Wrath & Bones (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 4)

by A. J. Aalto

  Remy leaned forward. “Nothing? Not a word to help me decide your fate? What should be done with you?” Remy wondered to Batten aloud.

  Her command was in question; anyone else might have felt pressure to prove herself and secure her command, but this was the Duchess of the Darkest Corner, and she had just singlehandedly scared off the troll scout and his entire ship of cohorts. She mused, tapping one finger against her lips in thought, “What should be done?”

  Batten spoke up, “House Sarokhanian mentioned my attack, but not staking Stefan.” He sat a bit straighter so he could look down at the slash that had mangled his pretty black kill-notch tattoos on his chest.

  Was he insane? Did he want to die? I glanced at the ceiling again and the missing rowan wood stakes, the empty silver chains. Had he been in here, alone with stakes, and my Harry frozen as a statue among the others? All those revenants at his mercy. Had they been unguarded? How had he managed it without help? My blood ran cold.

  Remy laughed then, a sudden explosion of surprise and delight. “You are fearless in the face of death, then, and I respect that. You crave revenge. I can taste it. I understand that, too. I have no love of the Falskaar Vouras. They have done nothing to endear themselves to me, vampire hunter. They all have their petty alliances and bickerings, and I have never been a part of it. Truth be told, I’m not terribly upset about your incursion. My only question is: how far will your passion for vengeance push you into my reign? How many will you betray with your false faces? How many will you slay?”

  Shut up, shut up, oh please shut up, I willed him, begging the universe, the Goddess above, the Overlord below, whoever might listen.

  “As many as it takes,” Batten answered, “to empty that house. If I can take out Aston, I will. If I have to take out every other revenant beneath him, one by one, I’ll do that, too.”

  Remy sat back in her throne, drumming her fingers on the blue-green arm of the chair. “That certainly makes the situation clearer. As you might expect, I cannot allow this. Raven of Night, what say you?”

  Wilhelm stood, and the heavy black wings lifted from around his shoulders for a moment to stretch outward like a shelter. For that one second, even though I knew there was no way to do so, I was sure he would intercede. Instead, he showed her his empty palms, a gesture I recognized from watching Gary Chapel, meant to indicate it's out of my hands; your call. With that gesture, I felt like someone had stuck a pitchfork in my chest and scraped out any remaining hope I had there, leaving a mangled wreck. My knees felt weak.

  Remy nodded once. “Mark Batten, servant of House Dreppenstedt, I find you guilty of murder, and declare your life forfeit on Svikheimslending. You will be drained to the point of death.”

  “No!” I shouted, struggling to release my hand from Harry’s. He refused to let go; his iron grip was unshakable, and through it, I felt the cold demand of my companion. “This can’t--” I broke off with a sob.

  Remy continued as though she hadn’t heard me. “Raven of Night, Crowned Prince of House Dreppenstedt, the deed should fall to your house.”

  Wilhelm took his time considering this. Stinging tears flooded my eyes. This wasn’t happening. They couldn’t. I shook with dismay and rage. How could Batten have done something so stupid? Where it was so unsafe? Was revenge worth dying for? He hadn’t even gotten close to Aston Sarokhanian? He’d picked off a Younger and been stopped. He’d wasted his life on a long shot. You glorious fucking dumbass.

  “You can’t,” I told Wilhelm, as though I had any right to tell the prince of the house what to do. I heard the pleading crack in my voice, knew it was feeding Sarokhanian’s sadistic sense of enjoyment, and couldn’t stop myself. “You can’t! Please don’t. Take me instead. My queen, please, take me instead.”

  “MJ!” Harry barked, eyes flashing with horror.

  Declan choked, “Dr. B, no.”

  “Stop them,” I begged. “I’ll do anything you want.”

  “You will be silent this instant, DaySitter,” Harry demanded, shifting his gaze from me to Batten. “Your cold cook has brought this on himself and will reap his just rewards.”

  Batten swallowed reflexively. “You’ve been waiting for this day,” he rasped, “vampire.”

  Harry’s eyes bled past chrome to pure, airy platinum as he left my side, and I felt my own mouth water as Harry’s fangs extended. Leaving gentleman behind, Harry strode into the center of the room like the apex predator he was, padding softly in thousand-dollar Oxfords and pristine white spats. His motion was the only sound in the room now, a soft shuffle of cloth as he shed his cloak and let it flutter behind him on the marble. I moaned as I felt his hunger bubble to the surface.

  “Please Harry,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.” I can’t be here. I can’t see this. I started desperately seeking an out, some way I could flee. Movement to my right preceded Declan making a shift to stand beside me, putting himself between me and the doors.

  “Your life has been declared forfeit,” Harry said to Batten softly. “Having deceived all those who have supported you, having betrayed the trust of my beloved pet, having behaved in a most unfriendly manner toward all who have tolerated your presence here, do you see any reason why House Dreppenstedt should dispute this finding?”

  “Deceived,” Batten spat blood. “Bullshit. Monsters like you can smell a lie a mile off. You knew exactly why I was here.”

  Point: Batten. I feared it would be his last.

  Harry cocked his head and inspected him like one might a venomous spider in a jar, dangerous but trapped. “I expected you to control your urges, just as I expect you to control your tongue. Can you doubt it?”

  Batten’s voice grew husky. “Fuck you, Fangface. Just do it.”

  Harry’s pierced brow quirked up. “You dare suppose to command me in such an inexcusable manner? Look at yourself, lad. Look at where you are.” He indicated the room, the banners, and the crowded court room with a pale hand. “Are you in any position to make demands of me here? It pains me to point out: you are not in a land where human laws can protect you, now. And, by her decree, neither do ours.”

  Batten’s head fell and he growled from inside the cover of his chest. “You’ve wanted me dead since the day we met.”

  It was an unfair assessment that pissed me off, and Harry looked stricken by it, shying back a step. “Fearful liar. Hold your hateful, impudent tongue for once in your wretched life. Ever have I welcomed you into my pet’s company and tolerated your boorish and disgraceful comportment in my home, with more patience than should be expected of any immortal.” Having center stage, he appealed to his audience of undead creatures young and old, and their sympathies were palpable. “I daresay, it was enough to drive one perfectly mad, but I have soldiered on for the contentment of my favorite darling. She would have her pretty plaything…” Harry cast his gaze down at Batten once more. “And though he was an appalling thorn in my side, and against my better judgment, I reserved my objections. At last, for all my kindnesses, I am repaid with treachery and madness. What lunacy drove you to approach House Sarokhanian on Svikheimslending? To forget yourself in such a reprehensible manner when you are here on our good graces?”

  Blood formed a bubble beneath Batten’s left nostril and he raised a shaking hand to swipe it clear. “Just. Do. It.”

  “Would you have me skip past the shaming bit of your end, then, my cold cook?” Harry asked crisply. “You would deny me my last words. I see. Very well. As you would face death so eagerly…” Harry’s eyes blazed anew with hunger. “You shall have it.”

  I saw Batten’s shaking hand twitch on the marble and my eyes cut to the nearby stake. I didn’t even think; I was across the floor and diving for it before he could move. Harry could have made it faster than either of us with an eye-blurring strike, but he stood perfectly still and let his DaySitter move in his defense; I felt him swell with pleasure witnessing my loyalty. I swiped the stake from the ground and rocketed back away from Batten so he couldn’t take it
from me. My training kicked in when I saw him push off with his arms, launching to his feet. I anticipated the direction of his lunge and spun the opposite way, effortlessly dodging his swipe and readying myself for a repeat attack. Harry watched us with unconcerned eyes as the badly beaten vampire hunter stumbled ineffectively in my direction once more.

  I sidestepped him too easily, throwing the stake to the ground where it rolled to a stop at Carole Jeanne’s feet. She stepped on it without reaction, grinding it under her navy shoe.

  “Mark,” I said quietly, putting my body between him and Harry. “Stop.”

  “Get away from me,” he said through his teeth.

  I shook my head. “I need to know: how long have you been using me to get close to them?”

  Harry touched my elbow but I shook him off.

  “You’re going to stand in my way?” Batten panted.

  “Wish I didn’t have to. Not leaving me much choice, here.”

  “I’ll go right through you,” he promised. I believed him. He’d gone full vampire hunter, and, in the face of death, he was going to take a dead guy out with him. It wasn’t going to be mine, though. Not if I had anything to say about it.

  “You have no fucking idea how much I wanted to believe I could trust you here,” I said. “That we had something different. Something special.”

  “Don’t over-romanticize me. Like I said…” he snarled, “I’m out.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” I snapped back. “You’re way out. You’ve never been more out. You’re also way out of your league. And you knew that, but you did it anyway. Now I have to save both Harry and your stupid ass. How am I supposed to do that, Mark?” I heard my own voice ring out alone in the massive room, the only sound. “How do I save you?”

  “You don’t.”

  “I have to!” I shouted. Hot tears blurred my vision for only a second before I angrily blinked them away.

  “No.” Batten nailed me with his deep lakewater blue eyes and said, “Don’t fuck everything up, Snickerdoodle.”

  He sprung up once more, and time slowed like we’d been thrown into a pot of honey. His knife was in his hand; I saw it too late, frozen in place. He could have aimed it at my throat, heart, belly, but it was a silver flash aimed directly at my shoulder; I would forever see the final betrayal of that knife coming at my shoulder, feel my training kick in, see Harry’s arm in that last instant. Harry’s forearm was a hard, frigid barrier as he swept me aside. He took one step forward, death’s frigid march, and put a stop to Batten’s attack with a graceful monster’s cold embrace.

  I stumbled under the momentum of Harry’s shove, falling to my knees. My fall seemed to take forever. I looked up just in time to watch Harry’s fangs claim valuable territory deep in Batten’s throat. Batten stiffened in his arms, letting out a grunt of surprise, like he hadn’t expected it to really happen in the end, despite everything that had been said. His feet scrambled for purchase on the marble, but Harry had him sinking, sinking into a mindfuck so complete that Batten would quickly forget where and who he was. Batten’s eyes rolled back, searching for me frantically, wide with realization and desperation as his life fled quickly to Harry’s noiseless feed.

  My mouth stung with Harry’s bliss. My heart jerked with agony as Batten’s face paled. He gave one more wriggle in Harry’s clutches, pointless and hopeless, but stubborn to the last. I could do nothing but sit on my ass, stunned, and watch the lights go out. Batten locked eyes with me and suddenly the psychic null shattered, and for the first time ever, I Felt him, empathically, strongly and invasively. Harry’s mindfuck of Kill-Notch was being blocked by some other stubborn revenant fucker, and Batten, unshielded, was little-boy terrified, a boy in the dark finding his fear of monsters well-founded, seeing the shadow under the bed for what it truly was, and in his last moment, calling out for me, calling out for my help.

  I could do nothing but tremble. His pupils fixed. His hand fell away from his futile push at Harry’s shoulder, his upturned fingernails already cyanotic. My clinical mind teased me with all the details of a draining death, all the physiological truths of his end. I couldn't look away.

  Harry withdrew but kept his face turned from me, tucked near his chest as his body rattled to a life-like vigor; flushed with the hunter’s blood, Harry’s body would chug to life like an abandoned train rescued under the power of new coal. Lungs, heart, and vital organs swelled and rejoiced, veins sang with heat, loins throbbed with need. Harry would ignore these things; his focus now was entirely on the agony of his pet, and as he laid Batten’s body gently on the marble, his free hand flickered impatiently at House Dreppenstedt’s banner.

  When none of the Dreppenstedt revenants made a move toward us, he flashed them a challenging chrome glare. It was not an immortal who came forward first. It was Carole Jeanne. Her trek across the marble was witnessed with surprise for only a moment, and when she gave a motherly don’t-make-me-come-back-there glance at the revenants next to her Wilhelm, they did not require their master’s order to hustle into action. A pair of them obeyed the prince’s DaySitter and her wordless demands, coming to sweep Batten’s body up.

  “Take that away,” Carole Jeanne said to the revenants, placing one hand on my shoulder and another on Harry’s. Remy gestured behind her throne, and several members of Wilhelm's retinue carried Battens body off in that direction.

  “Where are they taking him? Is it over? Is it done?” I shuddered once, hard. “Harry, I can’t breathe…”

  “You can,” Harry told me. “You will. We both will.”

  I couldn’t look at him. Remy was speaking. House Sarokhanian was answering. There were official things being said. Some of them were being said directly to me. I heard none of it. I felt Declan off to one side, felt his urgent need to connect with me. I couldn’t look at him, either. I didn’t want to see or hear anyone. When Declan moved a few steps forward, Harry’s shaking head stayed his approach.

  Harry sank to his knees by my side. “You are injured.”

  Understatement of a lifetime.

  “Your nose is bleeding, Dearheart,” Harry said, clearing his throat as a husky tone betrayed him; his appetite had been whetted, and he was still ragingly hungry, and it bothered him deeply. Letting me know this through the Bond was his was of seeking forgiveness. I couldn’t even begin to consider that.

  “My Own, can you stand?” he asked.

  I did, letting him support my elbow despite a deep need to shrink away from him. I didn’t bother hiding it through the Bond; he would just have to deal with my revulsion. Carole Jeanne’s hand stayed on my shoulder. It was the only thing I didn’t hate in that moment, the only thing that I didn’t want to punish, the only thing I didn’t want to stab.

  “It’s too cold for you, here, my MJ,” Harry said. “It’s time for me to take you home.”

  Batten should never have come here. I should never have come here. None of this felt worth it. I refused to look at Remy on the throne; giving her the respect of a civil parting bow or nod or glance was too difficult. I didn't look at the beings quietly standing under the banner of House Dreppenstedt, nor the master of my Cold Company. I felt Wilhelm’s desire to brush my mind with his voice, to reassure me, to support me, but he refrained. I could have used it. I desperately wanted comfort right now. The house Bond was shrinking away from me; I wondered if I was being rejected in some way, or if the empaths were protecting themselves from my pain, human pain they didn’t want or need to feel. I reminded myself that while they could not feel love, they were acutely able to feel the loss of love. If they did not protect themselves as a group from my agony, they would share it for as long as I was with them.

  But I would not return to Felstein. If I never saw Felstein again, it would be too soon.

  I half-saw Rask as he stomped past us on the marble, half-heard arrangements being made to fetch our things, was vaguely aware of Harry’s soft-spoken plans. I stared at Batten’s torn leather jacket, returned to the floor next to it, reached
for the mangled thing. The clamp squeezing in my chest intensified and I refused to feel it, shoving it out again hard. I dragged the leather jacket onto my shoulders, though it wouldn’t cooperate in any way.

  Harry stopped mid-sentence in his plans with Rask and said, “It’s filthy, love,” but moved to help me put my arms into it anyway. The jacket smelled of blood and leather… and watered down Brut cologne; in the end, the holy water hadn’t done a damn thing to save him.

  I looked up at Harry to check his mouth for burns and found nothing at all but slowly retracting fangs and the gloss of saliva where he’d carefully licked away all evidence of Batten’s blood so as not to further upset me. The tears finally came; Harry became an elegant blur. “Can you fix it?”

  He touched the torn bits. “I will stitch it immediately.”

  “Fix it,” I whispered, and dropped my head, no longer talking about the stupid jacket. “Just fix it.”

  “Hold it, Toots,” the Overlord’s voice rolled into the throne room, rushing into our reality with alarming ease. If I’d been less numb, I might have marveled at the control of the demon king, but as it was, I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t even look at Him as He approached from behind His daughter’s throne until He grabbed the left shoulder of Batten’s jacket and pulled it off my back. The shredded remains of it fell away in His dragon claw and he tightened the talons around it. “This belongs in the king’s collection.”

  He could not have hurt me more than if He’d kicked me in the teeth, and I think He knew it, and relished it. I slid my gaze sideways to His three heads, each uglier than the next, and He flashed me His broken piano key smile.

  “There is no king,” I managed, my voice hoarse. I looked down at the jacket. “You can’t take more from me than you already have. Keep it.” My hatred for Him and this place bubbled up abruptly like lava from a magma chamber, and I spit, “Don’t call me ‘Toots’. I am not your knight-errant. I am not your Marnie. I am not your thing.”

  “MJ—“ Harry choked, and Carole Jeanne hurried away from my side as though I’d burst on fire.