“What about Louvaen?”
“We’ll see.”
Ambrose glanced at her, his gaze granite-hard and bright with a silent message: Be ready. Their short relationship had always been one of sparring insults and wary truces, but she’d come to respect the wily sorcerer and gave him the trust he’d so valiantly earned when he walked amongst the enemy to save her. She inclined her head.
He bestowed a limpid look on Jimenin. “I will come with you,” he said simply.
“Cinnia, please!” Her father cried from his place behind one of the henchmen. Louvaen wanted to tell him to be quiet, but her command might give away the game. There was also an unexpected boon to his protest. If Ambrose fooled Mercer with his illusion, he fooled everyone else.
The sorcerer dropped his candle in the snow and raised both hands to Jimenin. “How shall I ride?”
As if the question punched Jimenin awake, he shoved Louvaen hard to the side and reached eagerly for his newest captive. She flew out of the saddle and sprawled in a powdery drift. The horse blocked most of her view, but she caught Jimenin’s shocked expression before he flailed and toppled out of his seat on the opposite side.
Ambrose roared in a deep voice wholly his. “Move, Louvaen!”
A flash of searing light burst across the bailey. Blinded, Louvaen scuttled on hands and knees away from the pounding of hooves as, for a second time, frightened horses bolted in every direction. A series of thunderous cracks added to the mayhem, and the agonized cries of the injured joined the chorus of equine squeals and whinnies. Somewhere in that chaos, Jimenin’s men had either shot each other, shot their horses or gods forbid, shot her father or Ambrose.
The warning hiss of Isabeau’s roses sounded dangerously close, and she flinched away, sliding along a patch of icy mud. The trailing ends of a horse’s tail switched her across the cheek as one of the animals galloped by close enough to flutter her sodden night rail. She’d come a hair’s breadth from being trampled—an ending she’d suffer any day over death by climbing rose.
As soon as her vision recovered from the blast of Ambrose’s light spell, another followed, putting to rest her fears that someone had shot Ambrose.
“Hold your ground, you white livered rags!” Jimenin roared above the din. “Shoot the woman and the old man!”
Jimenin’s threat held Louvaen silent, and she prayed Mercer would do the same. The heavy thud of a body hitting the ground made her jump. Hisses transformed into frenzied rustling as the fiendish roses latched onto a victim. A man’s screams cut through the clamor, pitching into unearthly screeches that froze every drop of blood in her veins to sleet. The bailey went still. Even the remaining horses stood quiet. Only the ebb and swell of one unfortunate soul’s dying shrieks pierced the hush.
Grateful for the mercy of temporary blindness, Louvaen resumed her crawl across the bailey to where she guessed the door might be. If she got inside, she could arm herself with one of Ballard’s many weapons. A sword wasn’t much use against a flintlock, but better than what she currently had, which was nothing. She halted once more when a plaintive howl drowned out the dying henchman’s fading cries. Wolfish, savage, it was joined by another, different cry—more a roar that vibrated the earth beneath her feet.
Her vision cleared in time to watch a black shape hurtle out the door and into the bailey where it leapt onto the nearest man so fast, he had no chance to cry out before a set of gleaming claws split him from gullet to gizzard. A second shape followed, just as quickly. The gait was different, more of a spidery sprint than a lope. Like the first creature, it dove into the fray, attacking anyone it could reach. Amidst more screams and the thunder of pistol fire, Louvaen flattened herself to the ground. She searched frantically for her father and Ambrose—now undisguised—in the concealing snowfall and sighted both men huddled behind the carcass of a dead horse.
Across the bailey turned battlefield Jimenin and his men fought their attackers as they tried to escape through the gate. One of the beasts pivoted, and in the moon’s light she caught the lambent glow of sulfurous eyes, bristling fur and the squashed face of a giant bat. Louvaen cried out. Gavin lived. If the son lived, then maybe the father did as well. She hunted for the other creature and found it busy turning one of Jimenin’s lackeys into a pile of separate body parts. Blood splattered in every direction, and another pair of eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness. Ballard. Or what was once the master of Ketach Tor.
This brutish thing bore no resemblance to the man she’d grown to love, just as the bat-wolf animal held no trace of Gavin. The terrible anguish in Ambrose’s gaze earlier had not been because they were dead, but because they were still alive.
Her waking nightmare took a worse turn. The real Cinnia appeared at the doorway and darted into the bailey. Louvaen screamed and lurched to her feet. Forgetting caution, she raced toward the door waving her arms. “Cinnia! For gods’ sakes, get back inside! Get inside!”
In that moment, the world slowed and the sounds of fighting faded. She saw Cinnia’s face, tear-streaked and pale, her gaze fastened solely on Gavin. She glimpsed movement from the corner of her eye. Jimenin turned, that hollow stare changing from terrified to malevolent. He sprinted toward them, the pistol in his hand raised and aimed at Cinnia. Louvaen lunged at her. The click of the flintlock’s trigger cracked in her ears, and she flinched in anticipation of the accompanying flash and muted boom of the lead ball flying out of the barrel to strike her sister.
Nothing. The world sped up again, and the gods answered desperate prayers. Jimenin shouted frustrated curses as the pistol misfired. He half-cocked it but never got the chance to full-cock the hammer. Just as he took aim at Cinnia a second time his eyes widened, and he staggered forward. His arm fell limply at his side, and he crashed to his knees before falling face first into the mud and snow. A warrior queen’s knife protruded from between his shoulder blades. Mercer stood behind him—breathing harder than a winded horse—sagging features dark with a grim triumph.
The shock of seeing her docile father dispatch their most hated enemy didn’t stop Louvaen. She limped to the fallen Jimenin and carefully pried the pistol from his still fingers. She reached for Mercer’s hand. “Come away, Papa. Hurry.” She tugged on him, holding him upright as he stumbled beside her in their bid to reach Cinnia.
The cursed pair of father and son savaged their last opponents, leaving only Louvaen, Cinnia, Mercer and Ambrose to their non-existent mercy. Unfortunately, neither she nor Mercer were fast enough. Before she could take two steps, Gavin loped across the bailey and crouched between her and Cinnia. The hackles on his hunched back bristled in warning, and he snarled through an impressive set of fangs.
She and Mercer froze. Louvaen full-cocked the pistol she’d plucked from Jimenin’s dead hand. If Gavin charged them or turned on Cinnia, she’d have no choice but to shoot. He did neither, but the fur along his back rose at every flinch and twitch they made. Louvaen watched him pace back and forth, and an idea took hold. He protected his mate. Somewhere in that bestial brain, the human Gavin remembered Cinnia, remembered the beloved wife and sought to guard her from those who might do her harm. Across from her, Cinnia’s gaze remained riveted on her cursed husband.
“Gavin,” she crooned. “My darling boy, come back to me.”
Louvaen blinked away tears at the longing in her sister’s entreaty and the befuddlement in Gavin’s beastly face as he struggled to understand its lure. What in the gods’ names were they supposed to do now?
She clutched her father’s arm and leaned to whisper in his ear “Back up slowly, Papa.” Maybe if they weren’t so close, Gavin would concentrate his attention less on them and more on Cinnia. She, of all people, had the greatest chance of reaching him.
They halted when every hair on Gavin’s fur-covered body stood on end. His yellow eyes blazed, and his lips curled back from his fangs as he stared at something behind them. In the moonlight, Cinnia’s face blenched white.
“Careful, Lou,” she warned in a low voice. “De Sauveterre is behind you.”
Forewarned, Louvaen pivoted slowly and almost bit through her lip trying not to scream.
Every child grew up with stories about the sloe folk—those dark beings born of men’s evil thoughts, their suffering and their rage. They prowled at night—lurking behind curtains, at the edge of windows and under beds—ready to snatch disobedient children from their home and devour them whole. In childhood, the eleven-year old Louvaen shared a bed with the three-year old Cinnia. Many a night she’d stayed awake long after their bedtime, one of their mother’s washing bats clutched in her hands in case she had to fight off a sloe-kin looking for a midnight snack. She and Cinnia had grown to women and consigned those night horrors to childhood memory. Never in her blackest dreams did she imagine they were real or that she might face a one as an adult.
