Tangled Webs

Page 42

The top half of her body fell in one direction, the lower half in another. Guts spilled out on the hallway floor, but not much blood. That meant the demon-dead witch hadn’t been drinking blood or yarbarah and had become too starved to be cautious.
She screamed at him as she pushed herself across the floor, too furious to remember she could use Craft to float her body on air. Intent on reaching her prey, she followed him as he circled toward the room where she had hidden.
His inner barriers were locked tight, and he should be safe enough from any games a lighter-Jeweled Black Widow might try to play. But a man who got careless and underestimated an enemy was a man who usually died.
Switching his war blade to his left hand, he grabbed the Black Widow by the hair, flung her into the room, and closed the door. Then he walked across the hallway and kicked open the other door.
Nothing sprang out at him, so he grabbed one ankle and threw the lower half of the Black Widow into the sitting room.
It went against his training and his temper to leave an enemy at his back. Since she was already demon-dead, the Black Widow was still a potential enemy. But he would need power to burn out what was left of her power in order to finish the kill. That would feed into the spells woven around the house. So he would leave her, and deal with her again if he had to.
Then he stopped and stared at the hallway as a thought curled around his heart.
Three Black Widows had made the spells for this spooky house. It stood to reason that the little prick who had devised this game wouldn’t want to leave any loose ends that could connect him to this place. Lucivar had no doubt at all that he’d just met one of the Black Widows—and he had no doubt he would cross paths with the second. But the third…
Daemon wasn’t a fool. The feel of Tersa’s spells was easily recognized by anyone who had spent enough time with her to know the woman. If she wasn’t safely tucked in her cottage in Halaway, if she was trapped in the house, Daemon would have told him. And if…
Fury washed through him at the thought of anyone daring to harm Tersa.
He grabbed the coat-tree and swung.
The mirror exploded, showering that part of the hallway with glass. One foot of the coat-tree punched through the wall.
Lucivar pulled the coat-tree out of the wall, set it down, and said, “Why use Craft when a little temper will do?”
Wasn’t likely he’d find Surreal or Rainier this close to the starting point of the game, but he’d check the back room and the kitchen before moving on.
One step. Two.
He caught a faint psychic scent, enhanced by a whiff of fear. It was gone before he could track the direction it came from, but it had been enough to warn him that Blood was nearby.
Not the Black Widow. This was someone else, someone who barely registered as Blood to his senses because that person stood so far above him in the abyss. Someone he hadn’t detected at all until he punched a hole in the wall.
He stared at the wall and considered the game. Then he bared his teeth in a feral smile and walked back to the front door.
“Guess I’ll play by your rules after all,” he said softly as he pressed his right hand against the door. The Ebon-gray Jewel in his ring blazed for a moment as he put an Ebon-gray shield around the whole structure.
Somewhere in the house, a gong sounded.
He felt the bite of a spell as it hooked into the Ebon-gray power, but he fed the shield for a few heartbeats longer—giving it enough power to assure that it wouldn’t be drained by the house before sundown. Of course, when he was ready to leave, he’d have to punch through spells that were bloated with his own Ebon-gray strength, and the backlash from thatwould hurt like a wicked bitch. So be it. He’d still be the one walking out. As for the little writer-mouse he suspected was hiding in the walls…
Lucivar picked up his pack and headed for the back room. As he passed the hole in the wall, he said in Eyrien, “You don’t leave until I let you leave. So you keep watching—and prepare to die.”
An illusion suddenly appeared in front of him. The boy had died a hard death, judging by the ripped torso and the missing eye, but he was just an illusion and notcildru dyathe , so he posed no threat.
“The worst is still to come,” the boy said.
“No,” Lucivar replied, walking right through the illusion. “I’m here now.”
He secured the door, then pressed his back against the wall—and trembled.
Why use Craft when a little temper will do?
Lucivar had cut the Black Widow in half. The fight was over before it began becausehe cut the witch in half.
Without Craft.
Lucivar had swung a heavy coat-tree like it was nothing more than a stick and punched a hole in a Craft-protected wall.
Without Craft.
The hole had compromised that part of the secret passageway, making it vulnerable to the spells that chained the rest of the house. This just proved how right he’d been to install doors to divide these passageways into separate sections that had their own set of protection spells. The witch who had done those particular spells had been a sweet woman until he had tortured her and killed her in a way that made her a suitably vicious predator.
Of course, there was no law against murder, so he’d done nothing wrong. And the information he’d collected in the process would make his next novels wildly successful, surpassing any of his rivals’. Maybe even successful enough that he would be able to acquire one of the kindred as a companion.
There was just one little hitch in his plans.
He was beginning to understand why Surreal and her companion were afraid of Lucivar.
“He put an Ebon-gray shield around the house,” Surreal said. “Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful.” How were they supposed to get past an Ebon-gray shield?
“Maybe Lucivar was trying to keep anyone else from coming in,” Rainier said.
“Or he’s trying to keep someone from getting out,” Surreal replied.Like us? she wondered as she glanced at the children. They had come close to pissing out their brains when that thunderous challenge had rolled through the house. Now the four of them were staring at her and Rainier, looking pathetically hopeful that they could be protected.
As if any of them had a chance of surviving now.
“Last night, that boy said the worst was still to come,” she said quietly. “What if Lucivar has been here all along?”
Rainier considered the question, then shook his head. “If he’d come in ahead of us, we would have seen some sign of his presence before now. A fist-sized hole in a wall, if nothing else.”
That was true enough. Once he realized he was trapped, Lucivar would go through the house like a wild storm. They would have been climbing over wreckage instead of moving through untouched rooms. But…
“Someone managed to kill a dark-Jeweled Eyrien Warlord and trap him in the house’s spells,” Surreal said. “Could those spells be strong enough to trap an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince?”
“Based on the rules we read, I think trapping Lucivar and Daemon was at least part of the intention,” Rainier replied. “But even if Lucivar is still just Lucivar…”
They looked at each other.
“Let’s get moving,” Surreal said. “We havegot to find a way out of here.”
Moments after Lucivar’s Ebon-gray shield closed around the house, Daemon’s Black shield surrounded the property, forming a dome over the house and sinking deep into the land.
Cold rage whispered in his blood, singing its seductive song of violence and death.
Then he felt Witch’s hand on his arm, felt a cold in her equal to his own but still tempered by the fire of surface anger.
“Lucivar found something he wants to contain,” Daemon said too softly. “Something not otherwise bound by the spells put on that house. He locked the house; I’ve locked the land.”
She nodded. “Nothing will leave here without his consent—and yours.”
And yours,Daemon thought. No matter what he and Lucivar thought, Witch would make the final decision.
Her hand tightened on his arm, a silent command to step back from the killing edge and the sweet, cold rage.
“Daemon, let’s take care around the boy,” Jaenelle said quietly.
That reminder helped him leash the rage and obey. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly…and regained control.
“Why don’t we take a walk around the perimeter and look for something that doesn’t feel natural?” Jaenelle suggested.
“Such as…?”
“A tunnel. A passageway.”
“An underground escape.” Daemon nodded. His Black shield went deep enough to block such an escape, but the search would give them both something to do while they waited.
He looked at the Coach. “Should we bring the boy with us and let him stretch his legs? He hasn’t left the Coach since you invited him in.”
“He’s afraid, Prince.”
“Of us?”
Jaenelle shook her head. “Of being sent back to the orphans’ home.”
He hesitated, then said softly, “We can’t keep him. The Hall is too dark. Our power is too dark. He would never belong. Might not even be able to survive.”
“I know,” she said. “But we can have him as a guest for a day or two while we decide what would be the best place for him.”
Something in her tone of voice. Something that softened his temper and tickled his sense of humor.
“How do kindred puppies feel about young boys who may be half-Blood?” he asked.
Jaenelle just grinned.
Tersa stepped back from her worktable. She had worked through the night, building her tangled web strand by careful strand.
The Langston man had used her to hurt the boys. Her boy. And the winged boy.
She remembered the winged boy from the days when she had been less of a shattered chalice and had lived in a cottage with her boy.
Before Dorothea had taken her boy. Had used her boy. Had hurt her boy.
And the winged boy too.
But the winged one was strong now, powerful now—and still a boy when he came to visit. He thought she believed that foolishness about ale being Eyrien milk? Even someone who walked in the Twisted Kingdom could tell the difference between milk and ale.