Page 144 of Liar Witch

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Nilsa

The asshole at the bar is the most obvious assassin ever. Like I can’t tell he’s checking the knife under the wooden counter every few minutes. Pirate he may be, but subtle, he is not. This whole thing feels like a setup, but Val’s too concerned about Cirio to notice.

He’s gone straight to a blond vampire in the corner, leaving me alone to take in the room.

The room is filled with hidden weapons. Every pirate in here has more on him than I do in my personal collection back at Coveton. Sure, they may all look relaxed, but they’re also a good deal less drunk than I’ve come to expect. All of them are doing a great job of looking like they’re not all listening to the conversation at Val’s table.

The final test which confirms my suspicion is when I leave the bar and head for the exit.

Six of them peel away from their tables the second I move.

Only six. That’s just insulting.

I push through the door, but I don’t want to go far in case it affects Val. I lead my would-be attackers into the first ramshackle alley I come across and send a little of the Moon’s magic to the sigils on my back. Safe on the spirit plane, I waste no time in dispatching all of them before any can raise the alarm. Then I double back to find Val.

Not bothering with the ridiculous password, I stride straight through the door like a ghost, only to find Val with a pistol in his face.

“Goodbye, Valorean Deadwood.”

The blond pirate dies in a fountain of blood. My silver blade cleaves his head from his shoulders as I materialise behind him.

“You’re welcome,” I growl at Val, who’s staring at me with wide, perplexed eyes. “Are you going to help me with the rest, or do I have to doeverythingmyself?”

His customary scowl replaces that shocked expression in the next second. Inky purple glyphs cover his skin and mine in the next second. Just in time for the gunshot.

The bullet ricochets off his chest like he’s wearing a suit of armour. And the fight is on.

“Taking out all of them is suicide,” he argues, drawing his sword and stabbing it into the gut of the woman creeping up behind me as I toss a spirit blade at the man coming at us from the other side. “We need to get to the others and get back to the ship.”

“Great plan!” I retort as a transmutation circle appears above the closest pirates and starts raining fire on their asses. “Except there’s a whole load of pirates between us and the door.”

“Between us andthatdoor, yes,” he growls. “But there’s more than one fucking door.”

He yanks me to one side, stabbing another pirate—who had been about to take my head—in the throat. I return the favour by punching the bitch behind him in the nose so hard she goes down, spurting blood everywhere.

“Consanguineous!” Val yells, dragging me towards a seemingly ordinary patch of wall.

For a second I worry that he’s taken one too many hits to the skull, before I realise it’s just another infuriatingly long password.

We drop straight through the stone like it doesn’t exist and into a dark corridor. Val does something with his magic, and a purple glyph appears on the secret door we just dropped through. He then turns on his heel, drops the magic covering both of us, and sucks in a deep breath.

“That won’t hold them for long.”

He doesn’t have to say it twice. Moonlight flows to the sigils on my legs, giving me the speed to match his pace as we sprint away from the chaos we just left in that room.

“Which way to the others?”

“This tunnel only goes to the docks,” he replies. “It’s one of a couple of fail-safes Cirio and I put into place just in case some mutinous bastards decided to try something like this before he could eat them.”

The anger in his eyes is almost enough to scare me. Val’s been mad at me before, but however riled I’ve made him, it was never this bad.

Part of me sympathises. The worst part about betrayal is that it’s never your enemies who are responsible.

“Hopefully, the others will meet us there,” he continues, just as a boom sounds from behind us. “Fuck, they’ve broken through.”

We push that little bit harder, moving as fast as we can in the dark, narrow tunnel. Only to stumble as the earth shakes all around us. Our arms reach out, snaring each other before we can face-plant.