The attack on Phelan happened too fast to prevent, but that didn’t stop me from burying an arrow in the camazotzi’s back a second after Phelan’s head slammed into the ground.
Dammit! If I hadn’t been so focused on watching that bastard Cariocecus, I could have stopped them! What kind of fucking game is this?
But Cariocecus was shouting at his minions to—to stop?
What the hell is going on here?
Low, rich feminine laughter echoed off the walls. Below me, Thom and Thordin stood frozen, Thordin’s axe filling his hands and Thom’s sword drawn, both weapons in hand in the instant after the camazotzi fell on Phelan.
“They don’t answer to you anymore, you puny excuse for a warrior deity,” a woman’s voice purred.
A petite, slender figure garbed in a cloak of sable fur knifed through the ranks of camazotzi and crossed the field toward Cariocecus. The cloak slid from her shoulders as she crossed the field, her hair oiled and dark, braided and beaded, skin the color of milk chocolate swathed in black leather tooled with red and white beads and shells. She looked like some Egyptian empress garbed for war.
Maybe she is. I swallowed rising bile. That’s the last thing we need.
Apparently, it was always the first thing we got—the things we didn’t need.
I tried to will Thordin and Thom to retrieve Phelan, but they stood frozen in the gap.
Phelan just lay very still and bleeding below me, his eyes closed and his face turned toward the sky.
Not fucking good. “Kel!”
“On it.” She ducked between Thom and Thordin, startling both of them, and ran the dozen feet to where Phelan lay. She hooked her hands under his armpits and started to haul him back toward the safety of the walls.
The woman’s eyes fell on her, then flicked up to me. The hint of a smile played on dark red lips.
“Gutsy,” she said.
I notched another arrow. “Trust me,” I said in a low voice. “We try to be.”
She turned away and took Cariocecus’s face in her hand, twisting him around to face her. Our enemy’s eyes widened, his posture stiff as he met her gaze.
“M-Menhit,” he stammered. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this coup d’état?”
“You’re a bastard, little god,” she purred. Though her tone was soft, her voice carried. My fingers tightened around the haft of my bow.
“You’re a bastard,” she repeated, “and I’ve got use for these and theirs and this place and your little minions and you will not be stopping me from using them to my advantage.”
“You’re working with the Hecate,” he spat.
“Until our paths diverge and I win the double-cross, yes.”
The woman crushed his lips beneath hers, then tossed him away like a piece of garbage. He hit the wall and screamed before crumbling into a faintly steaming heap at its base, barely moving. Her eyes flashed a she looked up toward me.
“You always had the luck of a goddess, little hunter,” she said as she met my gaze. I saw death there and stared back, unflinching.
It’s not going to be my death. Not today, not at her hands.
Not ever at this bitch’s hands.
“Bring it on,” I said with a cruel smile. The words came from a dark place inside, where memories that weren’t my own hid, still breathing despite the death of the bodies that had earned them. “You didn’t win then and you won’t win now.”
She lifted a hand to signal the attack as I let my next arrow fly.
Like a black tide, the camazotzi rushed the field.
The arrow slammed home.
