Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,2

parents.

Rousel sobbed from his spot across the room. “But we didn't mean it!”

“Of course you did.” So matter-of-fact, now, the creature sounded; almost sympathetic. “All children do. Only for a second, perhaps. Only in the heat of the moment. But you do. You all do. And a moment…”

The ratty old knife flickered in the crimson light, once, twice. Blood stained the pillowcases from within, and the terrified whimpers ceased in a burbling choke.

“…is all it takes.”

The boy shrieked, sobbed, dashed to his mother's side and began shaking her, clutching at her, begging her to rise. But Rosemund?

Rosemund was horrified, of course. Grief-stricken. The tears ran unhindered down her face, now, dripping from her chin. At the same time, though it thrust a blade of shame into her gut, a tiny, hidden part of her offered a chuckle of relief. No more unfair punishments. No more stupid rules.

A tiny, hidden part, but not hidden well enough. That mirrored gaze flashed her way, and the creature smiled—gruesomely, impossibly, inhumanly wide. “Now that's what I love to see!” The fingers of birch reached for her, but rather than lash her skin, they wrapped comfortingly around her, guiding her gently to the stranger's side. This close, the scent of candies was almost overwhelming. “Come, child. Come meet your new family. You'll like them better. You'll fit in so well.”

Another flicker of the light, and then there was only Rousel alone in the room, weeping over the still forms of his parents.

“Gods damn it!”

Lisette Suvagne, the new master of Davillon's so-called Finders’ Guild—and soon so, so much more—bolted upright, throwing off the luxurious down quilt under which she'd slept. Shaking not with fear but with rage, she swept her autumn-red hair back from her face and wiped the thin sheen of sweat from her brow. She knew the dream for what it was, just as she had the last time this had happened, and the time before. Knew that their connection allowed her to see, and what she saw was real.

Again. They'd done it again. It had been Embruchel this time; who knew which of them would slip the leash tomorrow?

She needed them, reveled in the power they granted, but this wouldn't do. They would kill, spread terror, everything she'd promised them and more, but not this much, not yet! Not everyone, everything, was quite in place.

“Gods damn it,” she growled again, far more softly. “You bastards are immortal. Why the hell do you find it so hard to wait?!”

With a sigh, Lisette rose and began casting around the opulent chamber for her clothes. She needed to compose herself, grab something to eat.

And then to try, yet again, to explain the importance of “patience” to creatures of pure and unchecked whim.

Ah, well. It'd be worth all the aggravation when Davillon—all of Davillon—was hers.

Lisette was not the only one in Davillon to wake in that moment.

Some distance across the city, in his dwelling chambers within the Basilica of the Sacred Choir, his Eminence Ancel Sicard, Bishop of Davillon, also sat upright out of a horrid dream. Groaning, he ran a few fingers through his pillow-matted beard before laying his head in his hands.

Confusing, unclear; a sequence of images, dark, disturbing, bloody. More a sensation than a sight, a cold and sick certainty that something was wrong, very wrong, in his city.

Not that he needed the dreams to tell him that. The Houses were squabbling, the Guard were dithering, and the rumors making the rounds were as horrid as they'd been last year, when the creature Iruoch had stalked the streets. Plus, Igraine was telling him of ever greater troubles in the criminal underworld as well…. It was no wonder his dreams were unsettling.

Except Sicard had been a priest long enough to know that sometimes the dreams of the clergy were no dreams at all. And if these were omens, signs, then something truly, impossibly, inhumanly awful was at hand.

It had been nothing shy of a miracle that Davillon came out of the last year so relatively unscathed. It seemed almost ungrateful to pray for another one so soon, but that was what his city required: another miracle.

Or maybe, he pondered, as the image of a chestnut-haired and darkly clad young woman floated to the surface of his sleep-addled memories, just the return of a prior one.

Unbelievable that he'd ever entertain that hope. She was rude, insolent, exasperating, unpredictable, and just talking to her was like trying to scoop up a squirming armful of puppies and eels.