We found the eastern pyres with the dead arranged in a neat row atop it. They’d been cleaned and dressed in shrouds, but they were unanointed, and the pyres were still undecorated.
I remained in the middle of the main road as Melisande circled to the other side, carefully tipping the pitcher and letting the pale yellow oil pool over their still faces and hair.
“I’m surprised he let me do this at all,” she said quietly, moving down to soak the shrouds. “So much of this is my fault, Belial.”
Sitting back on my haunches, I stared at her, willing her to hear the words in her head: it’s not your fault at all.
“All I think about is what could’ve happened if I’d just been faster, if I hadn’t hesitated… and when I’m not thinking about that, I think about what must be happening to them right now.”
Her lower lip trembled, and she bit down on it hard. When she moved on to the next body, her face was still.
“I wonder if Lucifer feels pain from the soul-bond, or what Satan is forcing him to do. I wonder if Vyra is safe, if maybe there’s still some small part of Lucifer that remembers who she is and wants to protect her, or if…”
She trailed off, her lips flattening. “I shouldn’t think about it. All of our energy should be focused on tracking them down and finding them, not worrying ourselves sick over it. I can’t help anyone if I just sit around and cry about it.”
Melisande looked up at me, her golden eyes hard. “We’re going to get them back,” she said. “I already know this. I don’t have time to waste entertaining bullshit nightmares about it; we’re going to do what we need to do.”
I growled in agreement, padding down the street to remain parallel to her as she moved on. A small line had appeared between her brows, growing deeper as she became lost in thought.
A gentle breeze kicked up, blowing a cloud of smoke away from the Circles and letting a hint of the Brightside sun peek through. The sunlight caught in the violet strands of my angel’s hair, and for a moment I was distracted by the shine of it.
The brass pitcher in her hand sparkled, sending out blinding rays of light. I blinked, realizing that wasn’t the only light shining.
In one of the tall buildings behind her, an obsidian tower listing slightly to the side, the sun gleamed off something silver in one of the windows. A tiny pinpoint of light, catching the bolt of a crossbow.
All of my senses reached out as the bowman pulled the trigger, the tiniest audible click.
There was no time to move. I roared, blasting Melisande with the sound.
She flinched, dropping the pitcher and splattering oil everywhere.
And gasped as the bolt missed her heart and ripped over her shoulder, opening a line that spilled gleaming red over her front and sent several dark feathers flying off the edge of her wing.
The bolt buried itself in my foreleg, a pain I didn’t feel at all as I jumped over the pyres and stood over her, gently pressing her to the ground.
A panic of thoughts blared through my mind. I needed to shift, to hunt down the assassin- but while she was under me, she was shielded from all sides.
To leave her defenseless, or stay here? The question gnawed at me for several tense seconds.
The assassin vanished from the window. The breeze carried the faint sound of a crossbow hitting stone as they abandoned it, but the aura of the Sixth Circle was suddenly dangerous, power rising from the stones and from the skulls that hung everywhere.
Leviathan was looking through them, searching through the empty eye sockets of the bones for the intruder.
I took a deep breath, intending to catch their scent and commit it to memory, but the fresh coppery scent of blood filled my nose: Melisande’s blood. I heard her gasping breaths beneath my chest.
Prince Leviathan’s aura grew closer, furious power rippling from him. The demon Prince came into sight, accompanied by several Witches who trailed behind him. The tang of magic drifted from them, but Leviathan took one look at the bleeding angel beneath me, and his eyes darkened behind his mask.
He closed them, tilting his head upwards. The sun gleamed off the bright bone of his mask, and another cloud drifted by, casting us into shadow again.
He raised one hand and opened it, then snapped it closed.
A strangled scream came from the tower. The would-be assassin floated through one of the lower windows, twisting and writhing in midair until he came to a halt in front of the Prince.
Leviathan held power over blood. He gripped every drop of it in the demon’s body, contorting the assassin into terrible shapes as he controlled the ebb and flow of the blood in his body.
The assassin screamed again, a sound of pure agony as Leviathan studied them. “One of Mammon’s loyalists,” the Prince said dispassionately. “I sentence you to death for desecrating the laws of my Circle, and for the attempted murder of a Prince’s consort.”
If I’d been thinking more clearly, I would’ve taken the assassin prisoner and questioned them until there was nothing left of them but shreds of flesh.
But I wasn’t thinking clearly. The smell of Melisande’s blood was still in the air, the copper scent coating my throat.
Leviathan’s lips tightened, and he stretched his fingers wide.
The assassin was still hovering several feet above the ground, and the first drops of blood splattered across the obsidian below him like rain. He groaned again, unable to make any other noise as the blood leaked from his eyes, ears, and nose, and finally poured out of his mouth in a river.
Melisande made a small noise of horror as Leviathan ripped the blood through the demon’s pores, creating a red mist and leaving the body nothing but a dry husk.
The Prince of Heresy lowered his hands, letting the husk drop to the street. The crunch of dry bones and skin against the wet smack of blood was music to my ears, an agonizing death for the man who’d tried to kill my woman.
“Do you need help?” Leviathan asked Melisande. His mask was splattered with blood, his hands wet with it.
Melisande climbed out from under me and stood up. She’d ripped off a length of her skirt and held it pressed against the wound in her shoulder, but the cloth was already soaked. She shook her head. “Belial was the one hit,” she said, her voice tight. “This is just a graze.”
She knelt by my paw, and I realized my fur was wet with my own blood. The bolt was still buried deep in my flesh, a slowly leaking wound.
With the danger completely annihilated, I shifted back to human form, where the pain was much more apparent. It sent barbed shafts of agony through my arm, but I had to stop myself from snorting in amusement at Melisande’s concern.
“Just a splinter, angel,” I assured her, and gripped the bolt in my forearm to rip it out.
She winced, drawing a sharp breath between her teeth as the sound of steel being yanked from flesh filled the air.
“Belial,” she whispered, but my muscles were already knitting themselves together, the skin closing over the hole in my arm.
I held out my bloody arm for her inspection. “Good as new. The bolt wasn’t poisoned or holy. But you were hit.”
I batted her hands away and forced her to hold still so I could inspect her shoulder. She frowned and gave me a look that told me I’d catch hell later, but let me lift the sodden mass of cloth off her bare skin.
The bolt had just missed her wing, only catching a few downy feathers, and had left a graze no more than a few centimeters deep. I released a breath of relief. She’d bled quite a bit, but the blood flow was already slowing to a crawl.