Days of Blood & Starlight(103)
“Karou, what do you think? What would we do with those thousands of souls? Our resurrectionist can barely build an army.”
Such contempt in his voice. Karou’s was its equal. “Yes, well, I’m done building your army, so I’ll need something to keep me busy.” She was practically spitting now, her head filled with the white noise of rage. She would get Amzallag’s soul, and the sphinxes’, too. Amzallag had not lived to have the hope of his family only to die now.
“Done, are you?” Thiago smiled. Killer, torturer, savage. He was in his element. “Do you really think this is a game you can win?” He shook his head. “Karou, Karou. Oh, your name does amuse me. That fool Brimstone. He named you hope because you rutted with an angel? He should have named you lust. He should have named you whore.”
There was no sting in the word. Nothing Thiago said could wound her. Looking at him now, she could scarcely understand how she had let herself be led for so long, doing his bidding, building monsters to ensure his nightmare legacy. She thought of Akiva, the night he had come to her at the river, the crushing pain and shame in his face, and love, still love—sorrow and love and hope—and she remembered the night of the Warlord’s ball, how Akiva had always been the right to Thiago’s wrong, the heat to the Wolf’s chill, the safety to this monster’s menace.
She fixed Thiago with a narrow stare and said quietly, coolly, “It still eats at you, doesn’t it? That I chose him over you? You want to know something?” Love is an element. “It was no contest.” She hissed the last words, and a spasm of fury wracked Thiago’s cold, composed face. That beautiful vessel that Brimstone had made; it hid such a black, deadly thing within.
“Leave us.” He spoke through clenched teeth, and the others were shaking out their wings to obey before Karou had even a moment to regret her words. With the sound of wings and the great, dust-stirring gusts of their backbeats, the fanning fumes of rot, the sting of dirt on her bare arms, her face, she felt the phantom twitch of her own once-wings, so deep was her impulse to flee. Like the night of the Warlord’s ball, when she danced with Thiago and every second her wings had ached to carry her away from him.
Away, away. Get away from him. She gathered herself to leap, but before she could leave the ground, Thiago moved. Fast. His hand flashed out, clamped around her arm—her bruises screamed—and he held. Tight.
“It does eat at me, Karou. Is that what you want to hear? That you humiliated me? I punished you for it, but the punishment was… unsatisfying. It was impersonal. Your protector Brimstone made certain I was never alone with you. Did you know that? Well, he’s not here now, is he?”
Caught in his grip, Karou looked after the departing soldiers. Only Virko looked back. He didn’t stop, though, and all too soon the darkness gathered him and he was gone with the others, wingbeats fading, dust settling, and Karou was left alone with Thiago.
His hand on her arm was a vise; Karou knew how Brimstone had made the Wolf’s bodies. She knew the strength in him, and she didn’t hope to break his grip. “Let me go.”
“Wasn’t I kind? Wasn’t I gentle? I thought that was what you wanted. I thought it would be the best way with you. Coaxing and kindness. But I see I was wrong. And do you want to know? I’m glad. There are other means of persuasion.”
His free hand, suddenly, was at her waist, thrust under the edge of her shirt to clutch at her bare skin. Her own free hand flew to the crescent-moon blade sheathed at her hip, but Thiago batted it away and seized the weapon himself, flinging it into the pit. It was only seconds before the other followed it, and Karou was shoving uselessly at his chest in her struggle to get free of him.
It all happened so fast, and she was off her feet, hitting the scree so hard her vision went dark and her breath was driven from her lungs. She was gasping and Thiago was over her, heavy and far too strong, and the useless thought looping in her mind was, He can’t, he can’t hurt me, he needs me, and all the while he was laughing.
Laughing. His breath on her face; she turned away from it, struggled, every muscle straining against him, every gasped breath a lungful of stench from the pit.
She was strong, too. Her body was Brimstone’s work as much as his was, and it wasn’t empty strength, either—she had trained all her life. She got an arm free and twisted, wedged her shoulder between them, pulled up a knee and threw him off, rolled clear as he came lunging right back at her and she was up and reaching for the sky, for escape, when he tackled her from behind and she went down hard again. Her face in the scree this time and pain flaring through her and she was pinned, his weight so heavy on her shoulders she could get no purchase to throw him off, and then his voice was in her ear—“Whore,” he breathed—and his breath was hot, his lips were on her earlobe, and then the sharp points of his fangs.
He bit her. Tore her.
She screamed, but he slammed her head into the scree again and the scream choked off.
She couldn’t see him. He was holding her facedown in the dirt and rocks when she felt his clawed fingers dig under the waistband of her jeans and tug. For a second, her mind went blank.
No.
No.
The screaming wasn’t her voice. It was her mind, and it was the same foolish, outraged loop again: He can’t, he can’t.
But he could. He was.
The jeans stayed put, though, even when he yanked so hard it dragged her a foot across the ground, her cheek feeling every rock, and so he rolled her over again to get at the button and he was on her and he was smiling and her blood was on his lips, on his fangs, it dripped into her mouth and she tasted it. The stars were above him and it was when he let go of her arm to grab both sides of her jeans and try to lever them off that her fingers closed on a rock and she smashed his smile from his face.