His face a mask of maniacal glee, Harlowe smacked the staff across her belly.
Foulness spurted over her like slime, breaking up into dozens of scrambling bits that hardened as they scuttled over her body, bits that clawed at her skin, ripping at her in ways indescribable while that hot orange hand held her and something pushed and pushed at her in a place nothing should have been able to reach—
She screamed.
A ball of black fire, eerie and terrible, erupted around Harlowe’s head like an obscene halo and fled down his arm to the staff.
Pain struck, a sharp, clean knife sundering her world, sending her spinning, spinning… into nothing.
EIGHTEEN
Weariness. Pain. Sounds…
“… except Rikard. Damned staff severed his neck. He was gone before he had a chance to heal.”
“Hellfire. He went out in style, though. He’d be glad of that. He’s the only other one?”
She knew the second voice, but memory was a slippery fish, freeing itself before she could claim it. She almost drifted away again, but the body’s pain insisted on dragging her back from that beckoning dimness.
It felt as if a burning brand rested just below her belly button, throbbing along with her heartbeat. But there are worse pains than the physical. Floating between here and not-here, she was aware of loss so huge that her mind skittered away, refusing to close around the thought.
“… got all the wounded away now, so I’ll be going. The cops will be here any minute. You’d better clear out, too.”
“And let her wake up to this?” The familiar voice was bitter.
“Her sister should wake up soon. She can…”
Her sister. Beth. Yes. She’d come to… to… all at once memory plopped in her lap, writhing and ugly. And incomplete.
She had to know.
When she forced her eyes open it was still dark. Dark and fuzzy, as if she’d forgotten how to make her eyes focus. The air stank of gunpowder, blood, and charred meat. Her mind flashed back to fire—uncanny fire, black at the center, flickering into blue at the fringes. Black fire haloing Harlowe, speeding down his staff… which had rested on her belly.
She’d been burned, then. Burned by mage fire. Maybe she would have fried along with Harlowe if not for her Gift… which wasn’t quite the complete protection she’d always believed.
The dimly seen shapes resolved. Overhead, sky too smoggy for stars, glowing with the city’s reflected light. And kneeling next to her, though he was looking away… that was Cullen, she realized, naked from the waist up. He was listening to someone standing beside him.
“If you aren’t leaving, you might as well make yourself useful,” the other man said. She had a vague impression of even features, pale skin, and light-colored hair, but darkness hid the details. “Her burn needs tending.”
“I’m no healer.”
“You never did pay attention to anything that couldn’t be done sorcerously. Cold water will cool it so the flesh doesn’t continue to cook.”
“You have any?”
Enough of that. She didn’t need to hear about herself. Lily licked her lips and found her voice. “Rule?”
The other man slipped away into the darkness so quickly and silently she might have imagined him. Slowly Cullen looked down at her. His eyes were weary beyond words. “I’m sorry, Lily. He’s gone.”
WEARINESS. Pain. Sounds…
Sounds without meaning, a babble of words she didn’t know. Awareness flickered. Nothing in that babble drew her… yet something did.
Anger. Beneath the babble, powering it, lay anger. Someone was having a major hissy fit.
It might have been a sense of danger that kept her from slipping back into unknowing. It might have been curiosity. Once she’d lingered beyond that first heartbeat, though, she knew something was wrong. She hurt, and that was part of it… as if a fiery brand lay across her stomach, she hurt from some wounding. But there was more to the wrongness than that. Worse.
She had to know…
Confusion, vast and powerful as pain, startled her eyes open.
She saw sky—sky the color of tarnished brass, glowing like the embers of a dying fire. Glowing all over, with no sign of the sun. Beneath her the ground was stony. Pebbles dug into the skin of her back and butt… the bare skin of her back and butt.
She was naked. That bothered her. She tried to think of what she should do about it, but her mind felt heavy, as if thoughts had weight and she lacked the strength to push and lift and arrange them. But she was lying naked on the ground beneath a brassy sky. That wasn’t right, but… where was she supposed to be?
At least she wasn’t cold. Neither cold nor hot, actually, except for her legs. They were very warm. Something heavy lay across her legs, warming them.
Oh…
An impulse stronger than pain or weakness moved her to stretch out one hand. She touched fur… fur that lifted slowly with a breath.
That was all right, then.
Her breath sighed out, her eyes closing once more.
DIZZINESS seized Lily, as if the world had tipped into some new, impossible angle. She stared up at Cullen’s weary face, adrift.
No, she realized. The world wasn’t askew. It was the gap that made it seem so—the gap between reality and what she’d been told. “No. He isn’t.”
“Lily…” Cullen’s expression softened into something she’d never seen there before. Pity.
That irked her. “Not if you’re using ‘gone’ as a euphemism for ‘dead.’ He isn’t even that far away. Less than a mile.” She’d tested the mate bond enough to be confident about the distance. “I can find him easily enough, though you might have to help me move.”
He just shook his head, looking so wretched she didn’t know if she should shake him or pat his hand. Her lips thinned, but she went on to her next question. “My sister. Harlowe knocked her down. Is she—”
“She’s okay,” he said quickly. “Knocked out, but Stephen said her breathing and heartbeat are fine, so she should come around soon. He moved her to the porch so she doesn’t wake up next to what’s left of Harlowe.”
“Okay, that’s good. Was Stephen the one you were… never mind.” That could wait. They didn’t have much time. “We need to find Rule.”
He winced. “Lily—”
“Look, I don’t know where he is, but he was hurt, not killed. Give me a hand. I need to sit up.”
Cullen shook his head, bafflement mixing with his weariness. “No, you don’t. You’ve been hurt.”
“No kidding. But I lack authority when I’m flat on my back, and those sirens are getting close. You’re going to need all the official weight I can muster to keep from being arrested and executed for using sorcery to fry Harlowe.” And she had to find Rule.
He sighed. “Wait a minute. Let me try something. I don’t have much juice left, but…” He pulled out the little diamond he’d taken to wearing around his neck.
“What’s that for?”
“Think of it as a storage battery. Mage fire takes a lot of power, so I’ve been gathering it for a while.”
At her apartment… when he’d been playing with the sorcéri, had he really been tucking them away for later? “I thought the how-to for that sort of thing was lost during the Purge.”
“I’m fucking brilliant, aren’t I?” His voice was as light as his face was bleak. He held the little diamond in one hand, held the other over her stomach, muttered something, and then pointed away.
A small flame burst where he’d pointed and then died. And a wave of wonderful cold sucked much of the heat from her stomach.