Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,92
“that I prefer…the kinds of spirits…that don't have bodies and…just possess people. Do those really exist, too? Can we get one…instead of fae next time?”
The little god was too busy projecting another warning to answer.
Lisette had come to the intersection and simply thrown herself sideways, the limbs of shadow changing direction inhumanly fast, pushing off the opposite building to absorb momentum. Shins's desperate turn had only resulted in her pursuer gaining ground.
“Got anything more?”
She'd guessed Olgun's answer before she'd even asked.
Blades sliced over one another like murderous scissors, coming together mere inches behind her. She ducked forward, stumbled, barely regaining enough balance to keep from toppling face-first to the road. Fast as she was sprinting, she wondered idly if a fall like that would've saved Lisette the trouble of killing her.
Her chest burned, her side was splitting. The aches were coming faster than Olgun could quell them. She'd never asked this sort of speed or strength from him for longer than a few seconds. Neither knew how long she could endure it; both knew the answer had to include a “not very.”
Again the end of the block loomed, a wall of void and water. Again Shins broke left, but this time, as Lisette began to pivot, she jumped at the nearest corner wall. Spinning her body up and back, she struck the building feet first, with enough momentum from her impossible run to take a good three or four steps up the sheer side. Another leap, entirely horizontal, and Shins shot past her opponent, breaking again into a mad dash the instant she hit the street.
That, even the fae couldn't react to immediately. For the first time since the chase began, Shins gained a few yards.
It wouldn't last, she knew it wouldn't last, but maybe she could—
“Enough of this!” It was Lisette's voice, rattled by the uneven motion, but it wasn't just her voice. Beneath it, Shins heard Embruchel's horrible twin tones.
The lower half of the former Taskmaster's face was pitch-black, now, and looked as though she'd been drinking tar. Without any apparent movement, without “retracting” or shrinking in any way, her arms were human again, holding their twin blades crossed over her chest.
But where limbs of flesh had returned to their natural state, one of the limbs of shade lengthened.
Lisette had chosen her spot deliberately, no doubt: directly beside one of the flickering streetlamps. At that angle, the leg—had it been real, had the light not been diffused by the rain—would have cast its own shadow halfway down the block.
As the leg was shadow, it stretched that far.
Shins felt a crushing pain in her side as she was hurled into a tangled heap on the street's far side. She throbbed from a hundred different bruises, probably bled from a hundred different cuts, though any blood washed away before she could be sure. And she knew it was only Olgun, desperately yanking the threads of luck and chance, which had saved her from far worse injury.
“I guess we're done running,” Widdershins whispered. “I'm sorry. I hope it's long enough.”
Wincing, she stood, drew her rapier, and turned to face her enemy.
It began with the faint thump of the doors to the grand chapel. Unusual and perhaps more than a bit gauche for anyone to enter while the bishop himself was speaking, sermonizing, but hardly unheard of. Sicard only remembered later than he'd even noticed; at the time, the sound failed to register.
Then the low mutters and whispers started, sprouting at the rearmost pews and swiftly blossoming through the congregation, echoing along the vaulted ceiling. A few attendees stood, trying to see over their neighbors, curiosity about the disruption temporarily overwhelming piety or politeness.
Only then did Sicard trail off, going silent in the midst of praising Vercoule—of all 147 gods of the Hallowed Pact, the one most venerated in Davillon itself—as the newcomer revealed herself to him.
A young woman, blonde, in skirts more rain than they were fabric. They slapped audibly against her legs with every step, spattering congregants with cold water. She ignored it all; the weight, the discomfort, the propriety. Although staggered and gasping, she struggled up the aisle with a pace and intent that suggested she was still trying to run.
And several of the Church soldiers, weapons raised, were converging on her.
“No!” Sicard stepped to the edge of the dais, a hand raised. “Let her pass.”
It might have been a foolish call. Given what had occurred recently, she could have been some trick, an agent of the fae or