The Wolf and the Unicorn

The tunnel was dark as the abyss, but that was no barrier to finding her quarry. She'd amplified her senses using one of the Gifts of her bloodline, and could sense the two Ba'ali not far ahead.



Only two…and neither of them were Rahab, damn it. She didn't need any sensory enhancements to tell whether he was near. Blood calls to Blood, no matter how sundered or sullied, she mused wryly. She moved as silently as only one of Caine's childer could, and soon she saw the pair with her eyes as well as her other senses.



Dumah and Pinem'e; not much of a challenge, but certainly worth sending to their Final Deaths. Every Ba'ali I turn to ash is a gift to the childer of Caine and Seth alike.



Pinem'e carried a book of some sort under one heavily bandaged arm and appeared unarmed, but his compatriot bore his ever-present bastard sword sheathed at his back. Right, then; Dumah first, she though with a nod to herself as she stepped out of the darkness, her blade raised and ready to meet his.



Neither of them were expecting her. To his credit, Dumah managed to get his sword unsheathed in time to parry her incoming thrust, but it wavered in a one-handed grip under the force of her strike. Pinem'e whirled and raised a hand, never losing his grip on the tome tucked under his bandaged arm, and called forth a sphere of flame to hurl at her.



She dodged the fireball, barely, and called forth a long-unused Gift of her Blood to guide her blade to Dumah's throat. A third eye opened on her forehead, blazing with a fiery light of its own as her sword moved almost of its own accord in a dance past the Ba'ali's oncoming blade. The edge opened a wide gash across her opponent's neck, freeing a cascade of blood and staggering him. She closed for the kill.



Another fireball streaked towards her, and this time she didn't dodge fast enough. Flames wreathed her sword-arm in a bath of agony, and it was only the strength of her will that held her Beast at bay and kept the blade in her hand long enough to send Dumah to whatever Hell awaited him. Pain and fear won out at last, and she dropped the sword and doubled over, clutching her arm close in an attempt to extinguish her smoldering clothing and flesh. As she called the Blood to anesthetize the burns, she was all-too-aware of how little of it remained in reserve.



Pinem'e laughed, his hand cupping a blossom of flame. "Looks like your luck's run out, Cyclops. Time to meet Saulot." He pulled back his arm to throw the fire at her.



She narrowed her eyes and growled, reaching with her good hand for the dagger tucked in her boot-top. Gritting her teeth against pain that penetrated beyond even her Gift to block, she sprang towards Pinem'e, dagger drawn and glinting orange in the light. The fire exploded over her head as she dove low, connecting with him at knee-height, the momentum of her leap sending them both tumbling backwards into the corridor. She moved quickly to kneel over him, pinning an arm under each knee. He bucked and kicked, trying to throw her off, but there was panic in his eyes now. She gripped the dagger's hilt with both hands and with all her strength sliced a gash across his throat. The dagger caught in between two of the neck vertebrae, but was freed as Pinem'e turned to ash. Her vision blurred as she staggered to her feet and collapsed against the stone wall, holding tightly so as not to fall back to her knees.



I need to feed, she thought in a near-daze. Gods, that was closer than it should have been. Pinem'e, of all people, should never have been able to get that close to taking me out. I'm getting slow in my old age. The wall before her face faded in and out as she held to consciousness. Any slower, and I'd have been dead, dead, dead.



Or more dead than I already am, she thought with a wheezing chuckle.