Cold Steel - Page 87/260

“We’ve got to keep moving,” I said. “We’ve got to reach the jade doors and retrieve Queen Anacaona’s head. Someone is sure to come after us.”

“We need to retrieve what?” Vai sat up as if he had finally woken out of a bad dream.

I opened my eyes. “I’ll explain later. There’s a jade door with warded ground somewhere along this exterior. We can cross there.”

We stumbled to our feet as I hoisted the pack. Vai stowed the tools and slung on the carpenter’s apron. His face was gray with exhaustion, but he trudged forward stubbornly. My entire body hurt as we staggered along the rim of the palace.

I wanted to ask Vai if he saw the white stone walls rising beside us, if he saw a plaza stretching to all sides like a sheep-mown pasture, but the effort of forming words was too great. All I could do was look ahead, hoping we would soon reach the jade door and its warded ground.

A cloud of crows swept past, flying as before a blow. Wind sheared across my back. I faltered, looking over my shoulder. A wrath of clouds boiled toward us. Lightning flashed, although no thunder sounded. Rain lashed the ground in sheets.

I had seen that storm before. I knew what it portended.

I grabbed Vai’s hand. “It’s my sire coming. We’ve got to run.”

Light flashed on the horizon ahead of us. It splintered into a smoky tide like the crests of multiple waves tumbling toward us: a dragon’s dream.

Vai’s hand tightened on mine as he sucked in a harsh breath.

We were caught between Hunt and dream, between death and obliteration.

A plain black coach rolled up, pulled by four white horses whose hooves did not quite touch the ground. A coachman sat on the front of the box. He had the white skin and short, spiky, lime-whitened hair of a man of Celtic birth. He wore a plain black coat, thin leather gloves, and a hat that he tipped up with the handle of his whip, greeting us. The footman hanging on at the back of the coach was no man but an eru; she appeared as a woman with black skin, short black hair, a third eye in the center of her forehead, and her wings neatly furled. She did not let go of the coach. Instead the door swung open. My sire beckoned from the interior.

“Best hurry,” he said with a calm smile. “This coach is a refuge, a sort of warded ground all on its own. The tide is coming in fast. You’ll be safe inside here.”

His sober dash jacket and neat black trousers made him look like a humble clerk on the way to his day’s work at his master’s offices. You would never have guessed he had recently hunted down and killed some poor soul in the mortal world, and then been forced to bow before the spirit courts and have all that power ripped from him to feed them instead. Not until you looked into his eyes. His gaze had as much mercy as a knife in the dark.

“Do you imagine we believe you?” asked Vai in the tone of a man at his supper who has just been told that the crust of bread set before him is the haunch of beef he requested.

“I imagine you have no choice but to join me. I have something of yours, Cat.” He indicated the Taino basket in which I kept the cacica’s head.

“How could you get that?” I demanded.

“I saw you hang it on the tree. Best hurry, Daughter.”

I looked at Vai, and Vai looked at me.

A smile brightened his weary face too briefly, but it was enough to strengthen me. There is more than one way to skin a cat. There were two doors in the coach, one that opened onto the spirit world and one that opened into the mortal world.

Vai nodded.

I swung up into the interior of the coach and gripped my sire’s arms so he could not slam the door in Vai’s face and thus leave him outside at the mercy of the tide.

“Father! I missed you so much!” I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, my lips warm against his cold, cold skin.

I had the intense pleasure of watching my sire blink in bewildered astonishment.

Before he could react, I snatched the basket off the seat and slung it over my body. Then I clambered past him. Grabbing the latch, I pushed down with all my strength.

It did not budge. It did not shift at all.

I hissed, “Open up, I beg you.”

The latch’s eyes glimmered into life as two stripes of light on brass. Its mouth was a flat line. It said nothing. And it stayed stubbornly locked.

The other door slammed shut. The coach lurched forward, swinging in a wide turn. I tumbled onto the upholstered bench opposite my sire as Vai pushed past me and, in his turn, grabbed the latch. Sparks spat with a cracking cascade of pops. With a grunt of pain Vai hit the bench and sat down hard next to me. He swore as he shook his hand.