Five days in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean was a long time.
But it washope.Hope that they were drawing closer to her people. To the surface. To a chance to have some support in this…war.
It had long since gone far past the point of a simple tale of revenge. She was no longer just infiltrating the Nostrom family to kill them all. No, this would devolve into family versus family. Blood versus blood.
Ifthey were lucky.
Ifthey didn’t die before they got that chance.
“Can you tell which direction it’s coming from?” She took more time to get up to her feet. Her head spun less when she didn’t jerk it around abruptly.
“Yes. I think so.” Raziel kept his hand gently on her arm as they both stood, holding her close to him as if he was concerned she might fall over. His touch was tender, a far cry from the violence he’d shown her during their…well, it wasn’t exactly love-making. Whatever it was. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed it immensely.
He headed off down a corridor to her right. It was the direction she would have guessed—where the vine was becoming thicker,towardthe heart-vine.
Oh, by the moons. He wasn’t lying. He truly could hear the caravans! They were getting closer. But the question was, how close was “closer”? How strong were the vibrations? Picking up the bag and throwing it over her shoulder, she followed after him.
The idea of meeting a fae clan in the Wild. Questions and emotions churned over in her mind. What would they be like?How had they changed? Who had they become in her eighty-plus years of absence?Which clan would they be?Would the fae help them? Would they try to kill Raziel on sight?
Each question had an equally horrible answer in her mind.
What would they be like?Changed.How had they changed?For the worse.Who had they become in her eighty-plus years of absence?Violent and jaded.Which clan would they be?Not mine.Would the fae help them?No.Would they try to kill Raziel on sight?Yes.
Why would the fae ever help them? A vampire and a traitor? No. The fae were far more likely to just open fire or slit their throats the moment they laid eyes on them. But it was the only chance they had.
They couldn’t take on Mael and Lana alone. Not with the whole of the Nostrom and now the Rosov family backing them. Lana and Zabriel Rosov being married meant the two most powerful vampire families were now joined as one. It would take far more than a maybe-slightly-better-than-average assassin and a single vampire to take them all down.
Theyneededthe fae of the Wild.
Double or nothing.
* * *
Raziel never thought he would desire the chaos and din of the metropolis, but here he was. At least the very firmament metropolis wasn’talive.At least it wasn’t beating with a billion little heartbeats and pulses of liquid thatsquishedandsquelchedaround him.
It was going to drive him insane.
And he was probably already halfway there by the time he had arrived in this void-forsaken hellhole. They were following the sound of the rumbling wheels for about an hour in silence before he had to break it to drown out the agonizing discord around him. “Why did you really come back for me?”
Nadi was eating from a can of preserved peaches. He had been unkind to her the night before—if it was night, it was impossible to tell—and she needed food. He couldn’t quite say that he blamed her. His little murderer paused for a long moment. “I told you already.”
“I want the truth, Nadi. Please. I was not only as good as dead, but suffering. Better than you could have possibly hoped for. And my idiot siblings had given you perfect access if you wanted to continue with your original goal of murdering them all.” He glanced back over his shoulder. Her expression was carefully blank. “You had everything in your hands. You threw it all away. Why?”
“I—”
She never got the chance to lie to his face again.
A sound cut her off.
A sound that made them both freeze.
It was a rustle from down one end of the cave in the darkness. Larger than anything else he’d heard so far. And large meantdangerous. He bared his teeth.Predator.Something primal in him boiled in fury.
Slowly, silently, Nadi moved to stand beside him. She slowly set her bag down from her shoulder, put the half-eaten can of fruit beside it, and lifted the bolt cutters she still carried as a weapon. Amusingly, she lifted her hand to him, telling him to wait, as if that alone would stop him from rushing into the darkness to attack whatever waited there.
Then came another sound that echoed in his bones.
A hollow, rasping howl that sounded like part animal scream, part grinding metal. The noise bounced off the walls and seemed to come from everywhere at once. Raziel wrapped the silver chain around his palm once more. It burned and chafed. He did not care. It was effective as anything.
