He leads me toward a back exit, Valentina falling into step behind us. I focus on the mechanics of movement. Left foot. Right foot. Don't think about what you're leaving behind. Don't think about the sound of Maximus's voice breaking. Don't think about the ring against your chest, the weight of his promise against your heart.
The last thing I hear before the door closes is Maximus's roar of rage, and the sound of fighting as he tears through Konstantin's guards to come after me.
Too late. He'll be too late.
But he'll come. I know he'll come. I hold onto that knowledge like a lifeline as Konstantin guides me into the night.
By the time he gets free, we'll be gone.
And I'll be exactly where Konstantin wants me.
But I won't stay there.
I'm coming back to you,I think, hoping somehow he can feel me the way I felt him when our blood mingled.Wait for me. Fight for me. And when you find me, because you will find me, we'll make them pay for every second they kept us apart.
The night swallows us whole.
Chapter
Thirty
Ikill the first guard before he can raise his weapon.
My hands find his throat and twist. The crack of his spine is satisfying in a way I don't have time to examine. He drops, and I'm already moving, already reaching for the next one.
There are eight of them. Eight vampires between me and the door Celeste just walked through.
Eight obstacles.
The second guard swings a blade at my head. I duck under it, drive my fist through his chest, and rip out something vital. He screams. I don't care. The third and fourth come at me together, coordinated, trained. They last four seconds longer than the first two.
She's getting farther away with every second you waste.
The thought burns through me like silver in the blood. I grab the fifth guard by the skull and slam him into the sixth. Bones shatter. Bodies fall. The seventh tries to run, actually turns his back on me to flee toward the warehouse door.
Coward.
I catch him before he makes it three steps. My hand closes around the back of his neck, and I use his own momentum against him, driving his face into the concrete floor. The impact leaves a crater. He doesn't get up.
The eighth guard, the last one, is smarter than the others. He holds up his hands, backing away slowly, fear rolling off him in waves.
"Wait," he says. "I'm just hired muscle. I don't even know what…"
I don't let him finish.
His head hits the ground before his body realizes it's dead.
Eight guards. Maybe twenty seconds. An eternity when every second takes her farther from me.
I stand in the center of the carnage, breathing hard. Old habits. Human habits. The kind that surface when you're operating on pure instinct and rage.
Blood coats my hands. My shirt. My face. Some of it's mine, I took hits I didn't bother to dodge because dodging takes time, and time is something I don't have. The wounds are already healing, flesh knitting back together with the efficiency of six centuries of vampiric existence.
But the wound in my chest, the one that has nothing to do with physical damage, that one isn't healing at all.
She walked away from me.
I knew what she was doing the moment she opened her mouth. Saw the calculation in her eyes, the cold assessment of a fighter weighing odds and finding only one path to victory. She traded herself for everyone in that compound. For Marcellus. For Elena. For all the vampires and humans who depend on me.
