Bloodstained and slick with gore, Gnome's decapitated head stared at her with dead eyes.
HELENA watched the wyvern soar into the endless sky. They truly were beautiful creatures. If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons.
A shot popped, like a firecracker. Magic whipped from her, her flash snapping into a glowing white barrier, shielding her and her team. A spark flared to the left - the bullet disintegrating, bitten in half by the flash shield. If not for her magic, it would've hit Sebastian in the face.
Helena held the barrier for a few seconds, but no more shots came. She let the magic die. She could resurrect the shield at any moment without pausing for conscious effort. Her bloodline stretched back over a thousand years. Magic was so deeply ingrained in her, its use was as instinctive as breathing.
"They are gone," Sebastian said next to her, his voice a deep, guttural growl.
And they had murdered her tracker, too. It would be a loss keenly felt. Sobat could find a drop of blood in a gallon of water. Taken down by surprise by a gun. How appallingly stupid. Sobat was more than capable of a low-grade flash shield, which would disrupt the flight of a bullet. Now they had to rely on Emily, and her talents were, while not bad per se, not on par with Sobat's. Inside, Helena grimaced. She hated to rely on second-best.
"No matter." Helena shrugged. "The book?"
Sebastian waved a clawed finger. Suzanne appeared, carrying the dead man's book.
"Emily."
The thin, petite tracker stepped forward. Wiry and always nervous, with reddish hair that looked odd with her bronze skin and hazel eyes, Emily reminded Helena of a skittish ermine. It had to be the combination of large wide eyes, always looking surprised, and round ears slightly protruding from her head.
"M'lady?"
"Find the page with the most recent scent signature on it."
Emily motioned downward at Suzanne. The two women knelt. Emily opened the book and leaned close, inhaling. She turned the page, sniffed it, turned the next one.
This would take a while. Helena looked away, into the distance. The wyvern all but melted into the blue.
Karmash cleared his throat. "M'lady?"
Sebastian bared his teeth.
"Yes?" Helena said.
"I recognized the man, m'lady. He is a mud rat from the Mire."
The Mire. The memory of Spider sitting in his wheelchair on the balcony flashed before her. That godforsaken clump of muddy water where mongrels dared to oppose the peers of the realm. They had cost the best agent the Hand ever had the use of his legs. Her emotions must've reflected on her face, because Karmash took a step back.
"Is he a Mar?" The name of the family left a foul taste on her tongue.
"He is. He killed the head of the second unit your uncle took to the swamp. His name is Kaldar."
The name blazed in her head.
Helena dropped by Emily. The agent shrank back.
"I know that you are trying to hurry because you think that they are escaping and time is short," Helena said. "I need you to slow down. Don't rush. Take all the time you need."
Emily blinked at her.
"Make sure there are no mistakes, even if it takes hours. Accuracy is more important. Do you understand?"
"Yes, m'lady."
Helena rose and fixed Karmash with her demon stare. The giant swallowed.
"Tell me more," Helena ordered. "Tell me everything."
Chapter Seven
GNOME'S head lay in her hands. Audrey stared at it for one painful, horrified moment and dropped it on the floor of the cabin. Gnome's head rolled and came to rest against a trunk.
They threw his head at me. Gnome is dead, and it's my fault.
"Stubborn, greedy fool." Kaldar picked up the head and deposited it in a wicker box.
A weapon. She needed a weapon. A crossbow hung on the wall of the cabin. Audrey lunged for it and saw a rifle. Even better.
"Audrey," Kaldar said.
She ripped the rifle off the wall, flipped the safety off, chambered a round, took aim at the tattooed asshole standing on the cliff, and fired, all in the space of two breaths. The recoil punched her shoulder.
A screen of white lightning burst from the blond woman. The bullet exploded against it. The tattooed man grinned at her, muscles bulging on his frame like body armor.
"Damn it."
Audrey chambered another round. If only the repulsive magic would leave her alone for one second, she would make this one count.
Kaldar's hand clamped on the rifle. "You're wasting your bullets. That's a blueblood. She can stop a shell from a bazooka with her flash shield."
Audrey let go of the rifle. Anger filled her so hot and intense, she had to scream, or she would've exploded. The Hand's magic, still burrowing into her flesh, only made her fury hotter. "What kind of a sick fuck throws a severed head? What the hell are those people?"
"That's what the Hand does." Kaldar shrugged.
"And you! You don't seem surprised by any of this!"
A man shouldered his way into the cabin, his hair a glossy black curtain. The man sat next to Jack and George in the corner, and she saw his face: powerful jaw, strong line, slightly slanted eyes of pale silvery gray. Slabbed with thick muscle, he looked strong enough to wrestle a bear, but the eyes were young. He couldn't have been more than twenty. The man smiled, displaying serrated teeth. "This ought to be good."
A small separate part of Audrey realized she ought to be shocked, but right now Kaldar was more important.
"I've told you, I've dealt with the Hand before," Kaldar said.
"No, there is more to it than that. It's like you knew that they would be coming. You even sent the kids to keep watch." She pointed to where George and Jack sat. A new thought occurred to her. "You sent the kids to keep watch!"
"I think we've established that," Kaldar said.
"You knew that the Hand was coming, the Hand who murders people, then throws their heads at their friends, and you sent children as lookouts right into their jaws?"
"Um." Kaldar took a small step back.
"Are you insane? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? What were you thinking?"
"I think it's a very reasonable question," the black-haired man said. "What were you thinking, Uncle?"
Kaldar pointed at him. "You stay out of this."
"And what if the kids didn't get a chance to escape? That blond bitch would've cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces, and we would be picking up their heads now instead of Gnome's." Audrey shuddered. "I can still feel their magic. It's crawling all over me. It feels like someone doused me in lighter fluid and set me on fire."