Thief With No Shadow (40 page)

A minute passed, full of long seconds. Something was wrong with his heartbeat: too fast, too loud, too jerky.

Heat and peppery musk billowed out at him as the heavy door opened. Bastian stepped back and caught himself, made himself stand still. Primitive terror twisted beneath his breastbone. He swayed with the need to turn and run.

He saw ember-bright eyes in the shadows. “Yesss?”

Bastian swallowed, forcing his fear down. “I’ve come for the wraith.”

There was a flash of sharp teeth as the salamander kit uttered a gleeful, hissing laugh.

Sweat gathered on his skin. He swallowed again. “If the wraith is alive, I want her.”

“For what prissse, human?”

Smoke and sulphur choked in his throat and acrid musk stung his eyes. Terror was tight in his chest. “For me. For pleasure.”

He heard a soft, sibilant inhalation of breath and a rustle of movement. Another pair of bright eyes looked at him. “Wait.” The door shut with a grating clang.

Bastian waited, battling his fear. His breath came too shallow, too fast. He still sweated, despite the closed door and the coolness of morning. His hand shook when he wiped the perspiration from his face. The sound of his heartbeat drowned all other sounds. If there was birdsong, he didn’t hear it.

The door opened again. Four kits crowded outside, where the sunlight fell on them. Bastian held himself still, his hands clenched, as they surrounded him. They were lithe and sleek, with skin as red as fire.

The salamanders inspected him as if he was livestock. Agile fingers unbuttoned his shirt and bared his chest, pulled the sleeves down his arms and dropped the shirt on the dirt. Hot hands touched his skin, prodding and poking, squeezing muscle, stroking.

“Yesss,” said one. “Yesss, a good bargain.”

And then those deft fingers were at his waist. Bastian squeezed his eyes shut, trembling, cringing inside himself as trousers and underbreeches fell to the ground. He felt a light, scorching touch on his thigh, heard a hissing murmur of delight. “Yesss, yesss. A very good bargain.”

The salamanders stepped back. They made no sound, but there was suddenly less heat. He swallowed and opened his eyes.

The kits stood in the doorway again, all four of them, as red as the heart of a fire. “You may enter,” one of them said.

Bastian pulled up the underbreeches and trousers while they watched, sweating with shame and fear. His hands shook too much to button the shirt. “The wraith?” he asked, when his nudity was hidden. “She’s alive?”

A crested head dipped in answer. “Ssshe livesss.”

The shame of his nakedness, those watching eyes and bold hands, was suddenly nothing. Melke was alive, and the fear evaporated like sweat on his skin. Stepping into the choking heat and smoke and peppery musk was almost easy.

A torch burned sullenly inside, pushing back the thick shadows. “Let me see her.”

“No.”

“Then we have no bargain.”

He heard a hiss of annoyance. “Very well.”

Bastian followed the salamanders, as clumsy as an ox beside their litheness. The rough space of the vestibule narrowed into a passage. It curved and curved again, and widened into a cell-like chamber, small and low-ceilinged.

“Here.”

Torches flared smokily in brackets, casting shadows on the coarse red walls.

“Where?”

One of the salamanders pointed to the floor with a sharp-clawed finger. “There.”

“No,” The word choked in Bastian’s throat. He was on his knees, scrabbling to lift the metal trapdoor, appalled. The iron was heavy, black and pitted. He couldn’t get his fingertips under the edge.

He heard a loud hiss in his ear, exasperated, and a salamander kit pushed him aside. Muscles flexed beneath supple red skin and the trapdoor lifted with a grating sound.

A hole gaped, black and bottomless. The stench of salamander scat and death curled out of it. He could see nothing.

Bastian turned to the kit beside him, too appalled to be afraid. “She’s not alive!”

“Yesss.”

He shook his head, speechless with horror. Nothing in that pit could be alive.

One of the salamanders thrust a torch into the opening. Shadows lunged back. That was the only movement.

The floor of the pit was fifteen, twenty feet below him. He saw bones, human ribcages and skulls, scraps of cloth—and Melke lying still, a rag doll figure with crooked limbs.

“We keep all our thievesss here.” The creature’s voice was rich with satisfaction.

Something choked painfully in Bastian’s throat. “She’s dead.” She’d died in the dark, in a stinking pit.

The salamander uttered a sharp sound of denial. “Ssshe livesss.”

“I want her out! Get her out! Now!” Bastian was on his feet, gulping air as if he’d just run a race. Melke was afraid of the dark. Liana had told him. Endal had told him.

“Afterwardsss.”

“Now! Or there’s no bargain!”

The answer was a sinuous shrug.

The salamanders hauled her out using a chain. The kit that went down into the pit was displeased. Tiny flames licked around its mouth.

Bastian watched, clenching and unclenching his hands. He didn’t recognize Melke when she lay at his feet. He knelt, hesitant to touch her. Black hair, yes, in a long plait, and the red blouse with flower-stitched cuffs, singed and torn. But it wasn’t Melke’s face, fine-boned and elegant. This was a stranger’s face, black with soot, burned and bruised and swollen. A gaping wound slashed down one cheek. He saw the white gleam of bone.

His fingers curled into his palms. He had no gift for healing. He was useless, helpless, afraid. “Melke?” he whispered.

It seemed to him that she didn’t breathe. There was no movement of her lips or chest. She lay as if dead. No defiance, no haughtiness, just death.

“Melke?” Bastian whispered again. He forced himself to touch cautious fingers to her throat.

He felt a pulse, faint and irregular.

“Come.” He heard impatience in the salamander’s voice, a crackle of fire.

Bastian didn’t look away from Melke. “But—”

“Come now or our bargain isss void.”

He looked up. The spines that crested the salamander’s skull cast long, spiky shadows on the wall. “But she’s dying.”

“We cannot promissse that ssshe will live beyond today. That wasss not our bargain.”

The bargain.

There was a bargain and he had to fulfill it, or else Melke would die on this floor.

Bastian scrambled to his feet. He followed the salamanders, fast, urgent, almost stepping on their heels.
Hurry, hurry.
The passage opened into a cavernous hall but he paid no attention to the vastness of it, to the heat and the heaped coins and the leaping pit of flames. He pushed ahead of the salamander kits and strode across the floor to their mother.

“We have a bargain,” he said roughly, stripping off his shirt.

“Sssss...” It was a sound of pleasure, ripe and sibilant.

His heart clenched to a halt. There was fire in those wide eyes, flames licking in the iris.

She stood, graceful and sleek. Her skin was as dark as heart’s blood, as bright as the burning core of a bonfire. There was no hair on her body, just that sharp crest. Her face was broader than the kits, but still...a lizard’s face, wide-mouthed and lipless, sharp-toothed.

The kits were immature, genderless, but this creature had a woman’s breasts, ripe and full. The dip of her waist and the swell of her hips, her musk... She was female.

Bastian’s revulsion was strong and instinctive. Bile rose in his throat.

The salamander stepped close to him, as tall as he was, lithe and lush. Her crest fanned over her skull, the spines as fine and sharp as needles. Heat radiated from her skin.

Bastian struggled not to recoil. His heartbeat was staccato in his ears. Breathing was impossible. He couldn’t inhale, couldn’t exhale.

The salamander touched one razor-sharp claw to his breast. “Pleasssure,” she said, and small flames curled from her mouth.

Bastian trembled, the shirt clenched in his fist. Terror beat inside him.
Courage.
For Hantje, bleeding, and for Melke, lying near-dead, he had to do this.
Courage.
He forced himself to breathe, to inhale the salamander’s scent, to speak. “Yes.”

She showed her teeth in a smile. “Then begin.”

His fingers opened stiffly. The shirt fell to the floor. “The wraith needs water.”

She gestured with her hand, feminine and graceful, terrifying, and one of the kits ran to do her bidding.

“I don’t wish to be watched.”

The salamander’s smile grew wider, showing pointed teeth. Flames glinted in her eyes. “They will watch.”

There was a moment when he couldn’t go further, a single, precise, shining moment when he simply
could not.
The moment passed and he undid his trousers with fumbling fingers.

CHAPTER FIFTY

S
ILVIA HAD TAUGHT
him well. Never mind that the heat of the salamander’s skin scalded his fingertips and singed his hair, never mind that his mouth and tongue blistered as he kissed her breasts, that her strong scent made him want to vomit. Bastian had promised pleasure and he gave it. He closed his eyes and pretended that she was Silvia, that it was skin beneath his mouth instead of fine scales, that her smell was sensual, not choking.

They lay on coins in firelight. It was a barbaric couch, decadent and hard-edged, a king’s fortune in gold. Bastian drowned in musk and heat. The salamander’s hands were on him, caressing him as he caressed her. His skin was slippery with sweat, prickling with pain.

He jerked as her tail curled snake-like around his calf, jerked again and almost yelped as hot fingers touched his groin, as she explored his maleness. Her hand was bold and greedy, forcing a response from him. He inhaled sharply. Pain and pleasure twisted together.

Now. Do it now.
He mounted the salamander, burying himself in her body, whimpering in his throat at the heat, the pain. The salamander arched to meet him. Flames licked from her mouth.

Bastian squeezed his eyelids shut. There was pain as he thrust, pleasure. Pain. Pleasure. It was a nightmare, a hideous combination of pain and pleasure and terror and scalding heat and intense shame.

The salamander’s body clenched around him. Bastian opened his eyes and saw her head bow back, saw the muscles cord in her throat, saw fire erupt from her mouth and then—
shame, shame—
his own release came, so excruciating that he nearly screamed.

Bastian wept inside himself as he rolled off the salamander. Something howled in his chest.
No.

The salamander stretched beside him, sinuous and fiery, sated. Flames were banked low in her voice, “Very pleasssant.”

Bastian closed his eyes. Sobs choked in his throat. The horror inside him was deep and absolute.
What have I done?

“Would you like another bargain? Gold, perhapsss?”

“No!” Bastian’s eyelids jerked open. He pushed himself upright and staggered to stand. “No! Just the wraith.”

The salamander’s eyes narrowed. Flame curled from her mouth. “I wasss mossst angry with her. But with you, I am mossst pleasssed.” More flames slid from her mouth,

Bastian turned his head away. “I just want the wraith. Just Melke. Please.”

The adult salamander came to stand behind him as he dressed. Bastian smelled her musk, felt her heat. He pulled on his underbreeches and trousers, his shirt. The buttons wouldn’t go into the buttonholes. Hot breath licked his ear. A scalding lizard-hand slid around his waist and cupped his groin.

“No!” The word was hoarse, choked.

The hand was removed.

Bastian dragged on his boots. He straightened, lurching upright, and turned to face the salamander.

She smiled at him, a creature of sharpness and fire. “A bonusss payment,” she said, holding a thick gold coin out to him.