“No good deed,” Gregor said as he flipped the car into automatic and reached into the back seat.
It was a curious sensation to feel her own body beginning to shut down as shock threatened. She just needed to close her eyes. No. That would be a disaster.
“Raymond has enemies powerful enough to summon demons in daylight and he sends you out—alone—to treat with them?”
“You think Auger or Tweedledee and Tweedledummy could have done better?” she snapped, sick of proving herself capable to arrogant men.
“I think all of them combined wouldn’t have stood a chance.” He scoffed, surprising her.
“Anyway I wasn’t alone this time,” she said. “I had you.”
A heavy weight settled over her chest and lap. It was soft and smelled of wintergreen and aftershave. Shit, she’d closed her eyes again. She made herself consider his surprise. She wondered if even a demon wound would have slowed him down. Her brain stuttered, thoughts coming together too slowly.
“Tell me about your history with Rathki.” His mouth pinched in a frown. “Ana?”
The surprise contact of a hand on hers brought her back to the car, the seat, and the road spooling out before them in an endless ribbon of yellow and black. She glanced at him, the weight of her head almost too much to bear.
“He’s a dirty old satyr.” She hated the way her voice slurred. “What more do you need to know? This country has collected a lot of refuse. His own people had it in for him.”
“They’d have him strung up by his balls if they could get their hooves on him,” Gregor said. “Claimed he violated satyr law, which is saying a lot, considering how few a trip of satyrs has to begin with. After today I’m inclined to give him to them.”
Her vision stopped spinning and her heart rate eased as her healing ability began to win the fight. “He likes to test the boundaries. Got a little pushy with some of the mortal coeds back in the sixties. Raymond sent me to put the fear of the sword in him.”
“No wonder he has a hard-on for you.”
“In more ways than one.”
Gregor’s hand flexed on the wheel. The one on hers remained a solid warmth.
“It was a joke,” she said, biting down on a yawn. “How did you know to ask about a lover?”
Gregor’s jaw flexed. “Something Raymond said last night, when I met with him. ‘She’s gotten her wish. I’m paying attention now.’ I thought he meant you.”
“Me?” Ana snorted.
“But something in his voice…” Gregor’s lips pursed in thought for a long moment as his gaze skated sideways toward her. “I’ve heard it before.”
She glared at him. “What?”
“Maybe nothing.”
She slipped her hand free, called up the navigation on the dash screen, and entered a destination address.
“That back there was not ‘maybe nothing,’” she said, tucking her hand under the warmth of the coat so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach for his again. “You heard what Rathki said. Your instinct was right. So tell me.”
He flipped on the seat warmers, fingertips drumming on the center console for a long moment. He sighed. “It reminded me of Azrael when he speaks of Isela.”
She wanted to laugh. Raymond of all people was incapable of emotion. That a fierce Amazon warrior who had watched civilizations rise and fall in 1,500 years of life had given her heart to him and he’d turned his back on her proved he was incapable of that kind of connection. He may have started the traveling show, but Lysippe’s presence among them formed its heart. Her leaving had been the end it. Now only those bound to him—the strong men— remained. And her.
The strain of her body’s fight with the demon wound bore her toward the blackness welling behind her vision. But this was the clean weight of exhaustion without the edge of oblivion threatening. Gregor exhaled, his idle hand returning to the wheel.
“I’ve got it from here,” he said. “Rest.”
I don’t need you, she thought she said before her eyes slid shut.
Chapter Eleven
When Ana slept, Gregor eased his foot down and focused on the road.
As the highway left the coast and narrowed to a winding mountain road, he shifted down and took the wheel in both hands. Thick trees rose on either side of the two-lane strip of tarmac, dousing the car and the road in shadows. The outside temperature dropped as the sun raced toward the horizon. Steam rose from the road, which had been left damp by an earlier rain shower, joining the soft gray mist clinging to the ferns. He blinked, and for a moment he was in the Great Smoky Mountains again. But the trees were wrong—too big, too red—and the boulders rounded sand and mudstone rather than the knife-edged sedentary rock. That time is gone, he reminded himself. That place is no more.
He pushed the car hard along the road, letting the pressure and release of acceleration be the outlet for the unfamiliar sensations roiling through him. The wheel creaked beneath his grip, and he forced himself to loosen his fingers.
He’d almost believed Ana Gozen’s reputation too good to be anything but exaggeration. Now grudging respect gave way to admiration. She had slain two demons single-handedly.
Her heart rate and breathing had returned to normal. Her skin was no longer cold and waxy. The immediate danger of her going into shock subsided, leaving Gregor with unsettling dismay. Demon wounds were pernicious, but this one should not have been enough to have brought her so low. Unlike a necromancer’s undead minions who were nominally powered after being animated, Aegis did not succumb to things like shock or bleed out. At least he’d never seen it before.
The basis of a necromancer’s gift was an almost-immortality granted by superhuman healing abilities. Gregor would have died a half dozen times in the past two hundred years if not for the strength of Azrael’s gift. He’d lost limbs and severed an artery or two and walked away. Even the worst, gored by a demon and tossed off the edge of a cliff into the sea, had not killed him—though the first few hours of pain had made him wish it had.
But that was the bargain he’d made, the gift he’d been given.
Like him, Ana walked into danger each time she stepped to Raymond’s side or out in his name. She should be stronger. No. She should be fucking invincible. Raymond owed her that. It appeared Raymond had skimped on this part of the bargain when it came to Ana.
Azrael might see it as a sign Raymond lacked the power to grant that level of strength. It might make him a weaker ally. For Gregor, in this moment, his worry was that Raymond had chosen not to and Ana had no idea what she was missing.
How could she?
He understood that each of the eight Allegiance necromancers ran their territories as they saw fit. Some were more forgiving, others less. Some treated their mortals as labor and resources, others with some level of respect and autonomy. Each Aegis also operated under the unique leadership of their necromancer. Vows of service and exchange of powers did not follow a standard. Ito had served another before Azrael; so had Aleifr. Gregor had never thought to ask them what life had been like under other necromancers. Everyone has a blind spot, Lysippe had said. His—thinking every Aegis ran like his own.
Ana stirred in her sleep, turning her body toward the window and giving him a view of her mangled arm. The cloth strip tied around the wound had gone a dull brown. The bleeding had stopped. A good sign.
She shivered in her sleep and a low moan escaped her lips. He thought it carried a name. He turned up the heat. Her hands clenched, fingers curling into balls before she hissed. One hand spasmed open from pain to reveal skin blackened from contact with demons. A few hours’ sleep would heal the worst of it, but he adjusted his expectation of what she could withstand.
He tugged the edge of the coat down over her back. Perfect for early fall evenings that turned biting in Prague, the inland California temperatures made it unnecessary. As her shivers eased, he found gratitude for the foresight to pack it anyway. He’d known what it was like to struggle to stay warm, and he’d sworn never
to be cold again.
He’d come a long way from the stinking skin coat he’d managed to acquire for his first winter in Haven. Beggars could not be choosy, and until he could do more than a child’s chores and earn himself something worth trading up for, it would do. He tugged it closer as he headed to the sounds of celebration around the bonfire in the center of the settlement. Lark’s hunting party had returned, loaded with game and supplies after weeks away. Gregor told himself that pleasure at her reappearance came from the sight of his rifle strapped to her back.
Feeling out of place, Gregor sat on the edge of the firelight, watching the others dance. It was a strange moment to be homesick. The reels and jigs of these New Worlders, so different from the organized, staid ballroom scenes of his youth. Gone were the bright colors and elegant fabrics, replaced by genuine smiles and boisterous laughter. Spirits went around, those too a surprising reminder of what he missed. Swallowing the sandpaper burn of hill whiskey, he would have given his soul for a mug of dark beer or even the sweet wine his mother favored.
When he’d left, he hadn’t missed any of it. Now it was all he longed for. Well, almost all.
Tales of the hunt came next. Lark demurred in the telling, moving from her place of honor close to the fire as one of the younger men gave a rousing, if slurred, recitation of her taking a mountain lion that had tried to steal their cache in the dead of night.
Weary and heartsick, Gregor traded the comfort of heat for solitude, drifting to the sheep pen at the edge of the settlement. He made a study of the stars streaking across the sky.
“We have the geese for that.” Lark’s voice came from the shadows as she joined him amid the lowing flock. “You needn’t guard.”
“Just trying to earn my keep, my lady.”
“Lady, eh?”
He was grateful the dark hid his flush. “I’ve never known anyone like you—”
She shrugged with a little sigh, resting an elbow on the rail. “Maybe I am something of an oddity. But I am what they need me to be.”
He longed to know the woman she was alone under the stars, without so many eyes on her. He might never get another chance.
“How did…” He hesitated, uncertain.
“A freedwoman come to lead a band of outlaws?” She laughed. “I use that ignorance to my advantage. At every opportunity. People cannot see coming what they do not expect. I have learned to value that.”
He lowered his head, too ashamed to go on. He’d done the same in the first few weeks, repeatedly questioning Henry about how and why she’d come to lead them.
“And you are also something unexpected,” she said. “I lost good coin betting you’d make a fuss being assigned to collecting kindling and slopping pigs like an indenture.” That she’d noticed warmed him more than a little. “You’re a mercenary, but Heinrich says the name von Schwarzberg means something where you come from. Not that either stopped two of your own from trying to kill you. War’s hard enough on men, how did you wind up fighting your own for your life?”
“Their orders were to make sure I didn’t return,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I have difficulty making friends, it seems.”
She made a soft, thoughtful noise. “Hard to believe. Iain and the others seem to like you well enough. Henry worships the ground you lay foot on. Even the Schmidt’s ornery old sow hasn’t tried to kill you.”
“She likes corn,” he said. “I make sure to always bring her a few kernels. Peace offering.”
She laughed and her hand went to her shoulder. “I think I need your help, soldier.”
He swallowed hard as his mind churned up creative ideas for the possibilities of what she might need him for.
Wordless, he followed her back to the cabin. The fire had banked low. He added logs and stood by the stove, trying not to look eager. In a few moments it crackled, brightening the room once more. She shed layers of outerwear, leaving them on the hooks by the door. She sat on the edge of the skinny bench close to the fire. Her fingers went to the buttons of her jacket.
Lark eschewed proper women’s clothing. Even the plain cuts and simple petticoats of the frontier wives would have seemed foreign on her. Instead, she’d assembled a wardrobe of trousers and buckskin leggings, shirts cut down to her size worn under woolen justaucorps that in the distant past had belonged to a slightly built colonial son. She kept her hair braided or pinned under a cap of the kind favored by traders and mountain men. At a glance, she could often be mistaken for someone’s son or a young servant.
He’d not thought much about what lay underneath. When he was recovering he hadn’t even thought of her in any way other than as his doctor and, perhaps, captor. As she loosened the neck of the plain linen shirt over her collarbones, his body reminded him of his health and his sex.
She looked up. “Bring the box above the shelf beside the fire, would you?”
He paused, dumb. She gestured to the old bandages on her right shoulder beneath her shift.
“It appears my reputation as being untouchable is a bit manufactured.” She sighed and admitted, “Mrs. Schmidt will fuss over me like one of the children. She dislikes that I hunt with the men. And that I dress like one. And carry myself as one. But otherwise she’s the most sensible one here. I’d hoped it would be a trait you share. Also, you owe me one, I think.”
In spite of himself, he chuckled. “This is hardly repayment for a life.”
“Well, consider it work toward a debt,” she said, exasperated.
How could he be so stupid to think this had been an invitation? Him no more than an invalid, good only for child’s labor. She could have any of the men who had already proven their fitness.
But she had asked him. He regained his wits and his tongue over the mixture of shame and disappointment. “Yes, I can do this.”
She looked back into the fire, angling her back to him as she slid the outer shirt to her waist and began to work the shift free over her right shoulder. He set the box between them. The scent of pine and bayberry drifted up from beneath the wood smoke and roasting meat smells clinging to her hair. Wide shoulders, muscular from work, did nothing to reduce the femininity of the curve of her neck, the small of her back. The velvety shade of her skin lightened in those hidden places, marked only with freckles.
The movement made her wince. The faintest trace of dried blood showed through the top layer. All evening she had stood with the others with no sign of injury. Now he could see the stiffness as she started to unwind the bandages. He took over and she sighed. At the end, absorbent packing stuck to the wound and he had to work it free.
“Just get it over with.” She clenched her teeth on a yelp.
Revealed, the three long scratches looked angry red. The bleeding had stopped. A sluggish bit of clear and pink fluid bloomed when he pulled the last of the padding free.
She winced. “I cleaned it as best I could without attracting too much attention.”
He’d seen enough of wounds that infection could be deadly in the wilderness. “Why didn’t you get help?”
“Spirit-touched witch woman,” she said with grim humor. “I don’t get injured. How does it look?”
“Not infected,” he said, his fingers hovering over the scratches and the bare skin above and beneath. “Mostly clean.”
“Mostly?” She tried to peer over her own shoulder.
“Ja, bits of… here and there.” He paused. “Would you like—that is—could I finish cleaning it?”
“I would be grateful.”
At the sight of goose bumps on her skin, he threw another log on the fire. Returning with a tin of hot water and a clean cloth, he found himself under her canny gaze.
“You thought I brought you here to seduce you.” She turned her back to him again, but she didn’t laugh. Wonder edged her voice. Surprise.
“I didn’t think.” He rested his fingers on the smooth skin above the slashes and focused on cleaning a bit of tree sap and dirt from a spot she hadn’t been abl
e to reach. No point dabbing at it. Better to get on with it. She hissed a little but did not pull away or reproach him.
At last he sat back, pleased with his effort. “Which paste?”
“The blue tin,” she said. “Smells like sulfur and tar.”
He recoiled as he inspected the opaque yellow goo. “Indeed.”
While he worked, she began to speak, her voice tight with discomfort at first, then softening. “This was my father’s cabin. He fled the highlands after the rebellion to join his brother as a trapper. My mother escaped one of the few farms near Charleston large enough to keep slaves. A band of the Ye Iswa—you call them Cheraw—took her in, and she traveled with them. She also had a bit of sight, and they valued that. Fever took her and my sister when I was twelve. My father never recovered. My brothers and I eked it out here for a while together. Then the eldest, Deacon, went east and married. They own a mercantile. We do a good bit of trade with them.”
She exhaled. “War turns desperate men to criminals, wives and families to widows and orphans, preyed on by the ruthless. My other brother and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing, so we started bringing them here. The ones who’d been friends with the wrong side and had their homesteads burned out by the other, or were taken advantage of by the lawlessness of unscrupulous men. Ewan died caught up in some skirmish with some loyalists a few years back and that left me.”
Forty souls, all looking to her for safety and order. And her, standing alone.
Treated and dressed in clean wrappings, she slid her shirt on and flexed her shoulder experimentally. He meticulously repacked the box, placing the used bandages in the basket he had seen her use many times when she finished checking his wound. She stood, going to the door. She replaced her hat and her scarf, guiding her coat over her injured shoulder before dropping her good arm in the other side. He remained beside the fire.
The Talon & the Blade Page 9