It was disconcerting to have his brain try to process the scents from the dank, smoky cave in the warm, brightly lit room, but after some concentrating, he could determine which scents and sounds were from which location, if only by distance. But it was the least of his worries at the moment.
As soon as the last of the chains fell onto the floor, he was up and racing over to where Ahmad lay. Whatever the drugs were, they hadn’t killed him, but he was having a hard time metabolizing them. Antoine pulled the darts from Ahmad’s thigh. Ahmad’s powerful muscles went from being still and cool to twitching wildly enough that Antoine had to hold his arm on the floor to keep him from hurting himself.
“Can you follow my finger?” he asked and slowly moved it from side to side past the dark eyes. “Do you have any idea what was in the darts?”
Ahmad tracked the finger adequately, but with his dark irises, it was difficult to tell if his pupils were dilated. He was able to move his jaw enough to hoarsely whisper the word “venom.”
While it was no surprise, it was a worry. Without a healer, it would take Ahmad days to recover—unless
…
He slowly rose to his feet, wincing as the burned tissue stretched and the cobra venom in his leg stung with force. But if he was lucky, Fiona had more than one specialty Wolven drug in her bag of tricks. He just had to find it upstairs.
But before he could get to the door, Matty was in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, mate! You’re stark raving mad if you think I’m going to let you move around until those burns heal. Now you sit your arse right back down. You’re in worse shape than either Ahmad or Babette, and in no condition to—”
He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, seeing it through the image of rock and fire. The image of the cave was unmoving. Nobody was in sight and only the flickering torches and scent of fear and pain made him realize it was really happening in some other place. Bits of black skin were slowly giving way to puckered, brilliant pink new skin on the thin flesh of his wrist, but he knew that the chest and arm wounds would be there for days. They might even wind up scarring, as weak as he’d made himself from throwing power around. “Matty, I’m fine. But there might be a drug upstairs that will speed up Ahmad’s healing. I have to check. Fiona would have hidden it, so I’ll have to go by smell. It wouldn’t do you any good to go in my place. Just keep an eye on Ahmad and yell for me if he gets any worse.”
Matty growled, sounding very much like the animals he tended. His worry, fear, and anger were nearly glowing in the air around him. “Yeah, right. Antoine, that is so patently untrue that I’m not going to even bother to comment. If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming up to get you.”
Antoine let out a short snort of air. “If I’m not back in five, you’ll need to. I’ll poke my head in Margo’s room, too. I’m hoping she’s all right. I worry that she didn’t come down during the battle. It was violent enough to shake the walls. Did you shut her door?”
Matty frowned, and his worried scent increased. “No, I didn’t. I wanted to be able to hear if she called out. Yeah, dead-set sure—you’d better check on her. I can’t imagine that those blokes would consider her a threat, but considering the things they did for laughs around here—I nearly felt sorry for the mice, and I hate squeakers.”
Antoine walked out to the entry way and looked up the staircase. It hadn’t seemed nearly so far up earlier, but he’d had both legs working properly. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The vision overlay wasn’t too bad until he looked down. That was a little too much for his equilibrium to handle, and the dizziness wasn’t worth dealing with.
At the top of the stairs, he debated whether to check on Margo first or to search for the drug. Friendship won out and he walked nervously down the hall to where the massive oak door was standing wide open.
“Margo?” he called out lightly, not completely hiding his own fear. She’d been his assistant for nearly ten years, and a good friend besides. There was no answer.
He poked his head inside the door, fearing the worst. But she was on the bed, under the comforter, and she was most definitely alive. The wave of relief quickly passed as the cave started to flow with activity. Tahira was being carried in by four men, one holding each limb. She kicked and flailed viciously, and the scent from the men was frustration and barely contained fury. She very nearly managed to get away after a few well-timed blows, but then froze so quickly and completely that he knew someone was holding her with magic. The men let go as she glided through the air to disappear inside the chamber entrance. No matter how hard he pushed forward in the vision, he couldn’t seem to follow inside.
It’s time to end this.
Antoine walked over to the bed and sniffed Margo’s face and breath. Her sweat smelled very similar to the bitter venom that had hit Ahmad. Her breathing was shallow, but her heartbeat was steady. Considering it had been nearly an hour since the original attack, her condition was probably as bad as it was going to get. He quickly smelled around until he found the bite mark. It was on her shoulder, under her shirt. Fortunately, the bite itself didn’t seem to be causing her any distress, so the venom must have some sort of paralysis agent without being toxic.
To be safe, he let a bit of his magic flow into her and was pleased that her breathing became stronger and the sweating stopped. It was all he could afford to do for the time being. He wasn’t a healer and needed every bit of his power for what was to come.
He sprinted down to Fiona’s room and started to search for his sister’s backup supply of chemicals. He knew she would keep some in the house because of the security normally present. He found himself wondering how Ahmad could have been blind to his own men being traitors. He was careful to the point of being paranoid, so the deception must have been long-standing. He pulled out drawer after drawer in the bureau, flipped the mattress off the bed, and opened wide every door in the place. But the kit was nowhere to be found. Could it be in a safe or in a different room?
“No,” he said out loud to the empty room. “She’d keep it nearby. It has to be within reach of the bed.”
The bed was the most inconvenient location in the room, the most indefensible, so that is where Fiona would want the most protection. He sat down on the edge of the empty bed frame and looked around more carefully. Fiona was amazingly fast for her size, but sleep would dull the senses if an attacker came at night.
Ahmad was right. He did think more like an agent than an administrator. But that mind-set would be valuable to them both today. Fiona wouldn’t trust something as simplistic as taping it to the bottom of furniture. There wasn’t much in the room, anyway, and the décor was subject to change by the owners.
“So, that means—” he whispered, and turned to the stone walls. The reddish tan laced with white limestone deposits of the cave gave a strange, fuzzy hue to the gray stone in front of him. He carefully scanned the wall, searching for anything out of place. He found what he was looking for under the large framed print of wolves running under the moon that had been painted by Star, a famous artist and one of Charles’s daughters. One of the massive stone blocks was loose. It took some wiggling and two chipped nails before the stone slid out on tracks inside the wall. It was quite clever, really. He looked inside the hole and was surprised that it had obviously been built when the castle was. The stone had been hollowed out somewhat, and there was a black nylon case stuffed in the opening.
He set the stone on the floor, being careful not to break off any edges, and opened the case. Inside, in carefully padded pockets, were a variety of small vials of viscous fluids. Each one was labeled with a different code—obviously ones she had developed to prevent theft. But he did know how his sister thought, so when he spotted two labels with RBT-01 and RBT-02, he knew he had found the right compounds.
Next to the special cologne that Wolven chemist Robart Mbutu had developed, the chemical cocktail that was affectionately named Rabbet was the most widely used by the agents. While he didn’t know the exact ingredients, he did know the effect. He took a deep breath and pulled out the tight plastic stopper from the glass test tube and threw the contents down his throat, praying that none of it would land on his tongue. The taste was hideous. He quickly moved to lean against the wall, bracing one hand on the corner so he wouldn’t fall over.
Antoine started to shake all over as the powerful Rabbet stimulants coursed through his body like an instant adrenaline high. He watched as his Sazi metabolism began to speed up until his fingers and eyes were twitching like a rabbit’s nose when frightened, and his chipped nails actually filled in and started to grow as he stared. Healing was intensified not by actually fixing the wounds, but by putting his Sazi body’s natural ability into hyperdrive, forcing along the already fast mending process. His breathing was so rapid it was as though he was absorbing air through his skin, and his heart was fluttering so fast that he could feel the blood vibrating in his veins.
But he hadn’t considered the consequences on his vision. He saw the image in front of his eyes fast forward and knew that it was the future rather than the present. But he was also transported inside the torchlit chamber.
Like in an earlier vision, Tahira was naked and bound to a massive boulder by silver manacles with spiked chains driven far into the stone. She struggled violently against the shackles as the small spidershifter read from a book with a leather cover dyed a whitish-green that reminded him of mold.
The words she spoke were in a tongue so ancient that they weren’t quite language. He heard hissing and snarling in the background and looked up. For the first time, he could move about in the vision, doing what Tahira had suggested. Giselle was also chained down, but had been blindfolded and had a silver collar chain in addition to the wrist and ankle bindings. He reached out to touch her, but his hand slipped through her like a hologram.
A tall, olive-skinned man was behind bars, as well as in chains. His features matched Tahira’s, and looking carefully, Antoine could just see a single emerald stud in his ear underneath the unkempt hair. He was screaming and pulling at the shackles, staring frantically at Tahira. His eyes were wet, and his expression was enough to tear at Antoine’s stomach, but no sound was coming out of the man’s mouth.
There was still time—he could feel it. He could still save her if he hurried. He tucked the case back in the stone and pushed it back into the wall until it was flush with the others. After he replaced the painting, he considered whether he should check to see if there were any more useful items on this floor, but Matty’s voice stopped him at the doorway.
“You’d better say something up there, mate, or I’m coming up! Babette’s looking at Ahmad really strangely, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad.”
Merde! That wasn’t a good sign. Babette was always the first one to know when there were problems with the other cats. He took a deep breath and ran down the stairs, intentionally staring at the front door and not looking at his feet. When he reached the ground level, Matty stared at him in shock.
“Fuckin’ oath, Antoine! What in the hell sort of witches’ brew did you find? All of those burns—they’re just gone!”
Antoine looked down and realized Matty was right. The burns had faded to long lines of new skin, pink and shiny. “Let’s see if we can put Ahmad back on his feet, too.”
They hurried inside the library. Matty had been correct that Babette was standing over Ahmad, nudging him with her nose. He pressed his mind into hers and she looked up and snarled in greeting and then bounded to stand by the fireplace. Antoine took her place. Ahmad was worse by far in the last few minutes. His eyes were nearly glazed, but there was recognition deep inside them. It was quite possible that even the Rabbet wouldn’t be enough, but it was worth a try.
“Ahmad, can you hear me? Can you swallow at all?”
He saw the man’s tongue press against the roof of his open mouth as he tried to get his throat muscles to respond. Finally, after several agonizing moments, he managed to swallow and relaxed back in relief that closed his eyes and flooded his scent enough to cover the bitter scent of the venom.
Antoine held the vial so Ahmad could see it. Distrust rose to the surface and if Ahmad could have frowned, he would have. Antoine asked, “Have you ever had a Rabbet? I know you’ve read the report on how it works.” He turned the tube so Ahmad could see the lettering in Fiona’s strange blend of calligraphy and cursive. “You might recover from this on your own, but you might not. I’ll leave that choice up to you because I have no idea what the Rabbet will do to the venom. It might well kill you quicker.”
Ahmad’s eyes went steely with determination and he nodded, but just barely. But his scent was clear. The hot metal scent of determination was enough to make Antoine slip an arm under his neck to raise him up enough so he didn’t choke. He flicked the vial lid off with his thumb and opened Ahmad’s mouth a bit wider. “I’ll try to make sure that you don’t hurt yourself while it’s taking effect.”
The were-cobra took a deep breath and blinked his eyes. While it would be easier to pour it down slowly so that he didn’t have to work at getting it all down, the taste was likely to make him gag, and his throat might seize. “Bottom’s up!” he said with false humor and poured the entire contents directly down Ahmad’s throat.
The reaction was much as Antoine had expected. Ahmad tried to gag, and Antoine massaged his throat to get him to swallow it all into his system. He ignored the scene still playing out, ghosted in front of him, concentrating instead on physical sensations to keep him grounded.
Placing Ahmad back down on the floor, Antoine used brute strength to keep him steady as his body began to speed up. It was like riding an insane bucking bronco or a rabid bull. Foam flecked on his mouth and every drop that touched Antoine burned and instantly scarred his skin, making him wince. Ahmad’s muscles soon began to convulse as his system tried to rid itself of the poison. As he strained his muscles enough to hurt, Antoine finally resorted to using magic energy to help hold the cobra to the floor. He could see Matty pacing in the background, his eyes wide and panicked. But he didn’t offer to help, knowing that he might wind up with broken ribs or worse.