Somewhere in that ruin, the Overseer was dead.
We were alive.
I kept my hand on Emberline, trying to reassure myself that this was real and not some fever dream. I didn’t know where we were going next, or what the plan was, but I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight.
Not for a single moment.
26
GABRIEL
The black, unmarked helicopter hit the desert like the fist of an angry god.
Sand spun up beneath the rotors, a violent storm that swallowed everything—the world became skin-shredding grit and shrieking wind, and I wondered if this was how the Fossa finished us off, after all—by burying us in a torrent of sand.
The side door slid open, and a pale-faced, sweating mortal in a headset leaned out, screaming something I didn’t need to hear to understand.
Get your asses moving. Now.
Nico went first, hauling himself up and in with brutal efficiency. He leaned down and lifted Emberline inside, blood smeared along her cheek and throat, then Dante went next, crowding in beside her, hand clasping her waist, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.
This was it, then.
I swayed on my feet as reality swept in, jealousy turning to despair. My brother was alive, and my fantasies of having a life with Emberline were as dead as the prison we’d left behind us. It had been a fool’s dream, and now I’d have to find a way to survive without seeing her every day.
Knowing she belonged to my brother and never to me.
I climbed in last, yanking the door shut behind me, cutting off that choking dust.
I swore to the gods, if I never saw red sand again, it would be too soon.
As we lifted off, I took my first good look at my brother in the light. Dry skin stretched over bone, blue eyes fever bright. He was starving. The kind of starvation that wasn’t fixed by sucking a guard or two dry. It would take him weeks to recover his full strength, and if I knew my brother at all, he wouldn’t wait that long.
No, that haunted look in his eyes told me the second we landed, he planned to head straight to the DiRavello palazzo and rip Giovanni’s lying head off his plump little body.
I couldn’t say I blamed him.
I’d spent one night in that fucking place, and I wanted to kill everyone who was responsible for creating that hellhole.
But Emberline was curled into him, face pressed against his chest—even though he smelled like death in this enclosed space—her fingers threaded through his. I doubted anything would pry them apart for the next few weeks.
My brother caught my appraising look. “I’m fine,” he mouthed, tipping his head back against the plastic headrest and closing his eyes, rings of dirt and blood circling his throat.
The cramped cabin reeked of human fear. There were too many bodies in too small a space—four vampires packed in with five mortals and enough tension that someone might snap.
One of them managed to make eye contact. “You have the coordinates?” I asked, touched the beacon implanted in the nape of my neck, the one that had been sending our location back to my new, very valuable friend, the armsdealer, sitting silent in the back of the chopper, which suited me just fine.
Fucker could keep his mouth shut forever. He’d served his purpose.
“We locked in on your signal last night, so yes.” The young man touched the cross hanging around his neck as Nico rolled his eyes. “Five minutes to drop off.”
“We’re heading back to the fixed gate,” I explained to my brother. “It’s not far and will take us back to the city in one jump. We can dematerialize to the safehouse from there.”
The humans exchanged a look, but kept their mouths shut.
I supposed, in their line of work, questions led to a bullet in the head, which made my life so much easier.
Mortals were delicate creatures, and right now, trapped in a vibrating tin coffin with four vampires—two of us bloodied, one half-dead, one barely holding himself together—they were realizing they were in over their heads.
