Sabrina's Clan (30 page)

The speaking went on and on and she started to hear patterns and repetitions in the language. Was it saying the same thing over and over?

She might have fallen asleep on her feet for a moment. She was woken by a flaring, dirty green light. It lit up the space beyond Andurag. She could see his silhouette and also the top of the alcove she stood in. Andurag was larger than the alcove. Even if she could figure out how to climb up to the top of it, she still would not be able to squeeze out past him.

Then the light faded and was gone and she was alone in the dark once more.

She must have drifted. Time passed. Gradually, so gradually she was not certain she wasn’t imagining it, the space beyond Andurag grew lighter. Daylight? Had she really stood here all night?

Then the light grew brighter. It wasn’t full daylight. There must be holes and chinks letting in sunlight, enough to let her see her hand in front of her face.

That was when she realized the hulk in front of her was no longer warm or leathery. She could see without touching it, thanks to the sunlight, that it was cold, hard rock. The transition had happened right next to her and she hadn’t noticed.

There was no way she was going to touch it, even when it was stone. She would have to get through another day, yet. Even if Riley and Nyanther and Jake knew where she was, they would not come for her until shortly before sunset, when they could kill the gargoyles as they roused from stone sleep.

So she stood, fidgeting and stretching, balancing on each leg, trying to keep herself limber and awake.

Eventually, sleep started creeping up on her, stealing her good intentions. That was when she woke to find herself leaning against Andurag, her head pillowed on her arms.

She looked around, measuring the light. Was it brighter? Darker? Had noon come and gone yet? How close was it to sunset?

Very far away, a soft echo sounded. A chink of rock upon rock.

She froze, straining to hear more.

After long minutes, she heard another sound. A whisper.

“Hey! Hey! Help! Help me!” she screamed.

Silence answered her.

She was wide awake now. She stood very still, waiting.

There. There was another sound. A shuffling.

Soon, the tiny sounds became more frequent. Someone was definitely coming.

“Help me!” she screamed again.

“Sabrina!”

Jake. It was Jake’s voice.

Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away furiously. “Here! I’m here!”

She guided them with her voice, calling out when they shouted to her. Then the light around Andurag brightened even more and began to move and throw shadows on a wall beyond the space.

Flashlights.

She could hear all of them now. Nyanther’s low baritone, Nick’s prissy accent. Riley, short and commanding.

Sabrina lifted up on her toes, pushed her hand out through the tiny chink between the edges of the alcove and Andurag’s back and waved it around. “Here!”

“There she is!” Jake said.

She heard scrambling, the shifting of many rocks. Then Jake grabbed her hand. He looking in through the chink. “You’re okay?”

“I just want to sit,” she confessed. “I thought I wanted to sleep more than that. It’s all I can think about, now.”

Jake’s smile was bright and quick. “Soon,” he promised.

Another silhouette cast a shadow across the chink.

“Nyanther!”

He gripped her hand. “The beasties are sleeping. We can take them in their stone sleep.”

“How?” she breathed. “I thought they were impervious.”

Nyanther lifted something that flashed with silvery light. The axe Jake had made him. “Time to find out if it works. Stand aside, Jake.”

Jake let go of her hand. “I’ll be right here,” he said.

Nyanther took his place, casting more shadow over her little alcove. His clear-eyed gaze was steady. “Watch your feet,” he warned and reached up to rest the edge of the blade against Andurag’s head. He hefted the hammer, measuring the arch of the swing, watching the blade.

He swung.

The axe and hammer made the same musical booming sound as they had before. The same shrieking, grinding sound. Sparks flew and Sabrina closed her eyes instinctively.

When she opened them, the axe was buried deep in Andurag’s skull, just like it has been in the wall.

“Again,” Nick said. “You have to reach the brain…or what would be his brain if he was awake.”

Sabrina couldn’t see Nyanther directly, because he stepped back to take proper aim and a full swing. She saw his shadow on the far wall, the swing of the hammer up behind him, in a full circle, up over his shoulder, with his whole body straining and stretching.

Then the hammer came down fast and sure.

She saw the hammer strike the flat back of the axe and bury it even deeper, because she forced herself to keep her eyes open, her hand up shielding them just in case.

Andurag didn’t explode. He didn’t collapse, either. It was as if a bubble rose from his middle, disrupting the surface of rock, cracking it apart. Everything splintered and shifted, then dropped back down again…only it didn’t settle back to where it had been. The small avalanche of rocks poured down onto the floor and grew still.

There was still a knee-high pile of them in front of Sabrina. Now she could see out into the area they were in. It was an old subway station, with a platform directly in front of her. What was left of Andurag covered what would have been tracks, only there were none there.

Jake leaned in over the pile of rocks and picked her up. “Come here,” he said gruffly and lifted her up over the rocks and onto the floor in front of her. He hugged her. Hard.

“Jake,” Nyanther called.

She looked over her shoulder. Nyanther was standing next to the little gargoyle, still hunched over in its stone sleep, holding his hammer and axe.

Nick and Riley waited to one side. They were going to let Nyanther take Valdeg. No weapons they had would work on a gargoyle while it was sleeping. The sun pushing through the cracks in the walls, high up by the soaring ceiling, looked dazzlingly bright. It was broad daylight and no one wanted to wait for sunset to take the gargoyles as they stirred, not now they had a weapon that worked on them while they slept.

“Do you want to do it?” Nyanther asked Jake.

Jake picked up Sabrina’s hand. “Yes,” he said flatly. He led her over the rocky floor to where the man-tall creature sat hunched.

Sabrina stopped in front of it and studied it, remembering the whispering, the sibilant speech it had used when it had spoken to Riley. It was an alien creature—a throw-back to a different age.

Nyanther was of that age, too, except he was adapting and adjusting. These creatures never had.

Sabrina thought of the way she had been hauled out of the apartment and dragged here. She thought of all the humans these things had killed, just to survive. She felt no pity for it, nor did she feel moved by its helplessness when it was in stone sleep.

Nyanther held the axe out to Jake, who took it with one hand. He was still holding Sabrina’s hand with the other and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to let go. He looked at her. “Maybe you should hold the axe and I use the hammer.”

Sabrina shook her head. “I’m not a hunter,” she said. “You do it.”

Something gripped her wrist in a squeeze so tight she thought her wrist might snap in half. She gasped and looked down.

Valdeg’s clawed hand was gripping both of their wrists in a pincer-tight hold. Jake jerked at his hand. It didn’t move.

“He’s awake!” Jake yelled.

Valdeg was glowing with an unearthly green aura. It wasn’t a glow. It was as if a cloud of green dust particles surrounded him. As Sabrina looked at him, his eyes opened, showing the red beneath. He turned his head to look at Nyanther and his mouth opened. He was smiling.

Or laughing.

Riley and Nick were scrambling to pull out their swords. They had relaxed, secure in the knowledge that no gargoyle was a threat in the middle of the day.

As they rushed forward, Valdeg brought his other hand around with a swishing sound. The middle claw curved over, slammed into the back of Sabrina’s hand…and kept going.

She felt it move
through
her hand. The pain was so great she couldn’t even cry out. It was beyond belief, just as the knowledge that what Valdeg was doing was almost beyond comprehension. Valdeg was looking at Nyanther as he drove his toxic claw through Sabrina’s hand and into Jake’s, beneath hers.

He was doing it just to get even.

She could feel the ridges of Valdeg’s claw rubbing against the broken bones in her hand. The pain was such a silvery, intense sensation that something shifted in her mind or her body and the pain moved out, away from her. It was still there, but distant.

Riley and Nick were moving in slow motion. They couldn’t save her. She was right there, standing next to Valdeg, who thought she was not a hunter. She was standing next to two hunters.

Sabrina reached into Jake’s jacket and pulled out the folded butterfly knife, one of a pair he carried with him. She had seen him unfold it one-handed a hundred times. He did it like another man might draw boxes on a sheet of paper to pass the time. It was fidgeting, something to do with his hands.

She let the handle fall open, then snapped it up, so the loose half of the handle flipped up into her waiting palm. She scrunched the halves together, then turned and drove the sheer blade points up under Valdeg’s chin. It hurt to do it. She could feel the bones in her hand grind against his buried claw.

She had to reach the brain. She stepped into the thrust, shoving hard, going deeper.

Valdeg looked at her. He didn’t move his head. He couldn’t. The eyes swiveled to take her in. He was still looking at her when the red glow in the eyes faded and was gone. Then he disintegrated into a million tiny pebbles, popping like a bubble and collapsing back in on himself.

The claw, now a curved stone, was ripped out of her hand, making her scream. The pain came tearing back, enveloping her and driving out thought.

Jake caught her with his other arm and held her up. His blue eyes were clouded with pain, too. “Not a hunter, huh?” he breathed.

“Quick! Quickly!” Nick shouted. “Nyanther, take her back to the apartment. The antivenin is in the fridge and you can heal the rest. We’ll bring Jake back.”

Jake staggered himself. “Woah…” he breathed and looked down at his injured hand. The blood was streaming from it.

Nyanther picked Sabrina up. She was glad of that because she wasn’t sure if she could stay on her feet any longer. Her hand felt numb and very, very cold.

“He wanted to hurt you,” she breathed. “He did it deliberately…”

“He didn’t know I can save you.” Nyanther was walking now, his steady stride bumping her arm and making the hand throb with agony, despite the cold numbness.

“Jake….”

“Nick will bring him. You need to focus now. You have to stay awake.”

“I don’t feel sleepy.”

Except she
did
. It wasn’t a normal type of sleep. It wasn’t creeping up on her, announcing itself with yawns and tired eyes. It was washing over her in thick black waves, like unfriendly seas in a storm. The surges were grabbing at her. Sucking. Trying to take her mental feet out from under her.

“Nyanther….” she breathed, scared.

She could feel warmth on her skin, on her face and arms. She couldn’t see it. She could hear traffic, loud and vulgar and so New York. Her vision was covered by clinging gray tendrils.

She did feel Nyanther’s hand on her face. “Stay with me,” he breathed, his voice rumbling. “You can’t leave.”

There was more talking she couldn’t understand. A strangers’ voice. She was resting on something that moved with distinct vibrations.

A cab.

“Sabrina.” He was shaking her.

She roused.

“Don’t let yourself sleep,” Nyanther commanded.

“Your blood…” His blood would cure her.

He was brushing her hair back, touching her face. “No,” he said very quietly. “My raw blood will turn you. We need Jake’s solution. You have to stay with me until we reach it. Listen to my voice, Sabrina. Listen to me. You must stay with me.”

“Talk.”

“Aye, I’ll talk to the cows come home if that’s what it takes,” he murmured by her ear. “Should I tell you about the day we met? How I wished I was human, even for a few short hours, just so I might please you enough to have you smile at me?”

Sabrina sighed.

He stroked her cheek and kept talking, about people in his tribe, the annual cycle of hunting and gathering, the beauty of the wild highlands, his journey through time, the stumbling, bumbling and terrifying early days when Damian had been forced to teach him not only how to understand English, but how to use a door, open a window, even how to put on pants and tie shoe laces.

His voice whispered on, evoking sights and sounds, wonder and awe.

She was being carried again and the sun was not on her face anymore.

“Mr. Straithairn, what happened?” Sabrina recognized the voice. It was a neighbor.

“Too much sun and not enough sleep. She works too hard,” Nyanther said.

“She does at that. Comes in at all hours of the night. Poor lass. I’m glad to see you’re looking after her.”

“I try!”

Then the soft sound of a door shutting. The grit of rocks and sand under his feet.

“I’m putting you on the table,” he warned. “Sabrina?”

“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m so cold!”

“I know.”

She realized he did actually know what this felt like. This had happened to Nyanther, too, only there had been no handy antivenin for him. Just this steadily darkening gray curtain and hopelessness.

Something hard beneath her. The table.

“Can you feel that?” he asked.

“Feel what?”

“I’ve sprayed your hand. You won’t be able to move it, but you’ll start to feel again.”

For long minutes there seemed to be no change at all. The gray was still swirling in front of her eyes, stealing her vision. Her entire arm was numb from the neck down. And she was so tired she did not think she would ever be able to sleep long enough.