Wrath and Bones (66 page)

“Wish I didn’t have to. Not leaving me much choice, here.”

“I’ll go right through you,” he promised. I believed him. He’d gone full vampire hunter, and, in the face of death, he was going to take a dead guy out with him. It wasn’t going to be mine, though. Not if I had anything to say about it.

“You have no fucking idea how much I wanted to believe I could trust you here,” I said. “That we had something different. Something special.”

“Don’t over-romanticize me. Like I said…” he snarled, “I’m out.”

“Yeah, I see that,” I snapped back. “You’re way out. You’ve never been more out. You’re also way out of your league. And you knew that, but you did it anyway. Now I have to save both Harry
and
your stupid ass. How am I supposed to do that, Mark?” I heard my own voice ring out alone in the massive room, the only sound. “How do I save you?”

“You don’t.”

“I have to!” I shouted. Hot tears blurred my vision for only a second before I angrily blinked them away.

“No.” Batten nailed me with his deep lakewater blue eyes and said, “Don’t fuck everything up, Snickerdoodle.”

He sprung up once more, and time slowed like we’d been thrown into a pot of honey. His knife was in his hand; I saw it too late, frozen in place. He could have aimed it at my throat, heart, belly, but it was a silver flash aimed directly at my shoulder; I would forever see the final betrayal of that knife coming at my shoulder, feel my training kick in, see Harry’s arm in that last instant. Harry’s forearm was a hard, frigid barrier as he swept me aside. He took one step forward, death’s frigid march, and put a stop to Batten’s attack with a graceful monster’s cold embrace.

I stumbled under the momentum of Harry’s shove, falling to my knees. My fall seemed to take forever. I looked up just in time to watch Harry’s fangs claim valuable territory deep in Batten’s throat. Batten stiffened in his arms, letting out a grunt of surprise, like he hadn’t expected it to really happen in the end, despite everything that had been said. His feet scrambled for purchase on the marble, but Harry had him sinking, sinking into a mindfuck so complete that Batten would quickly forget where and who he was. Batten’s eyes rolled back, searching for me frantically, wide with realization and desperation as his life fled quickly to Harry’s noiseless feed.

My mouth stung with Harry’s bliss. My heart jerked with agony as Batten’s face paled. He gave one more wriggle in Harry’s clutches, pointless and hopeless, but stubborn to the last. I could do nothing but sit on my ass, stunned, and watch the lights go out. Batten locked eyes with me and suddenly the psychic null shattered, and for the first time ever, I Felt him, empathically, strongly and invasively. Harry’s mindfuck of Kill-Notch was being blocked by some other stubborn revenant fucker, and Batten, unshielded, was little-boy terrified, a boy in the dark finding his fear of monsters well-founded, seeing the shadow under the bed for what it truly was, and in his last moment, calling out for me, calling out for my help.

I could do nothing but tremble. His pupils fixed. His hand fell away from his futile push at Harry’s shoulder, his upturned fingernails already cyanotic. My clinical mind teased me with all the details of a draining death, all the physiological truths of his end. I couldn't look away.

Harry withdrew but kept his face turned from me, tucked near his chest as his body rattled to a life-like vigor; flushed with the hunter’s blood, Harry’s body would chug to life like an abandoned train rescued under the power of new coal. Lungs, heart, and vital organs swelled and rejoiced, veins sang with heat, loins throbbed with need. Harry would ignore these things; his focus now was entirely on the agony of his pet, and as he laid Batten’s body gently on the marble, his free hand flickered impatiently at House Dreppenstedt’s banner.

When none of the Dreppenstedt revenants made a move toward us, he flashed them a challenging chrome glare. It was not an immortal who came forward first. It was Carole Jeanne. Her trek across the marble was witnessed with surprise for only a moment, and when she gave a motherly
don’t-make-me-come-back-there
glance at the revenants next to her Wilhelm, they did not require their master’s order to hustle into action. A pair of them obeyed the prince’s DaySitter and her wordless demands, coming to sweep Batten’s body up.

“Take that away,” Carole Jeanne said to the revenants, placing one hand on my shoulder and another on Harry’s. Remy gestured behind her throne, and several members of Wilhelm's retinue carried Battens body off in that direction.

“Where are they taking him? Is it over? Is it done?” I shuddered once, hard. “Harry, I can’t breathe…”

“You can,” Harry told me. “You will. We both will.”

I couldn’t look at him. Remy was speaking. House Sarokhanian was answering. There were official things being said. Some of them were being said directly to me. I heard none of it. I felt Declan off to one side, felt his urgent need to connect with me. I couldn’t look at him, either. I didn’t want to see or hear anyone. When Declan moved a few steps forward, Harry’s shaking head stayed his approach.

Harry sank to his knees by my side. “You are injured.”

Understatement of a lifetime.

“Your nose is bleeding, Dearheart,” Harry said, clearing his throat as a husky tone betrayed him; his appetite had been whetted, and he was still ragingly hungry, and it bothered him deeply. Letting me know this through the Bond was his was of seeking forgiveness. I couldn’t even begin to consider that.

“My Own, can you stand?” he asked.

I did, letting him support my elbow despite a deep need to shrink away from him. I didn’t bother hiding it through the Bond; he would just have to deal with my revulsion. Carole Jeanne’s hand stayed on my shoulder. It was the only thing I didn’t hate in that moment, the only thing that I didn’t want to punish, the only thing I didn’t want to stab.

“It’s too cold for you, here, my MJ,” Harry said. “It’s time for me to take you home.”

Batten should never have come here. I should never have come here. None of this felt worth it. I refused to look at Remy on the throne; giving her the respect of a civil parting bow or nod or glance was too difficult. I didn't look at the beings quietly standing under the banner of House Dreppenstedt, nor the master of my Cold Company. I felt Wilhelm’s desire to brush my mind with his voice, to reassure me, to support me, but he refrained. I could have used it. I desperately wanted comfort right now. The house Bond was shrinking away from me; I wondered if I was being rejected in some way, or if the empaths were protecting themselves from my pain, human pain they didn’t want or need to feel. I reminded myself that while they could not feel love, they were acutely able to feel the loss of love. If they did not protect themselves as a group from my agony, they would share it for as long as I was with them.

But I would not return to Felstein. If I never saw Felstein again, it would be too soon.

I half-saw Rask as he stomped past us on the marble, half-heard arrangements being made to fetch our things, was vaguely aware of Harry’s soft-spoken plans. I stared at Batten’s torn leather jacket, returned to the floor next to it, reached for the mangled thing. The clamp squeezing in my chest intensified and I refused to feel it, shoving it out again hard. I dragged the leather jacket onto my shoulders, though it wouldn’t cooperate in any way.

Harry stopped mid-sentence in his plans with Rask and said, “It’s filthy, love,” but moved to help me put my arms into it anyway. The jacket smelled of blood and leather… and watered down Brut cologne; in the end, the holy water hadn’t done a damn thing to save him.

I looked up at Harry to check his mouth for burns and found nothing at all but slowly retracting fangs and the gloss of saliva where he’d carefully licked away all evidence of Batten’s blood so as not to further upset me. The tears finally came; Harry became an elegant blur. “Can you fix it?”

He touched the torn bits. “I will stitch it immediately.”

“Fix it,” I whispered, and dropped my head, no longer talking about the stupid jacket. “Just fix it.”

“Hold it, Toots,” the Overlord’s voice rolled into the throne room, rushing into our reality with alarming ease. If I’d been less numb, I might have marveled at the control of the demon king, but as it was, I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t even look at Him as He approached from behind His daughter’s throne until He grabbed the left shoulder of Batten’s jacket and pulled it off my back. The shredded remains of it fell away in His dragon claw and he tightened the talons around it. “This belongs in the king’s collection.”

He could not have hurt me more than if He’d kicked me in the teeth, and I think He knew it, and relished it.  I slid my gaze sideways to His three heads, each uglier than the next, and He flashed me His broken piano key smile.

“There is no king,” I managed, my voice hoarse. I looked down at the jacket. “You can’t take more from me than you already have. Keep it.” My hatred for Him and this place bubbled up abruptly like lava from a magma chamber, and I spit, “Don’t call me ‘Toots’. I am not your knight-errant. I am not your Marnie. I am not your thing.”

“MJ—“ Harry choked, and Carole Jeanne hurried away from my side as though I’d burst on fire.

Asmodeus lumbered one step closer, and I Felt a wash of infernal heat. My nostrils burned with the acid stink of Him. “I did you a favor,” He snarled.  “Now I’m going to do you another.”

“You can go fuck yourself in a three-way.”

I heard Harry cry out sharply an instant before Asmodeus’s tail lashed around His back and struck my neck, boiling with intensity. I flinched, but I was slow with grief. The tail latched onto my neck and slapped me back down to the floor on hands and knees, forcing me to kneel before the Overlord. His skin singed mine, scorching as it sank into my neck and wrapped completely around my throat. He squeezed once, tentatively, and I felt my windpipe shrink to a mere straw. He gave another long squeeze to show me who was in control. I couldn’t breathe for real this time, and the pain was startling. I tried to shriek as the tail embedded itself in the flesh of my neck, burning into it, branding me, but all that came out was a horrified wheeze.

Asmodeus dragged me closer to His chicken knees, horrifyingly close to His leather skirt. I crammed my eyes closed, but He was no bad date; the demon king roared rancid breath into my face and demanded my attention. I opened my eyes, terrified by what awaited me.

His eerie yellow eyes boiled and sizzled directly before mine.  “Sayomi-chan cannot have your soul, Toots. That belongs to me.” He slapped my chest with His bear claw, threw aside the scraps of Batten’s leather coat, and brought His dragon claw in front of my face, showing me each thick, curved black talon individually. “You
are
my thing. My
favorite
thing.”

Everything shrank into darkness, and everything that hurt — the hot-wire tail searing into my neck flesh, the claw that was now tapping me in the chest above my heart, the bruised ribs, the aching arm, all of it — was suddenly a blessing. Pain was the only thing keeping me sane.

Stay down
. My prince’s voice pushed into my head with a hint of desperation, sensing my last ditch struggle with disobedience. Wilhelm’s will flooded my veins and his mind threatened to roll into mine like a swollen river threatening its banks.
Stay down. My Delight, you must stay down
.

The Overlord smirked. “You’ll thank the Raven of Night for that reminder, Toots.”

And then He was gone. The claws. The stinking breath of Hell. The warning, infernal ownership curling through my belly, the flaming tail around my throat. There was only Harry, rushing to my side with his undead heart pounding under the influence of Batten’s blood.  

Carole Jeanne marched over and threw her beige wool coat around me, beginning a no-nonsense assessment of my wounds. The burns and blisters would need immediate attention, she was saying, but Harry was already biting his wrist to access the pale blue, watery ink blood of the revenant vein, dabbing it on the nape of my neck while Carole Jeanne twisted my unkempt ghost-blackened hair around her fist to hold it aside. I let their hands make quick work of me, but once the burn was covered in his salve, they didn’t seem to know what else to do for me. They stared at one another over my head.

I found myself unable to speak. Words wouldn’t come. I blinked rapidly at Harry, shaking my head.

Carole Jeanne rasped, “Take her away from this place, Guy.”

And he did.

I’D BEEN IN THIS HOSPITAL
before. North Suburban. Thornton. Stab wounds delivered by one Danika Sherlock. Back then, Harry had formed a metaphysical bond called the
dhaugir
between SSA Chapel and I, through which Gary would absorb my physical pain, without my knowledge. They were back at my bedside with the same offer, but my pain was emotional, and so was Gary’s, and no bond that I knew of could remove it; it was hollow and numbing and dizzying in its savagery. Chapel suggested reinstituting the
dhaugir
bond until the burns on my neck healed, or at least until the pain subsided. I said no. The physical pain was distracting me from everything else.

Gary left the room to take a call. As the door shifted closed, I could see Golden sitting in a chair with her chin low against her chest, her shoulders fallen low. I might have thought she was sleeping if the Blue Sense didn’t report a heavy waft of personal shame, self-blame, loss, and guilt, clear and sharp and very much keeping her awake. She hadn’t slept on the plane. She wouldn’t sleep here.

Harry slid a subtle block up to free me from Golden’s personal struggles as the door drifted shut and he patted the back of my hand. My gloves were on the tray table but I didn’t care about psychometric triggers at this point. “The doctor would like you to get up and walk a bit,” he said.

“I would like the doctor to hop up his own ass.” There was a Styrofoam cup of water on my little table, with a plastic lid and a straw. I stared at the pattern on the Styrofoam and wondered whose job it had been to design it.