Chapter 127: Sharpened

The explosion came from well beyond the cave.

Its first sharp crack struck the surrounding slopes, broke into overlapping echoes, and continued traveling through the ravine long after the charge itself had gone silent.

Dust sifted from a crack above Rook’s head. A few grains landed on his face, but he barely felt them. He was listening to what happened outside.

The dragging stopped. Whatever had been scraping its way toward the ledge remained still for a moment, and then a shrill cry rose from below it. Another answered farther up the slope. Claws scrambled over stone, loose gravel rattled down the cliff, and something heavy pushed away from the rock with a sudden beat of wings.

The sounds moved toward the explosion. Rook ears followed them until the scraping nearest the cave had become a distant clatter, then waited a little longer to make certain nothing was still approaching. Only then did he let out a short, broken laugh. One of his charges had found a much better use than the one he had intended.

“Smart lass.”

She had taken it while telling him to get better.

While he lay there bleeding, unable to do much beyond resent the situation, she had crouched beside him and helped herself to something useful.

Then she had walked away beside the man who thought he had rescued her.

He always hated people for trying to touch his things, but for the first time in his long 300 years in this damned world, he didn’t mind it.

Since now, the creatures were following the explosion, leaving this cave behind and heading toward the two people traveling beyond it.

Gascoigne had been perfectly willing to leave Rook with the consequences of a gunshot echoing through the mountains. Apparently, Mara had decided he should carry some of those consequences himself.

He was the nearest Reaper to her. With Abominations closing in, the Brand would demand that he help, regardless of whether she had accepted his offer. He could argue about Rook’s crimes, refuse to like her, or regret ever approaching their shelter. None of that would allow him to simply stand aside and watch an unbound soul get eaten.

Mara had made herself his responsibility without agreeing to belong to him. Rook could almost picture the moment Gascoigne understood what she had done, and the thought pulled another laugh from his damaged chest.

It ended in a cough. Blood reached his lips, warm against skin that had begun feeling cold, and he could not lift a hand to wipe it away. Beyond the cave, the cries continued gathering. He listened to them converge, and his satisfaction began to sour.

Gascoigne was not the only person standing near that explosion.

“As much as you are smart, you’re also hella dumb for risking your life for a damn old fraud like me.”

She knew how quickly things could go wrong. She had crossed the bridge, felt those hands close around her, and watched him nearly disappear over its edge. Those creatures had not needed much time to turn a crossing into a desperate attempt to remain above the chasm. Now she had deliberately called more of them toward herself.

She could have kept walking. The contract was gone, and a Reaper who could actually finish an Abomination had offered to take her somewhere safer. Nothing required her to look back, much less steal an explosive and use herself as part of the distraction.

Instead, she had done it for him. For a Reaper who could not Cull, who had spent three hundred years surviving only to overlook a blunderbuss beneath a stranger’s coat. He could not even stand beneath the bandages she had tried to make useful.

Rook tried to move his leg. His boot remained where it was, surrounded by blood, and the effort produced only a fresh pull of pain through his chest. She had bought him time, and he was spending it sitting against a coffin, listening to the things she had drawn away from him.

Then he noticed the blood between his legs had stopped spreading.

Its edge drew inward, slowly enough that he initially thought the stone must slope beneath him. He watched it withdraw from a shallow crack and leave the dark groove behind. A thin stream separated from the pool, crossed a dip that should have trapped it, and traveled toward his hand.

Rook stared as it reached his coat. The blood climbed over a fold in the fabric, gathering briefly along the seam before continuing upward. He could still hear the distant cries, but they had become difficult to follow. His attention remained fixed on the impossible little movement beside his fingers.

The first stream touched his hand, and more followed. Blood gathered along his knuckles, thickening around the joints until he could feel it moving against his skin. He tried to bend one finger. It moved, and when he tried again, the others followed.

His wrist lifted from the floor with them. Rook stopped, expecting the movement to fail or the pain to force his arm back down. Neither happened. Slowly, awkwardly, he brought his hand toward his face and watched the dark liquid cling to it.

The blood collected along the edges of his fingers. Five curved points extended beyond his nails, growing narrow and sharp as they caught the blue lantern light. He spread his fingers, and the claws spread with them. When he bent them, the points followed without breaking apart.

He held his hand there for several seconds. Blood loss could do strange things to a mind, and he had been lying in enough of his own to distrust what he saw. Yet he could feel the weight around his fingers. He could see droplets leaving his cuff and joining the shapes instead of falling to the floor.

Then the points softened. Rook’s fingers tightened as the claws folded back into liquid, but there was nothing solid left to hold. Blood slipped between them and flowed down his wrist, passing beneath his sleeve before spreading across the black Brand.

He felt it continue toward his chest. The sensation made him lower his hand and look down, just as the soaked dressing began to shift. Linen pulled against his skin in small, uneven movements, although nothing outside it had touched the cloth.

Thin strands drew out of the bandages and entered the wounds beneath them. More rose from his lap, crawling over the folds of his clothes, while the pool on the floor narrowed. Blood that had been cooling against the stone climbed his body and disappeared into the holes left by the shot.

Something pressed outward beneath his skin. Rook clenched his jaw as the pressure gathered around one wound, sharp enough to make his fingers curl against his chest. Then a pellet dropped onto the stone.

The small metallic click made him flinch. He looked at the piece of shot lying beside his leg, absurdly small for something that had helped leave him helpless. Another followed before he could reach for it, striking the coffin and bouncing into the dirt.

Several more fell against his coat and rolled between his boots. Each came with a brief, concentrated sting as blood pushed the metal from his wounds. The torn flesh drew together behind it, closing before another stream could escape.

Feeling returned to his other hand. His fingers scraped against the floor, then pressed down hard enough to bear some of his weight. His toes moved inside his boots. Rook tried to straighten against the coffin and draw a fuller breath.

A sudden shock passed through his head before he could finish. The blue light smeared across the cave wall, and for an instant he could not tell whether his eyes were open or closed. He felt stone beneath his palm and something smooth beneath his back at the same time.

White lights hung above a metal tray. Hands pulled a strap across his chest, tightening it until he could feel the edge beneath his ribs. The smell of disinfectant filled his nose so completely that the damp air of the cave disappeared.

He heard his own voice. It sounded thinner than he expected, hoarse from asking the same question too many times without receiving an answer he understood.

“How much more?”

A tube ran from his arm. Dark blood moved steadily through it while someone stood beside the table and watched the collection fill. Rook’s fingers closed against the stone beneath him, but he could still feel the strap holding his chest down. He could still feel the needle.

The person beside him glanced toward his face, then back at the blood. There was something terrible about how little changed after he spoke. The tube remained where it was. The collection continued filling. Whatever answer he had hoped for, the hands near his arm did not move to remove it.

He remembered being cold. At first it had been something he could endure by drawing his fingers into his palms. Then the cold spread until even that small movement became difficult, and he wanted someone to cover him. He tried lifting his head to see how much they had taken, but his neck would no longer hold it up.

Someone spoke near his feet. Another person checked the needle, adjusted something, and told him to remain still. He had already stopped moving. He wanted to explain that, but taking enough breath to speak had become more effort than he could manage.

The weakness reached deeper than the wounds in his chest. He knew this feeling, knew the gradual distance between wanting to move and being able to make his body obey. His fingers still pressed against the cave floor, but he remembered lying beneath those lights with nothing left to tighten against the straps.

He felt the slow, uneven beats inside him. One came hard enough to hurt, followed by a pause that made him wait for the next. When it arrived, it was weaker. He tried to draw breath and wait again, certain that another beat had to follow.

The delay stretched. Someone moved beside the table, suddenly faster than before, and an alarm began sounding where there had only been quiet voices. Rook remembered trying to turn toward it. He remembered how far away it seemed.

He drew a sharp breath in the cave. The sound tore through his throat, and his hand caught against the coffin while the white lights gave way to the lantern’s blue flame. Pieces of metal lay scattered around him, among the wet marks his blood had left on the stone.

This had happened before the machine began bringing him back, before he lost count of the times he woke strapped inside it. He had still been asking how much more they needed, still expecting them to stop when he could no longer bear it.

They had taken too much blood.

He was remembering the first time he had died.

And now… he finally did.

Rook’s eyes burned bright white.

Rook… was no longer blunt.