Blood Lies (Dark Brothers of the Light #9) (21 page)

Stygean rubbed his mittened hand across his
nose and eyes, murmuring, "I do love you, Chinisi."

Melupo 2, 1077

Chinisi stared at the note the nibari had
just passed to her, and her heart leaped, for there was a large 'S'
written over the seal. As soon as she was alone, she opened it and
found her hopes confirmed. It was from Stygean: he had changed his
mind and wanted to see her again.

"Come and ride with me, Chinisi, my heart is
full of things I want to share with you. Meet me on the east side
of the walls at noon. Make certain the adults don't catch you
riding into the forest, you know how they are."

Stygean

She glanced out her window at the position
of the sun. It was nearly noon now. She swiftly changed into riding
clothes and ran out. She talked one of the hostlers into readying
her horse and she rode quickly through a postern gate with her
cloak pulled around her face, hoping no one noticed her. She had
not gone far into the trees when she noticed another rider sitting
a short distance beyond her, his cloak pulled around his face like
hers was.

"Stygean?" She approached him.

The rider threw back his cloak. "No. It's
me."

Chinisi's cheeks flamed as she realized she
had been deceived. "Jingen! I want nothing to do with you."

"Well, I want plenty to do with you."

Chinisi turned her horse about to return to
the mansion, and something sailed over her head, startling both her
and the horse. It settled over her body. A net! She reached for her
power, only to find that it did not answer. Spellcord!

Jingen seized the bridle of her horse, tying it to
the horn of his saddle. She struggled to get loose from the net and
dismount. He bent in the saddle, grabbing her and yanking her free
of her mount. The side-saddle her aunt insisted upon gave her
little to hold on to and resist him. He threw her across his lap.
She screamed and kicked. Jingen put two fingers to her temple and
stilled her with a word. Chinisi slumped over his saddle. She could
hear, but she could not move so much as a finger.

"You'll love me when I am finished, Chinisi," Jingen
said. "You'll tell them I rescued you from Stygean. You'll think
Stygean violated you."

Chinisi went cold and angry inside. She wanted to
scream, but her throat would not work.
Never. Never, never,
never.
Yet even while she denied the possibility, she was not
certain whether he could make good on it or not. She still knew so
little of sa'necari magic despite her long talks with Stygean.

Jingen twisted his fingers in her hair to bring her
head around so their eyes could meet. "After all, you've been
opening your legs readily enough to Stygean for months now."

Chinisi shuddered inwardly.
Is that what you
think?

"I sent Stygean a note that you wanted to meet him
here, just as I sent you one from him. When he comes, I'll kill
him. You forced me to this, Chinisi."

* * * *

Stygean fanned the note in his hands, wondering what
Chinisi wanted to show him and if this might simply be another ploy
to get more attention from him by taking her riding. He decided to
ignore it and then reconsidered, since he didn't want her riding
alone when he failed to show up. Stygean tucked the note into his
shirt and set off to saddle his horse.

He arrived at the rendezvous and found no one there.
At first it irritated him. Then he noticed a few yards off a place
where the snow had been disturbed by two horses suggesting that one
had been jostling the other. The tracks led off to the east and he
followed, suspicion hardening within him. Stygean rode for an hour
before he spotted a bit of blue in the trees, the same shade
Chinisi was so fond of. He rode under the tree and snatched it off.
Dried flecks of blood sprinkled the bit of cloth. Stygean's heart
caught in his chest as he brought it to his nose to smell it and
extended his sa'necari senses through it. Chinisi. Someone had
Chinisi. He could turn around now and go back for help, hoping that
whoever or whatever had her would not kill her before they could
return, or he could go after her himself. He doubted there was much
time. So he decided to ride on. The snow had begun to fall
again.

* * * *

Jingen rode into the clearing he had prepared days
earlier and slid off his mount. Throwing Chinisi across his
shoulders, Jingen carried her to a circle on the ground. He dumped
her in the snow beside it and cleared the fresh fallen white from
within the circle. Then he settled Chinisi in the middle. He
quickly fastened her wrists and ankles to the pegs he had driven
into the earth.

He returned to the place where they had entered the
glade. There Jingen anchored a line of dark magic like an arcane
trip wire and drew it across the ground, binding the other end to a
rock on the edge of a jutting stone shelf where the ground
descended steeply into a thicket of hemlocks. He regarded his
tracks and retrieved a pine bough that lay near Chinisi. Snow began
to fall around him in little flurries as he erased all but one set
of tracks with sweeps of the bough: the tracks that led straight to
Chinisi. He walked back to her, putting his feet in each of his own
tracks.

Jingen's lips curled in a pleased sneer as he stared
down at her. His necromantic senses could taste her delicious fear,
and it made him eager for more of it. He drew his belt knife and
slashed open her riding habit, shoving his hand inside to fondle
her breasts. They were firm and sweet. He would enjoy this.
Slashing open her split skirt at the crotch, he fingered her slit.
The widening of her eyes in alarm betrayed the fact that his spell
was loosening. Jingen did not want her crying a warning to Stygean,
although he would like to have heard her scream when he entered
her: it would be the closest thing to the exhilaration of the rite
of mortgiefan that he was likely to get until he was ready to
desert Isranon's company. Still, he could release his spell once
Stygean had been dealt with. So Jingen stroked her throat and
renewed his hold. He ripped a piece of her skirt free, crumpled it
up, and put a rock on top of it to keep it from blowing away in the
breeze. He laid down on top of her and dry humped her for several
minutes before reaching inside his pants to bring his member
out.

The sound of hoof beats nearby made Jingen look up.
"Later. Stygean first."

Chinisi watched Jingen leap from rock to rock and
fade into the trees without leaving a trace to show where he was.
Her throat tightened, her tongue felt thick and stuck to the top of
her mouth. There was no way for her to warn Stygean as she saw him
ride into view.

* * * *

Stygean saw a place where the ground had been
cleared of snow and a small form staked out in the middle of
it.

Mortgiefan?

His heart seized painfully in his chest until he saw
her move. Then he scanned the tiny glade for signs of Jingen,
certain that his rival was there. He swung his leg over to dismount
and felt the crackling of black energy rise up around him. He had
ridden into a spell trap and triggered it. His horse screamed,
reared and bolted. One foot caught in the stirrup, Stygean was
thrown and dragged. Desperately, he tried to draw his sword, but
the bumping kept jostling his hand. He managed to curl his body a
bit to protect his head and brought the blade free. He slashed the
stirrup away and tumbled across the ground, losing his grip on his
sword.

A heavy weight landed in the middle of his back
sending Stygean face down in the rock sprinkled snow. Before he
could rise, Jingen's hands clapped the sides of Stygean's head with
a surge of power, stunning him. Stygean tried to turn over.
Jingen's blade flashed, its ruby and crimson hilt catching the
light for an instant before it descended, plunging the jagged
obsidian blade into Stygean's back.

Stygean jerked and stiffened, gasping for air as
pain drove the breath from his lungs. "Oh gods…"

"I said I'd kill you."

Stygean tried to push himself up onto his knees and
throw Jingen off him.

Jingen grabbed Stygean's hair, twisting his head
around to control him, and plunged the blade into Stygean twice
more in quick succession.

Stygean screamed each time the blade entered him. He
shuddered; his shoulders sagged, and his eyes closed. Jingen
released his head, which fell forward as his body went limp,
settling into the snow face down where he lay unmoving. Laughing,
Jingen turned Stygean's head to the side to expose the artery in
his neck.

"Let's see how you like it, asshole."

Jingen's fangs lengthened, and he sank them into the
artery behind Stygean's ear to get as much of the blood as he could
while it was still warm.

* * * *

Chinisi watched Jingen straddling Stygean near the
rocks. Her heart had caught in her chest when she saw the blade
descend and then rise again, stained with Stygean's blood. From the
angle of Jingen's head, she had a sick feeling that he was
feeding.

"Oh gods, Stygean, don't be dead," she murmured
desperately. Deep down inside herself, Chinisi feared him
slain.

Battle-trained, but as yet unblooded, Chinisi calmed
herself and reached for her center. With a couple of deep breaths,
she was focused and studied her situation. The spells had faded
while Jingen fought Stygean. She tested the stakes holding her
spread-eagled. Jingen had been in a hurry to position her before
Stygean could overtake them, and one of them was slightly loose in
the cold earth. Chinisi bent her wrist, grasped it and pulled. It
moved. She wiggled it around and around, working it up and out of
the ground. Had Jingen been more prepared or an older, more
experienced sa'necari, he would have done this better, and she
thanked her stars for his impatient carelessness.

She rolled half onto her side and pulled at another
stake. It didn't give, so she worked the rope up it, and then over
the top. Both her wrists were free. Chinisi glanced back. Jingen
was still bent over Stygean, his face pressed into Stygean's neck.
It sickened her, but she had to keep moving and not think about it.
She worked the ropes off the stakes holding her ankles and stood
up. Chinisi swiftly examined the spellcord and saw that while they
had not been sealed, they had been tied firmly and she could not
get them off her wrists to free her magic.

Chinisi knelt and gathered rocks, filling one arm
with them held close to her body.

Jingen had not yet noticed her, for his back was
toward her. He rose and walked backward, bent low as he dragged
Stygean by the heels toward the place where he had left Chinisi.
Jingen let Stygean fall and straddled him again.

Chinisi screamed and threw her first rock. It struck
Jingen in the head, and she followed it with another that caught
him between the shoulders.

He spun to his feet and faced her empty-handed.
Chinisi saw that he had left the blade in Stygean's body. Stygean's
blood smeared his face and lips. "Got loose did you? I'll fix
that."

Jingen ran toward her, a spell forming on his lips
and in a gesture of his hands. Her power was blocked, but not her
mage sight. She could see the patterns in the air. She pelted him
and ran into the trees. A glance at her feet told her that she was
leaving easy tracks to follow, and she debated continuing like this
to draw him away from Stygean, on the chance that Stygean might
still be alive, or trying to leave no tracks at all. Chinisi ran
along in the snow, grateful that it was shallow in most spots, so
she did not find herself stumbling through drifts of it.

When Chinisi had left enough tracks, she doubled
back by placing her feet firmly in the ones she had already left
and leaped onto a rock. She left no traces on the hard surface and
jumped from one to another until she ran out of them.

He had to give up chasing her eventually. Anksha
would go looking for the boys after dark the way she always
did.

Chinisi kept to the rocks and drifts of fallen pine
needles, the areas that would not leave prints. She spied a large
tree that appeared to have a crack along its side. Chinisi stopped
and peered into it. The tree was more than half hollowed out, with
more than enough space for her to squeeze into the large trunk.
Carefully she picked up a small pine branch and dusted away her
tracks, leaving a second set leading in the opposite direction.
Then she backed up in her tracks and returned to the hollow tree,
using her branch to remove traces of her passing.

She waited there for what seemed like hours with her
heart pounding horribly. The sound of horses brought her to peek
through the opening in the tree. Jingen rode past her, leading all
of their horses.

* * * *

Jingen noticed the angle of the sun over the
treetops. He had been gone hours longer than he had meant to be;
the longer he was gone, the greater the chance that his absence
would be discovered; then Anksha or Nevin would be sent to look for
him. Worse, Anksha made regular rounds in the late afternoon – the
Beast was suspicious of them.

Jingen gave up chasing Chinisi. With her
powers blocked, exposure would kill her by morning. It was a shame
to waste her after wanting her so long. At least, no one else would
ever have her.

Stygean was a different matter. Jingen
needed to see if his rival still lived. Blood loss, the blade's
magic and exposure would kill Stygean by morning – however, Jingen
did not want to risk anyone finding the body with the blade in
Stygean's back. Done right, anyone who found the bodies would think
that Chinisi had done for Stygean in self-defense – assuming they
found them. Jingen returned to the glade, and a small groan
informed him that Stygean lived. He knelt beside him, pulled the
blade out and rolled him over.