My thought carried to Tam—and to Sarad Nukpana.
“Now!” came Tam’s shout in my mind.
I squeezed the trigger and the bolt flew. And so did Sarad Nukpana, abandoning Tam’s body the instant after impact. He knew Tam would be dead before he hit the street.
I felt Tam die.
My breath froze in my throat. Our umi’atsu bond pulled at me, stretching the distance between us, between life and death, becoming thinner and thinner until it snapped. The psychic recoil was like a monstrous whiplash across my entire body.
“Shields up!” Mychael shouted to his men, and pulled me to him, surrounding me with a protective, white nimbus.
A scream like a hundred banshees, a roar of fury and disbelief, shook the very air around us. A dark mist circled us, a bodiless specter. Then it suddenly vanished.
It wasn’t gone. Sarad Nukpana definitely wasn’t gone. The bastard wasn’t going to give up his prize that easily. He was a specter; he knew how to hide.
Mychael clutched my hand in his, keeping his shields around us both, and ran for Tam’s body now lying motionless in the street, my bolt protruding from his chest.
“Vidor!” Mychael shouted.
The nachtmagus was there a moment later, one hand on Tam’s chest, the other on his forehead.
One of Mychael’s officers took command, shouting orders, and we were surrounded by fully shielded Guardians, their backs turned toward us, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their weapons glowing with battle magic, ready and waiting to be unleashed.
No one could see between or around them. No one could see what we were doing.
Tam was dead.
If the plan worked, he wouldn’t be that way for long.
Mychael was keeping the blood in Tam’s body, using his healer’s magic to stop the bleeding, begin to repair the damage. He couldn’t do it instantly, far from it. It would take hours, days—if it could even be done at all. Mychael was the best, but he could only do so much. He snapped rapid-fire orders: a cloak or blanket, a stretcher, a room nearby with a bed, and most of all, more healers. And all of it now.
Vidor Kalta was keeping Tam’s soul in his body while Mychael worked.
I had another soul to attend to.
Sarad Nukpana was still here. He had to find another host body or he would lose everything he’d tortured and murdered for. If he found another body, we would be going through this all over again.
“Raine!” came a bellow from outside the wall of armored bodies.
It was Vegard. Dear God, the man was on his feet. The Guardians wisely made a hole for my bodyguard.
I ran to him. “Vegard, you shouldn’t be—”
“Up? Walking? Alive?”
“Yes.”
I ducked my head under Vegard’s left arm, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his arm around my shoulders, my right arm tight around his waist. I knew I was nothing more than a crutch; if the big Guardian fell, we were both going down. I pushed our way through the protective circle of Guardians. I didn’t want Mychael to hear or know what I was about to do. Yes, we were bonded, but hopefully he was too busy to notice me right now.
Vegard’s breath hissed in and out through his teeth. “Damn, it hurts. Ever been hit in the chest . . . with a war hammer?”
“Can’t say I have.”
He groaned and sucked in a halfway decent breath. “This is . . . what it feels like.”
“Vegard, more healers are on the way. You should—”
“Find that goblin son of a bitch,” he rasped.
My eyes stung with tears of gratitude. If I’d been tall enough, I’d have kissed him.
“Nukpana’s still here. I can’t see or sense him, but the bastard’s here.” I felt Vegard sway, and tightened my grip. “I can do this by my—”
“No!” Vegard’s eyes were blazing. “His ass is mine.”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was bone-dry. “If he runs, he loses everything. He needs another host body.” I looked back toward Tam’s motionless body and bit back a sob. “We’re not going through this shit again,” I snarled.
Vegard smiled, fierce and wolfish. “Damn straight we’re not.”
“I promised that you’d be at my side when the big trouble finally caught up to me.”
“Yes, ma’am, you did.” I knew that whatever I asked, he would do without hesitation.
“I know a way to find Nukpana and take the bastard out once and for all—”
Vegard knew what I meant. “Reapers.”
I nodded. “But they might want me worse than they want him. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to stop them if they do—”
“And you made me a promise that I’d be with you.”
“Yes, I did. You still want it?”
His expression was resolute. “I’m not leaving.”
“Thank you, Vegard.”
I was taking the chance that a black mage who had tortured and sucked the life out of who knew how many people, who had stolen, abused, and manipulated the souls of the living and the dead, would be more hated than me. I’d just had the piss-poor luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and have the Saghred bond to me. Yes, it was full of imprisoned souls, but I wasn’t the one who’d done the imprisoning. In a way, I was the rock’s prisoner, too.
I was going to make Death an offer that he hopefully wouldn’t refuse.
The Reapers were here, nearby. I could feel them. The death of a nachtmagus of Ghalfari’s power had probably drawn them in like a lodestone to true north.
So would the Saghred.
I let the power of the stone flare through me. I knew I was probably ringing a dinner bell, but I had no choice.
I felt them coming and did nothing to stop them. Not that I could, or wanted to. Sometimes Death’s minions were downright welcome.
The Reaper rose straight through the cobblestones at my side as from the depths of Hell itself. I could see it, and so could everyone else. It was high noon, bright as a day got, and the damned thing was solid.
There wasn’t a swarm of Reapers. There was only one. A really big one. Taller than Vegard.
The one I’d punched at Markus’s house.
I looked up at the towering mass of tendrils.
I was so going to die.
It was the one Vidor Kalta said was strong enough now to take the living, thanks to my life force I’d fed it when I hit it. And I’d punched it as hard as I could. I didn’t know if Reapers held grudges, but I couldn’t imagine it being happy about something like that—then again, maybe it was.
It just floated there. I’d say it was watching me, but Reapers didn’t have eyes, so I had no idea what it was waiting on, but at least it was keeping its tendrils to itself.
The Reaper didn’t move, but Sarad Nukpana’s specter sure did. The bastard had been using a veiling spell floating above where Mychael and Vidor worked frantically to save Tam, waiting for his chance.
I had one imploring word for the Reaper. “Please.”
The thing just floated there.
Sweeten the pot, Raine. “Help me and I’ll help you.”
“Ma’am, no!”
I tightened my grip on Vegard’s wrist, asking him not to interfere.
All of my attention had to be on the Reaper floating not three feet in front of me. It knew what I was offering. Souls from the Saghred. Souls who wanted to leave, to move on. The Reaper could have taken me there, taken all the souls it wanted and me along with it.
Instead I swear it inclined its head—or where its head should have been—in gratitude. Maybe even respect.
I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t Sarad Nukpana.
It was worse, the kind of worse that made you want to scream yourself hoarse.
Janos Ghalfari was standing across the street, smiling at me, his head twisted at an impossible angle. He raised his hands and turned his head so it faced the right way.
It didn’t stay put. His head fell bonelessly to the side, lolling against his shoulder. I thought I was going to throw up.
Sarad Nukpana had decided to keep his soul in the family.
Janos Ghalfari’s reanimated corpse turned and ran, faster than something dead and broken should have been able to. The Reaper snapped around, tendrils writhing like a nest of snakes, and took off in pursuit. Ghalfari’s body glowed with blood-red light, so bright I had to close my eyes against it. A flash shone through my eyelids. I opened my eyes. Ghalfari had vanished, and all sense of the Reaper was gone.
Vegard sank to his knees in the street, taking me with him. I didn’t try to keep us on our feet. I wanted Sarad Nukpana, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go after a Reaper chasing a corpse.
Death would send his collector back for me soon enough.
Chapter 24
I sat next to Tam’s bed and watched him sleep, watched the movement of his chest as it rose and fell with a deep, steady rhythm, listened to his quiet breathing.
Against all odds, Tam was alive. And unless I shot him again, he was going to stay that way.
Mychael was the best healer in the seven kingdoms, but he had worked on Tam to the point that he had needed a healer himself. No doubt during his career, he’d healed some horrific injuries.
Tam had been dead. You couldn’t be any more horrifically injured than that.
Vidor Kalta had his hands full forcing Tam’s soul to stay in his body. Apparently when you died your soul wanted to leave. Immediately. Tam’s intention had been to live, but his soul had other ideas. Vidor had done the nachtmagus version of a wrestling match.
All while Mychael had been using every bit of healing skill he possessed to close the hole in Tam’s heart and then get it beating again. Justinius Valerian told me later that it was nothing short of a miracle that Mychael didn’t die in that street, too.
Mychael and Vidor Kalta had brought Tam back from the dead. If they weren’t legends in their fields already, they were now.
Justinius’s healer had taken care of Vegard. Last month, the old man had had a spellsong- induced heart attack courtesy of Rudra Muralin. Vegard had pretty much the same thing from Sarad Nukpana. After nearly a week, today was his first day out of bed.
