Think of what they did last night. How many were killed?
Raed ground his teeth hard. He could go back and find the Deacons, but by that time the traitor could have disappeared. And besides, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to do something for Sorcha. She’d carried so many burdens for these last months, and he had felt at a complete loss to assist in any way. It would be good to be able to bring something to her for a change.
Now is your moment then.
In the tight confines of the tunnel, Raed hastily stripped off his clothes, and let the Beast take over. It was getting easier and easier to do that.
The human was correct. It was getting even easier by the moment. The Young Pretender’s mind was weakening, which gave the geistlord hope that the Fensena was right. He would soon have his way. However, right now there was vengeance to be dealt out.
The Rossin shook his great mane and crouched down. The corridor was awash in the smell of human, and suddenly his lust for blood boiled up inside him again.
It was strange that the Young Pretender knew very little of his progenitor or the power he gained from both the Rossin and Derodak. That was the way with humans; they learned so very little in their time. His host had apparently chosen to forget the power they had tasted beneath the streets of Vermillion when facing the Murashev.
The Rossin had not however. He would have that again.
His long, rough tongue ran fleetingly over his nose. For now, there was one Deacon to deal with. He might not be of the line of Emperors, but he still shared the great traitor’s blood. The Beast could smell it on him.
Crouching low, the Rossin began to stalk forward. The light grew brighter quickly because the tunnel was not very long at all—nothing more than a bolt-hole really. It was merely someplace where the infiltrator could work his craft out of sight of the other Deacons.
On huge but well-padded paws, the Rossin stalked the human at the end of the corridor. His target was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t notice golden eyes watching him from the semidarkness. The great pard was intrigued and for a moment merely observed.
Derodak in his cleverness seemed to have outdone himself. The Rossin had little experience with machines; they had always been the preserve of the Ehtia, the Ancient race that had been the cause of the breach into the Otherside. The geistlord hunkered down and let his senses, natural and preternatural, run over the device the cloaked figure was hunched over.
It was gleaming brass, with many intricate parts that moved over its surface and reminded him of scuttling insects. He did recognize some things about it though; the flicker of three weirstones within its boxlike shape and also the writing carved on every surface. Cantrips were scored in the metal, and he knew immediately that they were not the usual kind, though he’d seen them before.
They were necromantic cantrips, which made perfect sense when the cloaked figure sliced at his own outstretched arm and dribbled blood into the vial at the end of the device.
The Rossin’s tongue unconsciously licked over his nose once more. Blood was an Ancient source of power—especially the right blood. It could infuse a geist with strength, let the future reveal its secrets, or open up a little gap into the Otherside. That was why killing was always the last resort of the Deacons of the Order; the path for a geist was easiest when blood was spilled or death was summoned.
Yet now here was this man sacrificing his own blood to a machine; a machine that seemed to grow brighter as the blood trickled into it, and the weirstones began to vibrate. The sound they made was so high-pitched that the mere human could not have heard it, but to the Rossin it was like jabbing spikes into his brain.
Unable to contain himself, he rose to his feet with a roar that shook the rock, and for a moment drowned out the unholy noise the machine was making. The man hunched over it spun around and raised his hands instinctively in defense.
He had no marks of any of the runes on him, but he had a pistol primed and ready. His shot could hardly have gone wild in these tight confines, but its impact on the great pard’s shoulder was as effective as a bee sting. The Rossin did not know the man’s name or face, but he was so enraged by the machine and the pitiful attempt at self-defense that he sprang forward.
In the small space he could not leap as effectively as he would have wanted, but he still fell on the cloaked man like a crazed storm of teeth and claws. In the struggle, the machine was knocked over, breaking the glass vial that had funneled the blood and cracking the metal case. Two of the weirstones rolled free from their settings and bounced across the floor like a child’s marbles.
The Rossin was tearing out the man’s guts while he beat with decreasing vigor on the pard’s head. Eventually he stopped altogether, and the Rossin gave him a final shake, as if he were a rat. With his jaws dripping in gore, the geistlord glanced at the machine. It appeared broken, but there was a familiar smell in the air.
It was the fetid air of the Otherside. Something was coming.
Leaving the corpse where it had fallen, the Rossin turned about and bolted back the way they had come. The cantrip doorway accepted the blood on his jaws, just as it had accepted Raed’s, and he flew through the stone as if it were paper and he a circus tiger.
Covered in gore, the Rossin landed in the infirmary. To say the lay Brothers were excited by his arrival would have been a grand understatement. They might be men of science and healing, but a blood soaked leonine form in their domain was quite a shock.
The Rossin took little note of the chaos that he caused. He did not hear the cries for help, nor see the lay Brothers rushing to remove their patients from his way. He had his senses locked on something else altogether, and his mind was racing over all the possibilities of what it could be. At best a simple rei, at worse the Murashev.
Gathering his hind legs beneath him, he raced from the infirmary, scattering lay Brothers, patients, and furniture in his wake. No one moved to stop him. He powered his way up the stairs of the citadel, still knocking humans aside. He didn’t have the time to stop and see if they were Deacons or not. Finally, he threw the door to the battlements off its hinges and sprang into the open air. Behind he could hear thumps and cries of outrage, but they were nothing.
Farther down the battlements, another door was opened and Sorcha Faris emerged. She looked paler than usual, and there was the stink of the Betrayer on her. The Patternmaker they called him; a geistlord who had thrown his lot in with the humans and taught them the runes to control his own kind. He would have given much to rid the world of that creature, but the Order needed him—at least for now.
Sorcha’s blue eyes, shadowed and bloodshot as they were, met his. Shock would have been an appropriate response, but she had been sharing a bed with his host for months—she had to have guessed that this time would come.
This Deacon knew a great deal more about him than the Rossin liked. Raed had whispered much into her ear, and she had informed him that the geistlord could talk. They had always thought him a killing machine—which he had been in the early days of his emergence—and he liked it that way. He had not wished to reveal any more to them.
The Bond between them had thankfully grown a little thinner, but he still could not be sure if she was inside his head or not. He would have loved to be inside hers. Her gaze flickered over the fresh blood and flesh still staining his mouth and face.
Sorcha opened her mouth, but then she stopped, as her gaze drifted away from his to the far side of the battlements. Only a fool would have missed the stench. The Otherside was here.
The Rossin roared. Perhaps whatever was coming through would think again and return to the Otherside. Unless it was a geistlord. Unless it was the Maker of Ways.