20. Tez

20

Tez

Nemi sat on my shoulder as I looked out my small, grimy window.

The evening sunlight cast long shadows over the city. Slade had planned another grueling night of "tuning up the locals", so I'd forced myself to catch a few hours of sleep in my new quarters—a tiny room off the main corridor of the fourth floor. Simply a bed and a bathroom, but it was all mine. And once I'd braced the door, I was able to sleep like a baby.

I left it now and took the stairs down a couple of levels, aware of the hostile looks and the way others left a substantial bubble around me. I'd be a fool to consider it simply due to respect. More like abandoning the sick herd member to its fate.

I entered the mess hall with my usual arrogant swagger in place, as if I were oblivious to what hovered over my head. The reality was that I remained hyperaware of everyone that came within six feet of me. My forearm itched to drop the blade into my hand, and even Nemi seemed on edge, alternately fluffing and smoothing her feathers.

Clearly, nobody was interested in creating a fucking bloodbath in the mess hall. They left me alone while I ate. Very alone. No one would even sit at the tables on each side of me.

I watched the little cliques of shifters and men. Did they really think of those little groups as family? That any of their cohorts would help them out in a bind? If you lived like this for any length of time, you discovered it was all a lie. That your so-called amigos would stab you in the back in a moment, if it suited them to do so.

The only one I'd ever trusted was gone. I would trust no one else.

Nemi twittered from my shoulder. Okay, maybe one. She'd earned it.

So I ate my supper, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and left. When Nemi chittered at me and pecked my cheek, I knew I wasn't alone.

They thought they were being subtle, showing themselves in an effort to move me along a chosen route. But I was more like a cat than cattle.

I swung right, and when the one standing in that hall stepped forward, I met his eyes. He lasted a few seconds before lowering his. I saw him swallow convulsively.

I stepped close and glared. "Get out of my fucking way."

He read the promise of death in my eyes, and stepped aside.

I was halfway down the hall when I heard him grunt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his body crumple. His so-called accomplice pulled the knife free, and continued toward me. In his wake, came the others.

I counted eight of them. Eight idiots determined that I wouldn't see another sunrise.

The hall I'd chosen led outside, and I walked out the exit and along the beaten path as though out for an evening stroll. And then, between one stride and the next, I stepped off the path and into the morass that was the swamp.

If they'd possessed more than a few brain cells between them, they would have conceded defeat and retreated to fight another day. But the fact they persisted in coming after me was a pretty clear sign that these were nothing more than bottom feeders. Because they were afraid to quit.

Which meant that someone higher up was pulling the strings. Didn't think it went as high as Slade, but no way to be certain. It didn't matter, really. Because there would be a point made, just not the one they'd anticipated.

The marsh was unforgiving, and if I put a foot wrong, I'd solve their problem for them. So instead of trying to walk through the soggy mess, I took off my boots and climbed.

Some of the trunks ran for over a hundred feet, but they were as much horizontal as vertical. Where their branches touched, they grew together. If I could make like a monkey, I could be much more mobile up here than on the ground.

Once up there, I stashed my boots before silently crawling among the sheets of hanging moss and ferns that grew off the branches.

The dickhead that sent them must be scarier than me, at least to them, because they followed me into the swampy tangle.

As a divide-and-conquer technique, the swamp worked amazingly well. I moved carefully along the trunks in bare feet as I tracked my first victim. Nemi helped me, hovering above his position. When I dropped onto him, I hit him so hard he didn't have time to do more than gasp.

Seconds later, I was back up in the trees, wiping my blooded blade on a leaf. Nemi hovered in my face, then darted to my right, and hovered again. I followed her and found a guy pushing carefully through the foliage…

Twenty minutes and three more bodies later, I sensed a tremor in the branch beneath my feet. Nemi uttered a high-pitched trill of warning, and I acted on instinct, dropping off it just as a merc came at me from behind. He missed his grab, his knife slicing through the air right where I'd been. His long tail whipped at where I hung beneath the mossy trunk, and I grabbed it as I let go.

It hauled him right off the branch with me. We crashed through ferns and hit the ground with a soggy thwack. He hissed and rolled, pulling his tail free and raising his knife?—

Then I stared down at mine and buried it to the hilt in his stomach. I braced against his hip with my foot and ripped him open.

In seconds, I was back up in the trees. Five down. Three to go.

Fifteen minutes later, Nemi and I had disposed of another. The remaining two clearly embraced their inner intellectual and bolted. They'd face the head thug's wrath instead of mine.

The hummingbird and I emerged from the trees. I regarded her as I wiped three of my knives on leaves before sheathing them. She'd become an effective working partner, and I didn't understand it.

I shrugged the thoughts away. It only mattered if she suddenly stopped doing it, and if I remained on guard for that, I'd be fine.

What would Slade make of my efforts? I had my doubts that anyone would search for the bodies, or even give two shits about them. The marsh didn't lack for scavengers, and Slade didn't lack for mercs.

As Nemi twittered and flitted between flowers, I leaned against a trunk in the shadows and watched seven Dragons fly in low over the trees. Not Victor's crew—five Dragons flew in formation around the center two, escorted to Victor's ledge by two of the Wyverns. All the newcomers were huge, far bigger than any Dragons I'd seen so far.

With the softest rustling of bush, a large furred form emerged about twenty feet to my right. He must have been in the swamp the entire time. Not much got past the mercenary shifter.

That he hadn't intervened meant he didn't care. I guessed no one needed a stupid mercenary. And they'd all been very stupid.

Slade sat his furred butt down on the ground, and stared up at the Dragons, now landing on Victor's ledge.

"Legion," he stated.

I had no idea what he was talking about. But all I said was, "You sure?"

He snorted. "Everr see a fuckin' underworld Dragon that big?"

I filed that away. "Why the fuck are they here?"

Slade shook his heavy mane, and his blue eyes glittered in the evening shadows. "Victorr is making interesting friends," he growled. "Things across the rrealms are changing. The balance of powerr is shifting to the underworld."

Interesante. I desperately needed that fucking Realm Guide for Dummies . Not knowing this shit meant I was stumbling around in the darkness.

The Dragons vanished into Victor's suite. Slade rose and paced straight past me.

"Time to get going." He aimed for the door.

And that was all he said. As though I hadn't rendered several members of his team marsh bait.

I whistled to Nemi, and once she'd landed, followed Slade into the building.