Blood & Fur

Chapter Sixty-Three: The Theft

The First Emperor’s servants rushed to defend his prophet.

A swarm of thousands of red-eyed bats descended from the canopy in a great tide of fangs and fur. The cacophony of their flight resonated across the silent forest. They fell upon the Skinwalker in an instant, covering her utterly. Her screams were delightful to my ears.

Nonetheless, the smell of Nenetl’s and Itzili’s blood proved to be too much for the frenzied beasts to resist. A few moved to drain my allies of their life, so I hastily tried to stop them.

“Do not harm them!” I ordered before sparing the wounded Fjor a glance. “Not that one either, nor my red-haired consort! Slay the Skinwalker alone!”

I feared that the bats would disobey me, since I’d never tried to command them like I did with the Nightchildren before, but my voice compelled them to obey nonetheless. They joined their siblings in swarming the Skinwalker until she vanished under a hill of them.

I seized the opportunity to check on my allies. Itzili whined in relief at my approach, his tongue licking my hand. He had taken heavy blows from the Skinwalker and one of his legs limped from an arrow stuck in it, but the rest of his injuries didn’t run too deep. His young scales shielded him from most projectiles and the worst blows.

Nenetl though…

My heart skipped a beat when I examined her. Unlike feathered tyrants, a wolf was clad with a pelt of fur in place of thick hard scales. The Skinwalker’s claws and fangs deeply lacerated her body, some wounds reaching all the way to the bone. Red spots stained Nenetl’s fur, while her blue eyes threatened to close forever.

“No, no!” Panic seized my heart as I rushed to her side. “Hold on, Nenetl!”

Part of me knew deep down that the Nightlords would bring Nenetl back from the dead should she expire. They could bring her back from Mictlan anytime they wished as long as they held her soul into their grasp. Her pain and demise would carry no long-term consequences.

But I was too blinded by guilt and concern to think rationally.

I’d known death on the first day of my tenure and given it often enough to understand the pain Nenetl was going through. Her animalistic whines of pain and agony tugged at my heartstrings. I cared deeply for her, enough that I’d been ready to tell her the truth about myself in the hope that we could form a genuine bond. Yet I returned her kindness with betrayal, twisting her tattoo for my own use and turning her into a beast when I thought it most opportune. She didn’t deserve to suffer like this, bleeding out on a cold forest’s floor.

I had to do something.

I attempted to cover Nenetl’s wounds with bandages made from her own torn dress. The cotton absorbed the blood, but too much spilled out. I hastily covered the gashes in her skin with my hands in a foolish attempt to contain it somehow.

A jolt of energy coursed through my fingers.

I immediately pulled back my hand in surprise. Droplets of my blood burned on the surface of Nenetl’s skin. The slashes I opened in my palm had yet to heal.

This sensation… It felt pleasantly familiar, though it took me a second to recall it. I’ve experienced it many times before.

When I practiced Seidr.

My eyes widened as an idea crossed my mind. I applied my slashed palm to Nenetl’s wounds and let our blood connect.

And as our fluids joined, so did our Teyolias.

I practiced Seidr so often that I’d grown accurately attuned to my own heart-fire. My awareness sharpened each time I lay with Sigrun, Necahual, and Lahun, and the shared curse binding me to my consorts gave me a weak grip on their own lifeforce.

The bond between our Teyolias was faint and hardly noticeable, since blood exchange was a crude and pale imitation of a true Seidr’s union. The ritual of lovemaking emulated Ōmeteōtl, the first being who split into male and female at the dawn of the cosmos. It drew upon primal powers older than the Fifth Sun that a meeting of wounds could never hope to emulate. I would not receive visions nor achieve great feats of magic tonight.

Nevertheless, a bond was a bond. This was hardly the place for our first time and Nenetl’s wolf form made the prospect unappealing anyway, but the ritual required a mere exchange of body fluids to connect two Teyolias.

I can save her! Mother said that Seidr could heal wounds and Sigrun used Seidr to steal vitality and maintain her youth by taking a fraction of my power for herself. I shall renew the flame of Nenetl’s life with my own!

Instead of taking, I gave. I sent my lifeforce flowing into Nenetl’s heart-fire. So much of it was lost because of the improper connection, like a river spilling out of its bed before it could reach the lake it was supposed to feed, but enough did reach its destination to make a difference.

Nenetl whined at the contact of my burning blood on her wounds. I half-expected it to cauterize them, but they instead began to close as I reinforced her Teyolia with my own. Lacerated skin joined back together, as did flesh and veins, while Nenetl’s dying body surged with newfound vigor. I sensed her desire to survive and used it to nurture our connection.

It’s working! Mother’s casual disdain of Seidr blinded her to its broader applications: sharing lifeforce with another helped me understand how to manipulate it. This power can save lives… or end them.

I immediately noticed two issues with my performance, however. First of all, the results were nothing spectacular. Flesh stitched itself back together, but no new bits magically appeared to fill the parts taken away by the Skinwalker’s fangs and claws. I’d done little more than accelerate Nenetl’s natural recovery.

Second, I couldn’t focus on one wound over another. My power flowed through Nenetl’s body without direction. Superficial scratches and bruises took as much energy as life-threatening wounds.

I needed more practice.

“Shush,” I comforted Nenetl. I’d stabilized her enough to ensure her survival. “The pain will end soon, I promise. I am here.”

Itzili let out a warning screech, and a roar answered it.

I watched as the hill of bats pierced the canopy, not because more beasts gathered in greater numbers, but because the creature buried beneath them grew in size. A new shape emerged under them, far different than the Skinwalker’s humanoid countenance. A tail burst out from beneath the mass of flapping wings and I caught a glimpse of brown scales.

It seemed I’d succeeded in frightening the hag a little too much. The Skinwalker had decided to trade subtlety for overwhelming strength.

“You should have stayed put, you thief of skin!” I shouted angrily. Unwilling to let the hag complete her transformation and angered on Nenetl’s behalf, I grabbed my obsidian club, left my allies to recover, and rushed to behead the Skinwalker with a fearsome battle cry. “Agony awaits!”

I cut into the swarm of bats, my sharp blade and immense strength allowing me to cut into thick brown scales. I had little idea which part I sliced. I simply hacked with wild abandon and let the screams of pain guide my hand. But no matter how hard I hit her, the Skinwalker continued to grow.

I caught a glimpse of a reptilian eye glaring at me through the blood and fur.

Jaws closed around my chest with immense force and lifted me up in the air. Rows of sharp fangs bit into my armor, biting through the scales and blood-soaked cotton. The pointed ends of some of the fangs reached my skin, drawing blood, while the sheer pressure emptied my lungs of air. An elongated crocodilian head held me firmly within its grasp, moving wildly from left to right to shake off the bats trying to pierce its scales.

The monster was huge. Its size paled before that of a longneck, but its back reached all the way to the canopy above us. Five men standing on each other’s shoulders would struggle to meet its slitted eyes. Its body bore a worrying resemblance to Itzili’s, except larger and without feathers. I feared that the Skinwalker had transformed into a feathered tyrant until I caught a glimpse of a red, dorsal sail of flesh rising from its back.

A spineking.

Every fisherman learned to fear these aquatic behemoths. They rivaled feathered tyrants in size and aggression, though they hunted large fish rather than land animals. This fact, combined with the scarlet Tlahuiztli’s enchanted resilience, likely saved my life. The creature’s fangs and jaw weren’t adapted to properly bite through my armor. A feathered tyrant would have crushed me in a single bite, but the Skinwalker had to put in the effort to crack it like an egg.

It still hurt.

Xibalba’s trials taught me how to remain focused through unbearable pain, yet I’d rarely felt worse. An immense pressure pushed on me from two sides of my body, with fangs closing on my back and chest. My blood dripped and burned the monster’s scaled lips, but the Skinwalker was no Nightkin. It proved little more than an inconvenience as she continued to tighten her grip.

“Let me go!” I snarled as I fought back with my obsidian club. My sharp blades proved too brittle to inflict much damage. Most shattered against the Skinwalker’s thick scales, nor could the wooden handle keep up with my inhuman strength. The club snapped in half when I hit the creature too hard. “Let me go, I said!”

The monster answered by crunching my chest. A surge of sharp pain coursed through my body, my fury now only matched by my fear of being swallowed alive.

She’s crushing me! With no weapon left, I grabbed the spineking’s jaws with my hands and pushed. My arms’ muscles surged with inhuman power fueled by my scarlet Tlahuiztli. I fought back against the increasing grip, but though I held my own I couldn’t force the creature’s mouth open. If I use the Doll… But then they'll know… I have to find another way!

An obsidian spear surged from the trees and struck the Skinwalker in its left eye.

The creature let out a roar of pain as a shower of blood erupted from its wound. I fell upon my back from high, though my armor’s cotton considerably softened my landing. Strong hands quickly grabbed my shoulders and hastily helped me rise up to my feet. It proved quite arduous between my wounds, blood loss, and weakened breath.

Chikal stood by my side while drenched in blood, none of it her own. The Nightkin she was fighting earlier was nowhere to be seen.

“Can you stand by yourself?” she asked me.

“Yes, of course,” I grunted, only for a sharp pain in my chest to make a liar out of me. I nearly collapsed until Chikal caught me. “No.”

“Any plan, then?”

“Yes.” I smiled cruelly beneath my bat mask. “We watch.”

Chikal frowned at me, until she noticed what I already did: her breath was turning to mist from the sudden cold.

My soldiers crawled out of the forest with smoking black pits for eyes, their hunger so great as to suck out all warmth in the air.

I counted dozens of Nightchildren of all ages and sizes. All were humans, but not all were adults. A few looked no taller than small children, their rags hardly sticking to their pale frail frames. The First Emperor’s bats consumed indiscriminately, their hunger sparing neither the old nor the young.

I would have felt sad once, but reinforcements were always welcome.

Chikal straightened up. I didn’t remember her seeing these creatures before, and she was suitably on edge. I answered her caution with confidence. I pointed at the spineking before they could notice Nenetl and the others, then barked out orders. “Bring me her soul!”

An emperor did not ask, he commanded.

The Nightchildren rushed at the spineking without a sound. Their very presence muffled the beast’s roars of pain and dulled the forest’s noise around us. Those closest to the beast grabbed her ankles.

Mother once told me that men possessed lifeforce second only to those of great beasts like feathered tyrants. I’d seen the Nightchildren drain their victims to dust in less than a minute’s time. They feasted on the soul without moderation, and a group of them should kill anything within a heartbeat.

Either the Skinwalker accumulated quite the strong Teyolia over her cursed life or her shapeshifting let her borrow an animal’s lifeforce, for she didn't die on the spot. It would have been a kinder fate if she did. The scales around her feet crumbled to dust, exposing brittle flesh and calcifying it in an instant.

The monster’s sheer weight turned against her. With no strong foundation to stand on, she collapsed onto the nearest trees in a catastrophic fall. My heart nearly stopped at that, but she managed to fall on the side opposite of Nenetl, Fjor, and Itzili. Chikal and I still had to step back to avoid the dust and debris. The noise of the impact would have been deafening without the Nightchildren’s flock to smother it.

Stolen novel; please report.

I found the silence that followed far more ominous.

The Skinwalker attempted to shed her skin the same way she had transformed from a bear into an abomination earlier. I didn’t quite understand how the process worked, but the Nightchildren’s touch swiftly sabotaged it somehow. The spineking’s belly ruptured open in a shower of blood and gore, the Skinwalker sliding out of it in her horned, deformed true shape. The Nightchildren and the red-eyed bats fell upon her in an instant to feast on her blood and lifeforce.

“She has to transform back into her original form before donning a new skin,” Chikal observed with a thoughtful expression. Not even the Nightchildren managed to shake her composure for long. “We should finish her off while we can.”

“Not yet,” I replied. Chikal raised an eyebrow right as I raised my hand. “Release her!”

I didn’t want the Skinwalker to die too quickly.

The bats and Nightchildren retreated like hounds recalled by their master. Good thing they did so too. The Skinwalker’s body had turned pale and gaunt, her life hanging on by a thread. She wouldn’t have lasted another minute.

Without new prey, the red-eyed bats circled above Nenetl and Itzili. I quickly realized the limits of my control. Without a direct order, they would swiftly return to their natural, predatory behavior.

I needed to distract them.

“Kill every red-eyed human in this forest and beyond,” I ordered my troops. I would have said every red-eyed creature if it wouldn’t have endangered Eztli, but a hundred priests’ deaths would satisfy me. “Spread out and kill, kill, kill them all.”

The bat swarm screeched as it dispersed across the sky. The Nightchildren simply returned to the shadows in utter silence.

Chikal scowled at me. “Iztac,” she said, marking a brief pause before continuing. “Are you yourself?”

I snorted. “What kind of question is that, Chikal? Of course I’m myself.”

“You don’t act like it,” Chikal replied with a hint of concern. “You seem… wilder. And too bold by half.”

“Like you said,” I said with a scoff. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

I could finally visit the indignities I’d suffered back on my tormentors. Of course I enjoyed this. I’d spent so many nights hiding the power I accumulated, and I finally had the opportunity to show some of it off. Why shouldn’t I revel in it?

The Skinwalker didn’t even have the strength to move a finger. Her eyes, both those above her nose or embedded in her patchwork abomination of a body, stared at me in absolute terror. I was the shadow of death coming to take her soul, and she was helpless to resist my call.

“Finally realized that you never had a chance?” I taunted her, holding my chest with one hand and hiding my pain behind a mask of arrogance. This encounter took its toll on me in spite of my bravado. “Now tell me who sent you, and I might spare your life.”

It was a lie, but the Skinwalker appeared desperate enough to believe it. She tried to move her calcified lips to the best of her ability, all in vain. Only dust and rattles came out of her mouth. The Nightchildren drained the sorry excuse of an assassin of all her strength.

A pity. I decided to put her down when Chikal’s hands suddenly tightened their grip on my shoulders.

“Iztac.” Chikal stared at the sky with greater unease than anything the Nightchildren could inspire. “She’s coming.”

I froze in place. Hisses and whistles thrummed around us, first quietly, then louder and louder.

Snakes slithered around us in the grass by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands. Small vipers and copperheads joined with adders and feathered serpents in a swarm that rivaled that of the First Emperor’s red-eyed bats in size. They covered the entire forest floor in an instant and surrounded us all in a mass of squirming scales and fangs. Itzili snapped his jaws at them while doing his best to shield the now comatose Nenetl with his body, but it hardly frightened the growing mass of reptiles. Crimson serpents large enough to swallow adult crocodiles appeared among them and matched Itzili’s hostility with hisses. Fjor and the Skinwalker alike stared at the scaly mass with apprehension.

Iztacoatl wouldn’t let her father’s court overshadow her own.

The greatest among the snakes coiled together at the center of the squamous mass. Their form melded together into steps of a scaled stairway that reached up to the canopy above us. I looked up to the night sky and saw a graceful figure cast a dark shadow in the moonlight. Iztacoatl descended upon us with wings of crimson feathers sprouting out of her shoulders and near-divine grace. She landed on the highest staircase and looked down upon us with her smug golden gaze.

Fjor inclined his head in submission, as did Chikal. I alone dared to match Iztacoatl’s gaze. I recalled the wind’s words from so long ago: that true gods had nothing to prove. All this hollow pageantry inspired me with nothing but disdain.

“Has it been four hours already, oh goddess?” I asked, mostly to buy more time for Eztli to flee.

“My apologies, dear emperor,” Iztacoatl said with a wry smile, her feet climbing down the stairs of snakes with a confident strut. “I am hopeless when it comes to counting time.”

She came alone? I didn’t see any Nightkin flying with her. Either she thought she wouldn’t need them or she hoped that I would try to attack her. Showing up alone in the middle of nowhere would have made her an inviting target under normal circumstances. I won’t take that bait.

Iztacoatl walked down to me, the snakes forming a thick carpet for her to step upon. Gods forbid that she would walk on the same ground as us commoners.

“My hunters inflicted quite the wounds on you and your consorts,” she commented upon examining me. “We ought to rename your advisor Itzili the Lame.”

Itzili responded by showing his fangs at her. This only served to amuse the Nightlord further as she turned her sight to Fjor next. “You disappoint me,” she said while studying his wounds. “I expected better from Sigrun’s son. Has concern for your human sister dulled your edge, Fjor?”

Fjor knew better than to talk back to a Nightlord and simply kept his head down in penance. Chikal’s eyes narrowed slightly. Either she recognized the name or was memorizing it for future investigations.

Iztacoatl grabbed my palm next, her cold finger tracing a line along my new scars. “My poor songbird, how long did you intend to keep this from me?” Her smile had all the sweetness of rotten honey. “I knew something was wrong with your blood for a while, but to think it could burn my children?”

I feigned innocence. “You didn’t know?”

“You truly take me for an idiot,” Iztacoatl replied, her wry smile now stretched thin. “Why didn’t you tell us that your blood burned my children? Surely your consort must have noticed.”

“I assumed it was the case for all emperors,” I lied outrageously. “My blood is for the heavens alone to taste. Lesser Nightkin are unfit to touch it.”

“True indeed,” Iztacoatl replied with bemusement, her gaze lingering on my throat. She leaned in closer, a pair of serpentine fangs surging from behind her lips. “You are ours

alone.”

She bit me in the thin chink between my bat mask and armor.

I’d never been on the end of the vampire kiss before, although I’d seen it give death to so many. Eztli never tried to drink my blood, and even the mad Yoloxochitl refused to do so when I tempted her. I thought the Nightlords were forbidden to dine on the emperor until the Night of the Scarlet Moon.

Either I’d been deceived, or Iztacoatl didn’t care.

The pain of her fangs sinking into my throat lasted a mere second, raw and deep. The horror and agony were swiftly drowned in a tide of numbness and ecstasy. A wave of exquisite pleasure spread from my neck to the rest of my body, softer than a warm bath and more intimate than the greatest heights of sexual release. Sigrun, Necahual, Eztli, Ingrid… I’d laid with so many women, and none gave me a greater bliss than a second of Iztacoatl’s touch.

My entire body no longer answered me. A powerful sense of euphoria paralyzed it. My senses dulled to the point my vision blurred and the noise of suction became no more than a soft echo in the back of my mind. The cold filling my fingers as Iztacoatl drained me of my blood felt downright welcome. Both the battle’s pain and the armor’s inhuman strength vanished in an instant.

Vampires turned death into a delight.

But while my body betrayed me, my mind recoiled in horror. My acute awareness of my Teyolia let me sense my lifeforce leaving me. Itzacoatl stole enough of my blood to kill a Nightkin twice over, but her hunger proved greater than mere body fluids. She filled the void of her heart with souls, and now sought to devour mine.

Visions flashed before me. I saw myself strapped to a stone table under a crimson sky set alight by the scarlet moon. Obsidian spikes nailed my wings and claws to an altar, while the Nightlords feasted on my limbs, draining my holy blood until I became a shriveled husk.

“Struggle all you want, foolish father,” the Jaguar Woman taunted me, her mouth painted blue and yellow by the taste of my sulfur blood. “Your power is ours, now and forever.”

I shrieked and screamed in anger and pain, but when I opened my mouth, burning tar filled it instead of words. My cold body boiled in a viscous liquid that melted the flesh off my bones. My heart turned black with fury at this betrayal. And when the sulfur flame of my heart was extinguished at last, only hunger and darkness remained.

I snapped back to reality the moment Iztacoatl removed her fangs from my throat. I would have collapsed without Chikal to hold onto me. My knees were weak, my legs without strength. I couldn’t move anymore. The rapture from earlier turned into a deep numbness and frigid cold. I’d matched a spineking’s jaws in a contest of might, but I now lacked the energy to move an eyelid.

Iztacoatl had stopped before she could swallow my soul, but she had taken cups upon cups of my blood. She licked it off her lips with a rapturous expression. Dining on my flesh had been as pleasurable for her as it had been for me.

“My compliments, Songbird,” Iztacoatl thanked me with a mock chuckle. “You will be our best drink in centuries.”

My sunfire blood, which melted the flesh of Nightkin in an instant, had no more effect on a Nightlord than a strong spice.

The vast gap in power between the spawn and their progenitors became clear to me this instant. I dined on the embers of a dead sun and achieved power greater than most of the horrors that haunted the dark corners of the world, but I remained a young fish in a vast ocean full of great sharks and other primeval beasts.

Iztacoatl gluttonously licked the blood off my neck with her snakelike tongue, much to my and Chikal’s disgust. I knew this was payback for the time I’d slapped her. Violating my body let her reassert her power over me, like a master yanking the dog’s leash until it whined.

“Did you think you could poison us on the night of the Scarlet Moon? That you could die a martyr and take us down with you?” Iztacoatl laughed after she finished licking every drop of my blood off my skin. “Such a transparent plot.”

My only consolation was that she didn’t see anything when she drank my blood, or else she would have reacted more violently. Either she needed to fully consume my soul to see my memories, or my predecessors’ shroud of illusions continued to hide my Teyolia’s true nature from her.

“I do not see our dear Eztli among you, nor our little quarry,” Iztacoatl noted before finally deigning to notice the Skinwalker. “Who is this?”

I was too weak to speak up, so Chikal answered on my behalf. “An assassin who sought to kill our Lord Emperor,” she replied with no small amount of disdain. “A Skinwalker.”

Iztacoatl’s eyebrows curved in slight interest. She snapped her fingers and hundreds of snakes coiled around the Skinwalker. My would-be assassin was helpless to resist and swiftly lifted up in the air. I would have felt a degree of kinship for her had she not tried to kill Nenetl earlier.

I expected Iztacoatl to eat the Skinwalker for dessert, and I would have appreciated one of my enemies taking out another. But as always, the gods remained deaf to my prayers. Iztacoatl studied her captive in silent fascination, the hissing of her court lowering into a quiet whisper.

Something is wrong. A terrible feeling sank in my gut. Iztacoatl should have already murdered the Skinwalker on the spot for interrupting her hunt. She couldn’t ignore the offense. She’s taking too long.

A familiar sound came out of Iztacoatl’s mouth, low and sinister. I’d come to hate it with all my heart.

A laugh.

“What a stroke of luck,” Iztacoatl said with glee, her fingers stroking her captive’s cheek. “At last a perfect candidate. Kinslayer and betrayer, a broken soul wrapped in human skin!”

My heart skipped a beat in horror. I finally caught on to Iztacoatl’s gruesome idea.

“Worry not, dear, you are too precious to die yet,” Iztacoatl whispered to the frightened Skinwalker. “You have big shoes to fill.”

The Nightlords had been looking for a placeholder for a while. The Night of the Scarlet Moon was a play that had lost one of its lead actresses. Another had risen to occupy her place, but that person required a replacement too; a sacrifice that met the exceedingly precise requirements of a centuries-long occult ritual.

What better candidate to fill the missing role than a monster with a thousand faces?

“Let us find dear Eztli, songbird,” Iztacoatl decided with enthusiasm. “I cannot wait for her to meet her replacement.”

I spent the next two hours in Iztacoatl’s tender care.

Ever the lazy coward, she sent her Nightkin hunting for Eztli while she took me and the others to a large temple near the forest. I assumed that she used this place as a base to run her hunting rituals and sacrifice the losers. Nenetl and Itzili would receive medical care under Chikal’s supervision, while the Skinwalker had been chained up in the lower chambers for a different kind of treatment. I could hear her screams through the walls now and then.

Iztacoatl decided to personally oversee my recovery in her own quarters: a decadent chamber adorned with stolen artwork and furnishings taken from dozens of destroyed nations. She had a bath prepared for us in a pool of stone surrounded by serpent statues, undressed, and then dragged me into it naked.

The warm fluids were the same blend of blood and herbs in which Iztacoatl had me bathe in a few weeks ago. As viscous and disgusting as it was, it did slowly restore my health and vigor. I would have almost appreciated it had Iztacoatl not spent the last hour holding me in her arms in a lover’s embrace and caressing my neck. Capturing the Skinwalker had left her in an unbearably happy mood, and she was clearly resisting the urge to bite me again.

She liked the taste of my blood a bit too much, I thought grimly. My only consolation was the obsidian windows adorning the walls. I could see the dawn rising beyond them, its sunlight blocked by the blackened glass. Would it kill her instantly if I shattered them? If Iztacoatl survived my blood, she might endure a few minutes before turning to dust.

“Dawn nears, beloved goddess, and your hunters have failed,” I said with no small amount of satisfaction. “I win.”

“So you do!” Iztacoatl replied with a mocking laugh. “This time.”

My joy swiftly turned to anger. Of course the scaled whore wouldn’t let me enjoy a victory, no matter how trivial. “This time?”

“This was only the first test of many, my dear boy,” Iztacoatl taunted me. “Worry not, I will find another use for dear Astrid. How about I reshape her flesh until she becomes her mother’s spitting image and then put her in your bed? You inspire me so much I fear we will run out of victims before we do ideas.”

She lightly kissed my cheek to better savor my disgust. My blood had turned her lips warm.

“There is also the small matter of your reward,” she whispered into my ear. “I will think over it after putting your menagerie to death.”

Her left hand descended upon my navel while the right held onto my chin. The embrace would have been halfway intimate from anyone else. Every caress, every move, was meant to remind me that I was her property.

“Between your command over bats and your pets’ habits of wandering where they shouldn’t, it is now clear to me that you can command animals,” she whispered into my ear. “It would be unwise to let you retain access to such a vast army under our nose. I shall spare that reptile advisor of yours so I can kill him at my leisure later, and turn the rest into carpets.”

I met her taunts with silence.

I’d managed to spare Astrid’s life tonight and managed to hide most of my abilities from Iztacoatl, but I could hardly call it a victory. The Nightlord knew about my blood’s properties, and worst of all, she could shrug it off. Destroying the menagerie would also deny me the ability to Ride most animals and the Skinwalker’s capture would ensure the ritual’s renewal.

The chambers’ doors opened, and a pair of Nightkin escorted Eztli into the room.

I didn’t see Astrid with her.

I blinked in surprise, waiting for guards to drag Ingrid’s sister weeping and screaming into the chambers for Iztacoatl to mock her. I did so in vain. The Nightkin kept their heads low in silent shame.

Iztacoatl’s expression swiftly turned from smug to confused. “Where is the child?”

“I don’t have her,” Eztli replied.

My fists clenched at the same time Iztacoatl’s nails sank into my skin. I first feared for Astrid’s safety, but I had spent enough time with Eztli to recognize when she struggled to suppress a smile.

Why did she look so damn happy?

“You don’t have her?” Iztacoatl repeated, her voice laced with disbelief.

“I’ve lost her,” Eztli said. “I don’t know where she is anymore.”

I turned my head to take a better look at Iztacoatl’s face. I discovered a new pleasure even greater than sex or the thrill of a vampire’s kiss: the delight of watching Iztacoatl’s joy turning into utter despair.

Her short-lived triumph was about to become a monumental humiliation.

“Explain yourself!” she ordered, seething in rage.

Eztli’s expression turned into the smuggest smirk imaginable.

“An old owl took her away.”