She collapsed on her side.
Now the leopard would attack. She didn't care. Her mind lay blank -- survival and cunning and revenge wiped clear by exhaustion. A mild wave took her belly and it felt soothing by comparison, cleansing, ridding her body of tissue and blood and fluids no longer needed. And another, weaker still.
Now Maureen would come. Now, when her enemy lay in exhausted sweat, bleeding, helpless. Now she'd come and gloat and kill.
Fiona groped blindly, feeling through hot slime. She found the lump of the baby, stirring feebly, coughing in thin whines. It didn't even have the strength to cry.
She brought it to her belly, to her chest, to her face, found the cord with her teeth, bit. The blood gushed sweet in her mouth, and she sucked it, feeling Power and strength flow back into her. Something moved in the corner of her eye, and her teeth darted to the baby's throat. Just one bite . . .
She smelled the blood, smelled the Power, hungered for it, trembled for it. The baby was too weak to live. It could still serve her, feed her emptiness. Her jaws locked, unable to close.
"You will not kill that child!"
The red fur of the fox morphed into red hair around blazing rage. She'd never seen a face like that, never dreamed one of her enemies could show such naked Power. Fiona cringed, holding her frozen jaws tight in the notch between the baby's chin and shoulder. She tasted skin, tasted her own blood and fluids on it, felt a thin pulse against her tongue and lips, but she couldn't bite.
Her right hand pressed the baby to her mouth. She tried to claw at the child, spilling its precious Power on her own skin if she couldn't swallow it. Maureen's fingers grabbed hers, bending, trembling, holding with muscle while Power flowed elsewhere. Fiona pulled her strength into hand and jaw and eyes, glaring rage at her enemy above the child's body. Face to face, nose to nose, sweat and smell mixing, they froze into a standoff.
Fiona glanced out of the corners of her eyes. The black cat crouched there, less than an arm's length to her right, tension in every quivering muscle, with his ears and whiskers laid back. His tail thrashed.
{One could kill you easily.}
{Move and the baby dies.} Even blocked as she was, she could kill the baby. It was still a weapon, against a sentimental weakling like Maureen.
Fiona reached out and groped with her other hand, hunting for the wet slick skin of the child's back. Press it against her, and the breathing would stop, the heart would stop.
Teeth clamped on her wrist, tight as a vise, driving pain through the skin into muscle and grating on the bone. The fox. It had to be the fox, another of Maureen's puppets.
Fiona walled the pain away and drew back into her self. She groped for the words and workings of a curse, but they wouldn't come. The birth had drained even her hatred. Cunning, though -- that she still had, twisting through the fog shrouding her thoughts.
Cunning and the baby and some little dragons if it came to that.
Weapons.
That redheaded bitch would weaken soon. She was relying on sheer will, no time for spells or bindings. Commanding another Old One's muscles gulped Power the way that dragon swallowed meat. Maureen would weaken and lose control and Fiona would bite into the tender skin just touching her lips and drink the blood pulsing underneath and strike back with the Power flowing in it.
Revenge. She could taste it now, smooth and heady like the finest wine.
Like blood.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Jo stared down into the chalice in her hand, into the red wine shimmering inside cut-glass crystal. If the Church offered communion wine like this, damn sure they'd draw a bigger crowd for Mass. The stuff tasted like ambrosia brought down to earth.
Sinned big-time, that's for sure. Patricide would rank up there pretty far in the all-time top ten Hit Parade.
Thick-stemmed crystal goblet, cut glass and heavy but delicate, scarlet fire where she held it in the thin blade of sunlight leaking through the shutters. Scattered rainbows from the facets. Wealth and elegance. Blood.
The wine burned red like blood glowing with the inner fire of magic. Magic she'd used to murder her own father.
She'd grabbed the goblet and bottles of wine on the way up to this refuge, looking to get blind drunk. Then, between the opening and the drinking, she'd thought about Maureen. Maureen and alcohol, bane of the Pierce and O'Brian bloodlines. Thinking of that, she'd barely sipped the stuff.
Orange weight oozed between her and the wine. It settled into her lap, pin-prick of claws and warmth and fur and fish-breath. Cat. Maureen had acquired cats somewhere, three of them. Had the run of the castle, kept the mice at bay.
{You have work to do.}
Talking cats. It figured. Maureen would have talking cats.
{Pay attention. You are needed.}
Imperious talking cats. Jo stared into green slit-pupil eyes. They glowed in the gloom of the shuttered room. Magic.
Shivers ran across her shoulders and down her spine. Suddenly she felt cold, in spite of the wine. Cold, the cold of watching stone, waiting, calculating. Everything in this land watched, calculated, weighing advantage and Power. She felt the spiders thinking in their webs, measuring air currents and the spiral vibrations down the strands, sifting for the touch of dinner. It could drive her mad, if she weren't already there.
The eyes floated closer, closer, clear and green and glowing and hypnotic. Jo felt her own eyes crossing, trying to keep focus. Fur bumped her nose,
