Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [169]
He stepped over Veisan’s corpse. Her footprints told her story: violent struggle, lightning-fast attacks, and then a single devastating blow. All that violence rolled into a small package, constantly straining at its fragile wrapper, ready to burst free. She was at peace now.
The enemy had come and gone. The ropes hung abandoned on the cypress. They had taken Spider’s treasure with them. No matter. He would find them. None escaped Ruh.
Ruh reached the shore and crouched in the mud, careful not to step on the small spike spheres of magic bombs scattered in the sludge. They weren’t his, nor did they belong to anyone from Spider’s crew. Tentacles whispered from his shoulder in a rush of ichor. The magic licked the bombs. They tasted foreign. They tasted like the Mirror.
He stared at the mud marks. Interesting. Someone had stripped a body here. The clothes lay in a soggy pile. The bombs must’ve fallen from the pockets as the clothes were pulled off the corpse. The enemy wasn’t above looting the dead. Even the Mirror’s dead.
He scooted closer to the black pond and dipped his tentacles into the water. The cilia within them trembled, eager to taste the scents and flavors, but he kept them hidden. They were too fragile for this task.
He sank the tentacles and felt them snake their way through slick water, combing the pond.
Something brushed against them. He held still. A hand gripped them, and through the sensitive tissue, Ruh perceived a familiar taste. Familiar yet odd, as if something wasn’t quite right with the magic the person generated. The hand released him.
Ruh withdrew and retrieved a length of rope, still attached to the tree limb. He dropped the end of the rope into the pond and fed it to the black water.
The weight clamped onto the line and Ruh strained to pull it up. His hands slid a little, finding little purchase on the peat-slicked line, but despite his weak grip, the rope slowly coiled at his feet. Finally a head broke the surface, grotesque with its skin and hair blackened. A mouth gaped wide and gulped the air.
Ruh grasped Spider’s hand, wrenched him ashore, and crouched as the cell leader rested. The peat-sheathed water had little air in it. A few minutes longer and Spider would’ve suffocated. Or perhaps drowned was the more appropriate word. Ruh puzzled over it.
“I’ve made arrangements for the pickup as you’ve instructed me,” he said. “Four operatives will meet us at a creek a mile and a half to the southwest. Through that path.” He pointed to the narrow trail that sliced through the hill.
“I can’t feel my legs.” Spider’s voice sounded even.
So that explained the odd taste.
Ruh nodded. “Then I will carry you, m’lord.”
“The Box?”
“They’ve taken it. But I will track it down.”
“I know you will ...” Spider nodded and paused. His eyes focused on something beyond Ruh. “In the bushes,” he said softly.
A tentacle slivered from Ruh’s shoulder and tasted the air. The scent lanced the cilia on his arm. Animal fur. The stench of urine, unlike any he had encountered. The moist odor of breath, laced with scents of rotting meat. And magic. Strange, contorted, abnormal magic, pulsing with fury.
“It’s not an animal,” he whispered. His hand found the heavy knife and loosed it from his belt.
He spun around just as the huge shape launched from the top of the hill. It sailed into the open in an impossibly long leap, its tail lashing like a whip. The spiked curve of the spine flexed. Sickle talons rent the air, aiming for Ruh’s chest. Too stunned to dodge, he slashed at the horrid jaws, gaping open on the abominable face. The knife sliced deep into the flesh and met bone.
The beast snapped. Triangular teeth bit Ruh’s arm. He felt nothing, no tug, no jerk, but suddenly his arm vanished. Blood spurted in a hot fountain from the stump of his elbow. The beast gulped.
An explosion of pain in his shoulder nearly shocked him into unconsciousness. The monster gulped again and turned toward him, paw over