“Goodbye, Kalo.”
“Not goodbye.” He was already turning away, his blue hair catching the dim light. “Just…until next time, little fish.”
Then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel.
Raziel moved to stand beside her. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. Neither am I.” He took her hand. “Let’s go find out what’s left of our city.”
They climbed.
Nadi smelled it before she saw it.
Smoke.
Not the familiar woodsmoke of cooking fires or the acrid chemical reek of the factory districts. This was the smell of buildings burning. Of destruction.
The abandoned service building was exactly as promised—empty, forgotten, thick with dust and cobwebs. But the windows showed them what lay beyond.
The metropolis stretched out under a sky the color of bruises. Columns of black smoke rose from half a dozen points across the city, twisting into the haze that hung over everything like a funeral shroud. Sirens wailed—a constant, keening chorus that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“Moons,” Nadi breathed.
This wasn’t the city she remembered.
The streets below were nearly empty despite the late afternoon hour. The few people she could see moved quickly, heads down, shoulders hunched. No one lingered. They walked like prey animals crossing open ground, desperate to reach shelter before something noticed them.
And then she saw the patrols.
Vampires. At least a dozen of them, moving through the streets in formation, their weapons visible. She watched as one patrol stopped a human man hurrying across an intersection. He froze, hands going up immediately in surrender. Even from this distance, she could see him trembling.
“I can taste the fear in the air.” Raziel’s voice was quiet. Thoughtful. “It’s everywhere. Like a fog.”
“What did they do?” The question came out as a whisper.
“What I would have done, I suppose. If I had won.” He tilted his head, studying the scene below. “Established control. Eliminated opposition. Made it very clear who was in charge.” A pause. “Though I like to think I would have been more subtle about it. Or more effective.”
“This isn’t effective?”
“No. It isn’t.” His lip curled in distaste. “This is Mael trying to be ruthless when he doesn’t have the stomach for it. Enough cruelty to breed resentment, not enough to crush resistance.” He shook his head. “It leaves openings.”
“Openings we can use?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Perhaps.”
“We need to move.” She touched the hilts of her new blades, drawing comfort from their weight. “Find somewhere safe to plan.”
“The house we stayed in when I was injured. Mael doesn’t know about it. We’ll see if it’s still viable.”
Nadi nodded, but didn’t move. She stood there, looking out at the city she had once called home—the city she had returnedto destroy—and tried to reconcile what she remembered with what lay before her.
It was already broken.
Mael and Lana and the Rosovs had done what she had spent decades dreaming of. They had brought the metropolis to its knees. They had made it bleed.
And somehow, all she felt was grief.
