Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [43]
He threw the arrow to the ground, and drew his sword. “Call the hunt; even flying, they will not get here in time to save you.”
I spoke the words. “I call you oathbreaker, Onilwyn. I call you traitor, and I call the wild hunt to hear me.”
I heard the scream of the horses, and screams of other things, as if the shapeless things had voices now. They would turn, they would come, and Sholto would lead them, but Onilwyn was striding across the grass, sword in hand. They would be too late unless I fought back.
The only magic I had that worked from a distance came at a price of pain. I wasn’t sure what it would do to the babies, but if I died, we all died.
I called the hand of blood. It wasn’t like most hands of power; there was no bolt of energy, no fire, no shining anything. I simply called it into the palm of my left hand, or maybe opened some invisible door in my hand, though my hand was solid to the eye and touch, but it was the doorway for the hand of blood for me.
I called my magic and prayed to the Goddess that what I was doing to save us wouldn’t kill two of us. It was as if the blood in my veins turned to molten metal, so hot, so much pain, as if my blood would boil until it melted my skin and poured out of me. But I’d learned what to do with the pain.
I screamed, and faced the palm of my left hand toward the now-running Onilwyn. He was sidhe, he would feel the magic, or maybe he just ran to make sure I died before the hunt arrived.
I thrust that burning, boiling pain into him. He staggered for a moment, then kept coming. I shrieked, “Bleed!”
The wound that I had made in his thigh burst open. His skin split, and blood fountained. The original wound had missed the femoral artery—it was too far under the skin that low in the thigh—but my power could take a small wound and make it bigger. Nick someone even close to a major artery, and I had a chance to open it.
Onilwyn hesitated, putting a hand to his wound, his sword pointing downward. He looked past me, at the sky, and I knew what he saw. I fought not to look, because where I looked sometimes the hand of blood bled. I wanted Onilwyn to bleed, and no one else.
He raised his hand, shining dark in the moonlight with his own blood. He looked at me with deep hatred, then he raised his sword two-handed and ran at me, screaming a war cry.
I screamed my own cry of, “Bleed for me!”
The hunt was coming, but the man with the sword was too close. The only question was whether I could bleed him to death faster than he could cross that piece of ground.
CHAPTER TEN
I POINTED MY LEFT HAND AT HIM, AND SCREAMED FOR BLOOD. I pushed my power into the wound, and tore it wider. Onilwyn stumbled, but kept coming at a limping run. He was almost to me. I prayed to the Goddess and the Consort. I prayed for strength. Strength to save myself and my babies.
Onilwyn fell to his knees on the dark winter ground. He tried to stand, but his wounded leg betrayed him, and he ended on all fours, blood gushing out onto the frosted grass. The white of the frost vanished in the warm rush of his blood.
He started crawling toward me, dragging his injured leg behind him like a broken tail. He kept his sword in one fist, the point raised a little above the ground so it didn’t catch on anything. The look on his face was implacable. His eyes held only certainty and hatred.
I wanted to ask what I had ever done to him for such hatred to grow, but I had to concentrate on bleeding him to death before he could put that sword through me and my unborn children.
I wasn’t even frightened anymore. All the emotion that was in me was concentrated in my left hand. Concentrated into one thought: die. I could pretend that all I wanted was his blood, but that wasn’t enough. I needed death. I needed Onilwyn’s death.
He was close enough that I could see the sheen of sweat on his face, even by moonlight. I kept my hand pointed at him, and I cried out, “Die! Die for me!”
Onilwyn rose to his knees, swaying like a thin tree caught in a strong wind, but he rose above