Con & Conjure (31 page)

The elf mage suddenly closed the distance between us and gripped the leather just above my breasts in his fists. Leather ties laced the front; they might break or they might not. He bent his head toward me, his face mere inches from mine.

The elf smirked. “My competition’s gone; let’s see what I’ve won.”

I’d just won a way to ruin Balmorlan’s night.

I didn’t want the bastard touching me, but I wasn’t passing up an opportunity to touch him.

I slammed my forehead down hard on the bridge of his aristocratic nose and was rewarded with a clean break. Clean for me; bloody for the bastard. The mage screamed and staggered backward, the hands that were about to tear me out of my clothes now clutching his broken, bloody nose.

That’d put a damper on his libido.

I froze. Oh, hell. No, no, no.

Blood.

Blood on the hands that’d just been on me.

I sucked in my breath at what I’d just done. Stupid, Raine, stupid. The Saghred needed a victim’s blood to fall on it and then actual contact to complete the sacrifice. If the mage touched me again, the rock would take him, sucking his soul through me—a still-living, breathing, and screaming-my-lungs-out me.

My body was meant to contain one soul. Mine. No travelers passing through, just me.

The mage pulled his hands away from his nose and looked at them. Blood covered his fingers.

“You bitch!” he screamed.

An instant later, he backhanded me with his bloody hand, and I tasted my own blood in my mouth. My blood, his blood, and . . .

The Saghred throbbed to life, quivering in anticipation, eager, crouching . . .

The mage brought his hand back for another strike.

“No!” Balmorlan barked. “Conscious. We need her conscious.”

The mage hissed and turned on him. Balmorlan didn’t flinch.

“Once you’ve bonded with her, and proven to me that you can use the Saghred alone, the need for her will diminish considerably.” Balmorlan stood perfectly still and watched me, his eyes glittering with anticipation. “At that point, I wouldn’t be opposed to you exacting appropriate revenge.”

The mage slowly wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand, never taking his eyes from mine. I locked eyes with him; I had to.

Phaelan was moving.

To glance at Phaelan would be to draw attention to him, and that couldn’t happen. The mage could get his revenge without ever laying a hand on me—he could kill Phaelan right here and now.

A chill went through me that had nothing to do with what the mage wanted to do to me. It was for what the Saghred wanted to do to him. I didn’t care if the mage died, but I didn’t want him dying
through
me.

The rock was crouched like the predator it was, ready to take, to consume. The mage thought he was the predator. He was wrong. Dead wrong.

I knew there was air in the room; I just couldn’t get any of it. “Touch me and you’re a dead man.”

The mage laughed. “I’ll be doing more than touching you—”

Idiot. “You’re bleeding!” I screamed. “The rock—”

His blood-streaked fingers grabbed my throat, pinning me against the wall. Behind him, Balmorlan’s eyes widened in realization and panic.

He knew. He knew the one mage he had left was going to die and all of his plans along with him.

Balmorlan was too slow.

I couldn’t stop the mage from choking me or the Saghred from taking him.

I couldn’t breathe; I could only pant as a single tendril of white light sliced through the center of my chest, snapping around the elf’s wrist like a steel vine, anchoring him where he stood. It engulfed the hand that clenched my throat as I whimpered and gasped for air. More tendrils uncoiled in my chest like a nest of snakes, writhing inside of me, desperate to get out. A scream tore its way from my throat as the Saghred did the same to my body, the tendrils ripping their way out of me, lashing at the mage. I screamed and he screamed, raw and agonized, until there was no air left and black flowers bloomed on the edge of my vision. I was blind to everything but the darkness coming for me and the blazing tendrils that shot up the mage’s arm to his shoulder, coiling and constricting, racing hungrily to consume his body. A high-pitched strangled shriek came from inside the column of white flame that was the elf mage.

The Saghred fed and I screamed.

The stone was a living thing inside of me, its weight crushing me, filling my screaming mouth and nose with the sharp, coppery taste of blood. More blood than one body could hold, the blood of hundreds, thousands of screaming victims.

To the Saghred, the mage was just one more.

And I felt it all.

His body dissolving, his soul torn from disintegrating flesh, all that he was or had ever been was pulled inside of me. The mage’s soul struggled, writhed in terror and helpless panic.

It didn’t know yet. It didn’t know it was worse than dead.

My scream became one of the thousands as I fell into darkness.

Strong arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me up. That definitely wasn’t me.

I was hanging by my wrists, my shoulders on fire, and the contents of my stomach threatening to leave.

“I’ve got you,” a familiar voice assured me. He made it sound like a good thing.

The voice was familiar, but my head was throbbing so hard it couldn’t find a name to go with it.

Hands on my wrists . . . the rattling of chains . . . where was . . .

“We’re getting out of here, cousin.”

Cousin? Cousin . . . cousin . . .
Phaelan
.

I tried to fight my way out of a cold fog that didn’t want to let me go, a fog with soft tendrils, faintly glowing, comforting, caressing, promising safety . . . forever. I sank into a woven blanket of them. I was so tired . . . sleep . . . just for a little while.

“Raine!” the voice shouted from far away. “Stay with me!”

Sharp metal bit into raw skin. My raw skin. Tendrils gently touched my wrists, soothing the pain, a dark power seeping into me, carrying away the pain and fear and replacing it with an eager hunger. I felt a body next to me, a warm body with blood surging through its veins; a living body containing a vibrant soul. The tendrils that held me wanted that soul.

I
wanted that soul, and I would have it.

A low growl of need rose in my throat in anticipation of wrapping my arms, my tendrils around that soul, to feel it struggle in vain against my power, as hunter to prey, the body encasing it helpless to stop me from taking what was mine. It was my right; it was how it should be. How it would be again.

“Raine!” A hand slapped me sharply across the face.

I snarled, striking out. With a shout of shock and pain, the body’s arm released me. I dropped in the chains, agony searing through my muscles. The arms lifted me again, shaking me. I gasped, waking, trying to pull myself up through the fog. The tendrils pulled me back. I got my eyes opened, and a pair of dark eyes stared into my own. Frightened eyes. Familiar eyes. I blinked a few times to focus.

Phaelan.

The weight pulling me down was manacles on my wrists and me hanging from them. I was in a cell.

“Where?” I rasped, my voice hoarse from something. What had I been . . .

“Dungeon,” Phaelan said, his hands working quickly over my head, the scratching of metal on metal.

Picklocks.

I dragged my eyes to a man sprawled on the stone floor. Memory slowly surfaced. Taltek Balmorlan, the elven embassy, the elven mage.

The Saghred. The tendrils trapped him and the stone took him. Through me. His soul went inside of me, was inside of me now. I tasted the metallic tang of my own blood in my mouth, the coppery . . .

Blood. A sacrifice.

I gasped, choking on my own breath. “No!” I tried to get away from Phaelan, to get away from myself, but he just held me tighter.

“What the—”

I panicked, thrashing and struggling. “Get away!”

“It’s all right, I’m—”

“Don’t touch me!”

Phaelan’s grip tightened. “The rock doesn’t want a damned thing to do with me. I’m not bleeding, and you heard him”—he jerked his head toward Balmorlan lying motionless on the floor—“I’m moldy bread. And since I’m not a magic user, I can pick the locks on these things.”

He was right. The Saghred didn’t want him. It had wanted
me
to do it, to make me take him.

I barely got my head turned away from Phaelan before I threw up.

He held me through all of it, making comforting sounds against my hair until my gags turned to sobs.

“Raine, easy, shhh. I know, I know. I need you to be still for me.” Phaelan worked faster at the manacles’ locks. There was a sharp click, and my right arm dropped to my side. The only feeling I had was a cold, sharp tingle, stabbing like tiny needles on every square inch of my arm.

I tried to swallow, but just ended up panting. “No, you don’t know—”

Phaelan quickly looked away from me, concentrating on the other manacle, but I’d seen his eyes, haunted by what he’d seen. He was scared to death. Nothing scared Phaelan. What happened had. I had. And he’d had a front row seat for all of it.

Then he looked me squarely in the eyes. “I’ll tell you what I know; I know you’d never hurt me.”

Fear and the other thing I’d felt—what the Saghred had made me feel—twisted in confusion inside of me. “I’m glad
you
know it.”

Phaelan took a handkerchief from his doublet and gently wiped my mouth and chin. “You don’t have to.” One corner of his mouth curled into a crooked smile, Phaelan’s smile. “I know it enough for both of us.”

“Thank you.” My voice was so quiet I barely heard it myself. My throat was as raw as my wrists. I didn’t think I could scream anymore, but that didn’t mean one stray thought about what I’d done to that mage and nearly done to Phaelan wouldn’t make me start again.

I swallowed, forcing down a rising scream with it. “Guards?”

Phaelan shook his head. “I didn’t see or hear any. They’re probably hunting for Rache. A couple of them saw what you did . . . what happened, and ran like their asses were on fire. Unlikely they’re coming back.”

“We need to hurry,” I managed.

“Goes without saying.” He gave the picklock a sharp twist and the manacle clicked open. My other arm dropped. My body tried to do the same thing, but Phaelan was faster than gravity.

“Gotcha.”

I rested my forehead on his shoulder. I’d survived. The Saghred had fed and I was still alive. The rock had taken a man, an actual living man, reduced his body to vapor and inhaled his soul, right in front of me.

Through me.

I was still here, and so was Phaelan.

I chuckled, though it came off more like a running start toward hysteria. My sense of humor must have been marginally intact. Good. Hopefully my sanity had not only come along for the ride, but was going to stick around. If the Saghred had one or two more meals through me, I had no doubt I’d qualify for a padded room. I wasn’t going to think about that, either.

Phaelan unlocked the chains around my waist and eased me down to the floor, a floor that had never felt so good. I breathed slowly, in and out, trying to convince my stomach not to mutiny again. Taltek Balmorlan lay in a motionless heap. Phaelan wasn’t bleeding, but Balmorlan was, across the back of the head. My cousin was making quick work of my ankle manacles, but he glanced up and saw where I was looking.

“The rock doing its thing with that mage made for one hell of a distraction,” he said. “Let me pick my way out of those manacles and make good use of the chain—right across the back of the bastard’s head.”

“He’s dead?”

Phaelan went back to work. “Don’t know, care less.”

A split second later, he had me out of my ankle chains.

“Got a blade on you?” Phaelan asked.

“Check my boots.”

He did and I didn’t. He looked at Balmorlan and growled in frustration.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m not leaving him alive.”

As much as I wanted Taltek Balmorlan no longer breathing my air, killing him would just get rid of him; it wouldn’t get rid of his allies, his spies, and his lackeys. If Balmorlan was found dead, they’d just regroup and continue as planned. It would delay them, but it wouldn’t stop them. Leaving Balmorlan alive—and able to talk—would give us the best chance to end his war-monger operation once and for all.

I told Phaelan what I was thinking.

Phaelan’s expression said loud and clear that he didn’t like what I was thinking. However, his vicious and frustrated kick to Balmorlan’s ribs said he agreed with me. Under extreme protest.

“Get his keys,” I said. “I want in his office.”

Phaelan’s eyes lit with soon-to-be-fulfilled avarice. “That’s my girl. The mage payroll—enough to pay six.” He nodded in approval. “We’ll make a card-carrying Benares out of you yet.” He flipped the inquisitor over like a sack of grain. “Rest for a minute,” he told me then proceeded to do a very professional job of plundering the body.

I wasn’t interested in gold. If that was Balmorlan’s only office in the embassy, he probably kept things there that were even more valuable than gold—documents, financial records, anything that would make being in this hellhole and force-fed an elf mage worth my while.

When Phaelan finished his ransacking, he had a full purse, a gag, which meant Balmorlan might have made good on his threat, and a ring of keys.

But no weapons.

“Can you scoot over?” Phaelan asked with a vicious grin. “He made those magic-sapping bracelets, now he’s gonna wear ’em.”

I got myself against the far wall as Phaelan dragged Balmorlan’s body across the stone floor to where I’d been chained to the wall. Limp arms or not, I wasn’t about to take a chance on the rock eating Balmorlan.