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Lazarus’s gaze narrowed, and if Aidan had thought the man’s eyes black, he now saw he’d been mistaken. They glowed with a hell-born, inhuman light. Death reflected back on his victim a thousand times. “I have a million years, Kilronan. You don’t.”
The neat sweep of the blade had been meant to sever Aidan’s head from his neck. But Lazarus hadn’t counted on Aidan’s bad leg buckling beneath him. Dropping him to the floor. The sword’s keen edge whistling over him. Sweeping the table clean in a crash of china.
With the instincts of the survivor, Aidan twisted and jinked, using the close confines of the kitchen to dodge the follow-up attack. Lazarus’s frustrated curses sounding like t
he fevered screams of a million lost souls.
Rolling to his feet, Aidan blindly grabbed anything and everything that came to hand. Pots, pans, trivets, and utensils. They bounced off the man’s chest. Clattered across the floor in a silver shower of cookware. Less a threat than an irritation.
Aidan found himself backed against a shelf. Reaching behind him, his hand found the knife box. Gripped a handle. Turned and threw. Again and again. Paring. Chopping. Cleaver. The smaller knives did little more than nick Lazarus’s war-toughened hide. A boning knife bit into his arm. Another sliced him a wicked wound across his thigh. He never faltered. Beyond pain. Beyond fear.
Aidan risked a glance, but the knife box was empty. He’d run out of arsenal.
Lazarus’s mouth gaped in a sadistic smile. “And now the diary.”
“Get away from him!”
The crack of a gunshot shivered the smoke-blackened air. Felled the man with spine-shattering accuracy. His sword clanged and spun across the bricks, coming up against Aidan’s boot.
Aidan reached down, his fingers fisting around the pommel. Falling into the worn ridges as if he’d been born to it. Leveraged himself up against the grinding of screaming tendons.
“I told you, Cat,” he growled, “to get out. You—” Stopped himself with a disgusted snort. Was he really going to argue with her over saving his life? Again? This was getting to be a habit with her.
Cat lowered the pistol, her gaze riveted to the body. Her face wore a blank sheen of terror, but her eyes gleamed with a ruthless ferocity. He’d caught that look in cornered animals. Convicted felons. Those pushed dangerously close to the edge.
“I came across the gun in your desk a few days ago.” Her voice came hollow of emotion. Weak and fluttery. “I wasn’t sure it was loaded.”
Aidan pulled it from her lax fingers. Tossed it on the worktable. “I put it there on a hunch.” Nudging the body with the toe of his boot, he swallowed against an instant gag reflex. “One that proved correct.”
As if pulling herself back from the brink, Cat took a deep cleansing breath. Her shoulders squaring. Her face losing that pasty, vacant expression. “He came for the diary, didn’t he?”
Aidan didn’t answer. Instead, he knelt. Rolled the man over onto his back, searching his pockets. Who was he? For that matter, what was he?
He looked human enough. More so now without the ghoulish flame flickering behind those empty black eyes. But for a moment, he’d sensed a difference about the assassin moving beyond mere Other sorcery. A savagery born at the witching hour when monsters stir. Death undone, the man had claimed.
Blood pooled beneath the body. Spread in a growing morbid circle.
Well, Annwn may have spat him back once, but Cat’s crack shot had returned him to the underworld.
Nothing came of Aidan’s search but a ticket booked on tomorrow’s packet for Wales. Not a local then. He’d been imported for the job.
Aidan pocketed the ticket before straightening.
Cat stood hunched and forlorn at his side. He led her out of the kitchen. Nudged her unresisting body toward the warmth of the library fire. Made it as far as the hall when the same arctic blast that had preceded the first attack shivered along his flesh. Bit through muscles. Sank bone-crushing fangs into the well of his powers until he cried out against the ice cold agony. Swung around to face once more an undead and unkillable killer.
“You’re wasting time, Kilronan. The diary. Now.”
The man’s voice fell like lead into the silence that had descended over the house. A horrible, enveloping silence holding an echo of the grave.
But how? She’d killed him. She knew she had. She’d heard the shot. Watched the corpse crumple to the floor. Seen the sticky, red blood crawl over the bricks.
Aidan’s grip crushed Cat’s shoulder, his body sagging against her as the mage energy tore through him, the overspill burying itself like needles in her brain.
The appropriated sword dropped to the marble floor. Followed by Aidan. Hatred edged his expression. Glittered with animal intensity in his eyes.
The man stepped forward. “Don’t make me harm your lady.”
His gaze swung to her, the triangulating stare enough to steal her breath. Hold her captive. Motionless but for the frenzied rise and fall of her chest.
