Luckily, all the main roads led to her place. Hatipai was predictable in that way. All the geistlords who survived as she did had suffered the same arrogance—they began to believe what their worshippers told them. They began to believe they were indeed gods. This weakness made them much easier to find.
The Rossin leapt up stacked crates in the marketplace onto the red rooftops of the city. Below he could see streams of people running through the streets. They were singing and dancing, waving their hands about and laughing. As much as he wanted to be down there among them, tasting their blood, he knew that his great enemy was near. He could in fact hear her.
His lip pulled back from his long fangs, and a snarl rumbled in his chest. Her voice ran through the ether.
So he would save his rage for her and not the foolish humans. The great cat’s claws clenched on the mud brick, and then he leapt across to the next rooftop, following the direction of the crowd below.
The Temple stood in a square and reeked of faith and desperation—her stock in trade. The large carved representation of her lay sprawled on the roof, and the Rossin could not be sure that she wasn’t smiling. Yet he could not smell her nearby.
The great Beast roared again. A group of more guards, only half a dozen, were clad in red and standing by the Temple doorway. The Rossin recognized them as Imperial, and his stride faltered. Was he too late?
The one advantage faith did bring to Hatipai was that she had had and most assuredly still did have plenty of unquestioning followers to do her bidding. She didn’t need to be corporeal or even the littlest bit present at this moment to have her will carried out.
However, there was still a chance. He bounded up the stairs, sailing over the heads of the astonished guards in a leap that carried him to the doorway. That was when he saw the woman standing in the shadows, waiting.
The Rossin snarled and brought himself up short before reaching her, because she held in her hand the one thing that he had feared. The foolish Ehtia might have gone, but they had left behind plenty of dangerous devices. Things that even a geistlord might find of use.
The Ehtia device was a sphere of glass filled with that strange silvery substance—the very one he had helped Onika of Chioma rip from his mother centuries before. They had been uncomfortable allies back then, but both of them were aware that Hatipai would destroy the world eventually. The Rossin had never wanted the world to end. He liked the blood, the flesh and the freedom here. Why Onika had turned against his mother the geistlord did not ask nor care to ask.
Yet the Prince was not here.
The dark-haired woman holding the Ehtia sphere had that glazed look in her eyes, the look that the Rossin had not forgotten after all this time. Hatipai might not yet have form, but she had presence in this woman. She held the sphere aloft and smiled at him. It was not a human smile.
“Too late, old friend,” she whispered, and the voice came from no human lungs—instead it was coming from a very long way off.
The cat’s head flicked up, looking for the light that would signal she was nearby, but there was none. Hatipai was taking the safer option and remaining incorporeal.
It was too late; the Rossin realized that. Now the only option was too flee and protect the body and bloodline he had. Swinging around on his haunches, he changed the flesh to his avian form. Wide wings sprouted from his back, and his feline head shifted to that of a massive eagle, but the rest of his body remained that of the lion. The Rossin leapt to the sky, knowing his escape would be a momentary reprieve. If his enemy succeeded, then running would become his only chance. He would find the female Deacon—she might fill the gap left by the now-weak Prince.
Hatipai had been nothing if not relentless in all the time he had known her. She had shown no mercy for their kind, perhaps even less than what little she showed the humans.
However, the geistlord was wrong. Immediately and suddenly wrong. This was not beginning of his flight— this was the end.
The sky darkened in a moment, and the clouds that caused it were nothing natural. It was her followers. Every soul who had worshipped Hatipai filled with an intense hatred of the geistlords. The Rossin’s newly formed wings had only lofted him to the height of the buildings around him when the swarm of spectyrs descended.
Like diving eagles they shot through him, leaving no physical mark but ripping through the geistlord and taking away a little of his power. It would take more than one to bring down the Rossin—but this was a cloud of them, thicker and more deadly than a thunderstorm. They flew through the geistlord with their anger and their pain and their loss.
Each one pierced him. He screamed and howled and batted his wings, trying to rise above them, to flee into the open sky. Yet they kept coming.
The Rossin roared and fell, tumbling back to earth with the cry of a frustrated eagle. Nothing remained to save himself, as he smashed into the ground only a few feet from the steps on which the woman stood.
The spectyrs were remorseless. Each one was ripping away at his strength, and he was given no choice. He had to flee back deeper inside his host or be lost entirely.
As the Rossin released control, he heard the woman approach, her boots rapping on the cobble street, and he smelled death wrapping around him. She bent down and whispered into his ear, “You see, old friend, it is as I promised—you will pay for what you did to me.”
What she meant to do, the Rossin had a very good idea. He didn’t want to, but he did the only thing now possible. Taking hold of the Deacon Bond, he called to the female. Now she was his only hope. She would save him in the name of his host. She had to.
Voishem was an exhausting rune to hold up by herself, so by the time Sorcha was free of the palace, she was staggering.
Emerging through the outermost palace wall, she took a ragged, gasping breath. It felt like it was the first she had taken since before the ghast appeared. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her whole body shook. Everything was spinning and out of focus so that she thought she might throw up her breakfast.
If any Chiomese guards came upon the Deacon now, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. They could have sliced her into a million tiny pieces, and Sorcha would not be able to raise a hand to stop them. Even breathing was an effort. Only the firmness of the wall at her back kept her sitting up, which was ironic, after running through so many.
She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and with numb fingers tried to tuck the loose strands back into the braid. This simple habit gave her a moment to recover herself. When she was done, Sorcha looked about to see where she’d come out.
By sheer happenstance she’d not directly appeared near any main road. Instead she was in the shade of a guard tower. Perhaps this was not the luckiest place, but when she’d run it had been completely blind, so she was lucky she’d not dropped into a cesspit or materialized over a cliff.
Cautiously Sorcha flicked her cloak out, and on hands and knees, not yet daring her feet, she crawled to the outer edge of the tower to peer around it. Perhaps it was a kind of arrogance to imagine that all of the palace’s attention was directed at finding her, because what she saw before her implied that the Rossin had also made quite the impression.
The Beast ad cut a wide swath through the guards and citizens of the Hive City. Bodies were still lying about, as if a very angry small child had cast them right and left while leaving a very large nursery. Except there was blood—lots and lots of blood. As a Deacon, Sorcha had seen plenty of such atrocities. What concerned her more was Raed. He had mentioned that he only remembered flashes of what the Rossin did while in possession of his body—but they were enough to weigh him with guilt and revulsion.
Sorcha sat back and leaned against the wall for the moment. Losing both men was unacceptable. Though she had no idea where her partner was, she could feel the tug of the Rossin inside her. The rampant delight in blood and chaos was such a heady mix that she had to pull back or be lost in it.
“Unholy Bones,” Sorcha whispered and slumped back on her heels to slide her head into her hands. Passing through so many walls and using Voishem more than she ever had before had taken every ounce of her strength. She was unsure how much more she had to give. Without Merrick she was risking her life and her sanity drawing on
