<You go. Protect,> she said, pointing in one direction. Then she pointed in a slightly different direction. <Contamination. I hunt.>
She simply disappeared into the woods, became a dreaded silence.
As he moved in the direction she’d pointed out, he heard voices, caught a glimpse of someone who was also moving toward a particular spot. Another Sanguinati?
His brain . . . blinked . . . and he forgot about the battle in the town of Bennett, the battle that had cost him so much. Forgot that he wasn’t whole in so many ways.
He was a hunter again. A fighter again.
Protect is what she’d said. Protect the Reader is what she meant.
The Reader was just up ahead. In danger.
Then he saw them. All of them. And he heard the Reader say, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha.”
He heard the words—and he knew.
Gonna gitcha.
Enemy. Found.
CHAPTER 91
Them
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Richard Cardosa wanted to sneer at this last bit of bravado from a creature whose spirit had already been broken by an expert in gaslighting and mental abuse. He used those same techniques often enough, so he recognized the signs in someone who had been exposed to that kind of psychological alteration. Did she really think she was healing, that she was ever going to be able to cope with the world when it took so little to push her to the edge of panic and being unable to function? He couldn’t figure out why this fat bit of nothing was so intriguing to the Others. She was prey, a broken thing he hadn’t considered interesting enough to even toy with. And yet, because of her, he’d been trapped in this place with that idiot Roash—and with Ellen, who had decided to end their sibling rivalry by trying to kill off her rival.
Time to go. With the chaos his two bloodsucking helpers were about to create, it would be easy for him to slip away. He’d have to walk out in order to get past the barricades, but he was fit. He could do it. All the attention would be on his twisted, fanged darlings, who had been willing to be led and had been ripe for everything he could teach them. For a moment, he regretted their loss, but their enthusiasm had made them a liability a couple of years ago, and they were a liability now. He couldn’t afford to let the cops or the bloodsuckers make a connection between him and Kira and Viktor.
But that fat bit of nothing said, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha,” as she swayed from blood loss and the effects of the feel-good drug, and he, Richard Cardosa, felt cold sweat pool in his armpits, felt . . .
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
“Monkey man,” a voice sang from somewhere nearby.
“Moooonkey man,” another voice sang.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
A snarl, and a sense of something moving toward him too fast.
Then thick fog covered the small clearing and he couldn’t see anything.
“Deal with them,” he told Viktor.
He turned and headed back the way he’d come, a straight line that would get him out of the fog.
Sounds of vicious fighting. Screams that might have been delicious if he’d still been the one controlling this project. But he had to get away now, had to . . .
The fog suddenly thinned, and the woman . . .
A face too symmetrical, too perfect, too human to be human. Then he saw the feathers entwined in the long black hair, and when her lips pulled back in a snarl . . .
CHAPTER 92
Vicki
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
“Monkey man,” a voice sang from somewhere nearby.
“Moooonkey man,” another voice sang.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Fog so thick I couldn’t see my hand—which meant, thankfully, I couldn’t see anything else. Didn’t interfere with my hearing, though.
I heard Cardosa give the order to deal with us. I think Viktor sprang at me, but something attacked him with a speed that gave him no chance to shift to his smoke form. So I heard him scream as squishy bits plopped on the ground and bones broke and broke and broke. It took only moments.
Kira grabbed at me, probably intending to drain me past saving, but something slammed into her and tossed her aside. That same something knocked me off my feet but caught one arm and eased me to the ground.
I didn’t hear Richard Cardosa shout, so I figured he got away.
The fog thinned. I was sitting on the ground, partially hidden by a pair of legs in black trousers made from a fabric that probably cost as much as the entire population of Sproing made in a year. Okay, exaggerating a bit, but not the sort of fabric used for an off-the-rack suit. I looked up, confirming that the rest of the clothes were just as fine. Up a little higher to the dark hair and olive skin.
Sanguinati. Definitely.
“Can you stand?” he asked, his eyes fixed on something slowly coming toward us.
I thought about Aiden pointing out one line in a list of words and phrases. problem solver. ally. “Are you Stavros?”
“I am.”
He held out his hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet.
“Vicki!” Grimshaw’s voice, a ways away but coming nearer.
“Victoria!” Ilya, also a ways away.
But right in front of us . . .
“Hello, Nicolai,” Stavros said gently.
Whatever had happened to this Sanguinati had been horrific, and the damage that I could see, especially to one side of his face and skull, made me think he would never fully recover. But he looked at me and made an attempt to smile as he held up a gourd and . . .
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Not a threat. A warning to be alert, to be careful.
The female who came toward us . . .
It was possible for a being to be too beautiful. Her face, so painfully perfect, would give humans nightmares for generations. The rest of her . . .
I didn’t need to see the short-handled scythe dripping blood from its tip or the feathers woven into her black hair to know I was looking at Crowbones. Predator. Elder. Destroyer. Protector?
feathers and bones.
a no sign over pity.
lakeside. peace.
When I saw Crowbones gently adjust the cape made of black feathers that Nicolai wore to hide whatever else was wrong with his body, I suddenly understood the message from Meg.
“She . . . cannot speak . . . human words,” Nicolai said as if he had to struggle to find each word. “I speak . . . for us.”
I saw Grimshaw enter the clearing—and I saw Ilya grab him to hold him back.
“I have a message from Broomstick Girl.” I wrapped both hands around Stavros’s arm so that I could say this before I fell down. “She said you should go to Lakeside. Both of you. You should stay in Lakeside over the winter and return to your work in the spring.”
Crowbones might be an Elder who had lived a solitary existence as protector and predator, delivering her own kind of justice to terra indigene and humans alike, but she wasn’t alone anymore. And neither was Nicolai, who would never be normal but had a purpose again. Had friendship. Had a partnership without pity.
“It would be my pleasure to drive you both to Lakeside and speak to Grandfather Erebus on your behalf,” Ilya said.
“Nicolai?” Stavros said, his voice still gentle. “Is that acceptable to you?”