Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(25)

Sometimes I still had flashbacks to that one, the feathers dragging over my skin, the claws digging into my flesh, the beaks tearing. Yet I’d beaten them off, retrieved my weapons and stolen one of the horses of the men who had tried to gut me to get to my next job. I was used to dealing with the aftershocks of near disaster: the taste of blood, the scent of death in the air and the quiet that followed.

But, I realized slowly, I wasn’t nearly as accustomed to the disaster itself. Most of the time, I was out of my head when the mayhem happened—a fact I’d always dreaded. I had never realized before how much I’d also relied on it.

It had been terrifying but also strangely comforting to know that death for me would simply mean failing to wake up from one of my fits someday. It meant knowing every time I heard the familiar rushing in my ears that this might be the last time, but it also meant being pretty sure that I wouldn’t see the end coming. Yet I’d almost seen it tonight.

And this is how you deal with it? I thought angrily. Five hundred years and this is the best you can do? Freaking out because your damn weapons failed? Because you finally met an opponent you don’t know how to kill?

I got up, furious with my body for its weakness, with myself because I hadn’t anticipated this, hadn’t realized after getting my ass kicked by the fey once before that it damn well might happen again. I didn’t know their magic, didn’t understand their weapons. A weapon to me was the reassuring weight in my hand, a sword, a club, a gun; how the hell could I fight people who had the very Earth and sky on their side?

I didn’t know, but I knew one thing. Ifsubrand was alive, he could die. And I really, really wanted him to die.





Chapter Eight


I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and frying bacon, which was impossible. But since I needed to get up anyway, I rolled out of bed—and fell three feet to the floor. I hit with a thump that didn’t do the crick in my neck or the knots in my back any good.

My eyes crossed, focusing on a huge pair of smelly socks. They reeked badly enough to act as a kind of smelling salts. I sat up, fully conscious, and bumped my head on the underside of a table.

In front of me was a wreck that I vaguely identified as the living room. Blankets and old quilts had been thrown everywhere, clothes and bags of personal items had been piled in a heap by the cellar door, and a trail of huge, muddy footprints led from it to the hall. They obliterated most of the rug but skirted a waterlogged mattress.

The footprints had three toes each, pretty standard for mountain trolls, so I relaxed. I assumed they belonged to the large lumps curled up in a couple of wingback chairs in front of the fireplace, snoring loud enough to bring down what remained of the rafters. I ignored them for the moment, and stood up, my back cracking like old knuckles.

The edge of a quilt trailed off the tabletop, and I recalled what I’d been doing up there. Claire had been sprawled in the middle of the mattress when I returned last night, and I hadn’t had the heart to move her. I’d failed to find a dry patch of floor, so I’d piled some bedding onto the felted surface we used to play poker. It was only about four feet around, which explained the knots, and had a two-inch lip, which explained the crick.

After some much-needed stretching, I checked myself out. The wounds in my thigh and knee had ripened to purple with green and yellow around the edges. The knee was also puffy and tender to the touch, swelling up like bread dough when I peeled off the bandage. But both wounds had closed over, and my throat no longer felt like I was being choked from the inside. My wrist still hurt like a bitch, but overall, I’d woken up in worse states.

I wandered over and took a quick peek under the first lump’s blanket. A small green eye opened and regarded me unhappily. “Sorry, Sven.”

He grunted and went back to sleep. I didn’t check the other one, but it was probably Ymsi, his twin brother. They were a couple of Olga’s boys, second cousins or something, who acted as muscle in the business. It looked like word had gotten around that we might need a little added protection.

I walked out into the hall, yawning. The stairs were basically kindling, with more missing than still in place, and the wallpaper hung in dispirited strips, a victim of the damp that had mostly receded. But the ceiling looked better than I remembered.

It was still possible to see all the way up to the attic, but I was having a hard time figuring out which opening Claire and I had used to get the mattress down. None of them looked large enough for a twin, much less her queen. Even better, no more rain appeared to be getting in.

I found Claire in the kitchen, wrestling with the ancient stove. Her hair was a limp mess around her flushed face, and her glasses were about to slide off her sweaty nose. The house has air-conditioning, but with the wards on full, it didn’t work any better than the lights. It had to be ninety degrees in there.

The kids were at the table. Aiden had spread the chess set out on his half and appeared to be attempting to dry it out. He had stripped the soldiers of their armor and laid it out in a line on a paper towel, and was now struggling to get a small ogre out of its damp clothes. The ogre wasn’t too happy, but without its weapons, it could do no more than shake tiny fists.

Stinky was at the other end of the table, sleeping. Or at least I thought so, until a pitiful groan erupted from the fuzzy lump. I walked over, trying to get a look at him, but he kept shielding his eyes.

“He’s been sick twice since he woke up,” Claire told me, looking worried. “And he won’t eat anything. I gave him some aspirin, but it didn’t seem to help. I was about to wake you and ask if you want me to call a healer.”