Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(51)

“It was the end of days. They’re all dead. I saw the skeletons.”

The Shadow closed her eyes and shook her head. “I tried to tell them. Before I left, I tried to tell them it was all going to come to a bad end. But you cannot feed the truth to people. They have to see it themselves if they’re going to.”

Ahmare nodded because she agreed and because she didn’t trust her voice. The sight of all those skeletons, contorted from their suffering, was one of those images she was never going to forget.

“Put this under your arm and around your back.” When Ahmare just blinked at the towel, Nexi folded it a couple of times and put in place. “Hold this here so I don’t get the peroxide all over everything.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Ahmare did as she had been told, pressing the terry cloth tight and waiting. As her eyes drifted around the cabin, she decided everything about the place should have changed. So great were the things she had gone through, she felt like everything everywhere should be as different as she was on the inside. Instead, the rough furniture and Duran’s trunk and the workbench for maintaining weapons were all just where they had been left.

She focused on that trunk by the bed. Was it still full of Duran’s things? Probably. And “full” was an overstatement, actually. There hadn’t been much left after he’d gotten himself dressed and armed, and she thought about the clothes and personal effects that the congregation had been forced to turn in as they’d joined the cult.

Things, just things. But they were defining in a way that belied their inanimate nature. They were also a reminder, not that she needed it, that neither Duran nor the cult’s followers would ever need their personal effects again.

“Brace yourself. This is going to hurt.”

There was a pause, like Nexi was giving her a chance to prepare. And then the peroxide hit, cool when it was on the top of her shoulder . . . then like liquid fire as it got into the wound. Ahmare hissed and jerked forward.

“Good, now I can do the back—”

“Wait,” Ahmare gritted out. “Gimme a second.”

She felt as though her entire upper body on that side had been doused in gasoline and had a match tossed into the wound. As her vision blurred and she threw a hand out onto the table, a whiskey bottle appeared under her face.

“Take a swig. It’ll help.”

Ahmare was not a drinker, but the pain made her open to any solution. Bringing the neck up to her mouth, she took two pulls—

The coughing was not a help. Nope.

As her eyes watered and her shoulder screamed and her lungs issued evac orders to the Jack Daniel’s that had breached their shores, Nexi sat down, like the Shadow knew it was going to be a while before they could continue with the antiseptic.

When most of the storm had cleared out, Ahmare looked at the other female. “Why did you come for us? And thank you, because I’d be dead now if you hadn’t.”

The Shadow took the bottle and drank like the stuff was lemonade. And if that wasn’t a commentary on the difference between those who taught self-defense and those who’d actually used it, Ahmare didn’t know what was.

Then again . . . she had seen real fighting now, too—and had the battle wound to show for it.

“I kept thinking about what you said,” Nexi murmured. “About you killing that guy and him reaching through the divide of the raids, getting into your past, contaminating it with the stain of his blood.”

Ahmare took the bottle and tried the liquor out again, going more slowly. “Little did I know what was coming next after I left his body behind.”

No doubt some human had found Rollie’s remains by now, but given the crew he ran with? No one would report the death.

“Your story made me think about my own childhood.” The Shadow sat back, her braids falling over her muscled shoulders. “I guess I decided maybe if I came and helped you, maybe you could be the hand that reaches past my divide—only it makes things better. Like, if I saved you, maybe that’ll be the good thing that changes the bad, the opposite of what happened with you.”

Touched, Ahmare whispered, “I owe you my life.”

The Shadow burst up as if she couldn’t bear whatever she was feeling. “Or maybe I slipped and fell in the shower. Got some compassion knocked into me that’s going to dissipate like a concussion as soon as I get you out of my hair.”

Ahmare reached out and took Nexi’s hand. “I’m sorry that you lost him, too. Duran, I mean.”

The Shadow’s eyes flared peridot, and given the sheen that made them glow, it was clear that under that tough exterior, there was a broken heart.

“I didn’t lose him.” Nexi shrugged. “The truth was, he had me. Not the other way around.”

“But it’s a hard death for you. Either way, it’s . . . a hard death.”

“They’re all hard,” Nexi said in a haunted voice. “Even the ones you pray for . . . are hard.”

That was the last thing Ahmare heard.

Before she passed out.





33




ABOUT THREE HOURS BEFORE dawn, Ahmare approached Chalen’s castle alone. She was unsteady on her feet, although that was clearing up now as she measured those stone walls—and at least she had managed to successfully dematerialize at regular intervals from Nexi’s cabin to the conqueror’s property. As she stopped on the far edge of the moat, she found the drawbridge up tight to the entrance, everything battened down as if an attack were expected.