Hunted Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  “What about underground?” Avyi asked. “What are we dealing with?”

  “Ancient hovels from back to Roman times. Britannia, aided by the Tigony. More recently they’ve been expanded by Underground tunnels, most of which were never completed or left defunct after World War II. Without Grandio, I’d have already been lost a half dozen times among the winding train tracks.”

  Avyi’s mouth went slack. “A half dozen?”

  As if ashamed, Orla looked away. “I tried to find Hark myself. Even after the other rebels were captured and I escaped.” Tension warped the graceful line of her shoulders. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should’ve sought your help right away. If our comrades have been killed since because of my delay … I may get Hark back, but I’ll have done so at the expense of good men and women.”

  Avyi took Mal’s hand. Although she said nothing and didn’t look at him, she offered something he’d thought lost. Reassurance. Maybe even quiet absolution, although he wouldn’t give himself that gift until all of this madness was over, if ever.

  She offered the same reassurance to her sister. “Hark is your husband. I would’ve done the same. We will do what we must.”

  Mal caught Avyi’s eye, where green and gold gleamed in the acidic evening lights. Had he been Indranan, he would’ve asked her the question she probably read on his face. What about your prediction that the rebels would be killed?

  Avyi only closed her troubled eyes and gave his hand a squeeze. It was a start on their road back.

  “Here,” Orla whispered. “Grandio.”

  “No need to speak, Silence. You should know that much.” A middle-aged Dragon King of modest stature stepped out from a shadow Mal wouldn’t have even recognized as a shadow, let alone as a hiding place. It was that slender and tucked away. Then again, the Tigony lacked skills of observation that Garnis, Indranan, and even the berserker Pendray could claim. The Tigony were either vicious or sleek-tongued. Little room for middle ground.

  Orla shook hands with the man. “This is Grandio. A Southern Indranan, if we want to be specific.”

  “Which we don’t,” he said. “Those distinctions are ripping us apart. Tonight is a night for unity.” He dipped a slight nod toward Mal. “Giva. My privilege.”

  Mal clasped the man’s shoulder. “Those distinctions are ripping us apart,” he repeated, firmly believing the words. His people needed a leader, not someone who received deference based on title rather than action. “And this is Avyi. She’s like you.” He grinned. “No clan either.”

  “She’s also my sister,” Orla said.

  Grandio’s shock was apparent, with wide, dark eyes and a shake of his head, which was wrapped with the bindings of a human Sikh.

  “Silence, “Gradio said, “sometimes I believe you say things just to shock me.”

  “It’s true.”

  True, but madness as well. The circles. The idea that threads were being woven together or, more ominously, that a noose was being tightened. All Mal could do was start with the person closest to him. Avyi. Start with her, and work his way out toward the people he couldn’t see and didn’t know. She was …

  She was his touchstone. She was the person who made his responsibilities real, when every other attempt to lead had been met with grandiose, overwhelming, and ultimately ineffective results. How could he lead the Dragon Kings if he didn’t know what it was to care deeply for one of them?

  Because now he did. He cared for Avyi. He wasn’t going to let the next few hours’ events take her from him. He would make sure of it.

  “She’s looking for a crossbred Tigony-Pendray named Cadmin,” Silence said. “About eighteen. Set to participate in her first Grievance. Can you help?”

  “You’re a very polite Thief for asking.” Grandio had recovered from his momentary shock, replacing it with a teasing smile. “Just don’t dig around too deeply.” The man glanced at Avyi, and pointedly at Mal. Mal felt a gentle tap-tap in his brain, as the telepath touched his surface consciousness. “We all have dark corners we’d rather not see revealed.”

  *

  A full hour of mental exertion passed, during which Orla and Grandio worked together to map the souls of imprisoned Dragon Kings and their human captors. Still no sign of Hark or Cadmin. Orla broke the connection with a gasp and a frustrated growl, then slumped to the damp pavement. Avyi’s heart burned for the half sister she’d never known was hers to claim.

  She knelt and touched Orla’s trembling forearm. The dim lighting didn’t prevent Avyi from realizing what her fingers brushed against: the Thorn of the Sath mating ritual. Embedded just beneath the skin, the crescent-shaped needles symbolized a permanent commitment between two Sath. “I’m glad you married him,” she said softly. “Hark. I knew you would. I just didn’t know when.”

  Orla only nodded. Sweat had beaded along the line of her white-pale hair. “Best man I’ve ever known.” Her words were tight. “And the most infuriating.”

  Avyi risked a quick glance up toward Mal, where he leaned against the decades-old exterior of the power station. “Perhaps in some men, the two qualities are inextricably paired.”

  “Is he worth it?”

  “Has Hark been worth it?”

  Although Orla looked away, Avyi caught sight of shimmering moisture in the woman’s black eyes. “Yes. Even now.” She straightened her shoulders and returned her sharp gaze to Avyi. “But you didn’t answer my question. Is he worth it? Worth the way you look at him? I didn’t need a piece of Grandio’s telepathy to feel what snaps between you both.”

  Avyi swallowed. She wanted to be small. She wanted to find a place where she would be as mindless and unaccountable as she’d been as Aster’s Pet. The joys of freedom were tempered by the extreme responsibility of making one’s own way in life. “I fear what I’d do for him. That’s not something I ever wanted to feel about another person. Not … again.”

  “Aster.”

  “Yes. He created what it was for me to understand devotion. Just a trick of the mind? A craving from the soul? I don’t trust myself any more than I trust Mal.”

  That raised Orla’s brows. “You don’t trust him?”

  “I don’t trust that our goals align. When the moment comes, he’ll choose what suits his purposes—which may be noble, I grant you. He’s the Giva, after all. But would you believe him capable of putting Hark’s life above the concerns of a hundred Dragon Kings in need?”

  “No,” Orla said quickly, quietly. “You’re right. His priorities may not align with mine, not at the moment of choice. I don’t know what to tell you, sister. Only that he looks at you the same way you look at him.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Like he won’t be able to take another breath without you.”

  Grandio grunted. His skull smacked back against the wall with a sickening thud. He grabbed his head with both hands and applied what appeared to be a terrifying amount of pressure. He grunted again, this time with a word that resembled Silence.

  Orla shot to her feet and stood face to face with the pained man. She threaded her fingers with his on either side of his temples and pressed their foreheads together. “Show me.”

  “Another … By the Dragon and the Chasm, she’s unnatural. Indranan witch. Thrice cursed.”

  Avyi shuddered. Most Dragon Kings believed the thrice-cursed Indranan a myth. She knew differently. Although most Indranan were born as twins, some were birthed as one of three. Triplets. And some of those triplets killed both siblings to assume untold telepathic powers. They also assumed the screaming minds of their wronged brothers and sisters. The thrice-cursed were abominations—exceedingly powerful and completely mad.

  Avyi had only ever known one such woman.

  “Ulia,” she said. “Aster’s telepath.”

  Silence mumbled an affirmative, then cried out. She and Grandio were caught. They were fighting an unseen battle.

  Mal took position at Avyi’s side, his hand threaded with hers. “Helpless. Dragon damn it.”
>
  “You?”

  “Yes. I hate it.”

  “Our time will come. Every attack has multiple assaults. Yours, Malnefoley, will be of the explosive variety. This …” She shook her head, watching her sister and the Indranan man physically bound as they fought a mental battle. “This is not our domain.”

  “The rebels will still die? Do you know it, Avyi? A fixed point?”

  She mashed her lips together. “No. I don’t know for sure. I thought I did. It’s all coming together too quickly. Nothing makes sense anymore.” Embarrassed, scared, she glanced at him, where he stared her down with piercing eyes. “Maybe that’s why I’ve needed you all along,” she said softly.

  “Hark,” Orla whispered, sounding strangled by an unseen hand. “And that girl.”

  “Cadmin?”

  “Yes. Dragon be merciful—yes.” She shook free of Grandio’s hold. The man collapsed onto the sidewalk. “I couldn’t— The witch— It was let him go or be erased along with him. Oh, Dragon forgive me.”

  Mal knelt beside Grandio’s fallen body. He felt the man’s neck, twisted his pinkie finger, pulled his eyelids apart. “Nothing. Not a thing. Ulia did this?”

  Orla swayed on her feet. Avyi supported the taller woman, who replied, “Yes. Like flipping a switch. We can’t search again. She could find us, but the cover of so many Dragon Kings may give us time. We have to get to the holding cells.”

  “You found Hark?” Avyi asked, hoping as she’d never hoped.

  “He’s in chains. Alone in a … a tunnel? Human guards surrounded him. He …” She broke off and hefted her shield. A murderous expression turned her sharp but beautiful features into those of an unearthly avenger. “He’s not suffering another moment that can be helped. Do you believe I can find our way?”

  “We have no choice,” Mal said.

  “What about Grandio?” Avyi knelt next to the fallen man and stroked sweaty hair back from his face. He didn’t respond in any way. Had it been so simple for Ulia to turn him from man to meat? “We can’t leave him here. Are we sure he won’t recover?”

  Orla shook her head, leaving Avyi with a wellspring in her stomach where sickness and fear bubbled up. “There’s nothing left of him now. I was lucky to escape with my own mind intact. The Indranan can only focus on one individual at a time. That mind witch got to him first.”

  “I’m glad you’re safe. But we can get him out of sight. And we can …” She flicked her eyes to the sword Mal held.

  “I’ll do right by him.” Although Mal’s face was etched with dreadful tension, he moved Grandio so that his body lay horizontally on the sidewalk and his head dropped back into the gutter. His chest cinched tight. “Great Dragon,” he said, echoing Avyi’s words back in the labyrinth, “he is yours.”

  He swung the sword in a sure arc, beheading Grandio with a single blow. Without speaking, Avyi and Orla moved his body back into the shadow and aligned his head with his torso. They each whispered, before touching his forehead and standing.

  “No more,” Avyi rasped. “Not another one of our kind.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Avyi ran, with Mal on her heels.

  Orla raced up the street and veered into a narrow shaft that connected two segments of the Battersea. “This may get tight,” she called over her shoulder.

  The shaft was hot and shot steam up from slats low along the wall. “Some sort of release valves if the turbines overheat,” Mal said. “A way of venting excess energy.”

  Avyi smiled despite the throbbing in her chest, as anger, grief, and their fast pace tightened her lungs. “You could do with some of that.”

  A quick glance backward revealed Mal’s grim smile. The expression in his eyes was a combination of mirth and teasing that made Avyi’s heart pinch.

  “Right now I’m trying not to lose my legs to bursts of steam.”

  The shaft narrowed as Orla had warned, until Avyi was forced to shuffle sideways. Mal shed his lightweight overcoat. He had gained a wildness that appealed to Avyi on a deep, inexplicable level. The heads of the cartels bought and sold and negotiated. She would rather place her faith in Mal’s ability to lose control than his fallback penchant for trying to keep matters covert or on an even keel.

  She might even put her trust in him after the bitter words they’d said. She didn’t want their argument to be the final, overwhelming sentiment they exchanged.

  The grim set of his mouth, the tense readiness that radiated from his chest to his shoulders to his arms, and the dusty, ruffled hair of a true fighter made him more handsome than she’d ever seen. He shuffled beside her, taking up the rear of their trio, and she felt calm. Suddenly calm. Orla and Mal. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had chosen the right side, without the need to explain to herself, over and over, how the ends justified the means.

  She was a woman at home in her body and in her life, even on the verge of battle and the potential for the bloodshed she’d foretold. She would be a part of it, but on the side of her people. So when Orla stole a burst of Mal’s kinetic energy, blazing light into a hollow space at the end of the tunnel, Avyi was ready.

  Ready to face the most deformed Dragon King she’d ever seen.

  “Hellix,” Orla said coldly. “You here to die in the Grievance or die right now?”

  “You always were a cold-ass bitch. Where’s that jester freak of yours?” He smiled in a way that bunched the lines on his forehead. There, the brand of a knife warped into garish folds of scarred skin on skin. “Maybe I could help you find him.”

  Orla sneered. “Maybe you gave him up.”

  “That’s a possibility, too.”

  Avyi felt a tickle of awareness along her nape before the actual strike. It wasn’t premonition so much as simply knowing the two warriors who fought at her side. She dropped to her stomach. Mal crackled with energy, which Orla concentrated in the metal of her fiercely serrated shield. Sparks like a hundred bolts of lightning shot from its knife-point edges.

  Hellix was fast, and he was well trained. That probably explained why his deformities included more than just his brand. He looked like he’d been caught in a fire and burned and burned. Part of his left forearm was twisted down to the bone. Yet he was still able to deflect the energy bursts when he spun into the ferocious berserker rage of Clan Pendray. He tore through the pipes until steam concealed him, and the heated vapor was nearly suffocating. Orla fell to her knees, with her hands around her throat.

  Mal leapt over Avyi and her downed sister. His body was a living electrical current. Each microscopic droplet in the steam glowed, supercharged all the way to their neutrons. Steam became living light that he swirled—an in-person view of how he manipulated the skies and brought lightning down at will.

  Briefly, Hellix’s spinning, furious, malformed limbs could be seen silhouetted in the bright vapor. Avyi didn’t expect her sister to recover so quickly. Then again, the woman known as Silence would not have survived more than five years in the Cages, and her entire life on the run from Clan Sath, had she been any less resilient. Or any less deadly. In the time it took for Mal to reveal Hellix’s location, Orla pounced. She used the shield first as a slicing weapon, then as a blunt battering ram.

  She landed atop it, square on Hellix’s chest. From where she lay flat on the ground, Avyi almost smiled at that familiar crouching stance. She’d used it herself countless times. Cut off an enemy’s air. Squeeze his heart. Loom above him with the ability to leap away if needed. They were sisters in combat, as well as by blood.

  “Where is Hark?” Orla asked, her voice deadly quiet.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Giva? Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” Mal replied, equally cold and deadly.

  Orla balanced on the toes of her boots and spread her palms on either side of Hellix’s head. Her fingers already glowed with the power she borrowed from Malnefoley. The zaps made Hellix’s legs twitch. His arms splayed out to the sides, useless. “I won’t kill you,” she s
aid. “I’ll paralyze you, with your mental functions still intact. Nod.”

  The man did.

  Avyi crawled to her knees, crouching, ready to aid Orla however she could. In the face of such skill and power, however, Avyi’s street-fighting techniques and man-made weapons seemed like barbarian clubs.

  Hellix’s eyes were wide, although it didn’t appear as if he did it on purpose. Orla was in control of the man’s mind, right down to how his body functioned.

  “Then I’ll leave you here in the steam, until you suffer even worse than when you burned in the rubble of Aster’s labs. I’ll press you against the furnace pipes. You’ll sizzle, feeling every second, but you won’t be lucky enough to die. The Giva carries a Dragon-forged sword, but I doubt he’ll do you the mercy of a beheading.” She smiled, seeming half crazed. “I’ll kill him with it before he tries. Nod.”

  Hellix was losing consciousness. His eyes rolled back. But he still managed a scant acknowledgment.

  “Now,” she said calmly. “Where is Hark?”

  “Asters.”

  “I know that, you bathatéi shit. Where?”

  “East of here. One level below. With humans.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to use his powers,” Avyi said. “Trapped with humans, with no Dragon King gifts to borrow.”

  “I bet we’ll find all of the Sath in similar confinements,” Mal added.

  Orla hopped away from Hellix, who gasped and smacked at his head as if it were on fire. “Bitch,” he growled.

  “Help me, Avyi?”

  Avyi stood and grabbed a foot and hand, as Orla did. They pulled Hellix to one side, carefully avoiding the steaming-hot pipes as they positioned his body flush against one. The man screamed. “Mal,” Avyi said. “We have no rope. What can you do?”

  “Something terrible.” His face closed down. She read nothing in his expression, much like when he’d related the tale of his destruction of Bakkhos. “Go. I’ll follow.”

  Orla took hold of her, just as Avyi saw the flash vision of Hellix’s future. Mal was going to …