Cold Steel

Page 238

“Yes. And I will pay it. Only me. No one else.”
“Taken. What do you want?”
“Of your own self and will, you can only walk into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. But I am a spiritwalker. You can cross with me right now.”
“At last you understand.”
He laughed, and he sprang like a cat. He flowed like a viper. He struck like a raptor, the beat of unseen wings carrying me back through the coach. Bee sat as stiff as if she were encased in ice, but I had no time. I tumbled past her and to earth.
My sire was already standing on the gravel drive, as unruffled as you please. In his severe black jacket and trousers, and with his coldly handsome face, he looked like a man you never ever wanted to cross swords with because he would rather wait until you turned around and then stab you in back so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of seeing the light drain out of your eyes.
“Intriguing,” he said. “The cold mages pull heat and energy from the spirit world and lock it up in this world, thus stealing it from us, but this red-haired man is dispersing it through their bodies back into my realm. I would never have seen any of this if you had not escorted me through. I shall have to think about what this means.”
“Father! He’s going to kill all those people! Save them. Save Vai! I beg you.”
“You are a slave to the chains that bind you to others. That makes you weak.” His smile cut.
I licked a spot of blood off my lip. “No, it makes me strong.”
The history of the world begins in ice, so the bards and djeliw claim, and it got so cold so fast I was pretty sure the world was going to end right under my feet. A gossamer undulation like wings of frost flared at his back, and the veins of his closed third eye smoked like night on his brow.
He raised a vast pressure of cold that began to choke down the fire. Drake’s young fire mages collapsed first, crusted all over in a skin of ice. The soldiers cowered in fear, guns dead.
My ears throbbed. My eyes were sucked dry of moisture. My lips stung.
Drake saw us, for the shadows had been ripped right off me. I thought it must surely end quickly. What mortal could stand against the Master of the Wild Hunt?
But Drake blazed. The flood pouring through Andevai and the eru surged as an ocean tide around the fire mage. Like a volcano, Drake had become the flowing energy that consumes all in its path.
Soot spun in black tornadoes into the sky. Lightning sparked and flashed. The air above the palace grew so hot that a green aura of light appeared and twisted in the sky.
Ice and fire warred in perfect balance, neither able to retreat or to advance.
I ran forward to grab my sword. Drake did not notice. He dared not take his eye off the Master of the Wild Hunt, because no matter how powerful he and Andevai together were, fire mage and catch-fire, to falter even for an eyeblink would bring the ice crushing down.
I leaped up the steps, taking them two at a time. Just as I reached the top, Drake saw me coming. A thread of heat woke in my heart as he spun backlash into me with a fevered smile. Vai was blinded by the force of all that magic, and my sire was too far away to help me. It would take me only a few heartbeats to burn.
But I only needed one, for my sire had given me all the opening I needed.
I leaned into the thrust. Cold steel slid up under Drake’s rib cage and pierced the beating fury of his heart. I ran him through up to the hilt.
His brow wrinkled as if he were puzzled by how close I stood.
I shoved, just one step more, to make sure I really had him. He rocked back. Caught on my blade, he could not pull away. His eyes flared and sparked in sheer stymied fury. He tried to speak, but although his mouth opened, no sound came out, only a trickle of blood.
There flashed in an instant through my mind a hundred triumphant retorts and gloating taunts, but in the end I realized I simply did not care enough to speak. With a grunt of pain, for my hand hurt from clenching so hard, I jerked the sword out of his body and turned the blade to cut his throat. Blood poured down his chest, ruining the dash jacket he had stolen from Vai. I stepped out of the way as he toppled face-first onto the stone stairs.
With a sound like a monstrous beast inhaling, the flames vanished as all the fires went out.
Drake was dead.
Dead.
I had to secure our precarious situation. The cold mages sprawled limp on the steps, but I had not the leisure to worry about them. The fire mages were frozen. The soldiers stared in horror at my sire. While it was true that a great deal of magic was billowing off him, to my eyes he looked like a perfectly ordinary man. And while his clothes certainly were severe for being sewn out of unrelenting black, they were not otherwise exceptional or astonishing. But the soldiers dropped their rifles and fell on their faces, begging for mercy.