Kagen dove for the knife belt, caught it, rolled, and came up with it, but the werewolf slashed at him and he felt his back erupt with burning lines of fire. He stumbled as he came out of the roll, staggering sideways, and nearly fell into the fire.
He caught his balance, though only just, and tore the twin daggers from their sheaths. The monster that had been Tikaani rose up on hind legs and spread her arms wide as if daring him to strike.
And strike he did.
With no hesitation at all he leapt forward, crossing his arms midstep and then ripping them backhand to drag the razor-sharp edges across the monster’s belly. Blood exploded outward and some of it struck his bare chest, his throat, and his mouth. It tasted of copper and sulfur and bile.
Gagging, he stumbled sideways, spitting the foul taste out, and saw out of the corner of his eye a slashing paw filled with claws. He ducked, once more whipping his blades out, once more cleaving through unholy skin, once more seeding the air with blood.
And once more the werewolf ignored the damage.
It began stalking him, pawing and biting at the air. Playing with him as the howls of the pack grew closer. Kagen had to keep backing up, but he soon realized the creature was herding him toward a corner away from the door. The fire was still blazing, and he knew that if he could get clear and get at least a couple of steps of running start, he could vault it and escape.
But the pack was out there.
He had no experience with monsters except from campfire stories the Twins used to tell to scare him as a boy. Were the animals outside her pack? Was she a monster who ran as alpha to a pack of ordinary wolves? The ones he’d seen earlier did not look anything like her. They ran on all fours and seemed entirely normal, if larger than the common gray wolf.
Or, worse, was that a congregation of werewolves like her? Monstrous and indestructible? His knives had cut her skin, but the wounds seemed to be closing with bizarre rapidity, and he remembered how the scratches and cuts she had when he first met her had healed within hours and then vanished entirely.
Kagen kept slashing nonetheless, chopping at the fingers—or were they toes—of the reaching paws. He cut her every time, and each cut ripped a cry of pain from her, but she did not stop her relentless approach. It was clear the thing could feel pain, but what was equally clear was that the pain was transitory and the wounds of no real consequence.
The werewolf suddenly lunged forward, slashing downward to rake him from face to groin—but Kagen saw her shoulder muscles bunch, in the split second before the attack flashed out. Even with that warning he felt the tips of each nail rip his skin. She caught him on the outside of the left bicep and the pain was immediate and intense. The force behind the cut was enormous and the shock jolted the whole arm, causing him to drop one of the daggers. It clattered and skidded and stopped against a far wall, and it might as well have been on the far side of the moon.
Kagen ducked and twisted, slashing at the backs of her knees with his remaining knife, and he could feel the edge slice through tendon. The monster stumbled and fell, and that gave him a tiny chance. He dove past her, but even then—with deep cuts in her legs—Tikaani twisted from the waist and raked him again, ripping his right trouser leg from hip to ankle. Only one claw caught his flesh, but that was enough to ignite new agony in him.
He landed badly, twisted around, and skidded away from her on his back.
Kagen heard the howling directly outside now, but he also heard the wild fluttering of a thousand wings and the sharp challenge of the nightbirds. Caws and cries in a dozen bird voices. He had no idea what was happening outside, but so far, the other wolves had not yet come into the tower.
That thought stuck in his mind.
Why had they not come in? Any two of them could trap him and tear him to pieces. Were they leaving this to Tikaani, or were the nightbirds somehow interfering with their entry? Or … was something else happening? Nothing made much sense to him, and all of it was unfolding with such insane speed that there was little time to think.
He scrambled along the floor until he was on the other side of the fire. His left hand felt naked without the lost blade, so he grabbed for one of the sticks whose unburned end protruded from the blaze. It was hawthorn branch, sturdy and with good heft, and Kagen rose with it.
The werewolf got to her feet, and the damage to her legs seemed to have healed. That made Kagen’s heart sink in his chest. He could wound her, but could he ever hope to defeat this monster?
The werewolf began lumbering toward him, slashing left and right as if showing him the way in which he would die. Kagen picked his moment, and as her paw passed him, he darted forward and slammed the burning brand against her arm. He tried for an angle that would break the humerus, but she moved too fast. Even so, the fire tore a scream from her. Kagen then darted in with his remaining dagger and went for a twisting thrust in the lower abdomen.
The tip drilled into muscle as the werewolf jerked sideways, and the handle was torn from his grip. Tikaani howled in mingled pain and fury and backhanded Kagen with such shocking force that he was hurled across the room. He pulled his head forward to save his skull, but the stone wall smashed him like a bug, punching the air from his lungs. He dropped the torch and puddled down, then screamed and jerked back because his outflung hand landed amid the coals.
The werewolf was hurt, Kagen could see that much, but he did not believe she was mortally or even seriously wounded. Her eyes were filled with bright lights of pure malice, and already the blood flow from the stab wound was slowing.
He lay there for a moment, too horrified to speak or act or even move. He was a highly trained fighter, a protégé of his mother, the Poison Rose, who had been revered as the greatest knife fighter of the age, but nothing had prepared him for this. He was fighting a monster—an actual monster. He had fought only one supernatural creature before—the towering razor-knight conjured by dark magic. It had killed his mother when no ordinary fighter could bring her down; and Kagen had defeated it through luck as much as anything. But this … this … it was beyond him. He knew he fought something that could not be beaten, could not be destroyed by any means he knew of. Even the old campfire tales only hinted at the things that could do harm to a beast like this. Silver was its greatest weakness, and apart from a few silver dimes in a pouch on Jinx’s saddlebag, he had none. Nor any weapons thrice blessed by a High Gardener. Even his treasured daggers could only injure it, and that briefly.
Kagen knew that he faced his death as the creature began slowly stalking toward him. Tikaani’s face was incapable of expressing human emotions, but her red delight was there in her eyes. There was no time to run, nowhere to run. His life had trickled down to a single second, and that was about to be spent.
But Kagen was the son of the Poison Rose. Damned or not, disgraced or not, he was still that. He was a Vale, and the Vales did not ever give up. His father, mother, and older brother had died in the palace on the Night of the Ravens, that was true enough, but the bodies of their killers had been heaped up around them.
As the werewolf lunged forward, claws spread, mouth agape to reveal all those dripping fangs, Kagen rose to meet the attack. He summoned every ounce of body weight, all his strength, and the mingled storms of rage and fear that churned in his chest to swing the torch.
The burning end smashed upward beneath Tikaani’s jaws, snapping them shut and knocking her backwards. The beast fought for balance even as it pawed and slapped at the flames that burned on its long fur. She did not go down, though.
She did not.
Kagen rose to his feet, still clutching the gnarled hawthorn stick, but the burning end of it was gone, smashed to splinters. All he had left was a jagged stump fifteen inches long. That was it. Less than a torch, less than a knife.
The werewolf looked at him with dark triumph in her eyes. The fire had burned her pelt, but there was no real damage. She was too strong. Impossibly, unnaturally strong. That vitality would outlast his, even if he had his knives. Kagen knew this.
“Come on!” he roared, brandishing the stick. “Come on, you ugly fuck!”
The werewolf came.
She came fast, uttering a roar of such immense power that cracks snapped and whipsawed up the walls.
Kagen, knowing this was his last moment, surged forward to meet the charge, and he drove the spike of hawthorn before him, using his own rush and the unstoppable force of the werewolf’s momentum to drive the point home. He caught her in the chest, trying for her heart but missing, the spike scraping sideways across the curved sternum and instead punching into the right breast. As the massive arms, packed with corded muscle, ensnared him and pulled him toward those dreadful teeth, Kagen held the half-buried spike in his left hand and slammed the end of it with his right palm. Once. Again. And a third time before the werewolf crushed the last breath from his body.
If her last scream had been towering, then the one torn from her now was impossible. Blood erupted from Kagen’s ears and nose. He coughed blood onto her fur as the lights in all the world and the stars above the ruined towers all winked out.
Kagen fell.
It seemed to him that he fell for a very long time.
So long.
There was no light.
No sound.
Just darkness.
And he plunged through it forever.