Dance of the Gods
Page 62

And the smell of death seemed to soak it.
“Tinkers,” Larkin told them. And she’d been right, he could smell the death now. “Gypsies who travel the roads selling whatever wares they might make. The wagon’s harnessed for two horses.”
“A good nest,” Blair decided. “Mobile if you need it to be. And you could drive around at night, no one would pay any attention.”
“You could take it right into the village,” Larkin said grimly. “Drive it up to someone’s cottage and ask for hospitality. In the normal course of things, you’d get it.”
He thought of the children who might run outside to see if there would be toys for sale they could beg their parents to buy or trade for. And the thought sickened him even more than the stench.
He dismounted with the others, moved to the rear of the wagon where the doors were tightly shut, and bolted from the outside. They drew weapons. Blair slid the bolt free, tested the door.
When it gave, she nodded to her companions, mentally counted to three, then yanked it open.
The fetid air came first, crawling into the throat, pouring into the eyes. She heard the hungry hum of flies and fought against the need to gag.
It leaped out at her, the thing with the face of a pretty young woman whose eyes were red and mad. The stink rolled off her, where it was matted in her dark hair, streaked over her homespun dress.
Blair pivoted aside so it landed in the brush on its hands and knees, snarling like the animal it had become.
It was Larkin who swung his sword and ended it.
“Oh God, sweet Jesus. She couldn’t have been fourteen.” He wanted to sit, just sit there on the ground while his belly heaved. “They changed her. How many others—”
“Unlikely more,” Cian said, cutting him off. “Then they’d have to compete for food, worry about keeping it under control.”
“She didn’t come through with them,” Larkin insisted. “She wasn’t one of them before. She was Geallian.”
“And young, pretty, female. Food isn’t the only need.”
Blair saw when the full impact of Cian’s words hit Larkin. She saw not just by the shock but the sheer outrage on his face.
“Bastards. Bloody f**king bastards. She was hardly more than a child.”
“And this surprises you because?”
He whirled on Cian, and would, Blair was sure, have vented some of that horror and outrage. Perhaps Cian was giving him a target for it. But there wasn’t time for indulgences.
She simply stepped between them and shoved Larkin back a full three paces. “Close it down,” she ordered him. “Just settle it down.”
“How can I? How can you?”
“Because you can’t bring her back, or the ones that are in there.” She jerked a chin toward the wagon. “So we figure out how to use this to capture the ones who did it.”
Burying her own revulsion, she pulled herself up into the wagon. Into a nightmare.
What must have been the girl’s parents were shoved together under a kind of bunk on one side of the wagon. The man had probably died quickly, as had the younger boy whose body lay under the bunk on the opposite side.
But the woman, they’d have taken more time there. No point in tearing off her clothes if you didn’t intend to play with her first. Her hands were still bound, and what was left of her was covered in bites.
Yes, they’d taken time with her.
She could see no weapons, but one of the bunks was stained with blood fresher than what was staining the other bunk, the floor and the walls. That was where the girl had died, she assumed. And had waked again.
“The woman’s only been dead a couple of days,” Cian said from behind her. “The man and boy longer. A day or more longer.”
“Yeah. Jesus.” She had to get out, had to breathe. She climbed out of the back to draw in air she hoped would clear the smear in her throat, in her lungs.
“They’ll come back for her.” She bent over, bracing her hands on her thighs so the nausea, the dizziness would fade. “Bring her something so she can feed. She was new. Probably only woke tonight.”
“We need to bury them,” Larkin said. “The others. They deserve to be buried.”
“It has to wait. Look, be pissed at me if you have to, but—”
“I’m not. I’m sick in my heart, but I’m not angry with you. Or you,” he said to Cian. “I don’t know why it should be this way inside me. I saw what was in the caves back in Ireland. I know how they kill, how they breed. But knowing they made a monster of that girl only so they could use her between them, it makes my heart sick.”
She didn’t have any words, any real ones, to offer. She wrapped her fingers around his arm, squeezed. “Let’s make them pay for it. They’ll be back before sunrise. Well before if they can find what they’re after quickly enough and get it back. They know she’ll have risen tonight, and need to feed. That’s why they—”
“That’s why they left the bodies inside,” Larkin said when she cut herself off. “So she’d have something until they could bring her fresh blood. I’m not slow-witted, Blair. They left her own family for her to feed on.”
Nodding, she looked back toward the wagon. “So we close up the wagon, and we wait. Will they be able to smell us? The human?”
“Hard to say,” Cian told her. “I don’t know how old they are, how experienced. Enough so Lilith thought they could handle this assignment. Which they bungled. But it’s possible they’ll catch the scent of live blood, even through all this. Then there’s the horses.”
“Okay, I’ve got that covered. Most likely they’ll come back to the wagon from the same direction they left it. We’ll take the horses farther into the woods, downwind. Tether them. All but mine. If I’m walking him when they see me, they’ll figure he came up lame. And they’ll be too happy with their luck of coming across a lone female to think beyond that.”
“So, you think you’re going to be bait,” Larkin began, with a look on his face that warned Blair they were in for a fight about it.
“I’ll just take the horses back while you two argue this out.” Cian took the reins, melted into the trees.
Calm, Blair ordered herself. Reasonable. She should remember it was nice to have someone who actually cared enough to worry about her.