Page 15 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

“F or fuck’s sake.” The chair scraped back when Bane stood. “Wait here.”

“With bated breath,” she mumbled as he stalked out of the kitchen.

A moment later, she followed him into the entryway. He pulled a shotgun from the umbrella stand and loaded it with non-metallic bullets. Her heartbeat ratcheted up along with the insistent pounding on the door.

“Realmwalker!” boomed a gravel baritone. A heavy fist shook the door on its hinges. “Come out or I’ll burn you out!”

“Fuckin’ Verek.” Bane pumped the shotgun. “He would find my house while I’m injured.”

Fear dug its hooks into her. The house’s weakened wards would be little hindrance for the Pyromancer. Bane handed her a revolver. Bewildered, her gaze swung from the gun to him. “Can’t you traverse the house away?”

“Even if I could, bastard is on the porch. He’d come right along with us.”

Glass shattered as Verek broke through the window beside the door. He leered through the jagged hole, his eyes feverishly bright and his gold teeth glinting in a crazed smile. On his bald head bloomed a massive bruise from where Bane had brained him during parley.

Verek was not alone. Vicious Ferromancers and Pyromancers flanked him.

“We’re here to settle a score, you damn Paddy!”

Shotgun aimed, Bane strode towards the door and fired through the broken window in a deafening boom. Glass exploded and panicked shouts erupted outside.

A fireball ignited in Verek’s palm. He lobbed it at the house’s wood shingles. Flames caught. Smoke billowed into the cold air.

“Those docks were mine! All of London was mine before you infest—” His yelling cut off with a coughing fit. “Fetch me my tonic,” he hacked out to a thug.

Even with his thunderous scowl, Verek looked haggard. Shoulders slouched and handlebar mustache drooping, he seemed on the verge of collapse from fatigue. He tossed back the tonic vial handed to him and his posture relaxed, his eyelids sagging.

“Don’t let them see you, Cora.” Bane’s cadence was deep and even as he reloaded. “Go to the club. Wait for me there.”

He pumped the shotgun, kicked open the door, and fired. The non-metallic bullet resisted the Ferromancer’s manipulation, but not the gun barrel. It jerked up and the shot went wide, whizzing into the window of a building across the snowy street.

Bane dove to dodge a fireball and vanished, reappearing from above and crashing down on the thug’s skull with the butt of his shotgun. The thug thudded face first onto the icy porch with a meaty thwack. Bane planted his boot between the thug’s shoulders blades, cocked the shotgun, and fired.

Blood and viscera splattered across him, the porch, the snow. A chunk of skull inched down the broken window in a long, red smear. Only a smoking crater remained of the thug’s head.

With Ferromancy, another thug wrenched the shotgun from Bane’s grip and flung it into a snowbank. Fireballs and slicing scimitars rent the air while the flames on the house climbed higher and Bane blinked in and out of existence.

He reappeared, prying the Ferromancer’s blade from his grasp and stabbing him through the chest. The thug screamed and dropped to his knees. Another Ferromancer’s magic ripped the blade from Bane’s hand, spun it midair, and slashed him in the side before the Realmwalker disappeared again.

Heart in throat and revolver in hand, Cora faltered in uncertain panic in the doorway. At this rate, Bane would either run out of energy or the house would burn down.

Cor-a , echoed a distant voice. Cor-a …

Whirling around, she tried to see who had spoken. But there was only Verek and his grunting, murderous thugs.

Bane rematerialized. Staggering back, he nearly slid off the icy porch, blood welling in a crimson stain down his side. The thugs closed in. A Ferromancer’s blade hovered at his throat.

“I’ve dreamed of this, Realmwalker,” Verek said in a reedy voice.

Cora pulled out of her stupor and shot the blade-wielding thug in the neck. Blood spouted as he crashed down. The awful energy of his death churned in her veins. She dashed outside with frightened determination and fired again. The Ferromancer deflected the bullet with a jerk of his hand, sending it arcing away. Dimly, she heard Bane shouting for her to get back.

Adrenaline honed her attention to a single, bald-headed point. She fired, but a damned Ferromancer redirected the bullet.

Verek turned to Cora as if in a trance. His glassy eyes moved from side to side under hooded lids. Lurching, he grabbed her and smacked the revolver away. Then his hands were on her, scorching hot, wrapping around her throat. Squeezing .

She clawed at his feverish hands, his face, arms, chest. Useless. He’d strangle the life out of her before she landed a blow. Darkness dotted her vision.

Suffocating, her entire life condensed into this moment. She shoved his chest with all the force she could muster. He didn’t budge. She tried to shove him again and rot away his—

There . Beneath her terror, she sensed the rattle of the Pyromancer’s death. His death took shape. That hacking cough from a lifetime of shoveling coal and inhaling acrid smoke. Cancer bubbled in his lungs like tar.

She flattened her palms on his chest. Necrotic veins spread. Her eyes rolled back. The chaos of the living dissipated as her awareness contracted to death. Her magic sank through flesh, between ribs, and into the tarry innards. She urged his cancer to grow, to spread, to suffocate him as he was suffocating her.

Death eagerly complied.

Verek slumped to his knees, his stranglehold around her throat broken. He choked on tar, drowning in his own cancer. His chest caved into a roiling black pit. Features contorted, he tried to speak. Tar gurgled out of his mouth, nose, and eyes, streaking down his face and congealing in his mustache.

The threads of his life unwove into a dark ooze, filling Cora with grisly satisfaction.

Straddling the Realms of Living and Death, she stood over Verek as his eyes emptied and his life ebbed away. She smiled.

Arms grabbed her and dragged her back. They tumbled into the entryway. Bane slammed the door shut, and she felt a tug behind her navel as he drained his magic to traverse the house away.

Scorched and bloodied, their breaths quick and uneven, they sank to the floor. The necrotic veins began to recede, leaving her trembling and hollow despite death’s awful energy.

Something squelched and she glanced down. Mortification lanced her. Tar coated her hands. She wiped off the filth to no avail. The evidence of the atrocity she’d committed wouldn’t be so easily removed.

Verek hadn’t just been a Pyromancer—he’d been the Pyromancer. And his death was all over her hands.

“Oh god,” she breathed. “I killed Verek.”

Bracing for his revulsion, her eyes darted to Bane. He slouched against the opposite wall, eyes closed and elbows resting on bent knees. Gore painted him, splashed across his charred suit and face, tightened in pain. Blood dribbled out of the stab wound at his side.

“I’m glad that arsehole is dead,” he said. “You know what his first name was? Erik.”

“Erik… Verek?”

“Erik fuckin’ Verek.”

A laugh burst out of her, firing off like a gunshot. Laughter swelled and bubbled up like Verek’s cancer, rising into near hysterical cackling until her eyes leaked and her ribs spasmed and she couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying anymore. She cut off when Bane did something that shocked her.

He laughed.

A devious chuckle, ripe with dark humor, rumbled deep from his chest. The sound curled into her ears and around her heart. His own laugh cut off with a grimace as he clutched his bleeding side.

“You’re hurt.” She clambered to her knees and reached out to inspect the wound. “Should I bandage it?”

“Any excuse to take my shirt off again, eh?” The bastard actually grinned.

She sat back on her haunches with an unamused expression. “Fine. Bleed to death.”

Smiling, he offered her a cigarette. She placed it between her lips with a shaking, tarry hand. When the lighter’s flame leapt between their locked gazes, his irises were like spilled ink. Her eyes widened and he looked away.

They smoked in a silence too tense to be companionable and too charged to be awkward. Right now, killing Verek was a bitter triumph. But Cora knew that crippling regret waited around the corner.

Bane was watching her in dark wonder. “That was—”

“Monstrous?”

“Magnificent. How’d you do it?”

“I…” The awful energy spiked, and the cigarette unraveled in her hand. Seams splitting and paper decomposing, the tobacco fell to the floor like rotten snow. “I killed him with his death.”

He gazed at her, black tendrils retreating from the whites of his eyes. “Did you know you could do that?”

She glanced away, clenching her vile hands. “Yes.”

“With training, you’ll be an unstoppable force.”

“That’s a funny way of pronouncing abomination.”

“Cora—”

“Something was off about Verek, don’t you think?” Avoiding his heavy stare, she wrapped her arms around her knees. “He acted like those humans in the cemetery.”

Bane blew out a breath. “Aye. Something is definitely afoot.”

She slumped back. Her tired mind couldn’t begin to process any of it. “What do we do now?”

“First thing is getting someone to clean up those bodies before curious eyes see them. What a morning, eh?” His blood-splattered face broke into an almost boyish grin. “When I said I’d be running Verek’s gang within a year, I didn’t think it’d be this one. And all thanks to you, my darling Necromancer.”

Warmth pooled in her belly at his soft words and softer smile. Catching herself before she fell into his endless eyes, she dropped her gaze, tracing the hard line of his jaw as his expression sobered.

“Well. There are plans to speed up. No time to waste.” He rose to his feet and swayed, grabbing the wall.

Cora rushed up to steady him. “Maybe stop bleeding first, scheming second?”

“But—”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” she said, and he huffed a laugh. “I’ll fetch the bandages.”

He sagged against the wall. “That’d be grand.”