Stripping off what remained of my outer shirt, I twisted it rapidly and tied the makeshift bandage tightly around my waist. It would stanch the blood trickling from the Hob-inflicted slash in my back until I could get Niko to stitch it up. "It wasn't Caleb," I said with a poisonous quiet as I bent down and ruthlessly yanked free the two poniards that pinned his dead hands. I offered them to Promise. "It's the puck. That slimy piece of shit that runs this place. You know, Hob, the one I talked to without a fucking clue he was even involved?"
"Hob?" she repeated in disbelief. "That was Hob? Hob of legend? Hob of old?" It was a Promise I hadn't seen before, one well and truly shocked.
"Yeah, and apparently that's not a good thing." Hurriedly, I scanned the floor. I found only the Eagle. The .38 was missing in action and I didn't have time for an in-depth search. I also retrieved my knife from the chest of the revenant. "Slay, you little fuzzbutt, get out here now," I snapped off toward the bar. "We're going." Where, I wasn't sure. Up after Goodfellow or out front to where Niko was still fighting the good fight. Maybe Promise and I would split up and do both.
"You found." It wasn't a question; it was a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. "You found boy."
Flay hovered in a doorway behind us. Blood stained his white fur liberally and although he stood upright, more or less, he was in his wolf form. His clothes were gone and his back legs were the graceful curve of a greyhound's. His ears perked slowly from their flat position against the wedge of his skull as he sniffed the air and then he crooned. As difficult as it was to picture a gore-stained predator crooning, that's what it was, and it received an immediate answer.
Slay came rocketing into view. He ran so fast he was little more than a pale orange blur, and then he jumped. When he landed in Flay's arms, he was a boy—a small, naked boy with vodyanoi blood smeared around his mouth and coating his tiny white teeth. But he was also a boy with freckles, a thick shock of apricot hair, and a grin that wouldn't quit. Small arms were wrapped around his father's throat and he put his round face close to the pricked white ear to whisper.
No matter what you thought of Kin wolves or of cubs that might grow to raging carnivores, it was a bright moment. And there was no damn time left to appreciate it. Making a fast decision, I told Promise to take the back while I took the front. Flay could stay here with his cub. Whether Hob and the trailing Robin ended up outside or back here, we would be there. We would be ready. What a lie. I wasn't ready for what I found. I wasn't ready at all.
Niko was gone.
Chapter 20
Bodies littered the cracked sidewalk in front of the building. Vodyanoi, revenants—there were at least twelve of them. It wouldn't have been enough to overcome my brother. But in the midst of the bodies there was the spore of something that had been. Slim and silver, another poniard lay. By the gross, I thought numbly. He bought them by the gross. It didn't lie there alone; Niko's sword was beside it. Both were bloodied. And both were what it took to split me in half.
I'd held it together, mostly, this past week. I'd found a place within me to hide, carved out a craven sanctuary. I was stunned at how quickly that sanctuary crumbled, and I was almost immolated by what swelled free of it. Fear, red and raw. Hatred, black and suffocating. And over it all, fury—white-hot and blinding.
Blood sacrifice.
That's what Hob had said when I'd been more concerned with trying to kill him than paying attention to his cryptically poisonous words. And now Niko was gone. He wasn't lying wounded or dead by his sword. Hob, who wouldn't lift a finger himself to do anything that he didn't absolutely have to, had taken him. Hob, who needed a sacrifice. I'd tried to guard Niko from the Auphe when something else wanted him as badly. This was what Abelia-Roo had kept from us, out of pure, malicious spite. We'd sensed the crone was holding back something about the Calabassa. We should've guessed. We should've goddamn known. The world is about sacrifice, our world even more so. For the crown to take, someone would have to give. It would grant George's gift to Hob, and it would take Niko's life in return. The Rom and the Bassa had been allies, according to Abbagor… their lives intertwined. It took the blood of one to make the device of the other work. Elegant, logical…
And not going to happen.
I couldn't hear anymore, or perhaps there was nothing to hear. Velvety silence surrounded me as I bent down and reverently cradled Niko's sword. It was his katana, modern but with the heart of the ancient implicit in its spare form. He would've said he didn't favor one weapon over the other, that they were tools to be respected and admired… nothing more. That's what he would've said, but I knew better. He did play favorites with his edged family and this one was his pride and joy. It wasn't made in the old way—no one did that these days—but it was as close as you could come. He loved that damn sword, and guess what? He was getting it back.
At the hesitant touch on my shoulder, the hilt found its way into my hand and I whirled, surrounded by a halo of silver steel. There were flashes, disjointed and vague. Brown, green. Fox face and mobile mouth. To carve all that from the face of the earth wasn't a decision I made. It simply happened. The sword flew and I followed.
"Cal, don't!"
The words beat at the layer of pulsing rage that cocooned me. Sound had come back. It faded in and out, but it was there. Real. The sight that was before me was real too—as little as my anger wanted it to be. Robin, not Hob, was on his knees in front of me. He was panting with exertion as his white-knuckled fists gripped his own sword and kept Niko's blade from his neck by bare millimeters.
"Don't," he repeated between clenched teeth. "Don't make me hurt you. Please, don't make me."
I didn't delude myself into thinking it was only talk. Goodfellow very probably could hurt me. He predated swords; he'd had a lot longer to practice with them than I had. Not that it mattered. I didn't want to hurt him any more than he wanted to hurt me. I saw what my rage was slow to recognize; it was Robin. It was my friend. Not the monster who'd taken Niko.
Not Hob.
I let the tip of the katana fall toward the ground. My hands shook and cramped from the anger that had no outlet. "Nik's gone." If I hadn't felt my mouth move, I wouldn't have recognized the thick, choked words as mine.
"I know." Robin let gravity take his own blade and sat back to rest on his heels. Head down, he passed a hand over his face. "I know."
"Where would he take him?" The twitch of one of the downed revenants was visible from the corner of my eye. I swiveled, gave a vicious swing of the sword, and turned back before the brown blood had time to drip from the blade. "Where?"
"I don't know. I haven't a goddamn inkling." In a sudden explosion of frustration, he threw his sword against the asphalt. "He was supposed to be dead. Why couldn't he stay dead?" he said savagely before looking up at me. "And why Niko? Why not take just the crown? He already has a hostage. What would he need with another?"
"For the Rom blood." My mouth twisted. "For the damn Bassa, who made sure there was a price to be paid for what you took." I had the key in me as well, so why hadn't Hob taken me instead? He might know who was dogging my steps lately and not want the added distraction of vengeance-crazed Auphe dropping in on the ceremony. Or maybe the Auphe gene in me was so strong it tainted all the rest, made the Rom half of me unrecognizable to the Calabassa. It would be a chance that a scheming son of a bitch like the puck wouldn't want to take.
"Niko?"
Promise had moved up silently behind us. "Hob took Niko? No." She shook her head in denial. "He couldn't overcome Niko. No one could." Then her gaze touched the katana in my hand and pansy-colored eyes turned velvety black, even the whites swallowed whole by the dark cloud. "The first of your kind, Robin, but he will not live long enough to be the last. I'll kill him myself."