Renegade (34 page)

“You’ve finally arrived,” she said.

My chest pounded heavily. I fought panic and gripped the knife handle tightly even as my hands slipped upon it, my palms cold, clammy. I had never fought a monster before. I had never believed that anything like her existed, and now she stood before me, and I knew I would have to kill her.

Keep your distance
, I told myself, hoping that my general rules for fighting humans would work here.
Don’t let her pin you. You can’t match her for strength, so keep your distance.

I saw how gracefully, how quickly, she moved, reminding me of so many predators at once. She had the smoothness of a snake, the swiftness of a lizard; her enormous haunches, her legs reminded me of a crouching lioness hidden among the grasses, moving strongly and stealthily toward her prey.

“Seraphina.” I swallowed, almost feeling ridiculous talking to a beast like this. But the breasts, the hair—she was still a woman. I cleared my throat to keep my voice from cracking. “I don’t want to kill you.” In spite of everything, even what she had done to William, I knew that Max was the true devil in this game. He had kept her here, in this lovely palace-prison, fueling the predator in her with dashed hopes for a cure. The half-finished portraits surrounding us—they might as well have been her half-finished dreams. They were manifestations of her rage, her misery—testaments to the half-finished life that had come to be frozen in this purgatory for almost a century.

“Seraphina, these killings need to stop. And I need my William.”

I felt my heart flutter. Something about hearing me claim him as my own emboldened me.

She hissed, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that her long dragon-tail was too close to me, whipping back and forth a bit. We moved slowly in a circle.

She hissed again and moved forward a bit, in a threatening lunge. That tail. I had to keep watching it. She could trip me, and then, if she pinned me, if she leaped on top of me, there would be nothing I could do. I tensed, perspiration dripping down my forehead, and I clutched the knife even tighter in my hand, thinking quickly.

“You are the red-headed girl,” she hissed. “Caroline’s daughter.”

My heart thumped. How much did she know? How much did she know about me?

“I have seen your mother in photographs. You look like her. You were both foolish women, very foolish women, to refuse what I have—to refuse immortality.”

Jealousy. I began to realize that she didn’t want to be merely human—she had wanted what Mother and I had been offered, to be full members of the Conclave.

The elixir. That was something I could work with—perhaps she could be made to see how little the Conclave valued her. They gave her the elixir, but as Max had told me, they thought she had no “assets” as a human; they had never truly considered her part of their brotherhood.

“Yes, you have immortality,” I said. “But what else do you possess? How many times have you left the island in the last century? Are you truly one of them, or do they merely use you?”

I could tell I hit a nerve; she bared her teeth. “You are going to die. You’re going to die slowly, Arabella Sharp. I’ll break your bones, tear the flesh from your muscles, and then I’ll murder your friends before your eyes. Before I’m finished with you, you’ll be begging for death. Begging.”

She bared her teeth and lunged forward. Even with a non-fatal bite, with her venom and her teeth I would instantaneously be in her clutches. I leaped backwards, and tripped and fell.

Neil’s body.

I slipped on the hard marble floor in the mess of his intestines and blood. As I struggled to stand up, fighting nausea, I tried not to think about how it was Neil’s blood seeping through my trousers, tried not to think of the slippery mess that I’d fallen upon. I waited for the bite, for the sharp weight of Seraphina’s teeth in my flesh.

But instead she laughed, a heartless, cruel laugh. “William said you would kill me, that you would slay me. But you are a mere fumbling girl.”

Rage rushed through me as I straightened, feeling Neil’s blood smeared upon my face. “You think I haven’t killed before?” I spat. “I killed the Conclave. Did you know that? Did Max tell you that? They are gone, Seraphina. Only Max is alive. And I will kill him, too.”

The serpent-slit eyes wavered for a moment, and I saw her human eyes, dark and deeply greenish. I suspected then that Max had not told her about their deaths. She knew I had refused the elixir, though … did she plan to enact revenge on me, for the Conclave, since I refused to take their elixir?

I stopped and took the moment to steady my breathing, then stepped away from Neil’s body, distancing myself from Seraphina.

She began shaking, trembling violently. I saw confusion, doubt on her face, and then … finally … rage.

She sprang at me, not as a warning this time. She meant to kill me. I could not fight her in the hall, so I turned, threw open a door behind me. The moment I slammed and bolted it, I heard her crash against it loudly, her jaws snapping together in a great clamp.

I chastised myself over what had just happened. I had been so focused on her teeth, on her claws and tail, that I had tripped over Neil’s body. That mistake should have been fatal. I could not make a mistake like that again.

Monkeys shrieked behind me. The menagerie—I was in the menagerie. A lamp glowed dully against the wall on the far side of the room. Otherwise, the room was dark.

Then the door behind me burst open. Enraged, Seraphina advanced toward me. I clutched the bowie knife tighter; I had to keep the fight in here. There was at least a little light in this room; fighting her in the complete darkness of the hall was far too dangerous.

She leaped onto the grate of the empty tiger cage immediately in front of me. I saw a half-eaten deer carcass in the cage. I swiped at her with the knife, but in a single movement she knocked it aside and lifted me into the air.

I couldn’t breathe; I coughed, spit. I began to see flickering sparkles in my peripheral vision—only the lingering odor of blood on her breath kept me from losing consciousness.

Her claws cut painfully into my throat. She opened her mouth, her fangs extending again.

I still had the second, short-bladed knife in my belt. With my free hand I pulled out the knife and slashed her eye. A membrane shot over it just as the blade made contact, but she screamed and hissed nonetheless. As she clutched her eye, she bit me hard in the arm and kicked me across the room with her foot.

I heard myself scream distantly, as if in a nightmare. The pain was indescribable—worse than any knife wound. I could not imagine what William had endured these past weeks. I saw a narrow gash in my arm as pain pulsed from the wound—it was like a fire searing through my veins.

I bit my lip to keep from screaming, but as I fought hysteria the tears flowed; the pain was too great. I felt my arm stiffening, quaking from the poison—I could not become immobilized. Thinking of snake venom, I sucked the wound rapidly, as hard as I could, spitting the acidic venom away. I couldn’t extract it all, but I sucked and then spit out as much as possible in a few seconds, and I felt a bit of ease from the pain.

Her hissing ceased and I crouched, cowering. I knew she was stalking me now, but I didn’t know where she was—she could pounce upon me at any moment and then I would be dead.

Amid the monkey shrieks and other animal howls, I heard a softer sound near me, a soft, delicate noise, louder and more comforting than the others.

Dee-do. Dee-do.

A cool beak pecked my face. Then the bird leaned out of its enclosure, nuzzling my hand for pumpkin seeds.

A dodo!

A second dodo stepped out from behind the foliage in its enclosure. One of these dodos had to be the one I’d fed in Robert Buck’s hothouse before it was transported here for safekeeping. The first dodo, unconcerned but marvelous, considered me as I crouched against the enclosure. Its marble eyes rolled downward.

I couldn’t cower there any longer, waiting for her like a trapped prey.

“Seraphina,” I said into the darkness. It was an invitation.

I saw her massive form step around the monkey cages near me.

She was even closer than I thought.

Pushing my terror aside, I lunged at her again with the short-bladed knife, slicing her neck.

With a great roar, she leapt at me, swiping my chest with her claws. I felt the slashes on my stomach. I had twisted my body around the second before she struck, so the slashes were not as deep as they might have been; although painful, they were infinitely less painful than the bite on my arm was.

We fought, slashing and leaping. It was an odd and grotesque dance. But I began to feel a small hope that if I could get the perfect aim in the right spot, I might survive.

Then, before I could stop her, she pinned me against the outside bars of a huge birdcage—it was an enormous structure in the center of the menagerie, and stretched from the floor to the ceiling. I panicked, unable to push her off of me. But her weight was too much for even the thick cage wire, and it bent open, wide. Birds, dozens of birds, poured out into the room like a black cloud. In the confusion, I stabbed blindly in the direction of her chest, above the scales, but I missed with every swing. She hissed, and before I could jump away, she pushed me hard to the floor and pinned me there.

I was dead.

Although she did not have her full weight upon me, I could barely breathe. She crushed my rib cage, and I knew she was about to deliver a fatal blow. But then she roared, reared away from me in pain. I used the opportunity to roll out from under her. And it was then that I saw the sword sticking out of her back.

Simon.

The wound had not been fatal; he must have thrown the sword from the nearby doorway. She leapt off of me to pursue him out in the hall.

“Run, Simon!” I yelled. My heart dropped. He would be weakened by the blood transfusion and would not be able to flee from her or fight her. Taking a split second to retrieve my knives, I ran to the hall.

“Stop, Abbie!” Simon’s voice was beside me in the darkness, and he caught my arm. He was standing immediately to the right of the door, clutching a column. His face was pale, much paler than normal.

It was then that I heard the great crash, and saw the lamia lying on the floor under a heap of canvas paintings. The floor was smeared with blood—Neil’s blood—and lamp oil. Simon had slicked down the hall and then waited near the menagerie door.

Although my arm throbbed, I could still fight. I had to keep Seraphina away from Simon. Carefully, I moved along the slicked floor of the great hall toward the doors at the far end, away from the staircase and the bedroom.

Canvases began flying in all directions as Seraphina stood, righted herself. I was tiring, and my arm was already swelling from the bite.

I continued running toward the double doors at the very end of the great hall. As I plunged through them, she turned to follow. Falling into the room, I stumbled onto a floor-to-ceiling pile of gold pieces—coins, goblets, jewelry. Stacks of money lined one entire wall. I had found the Conclave’s treasury.

“Arabella Sharp!”

She was in the hall, just outside, and I hadn’t yet shut and bolted the doors. I heard the click of her talons on the marble floor.

I stood up in the piles, positioning myself. Throwing the knives at her would be my best defense. I remembered how that place—that place where her heart was, near her breasts—was not so heavily scaled. I stood back, hearing the gold pieces slide around me. Two throws. That was all I had.

The next moment, I saw her form in the doorway. I heard breath flowing through her nostrils, and I smelled her venom odor. Instantly, I threw the short-bladed knife, hard.

She hissed, stared at me. Confusion, hatred in her eyes.

I remembered the brief bewilderment, the seeming astonishment that had crossed her eyes for a few seconds when I had told her I had killed the Conclave. Once again, I wondered if she understood how she had been used all of these years, how they only needed her as a guard for their animals and their money.

She towered above me, and it was only then that I saw blood oozing from the wound on her neck. But it was not fatal.

Almost blindly, I plunged the bowie knife hard upwards into her chest, trying to ignore the pain and stiffness in my wounded arm. This strike had to hurt her, or she would fall upon me and kill me.

After stabbing her I rolled away through the piles of coins, seconds before she fell. I heard a great metallic rattling, a shift in the mountain of gold, as she fell heavily into it, scattering coins, jewels, goblets all around us.

I scooted away in the pile, gasping, heaving, and barely able to catch my breath. As I backed further away from her, I smelled her rancid, acidic odor.

I had pierced her heart, and it had been a fatal hit. I’d known I had to kill her to survive, and yet I felt deep remorse as I watched her collapse, clutching her chest. My heart pounded as I peered at her in the dim light. It was then that I heard a whimper, more pitiful than any death cry.

Beautiful, naked, lovely, she lay amid the gold—now in her human form, crying. She was not much taller than me. As she lay there, she turned her head toward me, fully a woman now. Her hazelnut hair covered her face. Her wounds bled, the bowie knife still protruding from her heart.