It had to be her. Rone prayed she’d been right about Kazen’s men.
“It’s all right, Sandis,” he prompted her. “They won’t shoot you.”
She glanced back at him.
“Now, Sandis,” Kazen snapped.
Understanding flashed across her eyes.
Inside his wet trouser pocket, Rone grabbed his amarinth.
Sandis bolted to the right.
“Stop her!” Kazen launched after Sandis and jerked the blonde girl with him.
Rone spun the amarinth and chucked it into the shadows, out of sight.
He ran straight into the grafters.
He landed a fist across one face and a kick into a stomach before two bullets rammed into him almost simultaneously—one in his kidney, the other in his heart. He felt only mild pressure as they dug into him and then, slowly, began to retreat from his skin.
A loud creak sounded to his right, and hot steam engulfed him and the men Kazen had left behind.
Men screamed. Steam clouded his vision. Rone’s skin tingled pleasantly as the scalding water sprayed over it.
A glimmer of gold sparkled near the valve. Pushing away from the grafters, he grabbed the amarinth by a single loop, so its spinning wouldn’t fight his grip, and bolted toward the factory. He wouldn’t be able to stop the other loops from spinning—it was always one minute, all at once, or nothing.
Kazen, the blonde girl, and another lackey ran down the street, fast in pursuit of Sandis.
“If Kazen touches me, he’ll control me.”
What the hell had she meant by that?
Rone growled and ran, but not before he picked up one of the grafters’ fallen pistols. He shook the thing next to his ear. A few more shots, at least. He wasn’t an arms man, but he pointed the thing forward and shot anyway.
He missed, but the threat of gunfire sent Kazen’s flunky hurtling down an alley. Sandis darted hard to the left, Kazen and the girl following after her. Or rather, Kazen dragged the girl by her hair. They disappeared around the building.
Moments later, a loud, birdlike shriek pulsed through the neighborhood like the snap of a whip. For a moment Rone slowed, his heartbeat pounding in his neck.
But he didn’t have time to sort it out, especially if any of the other grafters had survived. They’d be on his tail any second now if they had. Rone took an early left instead of trailing Kazen, hoping the roads would connect. He didn’t have time to climb to the rooftops.
His amarinth would stop spinning any moment now.
He knocked over a garbage bin as he ran and jumped a short fence, landing in a puddle of sludgy rainwater. The passageway stretched into the distance, but he took his first right— Sandis slammed into him, nearly knocking him over. The pistol ripped from his hands and slid somewhere into the shadows.
“Hell, San—”
“Go, go!” she cried. “If he touches me—”
That shriek sounded again, louder, chilling his blood. He looked past Sandis, down the dark road— At the woman hovering above it.
For half a second, Rone was sure it was a trick of the shadows, but she levitated even as she flew toward them on a single crooked wing. Black hair cascaded over her shoulders and bare chest, and her hands, clawed like a falcon’s feet, reached toward them.
Black ashes and hellfire.
He’d never seen one before in real life, but he’d heard enough scriptural condemnation and bedtime stories to piece together what it was.
A numen.
Rone’s skin seized as though he’d touched a hot stove. He turned and bolted down that long passageway after all. Sandis followed him, too slowly. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her, urging speed into her legs.
“What the hell?”
“Run!” Sandis cried. “Run!”
He did, as fast as his legs would take him. Over a garbage bin and a wall built too short. The landing shocked his ankles, especially when Sandis practically fell on top of him. He bolted forward, dragging her with him. Took a corner, then another. That she-beast cried out again, but it sounded farther away.
“How will,” he panted, “Kazen . . . control you . . . if he . . .”
“Not me, Ireth!” she sputtered. “And then he’ll kill you!”
A sharp pain exploded in his lower-left side. Rone stumbled, slamming his shoulder into a sludge-slick wall. Sandis urged him forward, and he forced his legs to keep sprinting.
He knew this tearing, hot feeling. He hadn’t even heard the gun. Curses flooded his mind as he struggled to focus on the path ahead and pocketed the immobile amarinth.
Lamplight gleamed off puddles at the next intersection—he and Sandis rushed toward it. A main street; it’d be harder for the grafters to chase them there, where there were more people out and about. A large chance of scarlets and people milling about as they made their way to and from night shifts. Surely this Kazen guy wouldn’t follow them into the open, where he and his highly illegal numen would be seen. If any scarlets were nearby, the grafters would be shot the moment their identity was known. Didn’t matter whose pockets Kazen had lined—the powers that be wouldn’t stand for such an open display of lawlessness.
Forget the law. They’d shoot them out of pure fear.
They reached the road. Rone turned toward the brightest lights, still running, gritting his teeth against the radiating agony above his hip. Was his pace slowing, or was Sandis’s? Either way, they couldn’t afford it. If the grafters caught up to them, he didn’t have any defense short of his own fists.
He looked around. Startled a horse tied outside a noisy tavern. He knew this place. His old teacher lived not far from here. Surely Rone and Sandis could find refuge there, and perhaps some extra help.
“This way.” He jerked Sandis to the left. She stumbled; he stumbled.
People were approaching to his right. He shoved Sandis down an alleyway, behind a garbage bin, and crouched beside her. Tried to slow his breathing, but his lungs pumped desperately for air. He leaned on his right leg, trying to take pressure off his left side. His damp clothes made him shiver. Everything was cold except for the warmth dripping into his waistband.
The men passed, talking low. Gold earrings dangled from their lobes. Just the mafia.
Just the mafia? God’s tower, what had he gotten himself in— He paused. Looked at Sandis, who had both hands pressed over her mouth to stifle her breathing. Until now, he hadn’t had a spare second to register any of it. The girl. The one-winged woman above the alleyway. The number of grafters.
He’ll control me.
Not me, Ireth.
Then he’ll kill you.
Lectures from his father spun through his mind. The occult. The Noscon records. Her unwillingness to take off her coat or reveal her back. The fact that they wouldn’t shoot her.
The name Ireth.
Rone fell onto his backside and stared, his fingers cold, his lungs suddenly void of the air they craved.
“You’re a vessel.”
Cold lanced his skin as the words left his mouth. Sandis dropped her hands from her face, her eyes round as marbles.
Holy hell in the pits of despair. No wonder the grafters wanted to kill him.
He was protecting one of the most powerful blasphemies in existence.
Chapter 10
Rone’s stare was as relentless as it was hard to read. Shock, yes, but Sandis couldn’t detect any disgust or awe. Just pure, simple surprise.
Another gunshot went off. Sandis winced. But no—that had been elsewhere, in the distance behind them. Not the grafters. Some other brawl involving neither them nor the scarlets. She couldn’t hear Isepia anymore, either. Had Alys been hurt? Distracted? Dismissed? To summon her so quickly . . . Kazen must have bound Alys sometime after Sandis left. Maybe Heath had been right, and that would protect her from Kazen’s experiments. Sandis prayed it did.
And now Rone knew the truth.
Her stomach squirmed.
Rone finally tore his eyes from her. “We need . . . we need to go.” He leaned against the brick wall next to them to stand, then winced, breath hissing through his clenched teeth. Sandis stood and grabbed his elbow.
His left side was dark and warm.