Текст книги "Burned"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

35

“Off into the sunset, living like there’s nothing left to lose”

MAC

I glance up but don’t see anyone at the cliff’s edge. Only a thin black cable snaking over the side.

Good. That means they warned me and sought cover, as was our contingency plan.

I glance down. If the Hag comes for Christian now, I’m perched on the side of the cliff a mere twenty feet above where she plans to hunker down and flay the Highlander. I’ll have to hang here, wait for her to finish, then climb back up and wait until Christian heals a little to try again.

Unless she’s going somewhere else. Could I be so lucky?

I glance back over my shoulder, peering through the moonlit night. She’s still standing in her nest, macabre gown of guts dripping over the edge, swaying from side to side in an eerily reptilian manner, nose in the air, head tilted as if listening intently.

Surely she didn’t hear the sound of my boots hitting the side of the cliff over all this wind and from a quarter of a mile away.

Did she? I have no idea the acuteness of her echolocation skills.

I hang there, debating options. I don’t need to kick out anymore. I can inch down another ten feet, whisper to Christian, give him the spear, kick out to draw her near him. Then pull myself up out of the way really fast.

Or … I could hang here while she kills him again, wait and inch back up.

Only to inch back down later.

I so don’t want to do this again. The way I see it, the odds of failing are directly proportionate to the number of attempts, increasing each time.

What would Jada do?

That’s a no-brainer.

I steal another glance at the Hag.

She’s still standing in her nest. Not hearing any vibrations. As long as she doesn’t, we should be fine.

I begin to inch slowly downward.

When I’m ten feet from Christian’s head, I say softly, “Christian, it’s me, Mac. Don’t talk loud. Keep it low.”

I have to repeat it several times before I hear a guttural groan.

My head instantly whips to the Hag but she’s still standing, unmoving.

“We’re here to save you. I’m bringing you the spear. I’m going to pry one of your hands free,” I say in a low voice. No way I can try to drive a spike in now. She’d hear it for sure. It’s going to be risky enough prying one of the rivets out. “You’ll have to hold on until she comes for you again. Hide the spear.” As soon as I say that, I think, Where exactly do I expect him to hide it? The man is naked.

I’m beginning to realize we overlooked a few critical details in our plan.

I hang there, boots carefully braced on a tiny, narrow ledge on the sheer cliff face, being buffeted by a stiff, cutting wind, suspended by nothing but my frightfully thin cable (yes, I read the weight rating; it doesn’t make me feel any better), and force myself to take one hand off it to rummage around in the pocket of my jacket for a bottle of Unseelie flesh, neatly sliced and diced months ago. I keep them hidden all over the bookstore. I’ll take every advantage I can get right now. I half expect the Sinsar Dubh to either prevent me from using it or try to amp it up in some nasty way. Biting back revulsion, I gingerly work the lid free and ease the wriggling contents into my mouth.

My body stiffens as it hits me like a thunderbolt.

Energy, sexuality, vitality, and strength burn in my veins. No wonder so many people are so addicted to it. I feel strong. I feel alive. I feel invincible. I remember eating it once before and taunting Barrons to hit me, punch me, fight with me.

I ease down a few more inches. So far no malevolent commentary from the Book and no apparent negative side effects. If you exclude a ferocious desire to eat it again once it wears off.

“Christian, can you hear me?” I whisper.

“I … hear you,” he says weakly. “Mac … I smell … Unseelie flesh. You … eating it? Ken you what … vile stuff … does … to you.”

Despite the agony in his voice, I swear I hear a faint note of teasing.

“Are you strong enough to hold yourself up for a little while if I free one of your hands?”

“Aye,” he whispers. “Give me … the bloody spear … kill the … bloody bitch. Can’t see … you. Naught but … black and moonlight. Am I … blind?”

“I’m invisible.”

“Och, and … why wouldn’t you … be.” He sort of laughs but it turns into a blood-chilling moan of pain.

“How long do you think you can hold yourself if I get your hand on an outcropping of rock?”

He’s silent and I get the sense he’s resisting the urge to snarl Forever, trying to gauge what he believes he can actually do. Finally he says faintly, “A few minutes … no more. I’m gutted … nigh dead. Keep … blacking out.”

“Shit,” I mutter. From this angle I can’t see past his head.

I feel another sharp pull on the cable, twice, three times, and my blood runs cold with dread. Three times means she’s taken flight.

It’s now or never. I have to hurry. And I’m going to be sitting mere feet away when it happens.

“I’m going for your left hand, Christian.”

“She’s … on her way.”

“I hear her.” She has no wings, who knows how the hell she flies? But she makes a sharp whining sound as she displaces air. She’ll be on us in ten seconds if she comes straight for him. I kick out – why not, she’s already coming? – and drop to rest below his left hand. I pull the spear out, wedge the tip beneath the pylon and get ready to pry it free. “Grab my arm with your fingers. You must hold on when I pry it out.”

“I’ll … pull you … down.”

“You won’t. I ate Unseelie.”

“You … never … learn.” His fingers close around my wrist.

I establish the most secure toeholds available, which is virtually nothing, as sheer as the rock is where she hung him, and pry with one swift, hard jerk.

The rivet shoots out, goes flying off into the air behind me, and begins the long plunge to the canyon below. Christian’s grip on me tightens, and my feet slip off the nearly nonexistent ledges.

I plummet like a stone, in full free fall.

I grab the cable with both hands and squeeze as tight as I can, jerk it too hard, bounce upward and crash into the rocky bluff.

Wiping blood from my face, I glance up. Christian is a good thirty feet above me, hanging by a single arm at a telltale slant.

I look down. The Hag is gone, apparently chasing the sound of the rivet hitting stone.

It’s a darn good thing I ate Unseelie flesh. Without it I’m not sure I would have been able to stop myself from plunging down to join the rivet. Dark energy pounds in my head, my heart, giving me many times my normal strength and energy.

I hang there a second, looking up, studying the cliff, picking out my toeholds, plotting my climb back up before beginning the steep ascent.

When I’m even with Christian, I see his body for the first time and gasp. He’s sliced from breastbone to groin, skin flapping, parts of flesh hanging out, regrowing.

How the hell has he even been talking?

“She sees me … hanging by one arm, she’ll lance … me from a … distance.”

“I’m going to ease your hand onto a piece of rock. Hold like your life depends on it.”

He groans. “Mere minutes, lass … no more … pain immense.”

I hear the familiar, dreaded whine of the Hag’s flight and scramble to get his fingers fastened onto a rocky ledge. “You got it?”

“Aye. Need … spear.”

If she sees it, she’ll never come near him. “I’m crouching on the wall, just above your hand. When she gets here, I’ll wrap your fingers around it. It won’t become visible until I let go of it.”

“You’ll … be.… lanced.”

“I won’t,” I say flatly. “Shut up and focus.” I use the cable to raise myself a few feet, praying he can hold on.

After a moment, he growls, “Where … is … she?”

Suddenly I hear shouting above us, and Jada screaming at someone to take cover.

“Fuck this,” I snarl. I take my spear and slam the hard steel against the face of the cliff, to distract her, lure her to us.

It works.

She suddenly shoots out above us and hangs in the air, gut gown snaking over the edge, peering down.

“Right here, bitch,” Christian snarls.

She draws back like a cobra about to strike.

And does.

With one of her insectile lancelike legs, she severs my cable.

Time suspends and everything seems to unfold in slow motion. I’m staring up, watching the cable snake in coils over the edge for what feels like a full minute, excruciatingly aware I’m a thousand feet above a deadly rocky canyon floor, crunching thoughts furiously: How fast will I fall? Will I die? Will I bounce off an outcropping and break every bone before I even hit bottom? How bad is this going to hurt? Have I been good? Was my life worth anything? What did I accomplish in twenty-three years? I haven’t had nearly enough sex with Barrons.

I know a mere instant passes, but I understand what people mean when they say their life flashes before their eyes. In vivid detail I see the finest moments I’ve experienced, the ones I regret, my bravest times and my most cowardly, followed by the many experiences I’d hoped to have and now perhaps never will.

All of it crashes into my brain as I take that horrific first moment of free fall, and in spite of myself, my mouth stretches wide on a scream as I try desperately to brace myself for whatever’s to come: a brutally painful recovery or a happy reunion with Alina in heaven, because if I go to Hell, I’m breaking out. I will not be separated from my sister forever. I haven’t been that bad. Besides, I just ate Unseelie, which means I can kick some serious demon ass busting loose.

I slam into what feels like a seesaw between my legs and suddenly I’m choking and sputtering, trying to breathe.

“Good … fucking thing you … screamed,” he rasps. “I’ve … got you … but can’t hold … long.” I realize he let go of the rock, kicked his leg in the general direction of where he heard me (my pelvic bone is going to be sporting one heck of a bruise) and grabbed blindly for any part of me, ending up with the front of my jacket. He’s hanging by one hand. Strangling me with my coat with the other.

He murmurs, “And that’s … what … Dageus meant.”

“What?” I ask as I flail wildly, finally get my legs wrapped around him and clamber up his body, trying hard not to clutch at any torn flesh in the process. It’s a messy, slippery business.

“About my opportunity. Bloody hell, she’s … coming!”

I can’t let go of him or I’ll fall. If I don’t let go of him, I’ll get lanced when she stabs him. I sincerely doubt she’s going to get close enough to us, with all the intruders she’s spotted on her mountain, for either of us to stab her.

I’m not leaving without what I came for. We’ll finish the Hag later.

I hiss, “Can you sift?”

“Iron. Manacles. Can’t. Too … wounded … anyway.”

Terrific. I can pry the rivets out but my spear is useless for cutting the manacles off his arms. I’d wondered how she was preventing an Unseelie Prince from sifting. With iron, the same way Inspector Jayne does with the Unseelie he captures and keeps until someone slays them. Speaking of which, his cages must be crammed to overflowing.

I’m not dying on this cliff.

I wrap one arm tightly around Christian’s neck, force myself up and to the left, dig my spear beneath the rivet holding his right hand. It won’t budge. There’s too much weight hanging on it. I dig the tip of the spear in deeper, start rocking it back and forth beneath the rivet, using my Unseelie-flesh-enhanced strength.

He looks up, growls, “What … the … fuck … Mac! No!”

The rivet suddenly shoots from the cliff like a missile being launched, and for the second time I go into a full free fall.

I hold on to him tightly and scream, “Fly, Christian! Fucking fly!”

36

“Forever trusting who we are and nothing else matters”

MAC

Once again, nothing goes as I expect it to.

I can’t call what Christian does flying, and he confounds me by going up not down. I expected him to, at worst, be able to unfurl his wings and use them as a sort of hang glider, to soar us to the floor of the gorge without killing us. Instead he scrabbles higher with short, fierce bursts of his wings, digging and clawing at the side of the cliff, using them like appendages, a hawk that can’t fly, scrambling desperately upward.

Closer to the freaking Hag.

“Why the hell don’t you go down?” I shout.

I hear roaring on top of the cliff, a scream and the rapid burst of gunfire.

The Hag shrieks and explodes up into the night sky. A whip cracks, followed by another banshee-like wail.

“Shut … the fuck … up,” Christian grits.

I’ve got both arms clamped around his neck, hanging on for dear life, getting repeatedly bashed against the side of the cliff with each scraping lunge of his wings. My shirt is being ripped to shreds and the back of my head and spine are taking a brutal beating.

“Keep her away from them until they reach the top,” I hear Ryodan bark.

“I’m trying to,” Jada fires back. “She moves erratically. It’s hard to compute.”

“Stop fucking trying to compute and feel,” he snarls. “She’s not a machine. She’s a goddamn pissed-off, bloodthirsty woman.”

I hear more cracks from the whip. The sound is bounced back and intensified by the surrounding mountains. I decide they must be using it to mess with the Hag’s echolocation.

“Behind the bitch, not to the side,” Ryodan orders.

“You’re almost there, lad,” Dageus shouts down at us. “Grab the bloody cable.” He’s hanging over the cliff’s edge swinging a length of thin black cord at us.

But Christian’s desperately trying to sustain our altitude and in no position to reach for it. I grope wildly for the cable, praying I have enough strength to pull us up because each time I get slammed into the cliff my vision goes a little dark and I can feel Christian growing weaker. Not even my Unseelie flesh rush is enough to stand this constant battering.

Looks like we may end up trying to hang glide after all.

“She’s coming back,” Barrons shouts. “Get the fuck away from the cliff’s edge, Highlander.”

I hear the whip cracking furiously again, and Barrons roars, a horrible, guttural sound, and I cringe to the bottom of my soul because I know without needing to see it that Barrons just got lanced. Doesn’t matter that I know he’ll be back. It’s one less person to protect the Keltar and Jada, and I despise the sound of that man dying. I have no doubt he stepped in the way to protect someone.

“Fuck.” Dageus snarls down at us. “Bloody grab the bloody cable.”

Then Drustan is beside Dageus and I hear Jada and Ryodan taunting the Hag, more gunfire and the sound of the whip cracking as they try to buy us time to get to solid ground.

I kick upward and Christian grunts with agony when my boot catches him in the stomach, but I close my fingers around the cord.

Moving quickly, Drustan and Dageus begin to pull us up.

We’re nearly there when Jada and Ryodan start shouting again, then suddenly something explodes out of the front of Dageus’s chest and he goes rigid, yanks upright and makes a soft grunt of shock and pain.

It takes my brain a second to process what just happened.

The Hag just lanced Dageus from behind.

Christian howls with such animalistic, inhuman fury that it chills my blood. It occurs to me how ironic it is that four of us on this mountain possess immense power but can’t use it. Barrons and Ryodan won’t turn into the beast in front of strangers. My inner Book has gone dead silent. Christian is too weak to use his Unseelie magic.

His wings begin that awful scrabbling again but it only slams me hard into the side of the mountain. I squeeze with all my might, struggling to merely maintain my grip on the cable with one hand and Christian with the other, but Dageus is no longer holding our weight and we begin to slip slowly, inexorably, downward.

“Pull them the fuck up,” Dageus growls at Drustan, blood gushing from his mouth. Then he’s airborne, impaled on the Hag’s leg. She shoots out over the canyon as Drustan, joined by Ryodan and Jada, yank us to the top.

Christian collapses, rolls, and stares into the night sky over the gorge. Painted crimson and silver by eerie moonlight, the Hag hangs above the gorge, Dageus clutched in her gruesome, bloody embrace.

“Fucking bitch!” Christian pushes to his feet, but Drustan tackles him and prevents him from leaping off the edge to attempt to fly, something we both know he can’t do right now.

“You will not make my brother’s sacrifice for naught, lad!”

The Hag shoots across the chasm, smashes Dageus into the far cliff once, twice, three times before violently shaking her leg to dislodge the unmoving Highlander.

Dageus plunges silently down, a dark speck, vanishing into the shadows as we all watch in horrified silence.

The Hag whirls midair and rockets back across the chasm, straight for us, head down, unfinished gut-gown streaming out behind her.

Then Jada is shoving Drustan away from Christian. “Get down and stay down,” she hisses at him. She drags Christian to his feet and steps in front of him and commands, “Mac. Spear. Now.”

There’s no time to argue. Barrons is down and Dageus just gave his life to save us. I want vengeance. Nothing else matters. I move to her side, place my hand against hers and make sure she feels the cold metal of the blade between us. “I’ll let go at the last minute so she doesn’t see it. Don’t you dare fucking miss or I’ll kill you myself.”

She doesn’t dignify my threat with a response.

Christian tries to push Jada out of the way, snarling that no one else is dying for him on this cliff. Jada shoves back, pushing him behind us.

The Hag dives headfirst, slicing through the night, mouth twisted with rage, black holes where her eyes should be narrowed in fury.

Jada freeze-frames us and suddenly we’re standing twenty feet away. My spear is no longer in my hand. While I was discombobulated from being freeze-framed, which she knows makes me feel sick, she took it from my grasp.

“What are you doing?” I explode.

“Not letting you die, Mac.” She shoves me so hard and unexpectedly that I go sprawling face-first to the ground.

Christian howls and I don’t need to look to know he just got lanced. When I peel myself from the rocks, wipe snow from my face, and look back over my shoulder, I see the Hag has impaled him and is preparing to fold her knitting-needle legs together around him and soar off into the sky.

Ryodan and Jada exchange a glance and she tosses him her whip.

He cracks it in the air behind the Hag, impeding her flight, and goads, “Come and get me, bitch. I don’t die either.” He moves closer, snapping the whip so fast I can’t even see it, keeping her penned into a small space of air. Unlike Jada, he seems to have no problem anticipating her airborne lunges.

The Hag levels her free leg at his head. He dances around, ducking and dodging like a boxer on meth, cracking the whip repeatedly. “But you know that. You killed me once before.” He’s become a blur, and I wonder if he’s actually going to be able to get close enough to kill her however it is the Nine do.

Then Jada materializes between the Hag and Ryodan with the abruptness of a Fae sifting in and I realize that was never his plan.

With that one shared glance, he and Jada made another one.

Ryodan was the distraction.

Jada closes her hands around the leg upon which Christian is impaled and with the grace of a circus acrobat swings herself up, spear tucked into the waistband of her camo pants.

The Hag rears back, violently shaking her leg, trying to dislodge her, but Jada doesn’t let go. When she reaches the writhing, bloody mess of a gown, she uses the guts as ropes to vault herself up, grabs the Hag by the hair, yanks back her head and slits her throat from ear to ear.

Blood sprays everywhere and the Hag’s head lolls back. Jada shoves the spear deep into the bone and gristle of her corset, expression fierce, savage.

The three of them crash to the ground in a heap.

The Crimson Hag is dead.

37

“And the shadow of the day will embrace the world in grey”

MAC

Ours is a somber group that descends the cliff, battered, weary, and bleak.

I now understand the meaning of the phrase “hollow victory.”

In the past, each time we did battle with the enemy, although there were losses, none cut so deeply, so close to the heart.

I realize belatedly that for some time now I’ve counted the Keltar as one of us: indomitable soldiers, battling tirelessly against evil, fighting the good fight, always surviving to wage war another day. I counted on it.

One of the good guys died tonight.

A man with family.

A legend of a Highlander.

There’s no hope Dageus survived the brutal gutting, the crushing blows against the cliff, and the subsequent twelve-hundred-foot fall.

Like the Hag, Dageus MacKeltar is dead.

Drustan doesn’t speak a word, supports Christian on one side, with Jada on the other, and they half carry, half drag the now unconscious prince down the mountainside.

When we reach the bottom and load him carefully into the Hummer, Drustan murmurs, “Och, Christ, how am I to tell Chloe? They fought so hard to remain together. Now she’s lost him for good.” He whispers something over Christian in Gaelic then turns to leave.

Ryodan steps into his path, blocking it. “Where do you think you’re going, Keltar.”

“Unlike you, I’ll no’ be leaving without retrieving what remains of my brother’s body for burial.”

He’s referring to Ryodan hastening us from the mountaintop without pausing to collect Barrons, which I know he did so Drustan and Jada wouldn’t see him vanish but no doubt appeared callous to the others.

Drustan’s gaze is bleak, haunted. “Too many times he took the burden upon himself to save us. I’ll see him buried properly, in the old ways, on Keltar ground, in Scotia. If the Draghar still inhabit his body, certain rituals must be performed. If not, aye, well, bloody hell if not, they’re free again.”

“I’ve no intention of returning to Dublin without Barrons,” Ryodan says. “I will collect your brother’s body as well. Christian needs you. Your clan needs you now.”

I search his face and am surprised to see something patient and understanding in those cool silver eyes.

“I know the sorrow of losing a brother,” Ryodan presses. “I’ll bring him back. Go.”

I wonder about Ryodan and Barrons. Did they once have other brothers? Did they lose them before they became what they are, or afterward? How? I want to know about these two, understand them, hear their tales.

I doubt anyone ever does.

Drustan glances between Christian and the shadowy entrance to the gorge, visibly torn, unwilling to do anything that might risk that for which his brother gave his life, equally unwilling to leave his brother’s body behind.

“Come, Drustan,” I say gently. “The living need you now. If Ryodan says he’ll bring his body back, he will.”

Ryodan says to me, “It may take time to find … all of him. Take Christian to Chester’s. Sequester him where we protected the Seelie Queen. He’ll be safe there while he heals.”

As Ryodan turns to go, Jada says, “I’ll come with you.”

“You will return with the others and protect them.”

“I’m not she who once—”

He cuts her off fast and hard. “I know who the fuck you are,” he clips the words out coldly. “You’re the only one that doesn’t. Dani could have anticipated the Hag’s movements. You could not. Jada.”

Ryodan vanishes into the night without another word.

I wince. That was harsh. Whether or not it was true.

The three of us join Christian in the Hummer and begin the long silent ride home.