Thief of Lives

Chapter 18

Leesil let Magiere lead the way up the staircase. Her slightly blurred form was silhouetted by the glow of her topaz amulet, an unsettling sight. Hopefully, the orb was the last surprise they would encounter. Although he could see enough to fight, he couldn't clearly make out the carpet's pattern. Spotting any fine detail of warning was impossible until his vision cleared further, and they didn't have time to wait. He feared little in the world, but the prospect of blindness had never occurred to him.

Chap snarled softly as he mounted the stairs beside Leesil. Wynn and Vatz followed behind, the sage now carrying her cold lamp crystal and the crossbow Magiere had given her. Nearing the second floor, Magiere stopped with one foot on the landing and looked back at Leesil, her dark eyes troubled and uncertain.

Leesil unsheathed his second blade, one in each hand, and took two steps up to peer through the stairs' railing along the hallway floor.

A headless body lay there, and a pool of dark fluid was already soaked into the rug. Leesil reached out to touch the stained spot-it was still freshly wet.

Magiere stepped onto the landing and into the hall, and Leesil followed. Halfway down the passage lay a decapitated head. A gasp came from behind Leesil, and he looked back.

Wynn's eyes were wide and round, fixed on the corpse.

He waved a hand at her several times before she looked up, and with a scowl, he put one finger to his lips. She nodded slowly.

Vatz sidestepped the body at Leesil's feet. He glared at it as if someone had stolen a dockside fare out from under his wrinkling nose.

Leesil gave Magiere a questioning glance, but she merely shook her head in confusion and moved down the corridor. They passed by the head and reached the base of the final flight of stairs.

Creeping upward, Magiere led them. As they stepped beyond the halfway point, Chap snarled loudly.

Magiere shifted back against the wall and Chap inched another step upward. Fur on end, the hound looked up toward the floor above. Leesil followed that crystal gaze.

Somewhere above were undeads.

Chap cut loose a wail that shattered the silence, and the world around Leesil became a flurry of motion.

A tall figure appeared above the railing along the third floor and slashed down at Magiere with a long sword. The clang of it colliding with her falchion rang in Leesil's ears, and he missed a grab for Chap as the hound bolted past Magiere to the landing.

Magiere slashed the sword out of her way as she climbed upward. The sword's wielder stepped into full view as he brought his blade back to swipe at Chap's lunging form.

He was tall, with brown-red hair, and dressed in a simple but finely tailored tunic. As Leesil took two more stairs, he heard Wynn cry out.

"Chane!"

That single word made the swordsman falter as he looked down the stairs past Leesil. Indecision broke the cold determination on his pale face.

A quarrel sailed past Leesil's head and struck the tall undead in the chest. Smoke welled around the embedded shaft. Leesil glanced back to see that it was Vatz who'd fired. Wynn stood petrified beside him with her crossbow clutched at her chest. Vatz was already reloading.

As Leesil rushed upward, he glimpsed a form leaping over the railing along the back of the hall and down into the stairwell. It landed on his back and crushed him against the stairs. Wiry hands like skin stretched upon bone snatched both of his wrists to pin them down.

"You're dead, half-blood," hissed a familiar voice in his ear.

Leesil felt the chill of Ratboy's grip on his wrists as if the cold burrowed into his flesh and spread through his body. Burning pain shortened his breath as teeth clamped against his hauberk's collar.

Not again.

The teeth closed hard on Leesil's neck, but his collar took the brunt. As shock finished its rush through his blood, he folded his left leg and kicked against the stairwell's left wall.

The thrust threw him into the right wall, crushing Ratboy behind him, and the wiry undead lost his grip. Leesil jerked his left elbow back and felt the rearward point of his blade sink into Ratboy's side. The teeth upon Leesil's neck released.

Leesil slipped down two steps and chopped back with his right blade. It bit into the empty steps. Rayboy already stood upon the landing.

The eye that Leesil had stabbed was now a mottled white orb in a bruised socket. There was only a dark, circular stain where the iris should have been.

Leesil followed carefully, both blades out in front of him. "Chap!" he yelled.

The hound spun from Magiere's side to face Ratboy.

A quarrel struck the small undead above the right eye and pierced the top of his skull. His head recoiled off the wall as smoke rose from the wound. Ratboy screamed, slapping at his face, and Chap slammed into him with both forepaws, sending him back hard into the landing's corner.

Leesil couldn't look away to see where Wynn and Vatz were, or which of them had fired. He rushed upward and made a backhanded swing with the left blade directly at Ratboy's neck.

Ratboy jerked the quarrel from his forehead as he ducked, and Leesil's blade scraped along the wall. The shock shuddered through his arm, and Ratboy ducked under toward the stairs.

Leesil turned.

Wynn stood down the stairs, an empty crossbow in her hands. She swung it at Ratboy as he drew back a claw-shaped hand to slash at her with his fingernails.

Time slowed to a crawl in Leesil's vision. The undead's nails could rip open throats. A twinge passed through the faded scars on his jaw.

Chap leaped down the stairwell.

The hound struck with his forepaws and full weight against Ratboy's back. Dog, vampire, and sage all tumbled down the stairs together in a rolling heap. Vatz grabbed the railing with one hand and barely avoided getting entangled.

A low male voice called out, "Wynn!"

Leesil couldn't help following the sound in surprise.

Magiere's eyes were black, canines bared, as she swung at Chane with her blade. It had been Chane who'd called out in panic to the young sage.

There was no time to puzzle over this, and Leesil rushed down the stairs after Ratboy.

Chane was furious. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong had before he could react. He had planned to momentarily engage the half-elf while pushing the dhampir off on Toret, but his little master's eagerness for revenge fouled everything.

He had not given due consideration to the hound's involvement. The beast's teeth were more than an annoyance. The gashes on his legs burned. In avoiding the dog, he had ended up fighting the dhampir after the boy shot him in the chest. The wound still smoked, even after he'd jerked the quarrel out.

And now Wynn was somewhere below, trapped between Toret and the hound.

Chane roared and swung at the dhampir. When she snarled back, he saw her extended canines. Unlike the crystal shimmer of an undead's eyes fully opened to the night, her irises were black pits that swallowed all light. She forced him back down the hallway. The wound in his chest hindered his sword arm, and to make matters worse, as he blocked another swing, he saw the boy near the stairs reloading his crossbow. If he did not do something quickly, this could end in his second death.

Chane feinted and stepped back.

"Toret will gut your half-blood," he said. "Tear him from throat to groin."

The dhampir hesitated. Chane feinted again, and when she moved to block, he followed with his left fist.

The blow struck her jaw. To Chane's surprise, the impact sent a jar up his arm. She was far more solid than he anticipated, but her head still whipped to the side.

She stumbled back, striking the door frame of Sapphire's room and spinning along the wall. Before she hit the floor, the boy with the crossbow stepped into the hall. Chane grabbed the railing and leaped over it, the hiss of a quarrel passing behind him as he dropped into the stairwell.

Wynn huddled on the floor at the stairs' bottom, with the snarling hound guarding her. Chane heard small footsteps on the upper landing, and turned to see the boy again trying to recock the crossbow. He lashed out with the long sword. The blade tip cracked against the top stair, and the boy skittered back to fall against the wall.

Chane leaped down to the second floor landing. Before the hound could turn on him, he swung the flat of his blade into the side of the animal's head. It tumbled across the floor.

Wynn looked up at him with terror in her eyes.

It was an expression he never thought to see upon her face when she gazed at him. He bent over to grab her wrist with his free hand and pulled her up. I "Chane… no!" she cried out.

There was no time to explain, and he hoisted her over his shoulder. Wynn's body was so small she seemed to weigh nothing. She struggled, but with little effect.

Toret scrambled to his feet, and the half-blood kicked him in the side. The small undead toppled against the closed door of the empty spare room. As the elf closed in, Chane kicked him in the back, sending him careening into Toret.

Chane took two long steps down the second-floor hall, grabbed the railing, and leaped into the next stairwell. As he raced down the last flight of stairs and out the front door, he heard the half-blood yell out Wynn's name. He sped off into the street without a backward glance.

As Toret struggled out from under Leesil, he caught only a glimpse of Chane leaping over the railing with the robed young woman over his shoulder. Then he saw Tibor's head upon the floor.

Toret was alone.

Of all the ways he had thought this would play out, facing the half-blood and the dhampir on his own had never entered his thoughts. The hound as well was on its feet, inching forward. Leesil gripped two curved blades directly in front of himself.

Leesil's eyes shifted briefly to the railing where Chane had just fled, and Toret knew the half-blood wanted to run after the abducted woman.

"Why don't you just lie down and die for good," Leesil snarled at him, and rushed forward, clearly trying to force his way farther down the hall.

Toret dodged and slashed at Leesil's face as one of the blades dropped too low, but he was buying time, and he knew it.

He was going to be destroyed, and Sapphire was in the sewers, fleeing to escape. What would happen at the moment of his second death? These intruders might go after Chane, but they might also use that wretched hound to find the passageway Sapphire had followed. They could hunt her down or even separate to go after both her and Chane.

Toret glanced quickly about for some advantage, but he saw only Tibor's head. He backed another step, and his foot bumped something on the floor.

The body.

He waited for Leesil's next advance, and when it came, he dropped low under the blade's swing.

Toret dropped his blade in midcrouch and grabbed Tibor's headless corpse with both hands. As he rose up, he pushed with his legs and flung the body forward.

The half-blood's eyes widened as the corpse collided with him. Living and dead limbs sprawled backward toward the hound, and the animal retreated. Toret leaped over the railing into the stairwell and ran down to the foyer.

The front door remained open from Chane's flight, but Toret didn't follow in his servant's footsteps. He pressed upon the wall at the stairs' bottom to release the catch and the hidden entrance popped open. Slipping inside and slamming it shut, he heard the padded footfall and snarl of the hound beyond the wall.

Toret headed downward as he heard the thud of the dog battering against the wall where the entrance had closed. He quickly exited into the cellar.

Several practice swords lined the walls. He grabbed the stoutest blade that looked manageable and headed into the open passage they'd dug down into the sewers.

Sapphire couldn't have gone far. He would catch up to her, and together they would escape from Bela to the Suman Empire. He no longer wanted revenge. Now, all that mattered was survival.

"Get up! Get up!" Vatz shouted, pulling on Magiere's arm.

She sucked in air and struggled up to all fours. She felt as if she'd been struck with an iron cudgel. Her head ached, but the worst was her jaw. Then awareness took her, and she realized Vatz was looking at her.

Magiere closed her lips tight with a quick pass of her tongue, and relief came at the touch of reverted teeth that closed smoothly together.

"Hurry," Vatz said. "He took Wynn, and Leesil's on the next floor fighting the other one."

Magiere pulled herself up, grabbing her falchion from the floor. Before she could stop him, Vatz rounded the railing's end and headed down the stairs, crossbow in hand. She followed quickly, regaining clarity with each step. When she reached the second floor, Leesil was dislodging himself from under the corpse they'd passed earlier, and there was no sign of Chap. She helped pull Leesil up.

"Where's Wynn?" she asked.

"He took her," Leesil called out as he headed around the railing down the next flight of stairs. "That butchering undead we've been after-he has her."

Vatz tried to get ahead of Magiere, but she pushed him behind. "You stay back."

At the bottom of the stairwell, she saw Chap repeatedly throwing himself at the wall next to the landing in the foyer, ignoring the open front door. His snarl was broken only by yelps on impact. Wynn's crossbow lay at the foot of the stairs.

Leesil ran out the door onto the front porch, looking up and down the dark street.

"Stop it," Magiere yelled, grabbing Chap before he lunged again.

Spinning out of her grip, the hound turned and snapped at her. Magiere backed away. Vatz took a step up the stairs, not about to get near either of them.

"What is wrong with you?" she shouted at the dog.

Chap circled back around, glaring at the blank wall next to the base of the stairs.

"Pay attention," Magiere said. "Where did the tall one go? Find me a trail, damn you!"

Chap glowered at her for a moment and then backtracked to the stairs. He sniffed the floor and whirled about to rush outside and down the steps. Magiere trotted out next to Leesil and watched as the hound worked the street's cobblestones, back and forth.

He stopped, head low, facing the way they had first come, and his rumble shifted to a vicious growl that carried in the night air.

"Chane is panicked," Leesil said. "I'm betting he heads into the sewers again."

Chap darted back to them, clearly wanting someone to follow him. But he also kept looking through the front door toward the wall he'd been insanely battering himself against.

Leesil followed the hound's gaze, and for a moment the anger on his face turned to puzzlement. Magiere put it aside and turned to Vatz now standing in the doorway.

"Do you know the new guard barracks, just inside the inner ring wall?"

The boy nodded uncertainly.

"Run to Captain Chetnik," Magiere said. "Tell him what's happened, and that there is at least one vampire in the sewers. Have him double the guard on the bayside openings, but no one goes in. Can you do that?"

Realizing the task was important and real, Vatz nodded. "Yes, I'll be fast."

She tossed him her pouch of remaining coins.

"Find a coach if you can. Do what you have to."

As the boy scurried into the street, Magiere stepped back inside to pick up the abandoned crossbow.

"Leesil, give me your remaining quarrels."

He unstrapped the quiver across his back and handed it to her from the doorway. A number of the quarrels' feathered ends were splintered or snapped off, but three were still whole. Leesil remained fixated upon the foyer wall.

"Let's go," she said.

"No," he replied.

He stepped inside to study the wall Chap had assaulted and ran his fingertips slowly across its surface. Then he stepped out the door again, this time looking at the left side of the building beyond the front door's frame.

"Leesil!" Magiere said angrily.

He lifted the tip of his left blade across his lips as if it were a finger, signaling her to silence.

"It's too wide," he whispered, and pointed to the left side of the building.

He reached his hands into the doorway's left side, extending one blade on the inside and the other outside. When he pulled them back, she could see the doorway wall's width was less than the length of his arm. Then he stepped out, looked to the left side of the building, and spread his arms, widening the measure he'd just shown her.

She stepped out with him to stare at the left side of the building.

Although the door's wall on the inside ran directly to the left side of the foyer, the outside wall was three or four times wider by the measure Leesil had just shown her. She could think of no reason why one stone wall of an old house would be so much thicker than the others.

Magiere looked to Leesil in puzzlement. What was he was trying to tell her in silence? He carefully pointed the tip of his blade at her chest, and she looked down.

Before she even saw the growing glow of the topaz, Magiere felt twinges of burning hunger roll in her stomach.

There came a soft grating of stone from inside the foyer. The wall at the bottom of the stairs slowly inched outward.

Dark-blond curls and the profile of a round face peeked out of the exit. The one called Sapphire scanned the parlor room across the hall. She smiled with relief and stepped out.

As she turned to the front door, Sapphire sucked in air and screamed out in panic: "Toret!"

Magiere flinched, almost turning about at Sapphire's cry, suddenly wary. She assumed Ratboy had run out the door in search of a sewer, but perhaps he was still in the house as well. Why else would this painted doxy wail for help?

Sapphire lunged back for the opening, and Magiere kicked out against it.

The hidden door slammed closed on Sapphire's arm, and Magiere leveled her falchion as she swung for the woman's neck. Squealing, Sapphire ducked and wrenched her hand free. Magiere's blade clanged against stone.

This was the little harlot who'd been sitting in Leesil's lap.

"Search the upper floors," Magiere snapped at Leesil. "She's not alone in here."

"But Chane-" Leesil began.

"I want no one at our backs," she shouted, and rushed after Sapphire fleeing down the hallway.

The undead scurried along the railing of the stairs leading below. Magiere slashed at her from behind, but she ducked aside and as the falchion shattered through the railing. Sapphire darted into the parlor along the far wall around a velvet divan. Magiere followed rapidly and swung down. The blade split through the back of a divan.

As she wrenched her blade free, Sapphire tried to dash out the parlor archway, but Magiere kicked her in the stomach. Sapphire stumbled away in her heavy gown. She grabbed a cream porcelain vase from an end table and threw it.

Magiere side-stepped, as the vase shattered against Sapphire's own portrait, and steadily closed in on Sapphire with purpose. The undead squealed again and ran behind another divan. Magiere smashed this one as well, sending Sapphire scurrying to the far corner of the room.

The familiar ache grew in Magiere's jaw, but she swallowed down the pain. There would be no mindless rage this time, no loss of self to hunger. She wanted full awareness of every moment. She let hunger creep into her head just enough so that her night vision sharpened.

This creature had been sitting in Leesil's lap.

Sapphire looked around wildly.

Magiere swung down, the falchion shattering the light oak table to Sapphire's right as she cringed back, crying out.

Magiere felt no pity. For certain, Sapphire felt no pity for her victims. She'd killed an unarmed house guard at the Rowanwood without a thought. Now she pleaded for help as her victims had surely done. How had this pathetic creature survived in the night?

Sapphire kicked up the table remains at Magiere, but the gown fouled her attempt, and Magiere swatted the fragments aside. As Sapphire made one last dash toward the parlor entrance, Magiere snarled her free hand in the woman's hair. Sapphire's head snapped back as she was jerked to a stop.

"Turn around," Magiere demanded. "Look at me."

Sapphire stared into Magiere's black irises, sobbing with quivering red lips. And yet, strangely, no tears fell from the dead woman's eyes.

Magiere let the falchion pendulum down in front of her and up under her other arm, her grip tight in Sapphire's hair.

No! Sapphire mouthed, as she raised a hand to shield herself.

Magiere slashed crosswise, pulling on the woman's hair at the same time. As her arms scissored outward and apart, the falchion swung level through the dark room.

One final sob from Sapphire ended halfway as the blade passed cleanly through the forearm of her raised hand-and then her neck. The hand spun and dropped to the floor first.

Magiere's gaze never left the pale, painted face as the body collapsed and the head hung suspended in her grip, draining black fluids onto the carpet.

She stood a moment longer before realizing she was panting. Her grip had tightened so severely that the dark-blond hair began to tear out between her fingers.

This thing had tried to take Leesil.

The room dimmed around her, though her settling vision still picked up details in the dark. She looked down to see the topaz dim and lifeless against her hauberk.

Magiere dropped the head onto the rumpled folds of the corpse's gown.

Running footsteps on the stairs broke her fixation as Leesil hurried into the room with Chap close behind. He crouched down immediately by the corpse, stared but a moment, and reached for the head.

Magiere was about to stop him. It wasn't time to collect proof for the council, but he waved her off.

"I may need this," he said simply.

He took a dark blue drawstring bag from the corpse, placed the head inside, and tied it to his belt. Taking out flint, he struck it several times with his blade until he ignited the torches he'd brought with them. He handed one to Magiere.

"Find Chane and get Wynn back," he said. "Chap's already tracked him to the first sewer grate up the street. I know where Ratboy has gone."

Before she could ask, he stepped out of the parlor toward the foyer. Magiere followed him to the opening in the wall. Inside were narrow stone steps leading both up and down.

"Chap's already confirmed it," Leesil said, staring at the steps leading downward. "Ratboy is mine."

"Take Chap," Magiere told him. "And this."

She unhooked the topaz amulet's chain and went to fasten it about his neck. Leesil was about to stop her, but she shook her head.

"I don't think I need it anymore," she explained with a glance back toward the parlor. "I can feel them now when they're close. If we can't find each other later, we'll meet back at the sages' barracks."

Leesil nodded and motioned Chap into the passage. As Magiere was about to head for the front door, he grabbed her by the arm.

When she looked at him, all the warmth and wry humor she'd become accustomed to finding in his face, his eyes, his smile was gone without a trace.

"You stay alive," he said.

Magiere felt cold inside.

Leesil wasn't just hunting anymore. This was vengeance. Or some fool's need to rectify what he thought was a failure from the past. Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd probably always known this, and now there was no time to stop him.

"And you," she said.

Magiere slipped out the front door, down the steps, and into the cobble street, running for the first grate she saw.

From the shadows between two houses across the street, Sgaile watched the unfolding events with an unsettling ambivalence. He had followed the renegade and majay-hi all day as they looked at houses in the city's wealthier districts. He did not know why.

He had already ignored the wish of Aoishenis-Ahare-Most Aged Father-and yet he could not leave well enough alone. He had not been told all and nearly spilled the blood of his people, even though it ran through the flesh of a halfblood mongrel. And the majay-hi would not keep company with a traitor. It was not possible.

As dusk settled, the half-blood renegade and his companions had entered the house across the way. Sgaile settled in to watch. For a while, nothing happened. Then a tall man ran from the house, carrying the gray-robed woman over his shoulder, and disappeared into a sewer grate. A short while later the renegade, the human female, and the small boy appeared. The boy ran off down the street, and now the armored woman went straight to the same sewer grate and disappeared below the city.

Sgaile waited longer, but the renegade half-blood did not emerge. Neither did the majay-hi. He slipped from his hiding place and approached the house, the front door half-open.

Snapping a stiletto into his right hand, he stepped inside and walked silently along the hall past the base of the stairs, watching in all directions. As he passed an archway to his right, he spotted a headless body upon the floor. The room was a shattered mess all around.

Sgaile froze in place, listening in the dark, but he heard no sounds in the house. When he turned back to the front door, he looked at the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

The wall had a crack in it.

More than a crack; it was a portal in the stone that had not been fully closed.

Sgaile pulled the door open and slipped inside and downward.