Page 43 of Unbroken
“Your life is in danger, man—get inside!” Sebastian shouted, scanning their surroundings frantically.
Fuller still hesitated, so Ves shrugged off his suit jacket and let his tentacles free.
Fuller’s face went white with terror and he stumbled back—away from Ves, and unfortunately, away from the safety of the building as well. “Oh God—she sent you! Get away!”
He broke into a run, fleeing blindly in his panic. Ves swore and dashed after him.
A dark shape dropped from the roof of the Breakwater Club and bore Fuller to the ground.
The scars on Sebastian’s arm pulled hard, as though they wanted to physically drag him across the courtyard to the dark shape that had fallen on Fuller.
He broke into a run after Ves, arm outstretched, magically fumbling for bones to break, flesh to unmake. But his power seemed to slip off what he now saw was a heavily cloaked human figure. Was the Book of Blood preventing him from doing anything? Or?—
The figure’s head snapped up, fixing on Sebastian, and shock brought both him and Ves skidding to a halt.
The light leaking from the Breakwater’s windows revealed the features beneath the hood, her mouth twisted into a snarl of fury and hate. On the right, her face was a smooth oval of pale skin and delicate features. A lock of strawberry blonde hair tumbled free of the hood, and her eye was a crystalline blue.
The other side was utterly inhuman, the eye a green iris with no visible white, bearing a goat-shaped pupil like Ves’s. Bark-like skin formed the whorls and small branches of a tree, twisted up into a single curled horn. She held Fuller pinned to the ground by his neck with her left hand, a gnarled thing like a bird’s foot made out of wood. He kicked and struggled against her strangling grasp, but she ignored him, her gaze locking onto Sebastian with an intensity he could feel.
Just as he could feel the magic of the Books calling out between his scars and her.
Ves raised an uncertain hand. “Sister?”
Impossible. The magic of the Books was anathema to the Dark Young; Ves had said so himself. So what the hell was going on?
Her eyes left Sebastian and fixed on Ves. “I’m no sister of yours, foul thing,” she snarled. “And if you mean to save your master, you’re too late.”
She hoisted Fuller into the air, his legs kicking. The bark-like skin of her hand shifted, stinging hairs bursting forth like those of a nettle.
Then she dropped him contemptuously to the ground, and he began to scream.
As Sebastian watched in horror, weeping blisters spread over Fuller’s skin, radiating out from the red mark her hand had left. He started to convulse, tongue protruding and heels drumming on the bricks.
Sebastian made to go to him, even though he didn’t know what he meant to do, but Ves flung out an arm and two tentacles. “Stay away from her! She’s poisonous.”
Her eyes locked on him again, and a chill ran down his spine. Then Irene spat out a spell.
The woman jerked back with a hiss—then fled, dashing across the bricks and leaping over the gate with ease. Within seconds, the pain in his scars eased, then vanished.
She was gone.
CHAPTER 20
“So,” Irene said, as they stood beside the incinerator behind the museum while Fuller’s body burned, “it seems you and Noct aren’t the only Dark Young in Widdershins, Ves.”
He folded his arms over his chest, tentacles tucked away. He wished Noct was here, wished he could have gone to the club with them and seen…whatever she was.
After Sebastian confirmed she’d fled, they’d been presented with the problem of a dead man who’d last been seen with them. In the end, Ves picked up the body and climbed over the locked gate, depositing Fuller in the shadows of the alley beyond. Then the four of them strolled casually back through the club, making certain to say goodnight to both the concierge and the doorman as they exited. If there was ever an investigation into where Fuller had gone, at least they’d been seen leaving without him.
Once in the car, Irene drove around to the side so Ves could slip back to gather the body. From there they’d gone to the museum, and thence to the little courtyard where the taxidermy department’s incinerator waited.
“Grandfather knows something, which means Mother does as well.” He tipped his head back, staring up at the smoke spiraling across the stars. “He speculated a Dark Young might be involved. He brought up an old legend about a man with a garden so poisonous, it turned his daughter poisonous as well. Reading between the lines, it seems clear she was a Dark Young to begin with.”
“And now we find ourselves facing a poisonous woman, like in the story,” Sebastian said. He leaned against the courtyard’s wall, since there was nowhere to sit but the ground.
Irene had taken off her enormous hat; escaped strands of black hair clung to her bronze skin. “She spoke as though she thought you answered to Fuller. ‘Your master.’ I wonder why that was the conclusion she immediately jumped to?”
“And when he saw my tentacles, Fuller thought she’d sent me to kill him.” Ves’s head ached; none of this made any sense. “Your spell startled her, but I don’t think it worked, did it, Irene?”
