Death's Dancer

by Jasmine Silvera

  “Not again,” Gregor growled. He booted the skull into the bushes. “You are going to have to develop a stronger stomach, dancer.”

  She didn’t know whether to thank him or take a swing at him. Consort or not, Isela still ranked about as high in Gregor’s estimation as the mud on his boot. Some things would never change.

  “Can you hold them?” Gregor barked at Alefir.

  The Viking snorted assent.

  Gregor grabbed Isela’s arm and dragged her away from the melee. He’d been cut in a few places, burned in others.

  “How did you know?” Isela panted, struggling to keep up.

  Gregor waved a slim black rectangle before sliding it back into some unseen pocket in his armor. “Your attaché called when he left you at the gates.”

  Isela flushed. “I told him. . .I didn’t want to distract you. Are those. . .bite marks?”

  Gregor snarled, dabbing at the gaping, tear in his neck. She tried to get a better look but he jerked away. It began sealing itself before her eyes.

  “You are not supposed to be here,” he barked.

  “I won’t distract him,” she said. “I just need to be close enough for the power transfer.”

  From a space in the tombstones on her right came a runner in the tattered remains of a suit. Gregor spun, reaching for his sword. The black wolf lunged from the shadows to intercept it. The wolf caught the filthy, snarling corpse by the thigh, snapping its femur with a dull crack. Gregor sliced the head clean away. It collapsed immediately, lifeless again.

  Gregor stepped across Isela’s path and she was forced to look up to maintain eye contact. She closed the distance between them in a stride.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Gregor snapped. “Your job is done.”

  “It’s not a job” Her voice cracked with cold and worry. “Not anymore.”

  Gregor stood, his breath coming much harder than it should have. Ignoring prudence, she reached out to him. When her fingertips touched his arm he flinched. She recalled Azrael’s words about the protection of his Aegis extending to her as his consort. She hoped it included their obedience as well.

  “I can feel him, right now, here.” She pressed her fist to the center of her chest. “And sitting this one out isn’t an option.”

  Isela latched on to that connection, using it to give her the courage to take the next step. She slipped around him, continuing into the dark. She didn’t realize her whole body had been bracing for him to try to stop her, until she released a ragged breath.

  Emboldened, she lengthened her stride as Christof and Tobias fell in at either side. She glanced back to see Gregor, still standing, and Markus between them. The black wolf’s jaws snapped shut, and he bared his teeth, daring Gregor to challenge.

  “Are you coming?” she asked both males.

  She never thought she’d see surprise on Gregor’s face, but it was there, beneath the cold, practiced blankness. He swore and caught up to her in a few swift strides before moving into a ground-eating jog ahead of her. She took a big breath, and started to run. Her limp was more pronounced and the youngest wolf stayed at her hip. She leaned a hand on his withers. Tobias fell back to guard the rear. Markus remained on the perimeter, and she saw only flashes of black fur moving through the moonlight-dappled snow.

  In the oldest part of the cemetery, Lysippe stood at the entrance to one of the mausoleums. The briefest flash of a smile creased her mouth when she saw Isela. “Good.”

  “What’s happened?” Isela asked between breaths.

  “She was ready for us,” Lysippe replied grimly, stepping aside to let her pass down the stone stairway. “She drew him into the In Between.”

  Lysippe dropped to the rear guard as the darkness swallowed them.

  The room was vast, much bigger than it should have been, given the aboveground terrain. A deep cold sank into her bones as they drew closer to the flickering light of a torch circle around a stone altar.

  The grimoire from Havel Zeman’s aedis rested on the altar beside a thing that resembled coalescing frost beginning to take human shape. Standing before the altar, Azrael faced a woman—Róisín. They were frozen in place. The stillness raised goose bumps on Isela’s arms. The room was silent. Not even a twitch of the earth stirring above or a breath from either one of the frozen figures.

  She recognized Azrael’s stance, the casual feint before the strike, but the woman captured her attention.

  The Queen of Diamonds looked as if carved from marble, her arms raised in welcome. But beneath her dense, pale brows, cerulean pupils shone with the sickly gleam of an oil slick and a savage smile twisted her face. The victory in her expression chilled Isela.

  Between the firelit circle and the room’s darkness, Gregor and Lysippe joined Rory and Dory to complete a second circle of Azrael’s four. They had their weapons drawn, backs to the circle of fire, but there was no enemy to fight. She knew without being told they could not breach the light—not even with the weapons Azrael had given them.

  Whatever was happening between the necromancers was happening somewhere else. She thought of the night in Zeman’s aedis, how Azrael had seemed frozen in place before he’d collapsed, clutching a wound she hadn’t seen inflicted. Whatever happened there, the consequences were real enough.

  “Hurry,” Dory said, and she saw the frost on his breath.

  Isela shivered, nodding.

  Her muscles contracted in the cold, and pain arched up her hip with every breath. She closed her eyes, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, and began to dance. Her body was tense with worry, but after a moment or two, training and muscle memory took over.

  Isela didn’t hold back, immersing herself fully in the expanding bubble she created. She flung herself into it, ignoring everything, and became the dance. The room warmed slightly. The air no longer burned her lungs with cold.

  She heard a shout, as if at a great distance, and there was sound again, not just the pant of her own breath and the pounding of her heart. She found herself face-to-face with the golden shadow.

  Though she couldn’t make out facial features, Isela knew it was staring into her. It cocked its head, like a curious animal, darting closer.

  She couldn’t help herself: she smiled at it. It mirrored her face, smiling back, and then they were dancing together, and nothing else mattered. It grew closer, and her moves became an invitation. She spun, stamping, and when she looked again, the glittering shadow was close enough to touch. If Azrael was right, guardian angels didn’t exist, not the way people talked about. This was no angel. This was a god. She spun with delight, and the god matched her movement perfectly.

  The tearing sensation in her hip came first as if at a great distance. Pain brought it into immediate focus. Her step faltered as the raw burn shattered her concentration, cutting through adrenaline and endorphins. She heard a high, keening sound before she realized it was the sound of her own frustrated grief. Any second she would fall, and any good she might do Azrael would be lost. If she ever danced after tonight, it would be a miracle.

  Time slowed as her shadow peered at her hip. She didn’t need to explain. She had opened herself—become the conduit—it knew her well enough to see the truth. It understood her anguish and urgency. It offered itself up.

  Isela didn’t think about the ramifications of what she was about to do. All she could hear was Azrael’s unchecked laughter when he told her his childhood nickname. She would give herself over a thousand times to hear that laugh again.

  Isela reached out, touching the shadow for the first time. “Okay. I accept you.”

  The world rippled. She sealed her eyes against the burning light, tears streaming between her lashes. Her body fell away, left behind.

  She was the shadow, and now she could see everything.

  A battle was being waged in the shifting, windswept gray place she now understood was the In Between. Azrael and Róisín fought one part hand to hand, one part power.

  Azrael bled from tiny slas
hes on his face and hands, as though he’d been hit with flying glass. Every time he scored a hit, shards of Róisín broke off; tiny pieces of ice or diamonds that glittered through the air, slicing anything they touched. In this place identical to the physical room it overlaid, the torchlight whipped in the heated wind that rolled off Azrael, and the room was bright with his fire.

  As Isela watched, Róisín spun a long, bladed staff. Azrael lunged away, barely avoiding her. When he lunged forward again, he was bearing a long, double-bladed axe that became two when his hands parted.

  In this place, Isela could clearly see the figure on the altar taking shape. A network of shining translucent threads, like liquid diamonds, swiftly knitting itself into a humanoid form. Beneath the figure, spilling over the altar sides, was the first suggestion of wings.

  “The angel,” she breathed.

  It begins here, but it must not be allowed to cross into the physical world. If it takes shape there, all is lost. The voice belonged to her shadow, only it came from within her chest now.

  Azrael grunted. He went to one knee to block the force of a blow but moved too slowly to avoid the second sweep that sliced into his shoulder, opening his chest up.

  Isela was running before she made the decision. I need a weapon.

  The gold shadow was ahead of her, a smile in that glittering voice. Look down.

  In her hands were the two small blades she always wore, but here, they were the length of stilettos and shining gold with a back edge holding a wicked curving arch. These weren’t designed simply to slice but to open flesh and leave it bleeding. She aimed her gaze at the Queen of Diamonds and charged.

  “Had enough, Azrael?” Róisín inquired, as if offering seconds at a meal.

  The Queen of Diamonds, taken by madness, was still stronger than he ever expected. He’d misjudged her and overestimated his ability to simultaneously fight a necromancer and undo the spell creating the nascent angel. He was running out of time. Soon the angel would be strong enough that destroying it would be impossible.

  “Sorry, majesty, we’ve only just begun.” Azrael spread his arms, giving a little courtly bow.

  A terrible scream tore from her, and he had just enough time to move sideways before her blow struck. “You mock me, little goat boy. When the devil bred you on your mother, she begged him for more.”

  “Is that the best you can do?” Azrael said, baring his teeth. “After all these years?”

  He’d blocked pain long ago, but the wounds he acquired here affected his body on the physical plane. His ability to heal himself would draw power he needed to fight her. Enough injury would weaken him past the point of no return.

  She spun away, alternately laughing and howling like a moonstruck banshee. The sound made the hairs on his neck stand on end. That such a madwoman held power like hers was beyond belief.

  At once, she stopped, but she never let him get closer to the altar, keeping herself between him and it the entire time. So not fully mad, he thought. There was something left of her old self, cunning and ruthless.

  And broken.

  She began to sob, shrieks becoming thin wails as she let go of the staff with one hand to beat at her chest. He heard the hollow booming like icebergs calving from a glacier with each strike.

  “They took him from me, Azrael. My dancer,” she said. Her eyes met his, naked with sorrow and bottomless pain.

  “You killed him, Róisín.” Azrael kept his eyes from moving to the altar as he edged sideways.

  “But he was a threat,” she pleaded, tears crackling into shards that flaked from her cheeks. “He would have taken my power. He and that god, conspiring against me and joining together.”

  “Is that what Paolo told you,” he asked. “Or Vanka? Those two should never be trusted. You taught me that.”

  For the sheerest instant, he felt pity. Perhaps it was what Isela brought out in him—the ability to see the broken thing she had become and to empathize. He remembered who she was just in time.

  Azrael narrowly avoided a swipe of Róisín’s bladed staff that would have opened him from gut to gullet. He rolled, suddenly infused with power, and struck out. The blow ripped through her from shoulder to waist, tearing her open and exposing the glistening organs beneath. She screamed with uninhibited rage.

  And still she fought, the wound sealing as she struck back.

  Azrael countered her attack with a new strength, realizing it came from Isela dancing. For him. Heat surged in him, and he radiated it out. The ice tracks on Róisín’s cheeks melted and steamed, and her blade dripped.

  The resurgent power gave him a new gambit. He may not have been able to undo the spell, but he could strike against the angel while it was too weak to defend itself. The backlash from contact with the angel would cost him his mind. If he was lucky, the shell of him would survive to absorb Róisín’s rage while Gregor and Lysippe protected Isela and escaped with the grimoire. Beryl would know how to destroy the book so the spell could never be used again. He sent the plan to his four.

  Neither looked up from the demons they battled, but he felt the acknowledgment, and Azrael had never been more proud of the four finest members of his Aegis. They were warriors; they understood what needed to be done. Isela would understand too, in time.

  A bolt of ice shot into his leg, and he felt the wound drive to the bone. The agony of it, muscles and nerve endings electrified with pain, knocked him back. He barely held off the attack, and both of Róisín’s blades took payment in flesh from him as they struck. He only needed to hold her off a moment longer.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of gold moving faster than any living thing should move.

  Isela aimed for Róisín’s blind spot. She dropped into a slide, blades up. Róisín moved fast but not fast enough to avoid the cut that opened up the back of her thigh and sent her to her knee. Isela rolled as the diamond blade struck her bicep, and pain lanced up her arm. Wherever they were, the wounds were real enough.

  The Queen of Diamonds snarled as Isela rebounded to her feet, but her eyes widened. For a moment Isela saw recognition in the madness.

  Azrael was also looking at Isela, trying to make sense of something, but it was as if he couldn’t recognize her. Impossibly, Róisín attacked.

  Whatever the nature of Isela’s shadow, it was a warrior. It rode her form like a second skin, driving her into moves and combat techniques she had never seen, never mind executed. But it was her. Each move came from the dancer’s skill; a performance turned deadly. Some giddy part of her huddled in the back of her brain, watching herself under the control of this golden creature that turned her body into a deadly weapon.

  Between Azrael and Isela, the Queen of Diamonds began to falter. Now Róisín was on the defensive, and as they demanded more of her attention, the formation of the figure on the altar began to slow.

  The voice of the golden shadow echoed as if at a distance. Now while she’s weak. Leave her to Azrael. We must kill it.

  Isela waited until the queen was occupied with Azrael, then she made her move.

  Azrael and Róisín realized where Isela was headed at the same time. Forgetting Azrael, Róisín lunged after Isela with an animal howl. Azrael had his opening.

  As the gold figure drew Róisín’s attack, Azrael swept the physical room with his gaze. Demons were beginning to bleed through the walls, and his four met them without hesitation. Only Gregor stayed close to the pale wolf. Something was wrong with the wolf. As it fought, it—and the Hessian—stayed in a tight formation around an object lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. He recognized the spill of braided hair, the long line of hip and thigh, and a hand, open and limp, palm up.

  His eyes went back to the gold figure dodging Róisín’s blades, knowing now why it had been so familiar to him. The golden thing has her shape, he thought. He even saw the shadow of gray in its gilded eyes.

  The angel’s wings began to beat, stirring the In Between into a whirling mass of non-air.

>   He had to stop her.

  He leapt after Róisín as she followed the golden shadow. Azrael slammed into Róisín from behind, knocking her to the ground. She kicked his legs out from beneath him. Róisín’s blade darted between his ribs, just missing the heart, as it split bone like blades of grass. She staggered to her feet.

  A battle cry in a long-dead language tore from Azrael’s throat as he yanked the staff deeper into his chest to drag Róisín off balance. He dropped, dragging her down as she struggled to free her blade from his body.

  Isela reached the altar, but her first blow must have missed. The angel howled, but there was no blinding light. Azrael still had a chance to stop her.

  Róisín hesitated, stunned that Azrael kept coming. His hand snagged her wounded thigh, and he dug his fingers into the bleeding gash. She buckled, screaming. He manifested a blade of his own power with the next breath. He drove the blade up, under her ribs, and it hit something hard that reverberated an icy cold pain up his arm.

  She began to laugh. “I haven’t had a heart for millennia, Azrael.”

  It gave him enough time to summon a second blade to his now-free hand. He sliced her head from her neck before the shock could register on her face.

  It was not finished. There was a chance she could still regenerate herself. He gathered the last of his power and pumped fire into her, shielding the others in the room to contain the flame so hot it burned no color at all.

  When it was done, all that remained was the ashy imprint of her body on the ground. In the center, rocking faintly, was a diamond the size of his fist in the shape of a human heart. He took a breath and dragged the staff blade from his chest.

  His vision swam as consciousness began to fail. Still, he struggled onward.

  The golden figure had a knife clenched in both hands now. The angel crouched at the foot of the altar, keening.

  Azrael could barely hold his eyes open to watch Isela’s golden blade plunge into the angel’s chest, and the world became a blaze of light.

  Isela approached the altar, swept along by the intensity of the figure before her. It was a vortex, sucking in everything that came too close while giving out an incredible amount of its own power. For a moment she was stunned into stillness. It was more humanlike than ever now but also more alien. Its body was too long, face too narrow.