Page 105 of Tin God

“I can’t give you any healing.” Tenzin glanced at her wound. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

She said something else, and her fingers curled around Tenzin’s.

“You want me to hold your hand?” Tenzin frowned. “I can do that.”

She held the girl’s hand in her own, squeezing her fingers and snarling at the dog that lurked on the edge of the river.

The Duna flowed south and east, the water gathering all the blood and dirt from the violent land it crossed, flowing down to a sea that entered another sea and another and another until it returned to the sky to spread over the earth again.

“Your blood will be part of that,” Tenzin said. “You’re not dying really. Your body will feed flowers and grass. Your tears will return to the sea. One day the blood that is leaving you right now will fall as rain on the grass that your people walk on, and your spirit will exist in them and in another form.” She turned to the girl, who was staring at the river again. “Nothing is wasted in the end. Everything has a purpose.”

She spotted a vampire from the corner of her eye, not a newborn like the first but a vibrant warrior with long braids the color of chestnut lying over his shoulders and leather armor with silver trim covering his chest. He was probably one of the many who’d raided this river town the previous night at dusk.

She spoke in a Slavic tongue she thought he might recognize. “Hail, Varangian.”

The vampire lifted a single hand, then put it on the hilt of the blade at his hip. “Hail, Khazar.”

Tenzin looked at the dying girl. “I will sit with her until her spirit leaves.”

The vampire looked at the human, then at the rubble around him. “I was sent to finish any survivors.”

“That is a kindness.”

“Is it?” The man blinked grey eyes that were not unlike Tenzin’s own.

“Killing those who have survived this raid will end their suffering,” she said. “So yes, it is a kindness. But this girl no longer feels her pain, so you will leave her alone.”

The hand went back on the hilt of his blade. “I was sent?—”

“You were not sent.” Tenzin knew who had done this. “Truvor has no regard for humans, and you’re one of his sons, aren’t you?”

The warrior frowned. “Aren’tyou?”

Tenzin smirked. “Does Truvor hire or sire female Khazars? I didn’t know.” She wasn’t a Khazar—she was something much older, but that name was one the raider would know.

The vampire looked closer. “I didn’t realize you were a woman.”

Tenzin wasn’t surprised. She’d been dressing like a man since she started her journey at the Black Sea. It was an easy way to avoid attention.

“You should leave,” the vampire said.

“What is your element, Truvor’s man?”

“A dangerous one.”

Tenzin looked up when she smelled the hint of smoke.

Interesting.

“So Truvor has a fire vampire with him. No wonder other immortals have left him alone. You’re attracting attention from human regents though. Tell your sire he needs to stop.”

“I’m not the reason they leave him alone.”

“You’re one of them, and you know it. It’s why you have crept from the camp and are going to ease the suffering of the humans who are dying slowly. You know he values you, and you feel guilt.”

The girl’s breath turned ragged, and there was a rattling sound in her chest. She tried to sit up but fell back on the rock she’d crawled to.

She muttered something; then her breathing grew worse.