"Let me drink, and I'll take care of her for you." He looked at me as he tried to get his arms underneath him.
"Drink," he said.
Then he smiled at me.
With a crow of triumph she bent her head.
She was still drinking when the butcher knife swooshed through her insubstantial head and cut cleanly through Blackwood's neck.
An axe would have been better, but with his strength still lingering in my arms, the butcher knife got the job done.
A second cut took his head completely off.
His head touched my toes, and I edged them away.
A knife in either hand, I had no chance to feel triumphant or sick at what I'd done.
Not with a very solid Catherine smiling her grandmotherly smile only six feet from me.
She smiled, her mouth red with Blackwood's blood.
"Die," she said, and reached out-- Last year Sensei spent six months on sai forms.
The knives weren't so well-balanced for fighting, but they worked.
It was a butcher's job I made of it--and I managed it only by clinging fiercely to the here and now.
The floors, the walls, and I were all drenched in blood.
And she wasn't dead ...
or rather she was dead already.
The knives kept her off me, but none of the wounds seemed to affect her at all.
"Throw me the stick," said the oakman softly.
I dropped the French chef's knife and grabbed the staff with my free hand.
It slid out of Blackwood's back as if it didn't want to be there.
For a moment I thought that the end was a sharp point, but my attention was focused on Catherine and I couldn't be sure.
I tossed it to the Oakman and drove Catherine away from Corban's cage.
He'd collapsed when I'd cut off Blackwood's head in a motion not unlike Amber's zombie.
I hoped he wasn't dead--but there wasn't anything I could do about it if he was.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the oakman lick the blood-covered stick with a tongue at least eight inches long.
"Death blood is best," he told me.
And then he flung the stick at the outside wall, and said a word ...
The blast knocked me off my feet and onto Blackwood's corpse.
Something hit me in the back of the head.