The Nutcracker Bleeds (27 page)

That
sound had come from Brooke’s sleeve. One of the blades had been extended. That
soldier–he would dare to oppose him? Armand immediately forgot about his
business with Anne.

“You
want to fight me?” he demanded of Brooke, reaching for the screw rapier at his
side.

Brooke
was going to defend Anne against him? Did he not know that Anne belonged to
him? How foolish. There could be an example made of him very quickly.

“Stop!”
the woman demanded, standing between the two of them. “For Godsakes! Can’t have
the two of you ripping each other apart. You ought to be ashamed!”

Armand
felt very little shame, and Brooke would claim that he didn’t even understand
the concept. The tension was so thick that either of them could have stabbed
it, but then, Armand realized how 

Pointless
to deal with him
,
Armand told himself. Anything that slowed him down was a waste of time.

Without
a word, and even at the risk of letting Anne think her plea had something to do
with it, Armand backed down, turning away and heading toward the larger door to
Olivia’s room.

5

Anne
sighed as she watched him walk away, but had to admit she was relived. Whether
or not he had backed down for her sake, she didn’t care. She was merely glad it
was over.

Anne
turned her eyes back toward Brooke. He stood there patiently, his weapon
sheathed and looking like nothing had happened at all.

“I
appreciate it,” she said, “but please don’t. Not with him.”

“If
that satisfies you,” Brooke said easily.

The
soldier with the empty brown eyes walked past her. She followed him.

6

Brooke
was feeling something, though no one, not even himself, would have been able to
interpret it. Armand was angry with many things, finally managing to compress
them and hold them within. It could be used against his enemy later.

But
Anne was feeling something else entirely. She knew what it was very well. It
had an exceptionally distinct name. She and it were well–acquainted. It was
Olivia’s fault that she had felt it once, but Anne never thought that the girl
would be the cause of it again.

Still,
the thing crept over her like the shadow of a monster. That thing was named
Jealousy
.

1

Neither
Anne nor Brooke understood why Armand had made them use the stairs instead of
the shafts to get down to the first floor. Was it because he was angry with
them? That would have been viable, for while the nutcracker himself moved down
the drops with his long legs in a relatively easy fashion, the soldier and the
woman were caught behind. Brooke didn’t have much trouble alone, but after every
step he would have to stop and help Anne down. This kept them back. Armand
didn’t even seem to notice. He reached the bottom long before they did.

Past
the stairs, he moved out into the corridor and checked down the hallway for any
threat. It was clear and silent, save for the thumps behind him as Brooke and
Anne continued to work their way down to the floor.

“Do
you see anything?” the woman asked from four steps above. She put her hands on
Brooke’s shoulders and he supported her weight until she was on the same step
as he was. Then he dropped to the next.

“Nothing,”
Armand said, feeling a bit baffled. They weren’t very far from the house’s
entry room where Olivia had instructed them to go, and yet there were no sounds
of disturbance. Had the Lady Sovereign not said that she’d sent soldiers?
Perhaps they’d not gotten there yet? Or perhaps it was already over.

“I
know this place.” Brooke stepped past Armand and began down the hall on his
own. The nutcracker did not bother stopping him.

“Be
cautious,” Armand warned, but not for the toy’s own benefit. “We’re here
because of an attack. Likely rodents.”

Brooke
said nothing in response. In fact, he didn’t even turn around in
acknowledgement, as if he’d not heard Armand at all.

It
took a short moment of standing there, but Armand suddenly realized that Anne
was not there with them. Perhaps it had been an absence of her inquiries, or
perhaps the missing grey gaze. He turned back toward the steps to find her, and
she was–

–
laying
in a pool of blood that dripped down the stairs, left staring lifelessly; a
ruined corpse after the dark–haired soldier had eviscerated her unfeelingly.

But
no. That was not what he found. The soldier hadn’t harmed her. He had, however,
forgotten to help her down from the last step. Anne was sitting on the edge of
it, trying to slide herself off easily but seeming unsure. Armand knew he would
have to help her.

But
he didn’t want to touch her right now.

Anne
looked up when he approached. He didn’t speak his intentions, but she knew what
they were. She accepted his help without fuss.

Anne
took his shoulders and he gathered her up, supporting her at her waist and
beneath her legs. She seemed to weigh nothing, like feathers or cotton. He
swung her around to set her to the ground–

But
then he stopped short.
Why?
The woman fit in his arms so perfectly, as
if she belonged there. The way she looked at him now… It was very different
from the way Olivia looked at him. There was a mix of everything one could feel
projecting through those eyes. There was confusion, concern, desire, hatred,
trust, fear, pain, love… His fingers clenched her side where he held her–
wanting
.
She didn’t protest.

Why
was he thinking these things? He
couldn’t
think these things. It had been
so many years and he’d never been tempted like this–not since the days that he
was flesh himself. This was a distraction. It was meant to throw him off his
course. He could not allow it. There was work to be done.

Dropping
her legs, he released her.

“You’ll
want to have a look at this,” Brooke called, and their attention snapped
forward.

At
the angle where the corridor opened up into the Ellington house entry room,
Brooke stood, his gaze directed upward. Armand and Anne joined him there.

What
they saw was nothing less or more than any of them expected, and they looked on
emotionlessly.

The
presents beneath the tree had been ransacked–torn to pieces. The toys that had
been ripped from the boxes of pretty paper were suspended from branches of the
decorated tree like ornaments, cocooned entirely in thread. Perhaps some of
them were also the Lady’s soldiers? There was no trace of them here.

Armand
looked over the spacious room that was glowing with the flames from the large
fireplace. Something was amiss here.
Something
was not what it seemed.

“Puppets
again?” Anne asked quietly from between the two of them.

“Seems
so,” Brooke commented, taking a couple of deliberate steps forward.

“Perhaps
a bit of both,” the nutcracker said.

His
eyes had drifted to the floor, and in the haste of this cover–up, a smudge of
blood had been neglected. It was drawn across the tile–telltale proof of the
true story. The soldiers
had
come. There had been a battle here
recently.

“Rodents?”
Anne inquired.

She
squeezed the marble. Somehow, it always managed to offer her a tiny degree of
comfort, like hugging a teddy bear. That thought amused her. In this world, she
was the
teddy bear’s
comfort toy.

“Something’s
not quite right,” the nutcracker said, stooping down to view the room from a
different angle.

Were
those eyes peering at him from beneath the tree? No. Simply reflections of the
fire off the glass ornaments. Still, it was much too quiet here. Too calm. The
vermin were not gone.

“Be
my eyes,” Armand said to Brooke as he moved across the floor toward the tree.
Even though they’d nearly had a nasty mishap earlier because of Anne, they
would still work together. The other soldier respected his decisions when it
came to these dangerous territories.

Brooke
peered around and stayed close to Anne as they followed the nutcracker. Armand
had his focus set on one thing: the lowest toy–cocoon that was hanging off the
tree. He cared very little about the toys inside. If he cared at all, it was
only for Olivia’s sake. Perhaps though, he could find out something. But it
might not have been worth his time.

He
knew they were being watched.

Drawing
the glass blade, he cut down the cocoon and worked it open. He’d gotten lucky.
Inside was one of the Lady’s soldiers.

Or
perhaps it wasn’t luck at all. This one was placed considerably lower than the
others. They meant for me to see this.

As
soon as the wooden soldier focused on Armand’s face, he began to sputter words.

“We
t–tried to stop them. But when we got here it was too late. There were s–so
many! They overwhelmed us.”

“Do
you know their purpose? Was it something more than taking the gifts hostage?”
The Lady’s toy soldier looked at him dumbly. “
Speak
!”

At
the command, the toy soldier began to yell frantically, nearly weeping through
it. The sound was like the dying wail of an animal. Armand knew he would get
nothing out of this toy. It had gone insane.

We
should not be here.

2

Brooke
observed the dim room. He’d decided that the nutcracker had been correct. It didn’t
feel right for them to be standing here. Even the air was suspicious.

His
eyes passed over thick shadows that rested in the corners of the room like
realms of night. Staring into the blankness, the darkness seemed to swirl and
move as if it was alive. Brooke had seen something like this before. He could
never decide if it was dust that made the dark seem to move, or–

Wait
. There
was
something stirring there. Realization dawned.

“Anne…”

Anne
and Armand both looked to Brooke, but before Armand’s gaze got there, he saw
what Brooke had seen. Those things in the dark may not have been overly
intelligent, but they knew that they had been spotted.

“Run!”
Armand commanded the woman, standing abruptly.

“To
where
?”

“Anywhere!”
he said quickly, pulling the sword from his back. “Just hide!”

Anne
did as she was told. Quickly, she wound through the mess of crumpled paper and
discarded boxes.

Armand
stepped forward to shield her fleeing form from view, and out of the darkness
came the rats.

3

The rats
were very different from the mice, as Armand had attempted to explain to the
woman earlier on. An assemblage of three crawled out toward the odd pair of
awaiting soldiers. They skulked into the light–large, slobbering beasts that
were both wide and long. Their tails were massive, their bloody yellow teeth
were sharp, and their eyes shone with the light touching them, mirroring off
the red surfaces.

Atop
each sat a mouse that was shrouded in white–and less than half the rat’s size.
In fact, these larger, more disgusting and dangerous vermin were bigger than
Brooke and Armand
both
.

“I’ve
never fought against these,” Brooke said. Even though he admitted this fault,
he stood ready with his blades, rooted firmly beside Armand. Unfeeling and
fearless, the both of them were.

“Throat,
head, chest, or gut. Your choice,” the nutcracker told him.

Brooke
heard Armand’s words, but the nutcracker himself was listening to a different
sound. The rodents were speaking to each other, but it was not the language of
man that they used. Their communications were a series of the unrefined squeaks
and chattering they had used before they’d received their master’s blessing.
While impossible to speak with his own tongue, these communications were not
impossible for Armand to understand.

Did
he really need to know what they were saying? No, he did not. He only needed to
know that, right now, the rats were moving to encircle both of them to keep
them contained in a small area of the floor.

4

Armand
didn’t expect Brooke to move until he moved, and that was what he counted on,
but once he did make his first attack, he expected the other soldier to help
him end this quickly.

The
mice circled their rat–mounts around their enemies, contemplating what was
best. They had been instructed to battle the soldiers from the Lady Sovereign’s
kingdom. They’d not expected to have any
unknowns
come into this area.

This
was not impossible to remedy, however. Mice could capture them, cocooning them
up as they had done to the rest of the toys. They could destroy them, but the
rodents didn’t think their master would like that. He wanted as few toys
destroyed as was possible. What a harsh dilemma.

Before
they’d finished considering, the nutcracker tired of this game. He had two humans
to protect–one directly, the other indirectly–and he had no time for this. He
flipped his blade over, driving it straight into the side of the nearest rat,
drawing the rancid, red life–fluid.

The
giant creature roared, twisting around, biting at the thing that had caused it
discomfort. Armand withdrew the sword before it was broken to tiny shards in
the rat’s mouth. Just as swiftly, he plunged the glass into the rat’s ear. The
mouse rider had not slid off in time, and Armand had little trouble lopping off
the creature’s head.

That
was one pair down. Two more to go.

The
rat and rider that had been following behind the one the nutcracker had slain
moved to save their fallen comrades, but Armand was not unprepared. He gripped
the screw–rapier and thrust it upward without turning, finding a place for it
in the shoulder of the lumbering rodent. The creature recoiled in pain, and the
nutcracker withdrew, stabbing again, this time into the beast’s heart.

This
next mouse did not even attempt to fight. It raised its head and let out a long
squeak–and then it too was missing a head.

This
justice had been swift on Armand’s part, and meanwhile Brooke had been left
with one rat and mouse pair. The mouse had led the rat to snap at the soldier
over and over again, and while he dodged efficiently, he didn’t manage to land
a hit either. He’d always heard tales of the rodents, and he’d seen a few
passing about in the shafts now and again, but he’d never battled them. Would
they truly fall as easily as the nutcracker had claimed? Such great enemies
they were, and yet they were more delicate than toys themselves?

The
rat dove in once again with its jaws of ragged death. Brooke could hear the
sound of its teeth gnashing together after each attempt. It bit once again–a
tad low this time–and the soldier hammered his fist down on the rat’s nose. The
creature withdrew immediately, falling back.

The
rat shook its unsettled head, slinging strings of yellow saliva onto the
soldier’s coat. With the creature woozy, Brooke thrust forward his blade–
This
had better work
–and the pointed end entered into the flesh of the beast’s
throat.