On the Edge (The Edge #1)(81)
Author: Ilona Andrews

"Too much," he told her. "Reduce the intensity. We have a long way to go. Why are you mad?"

The rest of the hounds braved the water.

"Rose?"

She recognized the persistent tone. He wouldn’t let it go. "You just said that the only women you favor with your attentions are either sluts or whores and that you prefer it that way. I’m just wondering where I fit in. I would hate to create any painful confusion for you."

His long blade cut through the air and sliced an emerging hound in half. He kicked the pieces into the water.

"You’re neither."

She said nothing.

Declan squared his shoulders, eyeing the approaching hounds. "When I was a child, I watched an iren-play called Aesu’s Rage. It’s similar to a motion film from the Broken. It’s the story of Aesu, a leader of a small tribe, who takes on an enormous empire and succeeds against all odds. I vividly remember one scene in it: Aesu, huge in his spiked armor, was about to go into a battle he couldn’t possibly win. He stood there in his tent, caressed his wife’s face, and told her, ‘You’re the measure of my wrath.’ I was twelve years old, and at the time I thought it was a remarkably asinine thing to say."

A third hound reached the dock. An ugly head broke the water, and Rose flashed, cutting the dark skull in two.

"Over the years I’d come to understand what the scene meant, but now I finally feel it, very sharply." Declan decapitated the emerging hound with two quick precise strokes of his blade. "And I would never tell you this, if you hadn’t insisted on coming on this dock, because that means you feel it, too. This used to be about honor, and duty, and my dislike of Casshorn. Now it’s about you."

"Me?" She tried to concentrate on the next group of hounds swimming through the water.

"I would give all of myself to keep you safe. To do that, I have to kill Casshorn. It’s a simple trade. Casshorn has to die, so you can live. Two sides of the same coin. I love you, and you’re the measure of my wrath."

"What did you say?" She flashed too hard and missed the hound.

He stepped in and sank a focused shot of white into the three bodies squirming in the water. "I said I love you, Rose. Easy on the flash."

ROSE swayed. She gritted her teeth and stood her ground, fighting to remain upright. The magic inside her no longer thrived and filled her up. She had to reach deep to pull it out. She was draining the last of her reserve.

"Are you all right?" Declan’s voice asked.

"Fine," she said.

Dark bodies bobbed in the murky waters around the dock, their silvery blood sliding across the surface of the lake like an oil rainbow. The silver wet the rubber under her feet, and she had already slipped once and barely caught herself.

They kept coming. Two, three at a time, a fraction of the horde unaffected by electrocution, swimming through the dark stream of cadavers and climbing on the dock, teeth bared, eyes glowing. Next to her, Declan swung his sword, mechanical, silent, and unstoppable. Like a machine.

Another hound. Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

Her heartbeat thudded like a hammer in her temples. One flash too many. Her vision began to blur. To push any further would be stupid. "I think I’m done," she said and pulled out the machete Buckwell had given her.

A hound crawled onto the dock, and she hacked at it. Gray goo sprayed the rubber.

"Will they never end?" she whispered. She was so tired.

Declan’s hand caught her waist. He pulled her to him and kissed her, his lips warm and dry. "It’s over. There are none left. They’re pulling the cable out."

"We’re done?" she asked.

"Yes."

The surface of the lake was gray with the hounds’ blood. Bodies bobbed in the water. "You were right," she said softly. "I never could’ve killed them all by myself."

"What did you say?"

"I said you were right . . ."

He gave her a dazzling grin. "One more time, my lady?"

"You were right," she told him with a tired smile.

"I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing that. Unaccustomed to it as I am."

It took another fifteen minutes before Buckwell rowed up in his boat to take them ashore. She watched as several Edgers under Buckwell’s direction dumped gasoline into the lake. When the first spark blossomed into orange flame above the water, she felt a great sense of satisfaction.

It lasted until Declan came to stand next to her. Her throat closed in. It was time for him to go after Casshorn, and there was nothing she could do to help him now.

She turned to him. Declan’s face was cold like a block of ice. He had locked himself into a rigid stance. Behind him, William waited, a dark shadow. Now wasn’t the time to break down and start crying. It was all or nothing. Either he came back and they had everything, or he would never return and they had nothing. She wanted desperately to run and throw her arms around him, but if she did that, letting go would be that much harder for both of them, and she sensed he was fighting for control.

Rose looked into Declan’s green eyes. "I love you," she said. "Come back to me alive."

He nodded, turned without a word, and walked away, William in tow.

Something broke inside her. It hurt, and she just stood there, trying her best not to crumble.

"He isn’t dead yet," Tom Buckwell’s gruff voice said behind her.

Rose turned.

The big man was looking at her. "Wait until he’s stopped breathing before you have a funeral."

She simply nodded.

"Well, don’t stand there all night. There is cleanup to be done."

Cleanup sounded good. Any work sounded good right about now. Anything but waiting.

She followed him next to the shore. Jennifer Barran handed her a pole with a hook on the end. Rose reached into the water, hooked a charred carcass, and dragged it to shore. She hadn’t realized how tired she was. Flashing had worn her out, and the hound’s body might as well have been made of cement. She was on her third when Tom Buckwell dropped his hook next to her and swore. "What the devil . . . ?"

A man was running up the road toward them, his face so pale, it took Rose a moment to recognize him. Thad, sprinting so fast he had to be running for his life. She dropped her pole and ran toward him, a step behind Buckwell. The others joined.

Thad crashed into Buckwell, gulped air, and bent over gasping. "Hounds."

It couldn’t be. They’d killed all the hounds.

"How many?" Buckwell asked.

"A shitload of them." Thad spat on the ground, blinking. "They’ve busted our trucks. We’re cut off."