Jordin had killed countless Dark Bloods that day; she and Triphon could take seven today.
To a man they towered nearly a foot over Triphon, built like bulls—muscle and brawn. But they moved with uncanny speed and took blows as if made of ironwood. Whatever alchemy had created such raw specimens of brutality couldn’t be undone. They could not be brought to life like a common Corpse. Only Sovereign blood killed them.
Most still wore their hair in dreadlocks, but they had evolved over the past several years. Their retinas were as black as their pupils, but rimmed now in gold. So well proportioned, they were specimens
of perfection; loyal slaves, their insatiable lusts held in check only by Feyn herself. It was well known they abused common Corpses at will.
They hadn’t seen her yet. She dropped to one knee, notched an arrow, and drew her bowstring.
The Dark Bloods pulled short, and the ringleader stepped forward, twirling his heavy sword as if it were a stick of balsa wood. His mutter was full of gravel—Jordin couldn’t make out his words. She did, however, understand the meaning of the sudden approach by the two warriors to the leader’s left.
They were going in for the kill.
She steadied her breath and released the bowstring. The wind had lulled, and her arrow flew straight. It slammed into the leader’s head as she quickly notched her second arrow.
The Dark Blood she’d struck staggered back, bellowing a cry that momentarily arrested the others. Triphon moved while their attention was drawn away, lunging at the closest warrior, swinging his blade up to catch the unsuspecting Blood under his chin.
Jordin sent another arrow at a third warrior and then she was on her feet.
“Triphon!”
Four heads swiveled to the threat at their backs. Without pausing, Triphon swung his blade at the fifth’s belly, missed, but arced the sword into the shoulder of one of those who’d turned.
Another arrow—this one sent quickly into the mass of Bloods where it struck one of them in the side. In the course of ten seconds they had cut down three and wounded two more. They had once fought by Roland’s side with as much precision, before the prince had turned his back on Jonathan’s legacy.
She raced at breakneck speed, flipping her bow over her back, palming two knives as she went in. Leaderless and stunned by such lethal attack from behind, the Dark Bloods suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage.
She threw the seven-inch blade in her right hand from ten paces off, sidearm, but the Blood she’d intended it for slapped it from the air. The three remaining warriors sprang back, more cautious now.
Three on two—they would fell these fiends where they stood. Outrunning them would be far more difficult, and they couldn’t risk leading them back to the cavern. If Feyn learned where they lived, they would all be crushed in a single blow and Sovereign blood would be no more.
“We kill them,” Jordin said.
“We kill them,” Triphon repeated with the hint of a grin.
The Blood to Jordin’s left nodded and slowly straightened. A sick smile crept over his face.
“All of us?”
“All of you,” Jordin said.
His gaze lifted past her shoulder. Triphon’s followed. His face flattened. Jordin threw a quick glance behind her. Three Dark Bloods had emerged from the same alley from which she’d come.
“Jordin….”
She twisted back. More. No fewer than ten Dark Bloods had slipped from the corners of both buildings at the end of the street. They were boxed in, cut off on either side by brick warehouses, to the front and back by Dark Bloods.
Her heart rose into her throat. She shifted to one side, all thoughts of an easy escape gone. A fresh gust of wind whipped a dusty dervish up from the knoll beyond the end of the street. If they could make a run for the wasteland, the Dark Bloods might not follow. But getting past the line marching toward them would prove difficult if not impossible—Bloods were anything but slow.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your response,” the Dark Blood said. “Are you sure? All of us?”
Jonathan, where are you now?
The sentiment that accompanied the question had become more bitter than inquisitive as of late. But she hadn’t always needed
Jonathan to survive. She’d been his guardian once, when her skill as a fighter had been unquestioned even by Roland himself. Her veins flooded with new resolve, fueled by anger. Their quest to follow Jonathan and bring life could
not
end here, regardless of the odds.
The sword of a fallen Blood lay on the ground three paces away. She still had nine arrows in the quiver at her back. Two more knives were sheathed against her thighs. And if no way for escape presented itself, there was the sword.
The calm calculation that had served Jordin so well at Roland’s side slipped for an instant as an image filled her mind: Jonathan spreading his arms wide, crying out for Saric to kill him as she screamed, powerless, from the cliff above. Saric’s blade arcing down into the chest of the only man she had ever loved, before or since.
She swallowed, mouth dry. Was this her fate as well?
Then so be it.
She whipped the knife in her left hand underhanded and watched it bite deeply into the eye of the Blood who’d spoken. His smirk exploded in a spray of blood. With a full-throated scream, she snatched the bow and arrow from her back.
Triphon’s roar joined her cry, and he flew at the Bloods who’d first attacked him. She spun to face the new arrivals, dropped to one knee, notched an arrow, and sent it into one of the three who were now running from the same direction she’d come. A second and a third arrow, in rapid succession.
Her arrows found bodies but failed to take down two of the Bloods.
Jordin faced a critical decision. They’d have to split the Bloods—surrounded, they stood no chance. She’d have to deal with the two approaching from the rear, but she also had to find a way past the line beyond Triphon.
She let a final arrow fly toward the two Bloods sprinting for her, already bringing their blades to bear. They seemed utterly oblivious to the threat of death—what was death to the dead?
Without waiting to see her arrow find its mark, she twisted and came to her feet. Five arrows left.
She strung one on the fly and started forward, angling left. Triphon had taken down one of two Bloods he had engaged and was lunging at the other like a bull. If she could break through the line of Dark Bloods between them and the wasteland beyond, forcing them into two fronts, they’d still have a chance.
The ten had become twelve, all at a full run fifty paces distant and closing, thinner on the left than the right.
“Split them!” she cried and tore forward, shooting as she ran. She sent four arrows into the three warriors farthest to her left without precision, only caring that she stalled them enough to break past them.
One arrow left. She flung her bow over her back and ran at a full sprint toward the two stumbling on her far left. She had to reach them. Get one of their swords, engage from behind. It was the only way.
But that way was cut short by a terrible sound behind her. A wet
thunk
followed by a sick
grunt
.
The
thunk
she knew to be a blade cutting deep into flesh. It was the
grunt
that made her start. She knew the voice.
Jordin twisted her head back. Triphon had killed the two Bloods he’d set upon, but a third had reached him from behind. Her arrow hung from the Blood’s side, but it hadn’t put him down.
Triphon’s arms were thrown wide; his grimacing face tilted to the sky.
A sword protruded from his chest.
Jordin pulled up hard, stunned. The night stalled, ripped beyond the boundaries of time. Triphon was severed nearly in two, held up only by the Dark Blood whose sword was buried in his chest.
Jonathan had fallen to a similar blow.
The Dark Blood wrenched his blade free, and Triphon collapsed on the concrete street. Dead.
Time refused to return. Triphon dead. At the hand of one she’d failed to kill.
Jordin didn’t know why she ran for him, losing the final advantage she had in breaking past the line of Bloods. Perhaps she could only see Jonathan there on the ground, dead because she had failed him as well. Perhaps in the deepest part of her soul she wanted to join Triphon in a pool of her own blood.
The Dark Blood standing over Triphon with bloody sword grinned wickedly.
Rage pushed reason from her mind. With a raw scream, she snatched her final arrow from her quiver, crammed it against the string with trembling fingers, pulled up five paces short, and fired at the Blood’s head.
The arrow took the warrior in his mouth, knocking out his teeth and cutting clean through his spinal column. He dropped dead in Triphon’s blood, eyes still wide in shock.
In Jordin’s mind this was Saric. Saric, whom she despised more than Roland, whom she hated more than death itself for killing the man she loved.
Sounds of pursuit from behind had slowed. They were close. Too close. There would be no chance of escape. Even with a bow and a dozen knives, her favored weapon, she could not fend off ten Dark Bloods alone. Nor could she outrun them.
She could only honor Triphon by taking his sword and killing as many as would join them in death.
Tonight she would be rejoined with Jonathan. Finally.
She heard the scuff of boots behind her. To her right. Her left. They were in no hurry.
She walked up to Triphon’s body, took a knee, and kissed his bloody lips. “I will see you soon, my friend.”
She eased Triphon’s sword from his fingers and stood. To the Bloods she would only be one more victim among so many for their taking. They couldn’t know that they now had one of the two
Sovereign commanders in their grasp. All that mattered was that they had been created to vanquish the blood that flowed in her veins.
Jonathan’s blood.
She turned. They had positioned themselves in a wide arc around her.
Calm now.
They were here to kill her, and that surety was as thick as the air they all breathed.
“You fought well,” one of them said, stepping forward.
“I’m not done,” she heard herself say.
“No, I expect not. It’s honorable to die with a sword in hand. But in the end death is still death.” A shallow smile toyed with his lips. “What say we make sport of it?”
“I’m not here for sport.”
“It would be a shame to die without offering us some pleasure.”
“The only pleasure I’m interested in comes at the end of this sword.”
Several of them chuckled. Revulsion swept through her gut.
“Not all swords bring death,” the commander said. “Can a small thing like you wield a sword as well as you fling arrows? Your weight behind it would be hard pressed to knock a dog down.”
“And I see ten before me.”
His grin broadened. “Well spoken. If you weren’t the enemy of my Maker I might make some dogs with you.”
His smile vanished, and he stepped forward. The men to Jordin’s far left closed in. As did two more on her right. They had no intention of killing her outright. This was it, then.
Jordin took a step back, thinking that she might be better off making a run for it. She cast a quick look behind her. Two more Dark Bloods stood on the end of the street, eyeing her lazily. There would be no running.
Too many closing in. If she couldn’t run, would she be better off cutting her own throat before they could overpower her? The thought seized her, profane and inviting at once.
She backed up another step and pivoted to face the commander. The glint in his eyes was unmistakable. Her earlier notion of taking
as many with her as possible would only lead to more suffering. They would not let her die quickly.
“Drop the sword and we’ll be gentle,” the Dark Blood said. “By my Maker I swear it.”
She lifted her eyes to the moon shining through an opening in the clouds on the horizon. She had danced beneath that moon once. Its face was cold and foreign now. The sandy knoll already looked like something from another land, another life, distorted and jagged on the horizon.
The knoll moved. Only then did she realize what she was seeing, and the awareness of it stalled her breath. A line of horses stood on top of it, silhouetted by the cold light of the moon.
Black horses. Seven of them abreast, mounted by seven hooded warriors dressed in black. Staring down at the scene before them.
It was the first time Jordin had seen an Immortal in years. Their faces were covered in black. Like wraiths come to collect souls before vanishing into the wasteland once again. The Dark Blood before her must have seen her eyes widen. He twisted around. It only took him an instant to know what he was seeing.
“Form up! Immortals.”
As one, the Dark Bloods spun to the east. The line of horses began to descend the sandy slope, slowly at first and then breaking into a full gallop, riders bent low. Fearless. Silent.
The sight of such raw power and stealth was so compelling that Jordin didn’t immediately recognize she had just been granted her means of escape. The Dark Bloods had forgotten their single prey, now clearly prey themselves.
She spun just as the two Bloods who’d taken up behind her rushed forward. One took a swing at her, which she easily sidestepped. Then they were past and scrambling for position on either side of the street with the others.
Jordin reached down, snatched Triphon’s amulet from his neck, turned up the empty street, and ran.
T
HE STILL figure stood looking out the six-foot-tall window, a dark silhouette against the night. Her hands were folded before her. The flicker of a lone candle on a table ten feet away lapped at the folds of her gown. All the others had long burned out.
Black, the velvet. Obsidian, the constellation of beading upon it. Ebony, the fall of unbound hair to the small of that back.
White, the skin.
It itched sometimes, on nights like this, as though the churning sky called to the inky dark of her veins beneath. Her skin had always been pale, but the shadow in her veins was six years new. A gift of the Dark Blood by her half brother, Saric, who had been Sovereign and Dark Blood before her.