Turning my back to his to protect our flanks, I prepared to fend off some monsters of my own. God knew there were plenty left. But strangely enough, they didn't seem to want to cooperate. Concentrating on Niko and Robin, they either ignored me or skipped out of my reach. After an entire lifetime of being watched and then pursued, now that I was actually caught the Grendels seemed oddly uninterested. Growling with frustration, I lunged at the nearest one, slicing it across the rib cage to spill blood. It hissed with pain and outrage and started to swing jagged claws at my throat. Bare inches away from my skin, it stopped, its hand hovering in the air with fingers flexing. Then it smiled and grated, "Not so easy for you, brother. Never so easy for you."
Not disinterested, then. They didn't want to hurt me, simple as that. After all, they had plans for me, didn't they? And whatever those involved, it was apparently better for them that I was in one piece. Better for them, but no way in hell it could be better for me. Being dead was an option; going back with the Grendels was not. If they wouldn't fight me, fine. I didn't have a problem taking the fight to them. I lunged at the bleeding one, intent on slicing the smug son of a bitch in half. Niko was still on his feet with one hand clutching the throat of a Grendel as he buried his sword in its belly. Robin was holding his own as well, although he had a streak of blood on his face and one on his neck. The odds were bad; shit, they were goddamn awful. Still, I wasn't about to give up. I would live here or I would die here, but with Nik and Goodfellow at my side, the odds might just take a beating. The Grendels were tough, a force to be reckoned with. So were we. We had a chance. It wasn't much of one, but I'd take any port in a storm, any straw I could grasp.
Then that straw slipped through my fingers as what I thought was the least of my problems suddenly turned out to be by far the worst. Alice came loping along the wall. It was on all fours and moving with the speed and intensity of a greyhound. The big bad wolf was done playing and ready to get down to business. It was just my bad luck that its business seemed to be me.
I did try to get away. I'd been in enough fights not to freeze and I'd seen shit a damn sight scarier-looking than Alice. The trouble was that even though my brain agreed with all that, every other part of me was screaming a warning. It made my attempt to dive to one side seem impossibly slow, as if I were a fly trapped in amber. I heard Nik shout my name and heard Robin say a word I didn't recognize, and all the letters crept snail slow into my ears.
Then Alice hit me and all wondering stopped.
"Little piggy." A tongue touched my jaw again as gently as that of a mother nuzzling her newborn.
The body slam had knocked me over our recliner. I lay stunned in its splintered ruins with Alice crouched on my chest. The sword had flown far from my hand as my breath had been knocked painfully from my lungs.
With pale eyes staring into mine, I struggled to breathe and I struggled to say one word. "No." I didn't even know what I was saying no to. But I did know Alice wasn't looking to do me any favors. The weight on my chest, the trail of saliva on my face, the eyes as hypnotic and consuming as a cobra's—it was all wrong. Wrong in the way murder is wrong, wrong in the way torture is wrong, wrong in every way there is to be wrong. "No," I repeated, my voice brittle as glass. "No, you son of a bitch. No."
Talon-tipped fingers cupped my chin, holding my head still. "Don't worry, Caliban. You don't have to open the door," it soothed before giving me a smile brilliant with triumph and vicious with glee. "After all, no lock has ever kept me out."
Alice was right. My locks held less than a second before it helped itself and moved on in. I tried to fight. God, I fought like ever-living hell. Every inner touch, every one of its fingerprints on my brain, burned like acid. It shredded the walls of my soul like tissue paper, tore aside my willpower like the filmiest of curtains. As it clawed its way to my very center, I couldn't tell anymore where it began and I ended. It poured into me like a river into the sea, mixing, melding, until we were one. One. For better or worse.
Until death do us part.
Suddenly I saw the world in a whole new light… and it was goooood. Sitting up, I held my hands in front of my face and wiggled my fingers. Warm-blooded. It was a weird feeling, at once odd and familiar. Looking a little farther down, I took in the result of that warm blood mixed with adrenaline and grinned. "Humans. Gotta love the horny little bastards." Rising, I pulled at my sweatshirt, snorting in disgust at the faded material.
"You have got to be kidding." Well, there was time enough for that later. After all, world domination came with a schedule and if I didn't get my ass in gear, I'd throw the Auphe off before they even got started. Couldn't have that. The customer's always right and all that bullshit.
Niko was still yelling my name, although now he was held back by seven of the Auphe. Goodfellow stood alone. What he knew, what he saw before him, held him just as solidly as the Auphe held Nik. His blade hung slack in his grip, the point resting on the floor. His mouth shaped a silent word. It was the same word I hadn't recognized only moments ago, but now I knew it as well as my own name. Because, hell, it was my name.
"Darkling." This time he got some air behind it so that I actually heard it.