First Blood

by K. Gorman

  He looked at her again. A small part of her gained a large amount of satisfaction from his hesitation as he, once again, took in the astonishing amount of blood that covered her. Some of it lay so thick in places that it was beginning to move in one piece.

  Behind her, the skewered demon made a gurgling sound. Caracel was bent over it, doing something.

  “So,” Nales said, hesitant. “Are you here to kill me, or rescue me?”

  “That depends.” She leaned closer and dropped her tone. Her accent thickened around the Janessi syllables, turning them guttural. “What, precisely, did you tell the demon back in the forest?”

  “It was a repeat of what I’d said to him in Janessi,” Nales said. “I told him I could get the sword, and that Pristav Castle was easy to capture.”

  She waited. “And?”

  “And a few other things to sweeten the pot.”

  “Such as?”

  “Passcodes to the armory, locations of weapons caches, updated maps and customs.” He grimaced. “He only half-listened. His only focus was on the sword. He asked for a location tattoo and a blood service.”

  Ah. That made sense. A blood service contract was the magical equivalent to slavery. If one disobeyed the contract holder, they had a direct line of punishment. It was unavoidable, and lasted for one’s entire lifetime. Though common among demonic tales, only the old houses in Gaia still used them—mostly to stop family secrets from spreading.

  Grobitzsnak couldn’t wield Andalai himself, but he could make a puppet out of someone who could.

  Prince Nales, however, had to agree to it.

  Her gaze slid over his varying cuts and bruises. “Let me guess—you said ‘no.’”

  “I said no.”

  “And he decided to work you over until you did.”

  “Yes. Something about letting me dwell in my own despair and humiliating me until I wasn’t even a shadow of my former self.” He winced. “He offered to pass me around for his army’s gratification, including the undead.”

  Catrin went very still. Old, deep anger stirred in her. She felt two sets of stares bore into her shoulders. Doneil and Matteo, waiting by the wall in silence.

  After a moment, her gaze slipped back up to Nales.

  “Would you like me to kill him?” she asked.

  The words hung in the air, the offer like a knife. She held his stare.

  A second ticked by. Then another.

  When he didn’t answer, she let it go.

  “What about the kiss?” she asked.

  Behind her, Doneil started. “Kiss?”

  Nales winced, the seriousness from a moment earlier broken. “I’m sorry about that. I had to get you away somehow. You were dispensable, otherwise.”

  Her stomach churned at that reminder, but she pushed the feeling down. Her eyebrows arched upward. “And he believed in that? In love?”

  “No.” Nales hesitated. “He believes in possession and control.”

  Her jaws tightened.

  By his tone, he did not mean the magical kind. He meant physical. Good, old-fashioned subjugation.

  Her back molars ground together. Briefly, the image of Tarris’ eyes came to her, liquid jade in the torchlight.

  That hadn’t been about love, either.

  We’re done here. With a rigid stance, she straightened and pulled the cage door open. Metal screeched.

  “Doneil,” she called. “Your turn.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was already brushing her out of the way, helping Nales out of the cage. She heard him hiss. “A kiss, Nales? Temdin, no wonder she wanted to kill you.”

  Healing magic stirred. She turned away. Caracel stood two paces from the wall, a dour look on his face. The demon lay slumped at his feet.

  She eyed him. “He doesn’t know where your priestess is?”

  He grunted. “Lost consciousness before I could ask.”

  By his tone, the inconvenience frustrated him. She glanced around at the room, noting the other cages. “That’s unfortunate.”

  He grunted again. She took it for a dismissal and slid her gaze elsewhere. Matteo had taken a defensive position against the wall, the light on his gun active. Like usual, a certain amount of concern and confusion highlighted his expression, but he’d pushed it into a concentrated mask.

  He’d been impeccable on the infiltration, so far, which was incredible—considering everything, she doubted he had much of a clue as to what was going on. It was only yesterday that he’d discovered that magic existed. Had she been in his position, thrust suddenly into the company of foreign strangers, on a hastily-planned mission involving crazy amounts of magic and demons, unable to even understand the language, she doubted she would have handled it so well.

  Likely, she would have stabbed someone.

  She caught his attention with a wave, then turned the gesture into a slower wave like she’d seen Doneil do, tilting her head to get the meaning across.

  How are you doing?

  He let out a quick breath—was that a laugh? If so, she could feel the tension and black humor dripping off it—but he returned the gesture. At the end of it, he closed his fist and slid his thumb into an ‘up’ position.

  She stared at it. She had no idea what that meant, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it right now.

  We have got to find a way to communicate with him.

  She glanced back to the fey, then down to the wounded demon on the floor, giving him a more thorough examination. The humanity in him surprised her. It wasn’t like looking at a troll, or at one of the goblin’s hill clan cousins where the line between savage and civil was a paper-thin cut—he was very obviously clean, sentient, and a high-ranking individual in whatever organization system these demons used for their army.

  Even now, with the subtle difference baring themselves to her perusal—the cheekbones that jutted out a little too broadly, the thicker bones of his wrist, the slight upturn of the ridge above his eye—he could still pass for an elf. If one dressed him in different clothes and stuck him on the edge of the Raidt, she would have assumed he was a hybrid.

  Only the rentac script tattooed on his face, and the slight scent of sulfur in his blood, gave him away.

  Something to ask Nales about.

  Actually, she had quite a lot of somethings to ask him about.

  Her gaze slid up to where Doneil was still healing the prince. His skin had regained some of its color, and he looked to be bleeding less. Bruises still marked his face, but they faded as she watched. A few smears of dirt traced through his hair, and it fell in messy, jagged locks across his brow.

  His eyes, though…

  Doneil had slipped into silence as he worked, and the prince’s stare focused on a point midway between him and a blank part of the wall across the room, his brow making a deep, contemplative furrow.

  Shit. She knew that expression. He was planning something.

  Abruptly, that faraway look focused and looked to her. “Could you kill him?”

  She opened her mouth. It was a simple question, but a complicated answer.

  “No, not likely,” she said. “He’s too powerful.

  “Then why offer?”

  “Because the rnari upper levels are a notoriously crazy and suicidal lot,” Doneil grunted. The healing magic still worked, outlining his face. Nales had been a lot more injured than she’d first thought. “She might be able to kill him, but it would take weeks of skulking about in this place, memorizing routines and patrol routes, dodging magic, blending in, until she found a way to sneak into his bedchamber and knife him in his sleep.”

  Doneil paused. A frown cut down through his face. Likely, he was following the same lines of thought she had just gone down.

  His eyes narrowed on Nales, suspicious. “Why ask?”

  Nales straightened, rubbing a patch of skin on his arm that was still sticky with his own blood.

  “The demon has the destruction orb of Cnixe, one of the Seven. It’s how he can corrupt the l
ey lines.”

  Caracel swore, his lips curling back from his teeth in distaste. “Truly?”

  Her jaws tightened. She knew precisely where Nales was going with this.

  “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. We are getting you out of here. You can summon your forces and deal with the demon and his power orb after.”

  “Er…” Doneil lifted his hand, a puzzled expression on his face. “What is the destruction orb of Cnixe?”

  She glanced to Caracel. When he didn’t make a move to explain, she went ahead. “The Seven were once part of the divine energies that made the worlds. After the Sundering, they supposedly collapsed unto themselves, forming seven orbs of immense power. Three of them, Yinilli, V’ithi, and Andro’t, serve in the highest fey temples. The other four, including Cnixe, were either destroyed or lost.”

  It was an old story. She only knew it because she’d done a lot of research into specific mythologies, and the Seven happened to cross them.

  “And it just resurfaced in the hands of the demon we’re up against?” Doneil’s expression twisted. “Lucky us.”

  Indeed. Lucky them.

  “We can’t.” She held up a finger when Nales made to interrupt her. “That’s not a won’t, that’s a can’t. We simply aren’t capable of what you ask right now.”

  He could make her. They both knew it. He could invoke the Undersworn Pledge, and she would have to comply—or be killed for treason.

  By the way his eyes calculated, he was thinking about it.

  “We have other priorities right now. Magic orbs can wait.” She deliberately put a shoulder to him and addressed Caracel, gesturing to the demon on the floor. “Doneil can heal him, and Nales speaks rentac. If this demon knows where she is, we’ll find her.”

  The fey eyed her. “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll find another demon who does.” She stretched her neck. Her body still felt strong, but the urge to commit violence had slowed, and the tiredness was catching up to her—a sign the rnari tonic was starting to turn from its peak.

  “It’s our only option,” she said when she was finished. “This place is too big. We can’t get lucky twice.”

  She’d barely finished the sentence when a door at the far end of the chamber scraped open.

  Volaon stepped in. Then Jorire. Their attention snapped across the hall, black eyes training on Caracel. Behind them, the other two heartsworn entered, a small, delicate figure trapped between them.

  The priestess.

  Chapter 23

  “Guess you don’t need that demon, after all.”

  Catrin unsheathed her blades. Behind her, Caracel jerked his sword out of the demon’s shoulder. A slicing gurgle followed as he slashed through the fallen demon’s unconscious throat. Metal rang on the ground as Nales picked up the demon’s former sword.

  She strode forward. “Matteo! Look sharp!”

  He wouldn’t understand her, but the situation was pretty obvious—one hostage, five hostiles to kill. None of the undead had cleaned themselves up, and they were all obviously… not right. Volaon himself had a new, nasty slash wound from sternum to shoulder, making his stance hitch slightly, but his movements remained smooth and strong.

  She flipped the blades in her hands, adjusted her grip, and rolled her shoulders.

  “Any magic I need to know about with them?” she asked Caracel.

  On the other side of the room, the fey drew their weapons with a chorus of sliding metal and cloth.

  “If they haven’t used it by now, it is no longer available to them. Fey are bound through life, not death.” He paused. “Death is the realm of demons.”

  She looked sharply at him at that last sentence, her mind flipping back to the ruins they’d stumbled across earlier, and the fey belief of a more unified four-worlds in ancient times.

  And to the apparent orb of Cnixe that actually existed.

  Then, the battle began, and there was no more time.

  Darts of red sizzled past her, Matteo’s aim sniping the first of the fey in the head before the rest of them clued in. The fey fell almost immediately, blood and brain matter exploding from the side of his skull.

  In an eerie, shivery motion, the remaining fey swiveled their heads toward Matteo.

  He didn’t stop firing, but the fey began defending. Arms came up, protecting their head with their bracers and the flesh of their forearms.

  They sprinted for him in a silent rush.

  Catrin cried out and made to intercept. Matteo kept firing, but began backing up very quickly.

  Gods, how she wished for her magic.

  Then Caracel did something, and the atmosphere shifted. Time slowed into a bubble. Ahead, the undead fey moved as if the air had turned to sludge. Matteo, by contrast, skipped backward. Red darts of light cracked into the thickened field, pulsating.

  She got close to Jorire, dug her feet into the ground, and leapt.

  Time sped up abruptly. Jorire spun and sliced her sword, and Catrin jerked down, driving her blades into the opening.

  The fey’s body was stiff and hard. Cold. Her blades came back with thick, black blood. She staggered away, cut another slash into the back of the fey’s thigh.

  Then, Nales was there.

  The prince bowled into the undead fey. Steel clashed as Jorire blocked and snarled. Nales dodged, defended. Though his movements with the sword were balanced and trained, he rocked backward against the fey’s strength.

  Catrin prowled around, waiting for an opening.

  Beyond, Doneil intercepted the third. He and Matteo took the fey down together in a rush of flashing red lights and slicing blades. Caracel was fighting Volaon off to the side, a quick-step rush of slashing steel.

  Jorire snarled, obliterated Nales’ guard with a downstroke, and sent him staggering back, chasing him.

  Catrin rushed her from the flank and risked a leap. Jorire moved, but she twisted in mid-air. Both of her blades dug through the fey’s neck, and her momentum took them both in an awkward fall to the ground.

  Her back thudded against the floor, the fey halfway on top of her and still moving. She dug her blades in a little harder and was rewarded when the body went limp.

  She’d severed the spinal cord.

  Good to know that works. With a grimace and a movement that was more a forceful nudge than a kick, she pushed the fey off her. A shadow moved to her back—Nales, sword in hand, protecting her until she stood. She rolled to her feet and surveyed the room.

  Most of the other fey were down. Only Volaon still moved, clashing in a relentless battle against Caracel. She took a moment to view the dead, looking for signs of movement, then moved on.

  The priestess had backed far against the wall, her eyes wary as Doneil jogged over to her. A large amount of dark blood splattered the left side of her neck, but after a moment’s glance, Catrin decided it wasn’t the priestess’ blood. Her former guard lay on the floor several paces away. Most of his head was gone, disintegrated in blackened chunks from Matteo’s shots, which explained the blood on the priestess’ neck. The guard had been standing right behind her.

  Matteo was still across the room from her. He must have made the shot from there. A lot of shots, as evidenced by the guard’s burned and pock-marked body.

  She decided to process that later. Her attention turned back to the fight.

  It was clear that Volaon and Caracel had trained together for a long and dedicated time. Given the nature of the fey heartsworn, that was a must. Caracel parried and countered almost every one of Volaon’s strikes with a practiced memory.

  But he wasn’t attacking. And he was losing stamina.

  As she watched, Volaon almost got him. Caracel leapt back, the blade narrowly missing his gut.

  She jerked forward, then stopped. Hesitating.

  Then, magic tinged the air, sharp as metal. A voice whispered close to her ear.

  “Kill him.”

  Her head snapped around. Across the room, the fey priestess was starin
g at her. Their eyes locked. The scent of magic lifted again. She watched the priestess’ mouth move.

  “Caracel is his heart-brother. He can’t do it.” The priestess’s gaze moved from her to the fight, a hard mix of grief and anger rippling through her expression. “Volaon li Naine is still in there, rnari, feeling his dead flesh move. Release him from this torture, and I can release his soul from this degradation. This is the role I give to you.”

  A shiver ran down her spine, and she sucked in a breath. A fey priestess was as close to the gods as one could get, and this one had just given her an order.

  For a second, she didn’t breathe.

  Then, her jaws tightened.

  She stepped forward.

  Caracel broke off, breathing hard—another non-attack. Tension drew his face into a tight mask, and his body was shaking with more than just exertion.

  Volaon lunged again, blade slipping up between them in a stabbing motion that had Caracel reeling off to the side to dodge. The prince pressed, and an angry clash of steel drove the fight toward her.

  She ducked around Caracel’s shoulder, caught Volaon’s sword with her left blade, and jabbed her right to his neck.

  He shoved the hilt of his weapon down and blocked her. She jerked her hand away when he made a grab for it.

  Her mind flashed back to the moment she’d seen him in the forest. His silhouette in the trees. The way the moon and firelight gleamed off the blood and pale skin. His hair, messed up and disheveled. The quiet seconds before he’d attacked, before his cooling flesh had closed on her arm and she’d realized he was undead.

  Seeing him in the light, everything appeared in stark, obvious detail.

  The gore had congealed long ago, combined with an awful blackness that reminded her of demon blood. Scratches and scrapes marred his body, along with thicker, more serious wounds. Some, he’d clearly gotten before he’d died, because the blood had spilled over his skin and clothes and stuck there, but others were clearly posthumous—simple cuts without much blood at all, despite their deepness.

  Dead muscles flexed underneath them, gray and rock-hard.

  Whatever power reanimated him had no care for the limits of a mortal body—it simply used him like a parasite, threading through his dead limbs like a puppets’ strings. Already, parts of him were tearing from the excess strength he used, wounds ripping further instead of healing. The slash across his chest was black and revolting, giving off an odd, oily smell that held a tinge of rot and gouged deep enough to see the muscles flex. One of his arms was definitely fractured, but he still swung his sword with the strength of a bull.