She reached out and patted his cheek with a dry, slightly too-warm hand. Nothot, just a few degrees high enough that you noticed. Cash flinched back because that was weird as hell.
“Okay, that is very disturbing,” he said. “But we can talk about it later. Where’s Shanko?”
Donna raised an eyebrow at him. “Manners, dear heart. I know you’ve seen them beaten into the slow to learn.”
“Where’s Shanko? It’s important,” he said.
Beside her the Worm chuckled. It was a thick hiss of sound, like a snake with phlegm caught in its throat. He pushed his hood back to reveal a narrow, not-quite-finished face of tender skin. His true face was just visible behind it—through it. What passed for his face, anyhow.
“Even the wisps don’t respect you now, Belladonna,” he said. “You should be grateful when Kohary comes back with the Prodigium’s weight behind him. At least an object lesson is remembered, not consigned to irrelevance.”
Donna gave him a sudden fierce look as her gracious-host mask slipped. “I know you like to be beaten, Helminth, but tonight isn’t about you, so hold your tongue,” she rasped, the burnt-meat-and-stone smell of her power suddenly thick in the air. “Or I’ll scrape you back down to the wet. If I am to be an object lesson, might as well be a colorful one, after all.”
Lust bloomed through the Worm’s aura until it was the color of fish guts.
Cash grimaced and dragged his eyes away. Some things he could do without knowing, and what turned the Worm on was one of them.
“Madam,” Cash said, the use of her formal title—one of them—unusual enough to make both Arkady and Donna look at him. “Where’s Shanko?”
“Cash?” Arkady asked quietly.
When Cash didn’t answer him, Arkady glanced at him and then at the Worm. He grimaced unhappily but didn’t push. Donna pouted but followed his lead. She mimed unconcern as she strapped a dagger to her thigh and held out her hand to a waiting servant. The shaft of the pike slapped against her palm.
“I don’t know,” she said. “His last task of the day was to prepare the Hunter and the Hounds for the chase. Perhaps he’s still in the kennels.”
HE WASN’T,but the Hunter was.
It had been a man once. Probably a venal or a greedy one, definitely a stupid one to make the final Crossroads Deal with the likes of Donna Abascal. That was a long time ago, though, and there wasn’t much left of that man. A human soul still, pinned and displayed behind bloodshot eyes, but the body had remade itself to Donna’s service.
She gave him his hands back when he was chosen to be the Hunter tonight, roughed out a facsimile of a human face. Or one that would do, seen through a mask.
Cash didn’t think he was human enough to be sure, but maybe the delusion he’d be human again—free, because that was always promised—had been some comfort before Shanko put a railway spike through his head. Or maybe death had been a relief all on its own.
“Shanko did this?” Arkady said. He crouched down to check the Hunter was dead. The pat he gave its scarred shoulder was almost respectful, but then, he’d have his own kennel one day. “Why?”
“He took the Hunter’s place?” Cash said. He folded his arms behind his head and stalked back and forth frantically. On some level he’d recognized Shanko on the kelpie’s back, but it hadn’t clicked until Anna-Beth described the butcher’s block stink that got in your head and lingered. “Shanko’s the one who leaked information to the humans.”
Arkady straightened up easily. He looked calm as he unbuttoned his jacket and stripped it off to toss it over the harness hooks that studded the walls, but his aura had lifted like hackles.
“I worked that out,” he said sharply. “Why?”
Cash opened his mouth on the off chance the answer would fall out. It didn’t. He shook his head and admitted, “I don’t know.” Shanko was sour and foul-mouthed, gross with bitterness, but that was his nature. His loyalty to the Abascals, to his Belladonna, was centuries old, as much a part of what held him up as his bones. “Does it matter?”
It should, Cash could feel that, but Arkady just grimaced his agreement.
“In the end, I suppose not,” he said. “Whether I understand or not won’t change anything. He’ll pay or we will. I prefer him.”
So did Cash. The Abascals would still be censured for one of their household being involved, but not excessively. Monsters understood how hard it was to control your instincts, never mind someone else’s. Unless Donna confessed out of the blue to being involved, the family would survive.
Ellie would be safe.
“How’s the child?”he caught the echo of Shanko’s question from memory, the closest to kindness the old man had ever shown. Cash had thought that was real, that it meant something. Shanko was the closest thing to a dad he’d ever had.
Shitty as the cruel old bastard was at it, it still hurt to realize he was going to die.
Arkady grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it gently. “You won’t have to do it,” he said. “I promise.”
It was a monster’s kindness. Cash appreciated it, but there wasn’t time to do more than brush a quick, grateful kiss over Arkady’s knuckles.
