“We have to.” There was steel in her voice now, the kind that reminded him she was an assassin. A killer. She narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t drag you through all this to lose you to some oversized cave pest.”
“Cave pest?” He huffed. “Thatthingwas more than acave pest.At least let me die with some dignity.”
“No. I will drag your naked corpse behind me if I have to. If you want dignity? You will live.” She took his hand and pulled him away from the corpse behind them.
He opted to ignore the threat. His head was already swimming too much to come up with a good retort. Especially since each step sent new waves of pain through his body, and the poison was doing something to his senses. The walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting like living tissue. The sounds were becoming strange and twisted—every drip of water became a symphony, each drop a crystal note in some alien composition.
Tripping over his own feet for no reason, he staggered.
“Stay with me, Nostrom.” Nadi’s voice seemed to come from very far away, though she was right beside him. “Don’t you dare die on me now.”
His vampire healing was fighting it, but slowly, too slowly. “Why?” The word escaped before he could stop it. “Answer me. Why come back?”
“Not now, Raz.”
“There won’t be a later. Why save me?” His steps were becoming more unsteady, and she was bearing more of hisweight now. “You could have left me in that coffin. Should have. Would have saved you this trek through hell.”
She was quiet for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, so softly he almost missed it, “Because I’m an idiot, remember? And apparently, I prefer my demons alive and complaining rather than dead and silent.”
He laughed, or tried to. It came out as more of a wheeze. “The biggest idiot I’ve ever met.”
“Shut up and keep walking. We’ve survived everything the Mother and Father have thrown at us so far. We can survive another few hours.”
They pressed on into the purple-lit darkness. Behind them, things stirred in the shadows, drawn by the scent of blood and death.
But those were problems for later. For now, Raziel focused on putting one foot in front of the other, on staying conscious despite the poison trying to drag him under. He’d survived his mother’s cruelty as a boy, survived countless attempts on his life, survived drowning in a silver coffin at the bottom of the ocean, survived a march through hell itself. He’d be damned if he was going to let some insect in the Wild be the thing that finally killed him.
Even if, at this particular moment, death was looking increasingly attractive.
The tunnel ahead split into three passages. Nadi chose without hesitation, pulling him along. “Almost there,” she said, though he suspected she was lying. “Just a little farther.”
She was making that up. He almost appreciated it.
The poison pulsed through his veins in time with the glowing vines around them. Each pulse brought new hallucinations—faces in the walls, whispers in languages that had never existed, the sensation of drowning even though he could breathe.
No. That last one wasn’t a hallucination. That was a memory. The coffin, the water, the endless cycle of death and resurrection as his vampire nature refused to let him die properly.
“Raz!” Nadi’s voice cut through the nightmare. “Stay with me!”
He realized he’d stopped walking, was standing frozen in the middle of the passage. How long had he been standing there? Seconds? Minutes? Time was becoming fluid, unreliable.
“I’m fine.” He forced his legs to move again.
“You’re a terrible liar when you’re dying.”
They continued on, deeper into the Wild, toward a salvation that might be worse than the poison itself. But that was tomorrow’s problem.
For now, he just had to survive the next step.
And the next.
And the next.
FOUR
Death was normal for Nadi. She’d killed dozens of people in her long life. Maybe over a hundred at this point—she’d honestly stopped counting. She figured it was healthier for her if she didn’t know.
And she’d watched people die in every conceivable way. Poison that turned people’s lungs into liquid. More stabbings than she’d care to remember. Drowning. Falling. Hit by automobiles or trains. “Accidents” or “suicides” of every kind. Death was hertrade.It was how she paid for her food and a place to sleep out of the rain.
