You crazy—Tate’s voice was cut off as Ilith chuckled. Pain swamped them in the next second.
* * *
Tate barely had any time to react as she fell out of the sky. Somehow, she got lucky, landing feet first. Peter only a short distance away. There was unmistakable surprise on his face at her sudden arrival.
He dashed away, making use of one of the many narrow openings before Tate could stop him.
“She’s right. You really do resemble a mouse,” she muttered, racing after him.
He led her on a chase through Cliff’s Shadow, turning down one alleyway after another.
His ability not to run into any dead ends pointed to a familiarity with the city that Tate hadn’t expected. Even she couldn’t have followed this twisting path without making a wrong turn somewhere and ending up caught.
She lost sight of him as he climbed up a wooden fence and disappeared over the side.
Quickly following after him, she stopped as soon as she landed.
Smart little mouse. The place he’d chosen to lose her at was a good one. An intersection of sorts, there were all kinds of places where a mouse could disappear.
Tate tapped her finger on her leg, considering her options. There wasn’t enough room to take Ilith’s shape. Even if she could, there was no way her dragon would have been able to take to the sky without knocking over a few walls and buildings.
That left picking a direction at random.
Where would she go if she was a mouse who needed a hidey hole?
Tate started walking again. There was really only one place that came to mind. The tunnels; where some folks sought refuge from those on the surface.
“The answer is always the tunnels,” Tate told herself as she trudged down another alleyway almost identical to the last.
After several more turns, Tate rounded a corner only to stop abruptly at the sight of Blade sitting on the carcass of a sleeper like it was his very own throne.
It was too odd a sight to go unremarked. The monster was at least twice Blade’s size, its body covered with long hair. Its hands were massive, the size of dinner plates. With its face turned toward Tate, it was easy to see the dead eyes and slack mouth. Tusks jutted from its lower lips, giving it the appearance of an under bite.
“Is this a new trend I’m unaware of? Treating dead sleepers like they’re thrones?” Tate asked, stepping more fully into the alleyway.
Like every other alley she’d traveled through on her way here, it was dingy and dark with only the light of the moons to see by. Despite the lack of light, it wasn’t enough to cover the trash littered around the edges or the clothes lines hanging between the building above.
“Would that bother you?” Blade asked.
Tate shrugged, keeping her distance from the other man. There was a reason the nickname she’d chosen for him was a weapon. He was a talented assassin. She’d seen him in action enough times to know how dangerous he was. Even she’d have trouble keeping herself alive if they were ever to tangle for real.
Though only half Kairi, Blade more closely resembled that part of his heritage. His black hair was cut close to the skull, leaving little more than stubble behind. Faint blue rimmed the edges of eyes that were pure black otherwise.
“Considering I was once a sleeper, I’d have to say, yes, a little,” Tate said, answering his earlier question.
“He killed four people, one of them a child.”
“In that case, never mind.”
The sleeper had more than earned any death Blade deigned to give him. From the looks of things, it had been a clean kill. There was only evidence of one wound, a bloody gaping line slashed across the creature’s throat.
The mark of an assassin. It took a lot of skill to make a strike like that—especially on a target as big and powerful as this one.
“I’m going to assume you’re not here to trade notes about the sleepers,” Tate guessed.
Blade was the personal assassin of the Lucius’s, Night Lords and rulers of the Court of Two Dawns, a powerful criminal organization whose base was located in the tunnels. He wasn’t the sort of man prone to midnight strolls where he just happened to intercept unwary dragon-ridden.
No. If he was here, there was a reason. The only question was whether he would reveal it or if she’d be left guessing.
