Chapter 45 Kidan
KIDAN
Susenyos led Kidan past Uxlay’s golden northwestern gate. It opened up to thick, dense trees that were determined to swallow the campus whole.
Kidan wished he’d say something, give her some indication of what he planned to do but he marched with purpose, turning into the leaves. She winced as branches scratched at her sweater, and a twig nicked her cheek.
She swallowed the burn and asked in a small voice, “Where are we going?”
Silence.
When she tried to slow down, the rope between them extended taut. Susenyos pulled on it, making her stumble into following him. Wings of apprehension flapped inside her.
Within Uxlay, Susenyos was careful, allowed himself to move alongside the laws and regulations. But out here, alone, there was an intensity to him, like a dragon free from its cage.
“I’m sorry I told him,” Kidan repeated, trying to get him to turn. Her words remained trapped under the canopy of the trees, sinking back into them. “It was a mistake, Yos. And now Etete is dead and I…”
He stopped.
Her heart was in her ears, thundering like hooves. They were in a small clearing with a few stone houses erected around the circle. One of them was collapsed as if a creature had torn it from the very ground.
Susenyos walked to her, and the steel in his eyes made her step back.
“I want you to stay still,” he ordered.
There was no trace of his usual amusement.
“Yos—”
“Don’t speak.”
She nearly flinched from the snap of his tone, the firm line to his brows.
“There is no such thing as companionship. No equal footing when one’s fate is to be the lamb, and the other the lion,” he said, staring at her, but instead of the usual warmth she felt, he appeared to see through her, right past her face and heart to her hidden shame.
He was quoting Aseracti. Hard lines marred his face, grief and anger intertwined.
“The only true power actis have is their house. Inside their walls, they are no lamb, but a dragon. And a dragon doesn’t give away its blood without a price. There is a hierarchy, older than time itself—the human serves the vampire and the vampire serves the master—”
“What are you—”
“Any deviation from this results in catastrophe. The true test of a master is how many laws they can take on. How easily they can force vampires to their knees. How their will commands all wills.”
“Yos, please—”
“Are you the master or the vampire?” He spoke louder, harder. “If you’re the human, you’re already dead.”
Cold stone plummeted in Kidan’s gut. She understood then how truly dangerous books were.
How easily they could bring two souls together, poetry and confessions of wicked love luring her in like with The Mad Lovers, but also how they might write themselves carefully, insidiously, to break apart her relationships and everything good like Aseracti had done.
In both cases, she hadn’t known how deeply she’d been changed until it was too late. Until she closed the last page.
But Kidan knew no other way to be. She had to consume everything, both rotten and good, to carve out a place in this world that’d already discarded her once.
“You wanted me to live,” she said, holding his gaze. “You told me to live.”
And that was what this was.
Her, living.
It would be riddled with mistakes, but God, she was trying.
Susenyos’s brows met as she reached into her pants pocket and retrieved a wrinkled paper. Her hand shook, still bound to him with the band. She couldn’t lift her chin to look at him.
Nor to tell him what it was.
Kidan held his letter between them as a relic of the past, something magic that could return them to words that were healing and kind.
He didn’t touch the paper. In fact, he inched back like it’d weaken him. But they were his words peeking through the sheet like translucent skin. He must know what they were.
She wished he’d say something.
Instead, Susenyos turned his shoulder. “Finally.”
Kidan jerked her head, trying to find whom he was talking to.
The most beautiful woman Kidan had ever seen appeared. She was perched on top of the stone shelter, her skin dark and smooth as obsidian, long legs ending in boots crossed at the ankles.
Arin Tawendyo.
Kidan’s throat tightened, taking in the ruined rubble to the right. Arin was the only vampire she’d seen crack pure concrete with a simple closed fist.
The vampire shot Kidan a curved smile, eyes cruel. Arin retrieved a black near-onyx flask and drank from it, her dark brown features becoming iridescent. The ends of her hair shading into a deep scarlet.
Slow dread crept into Kidan and she asked, “Why did you bring me here?”
Susenyos spared her a dark glance before facing Arin, voice commanding. “Let’s conclude the last test. Tell me where the Nefrasi hideout is.”
Test?
Her panic shot forward at once.
Susenyos wasn’t going to offer her as some sort of sacrifice, was he? Kidan tugged on the rope connecting them but if he felt it, he gave her no indication. No clue this was safe.
Kidan eyed the clearing. It was just the three of them. If she had to run back into Uxlay, she wouldn’t even know which direction to take. They’d come from the east side, through those broken branches, she was sure—
Something vicious locked around Kidan’s jaw, ripping her attention away. She gasped, unable to comprehend how quickly Arin had traveled. Her speed… it was unlike anything. As fast as Professor Andreyas, maybe faster.
The vampire’s nose was pierced with faux silver, making her feline golden-black eyes almost sparkle. It hurt to look directly into them.
“Your companion.” Arin said the word like it was rotten. “How many of her ancestors have you served?”
“Too many.”
Kidan made a sound, but she couldn’t move a single inch.
“Show me your strength, then.” Arin tilted her head like a boneless creature, her hand still on Kidan’s jaw. “Remind me why I chose you.”
The sound of a weapon being drawn reached Kidan. In her periphery, she saw Susenyos step behind her, wrathful as a hidden storm.
His dragon blades, the ones he had used to protect her during Cossia Day, pierced a point on her back. Tears bloomed in her eyes.
The tip of one of the blades slid down the column of her spine, making her insides spasm. Her fear swelled and overflowed into the only thing that could save her—anger.
She didn’t want to die looking at a stranger. If he was going to kill her, the least he could do was face her.
“Coward,” she clenched out, but it sounded like “cod.”
Arin smiled, not loosening her grip. “What was that?”
Susenyos answered, breath on the back of her neck warm.
“Coward.”
The blade was thrusted forward, grazing Kidan’s side in a thin, painful cut before it found another body—Arin’s, to skewer itself.
A wretched sound echoed, flesh meeting metal.
The vampire froze, her hand unlatching from Kidan.
Susenyos’s arm snaked around Kidan’s stomach, quickly pulling her flat against his side as he twisted the knife deeper.
Arin grunted, her eyes widening. She touched the jagged edge of the blade in surprise.
Kidan panted, still in Susenyos’s tight grip, trying to breathe through the burn above her hip bone.
No hint of pain touched Arin’s carved face. Instead, she squared her jaw, wrath igniting in her eyes, and stepped back.
The blade tore free with chunks of her flesh, blood spurting in a grotesque way. Kidan flinched, terror flooding her in a rush.
Her human skin stood no chance in a battle like this.
“You know that’s not enough.” Arin’s voice was labored yet her eyes flared with fire, almost sickly sweet.
Susenyos wasn’t alarmed. “I know.”
A vampire dressed in a brocade vest with a bloodred flower collar parted the trees to the side—Iniko. From the left, Taj swung his curved blade, his golden headband fluttering, his black shirt outlining his lean muscles.
Relief made Kidan’s knees weak.
Arin eyed them both and laughed. “Again?”
Taj smirked. “Fifth time is the charm, right?”
Kidan’s pulse raced.
Fifth?
Susenyos pushed Kidan behind him and retrieved his other weapon from inside his coat.
“We won’t fail this time,” he said, and though Kidan couldn’t see his face, she was sure it’d caught thunder.
Arin’s painted lips smoothed out. “Well, come on then. Fight.”
Kidan’s knees trembled. There was something unpredictable about Arin, a danger that was more enhanced by how she was amused rather than frightened.
Iniko spoke first, approaching. “The first time we learned we couldn’t take you head-on.”
Taj approached from the other end. “The second time… well, we learned the same thing.” He smiled and shook his locs. “The third time, though. We landed two fatal shots. That was because you’d downed a gallon of a thousand-year-old wine.”
Arin’s charcoal eyes scanned the circle. “So that’s your grand plan? Get me drunk?”
Taj’s gaze dropped. “No, sadly, that was a rare bottle. We opted for something more dramatic this time.”
Arin marched toward him with murderous intent, and Taj held up his hands, eyes stretched in fear.
“What, you’re not going to let me finish?”
Mid-cursing at him, Arin stumbled. Kidan’s eyes widened, watching Arin grit her teeth and try to walk straight.
Susenyos cleaned Arin’s blood from the edge of his coat. Kidan noticed it then: The tip of his blade was nearly black, smeared with blood like… ash.
Impala horn ash.
Kidan’s gaze brightened.
“The fourth, you taught me a good fighter felt every blow he did not deliver, died each time he miscalculated, and memorized every defeat, until he could find victory in his failures.”
“You poisoned me?” Arin’s surprise was genuine.
Susenyos’s blazing eyes slid to Kidan, making her breath catch. “I used to think poison was a coward’s weapon. A very human way of killing. But wielded the right way, I’ve seen how destructive it can be.”
Kidan remembered when he’d said those words to her. A breath away from killing her until she made him help her get a life exchange she never needed.
A vicious snarl ripped from Arin’s throat. “Poisoned or not, you will not win against me.”
“You’re not listening,” Susenyos said, squatting down and touching a handful of dirt and leaves. “I’ve learned from my defeats. So I don’t intend to fight you, Arin. I intend to bury you.”
Taj and Iniko had squatted at either points too, their hands buried in the swarm of leaves. Susenyos pulled on something, a rope or a chain, at the same time Iniko and Taj did, and the ground beneath caved in.
Arin dropped into nothingness.
Kidan’s heart plummeted as the tips of Arin’s Afro puffs disappeared from view.
All was silent.
For exactly three minutes. Susenyos’s shoulders remained wide, breathing slowly. Alert.
He was squatted at the very edge of the hole.
A hand shot out at Susenyos and he jumped quickly back. Arin had clung to a thick tree root, using it to escape the yawning black hole beneath her. Susenyos stabbed her again at the shoulders and she grunted in pain, scrambling for something and finding the red rope dangling from Susenyos’s wrist.
Panic slammed into Kidan and she hurried to untie them but it was too late.
Arin yanked on the rope.
Kidan’s arm shot out from under her and her chin slammed to the ground. Blood sprayed in her mouth. A ringing force traveled down the side of her face as she was slowly dragged into the hole. Arin wrapped the rope around her hands, pulling her in with monstrous force, menacing eyes fixed.
Right before Kidan’s leg tipped over the edge, something caught her ankle.
“Hold on!” Susenyos ordered, urgency thick in his tone.
Arin was smiling, her claw digging into Kidan’s wrist until she cried out. It felt like being stabbed by metal.
No way Kidan would survive this.
Even if she did, she would be in pieces.
Blood sprinkled from Kidan’s mouth and wrist, falling like red rain onto Arin. The vampire’s vicious smile contorted when a drop landed on her lips, then in her eyes. A low hiss filled the hole without an end. Arin rubbed her face and mouth in disgust. But Kidan kept bleeding onto her.
Arin’s feline gaze changed—the whites of her eyes turning entirely red.
Kidan writhed in an effort to get away. She had never seen such a horrifying sight.
A scream built in her throat as Arin’s bloodied eyes locked on to her.
Something wicked and ancient stared back at her, ensnaring her in place.
But a second later, Susenyos’s grip on her waist tightened and he pulled. Arin’s hand slipped and she let go.
Arin fell with a small smile, not like she was cursed to the jaws of death but returning to it for a visit.
“Now!” Susenyos shouted, clutching Kidan close to his racing chest.
Rocks the size of small boulders hovered in a sack among the thick branches above, like swollen balloons. Taj and Iniko worked fast, cutting them down and filling the hole with cascading stones.
An avalanche roared through the clearing, each smashing stone making Kidan wince.
Arin, with her bloodied eyes, was gone.