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“I gotta leave now,” Evan said with a rasp. “Must… leave now.”
Whatever had transpired between them had been interrupted. And he wasn’t going to survive when that horror came back.
Getting to his feet was a struggle, but his fear drove him to the vertical. With a zombie lurch, he headed back to where it had all started. At the elevator doors, he hit the up arrow to summon things with a trembling hand, but he didn’t expect anything to happen and he looked around for some kind of staircase—
Bing!
The steel panels opened.
He jumped inside and wheeled around, punching at the “L” button like his life depended on it.
As the doors closed in lazy contrast to his panic, they cut off the vision of that oil on the floor. But the shit was all over him—on his boots, on his jeans… on the skin of his doughy abdomen. Halfway through the achingly slow ascent, he realized he was going to freeze when he got out of the building, but he couldn’t worry about that.
Did he go to the police? Yeah, and tell them what? He was the nephew of a crime boss and he’d been bitten by a…
He touched the side of his neck, probing the puncture wounds.Shouldn’t they hurt, he wondered.
He couldn’t worry about that either. He needed to get out of this building, and go—where…? Where could he crash? Going back to his apartment wasn’t an option. One of his uncle’s assassins would be waiting for him there—
Mickey’s hideout.He could go to Mickey’s secret place, the one his cousin didn’t tell nobody about, that Evan only knew because he’d found out by mistake and Mickey had thought he was too stupid to believe the lie he’d been fed.
When there was a bump to a halt, he waited. And waited some more.
With his heart pounding, he went for the seam in the panels. Shoving his hands into the crack, he tried to pry things apart—and as he got nowhere, he lost it, flailing, scratching, pounding—
Bing!
The doors opened. But he didn’t move.
Splaying out his fingers, he looked at where the tips had been scrubbed raw. They were black with oil.
He told himself it was from the puddle he’d woken up in. But then he turned his palms face up.
Drip. Drip. Drip—
His blood was… black. He was bleeding… the oil…
Evan opened his mouth and screamed.
As the elevator doors reclosed on him.
When Nalla re-formed, it wasn’t anywhere near one of the entrance houses in that cul-de-sac that led down into the Wheel’s subterranean sets of quarters. No, she was out in the countryside, in front of a rambling farmhouse that had a curl of smoke rising from its brick chimney, a charming wraparound porch, and a big tree in the yard. Walking up the shoveled path, she knew she should have gone home. Also knew that if she had to spend all day locked underground with her father and hermahmen, she was going to lose her fucking mind.
It seemed far colder out here than it had been downtown, and the treads of her running shoes squeaked on the snowpack. When she hopped up the four steps to the porch, she thought of the steps leading into the sitting pit at that club.
God, she couldn’t believe she had trampled all those drinks. She could believe she’d killed those two slayers, though. Her father had insisted on training her himself, and no, it hadn’t just been for self-defense. She knew about explosives, poisons, and how to sneak up behind someone and piano-wire them.
She had loved that time with him. It had always been so specialbecause he’d carved those hours out just for her. Her father spent so much time in the field and training soldiers, and hermahmenalways got him during the daytime when everyone was hunkered down and sleeping.
Hard to be third in line, even though she’d known he had so many responsibilities.
As soon as she stepped onto the porch, the front door opened for her, and the platinum-haired female on the other side was a vision in a gray sweater and black pants. Then again, did Rahvyn ever look bad?No. She was like an ethereal pool of moonlight, even as she lived and breathed.
“You are supposed to be off tonight,” the female said with a smile.
“Well, I had some extra time.” Nalla stomped her feet on the mat to get most of the snow out of her sneaker bottoms. “Figured I’d see if I could help out.”
“You are always so giving—” Rahvyn glanced down and recoiled. “Are you all right?”
