Chapter 27
Muffled curses, fresh blood, and Gunnar shook loose, his attacker sliding across the pine needles. He stumbled away, putting space between them as fast as possible, because the wound fucking burned. Having resistance to poisons didn’t mean he’d instantly shake the effects, so he needed to get away, defense more important than offense.
Especially if he wanted to avoid killing this kid.
Gunnar stayed crouched as Tomas picked himself up from the snow, dusting off his coat. The moon hung bright; the sky was cloudless. He flipped the odd-looking blade a few times, Gunnar’s blood flicking to the snow between them.
“Manticore,” Tomas said, a quake in his voice and hand. “They kept them in the Manhattan Pen’s general population, you know? They were prisoners too, but didn’t stop them from eating us. Every once in a while, we’d bring one down, eat it back, and keep the quills for shivs.”
Gunnar’s fingertips tingled.
Manticore venom was nasty shit. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would slow him way down. He didn’t rise, staring at the man in front of him, teeth bared. If he stood now, he’d get even more lightheaded. Also explained why he was bleeding like a motherfucker, his coat already soaked.
He needed to keep his shit together.
Because despite the amount of blood littering the snow, covering Tomas’s clothes, blowing out his senses, the kid didn’t seem injured at all.
“I didn’t want to do this, you know? But Mateo.” Tomas swallowed a few times, swaying. “Mateo said you’d kill me if you found out.”
Gunnar blinked a few times; charge and overpower? Another prick of that knife might leave him too dizzy to fight. He swallowed around the cotton taste and texture of his tongue.
Tomas seemed skittish. It was hard to grab scent details; so much blood, that tang of madness. Maybe he was too far gone? Odd, because he seemed pretty damn lucid despite being twitchy.
Buy some time, let his body burn off the venom.
“Do what?” Gunnar slurred.
“Kill you. Make it look like an accident.” Tomas licked his lips, then again. “He says you’re out to get us. Keep us from what you found here.” The boy nodded a few times, as if convincing himself. Or reminding himself.
“Don’t like you,” Gunnar admitted. “Wanted you gone, but Rina’s the boss.” He wheezed as he spoke. Fuck, the quill must have come off an adult manticore.
“But you would. Kill us and leave us for dead. You’d do it.”
Gunnar shook his head, his ears ringing, pain stabbing behind his eyes as the venom circulated. It’d get worse before it got better. If Tomas was smart, he’d make his move quick. The kid had to know he’d never take Gunnar out in a fair fight.
Then he remembered their talk the first night the pair arrived. How they’d known next to nothing about vilebloods. If they’d never dealt with being poisoned, bitten, anything like that, they probably didn’t know about their innate resistance to things like manticore venom.
No idea that given another ten minutes, Gunnar wouldn’t be at his best, but the symptoms that really fucked up his abilities in a fight would be long gone.
Stall then.
“No. Just send you back on out on the train. Gone, not my business.”
“We have nowhere else!” Tomas lunged as he spoke, shaking the quill, his other hand tight in his messy black hair. “I have to do this. He told me! He said I had to get under control by more killing and sex, more and more of it, but it’s not working! He said you’d figure it out because you’d smell me. He told me this is the only way we can stay.”
His vision swam as the pieces came together. “He gut you himself?” Gunnar nodded toward the stained and torn tunic under his open coat.
Tomas jutted out his chin, his face pale. “You wouldn’t have believed it without enough blood. And he cut himself up good too, not just me.”
He must have used healing potions, the only thing that made sense for Tomas to be this lucid after a wound like that. His brother hadn’t taken it easy, did everything to make this gambit convincing, otherwise Gunnar would have smelled the lies, scented a light wound instead of organ blood.
“Mateo told me you’ve been killing the stuff at the borders. Can’t help yourself from making it messy.”
“He wants to protect me. No. Stop, stop,” he muttered to himself, pacing back and forth while Gunnar remained utterly still, unthreatening. Docile. “Stop stalling, stop talking. Just do what he said.” Tomas grimaced, mumbling more under his breath, not even watching Gunnar now. “Mateo wants to protect me.”
“So does Innocence,” Gunnar said.
The boy stopped, eyes wide. “W-what?”
“He knows that you’re going blood mad. He figured it out from feeding on you.”
“He . . . he knows?” Panic laced his scent, so strong it overpowered the blood in the air, and his expression crumbled. Looked like the kid had it as bad as Innocence did.
“He wants to help you, him and his sister both. And Audrey,” Gunnar added with a wheezing chuckle, “because the girl can’t let anyone suffer if she can help.”
“No.” Tomas shook his head, pulling at his hair, biting his lip so hard a black drop trailed down his chin. “No, no, there is no help. Once you’re sick like me, that’s it. Mateo said so.”
“Ever think maybe Mateo doesn’t fucking know everything?” Gunnar drawled. “Or doesn’t tell you everything?”
“He’s my brother. I . . . I wasn’t big like others in the pen. He looks after me. He’s always looked after me.”
“He sent me out here to kill you, kid.”
“You’re a fucking liar!”
“Yeah? Is that what you smell on me? Lies?” He bared his teeth, Tomas backing up half a step before he rallied and lifted the quill between them. “You smelled a single fucking lie on me the entire time you’ve been here?” Tomas’s nostrils flared. The spots in Gunnar’s vison had faded, but his muscles still twitched, his body sluggish. Getting easier to breathe, though, slowly but surely. “What’s next? Innocence knows about this shit, you gonna kill him too?
“What? No, why—”
“Think you or your brother have a shot at taking out Virtue?”
Tomas laughed at that. “No.” Another laugh. Another headshake. He squeezed his eyes shut, held them shut, while Gunnar kneeled a foot away from him, weapon in hand.
He really was just a damn kid.
Gunnar managed a smirk; Audrey really was going to love being right, because yeah, Tomas deserved a chance. He wasn’t a threat. Gunnar wasn’t sure if he knew how to be one.
“Blood madness can be cured, even for vilebloods,” Gunnar said, shifting his weight a bit as the feeling slowly came back to his feet.
He worked to remain as non-threatening as possible, but the more he talked to Tomas, the less mad the kid seemed. And if Innocence had only just picked up on it from feeding, even if the incubus denied it for a few days, it appeared less and less likely Tomas had snapped enough to warrant Mateo deciding trying to kill Gunnar was the only way to keep living in Nizhny.
Mateo and Gunnar needed to have a little chat. On the end of Gunnar’s blade.
“Why today?” Gunnar pressed as Tomas continued pacing and pulling at his hair. “You’ve been mutilating shit for weeks.”
“I don’t know,” Tomas muttered. “I don’t know. He said I was going to get worse. That we need this now, not later. That he’s sick of waiting for someone to find out. Sick of waiting for you to be out of the way.”
Gunnar lurched to his feet, the burst of raw rage driving him. He swayed, a snarl rumbling deep in his chest, and Tomas almost fell on his ass.
“This ends one of two ways, kid.” He opened his arms wide, pushing through the venom’s lingering effects for show. “You need me to put you down? You that fucked up? Because it don’t look or smell that way to me.”
“How . . .” He shrank back a bit more, eyes darting between the amount of blood Gunnar’d left behind on the snow and dirt, his weapon, and the dwindling space between them. “The venom . . .”
“Another thing your brother don’t know,” Gunnar drawled, letting a growl bleed into his voice, crowding up on the kid while he fumbled around. “Venom doesn’t really work on vilebloods.”
“Shit,” Tomas whispered. He held up his hands, too spooled up to realize what Gunnar meant was the venom wouldn’t kill him—not that he was currently operating on about seventy-five percent bravado and sheer fucking willpower.
The entire back of Gunnar’s jacket had soaked through, the wound still leaking, and despite shaking down the venom, if he didn’t get patched up soon, blood loss was going to become a real fucking problem.
If Tomas went all out? Right now, he might win.
An actual threat, a real predator, would have figured that out.
“You want to live? See if we can get you fixed up? Give me that quill and sit the fuck down,” Gunnar bit out.
Tomas handed it over and sat.
Gunnar tucked the quill in his back pocket.
“You patch up with healing potions?” When Tomas nodded, staring up at him like a fucking lost puppy, Gunnar sighed. “Stay here. I know you won’t freeze to death. You wait until someone comes for you, prove to me you’re not completely fucking lost, you got me?”
“Mateo—”
“Mateo, I’ll deal with.” Gunnar turned his back on Tomas, the utter defeat in the kid’s scent over taking everything else.
“Are you going to kill him?”
“I ain’t promising shit, aside from the only way he’s staying in this town is if he’s in the dirt. And you need to think real hard if the man willing to gut you and leave you out to face me alone is really who you want watching out for you.”
He considered Tomas for a few seconds, considered what he might find once he got back to town if Mateo was really gunning this hard for him. He wrestled his coat off, tossed it at the kid’s feet. No way Mateo didn’t have his own healing measures on hand if this was his plan.
What was the game, though? Lie in wait in case Gunnar limped back into town instead of Tomas? Fucked up as he was, if Mateo was at full steam? Gunnar needed an edge to counter the venom still pumping through his veins.
To Tomas, he said, “I’m gonna need your jacket.”