Chapter 339: Midnight Venture

Something grabbed me by the collar and I was airborne before my eyes opened.

Wind hit my face. Cold, fast, carrying the stench of the city below. My brain scrambled to catch up with my body, which was already several stories above the Company building and rising.

Kassie had me by the back of my shirt in one hand. In the other, she had Evangeline, who was wide-eyed and rigid, her blonde hair whipping behind her, her mouth open in a scream that the wind tore away before it could form.

’What the—’

We cleared the rooftops. Los Arcos spread beneath us in a patchwork of dim lantern light and dark alleys, and Kassie was flying across the sky like the air owed her a road. Each step was efficient enough to cover so much distance that the next time she was landing, it was definitely on a building and the city blurred beneath us.

She hadn’t said a word.

I twisted in her grip to look at her face. The demonic helmet was already formed. And what looked like a crimson mist flowed from her malicious armor, snapping in the wind of her own speed. Without seeing her expression, I could tell her entire demeanor and composure. It was the focused blankness of someone who had made a decision hours ago and was now executing it.

"Kassie! What the hell are you—"

She dropped.

My stomach lurched into my throat as we plummeted three stories and landed in an alley near the Waterwind bridge. Kassie’s feet touched the ground without a sound. She released both of us.

I stumbled, caught myself on a wall, and fought down the urge to vomit.

Evangeline hit the ground on her hands and knees, gasping. Her amber eyes were enormous. She was still in her sleeping clothes, a loose linen shift that hung off one shoulder, her feet bare against the filthy cobblestone.

I looked down at myself. I was in my underclothes.

’She dragged us out of bed. Good thing I didn’t sleep naked today.’

Everyone in the Company had been asleep. Milo, Cressida, Ophelia, Odelia. All of them behind locked doors, resting after the worst day the Company had seen since I’d arrived. And Kassie had materialized in the dark, grabbed the two people she wanted, and left without waking anyone else.

"Kassie."

She was already walking toward the tunnel entrance.

"Kassie!"

She stopped. Turned her head just enough that I caught the edge of one blood-red eye through the gap in the helmet.

"Keep up."

Then she kept walking.

Evangeline and I looked at each other, barefoot, half-dressed and standing in the worst neighborhood in Los Arcos in the middle of the night.

"Did she just kidnap us?" Evangeline whispered.

"She does this," I said, which wasn’t exactly true, because she’d never done anything quite like this before, but it felt true enough to be useful.

I started moving. Evangeline followed.

The tunnels were the same. Damp stone, shallow water, cracks of gray moonlight from above. The echoes were the same. The stench was the same. My bare feet splashed through the runoff and every step sent cold shooting up through my legs.

Kassie moved through the dark like she’d built the place. No hesitation at junctions. No pausing to sense the way. She just walked, and every turn she took was correct, and I realized she was following something I couldn’t feel.

"They’re ahead," she said without looking back.

I expanded my Enhanced Sense. She was right. Suppressed spirit essences, the same flat signature I’d felt before, spread across the junction where we’d found the bodies.

They were still there, waiting.

"Kassie, those things don’t go down. I hit them with everything I had and they—"

"I know what you told me."

She kept walking.

The junction opened before us. The bodies were still there. Seventeen freed slaves lying in the dark exactly as we’d left them. And around them, the assassins. All ten. Standing in the same positions, covering the tunnel entrances, weapons drawn.

They turned toward us.

Kassie didn’t stop walking.

The greatsword formed in her hand midstride, coalescing from red sparks into that massive red-and-black blade.

Instantly, the air compressed and pressure radiated outward from her in concentric waves, and I felt it in my teeth before I felt it on my skin.

The assassins’ movements stuttered. Whatever was controlling them pushed them forward anyway, but their bodies hesitated.

Kassie reached the first one and cut it in half.

From shoulder to hip. The blade passed through cloth and flesh and bone like all three were the same material. The two halves fell in opposite directions.

She was already past it.

The second thrust a short sword at her back. Kassie pivoted without looking, the greatsword sweeping horizontally behind her, and took its head. She kicked the body into a third assassin, used the stumble to close the gap, and drove the blade through its chest.

Three down in four seconds. She hadn’t slowed her walk.

I pulled Evangeline against the wall. Her amber eyes were wide, but not with fear.

Kassie reached the cluster of four guarding the far tunnel entrance and moved through them like a blade through standing water. One motion per kill with no excess movement. The greatsword moved in continuous arcs that made the four-foot blade look weightless.

Seven were down in time. The remaining three converged from behind. She didn’t turn. The killing intent that rolled off her tripled. One dropped to its knees.

Then she turned slowly and cut all three in a single stroke.

Kassie had finished all ten of them in barely... fifteen seconds?

And then the first one started getting up.

The one she’d split from shoulder to hip. The two halves dragged through the shallow water, pulling toward each other, and the blood reached between the pieces like fingers reconnecting. The halves met, sealed and the figure pushed itself upright.

Kassie watched it rise.

She didn’t look surprised. She looked like she was confirming something.

All ten of them were rising, their wounds sealing and blood crawling back into bodies.

She cut them down again. Faster. Heavier. A third time. A fourth. By the fifth, she was taking them apart at the joints, scattering pieces across the junction.

The blood always found its way back. The things always stood.

"It’s in the blood," Kassie said. She’d stopped attacking. "The command.vIt’s not a spirit ability and it’s not necromancy. The blood itself carries the instruction."