“Nadi!” Raziel snarled, struggling to keep the smaller vampire pinned. For all her delicate appearance, Asha was strong—centuries of accumulated power coiled in that petite frame. “The guards!”
Right. The guards. Whoever wasn’t being gunned down by Raziel’s commands would have to be dealt with. Let thevampires fight each other—they were far more suited for this nonsense than she was.
Assassin. Boxer. Different words for a reason.
She dove for her fallen blade, rolling as bullets sparked off the marble floor where she’d been standing. The smell of cordite filled the air, mixing with the copper tang of blood and the faint floral perfume that still lingered from the interrupted party.
One of the guards got too close, and she hamstrung him with a quick slash across the back of his knee. He went down screaming. Another one—she drove the blade up under his chin before he could bring his gun to bear. The body crumpled at her feet, and she was already moving to the next threat.
Shehatedfighting like this. Hated it.
The hallway had become a charnel house. Blood slicked the polished floor, making every step treacherous. Bodies lay in crumpled heaps—guards who’d been too slow, too unlucky, too confident in their numbers. And still the sounds of battle echoed from outside—Kalo’s forces providing the distraction that was supposed to have gotten them in and out cleanly.
So much for clean, Nadi thought grimly, driving her elbow into another guard’s face. She felt cartilage crunch beneath the blow, heard him howl as he staggered back with blood streaming from his shattered nose.
Behind her, she could hear Raziel and Asha locked in combat—snarls and crashes. She wanted to help him, wanted to turn and fight alongside him, but the guards kept coming and coming and she couldn’t spare a single moment of attention?—
A gunshot. Close. Too close.
Nadi felt the bullet punch through her side like a fist made of fire. She staggered, her vision going white at the edges, and barely managed to block the final guard’s strike with her rapidly weakening arm. The pain was extraordinary—a burning, tearingagony that made it hard to think, hard to breathe, hard to do anything but keep fighting through sheer force of will.
“Nadi!” Raziel’s voice, sharp with something that might have been fear.
She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t do anything but try to stay on her feet as blood soaked through clothes, spreading in a warm, wet stain that she could feel running down her hip. The wound was bad—she could feel that much. Fae healed fast, but notthatfast. Not from something like this.
The guard she was fighting must have seen the weakness in her eyes. He pressed his advantage, driving her back step by stumbling step, until her shoulders hit the wall. The impact sent fresh waves of agony radiating from her wound.
“End of the line, fae,” he said, raising his gun. His finger tightened on the trigger.
A blur of motion. A wet crunch that seemed to echo in the sudden silence. The guard’s head snapped to the side, and he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.
Raziel stood over the body, his face a mask of blood and fury. His suit was shredded, revealing pale skin marked with slashes and defensive wounds. His left arm was hanging at his side in a way that suggested the shoulder had been dislocated, and there were deep gouges across his chest that wept dark vampire blood.
But he was alive. He was standing. And behind him?—
“Is Asha?—?”
“Dead.” The word came out flat. Final. “She won’t be getting up.” He moved to her side, his good hand pressing against the wound. The pressure hurt, but she knew he was trying to slow the bleeding. “You’re hurt.”
“Noticed that.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a pained wheeze. “We need to move. More will be coming.”
“Can you walk?”
“I can try.”
She pushed off from the wall, and immediately regretted it as her vision swam and her knees buckled. The world tilted sideways, and she would have fallen if Raziel hadn’t caught her, pulling her arm over his good shoulder and taking most of her weight.
“Together,” he said quietly. There was something in his voice—something soft and fierce all at once. Something that made her chest tight for reasons that had nothing to do with her injuries.
She had to pull her shit together. Shehadto. Ripping off a portion of her shirt, she wrapped it around her side as tight as she could. Pressing it into the wound hurt like awhore,but it helped. Nodding, she gestured that she was ready to continue.
They made it maybe twenty feet before the corridor ahead of them filled with new figures. Not human guards this time—these moved with the fluid grace of vampires, their eyes gleaming in the dim light like predators catching scent of wounded prey.
And at the head of them, his face carved from cold fury, stood Zabriel Rosov.
Fuck.
He looked different than Nadi remembered. The careful stillness was gone, replaced by something raw and dangerous. His usually immaculate hair had come loose from its ponytail, dark strands falling across a face that might have been handsome if not for the terrible rage burning behind those amber eyes. There was blood on his shirt—though whether it was his own or someone else’s was impossible to tell.
