Etched in Silver: An Otherworld Novella by Yasmine Galenorn

Author:Yasmine Galenorn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2012-01-10T10:00:00+00:00

6

NIGHT was sweeping away the dusk, leaving a solid layer of stars overhead. As we slid through the streets, Trillian kept hold of my hand. My mind was racing with thoughts of Roche, of finally catching him and skewering my boss when I told the YIA that he’d been in on the perv’s escape.

But, overshadowing everything was the lingering tingle of my skin, the memory of what had happened between Trillian and me. There are legends that sometimes a Svartan will meet another Svartan with whom the mesh is so right that they spontaneously bond. For good. It’s rare, but it does happen.

His words reverberated through me. What did this mean? But I already knew. Something—by fate or chance—had brought us together. I’d known since our first meeting. And now we were bound, whether for good or ill, I didn’t know yet. My father was going to have a field day with this one.

“There,” Trillian whispered. “Calisto’s.”

As we watched, a figure emerged from the gloom. He was the right size and shape and an alarm sounded that yes—it was him. I clutched Trillian’s arm.

“It’s Roche,” I said. “I know that energy!”

We waited until he’d entered the building, then we slipped past the rawhead who had passed out, an empty bottle of booze on the counter. The stench of stale vomit filled the air.

As we tiptoed up the stairs, I steeled myself. Roche was up there. Roche, who liked to carve up women and children. Darynal’s warning came back to me—Roche wouldn’t play by the rules, so I wasn’t going to either. Whatever it took, I was taking the dude down. Hard.

As we reached the top of the stairs, Roche had already disappeared into the room and we could hear the sounds of fighting from behind the scarred door.

“Come on! Darynal’s in danger.” Trillian slammed open the door and rushed into the room. I followed.

“Stop or I’ll kill him!” Roche whirled, holding Darynal by the throat, a knife with a glinting razor’s edge poised at his jugular. He stared at us for a moment, looking totally confused. “Who the fuck are you?”

Darynal was limp, but alive. I could tell he was doing his best to relax into the hold, a good way to fool your opponent. Only Roche wasn’t the sanest peach in the pie, so what might work on a normal psycho wasn’t necessarily going to do the trick for him.

First things first—get Darynal out of Roche’s grasp. I whipped out my knife from the sheath circling my thigh. The leather strap looked like it was fastened around the illusionary trousers I was wearing.

Praying my voice had changed along with my looks, I said, “Give us all your money—jewels, whatever you got.” Yep, my voice had deepened, thank the gods. If we played guards-and-bandits, we just might confuse him long enough to throw him off guard.

Trillian took my cue and pulled out his own knife, a dangerous-looking kris. “Whatever beef you got with this guy, we don’t care. We’ll go through him to get to you if you don’t give us your money.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.