Chimes at Midnight

We abandoned pretensions of stealth as we hurried down the hall. We were leaving four fallen guards and a blood trail behind us. All we had on our side was speed, and so we were using it as best we could. Which . . . wasn’t all that good, considering our respective situations. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when we turned another corner and found six guards standing in front of a pair of double doors, obviously waiting for us.

“Aw, they want to win,” said Dianda, and broke into a run, launching herself at the startled guards at the last minute. Her body seemed to glitter in midair as her legs elongated into a muscular, scale-covered tail, and she slammed into the first three men like a battering ram, her momentum and increased weight bringing them all crashing to the ground. Still on top of the first three men, she slammed her tail into a fourth, sending him into the nearby wall.

“Get in here!” she roared.

I got.

Playing nice was no longer an option: I was weak from blood loss and withdrawal, and I wasn’t sure Dianda would be able to shift back into her bipedal form, which meant she might be a fish out of water for the rest of the fight. I kneed one guard solidly in the nuts. He crumpled, and I hit him on the back of the neck for good measure. Dianda, meanwhile, was simply hitting her four with her tail over and over again, looking entirely too gleeful about the situation.

“She really did just want something to hit,” I muttered, turning toward the final guard. She was clutching her spear with both hands, a terrified expression on her face. I guess she didn’t see rampaging mermaids and blood-drenched hoodlums every day. “Hi,” I said. “You look like a nice girl. Run away now, nice girl, and we’ll pretend we didn’t see you go.”

I didn’t have to tell her twice. She whirled and ran, leaving her spear to clatter to the floor. A wave of dizzy grayness washed over me. I slumped against the wall, putting a hand over the wound at my side. “Yeah,” I said faintly. “You better run.”

“October?” Dianda’s voice was very far away. “Are you all right?”

“No.” I pushed myself away from the wall and moved to try the treasury door. It was locked. The thought of trying to pick it made me tired. “I need those keys you grabbed before.”

She tossed me the key ring. It clattered to the floor at my feet, and it took me three tries to pick it up with my sticky, trembling fingers. The keyhole was large enough that I was able to eliminate half the keys before I even started testing them against the lock. The first three wouldn’t turn. The fourth turned slightly, and then stopped, refusing to go any further.

The fifth key opened the lock.

My shoulders slumped in relief as I pushed the door open, letting the keys fall into the growing puddle of blood at my feet. Dianda was saying something, but I couldn’t stop to listen. She would get up on her own. Or she wouldn’t, and we’d deal with that when I knew whether or not this was the end of the line. My feet left bloody prints as I walked into the room.

Treasure—both recognizable and strange—was piled up on all sides. Bars of gold and platinum shared space with sacks of beans and jars of feathers. I shuffled forward, trying to spot the hope chest somewhere in the mess. The smell of blood was overwhelming everything.

Blood. I fumbled the baggie full of the Luidaeg’s blood out of my pocket and managed to break the seal, spilling blood lozenges in all directions. I let them fall, focusing on the two that I had left in my hand. She knew the hope chests. They knew her.

Please, let this work without killing me, I thought, and put the lozenges into my mouth.