Shana Abe: The Treasure Keeper

Zoe climbed to her feet. She faced the old woman. Rhys did not reappear.

"I'm not so ill informed as to think this will work on you," Rez said, lifting the manacle. "I did a little research after you thieved back my creature in the basement. That's yet another fine Gift of yours, young Zoe, immunity to Draumr. So I'm going to have to destroy you the human way. With a bullet. Or an arrow. Whichever gets you first." She tipped her head to the black rounded entrance nearby; the twists of her coronet shifted between gold and gray by the candlelight. "Do you know why I chose this place for my home? Because of the music. You think it's soft at first, but it's deceptive, and distracting. It's nearly solid, you see. Nothing beyond it reaches you easily, not scent or sound. Go ahead and Turn invisible, if you wish. My men will hit you anyway."

Zoe vanished. She went unseen, sprinting at the same time, bending and turning and racing toward the pale blue figure that was her enemy, who had murdered Zoe's two drakon and her heart. She felt her lips curl back in a silent snarl, heard the sudden commotion of feet scraping stone, hammers cocking and the creak of strings from bows, but before she could even finish her dash to the bed a deep gray column of smoke fountained from the ceiling to the floor, became a man standing behind the old woman with one arm around her chest and razor-sharp talons jabbed up high against her throat.

"Hold,"he bellowed in French, a single word that crashed through the cavern, gained pitch and echo, and deafened. He stood tall and straight, and his eyes glowed poisonous bright green; a thread of scarlet snaked fast down Rez's neck. "Hold or I kill her now!"

Like a marionette on strings, Zoe did as all the others: She stopped in place, staring at the wrinkled woman and the taloned man, the light gliding over them, shifting and changing.

"Zoe," said the dragon-eyed man, and she finished the distance between them at a jog, still invisible, touched her hand to his arm.

Rez's gaze shifted. She seemed to see Zoe standing before them; she smiled once again, beatific. "Adieu."

She blurred. There was no better word for it; she was solid one second and a blur the next, and the next second after that, Rhys's claws closed upon empty air.

Rez was gone. Not invisible, not smoke. Just gone.

"Well," said Rhys, stepping back. "That didn't go right."

Someone shot at them. Zoe ducked and Rhys Turned back to smoke, and the bullet whizzed by and pinged against the stone wall. As if that single retort had tightened all the other fingers, pistols fired from all corners; gunpowder sparked; arrows whistled past, up and down, puncturing the bed, the golden screen, the harpsichord. Zoe's thigh.

She cried out and collapsed to the carpet, rolling, clutching the shaft of wood. It was perceptible even if she was not, three rows of bright yellow feathers, and nearly at once a hail of new fire came toward her.

She rolled. She screamed and broke the feathered part of it from her leg, tossed it away—but a bullet found her hand, and another ricocheted off the floor, spraying chips along her body.

Without noise, without wavering, a shadow formed above her. It was huge; it blocked out all the light and the arrows, it crouched over her and fashioned sounds not from its own throat, but from the thrash of its tail belting the Others, from its claws—metallic claws, razored claws—scraping sparks along the limestone, digging trenches, swiping at men. Shrieks and blood, more gunfire, bullets that bounced off him and struck stone. She lay on her back and stared up at his belly, the scales that glistened there, thick and glassy and emerald, shielding them both from the worst of the assault.

The dragon reared, still thrashing, and began to move, taking out everything in his path. She heard wood splintering, harpsichord strings twanging in a jarring medley. Zoe maneuvered to her hands and knees and crawled with him, she didn't know where, but it was clear they couldn't go much farther like this. He was too large to fit into any of the tunnels.

She scrambled out from beneath him. He'd drawn them both near one of the black open entrances, and she scratched at the floor with her fingers, dragging herself upright. She hopped on one leg and kept her shot hand close to her chest, pressed against his neck so he'd know she was there—hot, his scales burning hot, and humans yelling behind him—slipped around the pair of men frantically reloading their guns and hurried down the passage.

She felt him Turn to smoke behind her, but he didn't follow. Zoe stopped, grimacing, reeling against a wall, and from inside the cavern came fresh shouts and then a rumbling. Stones falling. Heavy stones, their impact shaking the earth. A rush of limestone dust devoured the two men with guns, began to boil toward her.

She lurched away again. When she glanced back she saw at last a trail of blood behind her in the final, clouding light; as it left her body it became visible, slick and dark against the paler stone.

She clutched her good hand to her thigh and forced herself to move faster. The dust became plumes overtaking her, choking, and then one of them Turned into Rhys. He scooped her up into his arms and ran.

It was ungainly and very swift. Zoe dropped her head to his chest and closed her eyes and let the deadened stone air wash all along her, wash all along until she hooked her arms around it and drifted away.

* * *

He took her back to the palace. It was the only place in the city he knew besides the cellar and the maison. He got her in by the last squeak of dawn, laid her down upon her bed, and was glad she'd passed out, because getting the barb of the arrow out of her leg was a vicious enough affair, especially for a creature with claws. Only one of them should be weeping over it, and he reckoned since she never woke, it might as well be him.

But he was glad she didn't see.

Her blood swamped his senses. She was whiter than the linens, whiter than lilies or the snow he'd trampled through. He'd purloined a bottle of cognac from one of the apartments below stairs, saturated her wounds with the alcohol, ripped up the sheet she'd used to hide her mirror of souls, and bound her leg and her hand. At least the bullet—he assumed it was a bullet—had gone straight through the flesh of her palm.

He'd stuffed pillows beneath her leg, laid her hand upon her chest, then taken a moment to bend over to catch his breath, breathing in the scent of very fine liqueur and blood and her, his forehead pressed into the bed by her ear.

He thought woozily that he might never touch cognac again.

She was alive. She was breathing, she had a pulse. She was alive.

One of the arrows had nicked him beneath a scale on his shoulder; compared to everything else he'd been through, it was no worse than getting pinked in a duel. But he cleaned that too, to be safe, and all the little scrapes and cuts along her feet and the left side of her body.

Rhys spent the remainder of the dawn and all the next day sitting upright beside her, the near-empty bottle cradled between his thighs, fighting sleep. When he wasn't looking at her he was looking at the mirror. The crack slanting through it. It seemed normal to him again, just two pieces of broken glass over a mercury backing, foxing along one side. No sign of the beings he knew dwelled inside.

"Where were you bastards," he muttered, as the afternoon light began to push against the velvet drapery. "Where were you last ruddy night, eh?"

No one answered. Zee was asleep; the mirror was empty. He was talking to himself.

The day passed. By twilight he knew she was in trouble, because the lily-white cast of her skin had deepened into ruby at her cheeks and forehead and chest, and her breathing was labored.