Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [41]
In fact, Akiva knew the precise number of kills recorded on his hands. “What about you?” he threw back at Izîl. “How many teeth, over the years? I don’t suppose you kept count.”
“Teeth? Ah, but I only took teeth from the dead!”
“And you sold them to Brimstone. You know what that makes you? A collaborator.”
“Collaborator? They’re just teeth. He makes necklaces, I saw him. Just teeth on strings!”
“You think he’s making necklaces? Fool. You’ve had everything to do with our war, but you were too stupid to see it. You tell me that battling with monsters has made me a monster? Doing business with devils, what has that made you?”
Izîl stared at him, mouth hanging open, then stated in a rush of sudden understanding, “You know. You know what he does with the teeth.”
Bitterly, Akiva breathed, “Yes, I know.”
“Tell me—”
“Shut up!” Akiva commanded as the final tether of his patience snapped. “Tell me where to find her. Your life is nothing to me. Do you understand?” He heard the brutality in his own voice and saw himself as if from without, looming over these poor, broken creatures. What would Madrigal think if she could see him now? But she couldn’t, could she? And that was the point.
Madrigal was dead.
The old man was right. He was a monster, but if he was, it was because of the enemy. Not just a lifetime at war—that hadn’t managed to make Akiva what he was. It was one act that had done this, one unspeakable act that he could never forget or forgive, and for which, in vengeance, he had vowed to destroy a kingdom. He hissed. “Do you think I can’t make you talk?”
To which Izîl replied with a smile, “No, angel. I don’t think you can.” And then he pitched himself off the minaret, carrying Razgut with him, to fall two hundred feet and shatter against the roof tiles below.
19
NOT WHO, BUT WHAT
The cathedral conducted Karou’s scream and splintered it into a symphony of screams that echoed and collided so the vast vaulted space was alive with her voice. And then it wasn’t. The chimaera silenced her with a backhand and she skidded off the stone slab, knocking down the metal crook and thurible, which sent up a clangor. He sprang down after her, and she thought he would tear out her throat with his teeth, his face was so close to hers, but then… he was dragged back as if plucked, and thrust away.
And Brimstone was there.
Karou had never been so happy to see him. “Brimstone…” she choked out, and then stopped. Her relief faltered. His crocodile pupils closed to black slashes, as they always did when he was angry, but if Karou thought she had seen him angry before, this was to be an education in rage.
The moment froze as he mastered his shock at seeing her there, while for Karou, an eternity revolved in the space between heartbeats.
“Karou?” He snarled his incredulity, lips peeling back in a terrible grimace. His breath, fast, hissed through his teeth as he reached for her, claws flexed.
Behind him, the white-haired wolf chimaera demanded, “Who is that?”
Brimstone growled. “That is no one.”
Karou thought maybe she should run.
Too late.
A lunge, and Brimstone caught her arm right over the blood-tinged bandage of her last angel slash, and crushed it in his grip. Light trembled behind Karou’s eyelids and she gasped. He grabbed her other arm and picked her up, raising her so that her face was just inches from his own. Her bare feet paddled for purchase and found none. Her arms were pinned, his claws piercing her skin. She couldn’t move. She could only stare back into his eyes, which had never in her life seemed so alien, so animal, as they did now.
“Give her to me,” said the man.
Brimstone said, “You need rest, Thiago. You should still be sleeping. I’ll take care of her.”
“Take care of her? How?” Thiago demanded.
“She won’t trouble us again.”