Page 78

CHAPTER

Seventy-Eight

W HEN IT WAS over, the Fox found a handkerchief and wiped its hands. “This is not my fault,” it said, flapping the bloody handkerchief at the twenty-four eviscerated corpses. The torn windpipes, the savaged flesh, the glistening loops of intestine. The stink of fear and death. “Their screaming triggered my prey drive.”

Neema rubbed her face. The Fox in the form of Vabras was… she couldn’t find the words. Cain and the Fox made a strange sort of sense. But not this. This was unspeakable.

“Cain would have stopped me,” the Fox complained. “You would have stopped me, Cain.”

Cain was on his knees a few feet away, throwing up into the ditch.

“Sensitive,” the Fox said, smoothing Vabras’s jacket. “Always was. This one is different. He craves chaos.”

“That’s not right. Vabras lives for order,” Neema protested.

The Fox winked at her. “Many a Hound dreams of being a Fox, without knowing it.”

Neema was certain Vabras had never winked in his life. He had never done anything that interesting with his face before. “How did you escape the binding spell?”

A shrug. “I am the Guardian of Escape.”

“It trapped the Dragon .”

The Fox pretended to be sad. “Poor Dragon. Caught by its arrogance. So powerful, it never bothered to learn how to run, how to hide. Thought itself above such things. What a pity.” It smiled, teeth bloody. Something nasty, stuck between its teeth. “What a shame.”

“I saw you go into the painting.” As she said it, she realised the trick. “One fragment of you.”

Cornered Vixen, Defending her Cubs to the Death.

Now the Fox looked genuinely sorry. “She sacrificed herself. Naturally selfless. A peculiar fragment.” It picked the dreadful thing from between Vabras’s teeth.

“So the spell dragged you out of—”

“My home.” The Fox looked wistfully at Cain, still dry-heaving into the ditch. “I lost him. He’d run off with you. Then I saw this one.” The Fox patted Vabras’s chest with both hands, proprietorial. The High Commander had been standing in his garden, looking for his cat. When the cat didn’t come, it left a hollow space inside him. The Fox—ever the opportunist—had jumped right in. “I think I will stay,” it said, and yawned. Its eyes flickered briefly from yellow to a dull, nondescript colour, then yellow again.

“Wake up,” Neema said sharply. “You can’t fall asleep.”

This the Fox did not like. It gave her a narrow look. “Can’t I?”

She stepped back cautiously, hands up. “Please don’t fall asleep. Vabras will kill us.”

The Fox yawned again.

“Why don’t you jump back into Cain?”

“Woah, wait. Absolutely not.” Cain had finally dragged himself away from the ditch, carrying Neema’s pack. He looked grey. “No offence,” he said to the Fox.

The Fox was distracted by a severed torso at its feet. It reached down, and straightened a square silver button on the torso’s jacket.

Neema grabbed Cain’s sleeve. Running might trigger the Fox’s predatory instinct again, and they were the only ones left for it to kill. Holding each other tight, they backed away carefully down the slope.

“It’s almost asleep,” Neema said. “Look. It’s tidying up. That’s Vabras.”

The Fox was trying to create order out of the carnage, moving body parts around. It picked up a head and placed it above the limbless torso. Shovelled some innards back into a ribcage. “Oh, are you leaving?” It unsheathed Vabras’s sword and waved it at them. “Yes, that might be an idea. I’m very tired. We did have fun, didn’t we, Cain? So much fun together…” Another yawn. “Fare thee well. Fare thee well…”

“We’re far enough,” Cain said. “Run.”

They turned, and sprinted the rest of the way down the slope towards the wide open Guardian Gate.

Vabras woke with a headache, and the taste of someone else’s blood in his mouth.