“I see. A husband, then. He was hurt. My sympathies. I hope he recovers.” The man nodded gravely. “But he doesn’t interest me as much as the two who brought him. One of them was Cerise Mar. I’d like to learn about her companion. I want to know everything about this other person. Looks. Age. Accent. Anything that you might find helpful to contribute.”
He smiled at her, a bright dazzling smile. “If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll depart and let you get back to your cooking. That stock smells divine, by the way. So what do you say?”
He fixed Clara with his stare, and she hesitated, suddenly panicky, like a bird caught in a glass cage. The menace radiating from him was so strong that deep inside she cringed and tried to shield the gaping hole that sucked at the bottom of her belly.
“It’s an honest offer.” He leaned forward. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll vanish.” He weaved his long fingers through the air. “Like a ghost. An unpleasant but harmless memory that will fade with time.”
His stare offered reassurance like a crutch, and Clara realized that he wasn’t bluffing. He wouldn’t harm her if she told him what he wanted to know. She felt the need to please him. It would be so easy . . .
But he had hurt Urow. The thought sliced through her hesitation. He or someone who worked for him almost took her husband away from her. He would take her children if she let him.
“I’m afraid that I’m rather pressed for time,” he said.
Clara took a deep breath and threw the cleaver at him. As he caught the wide spinning blade by the handle, she swiped at the stock pot off the stove and hurled it at him.
The boiling stock splashed over the man in a wide shower. She dashed away through the doorway, leading him away from the baby, away from Urow.
An animal snarl of pure rage whipped her into a frenzy. She scrambled through the familiar cluttered rooms, through the den to Ry’s room, to the window. Her fingers grasped the windowsill and she pulled herself up.
A steel hand clasped Clara’s leg and jerked her down with impossible force. She screamed as the back of her head hit the floor. He jerked her ankle up, nearly lifting her body with one hand. His eyes burned her with deranged fury. Somewhere deep inside a small part of her refused to accept what was happening, stubbornly chanting, It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real . . .
The heel of his left hand hit her knee. Her ears caught the sharp snap of the broken bone. In the first second she felt nothing. And then the pain ripped from her knee through her femur into her hip, as if someone poured molten lead into her leg bone. Clara screamed, clawing at the air.
“Hurts, doesn’t it,” he snarled.
She barely heard him, trying to roll, trying to draw her ruined leg to her. Oh, Gods, it hurts so much, it hurts, oh, Gods. Help me!
He wrenched her ankle higher. She saw the cleaver in his hand and shook, her eyes opened wide and frozen with shock. No. No, you can’t do this to me. No.
The cleaver fell in a shining metal arc. Ice bit her, and then he was holding the bloody stump of her leg, her foot still in the brown shoe. He tossed it aside as if it was a log. It hit the wall and bounced, leaving a bloody smudge.
Blood fountained from the stump in a crimson spray. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe. All sound fled the world and time slowed to a terrible crawl. She saw the man’s lips move, and then he twisted, shockingly fast to her underwater-sluggish eyes. He leaped up over her, and through the window. Glass fragments showered her like a glittering rain, falling, falling . . .
Urow’s face swung into view, his fangs bared, eyes burning with mad rage. She saw him drop the enormous crossbow. He had been meaning to mount the thing up on the roof for ages. It was too heavy for him to wield. How silly.
His eyes met hers. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear him. He looked so scared, like a lost child. Don’t be frightened, darling. Don’t be.
She could feel the darkness encroaching, ready to pounce on her. She tried to reach out to him, to touch his face, but her arm wouldn’t obey.
I think I’m dying.
I love you.
SEVENTEEN
CERISE slumped in a chair, painfully aware of William waiting next to her like a dark shadow. He didn’t seem to want anything, he just . . . stood guard over her. It was absurd—she was in the family house—but for some odd reason it made her feel better.
Across from her, Richard leaned against the wall, watching William with sharp eyes. The rest of the family mulled about. People came and went. Cerise didn’t pay much attention to them.
“How strong are you, William?” Richard asked.
“As strong as I need to be,” William answered.
Richard’s face showed very little, but she had been reading his expressions since they were kids and she found concern in the minute bend of his mouth. Something about William deeply troubled her cousin.
The door swung open, and Ignata stepped out, wiping her hands with a towel. Cerise rose from her chair.
“Mikita has two broken ribs,” Ignata announced.
“What about Aunt Pete?” Erian asked.
Ignata squared her shoulders, and Cerise knew it was bad. “Mom lost her left eye.”
The words punched her. Cerise rocked back. She should’ve dumped the damn body into the river. First Urow, now Mikita and Aunt Pete. Urow and Mikita would recover, but eyes didn’t grow back. She’d managed to disfigure her aunt for life.
Ignata pulled at the towel, twisting it. “We aren’t out of the woods yet. The cadaver was full of tiny worms. When the body exploded, both of them were showered with bone shards and decomposing tissue. The worms are circulating through their bloodstream. So far all of them seem to be dead, but I don’t know if that will persist.”
“Transparent worms?” William had a look of intense concentration on his face, as if trying to remember something.
“Yes,” Ignata said.
“The parasites will activate only when the temperature of the body drops below 88.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Do you know how to purge malaria?”
Ignata nodded. “And we have Chloroquine.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a type of medicine people in the Broken use to stop malaria.”
“Give it to them,” William said.
Ignata pursed her lips. Her gaze found Cerise.