'I must have,' Cicatrix said, her voice high and brittle with shock. 'I must have the machines with crash cart, it is being promised to to to me, I live forever!' She sounded like a mewling cat as her blood ran away across the floor. Erasmus dragged Semyon Iurevich's motionless body out of the room as Ayaan lifted Cicatrix down from the throne. She tried putting pressure on the wound but the spike had gouged out half of Cicatrix's throat. It didn't hurt that the Tsarevich had already drunk enough of her blood to leave her anemic and weak as a kitten.
'Is good life, I want more,' the scarred woman begged, but there was nothing Ayaan could do. Clearly she had been promised eternal life as a lich. Instead in a few minutes she would die and rise as a ghoul.
Ayaan looked up at the Tsarevich, who was literally foaming at the mouth with excitement. 'What do you want me to do?' she asked.
The single eye rolled in her direction but the prince of the dead said nothing.
'Damn you,' Ayaan said. Cicatrix had lost consciousness and was barely breathing. 'There's no time to make her a lich, even if I thought it should be done. I can keep her from coming back, though.'
The Tsarevich sucked on his lower lip and convulsed in his throne. Was it a nod, a shrug, or merely an involuntary spasm?
It would have to be good enough. Ayaan frowned and pulled power into her hands. She leaned forward and closed Cicatrix's eyes. In a very perverse way the living woman had been her closest friend in the camp of the liches. She kissed the shaved head and said a brief prayer for Cicatrix's salvation, begging Allah to see past the woman's decadence and her fraternization with monsters.
Then Ayaan brought up her hands and blasted Cicatrix's head until the skin and muscle and fat melted away and the skull beneath turned yellow. She kept it up until the bone scorched and steam fizzed out of Cicatrix's eye sockets.
For a long moment while she hovered over the dead woman Ayaan could think only of Dekalb. At the end of his life she had offered this same service. He had refused, and she had simply walked away. She'd always regretted that, leaving such a hero to become just another shambling, mindless wanderer. Perhaps this duty made up a little for her previous failure.
Eventually she rose to her feet and straightened her hair. She felt drained. She felt hungry and wondered if any of the goats from the farm in Pennsylvania were still available. A tang of disgust bit into the back of her throat'she had just boiled the brains of a friend, she had turned Cicatrix's eyes to running custard. She should hardly be thinking of food. Yet she was a dead thing and she knew the hunger would never stop.
'Be taking this one away,' the Tsarevich said. Ayaan looked up, startled, expecting to be accosted by handless ghouls. The Russian lich had been talking to the green phantom, however, who grabbed up Cicatrix's pink ankles in his skeletal hands. He dragged her from the room without further ceremony.
Ayaan turned to face the mummy who held the brain, then at Nilla, who just looked sad. She glanced back at the Tsarevich. 'I will take them to a safe place,' she announced. 'There could be a follow-up attack. I recommend finding a hiding place for yourself.'
It turned out the Tsarevich was capable of nodding after all.
Nilla led her small procession out of MAD-O-RAMA and up the boardwalk, the silver planks of wood echoing like drums under her boots. Before they had taken a hundred steps the brain spoke to her again.
Bollocks,he swore.I can assure you we won't get a chance like that again. We could have killed him! Slaughtered him where he sat! From now on he'll be expecting an attack. He'll take precautions, perhaps hide himself away again where no one can find him. And it's all your fault.
Ayaan looked at Nilla. The blonde lich pushed her hair out of her eyes with one pale hand but the breeze off the sea kept fluttering her locks down across her eyes.
The brain sputtered inside Ayaan's mind.Don't worry about her, she and I are friends from far back. You can speak as you please. Now tell me, lass, did you lack courage? When it came to the fatal moment, did you lose your bottle? Tell me just what in the blooming bastard hell were you thinking?
Ayaan addressed the brain directly, leaning down toward the mummy's hands to get closer. 'I was thinking I don't trust you.'