Drink of Me. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ increasingly steady, Reule directed his focus away from the fearful, paralyzed Jakals that yet remained alive, and the noisy thoughts of his Packmates. It wasn’t hard to home in on the sorrow. Adjusting his vision once more to detect heated shapes, he scanned the house more slowly. He was in the center of the structure, one floor above him and one below. Wherever she was, she was close. He might have mistaken her for a Jakal in his first scan, but it was clear from the depth of her emotion that she couldn’t be.

      Yet nothing stood upright in the house save his Pack. He looked up once more and realized there was another floor above the third. And there, up in the farthest corner, he spied a small ball of the dimmest heat.

      “Darcio, did you encounter anyone upstairs?”

      “No, My Prime. I only sought the one stray you noted.”

      “Then this is the female I’m sensing. Lord and Lady, but she has strong emotions,” he marveled as he stepped over an incapacitated Jakal.

      “One emotion, My Prime. One bound to attract a man of good conscience,” Darcio said suspiciously. “It’s magnified just as you magnified death to the Jakals. What manner of creature can do that besides yourself?” And even Reule shouldn’t be able to do such a thing, he thought. No man should hold death in the power of his thoughts. Reule had always been fair and just with his power, but things like this had a way of changing a man. Even a Prime.

      “You’re mistaken,” Reule said as he moved with increasing sureness out of the room. “There is no magnification. It’s…pure.” The word kept springing to his mind. He decided it suited and left it at that. Darcio didn’t say anything, but Reule could feel him repressing arguments because he didn’t want to contradict his Prime again. Darcio was a good man, ever his voice of caution and conscience, always advising him to consider carefully. Reule valued him beyond measure, and he made certain the thought made it through to Darcio before they took off up the stairs together.

      They made it to the third floor of the ramshackle building, clearly abandoned long ago. The roof had leaked and the ceiling was rotted through, as was the wooden floor they now negotiated. Reule and Darcio took care with every step as they edged toward another stairwell, this one narrow and stinking of must and mildew. Gypsy Jakals were always roaming the lands, scavenging and causing trouble, squatting wherever they could. This band had been around long enough to make this hovel a home. Homey enough to bolt a chair in a central parlor for the purpose of torture. It meant they’d been there for some time. Reule would never have known it if Chayne hadn’t accidentally stumbled into capture during their hunting trip.

      Reule tested the narrow little attic stairs and wondered how anyone could be up in the garret. Getting there seemed a dangerous task. Then again, it was its own sort of prison.

      He made his way to the head of the small stairs, Darcio his ever-present Shadow as he pushed open a heavy, stubborn door. He was instantly confronted with a chasm of missing flooring. A wide section had rotted out. Reule and Darcio could see straight down to the story they’d just left.

      “You’re lucky these stairs even held,” Darcio muttered as Reule entered the room one careful sidestep after another. His Packmate was right. The hole in the floor came to within a mere foot of the door and stairwell.

      And of course his target was all the way on the opposite side. Even though it was all one large room, he still couldn’t see her. There was a crowd of crates blocking his view of her, though he could still sense her dim heat.

      “I’d really like to know how she got over there,” Reule said in honest curiosity. Darcio nodded his agreement as they tried to plot the best course of action.

      “I should go. I’m lighter. Less chance of the floor giving way.”

      Good point, but Reule didn’t want to relinquish the task, for some reason. Her pain was so bittersweet, beautiful merely by virtue of its purity and depth. Logic reasoned that anyone who could feel pain so deeply was used to accommodating its antithesis. Reule only hoped that pain wasn’t all she could feel after this.

      “No,” he responded after a moment. “There’s a strip along the wall that looks sturdy enough even for me. Since this is my folly, I might as well be the one to risk breaking my neck.”

      “My Prime,” Darcio protested.

      “It’s a joke, Shadow. Take ease.”

      “I will once we’re out of this dangerous hellhole,” Darcio countered sullenly.

      Reule turned away to hide a smile. Leave it to Darcio to take all the fun out of an adventure. Still, he wasn’t swayed so easily. His blood rushed with adrenaline as he negotiated wet, creaking boards that were maybe days or even minutes from rotting away completely. He tried not to touch the dank, mildewed wall running next to him as he went. Some molds in the damplands were poisonous or ate flesh. An ominous crack sounded through the room, and Reule abruptly realized exactly how unstable the entire building was. The Jakals were insane to risk staying in such a place. If the floor inside was rotted, he could just imagine the state of the roof above them. He glanced back at Darcio and they exchanged a mutual understanding that they needed to get out as soon as possible. If nothing else, they were agreed on that.

      Reule exhaled carefully when he reached the other side of the gaping hole, unwilling to relax so long as he stood on water-stained boards. He gingerly made his way over to the boxed crates and peered into the dark corner behind them.

      The only thing he could see was the palest little hand. His heart skipped a beat as he realized that this was probably a child. A renewed sense of rage flooded him and he began to think of the Jakals left alive on the lower floors. When he left this property not a one of them would be left breathing, he vowed to himself fiercely. They had feasted on their very last victims.

      Very carefully, Reule grabbed one of the crates and slid it aside a little. The frightening creak of the protesting floor halted him instantly.

      “To hell,” he muttered, planting both hands on another crate and effortlessly leaping over its four-foot height as if it were nothing. His feet hit the only clear piece of flooring available without landing on the girl. He heard Darcio curse baldly when his weight met protesting floorboards.

      Reule ignored him and squatted down to better see her through the darkness. He reached for her hand as he bent forward. Her pain had become like a repetitive tune singing through him, no longer reaching extreme highs or lows. It wasn’t that it weakened, only that he was adapting to the force of it.

      Reule had no idea what he would find, but he certainly didn’t expect to feel a second hand spearing into his hair from the darkness to grip him with surprising strength and drag him down until his face was pressed against a baby-soft cheek that should have been warm, but was instead icy cold. A pair of lips, both rough and supple at once, rubbed over his ear as finally something warm, her breath, washed over him. The contrast gave him an involuntary chill, aided by the hoarseness of her voice when she whispered to him.

      “Sánge, bautor mo.”

      Chapter 2

      She went so suddenly limp that Reule almost didn’t catch her. Luckily, his supreme reflexes didn’t fail him and he quickly gathered her up against his warmth. Her entire body was like ice. Who knew how long she had lain there, shivering in the moldering cold? She was slightly bigger and heavier than he’d expected, but still as light as could be. She wasn’t a girl child, but perhaps a youngling on the cusp of womanhood. She was small and fragile in his arms, but СКАЧАТЬ