Nathaniel staggered to his feet covered in blood and breathing hard, but the other man didn’t get up. Nathaniel had won. We’d survived because he’d killed Barnabas. I stared at the dried husk that was the man I was slowly killing. The strong hand that had grabbed my arm was just bones covered in dry skin. It didn’t even feel like a hand anymore, and still I fed on the very essence of his life. If I stopped now, I could give back the energy I’d stolen and he’d heal, but I didn’t want him to heal. We were fighting for our lives. Tommy didn’t get to live any longer than Barnabas had.
Nathaniel’s voice was hoarse, almost as if he’d been the one screaming. “Can I undo your wrist? Is it safe to touch you?”
“No,” I said, and I swallowed all the power I’d gained from the man in front of me. I pushed the urge to feed and feed and feed back in the dark box of my soul, and Tommy fell to the floor like a broken doll.
Nathaniel reached up one hand and undid my right wrist. He still had the completely blood-soaked knife in his other hand. It felt good to have one wrist free, but the magic was still there, still blocking me. I reached over and undid the other wrist myself. The moment that I wasn’t touching the chains I could suddenly hear all my people; every metaphysical link was there again. Nathaniel was there again, bright and like another beating heart. I swayed with the fear from Dev, and Damian came back to life inside my head like a piece of myself that I hadn’t known was missing.
Nathaniel reached out to me and then dropped his bloody hand before he touched me. “I can feel you again.”
“Wipe your hands on his sweater,” I said, motioning to the dried husk that was lying at our feet beside the bloody mess that was our other victim.
Nathaniel squatted down and wiped his hands, and the knife on the sweater, and then stood back up. “He’s still screaming.”
“I can’t hear him.”
“I can.”
“Hand me the knife.” He gave it to me without comment. I knelt down, and now I could hear a high-pitched noise. He would stay alive in there, maybe indefinitely. Obsidian Butterfly had used it as punishment for her people, placing them in stone coffins until she wanted to get them back out and forgive them. I plunged the blade through the dry paper skin of the lower chest, turned the blade sharply up and in, until I felt the thicker meat of the heart. Most of the rest of the insides had dried out like the skin, but the heart was still there, almost as thick and alive as normal. I drove the blade up into that beating source of life until the screaming stopped.
I stood up and offered Nathaniel the blade again. He shook his head. “No, you keep it. It took me a lot to kill the other one. You did it in one strike. I’m not good enough with a knife yet.”
“It comes with practice,” I said.
He nodded. I knelt down and was getting Tommy’s gun out of its holster to give to Nathaniel when Rodina came down the stairs so quietly we didn’t hear her at all. She had a Glock in her hand pointed nice and steady. Some days you just can’t win for losing. Fuck.
82
SHE LOOKED AT us, smiling, and finally laughed, “Here I come to rescue you, and I’m not sure you need it.”
“Why would you help us?” Nathaniel asked.
“Because the Lady Bitch is not our Evil Queen.”
“And you think I am?”
She looked at us and then to the floor at the bodies. “Maybe I don’t know much about being good, but I don’t think that’s it.”
I couldn’t argue, so I didn’t try. I just stripped the gun off of the body that I had killed, and handed it to Nathaniel along with an extra magazine. If you’re going to loot the bodies, take the extra ammo. The gun was a Glock, never my favorite. It just didn’t fit my hand right. Nathaniel checked to make sure it was loaded, automatically. It was good to see he’d been paying attention.
“Thank you for letting me see you feed on her, Anita. I have had my fill of that pale bitch.”
I gazed into those black eyes so like her brother’s and realized, “Somehow, I rolled you when I rolled your brother.”
“Yes, the only other one that could ever do that was the Queen of All Darkness herself. I knew we had been following the wrong heir.”
I didn’t argue with her; I’d been arguing with people for months that I wasn’t the heir to the Mother of All Darkness. It was getting silly to keep protesting, so I’d stop. I didn’t like it, but I could stop playing the lady who protesteth too much. I got the gun off of the other body, though the grip was slippery with blood. Nathaniel might not have killed the guard with the first blow, but he’d hurt him enough that he didn’t go for his gun; that was a serious win in my book.
We needed to move. Rodina had a backpack with tactical boots that fit me if I stuffed them with the thick socks and a black hooded sweatshirt to go over the lingerie. I had done my best to ignore how cold I was until I got the clothes on, and then I could finally shiver. She even had an extra hooded sweatshirt for Nathaniel.
She led us up the stairs with a short sword bare in her hand. She’d holstered her gun. She told us silence was essential and we followed her, but I said, “We need Damian.”
“We’ll be lucky to get the two of you out of here. He’s still with the pale bitch and both her servants.”
“We can’t leave him,” Nathaniel said. He must have thought at Damian, because suddenly the vampire was loud in our heads. Go, he thought at us, I’ll join you in Wicklow.