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“Pritkin. He’ll give it to you, assuming you get the kids back safely. You can do that, right?”
“Yes.”
“And take the kitchen staff with you.” Miranda had said they’d defend a crèche with their lives. I wasn’t real keen on having her prove it.
“But…they’re Fey. Dark Fey,” Radella said, as if maybe I hadn’t noticed.
“What difference does that make? Just take them with you!” I didn’t know that the demons would attack them once the kids were gone. But I didn’t know that they wouldn’t, either. Rosier certainly seemed to have the concept of revenge down cold.
Radella was silent for a moment. Then I heard a softly spoken, lyrical sentence, almost like bells ringing. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” She sounded embarrassed. “Just…good luck, Cassie.”
I felt the rush of air as she flew past me, and Rosier smiled his ghastly smile. “A Fey blessing. So rare. And so useless, outside Faerie.” The black cloud had finished assembling minutes before and hung in the air behind Rosier, awaiting his pleasure. “I told you I’d trade you the lives of the children for your sacrifice. You should have made the deal. Now you die, and so do they.”
I was going to tell him that I preferred to trust my allies over his word. But I didn’t get the chance. The hideous, squirming mass suddenly froze, like soldiers coming to attention. Then it dove, straight at me.
Chapter 27
I screamed, too exhausted to even pretend I wasn’t terrified. The damn knights remained inert, incapable of detecting the creatures who were about to kill me. But a plume of fire, the strength of maybe a couple dozen flamethrowers, shot out of the other end of the corridor.
Maybe Casanova had installed some new security measure; I didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was effective. The cloud screamed with the sound of a hundred voices, and writhed madly in the air, a twisting, burning black mass that reminded me of the maggots working on Saleh’s headless body.
The glare of the flames glinting off the armor shed more light on the scene, although I might have been happier in the dark. Rosier dropped from the ceiling to land in the middle of the corridor with a faint plopping sound. Then something jumped me from behind, sinking what felt like a rack of small knives into my back.
I shrieked and staggered back, hitting the wall and driving the claws in that much farther. I lurched back into the room and let my gaseous knives loose, but they took one look at the larger fight going on a few yards away and deserted me. I looked around frantically, but although there were about a hundred weapons of various kinds in the knights’ hands I didn’t see any that would help dislodge something that high on my back that I couldn’t even see.
Another of the things latched on to my left arm, piercing deep enough to hit bone, while another attached itself to my right thigh. I went down to my knees, blinded by pain and shock, only to realize that the things weren’t continuing the attack. Instead, they forced me onto my back, pinning me down, waiting. I raised my head a little to look between my feet, and saw why.
Rosier was crawling my way, dragging himself forward with those spindly arms, his rudimentary legs trailing behind. His face turned unerringly toward me, despite the empty eye sockets, and over the screeching of the burning demons I could hear the soft sound of scales whispering over the floor. He looked harmless, a vague, unfinished creature with a toothless mouth and small, barely formed claws. But I so didn’t want him touching me.
He flowed bonelessly over my feet and onto my legs, long, too flexible fingers curling around my calves, my knees, my thighs as he pulled himself along the length of my body. And already I could feel a faint echo of that horrible, draining sensation. He was beginning to feed.
Despite my every muscle singing with tension, I couldn’t even turn over to try to dislodge him. My arms were pinned by the weight of his servants and my strength was steadily flowing out, what little remained of it. Curled on the floor at my sides, my hands lay still and useless.
He settled heavily onto my stomach, his little claws ripping at the seams of my skirt, pulling it apart to expose the unprotected flesh of my belly. That obscene mouth opened and I could see right inside it, right into the corpse-like hue of his gullet. He licked a clammy line across my skin. “You taste sweet.”
“Get off,” I said thickly.
He couldn’t have grinned. But he gave that impression anyway as he pinned me with that blind gaze. “Oh, I intend to.”
I felt a claw bite into my side, sinking deep. And without words, without him opening that obscene mouth again, I knew what he planned to do. He was going to slit me like he had the skirt, opening me up so he could feed on something more substantial than mere power. He planned to eat me alive.
A feeling—not quite pain, more like raw nerve endings firing on automatic—crackled upward from my stomach to my mouth. I swallowed it down, refusing to scream again. But my eyes rolled up into my head as I felt that claw start to move through my flesh.
He withdrew it for a moment, to lick daintily at his red-stained skin, letting me watch as drops of my blood ran down his arm.
One fell off his elbow onto my lower stomach, and he paused to lick it up, his tongue slick and cold against my skin. Then he inserted the claw again, and ripped me open a little wider.
He was deliberately going slowly, splitting flesh and skin a centimeter at a time, pausing every few seconds to lick the jagged edges of the wound, sending violent, sickened shudders through me. He wanted me to know that this was going to be a very long process. And I suddenly understood: he’d wanted the others to go after the kids so he could afford to take his time.
And he would have, except for the crazed djinn with the machete. “Saleh!” I was so happy to see him I cried.
“Hey, sweetheart.” He did a double take. “You look rough.” The machete swung, slicing off a rudimentary arm and knocking Rosier into the side wall, where he landed with a sickening crunch.
“It’s been one of those days,” I gasped, trying to strain my neck to see how much damage Rosier had done. It felt like a lot. It felt like too much.
“Tell me about it,” Saleh said. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had tracking this guy down.” He made another swing but missed. “Stand still, damn you!” he ordered, slashing at the demon. But the creature moved unbelievably fast, even without those skeletal legs, and dodged enough blows to keep himself in one piece.
