The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [63]
When Fala finally did enter the room, she looked quite a bit worse for wear. Her arm had been sliced open, and blood was still dripping from the slowly healing wound. She was trembling, though Aubrey couldn’t tell whether the cause was pain, chill, or rage.
“Damn both of you to Hell and back!” she growled when she saw him. “Get out of my room or I’ll tear out your heart and feed it to Ahemait myself.”
Judging by her mood, she might very well try. Ahemait was the Egyptian devourer of the dead. When Fala brought up the mythology of her human background, she was best avoided.
Instead, Aubrey’s anger responded to hers.
He slammed her against the wall, his hand around her throat, and heard the crunch as her windpipe broke. The injury would heal quickly, but he could tell that, despite her high tolerance for it, Fala did not appreciate the pain.
She threw a bolt of her power at him and he stumbled back a step. Dodging quickly, he barely avoided his own knife when she threw it at him. The blade stuck in the wall.
“What did you do to her?” he demanded.
“Only what you should have done a week ago!” Fala snapped.
This time it was Fala’s turn to stumble as Aubrey lashed out, his anger making the blow even harder. “Where is she?” he said quietly, his voice cold.
Fala laughed. “You honestly expect me to tell you?”
Meeting her gaze, Aubrey paused before answering. He saw her expression change as she recognized the complete, smoldering rage in his eyes. “Yes.”
“She’s somewhere on the river,” Fala spat, wise enough to recognize that fighting him at this moment was a dangerous idea. “I hope the crows have gotten to her by now.”
Aubrey disappeared, bringing himself to the edge of New Mayhem, where the river passed by.
Once again he changed himself into a wolf, a creature that could move faster and more surely through the woods. Following the river, he covered a mile in only a few minutes. Finally, less than two miles from New Mayhem, in the thick of the forest, he caught Jessica’s scent and brought himself instantly to her side.
Jessica was pasty white, her breathing was wet and shallow, and her heart alternated between racing and threatening to stop.
She was alive, but not for long, and he knew no way to help her. Three thousand years of killing had taught him nothing about undoing this kind of damage.
After a moment of hesitation in which he swallowed his pride, he left Jessica’s side and brought himself to the home of Hasana and Caryn Smoke. He could sense Caryn’s magic, stronger than her mother’s, even outside the house.
Had he not killed all his gods long ago, Aubrey would have prayed that Caryn would be willing to help. Anxiously he brought himself to her side.
CHAPTER 30
CARYN HAD NEARLY FAINTED from fright when Aubrey first appeared in her room, but his rapid explanation had shoved all personal concerns out of the way, making room for the disciplined healer to come forth. She had been working now for nearly an hour.
She was from the oldest known line of healers on Earth, but even her abilities had limits.
She felt weak from fatigue. Her clothing was soaking wet from when she had accidentally fallen in the river, and her heart was beating twice as fast as normal. Her face was stained with worried tears as she chanted and held her left hand, palm down, over Jessica’s heart, channeling much-needed energy into the dying girl. Her other hand was constantly moving — soothing Jessica’s brow, holding her hand, or drawing power from the earth.
Jessica’s heart had been beating evenly for several minutes, but now it skipped once and Caryn gasped in pain, her chant stopping.
“I can’t do this.” Fresh tears rolled down her face.
“Should I get Hasana?” Aubrey suggested. “Maybe she —”
“She won’t,” Caryn interrupted, remembering her mother’s anger when Jessica had left the house the day before. “She hates your kind and calls Jessica a traitor to the human race. Monica would have helped; she could have done it.