She Walks in Shadows(55)

He shook me off. “What — are we under attack?”

“No, no … it’s the daemon.” I hadn’t allowed myself to think it before, but deep in my heart, I knew.

The creature that fed on the soldier’s eyes was not of this world. Gratiana had tried to warn us. I spared a thought for the General’s wife as I grabbed for the Doctor’s satchels, loading myself with his surgical equipment and herbal potions. Once we escaped, we would not be returning to the villa, for Gratiana or anyone else.

I knew the stories too well.

“That’s not — there are no such things as daemons,” Engatius insisted.

A second cry rippled through the villa. I flung a desperate, searching glance at my master. How could a man of such learning be so obtuse?

“I saw it with my own eyes!”

“Then we must find the General.” He was up in a heartbeat, moving with swiftness that belied his age.

“There is no time!”

“He’s a friend,” the Doctor shot back. He shook off my grip when I seized hold of his sleeve, rounding on me with a snarl and a raised hand.

The slap snapped my head to the side. Heat spread down my neck and collarbone, sunk its claws deep into the cage of my ribs.

“He’s a dead man!” I gritted out.

But it was too late. The Doctor turned for the door that led into Gratiana’s cubiculum, the beaded curtain that separated our bedchamber from the procoeton jangling like a wind chime.

My master and I had little in common beyond a mutual hatred, but without his Roman protection, I would be another runaway Pictish slave and Rome’s reach could be long in these parts.

I swore and followed him through the stooped doorway.

“This is madness,” I snarled, a complaint that fell on deaf ears.

Just three feet into the General’s bedchamber, Engatius stood unmoving. Between his old friend and him lay Gratiana’s ornate sleeping couch. The woman herself was held at sword point.

“General,” Engatius began haltingly. “Antonius, what —”

“She killed them! Every single one. All the soldiers, all the villagers ….” The General’s forearm bulged with the effort of holding a blade to his wife’s throat. His knuckles whitened around the hilt. “She made a pact with the di inferi! She is Discordia-made-flesh!”

“She is your wife.”

“Husband ….” Tears beaded on Gratiana’s spidery lashes.

I squeezed my fist around my dagger. Small as it was, it was our only hope.

“Silence!” The General’s fury sparked like a flint. “Your poison tongue has taken two hundred lives! All my nightmares, all those unanswered questions — it was your doing! I should have slit your throat when you brought that thing into the world! Mothers of good Roman legionnaires rejoice! The gods themselves would welcome me into Elysium!”

Engatius inched forward. “Antonius, are — are you injured?”

“What?”

“Your hands. You — is that blood?”

The General blinked at him, bemused. His hold on Gratiana slackened. “It … it happened again.” He grimaced, shaking as if in the throes of a seizure, and abruptly doubled over.

As a doctor’s servant, I had witnessed patients expel the contents of their stomach before, but never had their bile contained human eyes, half-digested, yet still distinct on white linen.

“Antonius!”

My master started forward with arms outstretched, heedless of the offal on the bed. He blocked my view of the General but not of his sword.

The gladius did not stave him off, though it sank deep into his gut and emerged through the slats of his spine like a needle perforating cloth. A red flower bloomed in its wake.

Engatius buckled, his unbelted tunic catching on the blade. He folded gently.

The General’s face floated above him, blood around the mouth and eyes wide.

I did not think. I hefted my dagger and lobbed it with as much force as I could muster.

Had he worn his plate, the short blade would not have made a dent. Had he woken from his nightmares and come for me rather than the Roman guards standing watch, I would not have been here, now, to pierce his chest. But he had not.

The General crumpled like a puppet, his frown giving way to astonishment. He was not so invincible, after all, if a mere slave — a woman, at that — could fell him with a single blow.

Gratiana crawled away from her husband’s body and dragged herself up with both hands upon the soiled bed. She seemed no more eager to approach his body than I was to check if the Doctor was still breathing.

“It’s over,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

“Yes.”

“Can you ride? We should ….” Leave this place. Flee whatever darkness hangs upon this house. The General was gone, but the forces that had animated his mortal coil still hovered in the air around us. I could hear their whispers. I sensed their bodies rustling in the shadows.

My fear was Roman, but something inside me was awed by such horrific power.

I thought that the General’s wife might refuse. She’d said before she did not wish to leave this house. But Gratiana nodded, her lips curling in distaste as she took in the sprawl of our two masters — Roman, proud and very much dead.

“Yes,” she said again and only briefly hesitated before taking my arm. She seemed stricken, but not out of her mind with grief, as I helped her astride Engatius’ white charger. “Where will we go, Seonag? What are we to do?”