The staff warmed against her spine, bringing a mix of heightened conceit and rueful banality to the moment. “I’m not that impressed with myself yet. Stop trying to tempt me.”
A distinct sense of churlishness rose from the staff, but it quieted again, leaving Lara with a grin as she exited the city’s tower structure. Power corrupted—she had little doubt of that. Still, as long as the staff’s tendency was the combination of destruction, blatant cajoling, and sulking, she thought she could withstand it. And she had a destination now, which was more than she’d expected to be granted. All she had to do was survive the city and reach that destination.
She knew it for a treacherous thought even before Aerin rose up out of the sand in a full-on attack.
The Seelie woman’s white hair ran to blue, the same way it had the night Lara met her. But then it had been moonlight; now it was the city’s sickly color twisting what was natural. Her eyes trailed yellow fire, their usual green distorted as well, and her elegantly boned face was pulled in a grimace of hatred. Even the armor she wore was corrupted, moonlight silver corroded and blackened as if it had been buried in the sea for decades. Only her sword still shone bright, its edge unblemished as it swung down toward Lara.
Lara ducked, knowing it wasn’t enough even as she did so. A spurt of panic lent her strength and she turned the duck into a dive, flattening herself on the ocean floor. The sword passed over her head in a hail of grit and sand that matched the one floating up from Lara’s dive. She slithered forward, not quite daring to get as high as hands and knees, and grabbed Aerin’s ankle to yank as hard as she could.
Aerin stabbed down with the sword rather than fall over. The blade caught the thick shoulder padding of Lara’s doublet and drove into the ground, pinning her, but tangling the sword as well. Its cold pressure through the shirt beneath the doublet warned her of how close Aerin had come, and how easily she might sever her own muscles by moving too much. Aerin clearly had the same idea, wrenching the sword down rather than pulling it free.
Pain splintered Lara’s thoughts. Her right arm stopped responding properly, trapezius cut so deeply she feared the collarbone was in pieces as well. Blood welled up, tasting sharp and bitter in the air. Turning her head to see the damage was agony. And useless: Aerin’s blade remained in the way, angled dangerously into Lara’s shoulder, though it was a matter of seconds before Aerin withdrew the sword to strike again.
Without the sword’s presence to block it, blood swam free, billowing into Lara’s eyes. Dizziness ate her in waves, making her thoughts soft and unfocused. She could turn her head. That probably meant that despite sharp deep pain, the muscle wasn’t cut as badly as she feared. But there was a significant vein somewhere in there, one that fed from the jugular; she was almost certain of it. Terror pulsed through her, vivid fear that it was a vein large enough to bleed her out in seconds, unable to save herself.
She grated, “No,” in a voice so low she didn’t recognize it as her own. The pain lessened not at all, but some of her light-headedness faded, and her next heartbeat didn’t seem to blur the air with more blood. She put more force behind the next “No,” willing a difficult thing to be true: that was a truthseeker’s gift, to make something that was not, be.
Staunching the blood flow did nothing to stop Aerin, though. Lara flung her left hand up, wishing against reason she held the staff in it so she might at least parry, and put all the strength she had into her voice: “Stop!”
Aerin’s sword trembled to a halt an inch above Lara’s heart. Distortion wracked the Seelie warrior’s features as she fought the coercion, trying equally to drive the sword down and drag it up again. Lara clenched her teeth and dug her heels into the ground, shoving herself along the city street. That was her stomach Aerin would skewer if she broke the compulsion; now her pelvis; now her thigh, each push bringing a different body part into danger. But bad as gut wounds were supposed to be, dangerous as severed thigh muscles might be, she had a chance of surviving them. Her truthseeker’s power would be of no use at all if her heart were pierced.
Aerin roared as Lara inched to a less deadly position, and the compulsion failed: she slammed the sword down again. Lara jerked her legs apart, the blade scraping her inner thigh with another bright flare of pain. She had cut herself with a knife a time or two. Those accidental slices had nothing on the white-hot anguish of a sword blade parting skin and muscle. The pain was so great there was a purity to it: nothing else could possibly exist within its realm.
Except, perhaps, a thready, panicked desire to survive. The only thing greater than pain was wanting to outlive it. And possibly a growing ambition to visit the same anguish on the one who’d hurt her.
That was how wars were fought, Lara thought in a burst of clarity. It had to be, and that was a revelation she’d never wanted. She laughed, knowing the sound to be almost a sob, and inched back a little farther, taking herself out of the blade’s way. Aerin had driven it down too hard: it was mired in the stone beneath drifting sand.
Sitting up was difficult. Not impossible, though even the discolored blood floating around her went gray as her vision dimmed with the effort. But being able to sit, like turning her head, was probably good: it probably meant the muscle wasn’t as badly damaged as she’d initially imagined. And there wasn’t nearly as much blood as she was sure there should be. Aerin had broken one compulsion, perhaps, but the one Lara had laid on herself still held true.
Aerin gave up on the blade and whirled around with a kick aimed at Lara’s jaw. Dizziness, not reflexes, saved her; she was already sagging when the warrior woman threw the kick, and Aerin misjudged the distance. Lara kicked her in the other knee with just enough strength in it to knock Aerin’s footing askew. Aerin fell and Lara surged forward, drawing on reserves she hadn’t known existed in order to pounce on Aerin’s torso.
She landed with her knees on Aerin’s upper arms, knowing the pin would only hold her for a few seconds. Knowing, too, that she couldn’t keep Aerin down any other way, not with her arm only half responding. Not with Aerin’s fighting skills and Lara’s utter lack of them.
Something malfeasant crawled under Aerin’s skin, as though her blood itself had been corrupted and fought to be free. Scales rippled on her skin and faded again, replaced by sharp rows of teeth bursting from her gums. Her eyes were losing their color, sickly yellow replaced by a dead black that reflected the city’s dark light. Like a shark’s, Lara thought, and pieces fell into place.
Aerin had lost a fight on her way to the memorial gardens. Maybe against an unaltered animal, but more likely against some creature whose largest part had been a shark. And given this new predator, this Seelie warrior woman, to meld with, it was taking the city’s bleak magic and re-forming her into a deadly, undead monster.
Llyr had pulled chimeras apart, returned them to their native state. He’d paid the price for it in seeing new, more dreadful monsters born of his efforts, but it didn’t matter. If the magic Lara released backfired, made monsters of greater horror and scope than before, at least she had
“I don’t even like you very much, and I don’t think I know you well enough to be sure of making this work. But I can’t just leave you like this. I
But for the moment she reached for the only weapon she had, and began to sing.
Fourteen
“Eternal Father, strong to save.” It had been years since Lara had sung the Navy Hymn, but its lyrics and her location fit together. She wished the tune were more sprightly than stately, but that might be for the best: easier to pull back her God’s power if it came in slower waves than if it rolled over Aerin inexorably.
It was condemning enough as it was. Aerin screamed, raw sound that tore through Lara’s memory, shattering half-forgotten words into fragments. The tune, though, remained. Breathless with fear Lara hummed a snatch or two of the music, falling back as it ripped into Aerin and changed what she had become. Heat poured off the Seelie woman, distorting the air as it distorted her skin. She collapsed, silence worse than her screams as ripples rolled over her skin, Unseelie magic at war with the hymn’s power. Lara scrabbled for words, certain only of the verse’s beseeching final lines, though she dared a tiny change to them: “Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril
