This is going a little crazy, isn't it. ah well. Thanx v much to comments, and forgive my silly writing, I will do better one day ;) Advice is welcome.
CHAPTER THREE
Shadows of the Past
Jazda held the knife point stock still, a fraction away from the spy's wide eyes. The air about them was thick with blood, it was in her mouth too, and the taste was electrifying and very, very distracting. She was trying to remember why she wasn't just killing this spy like she'd done the other three, and it was getting hard to control herself. She was starving, after all, ravenous...
She'd been in this position many times throughout her cold, violent past. Dangling death before her victim's eyes while they bleated excuses at her. Watching the pathetic hope rise in their eyes, then the helpless terror when she killed them. Blood spilt from a begging victim was intensely more satisfying than blood from an unaware victim.
The young man swallowed again, carefully. His golden flecked leaf green eyes were fixed on the tapered point of metal, and she could smell the waves of fear coming off him. They were alone in the bar, everyone else having sensibly fled. Just the two of them. How very cosy.
"Well?" she asked, hearing the harsher, animal edge leaking into her voice, her long curved fangs pressing against her lower lip. Adrenalin still pumped through her veins and her mouth tingled, stomach burning. She hadn't fed properly all night.
"Because I work for Circle Daybreak," he said softly and carefully.
Jazda laughed, scornful and snarling, yearning for flesh. "Not good enough, little spy."
"I do! I was onlypretendingtobeaNightWorldspysoIcouldfindoutwhattheyknowandeverythingforThierry-" The words came out in a garbled rush and he only stopped to inhale fresh oxygen before starting off again.
She watched him, torn between amusement and suspicion, then gave him a kindly slap that nearly took his head off and shut him up.
"Ow," mumbled the puma shapeshifter. "Look, I swear, I work for Circle Daybreak and I thought if I infiltrated the spies then Thierry'd be pleased, why else would I let you hold an extremely sharp knife next to my suddenly extremely valued eyes?" He looked pleadingly at her.
"Thierry already gave me permission to destroy them. You're lying."
"Oh...crap. Look, I swear, my name is Lynx Siestrax, I'm an agent of Circle Daybreak! I didn't realise Thierry knew about them!"
"This just gets better and better. You expect me to believe that you were pretending to side with the spies." He nodded.
"In order to find out what they knew." He nodded.
"To see who they were meeting." He nodded.
"To allow them to tell those people rather than kill the spies straight out so they don't leak dangerous information to the enemy."
"Yes, that's- oh, crap. Again. That, er, didn't occur to me. I didn't mean that, er, it's amazing what a knifepoint in front of your eye does to your sense of rational reason and voice control-"
She was an inch away from killing him. Her muscles tightened.
"Err... the password... dammit, why don't I listen to these things-"
She was a millimetre away from killing him. Her lips pulled back in half smile, half snarl.
A harsh bang split the air and a nanosecond later the bullet crashed into the wall she was holding him up against in a minute explosion of sparks and stone chips. Reacting almost instantly she dropped Lynx and whirled about, going into a crouch, smelling the hot silver of the bullet and looking for the enemy.
On the other side of the room stood a three figures, the Night World contacts, come for the spies, but she was focused on the central figure, a tall, muscular, handsome man with long jet black hair and eyes that were a hot and piercing pale green and at the end of his raised, straight arm he gripped a silvery snub nosed gun...
Her eyes were fixed on the tiny hole at the end of the barrel, the blackness of it, abruptly changed by a flicker of light and that was the signal, the sign of death.
Jazda leapt sideways, putting all of her muscles into a fast somersaulting jump as the second bullet sparked off the spot where'd she'd been. She landed on top of the polished oak bar counter and hastily rolled off to drop down behind it.
"Get her!" roared a voice.
She seemed to have become very popular very fast.
-Memo to self- bring more shiny, sharp weapons next time- thought Jazda coolly, gripping her knife in her hand, listening hard, locating several sets of breathing, one seeming to be coming closer. Two more shots slammed through the bar, barely missing her as she moved along, listening, listening, till she heard fast approaching feet.
Quickly she stood up, saw the figure running forward and pitched the knife with all her strength. She dropped down instantaneously, rolling sideways as more shots punched into the spot she'd been, not knowing if she'd killed her target but the agonized scream was a helpful hint.
As she prepared to change, still slithering across the floor along the length of the bar there was a series of more shots and then someone landed in front of her. Jazda tried to put a fist through his head but he dodged and it went through the bar instead.
-Wait!!!- she heard him shout telepathically at her. The puma.
-Don't have time- she snapped and went to kill him.
-In the name of the House of Drache, will you just stop? I could have gotten away if I was Night Worlder!-
Interesting point, and there wasn't time to debate it. Another bullet burst through the bar wall. How many bullets did they have? They were just going to keep firing till they hit her.
The puma shifter snatched up two fallen bottles of vodka and broke off the ends, handing her one.
Weapons? She looked at him scornfully. Amateur. He shrugged.
Ah well. Nothing for it. As if to prove it another bullet zipped through the wall but this time it skimmed over her shoulder and ripped it open. It hurt.
It wouldn't kill her, though. Silver couldn't. Neither could wood. Not by themselves. Crossbreeds had their advantages, and a good thing too or she'd have been dead with a dagger in her back a long, long time ago.
-Scream- she told the puma shifter.
He blinked, then opened his mouth and shrieked in a good imitation of someone mortally wounded.
Jazda changed, the rush of heat, the sensation of turning to energy, every part of her stretching and adapting, shifting to her proper shape-
She bunched her wolf muscles, and sprang over the bar, landed on the red streaked, glass shard scattered floor, and began to run like mad towards the three figures, zigzagging behind and around the scattered tables, darting from place to place, catching glimpses of the two who remained, a tall man with a gun and a shorter blonde haired man.
Three more shots rang out as he tried to hit her-
*Crack* A bullet ricocheted off the ground in front of her and there was a slap of impact as it hit her this time in the ribs, Goddess, it hurt, but there was no time to whimper over it because she was a scant few metres away from them and closing fast with eyes locked on the throat of her target-
Several glass bottles came flying over her head to smash into the men. At least the puma guy had finally decided to do something.
-Now- she thought, and jumped straight for the gun wielding man. It would have worked except, the short blonde man was shifting into another shape and was in her way. Jazda collided with him instead and they rolled on the floor in a confusion of snarls and fangs, the sickening pain from the bullet inside her making it worse.
She bit blindly at the other creature, fighting to extricate herself despite the teeth that had fastened in her shoulder. The leopard was smaller but more flexible and wiry, it clung like a leech and raked her with burning claws.
She saw briefly the puma shifter stalking silently along the walls towards the man with the gun, who was aiming for them, not seeming to care who he hit, then she managed to get her feet under her and wrenched away from the leopard she was fighting. -I hate cats- Jazda thought with dispassionate anger, backing away and then darting in to try and knock the leopard on it's back...
-STOP. Or die- The mental shout blasted into her head with like the scalding heat from an opened furnace, and it came from the black haired man who had slipped up behind her and was now pointing the gun straight at her head.
Damn. Jazda snarled savagely at him, fighting back her bestial instincts to jump anyway and rip his throat out, eyeing the gun, enraged. Maybe silver bullets alone wouldn't necessarily kill her but a bullet in her head would still have a pretty good chance.
-Better. Now, change.- His mental voice boomed.
-Why- she asked icily, thinking furiously, stalling for time because she was hoping the puma was somewhere.
-Do it.-
Reluctantly she did, reshaping and twisting back into human form, fortunately dressed still in shapeshifter hide attire. She stared at the man with loathing, carefully analysing the situation. She might be able to leap for him but she'd take a bullet somewhere. As long as it wasn't her head or heart it could be okay. Maybe not.
He was very handsome and probably some kind of vampire. His eyes had changed from pale green to hard brown, like the cold earth on a grave, and then changed to hard malicious black. A Redfern, then. Killed by her own relative.
"You?" he whispered, and he was frowning hard, piercing stare drilling at her. She attempted to probe his mind but as expected he was heavily shielded.
How did he know her? She was quite well known, after all, but he was looking at her like he'd seen a ghost. There was something familiar about him, the changing eyes, the black hair. She felt a sensation like slow tendrils of dark memories rising in her mind, exuding cold dread, because she'd seen him before, she should know him surely too.
The man was laughing, mouth twisted in a sneer, yellowed vampire fangs showing, eyes shiny and endlessly black. "Should have known silver wouldn't stop you." With that he took a firmer grip on the gun and she prepared to throw everything she had in one headlong rush. She wasn't giving up her immortal life yet. Not yet.
Then the sinuous shape of the puma fluidly sprang from where it had been hiding and landed on the vampire's back, locking hard jaws around his head.
Jazda paused in surprise for a second, enjoying the man's shout of pain and fury. Then she heard a rasping yowl behind her and turned to see the leopard was poised to leap. The fight was far from over. She leapt up, corkscrewed her upper body around and hit the leopard's head stunningly hard with the back of her foot. It sagged to the floor, stunned, while she turned to check on the other fight.
Bleeding heavily, somehow the man had gotten free and was running for the exit with the puma limping after him. As he reached the door he whirled about, raised the gun and fired at her. It missed. Then he was gone.
Jazda ran after him and reached the outside in time to see the man leap into a waiting limousine, which departed in a screech of tires and exhaust. The puma ran after it, then sensibly gave up.
She stared hard at the retreating car as it vanished into the night, memorizing the plates. The puma came and stood beside her. It was a large and beautiful feline with thick sandy fur and white tipped ears, but she was still too preoccupied with the memory of the man's face to notice him much until he spoke to her.
-Are you hurt?-
Jazda glanced down to where she'd been hit. The bullet had worked it's way out and it would heal in a few minutes. She was covered in scratches, blood and a few fang marks but they'd go soon too.
-No- she replied and headed back into the Black Iris.
It was a mess. Table wreckage and shattered glasses lay across the blood streaked floor, bullet holes marked an interesting pattern along the bar and there was also the problem of the several bodies lying about. She approached the two they'd taken down. One was dead with her knife in it's head and the other was- dead too. He'd been shot.
"Either he was very unlucky or that vampire killed him to stop him telling us anything." She mused out loud.
"They really don't go for loyalty in the Night World, huh," commented the puma. He'd changed into human again.
"You better believe it." She rifled through their clothes, looking for a clue of some sort. She just had
the weirdest feeling things were not right here.
"That gun wielding vampire was really bad," the puma complained. "He burnt my head."
"What?" she was only half listening. She'd found a strange tattoo on one of them. It consisted of two circles, one inside of the other. Symbols she didn't recognised were inscribed between them, and in the centre circle was a three pointed archaic symbol. Dark suspicion grew like a rising tide on her. She checked the other body. There was a tattoo there, too.
"I made him drop his gun, but he used witch fire on me."
"Vampire and witch?" she murmured distractedly. That tattoo, that symbol. She stared hard at it, biting her lip till it bled, growing cold all over. She knew where she'd seen it before.
"Yeah. He was strong."
She stood up and began to head out, then came back and pulled him along with her.
"Are we going back to Thierry?"
"No," she said distantly. "We'll go to my headquarters. I'll call Thierry and check you out. Then maybe you can help me on this."
Jazda had joined Circle Daybreak because she hated the Night World for what it had done to Tieran. Circle Daybreak were somewhat idealistic and naive but the, at least, believed in soulmates and love, like she had once. Although most of her time had been spent helping them, she'd always had her vengeance project also, researching and listening for any clues to lead her to it. Now she felt like she'd finally found something solid whilst on what should have been a menial, basic mission.
She left the scene, not caring about the mess. For the first time in a while the cold, numbing sensation had receded, taking the burning to hunt with it. Instead there was a new feeling, a sick, prickling feeling of nausea, the closest to fear she would come. Because Jazda knew where she'd seen that mark before.
A memory surged in her mind, she was fighting inexpertly against a gang of vampire witches, hearing her soulmate call out to her, needing to save him. Then there had been a stabbing, piercing agony in her spine, like she'd been impaled by a shard of ice. She'd looked at Tieran one last time, then collapsed with a silver dagger in her back. As she'd begun to pass out, the hellish chaos of blood and smoke and voices twisting into a mass of confusion, she'd seen the symbol painted on the floor, on her soulmate's head, on the faces of the witches. The same symbol that was tattooed on the bodies of the two attackers. It was linked.
For the first time in years she had a clue that would lead her to her revenge. She needed to get some research on this, find out what the symbol was, and how it would link to what she'd had to witness some two hundred years ago. She just knew they must be still alive. They were vampires as well as witches, she'd seen it in their faces when she'd fought them years ago.
She really hoped the original ones who'd killed Tieran were still alive. They should be.
After all, Jazda realised coolly, as buzzing cold swept over her thoughts, she'd just fought one of them again tonight.
CHAPTER THREE
Shadows of the Past
Jazda held the knife point stock still, a fraction away from the spy's wide eyes. The air about them was thick with blood, it was in her mouth too, and the taste was electrifying and very, very distracting. She was trying to remember why she wasn't just killing this spy like she'd done the other three, and it was getting hard to control herself. She was starving, after all, ravenous...
She'd been in this position many times throughout her cold, violent past. Dangling death before her victim's eyes while they bleated excuses at her. Watching the pathetic hope rise in their eyes, then the helpless terror when she killed them. Blood spilt from a begging victim was intensely more satisfying than blood from an unaware victim.
The young man swallowed again, carefully. His golden flecked leaf green eyes were fixed on the tapered point of metal, and she could smell the waves of fear coming off him. They were alone in the bar, everyone else having sensibly fled. Just the two of them. How very cosy.
"Well?" she asked, hearing the harsher, animal edge leaking into her voice, her long curved fangs pressing against her lower lip. Adrenalin still pumped through her veins and her mouth tingled, stomach burning. She hadn't fed properly all night.
"Because I work for Circle Daybreak," he said softly and carefully.
Jazda laughed, scornful and snarling, yearning for flesh. "Not good enough, little spy."
"I do! I was onlypretendingtobeaNightWorldspysoIcouldfindoutwhattheyknowandeverythingforThierry-" The words came out in a garbled rush and he only stopped to inhale fresh oxygen before starting off again.
She watched him, torn between amusement and suspicion, then gave him a kindly slap that nearly took his head off and shut him up.
"Ow," mumbled the puma shapeshifter. "Look, I swear, I work for Circle Daybreak and I thought if I infiltrated the spies then Thierry'd be pleased, why else would I let you hold an extremely sharp knife next to my suddenly extremely valued eyes?" He looked pleadingly at her.
"Thierry already gave me permission to destroy them. You're lying."
"Oh...crap. Look, I swear, my name is Lynx Siestrax, I'm an agent of Circle Daybreak! I didn't realise Thierry knew about them!"
"This just gets better and better. You expect me to believe that you were pretending to side with the spies." He nodded.
"In order to find out what they knew." He nodded.
"To see who they were meeting." He nodded.
"To allow them to tell those people rather than kill the spies straight out so they don't leak dangerous information to the enemy."
"Yes, that's- oh, crap. Again. That, er, didn't occur to me. I didn't mean that, er, it's amazing what a knifepoint in front of your eye does to your sense of rational reason and voice control-"
She was an inch away from killing him. Her muscles tightened.
"Err... the password... dammit, why don't I listen to these things-"
She was a millimetre away from killing him. Her lips pulled back in half smile, half snarl.
A harsh bang split the air and a nanosecond later the bullet crashed into the wall she was holding him up against in a minute explosion of sparks and stone chips. Reacting almost instantly she dropped Lynx and whirled about, going into a crouch, smelling the hot silver of the bullet and looking for the enemy.
On the other side of the room stood a three figures, the Night World contacts, come for the spies, but she was focused on the central figure, a tall, muscular, handsome man with long jet black hair and eyes that were a hot and piercing pale green and at the end of his raised, straight arm he gripped a silvery snub nosed gun...
Her eyes were fixed on the tiny hole at the end of the barrel, the blackness of it, abruptly changed by a flicker of light and that was the signal, the sign of death.
Jazda leapt sideways, putting all of her muscles into a fast somersaulting jump as the second bullet sparked off the spot where'd she'd been. She landed on top of the polished oak bar counter and hastily rolled off to drop down behind it.
"Get her!" roared a voice.
She seemed to have become very popular very fast.
-Memo to self- bring more shiny, sharp weapons next time- thought Jazda coolly, gripping her knife in her hand, listening hard, locating several sets of breathing, one seeming to be coming closer. Two more shots slammed through the bar, barely missing her as she moved along, listening, listening, till she heard fast approaching feet.
Quickly she stood up, saw the figure running forward and pitched the knife with all her strength. She dropped down instantaneously, rolling sideways as more shots punched into the spot she'd been, not knowing if she'd killed her target but the agonized scream was a helpful hint.
As she prepared to change, still slithering across the floor along the length of the bar there was a series of more shots and then someone landed in front of her. Jazda tried to put a fist through his head but he dodged and it went through the bar instead.
-Wait!!!- she heard him shout telepathically at her. The puma.
-Don't have time- she snapped and went to kill him.
-In the name of the House of Drache, will you just stop? I could have gotten away if I was Night Worlder!-
Interesting point, and there wasn't time to debate it. Another bullet burst through the bar wall. How many bullets did they have? They were just going to keep firing till they hit her.
The puma shifter snatched up two fallen bottles of vodka and broke off the ends, handing her one.
Weapons? She looked at him scornfully. Amateur. He shrugged.
Ah well. Nothing for it. As if to prove it another bullet zipped through the wall but this time it skimmed over her shoulder and ripped it open. It hurt.
It wouldn't kill her, though. Silver couldn't. Neither could wood. Not by themselves. Crossbreeds had their advantages, and a good thing too or she'd have been dead with a dagger in her back a long, long time ago.
-Scream- she told the puma shifter.
He blinked, then opened his mouth and shrieked in a good imitation of someone mortally wounded.
Jazda changed, the rush of heat, the sensation of turning to energy, every part of her stretching and adapting, shifting to her proper shape-
She bunched her wolf muscles, and sprang over the bar, landed on the red streaked, glass shard scattered floor, and began to run like mad towards the three figures, zigzagging behind and around the scattered tables, darting from place to place, catching glimpses of the two who remained, a tall man with a gun and a shorter blonde haired man.
Three more shots rang out as he tried to hit her-
*Crack* A bullet ricocheted off the ground in front of her and there was a slap of impact as it hit her this time in the ribs, Goddess, it hurt, but there was no time to whimper over it because she was a scant few metres away from them and closing fast with eyes locked on the throat of her target-
Several glass bottles came flying over her head to smash into the men. At least the puma guy had finally decided to do something.
-Now- she thought, and jumped straight for the gun wielding man. It would have worked except, the short blonde man was shifting into another shape and was in her way. Jazda collided with him instead and they rolled on the floor in a confusion of snarls and fangs, the sickening pain from the bullet inside her making it worse.
She bit blindly at the other creature, fighting to extricate herself despite the teeth that had fastened in her shoulder. The leopard was smaller but more flexible and wiry, it clung like a leech and raked her with burning claws.
She saw briefly the puma shifter stalking silently along the walls towards the man with the gun, who was aiming for them, not seeming to care who he hit, then she managed to get her feet under her and wrenched away from the leopard she was fighting. -I hate cats- Jazda thought with dispassionate anger, backing away and then darting in to try and knock the leopard on it's back...
-STOP. Or die- The mental shout blasted into her head with like the scalding heat from an opened furnace, and it came from the black haired man who had slipped up behind her and was now pointing the gun straight at her head.
Damn. Jazda snarled savagely at him, fighting back her bestial instincts to jump anyway and rip his throat out, eyeing the gun, enraged. Maybe silver bullets alone wouldn't necessarily kill her but a bullet in her head would still have a pretty good chance.
-Better. Now, change.- His mental voice boomed.
-Why- she asked icily, thinking furiously, stalling for time because she was hoping the puma was somewhere.
-Do it.-
Reluctantly she did, reshaping and twisting back into human form, fortunately dressed still in shapeshifter hide attire. She stared at the man with loathing, carefully analysing the situation. She might be able to leap for him but she'd take a bullet somewhere. As long as it wasn't her head or heart it could be okay. Maybe not.
He was very handsome and probably some kind of vampire. His eyes had changed from pale green to hard brown, like the cold earth on a grave, and then changed to hard malicious black. A Redfern, then. Killed by her own relative.
"You?" he whispered, and he was frowning hard, piercing stare drilling at her. She attempted to probe his mind but as expected he was heavily shielded.
How did he know her? She was quite well known, after all, but he was looking at her like he'd seen a ghost. There was something familiar about him, the changing eyes, the black hair. She felt a sensation like slow tendrils of dark memories rising in her mind, exuding cold dread, because she'd seen him before, she should know him surely too.
The man was laughing, mouth twisted in a sneer, yellowed vampire fangs showing, eyes shiny and endlessly black. "Should have known silver wouldn't stop you." With that he took a firmer grip on the gun and she prepared to throw everything she had in one headlong rush. She wasn't giving up her immortal life yet. Not yet.
Then the sinuous shape of the puma fluidly sprang from where it had been hiding and landed on the vampire's back, locking hard jaws around his head.
Jazda paused in surprise for a second, enjoying the man's shout of pain and fury. Then she heard a rasping yowl behind her and turned to see the leopard was poised to leap. The fight was far from over. She leapt up, corkscrewed her upper body around and hit the leopard's head stunningly hard with the back of her foot. It sagged to the floor, stunned, while she turned to check on the other fight.
Bleeding heavily, somehow the man had gotten free and was running for the exit with the puma limping after him. As he reached the door he whirled about, raised the gun and fired at her. It missed. Then he was gone.
Jazda ran after him and reached the outside in time to see the man leap into a waiting limousine, which departed in a screech of tires and exhaust. The puma ran after it, then sensibly gave up.
She stared hard at the retreating car as it vanished into the night, memorizing the plates. The puma came and stood beside her. It was a large and beautiful feline with thick sandy fur and white tipped ears, but she was still too preoccupied with the memory of the man's face to notice him much until he spoke to her.
-Are you hurt?-
Jazda glanced down to where she'd been hit. The bullet had worked it's way out and it would heal in a few minutes. She was covered in scratches, blood and a few fang marks but they'd go soon too.
-No- she replied and headed back into the Black Iris.
It was a mess. Table wreckage and shattered glasses lay across the blood streaked floor, bullet holes marked an interesting pattern along the bar and there was also the problem of the several bodies lying about. She approached the two they'd taken down. One was dead with her knife in it's head and the other was- dead too. He'd been shot.
"Either he was very unlucky or that vampire killed him to stop him telling us anything." She mused out loud.
"They really don't go for loyalty in the Night World, huh," commented the puma. He'd changed into human again.
"You better believe it." She rifled through their clothes, looking for a clue of some sort. She just had
the weirdest feeling things were not right here.
"That gun wielding vampire was really bad," the puma complained. "He burnt my head."
"What?" she was only half listening. She'd found a strange tattoo on one of them. It consisted of two circles, one inside of the other. Symbols she didn't recognised were inscribed between them, and in the centre circle was a three pointed archaic symbol. Dark suspicion grew like a rising tide on her. She checked the other body. There was a tattoo there, too.
"I made him drop his gun, but he used witch fire on me."
"Vampire and witch?" she murmured distractedly. That tattoo, that symbol. She stared hard at it, biting her lip till it bled, growing cold all over. She knew where she'd seen it before.
"Yeah. He was strong."
She stood up and began to head out, then came back and pulled him along with her.
"Are we going back to Thierry?"
"No," she said distantly. "We'll go to my headquarters. I'll call Thierry and check you out. Then maybe you can help me on this."
Jazda had joined Circle Daybreak because she hated the Night World for what it had done to Tieran. Circle Daybreak were somewhat idealistic and naive but the, at least, believed in soulmates and love, like she had once. Although most of her time had been spent helping them, she'd always had her vengeance project also, researching and listening for any clues to lead her to it. Now she felt like she'd finally found something solid whilst on what should have been a menial, basic mission.
She left the scene, not caring about the mess. For the first time in a while the cold, numbing sensation had receded, taking the burning to hunt with it. Instead there was a new feeling, a sick, prickling feeling of nausea, the closest to fear she would come. Because Jazda knew where she'd seen that mark before.
A memory surged in her mind, she was fighting inexpertly against a gang of vampire witches, hearing her soulmate call out to her, needing to save him. Then there had been a stabbing, piercing agony in her spine, like she'd been impaled by a shard of ice. She'd looked at Tieran one last time, then collapsed with a silver dagger in her back. As she'd begun to pass out, the hellish chaos of blood and smoke and voices twisting into a mass of confusion, she'd seen the symbol painted on the floor, on her soulmate's head, on the faces of the witches. The same symbol that was tattooed on the bodies of the two attackers. It was linked.
For the first time in years she had a clue that would lead her to her revenge. She needed to get some research on this, find out what the symbol was, and how it would link to what she'd had to witness some two hundred years ago. She just knew they must be still alive. They were vampires as well as witches, she'd seen it in their faces when she'd fought them years ago.
She really hoped the original ones who'd killed Tieran were still alive. They should be.
After all, Jazda realised coolly, as buzzing cold swept over her thoughts, she'd just fought one of them again tonight.