Baldur's Gate II Shadows of Amn (7 page)

Whatever he was going to say ended up as a bloody gurgle. Abdel sliced in so fast and so hard he surprised even himself. He nearly cut the assassin in half at the midsection. He put one foot on the assassin’s chest and pushed him down. Blood was everywhere instantly.

“That’s …” the assassin managed to say around a mouthful of blood, “that’s too bad.”

Aran Linvail died on the floor of his own kitchen.

“Aran?” the girl called again. “Aran, you’re scaring me. Who was that?”

Abdel grunted again and searched the floor for his missing finger. Drenched in blood, Abdel bent and retrieved the severed digit. He’d seen parts of people amputated one way or another on any number of occasions in his life and knew the simple rule that if you loose it, it stays lost unless you have a lot of gold and a very good priest. Abdel wasn’t actually conscious of placing the finger back on the end of the little bleeding stump, but he did. It mended almost immediately, though it still bled. He held it in place for a few deep breaths, and when he let go, it stayed there.

“Bhaal,” he breathed, knowing all too well the source of his ability to heal. So, he thought, maybe there’s some advantage to this cursed blood after all.

“Aran?” the girl called, her voice quavering. “Aran, this isn’t funny.”

Abdel almost considered going back upstairs to tell the girl what happened, reassure her that she was better off, and send her on her way with a couple pieces of gold. He didn’t have any gold, of course, and really didn’t want the girl to see him covered in the blood of her lover.

He kneeled in the puddle of blood still growing rapidly around the inert form of Aran Linvail. “One more,” he said. “Last one.” He cut the assassin’s head off because he had to. It was worth a king’s ransom in gold to him—a druid’s ransom at least, and Abdel knew Aran Linvail wouldn’t be the last Shadow Thief he’d have to kill to get Jaheira and Imoen safely out of wherever they were.

A thin, lightly constructed door led off the kitchen into the cellar and Abdel went through it. There was a trapdoor in the floor of the cellar that led to the sewer, which led to an alley, which would take him in relative safety and anonymity back to the Copper Coronet. At least, that’s what Bodhi had told him, and she’d been right so far.

“Aran?” the girl called from upstairs. “Aran, that’s it. I’m coming down.”

Bodhi was getting nervous, with dawn approaching, though she was well underground and out of any danger of exposure to the sun’s killing rays. Still, she had to get up to the surface to get back to her resting place deep in Irenicus’s island asylum. She could travel rather quickly in the form of a bat, but getting back to the island would still take time. She had no idea what might be taking Abdel so long. Could he have failed? Aran Linvail was a practiced killer, but surely he could be no match for this supposed son of a god. Had Linvail managed to turn him? Is Abdel working for the Shadow Thieves by now?

She was only seconds from contacting Irenicus again, having decided to move on to her contingency plan and return, when Abdel burst into the room, panting and shaking in barely concealed rage. He sat heavily on the floor, tossing his broadsword aside casually.

“Well,” he said, “I’m back. In more ways than one.”

Relieved to see him, but still concerned about the coming dawn, Bodhi went to him quickly. The sellsword shook his head a little and held up a hand to keep her away, keep her quiet, or both.

“Abdel,” she said, letting the real relief at seeing him again make her role all the more convincing. “What happened?”

Abdel smiled at her and laughed. “You owe me thirty thousand gold pieces.”

She smiled, too. His laugh sounded good to her. The sight of his smile had an effect on her she hadn’t experienced in a good many decades.

“I’m glad to see you,” Abdel said sincerely. “Is that odd?”

“And I’m happy to see you,” she replied and only partly because she was told to do so. She leaned in and kissed him.

He flinched away from her at first, but she pressed in, and he responded. His lips were surprisingly soft, and Bodhi tried not to be drawn to the warmth, knowing Abdel would feel only coolness in return.

When she pulled away, his eyes were clouded and confused.

“Jaheira …” he said.

Bodhi shook her head, and his eyes met hers. She focused on the blackest point of his pupils and held his gaze in a grip as real and as tight as any vise. She released a slow, steady exhale, and her will drifted out from her eyes to his. She saw a brief flash of yellow light in his eyes, and it almost broke her concentration. She didn’t allow herself the luxury of wondering what that light was. Half god or not, this man could come under her spell like any other, and she could feel any resolve he might have had fade away.

“You’ve done well, Abdel,” she whispered, and he nodded with an almost imperceptible tilt of his chin. “You can rest now … from everything.”

Abdel’s face fell, then he forced a smile and made to stand. Bodhi shifted on her haunches and helped him up with a strong, firm grip around his back. He let himself be drawn into her. She could tell he wanted to say something. Bodhi didn’t have time for Abdel to go through any soul-searching. She pressed another kiss and used her tongue, a shift of her hips, the brush of a breast against his chest, and an anticipatory breath to force a reaction.

Even Bodhi wasn’t ready for the reaction she got.

Abdel never made the conscious decision to betray Jaheira and take Bodhi—still a stranger—as his lover. Like most things over the last few days, it just happened.

He let the tension slide out of his hands and arms, to be replaced by the smooth feel of her linen dress and her cool, soft skin under it. She held him in arms stronger than any woman had ever held him in. Bodhi’s mouth closed on his, and her breath tasted of the earth. It was a primal smell—more a feeling that a scent. Her lips were cool, almost cold, and the chill they sent down Abdel’s spine made him feel more awake than he had in days. His body burst into full life. The blood that coursed through him carried different signals, went to different places, but was powered by the same superhuman passions that drove his fighting arm and his ability to kill without hesitation. It was less an ability than a need, like the need to breathe.

When their tongues met there was no going back for Abdel. His eyes burned in his head, and he surrendered to the strange woman’s rhythms the same way he surrendered to the clanging-steel rhythms of an opponent. They came together in the same kind of hesitant, exploratory dance of two swordsmen parrying blows and searching for weaknesses and openings. Her dress came off like an opponent’s shield being batted away, and he shed what limited clothes he wore himself in the same way he would remove any encumbrance that might interfere with his sword arm’s range of motion. The feel of the floor was cold and rough, but Bodhi accepted most of it at first. It scratched her, and she flinched away from it—flinched into Abdel, who responded to the weakness by pulling her up and to him. They were moving completely without thought, pretense, or plan now. They were completely together in a single, crystalline moment. It was the sort of moment Abdel had never experienced, even in his most intense blood frenzy, or his most violent, kill-crazy melee. This was no tavern wench or camp follower, and the transaction they made was one that went to the blood, not just the purse.

It was at the beginning of what both of them knew on a silent, accepting level, was the end of it that her face slipped to his throat. Her cool breath brushed against his corded neck. Abdel heard a hollow, popping crack that in an even semi-lucid state he would have recognized as a joint dislocating.

There was a warm wetness on his skin, and he took a deep breath as Bodhi pressed her face into his neck. Her body convulsed once so violently they almost came apart all at once. Abdel held her tightly, and her back seemed to pop under his grip. She was breathing fast and hard through her nose with a rhythmic hiss-hiss-hiss and made a guttural, animal sound in her throat. Her chest, pressed as flat as her chest could be pressed against his, vibrated with the sound.

Her body quivered through a series of spasms that made it seem as if every muscle in her body had been granted individual will, and every one was fighting for escape or supremacy. Abdel’s own release came as this passionate frenzy began to subside, and Bodhi’s face came away from his neck. Abdel’s vision blurred, and his head spun. She pressed a cold-fingered hand to his neck and held it there hard while Abdel almost swooned like a widow at a summer funeral.

This was no man.

He was right, Bodhi thought. By the darkest layers of the Abyss, Irenicus was right. This was no man. No man at all.

She was afraid, rightfully so, that Abdel would kill her if he realized what she’d done. She’d tasted only a little—well, maybe more than the little she intended. She was curious, but now that it was over, she realized she had been hoping Irenicus was right about Abdel. He was so very right.

She’d fed on hundreds of men, maybe thousands, from all walks of life. She’d tasted the blood of shepherds and princes, generals and pikemen. She’d fed on the fey blood of elves, the bitter humors of orcs, and all manner of the Underdark’s primitive shadow-stalkers. The taste of blood, to her, had become like the cuisine of the living. Some was good—prepared well by a good, wealthy, comfortable life—some was left to its own devices, left to rot or congeal in its destitute chef’s muddy veins. Abdel’s blood was like nothing she’d ever tasted before.

To the blunt sensitivity of her tongue, Abdel was the strong young man he appeared to be. When it seemed like her head was going to explode in a shower of frenzied light, the simple taste stopped being important. When her whole body pressed into the experience then burst into flowers and starbursts and every explosion of red, whirling hell, she stopped being the predator and became a sort of worshiper, begging for the favor of a fickle but generous god.

She wanted to do it again so badly she made herself crawl away from him. She’d been alive for centuries, and it was that experience that kept her from going back for more. She’d already taken enough blood from him to make him light-headed. That worked, luckily, in her favor. Abdel couldn’t tell he’d been bitten. He lay back on the flagstone floor and let the wash of the experience pass through him. She’d done a good job of stopping the bleeding, but when her vision finally cleared enough to look back at him and see something more than a bright-burning deity, she saw that the wound was already healing. He should heal fast but not quite that fast.

She wiped the blood from her lips and chin with the palm of her hand, then licked the blood off her hand hungrily, her naked back turned to Abdel, so he couldn’t see her in this feral moment. He started breathing deeply and regularly, and she knew he would be up and looking at her soon, if he wasn’t already. She scrambled for her dress, found it, and with hands trembling like a schoolgirl’s, she slipped it over her head and did her best to smooth it around her hips without having to stand.

She didn’t think she’d be able to stand.

Abdel’s neck tickled and when he scratched it, it hurt just a little, but he didn’t pay it any mind. He propped himself up on one elbow, and though he was sure he would see Bodhi next to him, he didn’t see her at all. From behind him came the rustle of cloth and he turned slowly, his head heavy and his body sluggish. She was there, smoothing her wrinkled red linen dress over her soft round hips. Abdel couldn’t help but smile, though he knew he must look like a love-struck fool.

He didn’t know what to say, so he just stared at her until she turned one cheek to him to sneak a glance. Abdel wasn’t sure how to feel about her obvious reluctance to face him. He suddenly felt very naked and grabbed for the trousers slumped on the floor next to him.

“I didn’t hurt you,” he said quietly, hopefully.

“No,” she said quickly, part of a long, sibilant breath.

He pulled on the trousers, cursing under his breath at the trouble he had pulling them on. His hands were strangely weak, shook a little, and the pants were just so tight on him.

“Where will you go?” she asked him, her voice—louder now—echoing in the empty stone chamber, the cellar of the Copper Coronet.

Abdel didn’t answer for what seemed like too long. He had to figure out what she meant. He’d done a lot of thinking on his way back from killing Aran Linvail and had come to some conclusions.

“You know where I need to go,” he told her, “don’t you?”

“You killed him in his house?” she asked, her voice tight.

He stood slowly, his knees stiff, and went to the stairs. He looked back at her once, his eyes heavy, clouded, somehow dull, then he went up the stairs and reached around for a burlap sack soaked in blood. From the top of the stairs he threw the sack at Bodhi’s feet. When Aran Linvail’s severed head rolled out of it, Bodhi took a deep breath and tried not to smile.

“I don’t need to kill someone else for the other twenty thousand, do I?” he asked.

“Do you know the madhouse?” she asked him.

Abdel tipped his head to one side like a dog. It was an odd question.

“Madhouse?” he asked, coming down the stairs to face her, avoiding the blood as he walked.

She turned to look at him, and in the dwindling lamplight, he thought she might have blushed.

“She’s being held there,” she said. “They’re both being held at Spellhold. It’s a madhouse … an asylum for the insane.”

Abdel sighed. His head was beginning to clear, and he was just so tired. His mind was a confusion of a million emotions and thoughts that made no sense to him. He knew he was being manipulated by this woman and her friend Gaelan Bayle. He knew he was being targeted by the Shadow Thieves for something Sarevok did—ridiculous enough. He knew somehow a young girl from his past—a past that seemed so distant it was like another life all together—was caught up in all of it. He didn’t care anymore whom he had to kill, who wanted how much gold, or what had to happen. The only thing that made sense to him was finding Jaheira and Imoen and making them safe again. So they were in a madhouse, a prison, a dungeon, wherever. He knew there would be more strings attached to anything else Bodhi told him, but those were strings he’d have to cut once Jaheira and Imoen were safe.