Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(43)

The dread was everywhere. It beat a dark, oily sludge in her veins and tried to black her out, swallow her whole. The man reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, and suddenly the peanut’s little head whipped around and he actually bit her—

She plunged awake, her skin damp with sweat. Dammit all to hell, that wasn’t the kind of dream she had been hoping she would have. A vague nausea roiled and she curled on her side, breathing deeply.

The baby was roused again, his presence draped over her, an invisible protective cloak spiked with aggression. She put a hand on her rounded stomach. What the hell?

The dark sense of dread had intensified. It saturated the air so thickly, she felt as though she were actually breathing it in like wood smoke.

Smoke.

She came fully awake, stabbed to alertness by a knife of adrenaline.

The acrid scent of smoke hung in the air. A sharp clash of metal sounded in the distance, along with shouting, and a red-tinged fog drifted across the window outside.

Or maybe that wasn’t fog. Her head ached fiercely and her ears rang as if she heard a high, thin scream.

There was no sound of movement in the apartment. Lunging to her feet, she ran out of her bedroom.

The embers of a fire pulsed brightly in the fireplace in the common room. James sat on the floor, slumped against the hallway door. Andrea sat in an awkward heap in front of the window.

They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be. Pia leaped to James and slapped him. He came upright with a growl and pressed the tip of his sword against her throat before she could jerk back.

The sharp tip nicked her skin. They stared at each other, wild-eyed. Then James jerked his sword away and said, “FUCK, don’t ever do that again. I could have sliced your throat wide open.”

She hissed, “You were asleep.”

Affront flashed across his handsome features. “I never fall asleep on watch.”

“Keep telling that to yourself as you go wake Andrea up!”

The sharp clashes of metal in the distance—those were swords. James leaped toward Andrea’s slumped figure as Pia raced for the nearest bedroom. Eva would never sleep through this kind of commotion, not unless she’d been drugged.

Eva and Miguel lay in a large bed. Miguel had the bedcovers pulled up to his chin while on the other side of the bed Eva lay stretched on top, wrapped in a blanket.

Having learned her lesson the hard way with James, Pia slapped Eva’s ankle hard and jumped back out of the way as the other woman lunged to her feet with a growl.

“You know that bomb you mentioned earlier?” Pia said. “It went off.”

She didn’t bother to stay and chat about things. Eva would figure it out. Instead she ran to her bedroom to get dressed, yanking her clothes and boots on with unsteady hands. She unwrapped her light crossbow—the only weapon she was comfortable enough with carrying—and slung a belt of bolts around her neck. If only she could get her head to stop ringing. That sense of a high, thin scream just on the edge of her hearing felt like someone was shoving a needle into her brain.

Eva strode into the bedroom as Pia shouldered her pack. By the growing light in the window, she could see that the other woman was dressed and armed. Red tinged Eva’s bold dark features and sparked in her furious black eyes.

“Every last f**king one of us was goddamn f**king asleep,” Eva said. “Every last one. I’m gonna kill us.”

Pia told her tersely, “It wasn’t your fault. Something wanted us asleep.” Even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t quite right. She remembered the shadowed figure of a man, and the oily black sludge trying to take her over before the peanut bit her and shocked her awake. “Not something. It was someone, and I think he wanted more than just our sleep.”

Eva’s gaze narrowed. “Got a description of this guy?”

“Call me crazy,” she said, scowling, “but I’m pretty sure he’s got green eyes. I keep . . .” Her voice trailed off as something slipped into place. “I just remembered. I’m pretty sure I dreamed about him the first night we were here.”

“Did you, now?” Eva moved to the window to look out, hands on her hips. “Dreams, spells and fire. That ain’t good, princess, but whoever this f**ker is, he ain’t our problem. I sent Johnny and Miguel to scout out our best exit strategy.”

Pia didn’t argue. Eva was right. There was a time for sticking things out, and this wasn’t it. When they got safely back to Charleston, or better yet, New York, she could send a sympathy card to Beluviel and Calondir for whatever this disaster turned out to be.

She went to stand beside Eva. There wasn’t much to see outside, other than the smoke or the fog, except for a patch of dark water below that glittered with a tint of red. Man, her head ached like a son of a bitch. She said, “I wish we could see what was burning.”

“The walls, floor and ceiling are cool and our air quality is good,” Eva said. “Same out in the hall. If this building’s on fire, it hasn’t gotten close yet. We’re going to have to rappel out the window if the exits are blocked.”

Pia took a breath. Their windows looked over the river at the top of the falls, and the water rushed underneath the building to plunge over a deadly number of rocks before hitting the bottom. “I assume you have a plan to avoid going over the falls?”

Eva said, “One of the building’s main support pillars is underneath the common room window. We can use the pillar as an anchor and cast left with ropes. River’s edge is three pillars to the left. It’s awkward, and we’ll get wet and cold, but we can do it.”