A rattle at the door made his eyes flare wide. Just another drunken reveler, lost and wandering. There had been many after they settled in the room Suphtra had given them for the night, enough that Zera had lost her patience and struck the last fool to barge in, knocking him unconscious. She dumped him in the hallway, and the presence of the bleeding brute had put an end to unwelcome visitors. Before falling into her blankets, Zera had made sure the door was bolted, and then shoved a heavy chest in front of it for good measure.
The latch jiggled again, softly. Instead of some grumbling fool throwing a shoulder against the door, there seemed to be an element of stealth with this would-be intruder.
Leitos sat up, straining to see. A blade, its keen edge crawling with a gleam of moonlight, pushed slowly between the gap of the door and the doorframe. It slid up, clicked almost inaudibly against the iron bolt’s shaft, then began wiggling gently in a bid to slide it loose.
“Zera,” Leitos hissed. “Wake up.”
She sighed peacefully.
Leitos flung his blankets aside and crawled over to her, cringing at ever pop and creak of the dusty floorboards. “Zera!” he said, his nose an inch from hers.
Her eyes blinked open, dancing with a muted emerald glow. “Why have you waited so long?” she murmured, as if still asleep. “Do you find me displeasing?”
Leitos stammered a senseless response, cleared his throat and started again. “There’s trouble. Someone … someone is trying to get-”
Her fingers curled around the back of his neck and his teeth clicked together, cutting off anything else he might have added. He had no mind to resist as she slowly pulled him down. A sound akin to distant wind filled his ears as their lips met, Zera’s heat mingling with his own, searing away all thoughts, all concerns. Unresisting, he pressed against her-
Zera’s eyes suddenly bulged, the sleepiness blasted away by a full, infuriated awareness. “What are you doing?” she asked coolly.
“M-me?” he babbled, trying to disentangle himself from her grasp. Her once gentle and caressing fingers had become like iron. “I … I-” he faltered. Then he remembered, and his heart skipped into a gallop. “There is someone-”
The door exploded inward. Shards rained down around Leitos and Zera. With impossible strength, she threw him to one side. He revolved through open space, struck a wall, and dropped to his rumpled pallet. Before he could right himself, Zera was on her feet, advancing on the grinning figure that filled the doorway-the Hunter, Sandros!
“You conniving bitch!” he snarled, rushing forward. His feet slammed into the old chest Zera had placed before the door. It had moved when he broke through, but not enough to help. The Hunter crashed down with a string of vile curses. Zera ended them with a thudding kick to his rage-twisted face. His head snapped back, then slammed forward to strike the floor.
Another figure slid through the doorway. “Is that any way to treat a friend?” Pathil asked, his white teeth a gleaming line splitting the dark skin of his face. Before Zera could react, another voice spoke from behind him.
“Give over the stray, and you can go.”
“Suphtra?” Zera said softly. “How could you betray me to the likes of these rogues?”
“We cannot resist the rule of the Faceless One. To thrive we must pay a price, make sacrifices-”
Zera moved before he could finish. One moment Pathil was standing between her and Suphtra, the next his limp body crashed into one corner of the room and thumped to the floor, and Zera had vanished into the hallway. A thick tearing sound cut off Suphtra’s squawk of fear. All sounds of the brief struggle gave way to a horrid bubbling noise.
Zera stalked back into the room. “Get your things.”
Leitos thrust what little he possessed into his satchel, then his eyes found Pathil. Something about the way the Hunter lay on the floor wrenched at Leitos. After a moment, he realized the man’s torso had been twisted like a damp rag, his spine folded in half until the back of his head pressed against his heels.
A pattering sound around Zera’s feet drew Leitos’s attention. She swayed slightly. “You are hurt,” Leitos blurted.
“We cannot delay,” Zera said, ignoring his concern.
“Damn you, Zera,” Pathil mumbled. The Hunter’s mangled flesh was changing, healing-
Lakaan burst into the room. “Let us be gone!”
Zera caught hold of Leitos and shoved him past Lakaan. In the dim hallway, Suphtra sat against the wall, one leg splayed out, the other bent under him. A bloody dagger lay a few inches from his limp hand. His eyes had rolled up to show the whites. Most of his throat was gone … not slashed, but torn away.
Then they were running down the hallway. Drawn by all the commotion, bleary-eyed men and women popped out of their rooms to see what was afoot.
Lakaan bawled, “Run, you damnable sheep! For your miserable lives, get away!” Where his thundering cries failed to spur them into flight, his battering shoulders slammed them aside.
Shouts of confusion followed in their wake, but the trio did not slow. Lakaan continued to smash his way through the crowd, while Leitos stayed at his heels, propelled by Zera’s firm hand.
They charged down the stairs. From there, they turned down another hallway lined with doorways hung with sheer curtains. Leitos noticed Zera’s hand leave his back.
Without slowing, he cast a look over his shoulder to find her halted, a burning candle in one hand, and a swatch of gauzy curtain in the other. She touched the flame to the material. Bearing aloft that makeshift torch, she lit every curtain she passed.
As the flames spread up the walls, quickly growing into a conflagration, pandemonium exploded behind them. In all that chaos of flame, roiling smoke, screaming and running people, Zera followed, her eyes burning bright and fierce like twin bores opened to some unknown realm of Geh’shinnom’atar. When the panicked shouts became howls of agony, she dropped the flaming material and ran.
Lakaan took them through a maze of hallways until bursting through a door that opened onto a broad street. From there he turned and raced along, keeping close to the front of several different buildings.
By then people were streaming out of Suphtra’s fiery deathtrap. Leitos looked back and found Sandros and Pathil, both seemingly larger than they had been before, smashing aside the shrieking throng. In the light of leaping flames, and through the haze of smoke, the two Hunters barely looked like men.
Lakaan turned down an alley, and the two were blessedly gone from sight. Leitos was uncertain if they had been seen, but he added his minuscule strength to help drive the lumbering brute ahead of him. Lakaan seemed to be slowing, his gasps were loud and wheezy, but with both Leitos and Zera now pushing him along, he managed to keep a brisk pace. After some long moments, twisting and turning at each new alley or street, the sounds of terror faded behind them.
“Do you know where you are going,” Zera demanded, “or are you just rabbiting along?”
Lakaan made a fair attempt to respond, but only managed a series of gasps. In the end, he gave up trying to speak and ran on.
Perhaps sheer terror overwhelmed him, or the rush of blood through his brain, but Leitos envisioned the man’s huge buttocks as a pair of heaving boulders trapped under a blanket, and he fell into a fit of hysterical laughter. Lakaan kept on, but Zera’s hand caught hold of his cloak, her fist bunching the material between his shoulder blades.
“Are you daft?” Zera snapped against his ear.
Leitos, tears streaming down his cheeks, could only answer by shaking his head and pointing at Lakaan’s swaying backside. Zera’s brow furrowed. A moment more and her lips quirked toward a smile. Then, all at once, she burst out laughing. Their merriment ended when Lakaan halted.