along the riverbank. Between them and the stairs a pair of zombies patrolled.
Tariq pushed her sideways into the shadows along the high stone wall. “Wait until I’ve engaged them, then get to the bridge.”
Isela waited. Tariq limped cheerily toward the zombies, whistling. When they were occupied, she ran. She glanced back once at the uneven footsteps behind her to see Tariq salute with a grin that resembled a rictus of pain.
Tariq careened around the stone pillar at the top of the steps and onto the bridge, almost crashing into Isela where she waited for him. It was empty. Tariq swayed on his feet. “You were supposed to run.”
“And abandon the Dauntless?” Isela threw his arm over her shoulder. “Not a chance.”
They started at a hobbling walk. Ahead in the darkness, the massive functioning metronome sculpture that crowned the hill in the center of the park kept pace in the shadows.
“I’m supposed to be protecting you,” he said when an uneven step sent him into her side.
“You did,” she said. “That move with the car before it hit… it should have been me who was smashed to bits.”
“Well, I can take it,” he said wryly.
She glanced back at the sense of something emerging from the shadows behind them. She gasped at the misshapen bodies not quite visible. “Demons.”
Tariq nodded, moving faster. Ahead on the bridge, a squad of figures strode purposefully toward them. Isela tensed before she recognized the brothers. Dory grinned from the lead. Tariq sighed. “Cavalry’s here.”
On his left, Aleifr flipped his ax and drew a fat curved blade from his shoulder holster. Opposite, a spiky-haired Asian man seemed to disappear as they moved through a shadow, becoming indistinguishable to her eye before appearing at the edge of another shadow. This must be Azrael’s head of intelligence, Ito. She knew him only by reputation, and though he was dwarfed by the bigger men, that stealth trick must be an enormous advantage. Bringing up the rear, Rory looked ready to chew cobblestones.
Tariq took his own weight and flipped his sword to the ready. “Go.”
Isela jogged toward them, her mouth open to reply. She’d almost reached them when Dory dove for her, closing the distance in a blur. He snatched her up by the waist, spinning as he held her to his chest. The force of a knife’s impact was dulled by the jerk of his body.
Isela’s elbows slammed into the cobblestones beneath her as they fell, and the bright flare of pain blinded her for a moment. He landed half on top of her, his weight kicking the breath from her rib cage. Face-to-face on the cobblestones, she watched the last of a breath whistle past his lips, accompanied by the scent of fresh blood.
The corner of his mouth jerked with his order. “Stay down.”
A keening protest she didn’t recognize as her own voice formed a single word as she rolled him aside, blood splashing her palms. “N
ononono.”
The Aegis immediately fell into a guard position around them. Fully visible and solid now, the pack of demons left the shadows, circling. Isela pressed her hands around the blade protruding from Dory’s chest. It burned with a curious, sucking sensation. She thought of Tariq’s gift and wondered if something similar had been done to this blade to make it more powerful. Acting on instinct, she grabbed the hilt and pulled. The hilt bit into her hand, marking her, but now she could see it for what it was. The geas flared to life with her touch. She let the blade drop, clattering to the ground.
Soul eater, Gold said. The geas to separate the soul from the body. This was meant for us, Isela.
We have to save him.
He’s bound by it now; it ties him to death.
Than we cut him free. Isela felt for the edges of that gray space.
An engine roared, and a familiar white Range Rover approached them from the bridge, swinging a wide circle. Isela couldn’t breathe. All she could see was Dory’s flat black eyes staring through her. The breath gurgled in his chest. Dory’s hand fumbled up for hers, and blood stuck their fingers together.
Her fingers squeezed his hand.
His tightened briefly. “Go, Issy.”
“Get her to the car,” Rory shouted.
Tariq gripped her shoulders, but Isela fought him.
“I’m not leaving him here.”
Tariq forced her gaze to his. “Don’t let his sacrifice be for nothing.”
“No sacrifices. Not for me.” Isela dropped into the In Between. In that moment she was aware of all of them, yet apart. Outlined in the distance of the flat, sweeping darkness, she saw them on the bridge—Tariq blown back by her transition and picking himself up off the cobblestones. Azrael’s Aegis, ready to fight—and die—for her. Gus, fighting in the dark alone against zombies and a thing made of nightmares and teeth.
Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2) Page 18