To get rid of a wave of light-headedness, she forced a long inhale, and that was when the meaty smell of fresh blood and flesh really hit her. Dropping her palms, she knew she had to turn back around so—
Dearest . . . Virgin Scribe.
In the midst of Duran’s fang attack, he had flipped the body over, and the carnage was . . . you couldn’t even tell what the anatomy had been before his canines had struck. And even now, when there was no more life, at all, in the body of that guard, he was still crouched over his kill like he was waiting for reanimation.
“Duran?” she said.
With a jerk, he looked over at her, his wild eyes unfocused and unblinking, his lower face dripping with blood, his teeth stained red.
“He’s gone,” Ahmare choked out. “He’s not . . . alive anymore.”
Duran blinked a number of times. Then looked down at the male underneath him. There was a strangled curse, and Duran fell off to the side, his body landing on his shoulder so that he and the corpse met eyes, one living, one dead, both fixated on the other for two totally different reasons.
Duran put his hands up to his face and rolled onto his back. Then he was twisting again, moving away from the body and onto his hands and knees. As his head hung, she thought he was going to throw up. He did not.
He reminded her of the way she’d been after Rollie. In shock. Horrified. And it brought her even closer to him. His reaction meant that even though he’d lost it, he hadn’t lost himself. Not permanently, anyway. People should be affected by death, especially if they’re responsible, no matter the reasons, no matter the justifications.
“Get their weapons,” he said hoarsely. “We can always use more.”
“Okay.”
She was glad for the job. At least until she realized she would have to get near the dead bodies. Steeling herself, she found three daggers, two in the blood-soaked ground, and another on the guard that had had his neck broken. There was no way she was going to pat down the guard that had been savaged. Her stomach was fisting up already—
There was one more to check.
The male who had been thrown against that tree was still alive. Even though he’d hit the trunk like a car that had lost traction on a winter’s turn, he was not just breathing, but aware enough that he shrank back against the pine that had nearly paralyzed him.
Beneath a smudge of red hair, his face was young, and his terrified expression suggested that he’d never seen anything so graphic or violent in his life. His mouth was gaping, little clicking noises coming out as his tongue worked against his teeth, but without a voice box, he could not audibly beg for mercy.
He reminded her of Ahlan: Over his head. Drowning.
About to be killed.
Ahmare approached him with caution, her gun pointed at his chest. “Give me your knife.”
As soon as she gave the order, he fumbled with the weapon on his belt, dropping it. Picking it up. Offering it to her hilt down.
“Toss it to my feet,” she commanded.
He complied, and she bent over and picked the weapon up, keeping her muzzle on him.
“Any guns?” Duran asked roughly.
In the periphery of her vision, she saw that he was sitting cross-legged now and had wiped his face on his sleeve, his cheeks and chin cleaner, his shirt no different because so much blood had been spilled by him.
“Only knives.” She kept her focus on the remaining guard. “One each.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.” She glanced over. “Why is that a surprise?”
“Toss me one.” When she sent the one she’d picked up over at him, there was a pause. “Sonofabitch. They’re not working for Chalen.”
“What?”
Duran’s voice was getting clearer, calmer and closer to normal with every word he spoke. “Chalen keeps careful control over all weapons in his compound. I can remember when they would work on me, it was always an issue about where to find a blade or a gun or a sword on the fly without having to ask the conqueror. They’d get frustrated by this. The only guards who were regularly armed were the ones who monitored the exits and the arsenal.” He held up what she’d thrown. “These are handmade shanks. They made them on their off-duty time, probably from cutlery they stole from meals. They are working independently or they’d have better daggers.”
“Is this true?” she asked the remaining guard.
The male nodded.
“So you decided to follow us on your own,” she prompted. When he shook his head, Duran started to speak, but she talked over him. “You’re not the only ones following us.” This got a nod. “And you want to stay away from the official trackers because if they find you, you’re dead.”
“He’s dead anyway,” Duran said grimly. “I’ll see to it myself—”
“Wait,” she cut in as Duran got to his feet. “Hold on. Do you recognize this guard?”
Duran came over, his bulk making her feel like she had no control over him—no, actually, that was his mood, not his size, the threat of deadly violence returning to the hard cut of his jaw and the clench of his fists.
“I don’t,” he said after a moment. “But that doesn’t fucking matter—”
“Yes, it does.” She refocused on the guard. “Can you stand?”
The young male nodded and got to his feet. It was obvious one of his legs wasn’t working right, but other than that, he seemed relatively fine.
“Go,” she told him—
“What the fuck!” Duran exploded.
She didn’t acknowledge the curse. “Dematerialize now and do not follow us anymore—”
“I’ll kill him before—”
Ahmare slapped her palm onto the center of his chest and wadded up the front of his bloodstained shirt. Jerking him down from his towering height, she put herself between him and the guard.
“If he didn’t hurt you, let him go.”
Duran bared his fangs. “He works for Chalen. You remember, the warlord who is going to kill your fucking brother!”
Ahmare shook her head. “No deaths unless absolutely necessary. In the event I live through this, I’m going to have find peace with what we do for the rest of my nights. And I will not abide killing for the sake of killing. If he didn’t hurt you, if he wasn’t one of the guards who was in that dungeon with you, you don’t get to take his life. That’s not revenge. That’s evil and no different than Chalen. I will not be a part of it.”
She kept hold of Duran and pivoted back toward the guard. “Go now. If I see you again, or if he does, I will not stop what comes to you. Do you understand me. This is your warning. I will not step in again and save you.”
The young guard nodded. Took a deep breath.
And dematerialized.
As he left, Duran shoved her away and stalked around. When he stopped, it was on the far side of the guard he’d destroyed.
“This is what they’re going to do to your brother.” He jabbed his finger at the corpse. “And you just sent a guard back who knows exactly where we are—and may even know where we spent the day if he saw us come out of hiding.”
“I have no regrets.”
Duran leaned over his kill, hands on hips, chin tilted down so his eyes glowed under his prominent brows. “You will. I promise you, you are going to regret what you just did, and more than likely, your brother is going to pay the price for your misplaced compassion.”
Ahmare indicated the carnage with a sweep of her hand. “And you marked our place, too. There’s blood all over here and the scent is traveling on the wind. So I suggest that we stop arguing and start moving. If I have to wait through another day, I am going to lose my goddamn fucking mind—”
Duran lurched to one side—caught his balance.
And then passed out, landing with the response-less bounce of a dead body.
20
AHMARE’S FIRST THOUGHT—WELL, SECOND; her first was that Duran had been stabbed somewhere and died from internal blood loss—was not about the cult’s location. Chalen. The conqueror’s beloved.
It wasn’t even about her brother.
Her prevailing thought was, I don’t want to lose this male.
Duran’s life, and its instant of extinction, was the only thing that mattered as she crashed down beside him, her hands going to his chest, her torso bowing over his body as if her back could block the Fade’s arrival. His eyes were fixed on the heavens above, staring up to the night sky as if there was a message in it for him, ghostly symbols of the Old Language floating aloft that only he could see.
“Duran?” she breathed as she patted him down.
There was so much blood on his clothes, it was hard to tell what was his and what was from that guard he’d bitten. And a puncture wound of less than an inch could seal itself off on the surface, while the artery underneath became an oil spill in his ocean, ruining everything.
“Duran!” Now she was more urgent. “Are you . . .”
Are you dead?
Dumb-ass question to ask, but that wasn’t why she didn’t finish the sentence. She feared the answer—
Abruptly, his torso jerked upright with such force and strength, his shoulder punched her, throwing her back. And the inhale he took in was so great, she could have sworn she felt the very draw of it.
“Are you okay?” she said.
Yes, are you?
His head cranked in her direction. His pupils seemed to focus on her properly, and neither was dilated. “Sorry. Don’t know what that was.”
As she exhaled, she felt like she was doing part two of that inhale of his, finishing the relay, so to speak. “It’s all right. But we need to check you out.”
He lifted his shirt and they both looked down at the ridges of his abdominals. Nothing. Then he twisted around and offered her an inspection of his spine. There were no wounds there, either.
That took care of the big stuff, she thought. As long as he hadn’t been nailed in the groin. Femoral arteries were the superconductors of the lower body, capable of draining blood volume like a tub, but in that case, there would be all kinds of blood seeping through his pants and there was none.