Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,91
face hardened and she continued on, Robin clasped to her, apparently not even planning to acknowledge the request.
Until Robin locked both her feet, and Faustine could either stop or drag her over to fall against the cobblestones.
“I don't know why you think there's a chance in hell—!” Faustine began.
Robin brushed her fingertips over her lover's sodden cheek, halting her in mid-sentence. “You run all over town every night. You could be at the Basilica in minutes. It's going to take an hour or more, if you stay with me.”
“I don't care! I'm not leaving you alone!”
“If Lisette comes after me, there's nothing you can do. If anyone else does? Even robbers are at home on a night like this. But Gerard's place is only a quarter-mile from here. Even I can walk that.” Much as she tried, much as she had other concerns at the moment, she couldn't quite silence the bitterness. “I'll be safe there.”
Faustine actually stomped her foot, which would have soaked Robin's shoes if they hadn't already absorbed all the water they could possibly hold. “No!”
Robin smiled, even as her gaze hardened. “This is important. You know it is. Shins is out there, fighting, maybe…” She swallowed once, moved past it. “I know you worry about me. Want to help me. What you can do for me right now, tonight, is to help her. Please.”
A taut, almost violent shaking came over Faustine's shoulders—and then they slumped in resignation. “Swear to me you're going straight to Gerard's,” she pleaded. “That you're not going to try to go back and do something stupid.”
“I promise. I know I can't do anything—and I'm not leaving you.” Robin stretched up on her toes for a kiss—brief, all too brief—and then stepped back. “Now run, damn it!”
One more second of reluctance, and then she was gone, gracefully slipping away as though racing between the torrents.
Robin sighed, and then, before she could stop herself, called out as loud as her lungs could manage. “I love you!”
In the moment, Robin realized with some dismay that she couldn't remember if she'd ever said that to her before. She hoped Faustine had still been near enough to hear.
Then, for just a few heartbeats, she looked back the way they'd come. Maybe, just maybe I could…
No. I can't. And we all know it. Besides, she'd promised.
With a second, deeper sigh, Robin shuffled across the street and set her feet toward Gerard's tiny flat.
Another cry of warning, a surge of panic from Olgun. They came so fast and frequent now that Shins was having trouble distinguishing one from the next. She dove, rolling painfully over the road thanks to her inhuman speed. Mud splattered up even as the blades swept down, not merely ringing loudly against the cobblestones but actually carving divots into them.
Lisette was keeping up, and her arms were again somehow warping, winding, slashing, and stabbing at Shins from a good fifteen feet away, or even more. It just seemed unfair, perhaps even rude, for her to do both.
The swords spun and whipped around each other, swirling in circles that no human arms—even bizarrely lengthened and disjointed as Lisette's now seemed to be—could have managed. On the rare occasions Shins had felt it safe even to glance over her shoulder, she'd seen the woman coming after her and the steel flashing, but she'd been utterly unable to make out the movement of the limbs between, or even how they connected to the shoulders anymore.
Not even Olgun's help could allow her to see through the rain, the blurred steel, the writhing shadows.
The height.
Fae-ridden, leaking dark magics, Lisette didn't follow Widdershins from directly behind. She hung suspended, above the level of the streetlights, from wavering limbs of shadow. They skittered silently, unevenly, the horrible offspring of spiders and the very specific darkness found only under the bed; stepping across ground or the walls of surrounding buildings with equal facility. The awkward gait flopped Lisette around at the apex of those shadowy, segmented legs, until she looked as boneless and yielding as a corpse in a waterfall.
Despite that, her inhuman arms remained steady. The blades grew closer with every slash, and Lisette herself with every step.
Widdershins could hear the expected and despised giggling chorus of children, the tang of herbs and sweets beneath the olfactory weight of the storm.
How can she be this hopping fast?!
“I have decided,” she gasped to Olgun as she rolled back to her feet and made a sharp turn down a narrower street to her left,