Bride by Midnight (25 page)

The green light died; Lyssa dropped her hands and stepped back, all but falling into his arms. She was weak and needed his support, and he gave it to her.

Mere seconds had passed. Ahead the other two Ksanas continued to feed. It was too late to save the sentinels, had been too late from the moment the demons had captured their minds.

“Go, now,” Lyssa said to Runa. “Run while you can.”

Runa did not immediately do as she was told. She stepped toward them and smiled. “You are the witch, yes? Lyssa?”

Not so long ago he would have been alarmed that Runa knew his wife’s name, but tonight nothing surprised him. He was beyond surprise.

Lyssa was not surprised, either. “I am.”

“The witch and the blade.” Runa smiled, and for an instant she was the little sister he remembered. Not a half-demon; just a girl. “I should have known all along it was you.”

“Runa...”

Lyssa’s head snapped around. “This is your—”

“Yes. Blade saved me long ago.” Runa reached up, cupped his cheek with one soft hand. “He didn’t know that was what he was doing, but... with love and kindness, he saved me.”

He’d always thought he’d failed her, that he hadn’t been fast enough....

“I will find you!” Runa dropped her hand and turned, running but barely making a sound, blending into the dark shadows of the garden and then disappearing. Straight ahead, there was not much left of the sentinels. They were literally skin and bones, their uniforms sagging, their weapons lying discarded on the ground.

“Ksana demons,” Lyssa said. “Don’t let their appearance fool you. Unlike Runa, those two are beyond saving, and they will not be easy to kill.”

And he still did not have a sword.

***

A part of her wanted to take Blade’s hand and pull him away. They should run, as Runa had, not confront. They should flee and hide, and protect their child and themselves at all costs.

But a stronger part of her knew this was why they had been brought together. This was why she had been denied the simple life she’d craved. They could not allow these Ksana demons to escape.
The witch and the blade
.

Unlike Runa, these two were completely dark. They were lost to the kind of magic that people like Edine feared so deeply that they would deny a lifelong friend. They were evil. The Ksana demons finished feeding upon the sentinels and dropped what was left of them to the ground, discarding clothing and dried carcasses as if they were tossing aside the bones of a roast chicken.

Having just consumed the life force of the two sentinels, the girls were strong, making them formidable opponents. And still... she and Blade could not run from this.

One girl stepped in front of the other and grinned. In that moment she did not look at all like a child. She was enveloped in darkness, a monster through and through. “I thought I’d like to feed on the blade, who by the way does not even have a sword, which is rather disappointing. But the witch looks as if she would provide a powerful nourishment.”

She and the demon were two sides of the same coin, Lyssa realized. Life and death, healing and destruction. It was a terrifying thought, and at the same time... right. For every midnight there was a dawn. Lyssa knew she should be afraid, that she should be terrified to face these demons. But she was not. She was stronger than they were. They could not touch her....

Just as she had that thought, the girl in the lead lost her smile. Blade cursed as Lyssa moved forward without fear.

For a few moments the two Ksanas seemed to be transfixed. The cold fire Lyssa had felt in her hands on more than one occasion now shot through her entire body. Instead of being afraid, she welcomed that cold fire. It was hers. She
owned
it. Lyssa was surrounded by her witchy green light, coloring everything around her with that emerald haze. As the strength of that light grew stronger and brighter, Lyssa herself felt stronger. Brighter.

The demon to the rear began to back away, one step and then another, and Lyssa knew why. There was death for them in her light, and they saw it. Healing for humans, death for those with demon blood. She’d been able to touch and heal Runa, but only because there was light left within her.

The Ksanas were so fixated on the light that she realized they had lost sight of Blade. They had eyes only for her. She sensed Blade skirting around her to what was left of the sentinels. Hunkering low, he grabbed not one sword but two. With those weapons in his hands, he rose. Slowly. Determined. For a man who had never, as far as she knew, wielded a sword, he held them well.

The witch and the blade
. Lyssa understood now. They were to be warriors in a war that had not yet begun. They were light to the dark, dawn to the moonless night of the demon daughters. So much for her ordinary life...

The Ksana to the rear, the one with hair so fair it was white in the moonlight, finally heard or saw or sensed Blade and spun around to face him. For a moment or two, she hummed a strange, off-key tune. For a fleeting moment, Lyssa could feel the girl’s thoughts. The Ksana was not afraid. Not of a mere man, no matter what the prophecy said. After all, until now, swords and men had been of no danger to her. She was hard to kill, and all men fell under her spell. Blade hesitated, and Lyssa knew he was momentarily fooled by the Ksana’s innocent appearance. She looked like any other young woman, slight and fragile, and in need of protection. But it was an illusion; a demon’s trick.

There was only one way Lyssa knew of to make sure the demon would die and stay dead. She shouted, “Take her head!”

She’d never seen Blade handle a sword, and for a moment she worried that he might fumble or find the weight of the weapons to be awkward. Until he’d been hopelessly outnumbered, with only a dagger for a weapon he’d held his own against the men who’d abducted her on Volker’s orders. The swords were heavier, harder to control, though, and there was no time for him to practice.

Her worry didn’t last long. Blade moved as if he’d been born with a sword in his hand, his motions fluid and strong. He wielded the swords as if they weighed nothing, as if they were extensions of his arms. And there was... no, she was not mistaken, there was an emerald green light dancing off the blades. Not her light, this time, but
his
. The demon with the silver hair danced out of the way, hummed a bit more, and then tried to move in. She even tried, Lyssa saw, to capture Blade with her eyes and hold him in place. But he was immune to her power, and that immunity confused her. He moved more quickly than any man should be able to as he swung one sword and severed the demon’s head.

The other Ksana, the one who had been in the lead, spun around and screamed. “Divya! My sister!” She clasped both hands to her throat as if she felt the other demon’s pain, and she screamed again, the sound piercing and inhuman in the night.

Blade turned his attention to the remaining Ksana. She did not wait for him to attack but leapt, her body all but flying through the air. She descended on him like an eagle swooping down to capture its prey. One of the swords Blade wielded pierced her belly, slicing through her body. It would have been a killing wound for any human, but the Ksana seemed not to feel any pain as she pushed away and freed herself, then twisted forward and grabbed Blade’s hair. She tried to pull his mouth to hers but he resisted, and he continued to attack. His steel cut deeply into her, again piercing through her body, the bloodied blade exiting through her back once more... and still she wrestled with Blade, trying to impart her deadly kiss.

She was so close, he was in no position to take her head as he had taken her “sister’s.” He continued to fight, but if she managed to lay her mouth on him...

Lyssa ran toward the battle. Surely she could help, somehow. Would her touch be enough? Were her instincts about her magic bringing death to the demons correct, or had that been a moment of wishful thinking? She had to try... had to do something.

But before she could get close enough to do anything a strong hand stopped her, grabbing her hair and pulling her back. Her head snapped around; her feet slid out from under her. She scrambled for purchase so she could fight back but his grip kept her off balance. A sentinel? Another demon? Who had stopped her?

She wanted to scream, but could not. For a moment she could not even breathe. Blade pushed the Ksana away, forcing her off one sword while he swung the other. The Ksana jumped out of the way, trying to avoid the steel, but the tip of the blade cut deeply into her throat—inches deep. She held her damaged neck and backed away, furious and bloody, but still alive. She fell to the ground and crawled slowly into the shadows, injured but far from dead. Healing, Lyssa suspected, even as she made her escape.

Blade began to follow the demon, but the words—oh, that horrible
voice
—of the man holding Lyssa arrested him.

“Stop right there!”

Blade turned. Even in the night she could see him go pale. “Volker.”

And then Lyssa felt the cold steel of a dagger at her own throat.

Chapter Nineteen

Blade swore silently as his personal demon held Lyssa’s head twisted to the side so that the sharp edge of his dagger pressed against the vein in her slender throat. He forgot that the Ksana demon was crawling away, his focus narrowing to Lyssa. It should not be possible that the same man who’d driven steel into Runa would kill Lyssa, but that was a single twitch of a wrist from happening.

And if it did, Lyssa would not return from the dead as Runa had. Lyssa would die.

“Let her go,” he said, wondering if either Lyssa or Volker could understand his rough words. They seemed to catch in his throat.

Volker peeked over Lyssa’s head as he hid behind her, using her as a shield as he threatened her. Good. A dead shield would be of no use at all. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was to capture those three girls?”

One dead, one wounded, Runa... gone?

“Girls?” Blade’s voice was sharper now, clearer. “They were not
girls
.” None of them, not even his sister.

Volker shrugged. “Perhaps not in the purest sense of the word, but they were mine. I suppose any that were so easily disposed of wouldn’t have done me much good in the long run. But there are others. An army, or what will soon be an army.” Beyond the palace, a mournful wail rose. Volker’s head snapped around; an unnatural chill made the hairs on the back of Blade’s neck stand up. That howl was both human and not, and it was filled with pain. It echoed, the stuff of nightmares. “Did you hear that? Another of my girls, one of many you have not yet met.”

Blade took a step forward, but Volker did not stay distracted long enough for him to move in.

“Who are you?” Volker asked as he pressed the blade more firmly against Lyssa’s throat. “Why are you here? You must be the blade to this witch, the man who gives my girls nightmares. I thought you were dead.” His eyes flitted to the swords Blade carried, swords stained with the blood of his
girls
.

The man did not know. Years of investigating and tracking and killing, and Miron Volker had no idea that all this time Blade had been searching for him.

“You took my sister,” he said.

Volker sighed. “Is that all? I took many. I killed more. Men and women, young and old. Human and... not. I did what I had to do in order to shape this country into what it can and should be. Emperor Jahn is weak. What others see as kindness, I know to be weakness. He needs to be replaced.”

“By you.”

“By me,” Volker agreed, tilting his head, narrowing his eyes. “I remember you now. Didn’t I kill you once already?”

“You tried.”

“Twice. First by my own hand and again at the hands of others. I sent my best men to do the job. What
are
you?”

“Just a man looking for justice.”

Volker sighed. “Some families were relieved when I took their girls into my care. Who wants a demon sleeping in the next bed?”

Blade shook his head. “I thought you’d killed Runa, but she was here all along.”

“The demons are hard to kill, I have found. Like you, apparently,” Volker growled. “Some are harder to kill than others. There have been times when I’ve had to wound them severely in order to transport them here without incident. Your sister...”

“Runa. She has a name.”

“Runa, then. She’s a powerful one. I have given serious consideration to making her one of my empresses, when the time comes. Unless, of course, you’ve already killed her.”

“No.”

“Good. She’ll return to me, then. She likes it here. She likes her place at my side. Your sister is not the sweet girl you imagine her to be. She’s a pretty demon who drains the life from those she touches, and she grows stronger every day. If I had tried to take her
after
she’d come into her own, rather than identifying her early on, I never would have succeeded.” Volker smiled. “She’s killed far more men than I have.”

Blade’s vision narrowed. He could barely breathe. He’d always seen Runa as an innocent child, but in his heart he knew she was not. Was Volker lying now, attempting to make Blade doubt himself and his sister? Perhaps. It didn’t matter. “If she killed, it was not her fault.”

“If that makes you feel better, you can choose to believe it’s so. But you’re wrong. Your little sister is a bloodthirsty, murdering fiend. She is the stuff of nightmares.”

Blade tightened his grip on the weapons he held and prepared to rush forward, but an unexpected voice in his head stopped him.
Be still. He’s lying. He’s hoping you’ll make a rash move so he can kill us both
.

Lyssa’s voice. And she was right.

The moment will come. Soon. Not yet.

Blade made an effort to keep his voice as steady as Volker’s. “The men who were with you that day, I killed them... one after another. I hunted them down and slit their throats.”

Volker was not so smug now, since his plan to incite Blade had failed. “They were soldiers in a coming war, and no soldier’s life is without risk. At that time I was forced to use common mercenaries. I disguised them as sentinels, cleaned them up and gave them uniforms, but they obeyed me because I paid them. These days I have real soldiers, trained and dedicated men who will not be so easy to kill.”