The Book Eaters(116)

Devon pulled herself upright into some semblance of a fighting stance, fists raised and feet apart. “I am perfectly faithful to my family. My real family. Not that you would know anything about that!”

“Our Family gave you everything. You were a princess!” He snatched up the broken crossbow and swung it at her; she ducked.

“I never asked for that!” She scooped up a broken brick and lugged it at his head; he ducked. “All I ever wanted was the tiny, narrow life you promised me—a happy ending with my children. All anyone ever had to do was return Salem and leave me alone!”

“Admit it, you’ve lost,” he snarled. “I’ll kill every single person in this fucking manor!”

“Lost?” Devon almost pitied him. Almost. “The knights are done, the Families have abandoned you, and my son is safe. I’ve won, whatever else you do!”

He halted, broken weapon still in hand, chest heaving with exertion. “No. I can salvage this.” A glassy-eyed calm tightened Ramsey’s features into a mask of cold fury. “I will salvage this!”

“Dev! Catch!” Cai leaned over the wall, throwing something large and shining.

A pair of hedge shears landed in the grass a few feet away. Blades stuck fast into the ground.

Devon dived for them. So did Ramsey, but she was closer. Her fingers closed on the handle and she pulled the tool from the soil, swinging it hard.

Flat blades slammed against skull. Ramsey yelped and went down in a heap, sounding far younger than his thirty-three years. He pressed a palm to his bleeding, swelling temple. Devon lurched atop him, this time angling the shears point-first in a stab toward his throat.

She was strong but he was quick. Up came the broken crossbow, the blow landing hard against her eye socket.

Agony radiated through her head, the surrounding skin already swelling shut. Somehow she was laughing and couldn’t stop because there was a wild hysteria in them rolling around on the grass, each trying to stake the other, like a vampire film gone awry.

Ramsey didn’t find it funny. He wrenched the garden shears from her weakened grip, whirled them round, and stabbed upward. Devon flung herself backward and away. Instantly he was up on his knees, forehead bleeding. This time it was him atop her with all his weight, as he bore down with the blades against her sternum.

Barely in time, she caught his wrists. He pressed down, weighty, ridiculously strong, and she strained to hold the deadly edge away from her chest.

Blood ran in a trickle from his forehead, dripped off his chin to her cheek. “You won’t leave alive!”

In the corner of her one good eye, she caught a glimpse of movement as Cai crept down the spiral stairs. Sneaking up on them with his tongue flicking in warning.

Flicking in preparation to feed.

Even in the heat of her losing battle against Ramsey, she had to dissuade her son from doing the one thing that would destroy him. But if she called out, Ramsey would realize something was wrong, and turn on Cai; that couldn’t be allowed to happen either.

Arms shaking with the strain of keeping her brother’s weapon at bay, Devon said through gritted teeth, “Are you … a good … person? Are you … kind?”

In the gathering gloom Cai shook his head, and her heart sank at the sight. His choice. Not hers.

“The fuck are you on about?” Ramsey’s weight pressed the metal point down and down, until it embedded in her skin. “Crazy sodding—”

Cai sprang.

Devon saw him; Ramsey didn’t. Her son landed atop Ramsey’s back, scrabbling for the older man’s ear. His presence added more weight and Devon hissed as the shears veered sideways, slicing down across her chest and flaying the skin open.

Ramsey let go to twist around, trying to get his hands on Cai’s throat.

Her child. In danger. Devon wrenched the shears from her ribs and lashed out.

She struck flesh. Tempered metal parted the muscle tissue of his upper leg. Ramsey howled. Inky blood soiled the muddy earth.

And Cai kissed him. Lips to ear, proboscis unfurling. Ramsey gasped, hands gripping the boy’s shoulders with a strength that rapidly dwindled. He struggled to stand but the leg Devon had stabbed gave way, and he tipped forward.

Cai clung to his uncle’s back, like a small cursed monkey. Ramsey shrieked with a terror that astonished her, his limbs jerking weakly as he tried to crawl away in panic.

Devon stared.

She’d hardly ever watched Cai feed, choosing instead the cowardice of hiding away while he feasted on his prey. He was used to this struggle, the movement of his victims. He’d learned to make himself small and mobile, folding around them like a humanoid leech.

Ramsey locked gazes with her. His eyes were wide with horror. She could see that very moment—as she’d once seen with Matley, long ago—when the knowingness of him became unknowing, when mind became merely brain.

Cogito, ergo sum. Ramsey Fairweather-Knight collapsed, no longer a man and merely an empty vessel.

The brother she’d grown up with was gone.

Devon fainted.





35

NO MORE FAIRY TALES





PRESENT DAY


Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

—C. S. Lewis, note to his goddaughter

She dreamed of Hell, as she had been in the habit of doing for many years.