The Talon & the Blade

by Jasmine Silvera

  Most mortals would have flinched away from the sight of his teeth. Amelia held her ground. She reached out a hand and he gave her his, surprised by the strength of the grasp that yanked him to her level.

  “She needs you now.”

  “She doesn’t want my protection,” Gregor said.

  “It doesn’t matter, because you need hers too,” Amelia said. “Be well, Sticks.”

  The laugh rose before he could check it. She pressed her cheek to his and breathed in deep before letting him go. A traditional farewell?

  “He smells good too,” Amelia informed Ana with a pleased little cackle. “Make sure you try before you buy though, you hear?”

  Ana shook her head, laughing, but a pale shade of pink dusted her cheeks when she said her farewell. When Ana turned to him, she could not meet his eyes. “I see what you mean about meddlesome old people.”

  He almost smiled, but instead went to retrieve his bags. “I’ll meet you in the car, Auntie.”

  “Does Raymond track lesser necromancers?” Gregor asked without taking his eyes off the road as Ana hung up from her latest attempt to reach Raymond.

  She plugged the phone in to recharge and leaned back against the headrest, closing her eyes against the weary frustration of always being too late.

  “He eliminated most before the twentieth century,” she said. “The traveling circus was a convenient cover to hunt the last of them down. They swore fealty or he destroyed them. It’s how he grew powerful enough to ascend. And just in time. When the Allegiance formed, he was ready. We keep records of anyone who’s entered since the godswar but Huxley, wasn’t even a blip on my radar. How did he hook up with our Laughing Girl, and why now?”

  “Maybe we have it backward,” he said. “Maybe she made the time now. Everyone has a blind spot. She’s Raymond’s.”

  “What makes him think he’s strong enough to take on an Allegiance-level necromancer?”

  “What makes you think he’s not?” Gregor had programmed the tracker satellite information into the onboard navigation so they could get real-time updates on the dash screen.

  It pinged and she opened her eyes. “Tell me.”

  He frowned. So it wasn’t going to be something she liked then.

  “I’m a big girl,” she said. “And an old one. I can take it.”

  “Raymond skimped on his gift to the first of his Aegis. That means one of two things. He doesn’t have the power to give anything more. Or he held out on you because he is conserving his strength. Either way, he’s not as powerful as I expected. Maybe Barnabas knows it.”

  His voice held a curious mix of frustration, regret, and concern. She saw no lie in him. He believed it.

  “Raymond’s held the North American territory without challenge since the godswar ended,” she said, unable to keep all the defensiveness out of her voice.

  “Which means nothing,” he said. “Except that no one has challenged him. He does put on a good show.”

  She wanted to argue, but he had a point. Good stories didn’t just overlook the truth, they hid truths as well.

  “So Barnabas Huxley stumbles on Laughing Girl,” Ana said. “She can’t come out of the sea. How would he even know?”

  “He’s a water.” Gregor drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. “The affinity always manifests with awareness of the creatures within. Maybe he lured her into a parlay and a bargain.”

  “And talked the wolves into teaming up to take Raymond down.”

  “Alliances are powerful things,” Gregor said. “But the wolves are out now. You took care of that.”

  Was that admiration in his voice?

  “And she is no longer a mystery,” Gregor finished. “If she ever was.”

  Ana ignored the dig in his words. The case he built against Raymond was his own. He had no idea what life had been like in the first years after the godswar with Raymond drained from doing his part to form the barrier that kept the powerful entities known as gods from interfering in human affairs And now this upstart necromancer thought to swoop in and take what she and Raymond had fought tooth and nail for.

  “He’ll make his move soon then,” Ana said. “One way or another, this ends.”

  Gregor shook his head, frowning. “This feels… incomplete. And Amelia’s story?”

  “That she’s bound?”

  “Laughing Girl loved Raymond. Why this desire to take him down?”

  She scoffed. “He turned her into a monster. She’s not strong enough on her own. She needs this alliance as much as Barnabas.”

  “And if she’s being forced to work against Raymond? If we could free her, maybe we’d have an ally—”

  Ana shook her head, furious. “She’s cast her lot with that opportunist scum. Nothing else matters.”

  The rage burned clean through on a fuel she recognized well. Vengeance had a familiar taste in her mouth, the need for a wrong to be righted, a stain to be erased. Whoever this necromancer thought he was, she’d do everything in her power to help Raymond stop him from taking what wasn’t his.

  Gregor settled back in his seat, shooting a sideways glance her direction before his gaze returned to the road. His jaw worked, but he kept silent, as if sensing the chasm growing as the thing he could never understand wedged between them and drove deep.

  Hard to believe just a few hours ago they had been wrapped up in blankets, skin to skin. But if she focused on it, the tenuous connection stretched between them.

  Get a grip. She snapped herself back to the matter at hand. What happened in Seattle lay behind them. And all the better. She had a monster to kill and a rival necromancer to put down.

  “Ana Gozen.” The way Gregor said her name called her out of her thoughts and sent her sprawling into memory. “Onna Bugeisha.”

  The morning after she had taken her vow to Raymond, she watched the dawn from their river camp as the wondrous new powers surged through her body, repairing old injuries and imbuing her with strength and surety. She’d felt reborn.

  He settled beside her on the rock overlooking the spill of water around the bend in the river. “It’s not my name—Raymond Nightfeather.”

  There was a new understanding between them now. They could communicate without speaking a word out loud. It was part of the thing binding them. He met her eyes briefly. “My teacher said it’s bad luck to go into a new life with an old name.”

  The faintest traces of gray marked his temples, his skin no longer soft with the wear of age. She thought of the men they’d tracked, the ones he’d faced, frozen in a state he called In Between. Every time, he emerged younger, stronger, and his adversaries had fallen. Some of that power now ran through her veins.

  For a moment they watched the trout break the still eddy, taking advantage of the waking insects daring the water surface as the light went from a pale blue to rose gold.

  “Way I see it, this is a rebirth.” He rose to go down to the water to fish with the long sharpened stick he favored. “Best pick the name that suits you now and leave that girl behind.”

  She took the title she could never have. Made it a name.

  “My Lady Samurai.” Raymond’s back shook with laughter as he rose, a glistening trout writhing on the end of his stick as its gills opened and closed desperately. He cast a glance back over his shoulder at her. “Suits you. Ana Gozen it is.”

  It had taken Gregor long enough to see it, and for a moment she wished she had not tried to be so clever when she named herself. She closed her eyes against the swell of memories that rose and left anger in their wake.

  “Who are you really?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Gozen is a title,” Gregor went on when she remained silent, watching her in sideways glances. “Something like lady, right? And Ana sounds close enough to an Anglicized version of Onna.”

  She hadn’t responded to him, but she hadn’t run him through either. He wanted to admire her loyalty, her selflessness. He’d tried to give Azrael as much in two hundred year
s, until the Vogels had come back into his life. The first time Azrael spoke her name—the dancer foisted on him by the Allegiance to help track a killer—his loyalty began to splinter. And when it became clear he could not scare or threaten Isela enough to make her fail in the job she had been hired for, the splinter became a chasm in his vow. Did he have any right to question Ana now?

  “I thought it had a kind of symmetry.” In the brief flash of hawk gold, he knew it didn’t matter.

  “Who are you, really?”

  Her brows lowered in question, and her eyes darted to him.

  “The name Ana Gozen,” he said. “It’s just a mask. One you’ve been using to hide yourself.”

  “Think having my real name will give you some power over me?” Ana laughed. “Make you feel better?”

  “What would make me feel better,” he said, keeping his voice steady, “is knowing you understand the disadvantage at which you’ve been placed and start responding with an ounce of self-preservation. Start with your real name and keep going until you stop wanting to die in the cage you’ve built for yourself.”

  “The cage…”

  He recognized the look on her face, but he’d let her run him through a thousand times if it meant she heard him. “Azrael has never sent me to die to clean up his mess.”

  “Azrael inherited a territory so bowed into submission by the previous necromancer that the populace welcomed him with open arms,” she snarled. “I saw the news feeds. A ticker tape parade for the benevolent Azrael.”

  Gregor stilled, unprepared for the raw fury in her voice.

  “These fucking mortals. Raymond gave them everything Azrael did, and they still hate and fear him and revolt every chance they get.”

  The surprise must have shown on his face, because she loosed a hard laugh, shaking her head. “Let me tell you what we inherited after the godswar. Raymond has twice the geographic territory of your beloved Azrael and a more divided population in every way. They were tearing each other apart long before the rest of the world came at them. Floods and earthquakes and tornadoes and wildfires. Plague.”

  Her breath shuddered, and a note of horror edged her words. “The Eastern Seaboard wasn’t destroyed by weapons. They ravaged each other with a contagion that makes the worst zombie look like relief. And there’s no cure. He’s maintaining the spell to keep it contained until the necromancers working on it can unravel the magic.”

  She took a hard breath, her jaw locked for a moment before she could speak again. “So no, he doesn’t have any extra to spare for me. And why should he? I can put down most everything that comes my way with a single sword. He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask.”

  She shook her head, glaring out the window again. Her fists clenched on her thighs, the knuckles white. On impulse he settled a hand over hers. She snatched hers away.

  “Ana, I didn’t—”

  Her voice wavered. The fire of her words had burned out, leaving a weary rasp. “I don’t know the content of your vow to Azrael, Mr. Schwarz—”

  “One hundred years of service,” he said.

  She needed to know the truth of their different lives, even if she hated him for it after. He stated the terms. “I protect Azrael’s life, enforce his codes. In his territory, I am his eyes and his ears—anything I see, he sees, same as hearing. He can control my body from afar—in his territory. In exchange, I got the sword, as you know, and the speed, agility—I can climb like a monkey, which comes in handy more than you’d think—and I can survive most anything except beheading or being cut into tiny pieces. And most importantly: choice. Whatever he sends me into on his behalf, he grants me access to all the information he has. I decide to go. He’s given me his trust. At the end of the first hundred years, I chose to renew my vow. And I will continue to serve.”

  The silence stretched miles unbroken.

  “There is too much hidden between necromancers,” he said with a sigh. “I would not have it be so between us. I may have assumed too much, but Ana, being his enforcer puts a target on your back bigger than any of the other Aegis. You deserve more.”

  Her voice went cold. “Do you know what became of the men who killed my sister? I slaughtered them. I cut them to pieces. I may have avenged Takami’s death, but I could never remove the stain of losing her in the first place. Nothing remained for me in any life. Raymond gave me a reason to keep going. Purpose. I wouldn’t be here if not for him. Don’t tell me what I deserve.”

  It was like trying to climb a talus slope—every grasp, every foothold, sent the surface sliding out from beneath him. Every step slid him farther away from her.

  “We were opportunities,” Gregor said. “You said it—we weren’t normal, even before the gift. They plucked us from our darkest moments. They gave us this.” His hand swept the car, taking in the swords and the powers and the whole damn world. “And we serve them in exchange. But it doesn’t have to be blindly.”

  “It’s my duty—”

  Her phone rang. After a brief exchange she hung up, inputting an address into the navigation.

  “Raymond’s in San Francisco,” she said. “Auger caught up with them. He and the boys are pursuing Barnabas Huxley’s last-known whereabouts.”

  The navigation system chimed with a new arrival time and routing information. She swiped the tracking screen away and zoomed in on the city map.

  “This is near the wharf,” she said.

  She brought the tracking screen back to the forefront. Laughing Girl was moving fast now. He laid down the accelerator, missing the roar of an engine in spite of the accompanying force pressing him into the seat.

  “It’s a trap,” she muttered, reaching for her phone. “She’s going to be waiting for him.”

  “Ana.” He tried again.

  “I’ve made my choice,” she said before he could finish. “Raymond is my master. Ana Gozen is who I am now. And that’s all that matters.”

  The Nightfeather’s Talons. A single-minded hunting raptor. He wondered if Raymond had come up with it, with his badges and his comic books. Talons gripped and they held. The release took conscious effort, the desire to let go. Maybe the necromancer knew her better than Gregor ever could.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Just after twilight, Gregor slid into a loading zone directly in front of the warehouse. “We should probably have a plan.”

  “Why start now?”

  The car door slammed in her wake, leaving him in the insulated silence full of her scent. What were they if not weapons honed to a killing point to be wielded by necromancers? He’d made his vow. Whatever she walked into, they would do it together. He leaped out of the car.

  The sword coalesced on his back as he closed the distance between them in a few leaps, strolling tourists screaming and scattering in his wake. He expected Ana to chide him, but the noises coming from inside the warehouse had her focus. The sound of a fight.

  Ana went toward the chained double doors at the front of the building. Gregor didn’t bother, scaling the outer walls hand over foot and leaping up onto the roof. Skylights ran down the center of the rectangular building. He picked the one closest to the noise, drawing his sword as he crashed through the window made opaque by frosted glass and sediment.

  The darkness of the warehouse swallowed him. He landed in the puddle of light created by the newly emptied window—arched black scimitar in one hand, the less beautiful but equally deadly semiautomatic in the other. Dust and broken glass glittered around him. He turned a slow circle, blade at guard as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Grotesque, rippling shadows overwhelmed Auger and the giants.

  Another clutch of demons.

  Ana crashed through a side door, sliding to a stop with an expression of disgust. He wasn’t sure if she was irritated with the appearance of demons or of the failure of her subordinates to do their jobs. He almost laughed.

  “Just in time,” Gregor said.

  A misshapen canid waved a barbed tail in Gregor’s direction and lowered its head. G
regor tipped the blade in invitation. The moment of reprieve broke in a cacophony of inhuman growls and shrieks. Gregor stepped into the fray, clearing a path for Ana.

  “Where is he?” Ana snapped, freeing Auger up from the double-headed snake.

  “Docks.”

  Ana hesitated. Raymond’s guard was no match for the remaining demons. Gregor jerked his head. “Go.”

  Ana turned, and a bullish grotesque leaped into her path, lowering a leonine head with slavering jaws. She went at it running, flinging her body to the ground at the last minute and sliding past. Her blades flashed before they gored the clinging shadow, and the demon collapsed in her wake. Four legs skittered out around it. Severed, they began to melt into the nebulous gunk demons left behind. Gregor finished it with a bullet to the brain, sword ready in case that wasn’t enough. Demon ichor splashed his pants, tearing holes in the fabric. He swore. He was out of suits.

  He took down two more. Auger and the boys could handle themselves with the rest.

  Like in the art studio, demons weren’t the only defense the rogue necromancer had summoned. He recognized the clean slice of Ana’s blades in the trail of undead body parts—no spare slashes or useless stabs. Each blow had struck precisely, severing a limb or a head, before she moved on.

  Christ, this woman set him on fire.

  Ahead, Ana yelled and something heavy slammed against wood and water. The building shuddered around them.

  He crashed through the doors as the last of the creature disappeared under the dark, churning water of the empty boat launch. Ana flung herself out of a pile of splintered wood paneling and old fishing nets, racing down the dock in pursuit. “She has him.”

  “Not another fucking boat.” Gregor shook his head as she leaped onto a boat tied at the end of the launch, working the ropes.

  An armless undead rose from the netting with a snarl. He fired once without looking. It collapsed in a heap. He strode down the dock.

  Ana brought the engine to life with a roar and tossed off the last of the ropes. It took him a moment too long to realize she intended to leave him.