demons. I would chew my own limbs off to escape this feeling.” She glanced at Spider and he nodded sharply in agreement. “I can only imagine that Myca and his accomplices hide here to avoid being found. Or because they have already gone mad.”
“Well,” Isyllt muttered, leaning against the wall. “That’s something to look forward to.” Her left hand scraped stone, feeling the sour magic through her glove. And the quiet strength of centuries, as well. Erisin had endured, and continued to endure. It would outlast the blight. Affection for the city warmed her, and she closed her eyes against a sudden prickling in her sinuses.
Saints and specters. Head wounds really were dangerous.
She glanced up to find two sets of yellow eyes and one of brown watching her, their expressions ranging from concern to the elaborate disinterest of a well-fed cat watching a wounded bird. How long had she been standing there?
“Come on,” she said, pushing off the wall. A blink cleared the glaze from her vision. “I’d rather not breathe this in longer than I have to.”
The tunnels grew quieter and quieter the nearer they drew to the ruined palace. The great copper pipes were corroded and caked with verdigris, and the sewer canals held only a low thick sludge that smelled of mud and stagnation instead of waste. Isyllt saw no rats; animals often had better sense than men. The only sound now was their footsteps and the rasp of her and Khelsea’s breath.
They stopped when the tunnel split into three equally dark and unappealing branches. Isyllt and Khelsea exchanged a glance, then turned to Spider. He gave them an articulated shrug in response.
“I thought they must be lairing somewhere near the old palace, but from here I have no more clue than you. But”-his voice lowered-“if they are here, they know we’re coming. I imagine we’ll find them waiting for us eventually.”
“So your plan is to keep going till we walk into an ambush?” Khelsea folded her arms across her chest in eloquent critique of the idea.
“It does have a certain brutal efficiency,” Isyllt said wryly. “Do you have a better idea?”
“You’re the sorcerer. Can’t you do something clever?”
She winced at the thought; even a witchlight’s worth of concentration was daunting right now. But she was the only one who could magic a solution. She leaned against the wall and slid slowly down, careful not to bump her head.
“Spider, Azarne, give me some of your hair.” She tugged her gloves off, shaking dry a film of sweat. It was hedge magic, the sort of craft children practiced and Arcanostoi disdained. But Isyllt had learned such charms from her mother, and they worked more often than not.
The vrykoloi each gave her three long strands, and she plaited dark and fair together into a slender cord nearly the length of her forearm. The hair was curiously slick against her skin, and she wondered what it would look like under magnifying lenses. “Now I need a weight.”
After a pause, Azarne untangled something from her hair and handed it over; a thick gold ring set with lapis. Isyllt nodded thanks and tied it to the end of the cord, where it swayed heavily. The trick was convincing the crude pendulum to seek out vampires other than the two closest.
The answer, as it so often was, was blood. She pulled her jacket away from her wounded shoulder, wincing as she did. Amid all her new discomforts, the bite had faded into the background. Working a corner of the dressing loose, she prodded the tender flesh until blood and lymph smeared her fingertip. The physical poison was long since cleansed, but its ghost remained and that was enough for her. She slicked the ring and tugged her jacket back into place, ignoring the way Spider and Azarne’s gazes had sharpened and trained on her.
She cleared her head as best she could, concentrating on the memory of the attack in the sewers, of the vampire’s teeth in her neck and his chill skin against hers. When she opened her eyes again her shoulder throbbed fiercely and the ring swung in a straight and steady arc, pointing toward the right-hand tunnel.
The tunnel had been a dead end once, but now a ragged hole opened in the wall. The pendulum tugged sharply toward the blackness. A faint draft breathed through, cold and stale and dry. Its touch conjured ghostlight in the depths of Isyllt’s diamond.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Spider murmured. His nearness made the pendulum twitch. “You’re in no condition for a fight.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“I need you alive if you’re to be of any use.” He squeezed her elbow as he said it. It would have reassured her, had his fingers not been cold and vising.
“You haven’t earned your use of me yet.”
She pulled her arm free, shoving the pendulum into her pocket and drawing her kukri. Opalescent light licked up the blade as she gave Khelsea a nod. Isyllt sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, then stepped forward.
The echoes of their footsteps changed as they stepped from the narrow tunnel into a wider space. Lantern- and ghostlight brushed the curves of a high vaulted ceiling and the shadows of coffined alcoves in the walls-a great crypt. Doors led into darkness in all directions. Isyllt opened her mouth to question Spider when Azarne hissed, jerking her face upward.
She had an instant’s glimpse of pale shapes clinging to the stones like insects before the vampires fell on them. Spellfire cut the air in the wake of her blade, throwing shadows wild across the walls, but the vrykolos was already out of the way. Pain blazed in her shoulder, and she knew she faced the one who’d bitten her.
She swung again, too slow and clumsy. He moved faster than she could follow, sliding under her guard and shoving her against a wall. Only dumb luck kept her from striking her head again. He cracked her hand against the stones-once, twice, and on the third blow her kukri fell from useless fingers, its light fading as it clattered to the floor. Her ring still glowed, bathing half his face in eerie blue. She heard shouts and struggles around them, but only had eyes for the demon in front of her.
“Was it you?” he hissed, fangs shining. The light lined a knife-edged nose and hollow cheeks, reflected in the depths of eyes pale and crystalline as ice and agates. Grey skin glittered dully, like flecks in unpolished stone. He smelled of snakes and earth and sweet poison. Isyllt squirmed in his grasp and kicked him in the groin, but he only snorted angrily and shook her.
“Was it you?” he demanded again, dragging her up by her collar. “Did you kill her?” Her toes scraped the floor and she could barely breathe, let alone think. His eyes distracted her, flecks of yellow floating in striated irises-her own confusion, or a predator’s enchantment?
“Kill who?” she gasped.
“Forsythia!”
She clawed at his hand and annoyance cut through her fear. “Of course not. I’m trying to find her killer.”
His fangs snapped inches from her face. “
“I did not!” The conversation was making her headache worse, and lack of air wasn’t helping. “I’m a Crown Investigator-I find the people who slit women’s throats in alleys. And I find idiot tomb-robbing vrykoloi too.” She clenched her throbbing right hand, letting the different pain and the press of her ring ground her.
The vampire’s grip loosened, and the balls of her feet met the floor. “If you didn’t kill her, who did?”
She kicked him again out of pique, beyond caring if she antagonized him. “That is
Confusion narrowed his strange depthless eyes. “Because-”
A sound like thunder shattered the air, pierced her ears like hot steel, and Isyllt yelped. The vampire flinched, letting her fall as he clapped his hands over the sides of his head. She felt the second gunshot, but was already deafened.
Through a haze of tears she saw Spider seize the other vampire by the neck and drag him away. She read Spider’s name on his lips. Then a bone-white blur, and cold black blood sprayed across her face.
The vampire toppled, clutching at his ruined throat. The wound didn’t pump as a human’s would, but leaked viscous dark fluid. His lips moved, but in the flickering light Isyllt couldn’t read the shape of the words. The look on his face was clear enough, though: shock and betrayal, a confused and childish hurt.
