Daughter of Smoke and Bone(48)

Good for you, thought Karou, tightening her grip on her knife. I’m not.

He drew even with the niche.

Karou gathered herself.

And leapt.

She had to launch herself upward to hook him around the neck—he was tall, six foot four at least—and she slammed into him hard and sent him staggering. She clung to him, feeling immediately what she couldn’t see: the heat and mass of wings, invisible but real. She felt too the warmth and breadth of his shoulders and arms, and was keenly aware of their powerful vitality as she brought her blade against his throat.

“Looking for me?”

“Wait—” he said, making no move to fight her or throw her off.

“Wait,” Karou scoffed, and, on impulse, she took the flat of her other hand and pressed its ink eye to the exposed skin of the angel’s neck.

As in Morocco, when she had first directed the unknown magic of her hamsas at him, something happened. That time, it had hurled him through the air. Now, its awful force didn’t hit and throw him—it went into him. Where Karou’s tattoo touched him, she felt a shrieking in his skin that forced shudders down into his flesh and reverberated up her own arm, into the core of her, even the roots of her teeth. It was mind-splitting. Horrific. And that was her.

For him, it was much worse. Spasms wracked his powerful form, threatening to knock her loose. She hung on. He choked. The magic wracked him. It felt sick and wrong—what was it doing? He lurched, shaking violently, and tried to pry her hand away, but his fingers fumbled. Under Karou’s hand, his skin was smooth and hot, so hot, so hot, and the heat was rising. The heat of his wings, too, like a bonfire whipped into a frenzy.

Fire, invisible fire.

Karou couldn’t bear it. Her palm lost contact with his neck. As her hand came away, stinging with the heat, the angel rallied. He grabbed her wrist and pivoted hard, flinging her off.

She landed light and spun back to face him.

He stood slouched, breathing hard, one hand holding his neck as he stared at her with his tiger’s eyes. She felt pinned in place, and for a long beat she could only stare back. He looked pained. Puzzlement drew a crease in his brow, like he was divining a mystery.

Like she was his mystery.

Then he moved, and the moment unfroze. He raised his hands, placating. His nearness pulsed at Karou. Her hamsas pulsed. Her heart, her fingertip, her memories: a slashing sword, Kishmish on fire, torched portals, Iz?l the last time she’d seen him, wailing, “Malak!”

And when she raised her hands, it was not in peace. One gripped her knife; the other flashed its eye.

The seraph flinched and the hamsa buffeted him back several steps. “Wait,” he said, straining against it. “I won’t hurt you.”

A laugh caught in Karou’s throat. Just who was in danger of being hurt here? She felt powerful. Her phantom life had stopped taunting her, had slipped instead into her skin and possessed her. This was who she was: not prey, but power.

She launched herself at him, and he fell back. She pursued, he retreated. In all the sparring she’d done in years of training, she’d always held a little something back. Not now. Feeling strong, feeling unleashed, she delivered a whirling kata, landing blows to his chest, his legs, even his upheld, peacemaking hands, and with every contact she was reminded of his solidity—his firmly rooted physical presence. Angel or not—whatever that even meant—there was nothing ethereal about him. He was flesh.

“Why are you following me?” she growled in Chimaera.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Karou laughed. It really was kind of funny. She felt light as air and bright as danger. She attacked in a cool fury and still he barely defended himself, only parrying knife jabs and cringing under the force of her outfaced hamsa.

“Fight,” she hissed at him when another kick hit home and he did nothing but absorb it.

He didn’t. Instead, the next time she came at him, he gathered the air beneath him and took flight, lifting off the cobbles and out of her reach. “I just want to talk to you,” he said from above her.

She threw her head back and looked up to where he hovered in the air. The draft of his wingbeats whipped her hair around her face in wild blue tendrils.

She smiled, savage, and sank into a crouch. “So talk,” she said, and sprang into the air to meet him.





28





ATTITUDE OF PRAYER



In her hiding place, the vampire Svetla momentarily forgot how to breathe.

Down the alley at the junction with Karlova, a small tour group rounded the corner and came to a shocked halt. Gum fell from slack mouths. Kaz, sporting a top hat and carrying a wooden stake jauntily under one arm, perceived that his ex-girlfriend was in midair.

Honestly, he wasn’t that surprised. There was something about Karou that activated an unusual credulity. Things you wouldn’t dream of believing of others seemed, where Karou was concerned, not such a stretch. Karou, flying? Well, why not?

What Kaz felt wasn’t surprise. It was jealousy. Karou was flying, sure, but she was not flying alone. She was with a man, a man who even Kaz—who claimed it was “gay” to recognize the attractiveness of other men—had to admit to himself was beautiful to the point of absurdity. Beautiful to the point of completely overdoing it.

Uncool, he thought, crossing his arms.