Eileen Wilks - Mortal Ties

Lily’s arms were imprisoned. So she used her head.

The cranium near the hairline is one of the thickest regions of bone on the skull. Lily couldn’t reach some of the best targets for a headbutt—he was too tall—so she smashed the top of her forehead into his chin. As she connected, she hooked his ankle with her foot and pulled.

He toppled. She came down on top of him, cracking her left elbow on the floor but keeping a tight grip on the knife in her right hand. Mage lights popped up all over the place, and she saw Benessarai’s slack face—stunned, she thought, not out, so she pressed the tip of her borrowed knife to the spot right under his chin where a hard thrust would take it up to his brain. Then took the chance of glancing behind her for the guard elf.

Who was several feet away, fighting a wolf.

People were falling from the roof. Leaping down and falling.

One of them was Rule. Her heart exulted even as she turned back to her prisoner.

It would be easy, so easy, to end him here and now. More fitting to do it through the eye the way he’d made Dinalaran kill himself, but she wasn’t going to pass up easy to go for poetic.

“Don’t! Lily, don’t do it!”

It was Drummond. And he was a mess.

He crouched in front of her. One arm hung down. It probably didn’t work right because a big chunk of his bicep was missing. Just gone. He crouched on both knees, but she only saw one foot. The other leg ended cleanly about midcalf. His shirt hung open. Skin and muscle were missing from his middle. She could see one of his ribs, the pale curve of it, and the round pillow of his stomach, and the segmented worms of his intestines. Which were also a mess, ripped and ragged.

No blood. Somehow that made it worse. He’d been ripped apart, but he couldn’t bleed.

“You’ve got a choice,” Drummond said urgently. “You don’t have to do it.”

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

He glanced down at his ravaged middle. His mouth crooked up. “I got there, got to Turner, but it was not a smooth trip. I guess I’m finally dying. So listen up. That scumbag deserves to die, but you don’t deserve to live with what that will do to you. You don’t deserve to end up like me.”

His arm was fading. The one hanging down, the one with a chunk missing—it was dimming, going away. She swallowed. “I—”

He leaned closer, scowling. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t kill him. Not like this.”

She looked him in the eye and nodded slightly. “Okay. I promise.”

He exhaled in relief. “Good choice. You’re a good cop, and we don’t have enough—” Suddenly his head tilted. He looked up and to his right. His mouth fell open. She could swear tears filled his eyes—and joy. He reached up, his face lit with happiness as real as anything she’d ever seen. He reached up with his remaining hand, the wedding band on the third finger glowing softly.

“Sarah,” he said. And the rest of him faded away.

Lily felt shaky and weird inside. Kind of hollowed out. Then the body beneath her tensed, and she was called back to reality. This reality. Benessarai was looking up at her. She sighed and pressed the knife into his skin slightly to make him pay attention. “So what the hell do I do with you?”

“I can help with that,” Cullen said. He limped over, wincing with every step. He was missing half his hair, and he looked like he had a bad sunburn.

“Cullen! That was you falling? You didn’t—”

“Didn’t burn. Much. I couldn’t get the last damn ward down, but it was a fire ward, and I’m good with fire, so I took it down by leaping through it. Landed badly, though—my ankle’s got a hairline fracture, I think. It took a lot of concentration to keep the flames from burning me until I could snuff them.” He sank down carefully to sit by Benessarai’s head. “Good thing this asshole doesn’t know about mage fire, or I’d be really crispy. Nighty-night,” he said, and slapped his palm onto the elf’s forehead.

Benessarai went limp, his eyes closing.

“Sleep charm,” Cullen added. “Don’t know how long it will work on his sort. You okay?”

“Not…long,” a breathy voice said on Lily’s right.

Lily turned to see the not-so-dead Alycithin smiling faintly at her. She scooted close. “What can we do? How do we help you?”

“Aroglian…will help. Give him…ring and word. Thelaisat .” She closed her eyes as if gathering herself. “I bequeath to you, Lily Yu, my…rights and responsibilities for…Sean Friar, hostage. You…accept?”

“I do.”

“Say…the word.”

“ Thelaisat ,” Lily repeated. Alycithin’s wince might have been at Lily’s mangling of her language, or simple pain. “That one…” The halfling’s gaze shifted to indicate Benessarai. “Best if…you kill.”

“I can’t. I gave my word.”

The slightly lifted brows expressed incredulity. Alycithin didn’t ask who Lily had promised, though. Instead she said, “Duct tape.”

“Duct tape.”

“On…mouth, hands, feet. Strong. Magically…inert.”

“Cullen, did you hear that?”

“Mike!” Cullen called. “We need duct tape, pronto. I’ve got a couple more sleep charms,” he added, “which is good, because he’s almost burned this one up.”

“You shocked the hell out of me when you touched me,” Lily said. “And undid the restraints, for which I thank you with my whole heart.”

The eyebrows lifted again. “You…did not know? Said…now or never.”

“That was for Rule. I knew he was on the roof. I thought you were dead. You fooled Benessarai, too, when he did that spell.”

Alycithin’s eyes closed, but her lips turned up. “The fool…right about one thing. Rekklat…hard to kill. My Gift…he didn’t notice.…I was alive.”

“Your Gift doesn’t work on me, and I’ve never seen anyone look as dead as you did who wasn’t.” She hadn’t been breathing. Lily was sure of that.

“Not…very alive. More now, but…” Very faintly she sighed. “I will sleep.”

Outside, a tiger roared. Lily looked up. “Grandmother—”

Rule stepped into view at the end of an aisle between shipping crates. “Let Madame Yu in,” he snapped at someone.

“Friar?” she asked, pushing herself to her feet.

“No sign of him. His scent trail ends at the back of the warehouse.”

“He knows a spell to go out of phase like—” Rule had reached her and his arms closed around her. Tight. “Ow. My rib.” But she held on, too.

He loosened his grip immediately and straightened to inspect her worriedly. “Are you all right? Your face.” He touched her cheek gently. “Someone hit you.”

“Friar. He’s gotten a lot stronger than he used to be. I don’t think he broke any ribs, but they’re tender.”

Rule’s mouth tightened. “That would be why Madame rushed things, I imagine. She was to wait for our signal. Cullen took down the first ward—there were only two—but the second was harder.”

“Not on Rethna’s level, thank all the gods,” Cullen said, “but a good, workmanlike job. I couldn’t untangle it in the time I had.”

“Which is why,” Rule said dryly, “he knocked me aside—damn near knocked me off the bloody roof—so he could make his heroic dive.”

“Because you were about to do it,” Cullen said promptly, “and you are not good with fire.”

Lily shivered at how close it had been.

“You’re all right?” Rule asked again.

“I’m good. Sore here and there, but good. What about…do we have any casualties? From last night or now?”

“Minor wounds, nothing serious. I think we managed to keep one of the other two elves in here alive.” He turned his head. “Scott? Is your captive going to make it?”