Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(64)

And in that unity he felt Seril, diminished though present—a chill to match His flame, an equal and an adversary, haughty and swift, fluid and eternal. Kos had burned alone for fifty years, with only cables of contract and debt to bind Him to other gods, bereft of gift and humor, of all that matters in life save duty. The city had been His alone.

She was back, but She was weak.

But, Abelard reminded him, Her return had not broken His obligations—to church and city as well as love.

We need to work together, Abelard prayed. And, though the fear was not gone: I trust You.

The web echoed with that word.

Then the Fire said: You may have to prove it sooner than you think.

*

Cat was still deciding what to say when someone knocked on the door to the refrigerated hold of the Demon’s Dream.

The knock came from within.

She looked from Raz, to the contract he held, and back to the compartment.

“You told me to sign the thing,” Raz said.

“I didn’t think it would work that quickly.”

The knock repeated, a hammer-blow strike.

“Hold on.” She raised her voice. “We’re coming.” She pressed the amulet to the door, turned, and pulled. The door swung open and a chill wind gusted out.

A woman stood behind the door. Frost painted her skin. She lurched across the threshold. Her knees buckled, and Cat caught her by the arm, felt her flesh still stiff and cold. Kos and Seril. There should be someone here to deal with this. Specialists. Doctors. They should have thought. “You’re safe,” she said. The woman turned to her from the neck up. “I’m Cat. You’re in Alt Coulumb.” The woman did not respond. What language did these folks speak? Others approached the door, arms slack at their sides, staring.

Raz tore free a tarp that had been lashed over a loose crate and folded it around the woman, rubbing her shoulders through the cloth. He spoke to her, first in a smooth language heavy with l’s and aspiration, and when that produced no response, in a more halting, guttural tongue, then a third with singsong tones Cat could barely classify. No answer.

He tried another seven languages then swore. “That’s all I’ve got.” The hold was filling slowly with woken, silent people. Raz turned from the woman to the others. “Anyone here speak Kathic? Talbeg?”

The woman quaked in Cat’s arms. Not shivering, or at least not shivers as Cat knew them. Heaving spasms. A seizure?

Cat tried to lay her on her back, but the woman shook her off. Then she looked at and through Cat, and opened her mouth too wide. Her teeth were long and narrow.

“Cat?”

The others from the hold stood before Raz: tall and short, muscled and fat and lean, male and female and those not obviously either. Their mouths hung open.

Cat looked back to the woman she held. Sticky darkness seeped between her teeth, and sharp glass gleamed within, swelling as if it approached down a tunnel much longer than the woman’s throat. Reflective tendrils skittered against enamel, caught and cut her lips, tensed—

Cat threw herself to one side as a mirror shard shot from the woman’s mouth. Raz hit the deck too—shards burst from all the open mouths, a storm of crystal darts unfolding wings and legs, and unfolding again, like those creased-paper birds kids from the Shining Empire made, that when you undid them formed a bird larger than the one they had been. The people from whom the crystals flew all fell like string-cut marionettes.

The glass that missed Cat struck the bulkhead arrow-deep and quivered there as claws tore gouges in the wood. Sawdust and wood chips and scraps of cloth filled the air, and all around the hold there were these things, huge winged bugs, reflective carapaced and slick and growing. Their mouths held fangs and twitching blade lips. They were hungry.

Blood seeped from the corner of Cat’s ear, from a cut she hadn’t felt.

“Demons.”

Cat raised the truncheon from her belt, just in time. The nearest demon-bug flew toward her; she batted the glass insect into a bulkhead. It bounced off a tarp, reversed its legs, shook itself, and launched at her again. The second’s relief gave Cat’s hand time to reach the Justice medallion at her neck, and the cold perfection of service carried her away.

This time, when she swung the club, the creature shattered to smoking shards. One down, forty-something to go.

She looked up. Raz had pulled the tarp from the fallen woman and thrown it to snare a clutch of demons. Legs and mandibles pierced fabric, but before they could fight free he smashed the tarp against the deck. Glass spines cracked. A bug landed on Raz’s scalp and clawed bloody strips away. He screamed. Cat leapt, clubbed the thing off him, and it burst into a shower of sharp dust. Blood streamed down his forehead.

They stood ringed by unconscious former demon-hosts, and twenty-five glass insects, now the size of toddlers and still growing. Spindly limbs merged and thickened. Plates of mirrored chitin sprouted between joints. Ruby eyes grew further facets. Claws lengthened and serrated.

Too many to fight.

Raz bared his fangs.

She didn’t know how strong he was. But he could bleed. And they could cut him.

They could cut her, too, even through the Suit. This many, they could tear off her arms like children plucking daisy petals. But she could kill—not all of them, the distributed tactical mind of Justice told her. Skill, speed, and strength went only so far against sheer numbers. But she could take many with her.