Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles #2)(66)

“Finn was falling for you, but now he knows what you did.” The second girl to hide her true nature from him. “You broke him, Lark. There isn’t a whole lot of light left in the world, but he was a bright spot. He may have survived, but you still doused him.”

A hint of some emotion flitted across her face, then gone. “A small price to pay for the life I have here. Each night I watch a new movie, while my wolves doze in front of a roaring fire. At any time, I can shuffle down to the kitchen, make a grilled cheese, and have fresh milk with it. There are no cannibals or Baggers to dine on me, no militia to rape me, no slavers, no plague.” She jerked her chin toward Ogen’s guardhouse. “The Devil you know, baby.”

“You didn’t just say that? I hate you.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You mention a lot of pros to living here. What about the cons? You have no free will and no future. Death will kill you eventually.”

“Well, then, I’m not wasting another minute arguing with you. I’m tired of you making me feel bad.” Baring her little fangs, she marched up until we were almost toe to toe. “For better or worse, we’re roomies now. So you’ll just have to check your baggage at the damn door.”

“Or what?” I closed the remaining distance between us to stare her down—challenging, since we were about the same height. “What can you do to me? That’s right, not a—ow.” Pain flared in my leg. When I shot a glance down, I spied two puncture marks in my slacks and a cobra slithering away. “Ugh, disgusting!” I sidestepped with a shudder. “You made it bite me? Hate to tell you this, but I’m immune to poison, and likely venom too—ow.” Another one got my other leg. “Damn it, Lark!”

She laughed. “Calm yo tits, unclean one. Those were dry bites. Nonpoisonous.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I will get this cuff off me one day. Keep this up, and you’ll find yourself mummified in vine.”

“Noted. Now, come on, there’s a ton more to see.” She opened the barn door. “Admit it, this place is badass. Some steel baron built it for his wife in the twenties, but she died mysteriously. It might even be haunted! They had cold-war renovations made, so the basement is like a bunker, bigger than Warehouse 13.”

“Death lived here before the Flash, prepping everything?” Must’ve been nice to have time to get ready. “Did he know it was coming?”

“Not the Flash necessarily. He just knew some kind of catastrophe always accompanies the beginning of a game.” With pride, she said, “Boss was mega-rich and used bank to doomsday-prep for everything from snowmageddon to a great flood. My dad and I just thought he was an eccentric billionaire.”

“Then Warehouse 13 is where you keep your garden?”

Lark hastily said, “No!”

I gave her a pleasant smile. “Just a matter of time. So if you’ve been with the Reaper this long, how come you weren’t in that first battle against Joules, Gabriel, and Calanthe?”

“Death and Ogen had only planned to go on a supply run, and I had a foaling mare to tend to. Breeding is my top priority. Look, Death doesn’t hold the animals over me, but I’m not stupid. Where else am I going to find hundreds of tons of hay?”

At the barn door, I gazed back. For all I knew, this might be the largest collection of animals left on earth. She was shepherding them, increasing their numbers. And despite myself, my hatred cooled another degree.

Once she’d locked the barn behind us, we meandered down a brick path past a training yard. Death was there, shirtless in the rain, practicing with his swords. I didn’t think I would ever get used to seeing that kind of strength and speed. His skin was damp, those tattoos rippling as his chest muscles flexed.

What did those symbols mean? Why would he mark himself like that?

Though shot just yesterday, he’d taken no downtime, working past those stitched-up wounds, his enhanced healing clearly at work. “Did you tend to his gunshot wounds?” I asked Lark.

She shook her head. “The human servant I told you about was an EMT pre-Flash.”

When Death hammered a particularly fierce blow against a training post, she breathed, “Don’t you think he’s amazing to watch?”

I didn’t want to. In a sour tone, I said, “Amazing? Maybe like a tornado is.” And this was the man I was supposed to seduce?

In matters concerning boys, I’d always turned to my best friend Mel. I could imagine what she would do about this situation: ogle him thoroughly, then quip, “It’s a dirty job, bitches, but somebody’s gotta do him.”

Lark said, “He’s got that whole I-have-power-over-all-I-survey vibe. Admit it, it’s sexy.”

“Not when I’m one of the things he has power over. And unlike you, I don’t enjoy seeing him out here improving his skills. How do you get past the fact that he’s going to murder you?”

She readjusted her cap. “Boss said he’ll let me live half a decade in safety, okay? In A.F. years, that’s a lifetime.”

“Never going to happen. He intends to win this game and play again in the future, right?” At her confused look, I said, “We age as long as the game spools on. He ages. Your half a decade would put him closing in on thirty for the next round. And this is a young man’s game.” The utter confidence in my words must be troubling to her. “Believe me, he’ll close us out as soon as possible.”