Still, she hoped she saw that bag again.
She waited, listening with shallow breath to the furor above as Blacksuits burst into Shale’s room. It took them seconds to digest the chaos, and perhaps a minute to notice the fire escape opposite, bent and twisted where Shale hoisted himself up. The frame had not been designed to support a thousand pounds of gargoyle.
On cue, three black glass forms leapt from the infirmary window and clattered against the fire escape. Limbs surged like pistons as they climbed. Soon they reached the rooftops and vanished, continuing their hunt.
As a courier and Guardian of Seril, Shale knew how to evade pursuit. The Blacksuits sought a gargoyle carrying hostages. Shale, unburdened, could outpace and outmaneuver them.
So far, everything was going according to plan.
Tara smiled grotesquely, then winced at the pain in her side.
*
Abelard closed his eyes and ran, following the red glow of the coolant line. He tripped over a toolbox left by a maintenance monk and banged his knee against a sharp piece of unseen metal. If either metal or fall injured him, he couldn’t feel it. The shadow creature’s claws had torn holes in his leg, and numbness spread from them. With each heartbeat his feet grew heavier. Behind, he heard the shadow’s limbs clatter over stone and metal, accelerating.
He could not rely on speed to escape, but in fifteen years of working in this boiler room, playing hide-and-seek and capture-the-wrench in its maze turns and dead ends, he had seldom relied on speed.
He leapt from the floor’s edge onto a scaffold and climbed down a quick ten feet through a narrow gap between a wall and a water reservoir. Before reaching the boiler room he stepped off onto a side passage. His hands shook as he unclipped a wrench from his belt and threw it underhanded back into the gap. It clattered off the scaffold as it fell to the boiler room floor, sounding a great deal like a scared young man fleeing a predator. He retreated twenty feet into the side passage, where a ladder descended into another part of the boiler room. With one hand on that ladder’s top rung, he crouched, turned, and set the bull’s-eye lantern before him.
There had been no light in the hidden room save the glow of what he felt certain Tara would have called Craft. This thing grew in and fed on shadow. Real light might blind or injure it. Abelard had no reason to suspect his plan would work, but he needed to try something. He couldn’t run forever.
He stilled his breath and readied his fingers on the lantern’s cover. Calm. Careful. Wait.
Exhale.
Above, almost inaudible, tiny claws scraped across metal. Closer, descending the scaffold. A distinct inrush of air, amid the hundred metallic sounds of boiler and turbine and piston. Was the creature smelling for him? Could it see in the dark? How well? How smart was it? Why was it taking this long?
He tried to pray, without bothering to think who might answer.
Clicking, clattering, closer.
The hiss of foul breath deepened and grew louder. It had drawn even with the side passage.
He flicked open the lantern’s lid, and hoped.
A beam of fiery light lanced through the cloying darkness. Narrow at the lantern’s aperture, twenty feet out the beam was broad as the tunnel’s mouth.
The shadow creature had grown. It nearly filled the eight-foot-tall passage, and longer, thinner thorn-limbs trailed beyond. Smoke rose from its body where the light touched. Jagged mandibles snapped open, and fanged mouths loosed a horrible, inhuman cry.
Don’t be smart, Abelard whispered. Be fierce, be cruel, vindictive, but, please, Kos, don’t let it be smart.
Scuttling on many sharp limbs the creature launched itself down the hall toward the lantern. Shadow-flesh shriveled as it moved. Light tore steaming gaps in its body.
Abelard breathed a silent prayer of thanks and descended the ladder as if in free fall.
*
The vampire’s fangs pierced Cat’s wrist, sharp as a bee sting. The pain was brief; his lips fastened reflexively on her wrist and euphoria spread from the wound as he began to suck. Pleasure tingled into her fingers, back up and around to her heart, from there to her entire body. Perfection enveloped the world. Knots within her soul untied, or else were sliced open by the sword of bliss.
Were her eyes open or shut? Was she still sitting up, or had she slumped against the vampire as the joy of him took hold? Was she even breathing?
Paltry, everyday concerns. Ecstasy ruled her soul.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She had a duty, someone to protect. A woman. A woman who had told her a story.
The red sun’s bulk settled beneath the horizon, and the sky outside the window dimmed. Far away there came a crash of broken glass, followed by a cry Cat heard with spiritual ears: the cry of Justice, a summons to all Blacksuits to pursue a Stone Man who had abducted a witness and a Craftswoman.
Tara.
Tara had told Cat to check on the vampire. Here he was, unharmed, healthy, glorious. Hungry.
His eyes were open.
She saw satisfaction, confusion, and revulsion superimposed on his face. Roused from sleep, he found his teeth buried in a strange woman’s wrist. He was hungry, and his will was weak. He did not push her away. A beast within him woke, stretching and yawning in his red eyes. One clawed hand rose feebly from beneath the sheets and hesitated, uncertain whether to seize her or thrust her from him, unsure whether she was real or a predatory dream.
Cat tried to think through the rush. Why had she left Tara’s side? Her orders had been to watch the Craftswoman. Cat’s memory was hazy, but she recalled a story, a suggestion, a sudden desire.
Tara had done something to her. Twisted her.
The vampire’s hand rose, curved, to grasp the back of her neck.
Pulling her wrist from his mouth was as hard as turning from the gates of paradise. She fell back off the bed and sat down hard on the tile floor. The vampire snarled and rose to a crouch, silhouetted by the last rays of the setting sun. Her blood stained his lips and his chin.
“What the hell were you doing?”
Cat’s mouth fell open.
“What. I mean.” He wiped the blood off his chin with his fingers and regarded it in fascination and disgust. “Seriously, woman. What is wrong with you? Haven’t you ever heard of consent?”
She pressed her back against the wall and slowly stood. Blood pounded in her ears. The wound in her wrist had closed when his fangs left it, but it still hurt.
“I could have killed you,” he said.
“I…” Words were hard, imprecise. Fog clouded her mind.
“Wait.” Red eyes flicked from the crown of her head to the bottoms of her boots, and back. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Before.” She nodded. “When you spoke with … Tara.” She spat the name.
His tongue flicked out, and the blood on his lips disappeared. He wiped his chin on his wrist, and licked that clean, too. “Where is she? Why are you here?”
Shaking her head did not clear her mind. “I’m … She made me come here.”
“You’re an addict,” he said, with the distaste Cat reserved for words like “pusher” and “pimp.” “You’re an addict, but even an addict would know better than to give an unconscious vampire their blood. You’ve been … not drugged.” His eyes narrowed. Vampires could see beyond the normal range of human sight, she knew. “Something’s worked through your mind. Made you vulnerable.”
“Tara did something to me. I wouldn’t have left her alone otherwise.”
How could you let someone into your mind, Tara had said with mock horror, before she bound Cat in chains forged from her own need. Gods and goddesses, that bite had felt so good.
“Alone? Where?”