by Sienna Skyy
“As stated, I have fail—”
“I heard you, Isolde!”
He faced the window, and for the first time, she noticed his mien. The bronze skin sheathing his sinewy muscles glowed with a layer of sweat.
Someone had been here. Someone upon whom he had expended significant physical exertion.
He turned, and when he did, she saw a pool of blood glistening at his chest.
A Pravus under Kolt, then, perhaps even a lieutenant. This was good news for Isolde. If Enervata had unleashed his fury by extracting information from one of Kolt’s minions, he may not be so inclined to drag out Isolde’s death.
Enervata spoke deliberately, and though his black stare leveled at her, he did not address her directly.
“Hedon, kindly relay to Isolde the new development with the Macul of Corrupted Compassions.”
When he spoke, Hedon sounded gruff and, for once, stone sober. “Kolt has been working on a philanthropist named Jonathon Raster. Well-known bloke. Liable to win the Nobel Prize. We think Kolt might be on the verge of corrupting Raster, and if he succeeds . . .” Hedon swallowed. “The impact on humanity ought to be a good sight devastating. Enough power in it for Kolt to take the throne then if he pulls it off. Enslave humanity. Us too, of course.”
Enervata stepped toward her with savagery in his eyes. She saw his desire to spill her blood. His tongue spilled from his lips in a doglike pant. He spoke through his teeth. “So you see, Isolde, today is your lucky day. We must now divide our efforts and break Kolt’s philanthropist. We cannot lose another single Pravus lieutenant.”
Isolde wanted to laugh. Wanted to throw back her head and scream. To have assembled the courage to face her death, request it, practically, only to be thwarted by this.
Enervata growled. “Hedon shall be devoted to watching this Jonathon Raster and ruining Kolt’s plan. You shall continue to follow the quest and prevent any further progress.”
“I am unable to suppress the signs. They prevail though I know not how—”
“Silence!”
Enervata’s claw struck her face and she tumbled to the marble floor. Before she could gather herself another blow came, a kick, and with it she heard a snap as her left wing broke.
“I knew of your failing, Isolde! Hedon reported it to me!”
He knelt where she lay, teeth gleaming at her ear. “I almost killed you. Do you know that? As much as I cannot spare another single resource, I intended to kill you the moment you arrived. The only thing that saved your life was your immediate confession.”
This time she did laugh—a shuttering, moist gurgle that he likely mistook for weeping. She found in this laughter that her rib was broken in company with her wing.
Enervata grabbed her hair and yanked backward. “Explain to me now how you failed.”
Isolde shuddered. “I repressed the signs. But there are so many spirits attempting to get through. They use tricks now that I cannot anticipate. Speaking through random vessels in a crowd. It is too much for me. I have failed and shall continue to fail.”
Enervata struck her again.
Hedon cleared his throat. “Suppose we pay a visit to the girl in Blue Ash afore they even get there, eh, master? I can be there in a jiff. Stop her heart like I did the driver of the gas truck once I’s done with him.”
“Yes, Hedon, you managed to kill a driver on an interstate off-ramp. And what was your intention? To cause the van to ram the truck and destroy them all!”
“At first! So shocked I had to do something. But I had to keep Bruce alive to keep the bond-recherché intact, so I slowed the van and sent a hailstorm instead. All happened so fast when I saw what they were about that I thought it better to rush back here and report than to—”
“Shut up. I grow so very weary of your puling.”
Enervata wiped his knuckle on his chest, adding Isolde’s blood to the existing stains. He would have employed extreme means in order to extract the information about this philanthropist, Jonathon Raster. Isolde knew many of Kolt’s Pravus, and wondered which one had shed the blood that now mingled with hers on her master’s chest. Jachai perhaps, as she knew Hedon had been watching him. But she dared not ask. Whoever the Pravus was, he likely met an unthinkable end. The specter of smoke still lingered in the air.
Enervata stood. “Why do none of you choose to think? If you can’t even suppress signs, what makes you think you’ll be able to get at the girl in Blue Ash? Don’t you think perhaps she might be a bit protected?”
Isolde put her hands to the floor and pushed up, wincing.
“Sileny, bring me my dagger,” Enervata said.
Sileny scurried, stepping first toward the Rococo cabinet and then pausing. She turned and left the room.
Enervata’s dagger. The only instrument that could pry through the spell of immortality he had cast centuries ago. Perhaps he would end it for Isolde after all.
Her heart thundered. If only he would move with haste.
Where was Sileny? Why had she not taken the dagger from the Rococo cabinet where it belonged?
Sileny returned, running a soft cloth over the sheath. She must have taken the dagger in with the polishing. Sileny placed it in Enervata’s hands, never once looking at Isolde.
“On your feet, Isolde.”
Despite the slicing pain in her ribs and wing, she would accept this death in a dignified fashion. She would not beg nor weep as had Glueg. She rose to her feet and let her eyes rest on Enervata’s.
“You are a brave one, Isolde. I give you that.”
He mopped his brow with his discarded outer-shirt and then cast it aside. “You think I mean to kill you. But as I said, you shall not die today. I will not forget your failure to carry out my instructions, but your good fortune has allowed you a small reprieve. Perhaps you shall find a way to remedy your deeds before this breaking of the bond-recherché is complete.”
Sileny slipped a belt diagonally between Isolde’s shoulders and fastened it at her waist. A leather pouch that matched the shape of Enervata’s dagger hung above her hip.
Enervata placed the sheathed blade in the pouch. “Rafe awaits you in Canteshrike Grotto. Bring this to him.”
NEW YORK
He was older. Not by much. She could tell by the change in his hair, the roughening of skin, the tiny lines at his eyes. And she saw the seriousness of his expression, how it had now become his permanent state. No hint of playfulness. It was funny how a person could change in a span of maybe five years.
And he looked so handsome. Bruce was wearing his tuxedo. A groom on his wedding day. He looked at Gloria’s picture. Looked at it for a very, very long time.
“In a way, she reminds me of you,” he said to the photograph.
He stared at it for a while longer.
“Good-bye, Gloria. You’ll be with me forever.”
He put the picture away. Face down.
Gloria awoke with a start, a cold sweat dampening her brow. She climbed off the bed with unsteady feet and walked to the window.
The knife lay on the dresser. She refused to look at it.
The door opened and Sileny appeared. She saw Gloria and paused, looking back over her shoulder. Then she gave a nod as if she was going to leave.
“Please, Sileny, stay with me a moment.”
Sileny held up a hand, indicating she would have to come back. She darted forth, took the knife, and left, closing the door behind her.
Gloria wrapped her arms around herself. The image she’d seen in the dagger that morning still unsettled her. Bruce and Jamie—she had not dared look at it since. But what truly unsettled her were the deeper images. The ones that filled her mind when she slept.
Good-bye, Gloria. You’ll be with me forever.
She turned on the radio to the station that played Spanish ballads and listened. Soft, gliding classical guitar. Beautiful, yes. But not the song on her mind.
She put her fingers to the windowpane, wishing for the dragonfly.
Later, wh
en Sileny returned, Gloria was kneeling under the sill. Sileny set a tray of tea on the little bistro table and regarded Gloria with a solicitous inclination of the forehead.
“Thank you, Sileny.”
Gloria blinked away tears and rose to her feet. A fleeting tension shadowed Sileny’s face.
“Are you all right?”
Sileny nodded and the tension dissipated. Or at least it hid.
Gloria nodded at the door. “Is something going on out there?”
Sileny shook her head and poured Gloria’s tea.
Gloria resisted the impulse to ask whether Sileny would join her in a cup. Of course she wouldn’t. Not for the first time, Gloria wondered how Sileny found sustenance.
The music turned and Gloria looked toward the stereo. The opening of the song sounded similar, but it wasn’t what she thought. She shrugged at Sileny. “I heard, I thought I heard . . . ”
She shook her head. “I told you about my fiancé. There’s this . . . ”
She expelled a deep lungful of air. “Do you know how we met? On Cinco de Mayo. You know, the Mexican independence celebration. About a year ago. We didn’t actually meet. I saw him and he looked at me. There was this song playing. A jazz song on Spanish guitar. ‘Besame Mucho.’ I didn’t know who Bruce was, but I kept catching him looking at me. Unfortunately, I had to leave before we even said hello.”
The tears came again and Gloria closed her eyes for a moment. Her heart and mind filled with the easy, sumptuous melody.
“I saw him again a month later. Purely by accident. Bumped into him at this little coffee place. I was so surprised to see him I just stood there. I didn’t know what to say. And he was looking at me like—”
She shook her head. “And then he said, ‘Bessy-me.’ And I laughed, and we both knew.”
Sileny reached a hand out and stroked Gloria’s hair, causing her tears to come harder.
“The thing is, Sileny, I had this dream. Only I don’t think it was just a—”
Gloria stopped. Sileny stepped closer.
“He put my picture away. Face down. It was so real. It almost felt like, like a premonition. As if he’s done. Already moved on. I think I might have seen his future, and I just don’t exist in it.”
18
CANTESHRIKE GROTTO
THOSE SHRIEKING VOICES, melodic even in their fury. Isolde panned the ice cave looking for Rafe.
The flock seemed to be in the midst of a hunting expedition and they had fallen upon their prey with zealous bloodlust. Talons slashing and lips smeared with blood, yellow eyes agleam—another type of dance she had shared with them before Enervata dulled her skin. She remembered it, the drunken excitement, the delicious release of fury, the taste of wet copper at her lips.
Isolde moved in the opposite direction. It was prudent to avoid their attentions when they frenzied so. Individual canteshrikes would never dare harm her due to her standing in Enervata’s service, but as an ensemble, the flock bore no sense of reason.
She stepped along the icy path, jaw set with disgust for Rafe. She loathed having to speak with him. Let this discussion be quick. She wondered if he even knew of Hedon’s discovery.
She looked into the small niche in the ice wall they had recently shared but found it empty. Enervata had said that Rafe would be waiting for her in Canteshrike Grotto. Likely in another corner of the cave, then.
She scanned the gleaming walls and fingered the dagger strapped in a diagonal across her chest. It was a detestable sensation. Canteshrikes never tolerated clothing nor anything else touching their persons save for another canteshrike.
The dagger was likely for Kolt or someone in his high command. Enervata had likely tasked Rafe with a mission of assassination. It would be a dangerous mission, near impossible even with Enervata’s dagger.
Isolde stepped to the soft, down-covered moss and sank to her knees, then reclined, curling into herself. Her wing and ribs ached so. Her longing to abandon this existence ached so.
She had managed it with Rafe when they had shared this niche. But the abandon was fleeting. Now she could only continue an intolerable life of service.
She turned her face to the moss and breathed in, recapturing a scent of that escape. A lone tear trickled down her face. She dispatched that tear—that hated tear—and scrambled to her feet. Should Rafe appear now and witness her wallowing, he would seize upon her weakness. He would speak in flowery prose to entice her to his contrivances.
And Rafe’s contrivances invariably yielded misery.
Isolde lifted her eyes and panned the cathedral center of the grotto. The only signs of life were the canteshrikes themselves. Even the pixieflies had vanished, receding into their burrows at the raging song. The song of the canteshrikes eviscerating their prey.
Isolde’s pulse slowed. She listened to the arc of harmonies puncturing the stillness of the cave.
As always, the canteshrikes’ voices joined in the manner of a practiced choir, with the pace and unity of a sewing machine. More a hive than a flock.
She stepped toward their canting. Down below. Near the pool.
If she could speak above a whisper, she would call out to them now.
No, she would shriek to them. Would spear her voice high above all others and dominate their cries.
She ran, heating the cold air with her lungs as her talons gripped the ice. Ran straight for the flock.
And those with loose attentions saw her coming. Their eyes lit with a manic hunger. They cried out to receive her into their bloodbath, to abandon their limp prey and turn their frenzy upon her, Isolde the Fair. Isolde the Formerly Fair.
Isolde hurtled herself the final distance. She leaped from the ledge and burst her wings open to their full span, ignorant of the pain in her broken bones. She shared in their hunger for the taste of blood. But her hunger was angrier, fuller with an infestation of hatred.
In the milliseconds before she landed, those who saw her coming stepped back, their bloodlust tempered to fear. She kicked the trident razors of her feet at them, spinning her body in the furious, graceful canteshrike ballet of murder.
Two of them fell. The flock let out a collective shriek, voices coalescing into a single note of high A. She felled another. The flock lunged at her, but their movements dimmed with uncertainty.
Isolde felt no awareness of the injuries Enervata had inflicted, nor did she take notice of sharp talons that striped parallels into her flesh. The canteshrikes sliced at her, shrieking, bewildered, and as one talon whipped toward her face, she coiled her arm around the leathered leg and snapped it.
They turned. They ran from her. All of them.
But Isolde’s lust remained unsatisfied. She pursued them and caught one, descending upon his back. She curled her head around his neck and tore the flesh from his throat, abandoning him before his tenor cries had even extinguished.
Then another, the one whose talon had tried to slash her face. With her leg broken, the young canteshrike could not escape with the speed of the others. Isolde fell upon her and beat her, using elbows and the full force of her body to sate her own desperate thirst to shatter bones. First the neck, then the wrist, and then bone after bone turned to gravel at her blows. Isolde glutted herself on the satisfaction of it long after the younger canteshrike lay still.
When her strength finally waned, Isolde heaved, straddling her latest victim.
She looked down and realized she still wore Enervata’s dagger, but had never even pulled it from its sheath. Even had she thought of it, the blade would have been too distant a means for imparting death. Isolde wanted to feel the murder in her talons. Feel it in her flesh and teeth.
She stood, backing away from the body, and looked up to see her own reflection in a plane of ice. Silver turned red. Lips black with the blood of another canteshrike’s throat.
Five canteshrikes had fallen to her fury. Canteshrikes she’d lain with.
She turned toward the flock. They milled at a safe distance and none looked at he
r. Most had entered the pool and were cleansing themselves. Ridiculous, vain creatures. She had just reduced the flock to three-quarters it size and those foolish narcissists could think only to beautify themselves. Unable to tolerate any stains on their downy white bodies. Stains from their wounds and Isolde’s. And the one they preyed upon when Isolde arrived.
“Isolde,” came a voice in a whisper. A voice she knew too well. A voice she would know as long as she breathed.
She began to shake.
“Isolde.” The whisper was weaker and more desperate.
She turned, trembling with fury and exhaustion. She strode past the bodies of her prey to seek out Rafe.
The canteshrikes’ prey.
The moment his agony-wracked eyes lifted to hers, she felt as though a broadsword had cleaved her.
“Rafe!”
She sank to her knees before she even reached him, for her legs refused to carry her that small remaining distance. His body lay eviscerated. The canteshrikes had torn at him. While she lay curled, wallowing in the tufted bed they’d shared, the canteshrikes had been upon him.
He did not lift his head; could not, probably. His fingers stretched toward her.
“Isolde.”
She crawled the span of ice that lay between them. She touched him gently, terrified of inflicting further injury upon him and yet unable to refrain from touching him. Tears scalded the blood at her cheeks and each breath she drew came in a shudder. She gathered him to her, cradling his head to her breasts, resting his skull on her downy thigh.
She pressed her lips to his brow. “Rafe, oh my hated love. What has happened?”
“’Twas as you said it would be, my dear Isolde.” Each ragged breath seemed to cause him pain. “He learned of what happened in Maine. Hedon discovered our secret and told him.”
Rafe coughed and she lifted his head, turning him so he could spew blood.
She grazed her knuckle to his lips. “Do not try to speak, my love; it pains you so.”
Rafe wheezed, eyes glazing. “He knows not of your involvement, Isolde. I told him that I had dispatched you to the forest to conjure false signs and that you had no knowledge of my failure.”
