LITMIR.BIZ

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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 there was no mistaking the press of soft breasts against his chest and the rounded curve of her hip as he slid his hand over her to catch up her legs. She wore some sort of nightgown or thin shift, but it was soaked with moisture and reeked of mildew.

      Even in this total darkness, she had known what he was.

      Sánge.

      He’d shown no fangs, no claws, and other than his dusky skin, there was little to identify him. The Sánge weren’t the only ones with dark skin in this world, or even this region. There were the Opia, though they tended more toward a beautiful ebony, if they were purebred, that hid them in the night. Or the Gemin, who tanned so richly in the sultry summers. Besides, she couldn’t possibly see his skin in this darkness, he reasoned. How had she known he was Sánge and not any other?

      She had known. There was no mistaking it. She had said it clearly.

      What she had said afterward was too disturbing for him to contemplate while so precariously positioned with a vulnerable female to protect. He would examine the remark at a later time, for he was almost certain he’d misunderstood her.

      Sánge, bautor mo.

      Reule stood up, lifting her high against his chest, contemplating how to get her out of the crate enclosure without sending their joint weight crashing to the third floor.

      “Hand her to me, My Prime.”

      Reule looked out of the darkness and met the steady gray of his Shadow’s eyes. He should have known Darcio wouldn’t leave him for long. He was aptly titled Prime Shadow, and he was as dependable as the rising sun and the rotating moons. He was lighter and leaner than Reule, making him the better choice for carrying the girl. The combination of her weight and Darcio’s would just about equal Reule’s.

      Despite Darcio’s verbal protests of earlier, and his equally doubtful thoughts, Reule trusted him to take the very best care of the girl. Darcio was loyal to him in such ways. Reule didn’t think twice about handing her over the crate to him. He saw Darcio wrinkle his nose at the smell of her, then catch a chill from the dreadful cold of her body. If there was one thing Sánge despised almost as much as Jakals, it was the cold.

      “You go first; I’ll follow at a distance to keep our weight distributed far enough apart,” Reule instructed him.

      Neither man breathed easily until they were safely on the second floor, though no spot under that rotting roof could really be considered

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