JinYeong looked away first, his hand dropping from my chin, but his other still had a good grip on mine, and I was thankful for that. I might usually be proof against JinYeong’s wiles, but it was obvious that he was proof against those of the fae, and that also made me feel oddly safe.
Maybe there was some justice in this world, after all.
“What,” demanded JinYeong silkily, “do you want?”
“I have something I wish to say.”
JinYeong stared at him. “Lord Sero is not here.”
“Then it is fortunate,” said Zero’s father, “that I have not come to speak with him.”
Flaming heck. That was all we needed. Maybe I was just feeling particularly sensitive today, but any reason Zero’s father wanted to speak with us was a Bad Thing, and it was hard to believe that it was a complete coincidence, him turning up right after we killed one of his henchmen and then had a big discussion about who was definitely an Heirling and needed to be Far More Careful about everything.
“Stop growing flowers on me,” said JinYeong in cold dislike, scraping a few, trailing flowers from the inside of his pants leg with the side of his shoe. “This is my best suit.”
“The world moulds itself around me,” the fae said, with an insolence far more annoying than JinYeong’s. “You are barely of this world or that; why should it concern itself with you?”
“Thought you said you’ve got something to say,” I reminded him, avoiding his eyes. “Or did you just mean you’ve got insults to throw?”
I definitely shouldn’t have said it, and the fact that JinYeong’s lips curved very slightly when I said it was absolute proof of that. That brief smile made me feel less cold, though, even though it wasn’t wise to be cheeky. This is what happens when pets go out without their owners: they get cheeky and start running wild with no one to stop them with a forbidding, icy-cold “Pet!”
“I have heard,” said the fae, with a cold look that didn’t lose any of its potency for the fact that I wasn’t looking right into the eyes of it, “that my son is again working with the Enforcers. Is it so?”
“That’s a question,” I pointed out. It was a question, moreover, to which he definitely knew the answer—which meant it wasn’t the question he’d really come to ask. I would have liked to have looked properly at him to see his reaction when I added, “He’s working for them, not with them.”
“Is there a difference?” he asked, but there was a distinct grit to his voice that suggested Yes there was, and that the difference very greatly irritated him.
Maybe because the idea of his son working for anyone else stuck in his elegant gullet, which was a nice thought. I could understand it if Zero had chosen to defy his father only to make him choke a bit, because if I’d been able to do it safely, I would have taken the opportunity with alacrity.
What had he really come to ask? It couldn’t have been just to put a little worm in my brain—he couldn’t know what had happened yesterday, could he? We had killed the golden fae, and there hadn’t been anyone else to see.
Worried and wondering about that, I looked up at JinYeong and found his eyes on me. They were slightly questioning, and I shrugged fatalistically. Might as well ask, that shrug said.
His eyebrows quirked a bit, but he looked back at Zero’s dad and said clearly, “You already knew this. Why ask us?”
“I would have thought that my son knew better, after what occurred last time.”
“These days, hyeong has friends around him,” JinYeong said lazily. “You know this too. Why ask about it?”
There came a low chuckle that almost had me looking straight at him. “Still friends? How very noble of you! I would have thought that after he took off your sister’s head with his sword my son wouldn’t have been much endeared to you.”
“Think he’s more annoyed at the people who were responsible for turning her into a vampire in the first place,” I said, clear and angry, my hand tight around JinYeong’s because his had just gripped mine convulsively.
JinYeong looked down at me again. I tried to make sure that my gaze was full of very obvious Don’t do it warning, and it seemed to work. Either that, or JinYeong was just better equipped to deal with his rage this time. At any rate, he didn’t leap for the throat of Zero’s father, and he didn’t even snarl, which was truly impressive.
“Don’t get attached, little human,” said the fae to me in amusement. “For his kind, you’re a bite and a sip and then dust. Or if you’re amusing, perhaps you’ll be a fledgling. Would you like that, filth? Your own fledgling?”
JinYeong gave a small, bloody chuckle that sounded truly amused. “I will never have this one as my fledgling. Hotsori.”
“Rude,” I mumbled, beneath my breath. “You’re just saying that ’cos you don’t want me around forever to mess with your ties.”
A small pft was directed at me, and JinYeong said beneath his breath, “Am I hyeong? I will not have you as a fledgling.”
“I am curious to know if the rumours I’ve heard about a certain sword reappearing are true,” said Zero’s father, quiet and sudden enough to give me a nasty startle that I hoped I hid well.
Flaming heck. He knew about the sword, but what did he know about the sword?
“You should talk to hyeong about this yourself,” JinYeong said, but his fingers had gripped mine in return. “I do not care about the Throne Behind, or the succession.”
The fae flicked a few fingers dismissively. “It would be too much to expect of filth like you to care about the purity of the Throne.”
JinYeong surprised me considerably by laughing aloud, dark and dangerous. “Purity? Someone once told me you stole a human woman to bear your son. There is no purity in the Throne Behind; just human blood running through everything. Everything.”
There was a silence as deadly as anything I’d heard from Zero, and then someone in the group of humans around us applauded.
“Shakespeare,” said one of them, elbowing the one next to him and nodding knowledgably. “Good stuff, isn’t it?”
“Shut your mouth, filth,” Zero’s father said, so softly that it would have been hard to hear had it not had such a vicious edge to it. “Or you will end your life in a field of flowers, at my feet.”
“I am already a flower,” said JinYeong, shrugging one shoulder. “What. Do. You. Want?”
The swift sound of the fae’s indrawn breath in cold, deadly anger made me feel far too squishy on the inside, like a spider soaked in bug spray, melting from the inside out. I expected his anger to make itself obvious in his speech, but instead, he took a moment to gather himself and smile. It didn’t make me feel much better, but maybe I’ve just got a bad attitude.
“I want your word,” said Zero’s father, “that when the time comes, you will stand beside my son and help him win the throne.”
“Hyeong,” JinYeong said, with scathing amusement, “does not wish to take the throne. I shall not force him or assist him.”
“It would be very much the better for your health if you did so,” said Zero’s father, and now his smile appeared to be pasted on, for all the warmth of it. “And for the health of that little human you’ve made far too cheeky.”
“This is my petteu,” said JinYeong, silky voiced, “and I do not permit you to touch it. I will kill it myself when I am no longer enjoying it.”
If Athelas had said it, I might have had a momentary worry that he actually meant it; with Zero, I would have felt a chill as he said it, even if I didn’t believe he meant it. This time, despite the very real danger in front of me, I had to work not to roll my eyes.
JinYeong pinched my hand warningly, and I realised belatedly that perhaps I hadn’t done as good a job as I’d thought at not rolling my eyes. Good thing I was already avoiding Zero’s dad’s eyes.
“Your loyalty—”
“My loyalty belongs to me,” JinYeong said, with finality. “You said it before: hyeong has not endeared himself to me. I shall not help him to a throne.”
“You are chattel with a longer than usual life,” said Zero’s father, with ice-blue anger. “You should remember your place.”
“I choose my own place,” said JinYeong, his gaze roaming over the crowd around us and finally resting on me once more. “And I choose who I will stand beside.”
Oh heck. The cow pats were about to start flying.
“That’s a very great pity,” said Zero’s father. He didn’t look as though he found it a pity. He looked as though he was furiously glad—as though this was what he had expected all along, and now he could deal with it as he had wished to do from the start. “I dislike having to deal with filth, but if the filth does not know its place, it must be taught.”
“Ah heck,” I muttered. JinYeong’s fingers pressed mine, but his expression didn’t change. Oh yeah. That was right. I was supposed to be pretending that I couldn’t see or feel the huge disturbances in the layers of the world all around us.
“And you, little pet—” he looked at me and I managed to stare at his left cheek to avoid his eyes. “You will regret the company you keep before long.”
Whatever he had been trying to offer me earlier, he was definitely annoyed that I hadn’t taken it—or that JinYeong had interrupted before he could elaborate.
“I will say neither fare you well nor the human see you later,” he said in JinYeong’s direction, the expression sitting oddly within his deliberately formal voice. “I trust that you will fare exactly as I intend and I do not intend to see you later.”
He turned on his elegant, bare feet and left, cobwebby trousers legs whispering elegantly against each other as he walked, shirt fluttering softly behind him; and as he went, the entire circle of humans applauded like they’d just seen the end of the act.
It was hard not to watch him go, but it was easier to refrain than to keep pretending I couldn’t see the Things segueing from Between through the formerly poles of the weather shade above us. The crowd began to disperse, but between the flowing movement of people separating here and there, Things pushed through the flowers that had grown from every white pole and carried the flowers along with them as they came.
Things that were flowery and smelly and not quite alive even though they were moving.
“Ah heck,” I said once more. Tall, broad-shouldered, and whispering like a breeze through flowers, these petalmen didn’t look really solid, but I was pretty sure they would pack a decent punch despite that. Or, I realised, as one of them grew a needle-like thorn of green, sappy wood, a decent sting.
Nobody nearby seemed to do more than give them the odd, sideways glance and then look hastily away: I suppose they could have looked like shadows if you didn’t look properly at them. Flower-laden, stalk-encrusted, and grass-thatched shadows.
And even if humans couldn’t see them properly, it wouldn’t stop them from being hurt by the creatures.
“Come, Petteu,” said JinYeong, drawing me away by the hand and swiftly toward the nearby flower cart.
I thought he meant us to pass by it and escape by way of the alley and into Wellington Court.
I protested, “There are people there too!” but he dragged me directly toward the cart itself, and we were only a few steps away when a couple of petalmen segued from there as well, blooming from flowerless buckets of water with the decaying stench of dead flowers clinging to them as they came.
They might have been made of dead flower petals; they might have been made from rotting plant matter scraped from the bottom of those same buckets of water. Whatever it was, they were the same kind of thing as those behind us, just slightly different in makeup and significantly more smelly.
JinYeong snarled at their appearance and loosened the button on his suit-coat to free up his shoulders.
“Gotta keep moving!” I said sharply, because there were still far too many humans around the place. If they got caught up in all of this—
A plastic cup sailed through the air, arcing over my shoulder and sloshing milk tea and boba as it went, and splattered against one of the petalmen. A gaping, soggy hole burst right through the creature, milk running down and taking out its legs as well, and the whole creature collapsed into a mess of petals and leaf mould.
Someone chuckled in a high, gleeful sort of way that was very familiar, and I caught sight of the old mad bloke, chortling madly as he scuttled from wombat to fixed seat, lobbing another full plastic cup of bubble tea as he darted for it. The old mad bloke: once my neighbour, now a permanent shadow in the corners of my life. Supposedly dead at least three times now but somehow still alive.
JinYeong said something in Korean that was probably as rude as it sounded, and we ran for it through the open space toward the alley as another volley of milk tea met flower petals and collapsed them utterly. At least in the alley, we might have a chance to fight back without hurting anyone—without anyone seeing. And now that there were a few less petalmen to deal with, we’d have a better chance of coming out of this with all of our limbs. I saw them in the reflections of the papered-up windows, following us with their single brain cell and pursued, themselves, by a final volley of bubble tea. The old mad bloke, on the other hand, was now nowhere in sight.
Find somewhere empty, said my brain, sharp and urgent, just as I saw the glass door and dark stairway vanishing into the ground that had once belonged to an opshop and was now in the process of being fitted out for a karaoke bar.
“Here, here!” I panted, and this time it was me tugging, tugging us right through the glass and into the storefront. Down the stairs, with the smell of mildew and dust suffocating us and the thunder of our footsteps surrounding us, we ran.
We stopped briefly at the bottom of the stairs, and JinYeong made a small, throaty noise of satisfaction.
“Johah,” he said exultantly. “There are many weapons here.”
“Yep,” I said, snatching up two of the closest: a pair of wall brackets painted white that were easily persuaded to be twin swords a little shorter and sturdier than I usually used, with a slight curve to the end of them. I didn’t have time to persuade them that they didn’t need to be white, because a skirl of petals and sticks and wind brawled above us on the stairs and swirled at the top of the landing.
“Heck,” I said, in a sudden coldness of remembrance, as we darted further into the darkness of the store. “You haven’t bitten me in a while.”
“I have not,” he said, as if he was to be congratulated. Maybe he was. It must have been hard for the bitey little mosquito.
He hesitated, a small swaying movement back and forth, and I said, “Hurry up, then.”
“You did not give me permission,” he said, putting his nose up very slightly.
“Good grief!” I said, staring at him. “Did you actually listen to me the other day?”
“I always listen,” he said coldly. “I do not always obey.”
“Yeah, but—never mind that! If I need vampire spit, it’s not like a real kiss anyway and—”
Stubbornly, JinYeong began, “It is—”
I transferred the sword in my left hand to my right, grabbed his tie, and pulled him down to a more convenient height. I’m not sure if I kissed him or he kissed me, because all I could hear was the tumble of Behindkind petalmen barging onto the litter-strewn shop floor from the stairs.
Whichever one of us it was, JinYeong was the one who snaked an arm around my waist when I would have let go at the first tingle of vampire-induced accelerated heartbeat and continued the embrace until I heard my own heartbeat above the sound of the Behindkind charging across the floor at us.
He released me a few moments before they reached us, and I tossed my second sword back into my left hand from the right, where it rested, ready and warm in my grip.
“Ah,” said JinYeong, throaty with satisfaction, “this will be fun.”
“You’ve got a flamin’ warped idea of fun,” I said, but a fierce, dark sense of enjoyment grew in my heart as its beat accelerated again, and I felt as though I could alm
ost laugh. Vampire spit works quick. “Where are your weapons?”
“I have told you—”
“Right,” I said, automatically swinging back and around until we were back to back with a few paces between us as the Behindkind curled around us in a slow, wafting sea of decay and leaf mould. “Your body is a weapon. I’m circling left; mind my swords.”
A thorn lunged from my right and I stepped swiftly to the left, sweeping with that hand to clear my way while I smacked the thorn away. I smacked it hard, but it must have been attached to the petalman’s hand, because although the creature spun away from me, he didn’t lose hold of the thorn sword.
At my back, JinYeong stepped swiftly to the left as well, keeping my back covered, and a flurry of blackened petals and sharp wind tore into the fight just past that. I was too busy with my own monsters to pay attention to his, but I felt the stillness and security of that buffer between me and them, and I took pains to stay aware enough to keep up my side of it. I didn’t think I could bear the idea of him being stabbed for me again.
If I thought at first that we would have a brisk, if uncomplicated fight for it, I was soon proved to be disastrously wrong. The petalmen were quick to be decapitated, or lose an arm or leg, but they were also very quick to hurl their remaining pieces into a kind of mulchy whirlwind and emerge again whole, without stopping, to lunge back into the fight, thorns foremost.
I heard JinYeong snarl in frustration behind me as he took a stab to the side from the creature he had just beheaded a moment ago, and a whirl at my left took the scattered pieces of two recently de-limbed petalmen and threw them at me again, reformed and re-thorned.
I was already tired, my heart beating too quickly in my chest, and there was still a lot of fight left in these creatures. We couldn’t run for it because they were blocking the stairs, even if we had risked them in the crowds outside; we couldn’t run Behind because that would give them the home advantage.
In fact, the only thing I’d seen disintegrate the creatures for good was the bubble tea the old mad bloke had thrown at them. If I’d thought about it, I would have taken the time to throw a few of those buckets of leftover water and dead petals at them before we ran down here, but it was too late now.
Between Cases (The City Between Book 7) Page 8