The Rabbit and the Raven: Book Two in the Solas Beir Trilogy (37 page)

The Daughter’s face shimmered—now she looked exactly like Abby. Abby recoiled, gasping and clamping her hand over her mouth, as if she were trying to hold in her shock
, or maybe a scream.

David feared she would let go of him and grasped her tightly against his chest. The muscles in his arms tensed and began to ache.

Abby looked up at him and seemed to recognize the strain she was putting on him. She wrapped both of her arms around his neck again, and he relaxed slightly.

The smile on the Daughter’s face was Abby’s. “We have already been richly rewarded, and care not for gold.” Then her face changed again. It was still Abby’s face, but her blue eyes turned black, soulless, not unlike those of the creatures waiting on the other side of the one-way portal. “David,” she purred seductively in Abby’s voice. “Come with me, David.”

“No,” David spat, shaking his head. “Never.”

Suddenly, one of the Daughters slammed into him from behind, knocking the breath from his lungs, blindsiding him in an attempt to pitch Abby out of his arms. The first Daughter smiled wickedly and sank her talons into Abby’s back, ripping at the fabric of her clothes, trying to tear her away from him.

Abby screamed out his name and tightened her grip around his neck, burrowing her face against his chest.

Gasping for air, David tugged Abby closer with the arm that was anchored around her waist. With his free hand, he released a ball of blue fire, forcing the Daughter with Abby’s face backward. The Daughter’s wings caught fire, incinerating in an instant. She fell into the fray below. Her sister released her hold on David’s back and rocketed down, trying to catch her.

“Seize them,” Lucia ordered the Kruorumbrae. “I would prefer prisoners, but do what you must to subdue them.”

Malden interpreted this last part very loosely. He’d subdue little Marisol all right, but her boyfriend would not get off so easy.

Malden had been riding in his Kruorumbrae form, that of a goblin boy, with a malevolent grin permanently seared on his face. The burn he had received from his last encounter with the Solas Beir had never healed. The nautilus shape of the Sign of the Throne was etched in his cheek, a blistering sore that still oozed black pus.

At his mistress’s command, he leapt from his horse, landing on all fours in the shape of a black cat, now the size of a Great Dane—one with a prehensile tail and a disturbingly human face. His comrades followed suit, pouring from their mounts like so much dark sludge, solidifying into the stuff of nightmares.

Malden could see his pretty
dulce
standing between the Reyes boy and the knight, swords held out in front of them, their backs against the solid rock base of the Eye of the Needle. They were going nowhere fast.

With the arrival of the Kruorumbrae, the Daughters of Mercy left their quarry on the sands below in favor of a coordinated attack on the Solas Beir himself. David was surrounded. The Daughters were clawing at him from all sides, steadily wrenching Abby away from him. They pinned his arms and carried her off toward the cave. He could see her real face peeking out among all those twisted renditions of it. “Abby!” he yelled, and broke free, flying after her.

Abby was kicking at them as best she could, fighting to get free. But she was so high above the ground—what would happen if she escaped their grasp? There was nowhere to go but down.

David slammed into the mass of Daughters holding her captive, and managed to pull a few of them off Abby. He could see angry red lines all over her neck and back where those terrible talons had sliced her skin, and bruises forming on her arms from being rudely yanked from his embrace. He set another Daughter on fire as he struggled to reach Abby. “Let go of her!” he shouted.

“As you wish,” one of the Daughters replied, and as one, they released their hold on Abby. She was falling so fast, and yet her eyes were locked on his—it felt as if time had stopped, as if she were frozen in midair and the ground were rushing up to meet her.

David dived for her, but he knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. Abby shuddered as if embracing her fate—and suddenly she was gone. In her place was a white raven. David’s mouth dropped open in a mixture of relief and awe. Then she was obscured from his sight as the Daughters surrounded him again. They were pinning his hands behind him, forcing him up against the rock spire.

David twisted his head to the side and caught a flash of white—Abby racing through the air with several Daughters close behind. They were herding her into the wide black mouth of their lair. One of them reached out, and for a moment, he thought the Daughter would catch Abby by the throat, but she was faster than the winged woman, and the Daughter’s talon sliced her raven wing instead. He saw Abby falter, the injury to her wing throwing her off balance, but then she recovered before being swallowed up by the cavern’s dark depths.

David managed to get a hand free and set another Daughter on fire, and then saw that one of them had turned on the others, fighting to free him.

No, wait,
he thought. It wasn’t one of the Daughters—it was Erela. She must have flown across the Barren to come to his aid.

It was a vicious fight—Erela had been cast out, and she was paying dearly for her rebellion, for daring to defy her sisters once again. Erela gave back as much as she was given, her own face a mask of fury.

Erela maneuvered behind one of her sisters. She broke the Daughter’s neck in one swift motion, and then let go. The Daughter dropped from the sky like a stone. David wasn’t surprised that Erela didn’t stop to watch—she wasn’t the sentimental type, after all.

She flew straight to David, pulling off one of his attackers and following the same, methodical protocol she’d used when disposing of her other sister.

David didn’t mind—he quite appreciated her efficiency. He set another Daughter on fire, and then another, and found that he and Erela now faced but a single Daughter. The others they’d dispatched were lying, limbs askew, on the sand below.

“This one is mine, Solas Beir,” Erela said. “You get the c’aislingaer.”

“Thank you,” David breathed, and shot up the rock wall to the Eye.

“They’re eating the horses!” Cael heard Marisol shout above the din of the battle. Over the shoulder of the Kruorumbrae he was fighting, he could see their horses collapsing and heard their primal screams over the guttural roars of the creatures that had taken them down.

“That’s just wrong,” Jon yelled, slicing through the gut of a Blood Shadow. “How are we supposed to cross the Barren now?” He punctuated each word with another hack of his sword through the creature’s thick flesh.

“Win this battle and we will take theirs!” Cael shouted, beheading one monster and spinning to run his sword through another. He was still more skilled than his students, but they had learned much. Perhaps there was a chance they would live through this.

Or perhaps not. The Kruorumbrae who had been busy devouring the horses had finished their meal and abandoned the drained equine corpses to engage Cael and his young warriors. These creatures were larger than their comrades, and they were more powerful than ever now that they’d had a little snack. Cael felt searing heat and looked down to see one of the creatures grinning wickedly as it viciously raked its cruel claws across his torso.
I stand corrected,
he thought, sinking to his knees, watching blood gush from his gaping wound.
I may not live through this after all.

“Cael!” Marisol screamed. She rammed her sword through the creature she’d been fighting and leapt over the one sprawled at Jon’s feet—it was newly dead and still twitching.

The monster that had injured Cael was standing over him, its arm raised to swipe at Cael’s head. Marisol raised her sword and brought it down smoothly. She severed the arm, relieving the beast of the need for its appendage as she sent the creature swiftly from its world into the next.

“Keep those things away from us!” Marisol shouted to Jon. “I’ve got to help him.”

Jon grunted and nodded—he was too busy fighting to answer any other way.

Three of the bolts of fabric Marisol had purchased lay propped next to the now-defunct portal. She had set them there, meaning to grab them as she slipped through. Marisol stepped over Cael and retrieved one of the bolts
. She eased Cael into a sitting position with his back against the rock wall. “Can you scoot forward a bit?” she asked, unwinding the cloth from its wooden spindle.

Cael grimaced and complied, his jaw clenched against the pain as Marisol wrapped the fabric around his waist, tightly binding his abdomen with it. She placed his hands over the wound, then pressed her own hands down on his, applying pressure to stop the flow of the blood. The blue silk turned red between their fingers. “Hold on,” she cried.

“No promises.” Cael smiled grimly. He knew he would bleed out long before the battle was finished.

“Don’t you say that,” Marisol chided him. “You’re going back to marry Eulalia—even if we are making a mess of her pretty silk.”

“She will have to forgive us,” Cael responded weakly.

That was when Malden grabbed Marisol.

Abby was flying blind. Whatever advantage her raven eyes might have had over her human ones was rendered null and void in the darkness of the Daughters’ cave. She had taken on this new form in full sunlight, and there was no time for her eyes to adjust to the complete blackness that now enveloped her. Not with the things that wore her face hot on her tail.

She twisted and wove between columns of stone, gliding over stalagmites and ducking under stalactites that seemed to appear from nowhere in the darkness. She felt them more than saw them—the way the air around her body changed as she flew close to the rock. She had been lucky so far, a few near misses, but whatever force was guiding her seemed to be keeping her from smacking into the cavern walls and out of the grasp of her evil clones.

If only
they
would collide with something solid. That would be helpful. Her injured wing was holding out, but for how long, she didn’t know. Abby had no idea where she was or where she was headed—the Daughters of Mercy had every advantage in that regard. She was in their home.

The cavern could not stretch on forever, and that was a problem. Eventually, she would run out of room to fly. She could feel a sense of the walls growing narrower, pressing in on her body. She didn’t think the sensation was a case of claustrophobia talking. She was sure what she was experiencing was real. The Daughters chasing her were funneling her into some kind of narrow passage—she would soon be trapped.

Maybe she could survive if she could find some kind of side tunnel—some hole small enough for her to squeeze into, where her pursuers couldn’t reach her. Somewhere she could hide until David had the opportunity to kill them all and get her out of here. He
would
come for her—she refused to entertain the thought that the Daughters had killed him. If he were dead, she would feel it, and what she felt was that he was very much alive.

There, ahead—there was some kind of gleam, piercing the darkness. It was a tiny circle of bright light, growing larger by the second. She hardly dared to believe it, but sure enough, there it was. There was a hole in the rock wall—the daylight shining through drew her forward on its beams. She could just fit, and the Daughters wouldn’t be able to follow.

Abby burst through the hole into the vivid blue of a cobalt sky. Then she saw the line on the horizon where the sky bled red, and her wings failed her. After that, there was only the falling.

“Stop,” Malden ordered.

Jon froze—he had managed to protect Marisol and Cael from the other Blood Shadows, but this one had evaded his sword. Jon felt a sense of despair. Of all the nasty monsters in Cai Terenmare,
why
did Malden have to be the one to get past him?

The creature had Marisol in his grasp, one long, razor-sharp claw resting against her throat. Jon could see a scarlet bead form on her skin as Malden exerted pressure. “The girl comes with me,” he purred, a smug grin on his ruined face. “We have unfinished business, don’t we,
mija
?”

The creature began to drag her across the sand, back to where Lucia stood flanked by her bodyguards. Jon saw Marisol’s eyes widen in terror, and in an instant, a number of things became crystal clear to him. Marisol had told him she had been plagued by horrible nightmares as a child. This monster was one of her bad dreams come true, her own personal Kruorumbra
e bogeyman.

Malden was obsessed with her, and he meant to take her away so he would be free to abuse her without the risk of interruption. He wouldn’t kill her. No, she would live, but some things are worse than death. Jon would die before he let that happen.

Bargaining with Malden was pointless—the creature had what he desired. Jon took his appeal straight to the top. “Lucia, please. Take me instead. You
must
have a hostage, and next to the c’aislingaer, I’m the Solas Beir’s closest confidant. The girl is nothing.”