Blood Red (9781101637890) (38 page)

Her head throbbed, still, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
All right then. I can get things done. Maybe Dominik can manage to make it a little better, too. . . .

The dead shifter was over to one side; by the smear of blood, Markos had dragged him off of her, which was kind of him. She wasn't sure how she would have reacted if she had awakened under the body.

Probably screaming a great deal.

“Are you all right?” Markos asked anxiously.

“I have been better,” she said, “But I have also been worse. But Markos, are
you
all right?” She turned her attention to her friend, and took his shoulders in her hands, turning him to one side and the other, a little to examine his injuries. Then she took his chin in her right hand and tilted his face about to get a good look at what had been done to him there. “In the name of God, what were they doing to you? And
why?
”

“I'm not sure,” he admitted, as she let him go. He was a little flushed, but soon cooled down. “The chief one, Bertalan—he kept trying to get me to bite his children. He seemed to be under the impression that a bite from a true, born shifter would allow his children to shift without the need for casting the spell.” Markos made a face.

“And does it?” she asked, without thinking.

“Of course not!” he said crossly. “They kept beating me and cutting me, to make me bite. I finally gave in and bit them, and of course nothing happened. The taste is something I thought I would never get out of my mouth. And when that didn't work, he talked about breeding me to his wives. Daughters. Ugh, they were both. Granddaughters, too. Actually I think the ones living that weren't his captives were all his granddaughters at this point.”

Markos looked as if he was going to gag, or throw up, or both. She didn't blame him. She felt nauseous too, and it wasn't all due to the blows on the head.

“It was all just. . . .” He shuddered. “It was like a nightmare. It was worse than a nightmare. If I could have ripped open a vein with my teeth to make it stop, I would have. It wasn't even a day and a night, and I thought was going to go mad. And then—”

His face relaxed. “Then . . . the
zâne
came . . .”

Tears began to fall from his blackened eyes, and he broke down. Awkwardly, she put her arms around him and he sobbed on her shoulder. “Rosa, you can't imagine what that meant to me. In the middle of this . . . this horror, these horrible, horrible people, in the middle of being tortured and told that a sorcerer was going to take my own mind away from me came—
cleanness.
Something clean, and good, and wholesome. . . .”

“You did amazingly,” she murmured, meaning it. Poor Markos . . . and poor Dominik. This was a hard, terrible way to learn just how vile evil could be. At least she had been able to learn that lesson by degrees.

“And they drove those—half human things out of my prison,” he continued, sobbing. “And stayed with me and tried to heal me. And they promised me that if they somehow got driven away, they would kill me. You can't believe what that meant to me!”

She shivered. She could believe it—and she only thanked God, silently, that she had never found herself in that position.

She patted his shoulder, self-consciously, and held him until he recovered himself. It was a little strange, holding him like this, because there was nothing
remotely
sensual about it, even though he was half-naked. “I'm sorry,” he said, pulling away, and wiping his face with his hand, then wincing as he touched bruised flesh. “I don't . . . I shouldn't have lost control like that.”

“Don't be sorry,” she replied. “It's all right.”

He rubbed his hands over his arms self-consciously. “Let's go get Dominik. He probably thinks we don't care about him anymore,” he said, trying half-heartedly to make a joke.

“I can hear you both perfectly well, you know,” came a cross-sounding voice from behind and to her right. “It's my leg that's broken, not my hearing.”

Markos flushed. She noticed he blushed everywhere. It was rather charming, actually. She found herself blushing too, and sternly told herself to stop.

“I'm getting stiffer by the moment,” came the increasingly irritated voice. “And if my calculations and my poor abused pocket watch are correct, it's almost dawn.”

The two of them separated completely, and turned to make their way around the grisly altar and to Dominik's side.

“How are you not screaming in agony?” she asked, kneeling down to look at his leg. She might not be a healer, but she had splinted a leg or three in her time. But she didn't need to do anything at all. This was an expert job.

“Healer,” he reminded her. “I can make most of the pain go away.”

“I wish I could,” she grumbled—and managed not to wince away as he reached for her temple. Almost immediately, the throbbing subsided.

“Don't move fast. Don't lift anything heavy. Don't strain. You've still bruised your brain,” he cautioned. “And it will warn you if you are doing something stupid.”

“So I will try not to do anything stupid,” she replied, putting one of his arms around her neck as Markos did the same on his other side. “Does getting you to your feet count as stupid?”

He didn't answer . . . but her head did ache a bit, warningly, as she and Markos hauled him upright.

They managed to get him up on one foot between them, and with his arms draped over their shoulders, hopped him through the cave. “Who splinted your leg?” Rosa asked, as they passed into the outer cave.

“I splinted my leg. Once Markos dragged that disgusting creature off you and made sure you were only knocked out and would come around in your own time, he rooted through the trash out here and found me some sticks and rags to tie it up with.” He glanced over at Markos. “And some rags to tie himself up with.”

“I left my clothes hidden out there in the woods when I came to investigate the area,” Markos said, going red all over again. “But I wasn't going to leave the two of you alone just to find them!”

They made their slow way out of the cave and out to the open area where they had fought the last of the shifter children. It was, indeed, dawn. That was where Rosa and Markos left Dominik, with some better branches to tie his leg up with, while Rosa went to get the horses and Markos shifted to wolf to find his clothing. By some miracle, the horses were still there, although they had eaten every scrap of food there was to find within reach of their reins, as well as the bag of oats. She filled her water bottle and Dominik's at the little stream, after drinking her fill. The horses regarded her with mild impatience, as she mounted one and took up the other's reins to lead him, as if to say “It is long past time you came to get us!”

She brought them to the waiting healer. Unfortunately the one thing she hadn't packed was anything at all in the way of medicine. But, well, there would be plenty back at the village. Her head throbbed dully, but incessantly, and she would have given just about anything to lie down and sleep it away.

Markos still was not back, so she gave some food, and most importantly, water, to Dominik.

“Shouldn't you rest?” he asked, when she had made sure he was as comfortable as possible—which was to say, not very—and headed for the cave again.

“If I stop, I may not be able to start again,” she told him, over her shoulder. “And I need my weapons. They're too valuable to leave behind.”

The weapons were scattered all over the cave with the altar, and she had to fight down nausea and avert her eyes to get them. But she found all of them, all three knives, all three pistols, the boar spear, and the coach gun. Fortunately they were not too heavy, but she brought them out in three trips, leaving them next to Dominik and the horses. Her headache was easing again, as long as she moved slowly.

The last knife was right beside the chief shifter's body, so, just to be sure, she checked it over. Sure enough, there was a copper medallion on a copper chain around his neck, the Stag of St. Hubert, with the crucifix between his horns inverted. She dropped it on his body.
Rot there with him,
she thought. That was all the evidence she needed.

She didn't think there would be anything else of any value in that cave—but Markos wasn't back yet, and how would it hurt to be thorough? So she walked slowly through the entire cavern complex, taking advantage of her dark-vision while it lasted. And that was where she got a surprise.

Besides heaps of trash and filthy rags, and stores of mixed sound and rotten food, there was one cavelet that was full of nothing but human bones—

She thought she had gotten inured to it all, after the slaughter on the rough altar. She hadn't. She stared in stark horror as she tried to take in the sheer volume of victims and . . . couldn't. It was impossible. The bones, scarred by tooth marks, were heaped in a pile that filled the little cave, which was at least the size of an average cottage, and in the back they were piled as high as her head. Decades upon decades . . . more victims than anyone had ever guessed, even her.

The horrid sight just unleashed everything she had been holding back.

She sat down on the cave floor, and wept until she was sick, then she threw up the water she had drunk, then she wept until she didn't have any tears left.

And at the very back of the complex, there was one cavelet, room sized, that was clean. And full; full of the belongings and treasures of all those people the shifters had murdered and eaten. There were not many of those who had been taken who had actually possessed much, but there had been
hundreds
of victims, and the accumulation . . .

She thought about throwing a torch in there and burning it all. But then she remembered. . . .

There are people alive right now who lost loved ones to these monsters. Somewhere in here are tokens to identify the victims . . .

That was when it dawned on her.
This is something Petrescu should handle. He probably won't want to—but he should, and he will understand that. And he will finally bring peace to so many . . . people will finally be able to put their loved ones to rest. People will have answers.

Avoiding the cave of bones, and the cave of the altar, she ventured out—into sunlight.

Markos was waiting, clothed, and cooking rabbits over a fire. The horses were grazing on armfuls of grass he had brought them. Dominik's leg was re-splinted, and he was drinking something and making a face over it.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“Willow bark tea. Not my favorite,” he said. “But it is helping. I just can't wait to get back and get some laudanum and a real bed, and be pampered by one of our host's daughters until this damned thing heals. The ride back is going to be a horror.”

She had had a broken leg once, herself, and she sympathized. “Well, let's get food inside us all, then get you up on the horse and get the horror over with.”

If the young men noticed her red and swollen eyes, they were tactful enough not to say anything.

She had thought she wouldn't be able to eat, but had been prepared to choke the meat down because she knew that she needed it. But to her surprise, she was starving, and finished her half and licked the bones clean. Dominik managed to get all of his down as well, although he was not nearly so enthusiastic about it. Markos wolfed his down—like a starving wolf. But then, he had been more than a day and a half without food.

They got Dominik up on his horse; as the lighter of the two, Rosa mounted up behind him. She would be able to steady him if necessary, and take the reins at need. He was paper white when she got up behind him, and she was feeling a little sick and sweating herself. But they both managed to stay ahorse, the other horse accepted Markos without too much fuss, and by the time the sun was over the trees, they were on their way.

It was not a pleasant journey, not for any of them. Markos was still covered in bruises and half-healed wounds. Rosa's head was aching abominably. And Dominik had both a battered head and that broken leg.

Mostly, they concentrated on the landscape immediately in front of them, guiding the horses over the smoothest parts and keeping them to a slow amble. It was marginally better once they broke out of the forest and into fields and meadows, but not by much. Rosa was about to suggest they stop and rest, when Markos suddenly exclaimed, “Look!”

She looked up, squinting against the sun, and saw nothing immediately in front of them. But then, she looked where he was pointing, off to the side, and toward a hill.

Just coming over the top of it was a group of mounted men, approaching at a canter. They dropped down between hills, but as they crested the one nearest, Rosa could easily make out Petrescu, kitted out with what must be every weapon he owned, however ancient, his moustache quivering with determination.