Luscia looked up through the opening of the alley and into the empty street. Suddenly, every thread trembled, the light of the Other sputtering angrily. Beset by a second storm invisible to Marek’s eyes, the city flashed with ethereal lightning. She felt its wrath turn her stomach over, knotting it mercilessly. Nausea clambered her throat, burning under her awful scar. Flashing as if in warning, the threads snapped into place, fortifying their glow.
“Luscia….”
The whispers layered in unison, harmonizing her name. Luscia spun in her crouch toward the opposite end of the alley. Brilliant and volatile, the harbinger thread appeared in the distance. The beam quivered erratically, beckoning her to follow.
Springing from her position, Luscia darted after it, plunging deeper into the glittering web in a capricious race through the Other. In her periphery, details in the darkness blurred, her Sight anchored onto the thread’s bright, fractured light. Luscia skidded around a corner and, seizing a rusted pole, catapulted through a second-story frame. The harbinger thread shuddered, encircling it. Grasping the splintered wood, she swung her body into the dirtied apartment. The moment her upturned boot landed on the creaky floorboards, the stench of rot and waste assaulted her nostrils.
Creeping forward on the balls of her feet, she followed the crackling thread. Abruptly, a child’s scream sliced her ears, chilling and horrible. Her grip on the Sight broke, jerking Luscia to the front of the veil. She shook her head, feeling suddenly bereft, but continued toward the cracked door at the end of the crooked hall.
The slightest scuffle signaled Marek’s arrival at her back. Luscia raised two fingers, communicating absolute silence. Najjani silence. With another step, she touched the door, pausing to tilt her head and observe the scene within. Through the slim opening, a cloak swayed, dusting the wood floor. A tall man angled over a quaint bed. Even without the aid of the moon, her Tiergan eyes read the outline of a simple dagger as the man lifted it over the frightened child.
“Niit!” Luscia shouted, ramming the door open and diving for his middle.
Tumbling across the floor, the man’s revolting odor filled her nostrils, making her gag. Luscia heard the cross-caste child crying from the corner of the straw bed. The man shirked her hold on his torso when she glanced to the little girl, distressed by the amount of blood on the sheets. In her distraction, his cloak fanned out, lashing her across the face. He leapt for the window, shattering the glass, his hands protected in fine leather gloves, and plummeted into the street.
“Marek, the girl!”
She pointed to the bed before unsheathing her wraiths and jumping out the small window. Vaulting over the shards, Luscia slammed into a puddle, slapping the surface of the water as she hunkered into a low squat with the impact. Luscia squeezed her eyes shut, trying to reengage the Sight for aid. Reopening them, the corner of a cloak caught her attention, sweeping past a flooding merchant cart. Down a row of patchwork tents, the man ran on foot, faster than expected.
Sprinting, she trailed him between the pipe huts, the foul smoke competing with the rain as it filled the lane with putrid steam. A few partakers, oblivious to the storm, staggered from the flaps, firmly entrenched in marrow stupor and mumbling nonsense. Thrusting them out of the way, she dodged the wasted patrons in chase of something far worse than any addict.
Gaining speed, Luscia ran up a terrace, leapt, and flipped over the final tent. Spinning through the air, she hooked her boot around the neck of the man’s hood and drove them both into the street, bathing them in soiled water. With her left wraith, Luscia secured his cloak to the cobbles and ripped the covering away from his face.
Aghast and confused, her lashes beat off the torrential rain. The wraith in her right hand chimed as she raised it, wavering.
“Ambrose?”
The rainclouds parted, permitting the moon to wash over his face, or what remained of it. While his features resembled the noble from Agoston, with the same sharp nose and protruding brow, his coloring was far from the man she’d threatened and pulled off Mila just days before.
Ambrose’s lips split apart as he grinned coldly, the flesh blackened in decay where it should have pinked. Curdled inkiness gushed from his mouth when he hacked a laugh. The substance congealed and seeped down his chin.
“You shouldn’t have come here, y’siti spawn.”
With a strength too formidable for any human, Ambrose lurched forward and sank his teeth into her upper arm. Luscia yelped in pain, the power of his jaw more animal than man. When her grip gave out and the wraith clattered to the stone, his fetid fangs opened to angle for her throat. Terrified, Luscia repelled his advance, pushing her forearms into his neck as he snarled. His rotting tongue, covered in fissures and pustules, flailed after her skin.
A savage growl, harrowing and unhinged, came from the right. A terrible force struck Ambrose, wrenching him off Luscia. Wheezing, she knelt on the ground and pivoted to see a massive Orrallach hybrid wrestle the diseased noble down the way. Hackles raised, lifted to Aurynth, her lycran dragged Ambrose by the ankle. Thrashing him from side to side, Aksel brutally attacked, his feral nature freed at her defense.
“Is that him?” Luscia jumped as Kasim ran up from the rear. Panting, he hunched over to grip his knees. “Did you find the killer?”
“How—”
“Followed the beastie.” He cocked his head down toward the tussle.
Her focus drew away from Kasim’s strange presence when the lycran yelped and stumbled back, slumping into a pile of garbage.
“Aksel!” Luscia wailed, running for her friend.
As Ambrose took off with renewed velocity, his ankle bent unnaturally, yet it did not slow his pace, even as she heard the pop of a bone snapping.
Dropping to her lycran’s side, she scanned his injuries—mostly superficial, save an ugly gash on his hind leg. It would heal, though not without significant pain. Kasim skated toward her, drenched in the drizzle. Holding the partnering wraith she’d staked into the cobblestone, he huffed as she examined the whimpering wolx, combing through his bloody fur.
“Now you bring these out?” he criticized, flexing his hold around the central hilt. “At least tell me you caught Wekesa in the act—that’s all I need for the arrest.”
“Wekesa?” Lucia sputtered incredulously, tearing a strip off her belted tunic to bind Aksel’s leg. “Nitt! It’s Ambrose, Kasim. He’s war-tainted, infected or something. I’m not certain, but we have to go after him now, before it spreads.”
“Wait, doru…you said Ambrose? Felix Ambrose?”
“Or that’s who he used to be, anyway. Bolaeva, please.” She extended her open palm to retrieve the crescent wraith, to complete her set. Begrudgingly, he handed it over and reached instead for his kopar. “Heh’ta, Aksel,” she said, ordering the lycran to stay when he whined, attempting to follow.
Luscia rattled her head agitatedly as she and Kasim rushed to follow Ambrose’s escape. She petitioned the Sight, but it again denied her access behind the veil, into the Other. Leaping on top of an overturned barrel, Luscia listened for the whispers, but none came. She was alone.
“Ano, higher!” Kasim yelled, jumping for a hanging ladder.
The lowest rungs snapped beneath Kasim’s feet. Luscia sprung off her heels with vigor and clutched the slippery fourth rung, but her fingers failed to reposition around the dampness. Kasim’s hand swung out from the rooftop just before she lost her grip. Entwining their arms, he hoisted her up and around.
Luscia winced as she landed on the slats beside him. Numbness had entered her fingertips from the blood loss. Unbuckling her belt, she bit the leather to strap it under the wound in her bicep, fastening it tightly.
“This,” she remarked, nodding to the other wraith and shaking out her arm to wake it, “is why there are two.”
Atop a beam, they scanned the dodgy grid of Marketown while thunder boomed overhead.
She felt Kasim nudge her ribs and followed the end of his kopar where it pointed toward The Veiled Lady, a few streets beyond.
“There,” he confirmed. Luscia saw the dark smudge at the tip of his sword, trailing Ambrose’s fitful movements under the distant torchlight of a resilient streetlamp, still blinking in the rain.
Hopping off the beam, Luscia stalked the perimeter of the roof, surveying the stories below. Moored to a tilted post, a layer of canvas was stretched over the entrance of a dingy shop, operating as both a clothesline and a canopy. Cupping her hands, Luscia folded the wraiths in front of her chest and marched off the ledge, tucking in her knees to sail down the material. Descending in a graceful arc, she waited to ensure Kasim could do the same. Sheathing his kopar, the other al’Haidren plunged into the buoyant fabric, landing unceremoniously.
The moment he was upright, Luscia bolted through the rising puddles toward the popular tavern. Weaving between deserted vendor stalls, running as fast as her legs could carry her, she ducked to glide beneath a barrier of draped mats, soaking Kasim. As they rolled to their feet, Luscia shared a glance with the Darakaian, his dress shirt coated in muck. She looked around, lost. In the absence of her Sight, she recognized the streets of Marketown belonged to him and deferred to his lead. By the way Kasim grunted, swiping the rain off his face and stepping around her, he knew it, too.
Luscia tailed him as he hurried past the conventional path to The Veiled Lady and opted for another route, careering down a winding back street, vacant of lamplight from even the lodgings in the heights above. Smashing through the entry of a shabby emporium, Kasim trampled over mounds of trinkets to an archway on the other side, spitting them out into an adjoining alley behind the tavern.
The same place, she realized as they cleared a stack of crates, where she’d found Wren—drained, limp, and wrong.
“Ano!” Kasim released a howl and sped ahead.
Surging for another load of crates, he vaulted off and barreled into a deformed figure scaling the bricks. A patch of brittle hair shed from Ambrose’s skull as Kasim tumbled with him against the building. Luscia let out a growl of her own. Fury over Wren and the others sent fire through her limbs. With a righteous roar from deep within her gut, Luscia ran, slung an empty crate over the pooling water, and skated through the alley toward their fight. Whirling the crescent wraiths in a harmonious whirlwind, she whipped herself off the crate and sliced Ambrose’s thigh apart.
In a somersault, she flipped into a defensive stance and bent her knees at the ready, utterly stunned. Ambrose snarled and rose despite his injured leg, even as inky blood oozed down his shredded skin. Kasim’s kopar lashed out, ripping the muscle out from his calf. His back curling in a sinister stoop, Ambrose hunched and tore off an embellished glove. The moonlight glinted off a set of blackened talons, no longer mortal fingers. Ambrose slashed at Kasim, carving his wrists up and flinging him into the old masonry.
Kasim’s body split the bricks. Neck slack, the al’Haidren slumped into the rubble, unconscious.
“Luscia, to your left!”
She spun at Marek’s unexpected voice, twirling with the wraith as Ambrose rushed for her throat, his claws outstretched. Luscia kicked off the tower of crates and rotated the arcs like a saw, severing what used to be his hand. Ambrose shrieked, guttural and primitive, like a creature from the bowels of the earth. She smelled the toxin coating the luxiron sizzling into his deadened flesh where it spurted dark, curdled gore. Lunging, Luscia severed the tendons at his ankle. Ambrose’s leg crumpled under him as she rotated, but the corners of his mouth tore and opened wide in his fall, spewing oily mire into her eyes.
Blinded, Luscia cried out, dropping the wraiths to wipe the stickiness out of her lashes. The substance, foul and acidic, stung as she desperately tried to rinse it off. In a rush of wind, she felt Marek fly across her back as she doubled over, their contact brief before his luxiron met Ambrose. Unable to see, Luscia scrambled for her weapon within the pools of water. After a succession of crashes, she heard Marek bark in either agony or frustration when something heavy collapsed onto the cobblestones.
“Quarter spin and roll!” Marek shouted, instructing Luscia through her blindness. “I’m pinned under a beam. Waedfrel, now dip low!”
She ducked, listening to the air shift over her head as Ambrose’s remaining claw narrowly missed. A shuffling came from Marek’s direction as materials shifted about. Luscia stayed down, frantically seeking the encased hilt of one of the wraiths in the water. Out of the chaos, like the resounding gong in Thoarne Hall, Marek’s wraith struck a drainpipe, sending waves of reverberation through the stone and creating a field of resonance for her. Luscia inhaled and focused her other senses. Striking the pipe a second time, Marek continued to beat it, like a crude bomaerod.
Luscia reeled aside as she sensed Ambrose pounce, wheeling her body like a spinning top. He dove, sending a ripple through the surrounding air, emphasized by the droplets from the sky. As she twirled, his claw snatched at her boot. One of his talons pierced her toe, and he hauled her over the cobbles through the river of filth.
Pinned against the crates, Luscia struggled to fend off Ambrose’s gnashing teeth, clutching his throat with one hand, hot under her palm. Fumbling beneath the fabric of her hooded tunic, made heavy by the moisture, Luscia probed the folds for her mother’s blade. Stroking the warmth of the hilt, she sobbed in relief and released Ferocity, stabbing the consort dagger into Ambrose’s chest. The luxiron hissed as it sank into his tainted flesh.
“We are what we become,” she heard him croak. Rancid saliva hit her cheek. “Release me.”
His hold loosening, Luscia drove the dagger straight into his heart until the brim of the hilt busted through the bone, meeting soft tissue. Pushing him off her, Luscia flipped him over onto the ground and withdrew the blade, encountering little resistance. Under her touch, Ambrose was slowly changing, his monstrous form dissolving.
“They will come for you, too,” he rasped.
Sinew and bone turned to ash in her hands. Dim shapes came into view, her vision clearing at last. Luscia dry-heaved as she madly brushed the remnants of Ambrose off her skin.
At the sound of his voice, she crawled toward Marek. Her hands trembled as she grasped the beam trapping him, adding her strength to heave it off his middle. Nearby, Kasim let out a distressed moan.
“Ana’Sere, can you stand?” Marek asked.
“Wem, I think so,” she said. “Can you?”
“Nearly,” he replied, hoisting her upright.
“Tadöm. But first help Kasim,” Luscia instructed, exhaustion overtaking her. “His shoulder might be out of place.”
Marek’s boots splashed through the puddles as he bent to boost the Darakaian out of the wreckage. One of the men murmured at the other, but her hearing was to fuzzy to make out their words. An ache coursed through her mind as she started to drift backward.
“Find my Aksel…” she whispered, her voice echoing far away.
Eyes rolling back, Luscia’s head hit the ground, and the sound was no more.
Every part of her body hurt.
Hazily, Luscia heard someone breathing close by—in, then out. Felt a depression on the bed, opposite Aksel’s familiar weight by her thigh. Suppressing a groan of anguish, Luscia thumbed the latch of Phalen’s radial and sat up, releasing the hidden blade and tucking it under the intruder’s chin.
Opening her sore eyelids, Zaethan Kasim stared back at her. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. His vivid green eyes dropped to the thin weapons riding her knuckles, and he arced a dense brow, impressed. Luscia noticed that a leather sling strapped his elbow to his side.
His gaze idled when the blanket fell from her chest, revealing the delicate shift she wore. Under his gaze, Luscia’s arm itched beneath the crust of a poultice. She had no recollection of how or when it got there.
In a rush, Luscia’s memories battere
d her mind. The girl, war-taint in the city, Ambrose. Her tongue scratched the interior of her mouth, dried from the horror of it all.
I killed a man.
As her hand started to shake, a noise pulled her attention to her bedroom door. Backlit, Marek stood inside the threshold. His hand was clenched around the hilt of his sword while he scrutinized Kasim, as if waiting for something. Still groggy, Luscia hastily assessed his injuries, but stopped, settling on his grave features. Why would the captaen of her guard permit the al’Haidren to Darakai into her chamber?
Dread told her to lower the radial. Something was terribly wrong.
The swell of Kasim’s throat shuddered as he swallowed and took a steadying breath, his eyes flitting back up to meet hers.
“The king is dead. We’ve been summoned.”
THIRTY-SIX
Zaethan
In a surreal sweep, Zaethan tugged the handle and stiffly latched the door to the Zôueli suite, locking the western royals safely inside. He scrubbed the stubble on his face with his free hand and backed into the corridor.
Zahra and Kumo flanked the exterior of the sweeping entry. Neither his beta or his third said anything as they rigidly held their posts. Discreetly, both watched him from the corners of their eyes as Zaethan awkwardly readjusted the leather sling.
Neighboring sentries continued along either side of the corridor, forming a tunnel of security. Every man stood silent, the air hung with an unprecedented heaviness as he spoke for his pryde’s ears alone.
“No one comes in or out,” he murmured gruffly, glancing between them. “No one. Yeye qondai?”
“Uni zà, Alpha Za,” Zahra and Kumo murmured in unison.
Kumo angled his head to level with Zaethan in a wordless exchange. Confusion and anger buckled the wide bridge of his nose. The last hour had been utter chaos, since the moment an elderly attendant discovered the king’s body, drooped over the arm of his reading chair, foaming from the mouth. His utterly unexpected demise had awoken them all to a new reality—a reality where kings were slain in the silence of their studies rather than amid the glory of a battlefield.
House of Bastiion (The Haidren Legacy, Book 1) Page 34