Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(91)

Was it afraid?

I opened my mouth to ask, but the Harvester moved, and then I was too busy for conversation. I felt the Soul Taker withdraw its awareness from me as Wulfe occupied it fully.

Drill is the secret sauce to creating a fighter. If you have to think about what you’re doing, you’re doing it too slow. I had drilled and drilled and drilled with my cutlass. Not with the katana. The automatic reflexes still helped, but the differences between the blades threw me off.

As I struck and whirled in the deadly dance I was engaged in, I wondered why Bonarata had given Wulfe to the Soul Taker rather than Stefan. Marsilia he had bigger plans for. She would either become his devoted slavish follower or he would kill her in some spectacular fashion that would be spoken of for centuries. Bonarata was jealous of Stefan. And between Stefan and Wulfe, I would think that the Soul Taker would have an easier time using Stefan.

“Stefan,” I said out loud, “is old and tough and strong, but he’s not a freaking witch wizard crazy person. So why did Bonarata pick you, Wulfe?”

The sickle made a wicked quick slash at me, but I moved a quarter of an inch and it missed my throat. I dropped and thrust the katana like it was a foil or a spear and forced the Harvester back, a wet stain over one of his hips.

“Why you?” I asked.

In my mind’s eye I remembered the skeletal thing crouching against Marsilia’s skirts, surrounded by the blood-drenched dungeon and the dead.

I blinked and was back in the unused master bedroom just in time to get out of the way of Wulfe’s elbow. That jump back into Stefan’s dream-sending thing had been dangerous. I couldn’t do that again.

Bonarata had tortured Wulfe for centuries. He’d turned him into that creature—and still Wulfe was his own person, broken as that was. Bonarata had tried to use Wulfe to undermine Marsilia, to spy upon her, and Wulfe followed Bonarata’s orders exactly as they were given—and somehow defied Bonarata by twisting those directives on their heads.

I thought of Stefan’s long-ago words. Bonarata was still afraid of Wulfe. Something kept him from killing Wulfe outright. I did not know what those reasons were. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that by killing Wulfe, Bonarata admitted that he was afraid. But he did not expect Wulfe to survive the Soul Taker.

I understood now, in a way I hadn’t an hour ago, exactly what the Soul Taker did to those who wielded it. I understood why Bonarata would assume that Wulfe would die a servant to the blade.

But I’d seen the damaged thing Marsilia and Stefan had released from Bonarata’s prison. And he’d survived. If I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on Wulfe. Long shots have always appealed to me.

Adam said it was the Coyote in me. Of course, I’d never know how it turned out because I would be dead.

That’s when it hit me how odd it was that I wasn’t already dead. I had calculated that my life span after we started to fight would be in seconds. It should have been over in seconds.

I hadn’t kept track of the time we’d been at this, but I’d broken a sweat and my breathing was starting to be more labored. I knew this state from practice bouts with Adam. From that I estimated that we must have been fighting for three or four minutes.

A minute is a very long time in a fight, especially a fight with sharp things. I wasn’t good enough to last this long in a fight with Wulfe.

Did the Soul Taker not want to kill me and finish the purpose of its existence?

We exchanged more moves and countermoves, and I could feel myself slowing down. He knocked me back and it took me too long to get my guard up. He should have hit me—and he didn’t.

Some king had enslaved Zee, and Zee had made cups from the king’s son’s skulls and got the king and his wife to drink from them. Some people made very bad slaves.

I bet, I thought with a surge of hope, that it would be really difficult to make Wulfe do something he didn’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to try it.

The tip of the Soul Taker slid along the top of my scapula, cutting the shirt and my bra strap away and ripping a slice in my skin. I felt my awareness of it grow, felt its magic sliding into me, even as I spun away and lashed out with a low swing that forced the Harvester back.

Wulfe was serving the Soul Taker, exactly as well as he had served Bonarata. And that was why I was still alive after roughly five minutes of fighting.

That was a bad idea, Bonarata, I thought. It’s going to bite you in the butt.

Teach him to play with the daughter of a chaos deity. Send the Soul Taker out to kill me and see what that gets you.

I turned aside the Soul Taker again—and Wulfe’s head jerked down and he bit me. Surprised, I rolled away and—



* * *



—

I walked beside someone in the formal gardens at the seethe with rosebushes taller than my head on either side. Some part of me was very concerned about this. It felt like a very dangerous thing to do. I shouldn’t be walking in a garden. I should be—

“Pay attention,” said Wulfe sharply.

I started to turn my head to look at him.

“Do not,” said Wulfe, and I froze before my eyes found him. “We don’t have much time.”

I knew that what I should be doing was fighting off the Harvester—who was Wulfe, or at least partly Wulfe. My body was defending itself on pure reflex while Wulfe pulled me into his dream.