I didn’t care. Because I saw something else, there in the dark. Faint, but unmistakable, and utterly and forever unforgivable.
He bore the mark of blood, rich and red about his hands, about his mouth. He’d washed, but I could see. Darla’s blood, perhaps. My Darla’s blood.
I made a sound, something between a shout and a growl.
An instant of confusion, when he saw I wasn’t the same man he’d admitted. Another instant to raise his pale hands toward me, to open his mouth, to leap.
An instant too long. That which had blossomed in my soul, back in the alley on Regent Street, took root, fed by rage and fury, fed by the blood lingering on his lips.
I caught him up. Caught him and stilled his cries and let him flop like a fresh-caught trout in my hands. I let him see my eyes. Let him see his fate, mirrored within.
“You die for what you did. You die for her.”
I pulled him apart. Easily. I pulled, twisted and tore and did not stop until he was a twitching red ruin. I smeared what was left upon the walls.
When I was done, I took hold of the far door and pulled it from its hinges.
“Come and be judged,” I said, and my voice rang out like an Angel’s. “Come and face the hand of wrath!”
Shapes flew. Harsh voices cried out.
I squeezed myself through the tiny door, and my Darla had her vengeance at last.
Some time later, I became aware.
Aware of voices, furtive footfalls and the glare of torches and lanterns.
The sounds rang hollow, in a large and empty room. I blinked, and the dark fled, and I saw.
It had been a warehouse. Tall bare walls, high flat ceiling, warped plank floor. Windows all boarded, doors all barred, though attempts had been made to pull down the bars from within.
Few such attempts had succeeded.
Carnage lay about me. Blood-thin and black-covered nearly every surface. The odd arm or leg completed the grim decor.
I coughed, tasted blood and wiped my face.
My hand came away red.
I scrambled to my feet. Torchlight flowed through a broken door, and a man stepped through, saw me, shouted and stepped quickly back.
The man darted back through, half a dozen of his fellows and a pair of halfdead on his heels. The halfdead trained crossbows upon me, would have fired had not another pale form appeared and shouted them down.
I spat, and the spittle was red. My head spun, and my vision was alternately clear or shadowed. My ears rang, and when I moved I felt as if my limbs were the wrong size, the wrong shape.
A voice called out, half familiar.
“Finder?”
I knew a finder, once, it seemed. What had been his name?
“Mister Markhat?”
I took a breath, nodded.
“Are you injured?”
Evis stepped forward, waved his men to follow. The New People came as well.
The crossbow-bolts shone strange, in the flickers between light and dark.
I tried to speak, failed. Tried to recall how I’d come to be in the midst of such horror-
— and it all came flooding back to me, and my hand closed around the huldra, and my eyes were suddenly accustomed to the dark once again.
Evis and his men came ahead, their eyes darting to and fro, from limb to bloodstain and back to me.
“I see you found the nest,” said Evis, carefully.
“I found those I sought. They shall trouble us no more.”
Evis nodded, halted. “No, it seems they shall not.” He turned, spoke to his fellows, and one went darting off.
“Miss Hoobin,” he said. “Have you perhaps seen her?”
“I did not yet seek her out.” I cast my new senses down, turned them to the floor, and what might lie beneath.
“She awaits us below. She is not alone. I shall tend to them, as well.”
“No,” said Evis, and I turned sharp upon him. “Please. Let us. Would you deny the brothers Hoobin their due, now that you have had yours?”
“I will do as I wish.” My voice took on hints of thunder. “None shall deter me.”
“None will seek to deter you,” said Evis. “But might we beg of you this boon?”
Ethel and his brothers came rushing inside, along with a gang of twenty or so winded New People. Many bore cuts and bruises. I gathered the only fighting hadn’t been within the bloody walls I faced.
I laughed. “Come. I shall watch then. It will amuse me.”
I caught hold of the trap door recently cut into the floor. Caught hold of it from where I stood, and blasted it from its hidden frame, all without moving.
Evis nodded, snapped instructions to his men and motioned for Ethel and his to follow.
They swarmed off, into the deeper dark. I followed, my pace leisurely, no longer troubled by the blood that ran down my face.
It was nearly over by the time I descended the makeshift stair. Two halfdead and a trio of humans. The halfdead fell first, shot by Evis’s faintly glowing crossbow bolts-I could see plain the spell caught in the bolts, a simple thing of light and heat-and a fusillade of blows from a furious New People mob.
Evis gathered the humans in a corner. Ethel stepped forward, blade raised, and asked them where his sister was.
I knew. I made my way easily through the dark, came to a heavy door, opened it.
A raving, bloodied halfdead flew shrieking to meet me. I caught it, too, and would have crushed it, save it began to cry, a woman’s high sobs.
I brought it out, into the sudden ring of light cast by Ethel’s torch.
Ethel bellowed, would have hacked the captive priests apart had I not silenced him with a shout.
“This is not your sister.”
“Ameel Cant,” said Evis, elbowing his way through the crowd. He eyed her critically, pointed toward a small room behind the one I’d just opened. “If you please?”
I cast her into it and slammed the door. She beat and flailed upon it, her cries long and high and anguished.
A bar leaned by the door. I picked it up, dropped it in the holds, crossed the room, flung open the next door and stepped inside.
And there she was.
Martha Hoobin, backed into the furthest corner of the tiny stinking room, glaring up at me with those sky-blue Hoobin eyes.
“You’ll nare lay a hand on me, ye cat-eyed devil.” She’d torn a post from the bed that was the room’s sole piece of furniture and scraped one end sharp. She held the point steady and level with my gut.
Even there, in the dark, through eyes no longer entirely my own, I could see a bit of Ethel in the set of Martha’s jaw, in the way she held her eyes boring straight into mine. There were other similarities-the long narrow shape of the nose, the coal-black hair, the cheekbones that caught the faint light of approaching torches behind-but while Martha was obviously a Hoobin, she’d inherited none of her brothers’ massive big-boned frames. She was tiny-perhaps half Ethel’s height, maybe half a hand taller than Mama-almost Elfishly so, in the seeming fragility of her limbs, in the long fingers, in the nearly luminous blue of her eyes.
I didn’t need the huldra to show me any semblance of fragility was mere illusion. She gripped her makeshift spear tight. Her breathing was steady. I could see her measuring the distance between me and the door and wondering if she could dart through it after making a stab at my ribs.
