Bayou Moon (41 page)
Authors: Ilona Andrews
William ground his teeth and tried to hold it back. He would need it later. He would need it for Spider.
Not now, fuck it. Not now.
Not now, fuck it. Not now.
“Bet you a dollar I’ll kill more than Richard,” Kaldar yelled, his fingers clenching a wide-bladed sword.
“That’s a losing bet,” Richard said.
Inside William, the wild’s jaws had opened a crack. He caught a glimpse of its fangs, shining and white like the surface of a glacier. He was losing. The rending was coming.
Erian jerked a short, curved knife from the sheath on his belt. A moment stretched into an eternity. Another . . .
The wild opened its mouth. Bottomless blackness gaped in its maw, guarded by icy fangs. He stared straight into it.
The wild bit at him. The fangs pierced his mind. The wild swallowed. Darkness engulfed him.
The world slowed to a crawl. William walked into the field.
Behind him Kaldar screamed. William paid him no mind.
Another kick rocked the bars and the whole grate came loose and clattered to the ground. A dark-haired woman leaped out of the window. She took two steps and crashed down as a bolt sprouted from her throat.
The Sheerile mercenaries fled from the house, spilling from the window and doors, charging across the clearing. William snarled and lunged at them.
A man hurled himself at him, knife raised. Too slow. William swayed away from the glittering metal arc of the striking blade, sliced the man’s armpit, jerked him to the side, cut his throat, and kept moving. A woman lunged from the left. William disemboweled her with a precise slash, stepped over her body, and kept moving. He killed again and again, knowing that nothing short of shedding his skin and biting into living flesh would satisfy him. He had to settle for what he had. Steel rang around him, punctured by isolated shots. He glided through the air thick with metallic blood stench on soft wolf paws, removing obstacles in his path.
The world dissolved into blackness and blood.
CERISE saw William sprint across the field. Her mind took a second to comprehend it, and by the time she understood what was happening, he’d swung his knife, quicker than the eye could see. Arterial spray wet the ground, bright, vivid red. The Sheeriles’ man fell to his knees, but William had already gone on to his next victim.
He killed the woman in an instant, didn’t even pause, and when he turned to strike at the next man in his path, she saw his eyes, hot like two chunks of molten amber.
“Stay back!” she barked. “Stay away from him.”
He cut and sliced, raging across the field like a demon, killing with brutal, precise savagery. As if a mad tiger had got loose amid a herd of helpless prey. Fast, tireless, deadly.
A shot rang out. William jerked. Her heart skipped a beat.
William swiped a knife from a fallen opponent, whipped about, and hurled it. The blade sliced through the narrow space between the bars on the second-floor window. A woman sagged against the bars and tumbled down, a knife in her throat.
William grinned, baring his teeth, and kept killing.
Chill bumps marked her arms.
Around her, people stood up to get a better look. Nobody said a word. The family just stood and watched in horrified silence.
So that was what he kept chained inside.
“He’s insane,” Richard said next to her.
“I know,” she told him. “He held it in all this time. He’s unbelievable, isn’t he?”
Richard stared at her for a long moment and raised his eyes to the sky. “What are all of you doing up there? You’ve lost your minds.”
“WILLIAM?”
The girl. Her voice, floating into his mind. Her scent swirling about him, filtering through the scents of hot blood
Cerise. Calling him.
William clawed through the blood-soaked fog.
Her hand touched him. He grabbed her and pulled her to him. His vision snapped into crystal clarity, and he saw her and his hands, gripping her shoulders. His fingers were covered with blood.
Cerise smiled at him. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Her fingers stroked his cheek. “Are you back with us?”
“I never left.”
He noticed her family now. They had surrounded him in a ragged circle, clutching crossbows and rifles. The field was strewn with corpses. He’d run out of people to kill.
The pressure inside him had eased. He needed more, more blood, more enemies to drain the heated strain in his muscles, but Cerise needed him and what he had done would have to be enough for now.
“I’m going to fight Lagar now,” she told him. “Will you watch?”
He let her go and nodded.
Cerise walked to the porch. The sun glinted from the sword in her hand.
William sat in the grass.
Richard sat on one side of him, Kaldar landed on the other.
“Murid has her rifle trained on your head. If you interfere, she’ll splatter your brains right on these nice weeds over here,” Kaldar said. “Just thought you should know.”
“It’s good to know,” William said. His body cooled slowly. Fatigue mugged him. They were fools. It was her fight. If he interfered, she would never forgive him.
If Cerise faltered, he would end up watching her die. The thought made the wild inside him howl, but one didn’t stand between a wolf and her prey.
“How often can you do
that
?” Richard indicated the corpses with a sweep of his hand.
that
?” Richard indicated the corpses with a sweep of his hand.
“Not often.”
“It’s over, Lagar,” Cerise called. “Come out. Let’s finish this.”
A quiet descended on the clearing.
The screen door banged. A man stepped out into the sunshine. He wore a blue robe that reached to his knees. The left sleeve hung in tatters. Lagar shrugged off the other sleeve, letting the robe hang at his waist. He swung his sword. Cords of muscle rolled on his bare chest and arms.
What did she see in him? He was tall, well-built. Handsome enough. Pale hair, blue eyes. They were enemies, but he got Cerise to dance with him. Was he charming? Did he know the right things to say?
They paced from side to side, stretching, keeping their distance. Lagar flexed. Veins bulged on his arms. “How come we never got together, Cerise?”
She looked small compared to him. That made for a smaller target, and she was fast, but Lagar was stronger. He’d muscle her and she didn’t have the weight to counter. “I don’t know, Lagar. Killing my relatives and kidnapping my parents might have something to do with it.”
Lagar stopped. Cerise stopped also.
His flash burst from Lagar’s eyes in a torrent of brilliant white. It ran down his hand onto his sword.
Shit.
“Too bad it turned out this way,” Lagar said.
Cerise’s magic slid along her sword. “We both knew it would,” she replied.
Lagar charged, fast like a changeling. Cerise parried, her movements flowing as if her joints were liquid. The two blades crashed against each other, sparking with magic. They danced across the clearing, flashing and thrusting. Steel rang, magic shone.
Cerise pulled back and so did Lagar. For a long breath they stood still, poised like two cats before a fight, and then Lagar moved, stalking Cerise across the grass, his sword pointing straight up. Cerise followed, her blade loose in her fingers, stepping on her toes.
Lagar ran. She matched him. He leapt and struck from above in an overhead blow, banking on his superior strength. They clashed in a blinding burst of magic and broke apart, facing each other.
The scent of blood lashed William’s nostrils.
A long cut sliced through Cerise’s shirt, swelling with red across her shoulder over her breast. A narrow smile bent Lagar’s lips.
If Lagar won, William would kill him.
The Sheerile took a step forward and fell, as if his legs were cut out from under him. Slowly Cerise slumped next to him in the grass. Lagar gasped, sucking in the air in small shallow bites.
A dark stain, deep red, almost black, spread through Lagar’s robe. Liver blood, tainted with the stench of bile.
“Gods, it hurts,” Lagar whispered.
Cerise picked up his hand and held it.
She touched him.
William choked back a snarl.
She touched him.
William choked back a snarl.
Lagar’s gut distended, growing like an inflating water balloon. A cut to the aorta or an iliac vessel. Lagar’s stomach was filling with his own blood.
“We . . . would’ve been good ...” Lagar coughed out blood.
Cerise rubbed his hand. “In another time in another life maybe. You hated my father more than you could ever love me.”
“Lucky for you,” Lagar said softly. A convulsion rocked him and he clenched her hand.
“You should’ve left,” she told him. “You always wanted to.”
“False diamonds,” Lagar whispered. “Like swamp lights.”
Another convulsion shook him. He screamed. His eyes rolled back in his skull. Blood poured from his mouth.
His pulse stopped.
Cerise untangled her hand from his. Her face turned flat and cold. “String him up.”
“You’re bleeding,” Richard said. “And grandmother isn’t here to help you.”
“She’s right,” Ignata walked up to them. “Tomorrow will be too late. String him up, Richard.”
He shook his head and walked off.
“What’s going on?” William glanced at Kaldar.
Kaldar grimaced and spat into the grass. “Magic. Old swamp magic.”
TWENTY-TWO
CERISE sat in the grass. The cut on her breast had stopped bleeding. Strangely, it didn’t hurt, not as much as she thought it would have. Her blood always clotted quickly, and she usually got away with a bandage where other people needed stitches.
A few yards away Erian dragged a corpse by its feet onto the growing pile of the dead. He should’ve nursed his wounds, instead of pulling corpses around. Erian turned toward her, flipping the corpse. Excitement lit his eyes, his teeth bared in a rigid grin. He looked deranged, lost in a maniacal glee.
Blood poured from the corpse’s mouth. Erian laughed, his voice bubbling up from his throat.
The delight on his face disturbed her to her core. This wasn’t Erian. Erian was calm and quiet. He didn’t laugh at death. Didn’t revel in it.
The feud was over, Cerise told herself. He’d waited for his revenge for so long it might have driven him a bit unhinged. The Sheeriles were done, and once they cleared the field, Erian would return to his normal self. But she would remember that rigor mortis smile forever.
She sighed and looked at the body he was dragging. The cadaver’s pale head bounced on the ground, and more blood escaped from its mouth. The face seemed familiar . . . Arig. She almost didn’t recognize him without that leer. Death wiped all expression off his face, and now he seemed just another boy, cut down too early.
Cerise wished she felt something, something other than regret. The Sheerile brothers were dead. The feud was over. She should’ve been celebrating, but instead she felt empty, scraped clean of all emotion. Only regret remained. So many people dead. Such a waste. A waste of people, a waste of life.
If a rock fell from the sky and hit her head, killing her, she wouldn’t care. She was spent anyway.
William dropped on the grass next to her. “It was a good fight.”
“Yes. You slaughtered thirty people single-handedly.”
“I meant you and Lagar.”
Cerise sighed. “If I was my father, the family would follow me anywhere, but I’m not. I had to prove that I was good enough. The next time I may have to lead them against the Hand, and I need them to follow.”
In the center of the clearing the men had strung up Lagar’s body. He hung upright, off a wooden pole, and people piled peat and mud around the base. Three buckets full of mud already waited next to the body. Richard and Kaldar brought a large plastic bin over and set it by the buckets.
William looked at the body. “Why?”
“We’re going to invite a swamp spirit into his body. There are many spirits in the swamp. They used to be Gods, the Old Gods of the Old Tribes who fled into the swamp centuries ago. But the tribes are long gone, and now their Gods are just spirits. There is Gospo Adir, he’s the spirit of life and death. There is Vodar Adir, he’s the spirit of water. I’ll be calling Raste Adir, the spirit of plants.”
“To what end?”
She sighed. “We don’t know where the Hand took my parents or why. We need to find out where they are and what they want. Plants have a lot of vitality. Enough to revive a dead body. The things I’m looking for are locked in Lagar’s brain. He was a careful man. He would have to know what Spider planned to do with my parents, or he would’ve never made a deal with the Hand. Raste Adir will meld with the body and find that knowledge for me.”
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