Scorched (40 page)

“Where?” Mac asked.

“There.” She pointed to a cell across the courtyard. “He—I’m pretty sure it’s a he—isn’t moving.”

Mac squinted. She was right. “Good eyesight. That’s a guardsman’s coat. I’ll bet you a quarter that’s Reynard.”

He turned to Connie. “I need your key.”

She gave it to him with a questioning look.

“Let’s see if it works on the cell doors. Wait here.” Mac dusted across the courtyard, materializing right outside Reynard’s cell. The ledge outside the cell door was as wide as a sidewalk, allowing Mac plenty of space to crouch and look inside the bars.

What he saw disgusted him. The cell was tiny, not large enough to lie, or stand, or even sit in comfortably. The captain’s usually spotless clothes were torn and blotted with blood.

Perhaps most cruel of all, he was conscious. “My own men did this.” Reynard’s expression hovered somewhere between a grimace and a rueful smile. “You look shocked, demon.”

“I served as a kind of guardsman in my old life. This is shocking.”

“They claimed I let you escape.”

“Yeah, well, just be glad I got away, because I’m here now.” Mac pressed the gold disk against the lock. It flared with light. The mechanism ground with a shrill squeal, and then a clank. The light winked out. He yanked the door open. It came away in a cloud of stone dust, the raw ends of the bars scraping the rocks.

Reynard moved to crawl out, but his limbs refused to obey.

“Hang on.” Mac reached in, grabbing the man’s hip and arm and dragging him forward. Reynard collapsed to his hands and knees, his limbs too stiff and weak to stand. Mac steadied him with one hand. The landing at the top of the stairs was small. A false step would take the captain a long, long way down to the courtyard below.

“Where is the incubus now?” Mac demanded.

Reynard shook his head. “Gone. The others took him to the black lake.”

Damn. They had guessed wrong, come to the wrong place. “When?”

“Not an hour ago.” Reynard grasped the top of the cell door and determinedly got his feet under him.

Mac grabbed the captain’s jacket with one hand and hauled him to a standing position. Reynard wobbled dangerously. He hunched, holding one arm across his stomach.

“I’ll help you stop them if I can.” Reynard said. “Anything to stop Bran.”

“Can you walk?”

“Of course. Just give me a moment.”

Mac kept one hand on Reynard’s shoulder, steadying him. “Do you know where the sorcerer is?”

“Atreus? They took him as well.”

Mac glanced across the courtyard to see Connie, leaning on the rail and watching. It was going to be a slog to get Reynard across the courtyard to join her. Or not. “Hold still.”

“What?”

They rematerialized on the other side of the courtyard. Reynard grabbed the railing with white knuckles. “God’s teeth!”

“Shortcut,” Mac said with a grin, but his smile wilted.

He’d been fooled by the guardsman’s bravado. Connie grabbed Reynard’s arm as he started to slowly collapse. Mac helped her ease him to a sitting position. Connie crouched in front of the captain, then drew back sharply.

She could smell the blood, Mac realized, as he saw her eyes flash silver. Even guardsmen’s blood would catch the notice of a fledgling, and they hadn’t been in the Castle long enough for her hunger to be entirely subdued.

“How badly are you hurt?” she asked, one hand over her nose and mouth.

Reynard gave a hollow smile. “I simply need to stretch my legs.”

He said it as casually as a country gentleman about to take a stroll around his estate. The only trace of strain he showed was a deepening of the lines in his face. He barely let the discomfort reach his eyes, but then he pressed his hand to his stomach. Blood seeped over his fingers, making tiny rivulets over his skin.

“On second thought, perhaps you should leave me,” Reynard said.

“If I leave you here, you’ll be dead meat,” Mac said, frowning down at him. With short, efficient movements, he bent and pulled open the captain’s jacket, then tore open the fine cotton shirt beneath. Mac caught his breath. “Sword wound?”

“Bran’s ax.”

Mac felt his gorge rising for the second time that morning. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of rock, paper, scissors?”

The smell was the first thing Alessandro noticed. A stink like melting rubber, cloying to the nose and bitter as it reached the back of the tongue.

He crept down the hall, the dark arch of the stonework growing inky with shadow as he navigated the curve of the corridor. It took him a moment to place what was wrong.

The ever-burning torches were dead.
That can’t be good.

Without light, the stench seemed thicker. Or maybe the smell was simply growing worse. He approached the darkness step by step, using his ears and the feel of the air against his face to navigate. His right sleeve brushed against the stones of the wall, giving him one boundary of the corridor. If he kept the wall within reach, he could reverse his path if needed. The black, lightless space ahead seemed to pulse against his skin. Nerves prickled across his shoulders, down the backs of his arms.

He froze, reacting to a noise before he realized he’d heard it. The echo of his boots faded to silence. Faint as a whispered oath, something scraped, a long, slow drag over the stones. Statue-still, he listened, waiting. It was a full minute before he heard it again.

Alessandro tried to put an image to what his senses were telling him, but failed. The impenetrable blackness ahead gave no clues. The foul smell gusted on a waft of hot air that felt unpleasantly like an exhaled breath.

He heard another noise, this time behind him.
Trapped!
Alessandro pressed his back to the stone wall, his sword raised. To his right was the unseen menace; to his left was a thin wash of light from where the torches still burned, barely enough for even his predator’s eyes. The bend in the corridor obscured whatever lay beyond the curve. He was caught between two unknowns.

An indistinct shape detached itself from the mottled shadows, sliding like oil into the middle of the corridor. He recognized the silhouette by the size and posture.
Ashe
.
Is she taking advantage of the confusion to finish her execution job?
He saw her pause, felt her scrutiny.

There was no way he would make this easy for her. He shifted his hands on the sword hilt and waited, letting her come to him. His flexed his knees, his weight ready to lend force to a quick sweep of the blade. It was a technique he’d used time and again as the queen’s executioner. A swift blow to separate the head from the body—merciful and final.

At the same time, he heard the scrape from the darkness to his right. Tension crawled up his skin, a live current. The stink clogged the corridor, nearly making him gag.

Ashe ghosted forward. She moved nearly as silently as he did, making it almost accidental that he heard her. Stopping outside the reach of his blade, she reached out, her hand bracing against the wall, her shoulders oddly hunched.
She’s still in pain from her battle with the sorcerer.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered, taking a quick glance toward the darkness.

“There’s something down there,” she said. “Something big.”

“I know. It’s blocking the way out.”

“The hounds are trapped back there?” she asked.

“They’re females and children.”

“I know. Kids. Puppies. Whatever.”

“What are you doing here, Ashe?”

“I’ve been scouting for Lore. I came down this way because I thought it would be safer. There’re guardsmen galore due west of here. I can’t get past.”

She took a few steps forward. His sword twitched, and she froze.

“Relax, I’m not here for you, fang-boy.” She coughed, trying to stifle the noise. “Sonofabitch, that stinks.”

“Get out of here. I’m willing to bet that’s some kind of noxious gas, and I don’t know what it’ll do to living lung tissue.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t need to breathe.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not poisonous to you.”

As the dragging sound started again, he saw her body curl into itself, a spring coiling for action.

“What the hell is that?” She drifted closer again.

This time, he let her, slowly lowering the sword. It wasn’t that he trusted her, but right then there were other threats—and more interesting game for her to hunt. She coughed again, burying her face in the crook of her elbow.

Then, there was light in all that darkness, a flash of orange bleeding to crimson. It was so vivid, Alessandro felt it like a blow. It disappeared, the afterimage burning in his mind.

“Was that fire?” Ashe whispered.

Before he could answer, another glow appeared, dark like smoldering embers. Two smoldering embers, about shoulder height. And then the dragging sound again, like shells or scales hitting the stone floor. Maybe a tail? Claws?

Eyes.

Scales against stone.

Long and low, like a big lizard.

Flame.

Merda!
Instincts screamed a warning.

Ashe grabbed his arm in a panicked death-grip. “Oh, fuck!” she croaked, the words robbed of air. She’d drawn the same conclusion.

The collapse of the Castle was bringing the creatures from its deepest levels.

“Run,” he said, sounding weirdly calm despite a jitter of panic. “A mortal won’t stand a chance in this fight.”

He half expected the creature to rush them, but it stayed put, eyes lit with an inconstant, shifting, bloody light. It had to be a good hundred feet away, but he could feel the heat radiating off its body. Dragons lived in fire. Lived with it inside them. He’d heard even their skin burned bare flesh.

“I’m the only backup you’ve got. Live with it.” Ashe released his arm and raised the light machine gun slung across her body. “What do you think? Underbelly?”

Alessandro shrugged. She was right. There was no one else to help, and Ashe Carver was a fighter. “Throat or eyes usually works with anything.”

Ashe squared her shoulders. “We’ll have those kids out of here by lunchtime.”

The dragon’s eyes shifted, the scraping sound matching the movement. It was scales making that noise, the swish of its tail on the stone.

It was inching forward. If Alessandro had to guess, he would have said it was curious. He backed away, dragging Ashe with him. This was his first dragon. He wanted a moment to plan.

“We have to separate. Find cover. We’re too good a target standing together.” Fire loomed large in his mind. Vampires burned all too well, and toast didn’t rise to walk the night. “Find a recessed hiding place. Stone shelters from the heat.”

“Got it.” Ashe pulled away from him and slid into the shadows, her form melting into the dark on the other side of the corridor.

Alessandro felt grudgingly glad to have her there.
A family that slays together stays together?
He slid back along the corridor until he found the entrance to a side passage where he could let it pass. They weren’t going to win by strength, so he wanted to attack from the dragon’s blind side, away from its flame.

As it closed in, the creature’s outline became visible, lit by the radiance of its eyes. No one Alessandro knew had ever seen one of the great beasts, though legends were plentiful. Unlike the weres or the vampires, dragons were truly wild creatures. They killed, ate, and laid their eggs as they had since the age of their dinosaur cousins. Human settlements were a convenient snack bar. This was the type of creature the Castle had to be meant for—one for which there was no suitable place in the outside world.

The creature’s savage beauty struck him first: the delicate bones of the head, the almost feline face surrounded by a flaring fan of skin and bone. The hide was smooth, brick-red with points of cream.

As it came closer, Alessandro could see the short legs were covered in hard, opalescent scales, the claws curved hooks of solid black. It was shorter than a man, but the body was a good twenty feet long.

Just beyond his hiding place, it stopped, round eyes blinking like the flash of rubies, the blast of heat from its flesh like a furnace door opening. Alessandro had willed his lungs to stop, protecting himself from the dragon’s breath, but he could hear Ashe coughing convulsively.

The noise was why the beast had stopped. It sniffed, its nostrils flaring to reveal the hot, steaming red of its inner flesh. It looked far too interested in what it smelled. Alessandro had to act fast.

How smart were dragons? Smarter than Holly’s cat? He pulled some loose change from his pocket and tossed it as hard as he could down the corridor in front of the creature. The coin landed with a clatter.

It jerked its head around with eerie speed, glowering down the Castle hallway, ready to pounce. Silent as the dead, Alessandro threw a second coin. The dragon took off with a strange side-to-side shuffle, its long body weaving as it ran, the belly scraping over the hard stone floor.

Ashe sprang from her hiding place. Alessandro followed barely a beat later. They raced after it, lagging behind almost at once. For a big creature, the dragon moved like lightning, the lashing, muscular tail ready to crush everything in its wake. Alessandro had to leap more than once to avoid its whip.

It reached the point where the coins had fallen, sniffing the ground like a hound searching for scent. Disappointed, it snorted out a gust of steam and smoke that curled over its head like a question mark. It hunted a moment more, the big head swinging from side to side.