Page 107 of Mistress of Bones
Sergado tilted his head, a satisfied edge to his smile. “Yes, you are very much like me, aren’t you?”
Virel Enjul had been wrong, she realized. Her brother had knownshe was to blame for the demise of his men, and had guessed how she did it, judging by his victims’ gloves and long sleeves.
“So let us talk, Sister,” Sergado continued. “I will not harm you—you have my word.”
Azul dug under her waistcoat and brought out her bone-hilted dagger. “No.”
Sergado ignored her rejection. “I knew from the first time we met, when you were nothing but a child—how stubborn you were then, how stubborn you are now. I should have dragged you back home, as was my right and duty as your older brother. I was too busy with my own self, and I must ask forgiveness for that. But I won’t fail you again. We will talk, and we will see about your sister, since you wish it so much. That sort of urge, I can understand. Are we not alike in every other way?”
One of Sergado’s men advanced on her. Azul slapped his hand away and crossed his chest with her dagger, forcing him back. “No.”
She heard swords clanking behind her. Sergado wouldn’t be concerned with Sombra’s well-being, but she couldn’t afford to check.
Azul grabbed the man in front of her by his shirt and pivoted her body to send him stumbling to the wall. She was on him the next instant, pushing him to the floor and thrusting Nereida’s dagger deep into his gut. It wasn’t enough to stop him—back in the ossuary, she had seen how mortal wounds mattered little to these living corpses—and the man’s strong hands clamped on her forearms. She pushed the blade deeper until the hilt reached the skin, slipped her fingers through the tear in the shirt, and touched flesh.
The stench of putrefaction filled her nostrils, invaded her throat. A shout came from the stairs. A body thudded against the floor by her side. Sombra, giving her more time.
Azul tightened her hold on the bone hilt and opened the Eye of Death.
Power coursed eagerly along her arm all the way to the dagger. It sucked greedily at the bone, drank from the man slumped against the wall, and demanded its cut of Azul’s soul, which she gave up willingly.
The bone reshaped itself, and then demanded more, going afterthe wooden column behind the man. The house groaned; the plaster and paint on the wall crumbled.
Muscle re-formed in the blink of an eye. Azul snatched her hands back and scrambled to her feet as fur crept over flesh and a gray catlike creature stood as tall as her chest. Fangs protruded from its mouth, big black eyes opened, and muscles strained under its hide, ready to strike.
She let it go.
The beast ripped into the living corpses, shredding their limbs to butchers’ meat. Sombra handed her a new dagger. She plunged it into the back of a man about to stab the big cat. The man’s body jerked, his weapon still firmly in hand. Azul felt for the neckline of his shirt and touched his neck with her knuckles. The man dropped instantly.
The huge cat sank its teeth into someone else. Azul kept her back against the creature’s side, protecting its flank. She saw a man with a raised pistol, waiting.
Her brother was shouting something. Was it “Enough, enough”? Sergado’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed. “Enough! Or it’s his death.”
Her brother’s words finally made it through the maelstrom of her thoughts. Panting, Azul glanced at the corpses surrounding them to find Sombra with a dagger to his neck. Azul’s stomach clenched. Even with his life in danger, Sombra’s countenance remained unperturbed, as if he were enjoying the situation. The beast stopped attacking Sergado’s men and backed against Azul, warm and alive and growling.
Why hadn’t her brother left? Did he have so much faith in his men? More than half littered the floor. If he tried to keep her and Sombra here, the rest would soon join them.
But Sergado knew her well, hadn’t he said so? And she would not risk a friend’s life. But then… would it really be such a risk when she could just touch one of Sombra’s bones after she was done felling everyone else?
The big cat shifted suddenly, but the warning came too late. A powerful hand gripped her arm and spun her around. Azul cried out in pain, barely keeping the cat from mauling the new threat.
Because Virel Enjul stood in front of her.
The world went still.
You survived!she wanted to say, but her voice failed her. Those harsh features, the wide violet rings, the golden irises, the unfocused black pupils. Hehadsurvived. The Lord Death’s touch had reached Cienpuentes, after all. He had struck some kind of deal with Sergado.
A loud growl broke through the sudden silence, not from the animal, but from Sombra. He didn’t strain against his captors, but his mouth had twisted into a feral snarl. Over Enjul’s strange change of heart?
No, she realized in horror. Of course not.
“Why?” she cried out, despair filling her as she admitted what stood in front of her: the skin, lacking the life it ought to have; the eyes, flat like simple round stones. “Why him?”
One of her brother’s dolls.
Sergado’s heels echoed against the steps as he descended the staircase and stopped well outside the cat’s reach. “Azul,” he gushed, motioning to the creature. “Sister! This is beyond any of my dreams! Why did you not tell me you had this gift?”
“Why him?” she shouted.
