Page 76 of Dead Drop

Their eyes don't have the amber steadiness of Corvin's. They have the jittering, too-bright look of something running on fumes.

The biggest one sees me and makes a sound—a wet, rattling hiss that raises every hair on my body. His tail lashes behind him. He lunges.

I don't panic.

I go tactical. He's coming from the edge—the angle puts him between me and the open air, which means the only way out is through him. Through it is.

I duck the lunge. His claws rake the air where my head was—close enough that I feel the wind of them across my cheek. I come up under his arm and drive the blade into the soft tissuebeneath his ribs. Good steel, sharp edge, the angle I've trained a hundred fighters to find. The blade goes in to the hilt. He screams—a high, broken sound that fills the aerie.

I twist and pull.

He drops.

The other two are on me before the first one hits the furs.

One grabs my arm. His grip is wrong—too tight, too fast, the desperate clutch of something that can smell what it wants and can't think past the wanting. I slash his wrist. He lets go. His blood is dark, almost black, and it smells like the sour venom that's rotting him inward.

The third one is circling. Faster than the others. His broken horns are low, his tail whipping behind him in short vicious arcs.

He's the dangerous one—the one with enough mind left to wait while his companions go first.

I'm bleeding. The first one's claws caught my shoulder on the way down—a shallow gash, burning, the kind that doesn't stop you until the adrenaline fades. My knife hand is steady. My breathing is controlled.

I am standing in an aerie above the wasteland with two addicts circling me and one dead at my feet, and I am the best fighter New Reach ever produced.

The broken-horned one charges.

Corvin lands between us.

His arrival is the sky cracking open. His wings hit the aerie floor like sails snapping taut. His body—nine feet of red muscle, crown horns, absolute violence—fills the space between me and the remaining Stained.

He doesn't roar. He doesn't need to. The territorial display is his body: the wings spread to full extension, the crown horns lowered, the tail uncoiling behind him in a slow deliberate arc.

Every line of him says mine in a language older than words.

The broken-horned one hesitates. That's the last decision he makes.

Corvin's tail strikes. The coil wraps the Stained's throat, lifts him from the floor, holds him at arm's length. The one with the slashed wrist tries to run. Corvin catches him with one hand—casual, efficient, the way he catches canopy prey.

Two kills. Less than three seconds. The Stained are dead before I've lowered my blade.

The aerie is quiet.

I'm on my knees. I didn't decide to be—my legs gave, the adrenaline crashing, the withdrawal underneath it surging up like something that was waiting for the fear to crack the door open. My knife is still in my hand. Blood—theirs, not mine—is on my face, my arms, the furs around me.

Corvin crouches in front of me. The full mass of him folding down, his wings settling behind him, the firelight catching the blood on his claws—theirs, dark and sour-smelling, the wrong kind. His hands find my face. He tilts my head, his thumbs along my jaw, checking my eyes, my throat, the gash on my shoulder.

His claws are gentle. His touch is deliberate—the careful attention of hands that could break me and choose not to.

"I handled one," I say.

"I know." He's not dismissing it. His amber eyes move to the body at the edge of the furs—the one I killed, my blade still wet with its blood. He looks at it, then back at me. Something in his expression that isn't surprise. Confirmation. "Good blade work," he says. The words come clearly, without effort. He's not reaching for these. He has them ready.

"The other two were manageable."

"I know that too." The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile—something harder, something that looks like pride wearing the face of restraint. He's looking at my shoulder now. The gash is shallow but it's bleeding freely, the blood runningdown my arm in a warm line that drips from my elbow onto the furs.

"You're hurt," he says. Not a question. His voice is low, the tone of it changed from the clipped reading of damage to something quieter. His hands move to the wound. His claws hover over the torn skin, not touching, just close enough that the heat of his fingers reaches me.