“Who the fuck are you? What are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I am a friend. I’m sorry this had to happen to you, but—”
“None of this had to happen,” I shouted, spittle flying through the air.
I felt rabid, a dog too long without food in a place too cold to bear it.
“None of this had to happen,” I sobbed angrily, dashing at the blood, tears, and mud on my face. “If you are a friend of Salvatore as you say, tell my papa puttaniere to go fuck himself! None of this had to happen, and none of it would have happened if he’d stepped up once in all my life.”
There was a rustle in the bushes, and the heavy rush of breath through the nose of a beast. Seconds later, a horse burst out of the trees into the clearing.
“Minchia,” Edward Dante swore, swivelling to the face the man. “Fucking run, Cosima.”
I turned and ran, the sounds of hooves beating into the ground behind me like the drum of a funeral song.
There was a shout, and a huge splash behind me.
I took a moment to look over my shoulder and see Dante straddling the hunter in the shallows of a stream, beating his huge hand again and again into the dethroned rider’s face. The horse stomped and whinnied restlessly, pawing at the air.
“Cosima, run!” Dante yelled as another rider appeared in the clearing.
I faced forward again and raced as fast as my legs could take me back into the densely woven trees.
The second rider wasn’t deterred; he took the horse leaping over fallen logs, swerving around tight corners until I could feel the breath of the beast at my back and the vibration of its steps on the forest floor.
I was so tired, and I was going to lose.
Hands twisted in the back of my hair, then wrenched so hard, I flew into the air and went sailing over the pummel of the saddle.
A slap rained down against my rump as the rider howled into the night. “Right where you belong again.”
I shivered at the sound of Landon’s voice and wriggled enough to roll over, landing a kick to his shoulder that had the reins falling from his hands. The horse bucked slightly and sent us both falling hard to the root gnarled earth below.
The breath left my body as my head hit the base of a tree and pain exploded in white shards across my vision.
A hand grabbed my ankle and dragged me across the mud. I flipped onto my belly, scrambling with my hands to find purchase in the soft soil.
And I screamed.
I screamed and screamed like a symphony of terrors as Landon used his hand to pull me under him and rip my dress straight down the middle of my spine. He hissed with pleasure at the sight of his pink whip marks on my skin. I struggled, bucking and twisting against him as he took each mark between his teeth and bit down, tasting the symbols of pain he’d branded me with.
A stick was in my reach, the sharp, the pale end of it gleaming dimly in the mist-shrouded, moonlight murk. With an almighty shove, I reached forward enough to grasp it in my hand and then twisted my torso with a warrior’s shout.
Then I slammed the branch into the nearest bit of flesh I could find.
It impaled Landon in the cheek.
He roared as he reeled off me and onto his knees, his hands clambering at the blood wet stem, desperate to remove it.
A high-pitched screech rent the air in two, and with a great flurry of black wings, a bird descended from the sky and reached his dagger-like talon for Landon’s prone face.
I scrambled backward as Landon shouted in agony and tried to bat the falcon away. Frantically, I tried to look for a way to get around him easily and back into the night woods.
Only, there was a shifting of the darkness in the trees behind Landon, a parting of night as if Hades himself was breaching the veil from the underworld.
And then there was Alexander, walking calmly, silent as a spirit across the leaf laden turf.
There was a glint of something in his hand, something red flashed in his hand, silver at the bottom.
A ruby hilted knife.
I gasped, but Landon didn’t hear me as the bird of prey finally unlatched with a sickening wet slide and took off into the night again. Free from his tormentor, Landon finally pried the stick out of his cheek with a moist pop and spat bloody saliva on the ground.
“You little whore, I am going to hurt you until you sing like a fucking bird,” he promised me.
Alexander dropped to his knees behind him, so much taller that he loomed over the other man even like that. The knife went to his throat smoothly, his other hand hard in Landon’s hair as he tugged his scalp back and jutted his neck into the blade.