Chapter 16
EMBERLINE
Nico finished off the final guard, the enormous male hitting the ground with the soft hissing thump of five hundred pounds of flesh and metal meeting sand.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the wind shifted, and the stink of the Fossa rolled over us—a choking mix of old blood and urine and excrement, like something dead left too long in the sun. My stomach turned over and over, uselessly, while I tried not to gag.
I stayed low and crawled through the sand to Gabriel, forcing my breathing to even out into something that didn’t sound so desperate. Or so loud.
Inhale. Exhale. Quiet, or we’re going to die.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, running my hands over him, trying to discern black clothing from shadows, the small amount of starlight no help when it came to detecting what was wrong. When I pressed on his shoulder, he let out a rasping groan that made me frantic.
“Gabriel,” I tested the spot again, and he hissed. “How were you hurt? Stabbed?”
I smelled his blood, and more of that foul scent, but it was too dark to tell anything except he was breathing erratically.
His jaw flexed. “Don’t fuss over me. I’m fine.”
I peered up at Gabriel’s pale face and swiped my fingers across his sweating brow. “You’re a terrible liar, just so you know.”
Nico dropped down beside us and held out my knife. “Good throw. I owe you one, principessa.”
I took the knife and the praise for what it was worth, tucking the blade back in my boot, then knelt down beside Gabriel.
“He’s hurt, his shoulder, for sure,” I explained, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “And that smell… I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
Nico’s breath ghosted over my cheek as he leaned in, checking Gabriel over, fast and efficient. “The bastard’s knife must have caught you… There’s a nick on your shoulder.” He peeled back Gabriel’s jacket, and the reek grew stronger.
“Smells like… yeah, poison.” He pulled something out of his pocket, paper rustling before he ripped a package open with his teeth. “I’m giving you a shot. Standard issue antitoxin injection should take care of whatever’s in your system.”
Gabriel hissed as Nico jammed the needle into the top of his arm, his entire body shuddering against mine, the scent of blood getting stronger—rich and warm.
My fangs began to ache, my stomach clenching. Gods, I couldn’t stop thinking about how good he tasted. How close I’d come to spilling all my very confused, very wrong feelings before he’d stopped me cold. And thank the gods for that. I hated myself for wanting so badly.
His blood. Him.
I wished I could take back everything I’d said, but I’d been so caught up in the moment, so caught up in my ridiculous notion of what could have been, I’d just…
“Emberline, are you listening? Keep your hand pressed on that wound, and keep him upright,” Nico instructed. “We have about five minutes to get there before they notice the missing guards.” He pointed at a shadowy smudge that could have been a building. Or nothing at all.
Gabriel’s mouth curved, sharp and humorless. “Piece of cake.” His shudders turned to a steady shaking as I hoisted him against me, taking on as much of his weight as I could manage. He looped his arm over my shoulders, his whiskers scratching my cheek.
“Alright, here we go.”
Nico covered us as we hobbled across the open sweep of sand, eyes peeled for movement, ears straining to catch every faint sound.
But everything here was strange; with the skittering of small night animals and the rushing wind, there was nothing familiar to ground me.
When we reached our destination—a low stacked wall of soft, mud bricks—Gabriel sank to the ground.
Nico peeled Gabriel’s hand away, prodded the wound like an experienced healer. The gash was straightforward enough… except for the bubbling foam around the edges. The smell was acrid, and the skin around the cut looked black.
“Once the poison is out of your system, this will take time to heal. What about your leg?” Nico shot him a steady stare. “I know you tweaked it on the way through the gate.”
“I’m fucking fine. Stop mother-henning me.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Why didn’t you say something? Can you walk?”
Gabriel rolled his shoulder with a wince. “Well enough to get where we need to be, bella.”
“Can you fight?” Nico added, “Because if you can’t, going any further will be a death sentence. We should head back to the gate while we still can and regroup. Come back with reinforcements.”
“No.” I grabbed Nico’s arm. “We can’t turn back, we have to…” I bit my lip. Telling them my dead mother told me in a dream that Dante only had one more day to live would sound… well, they wouldn’t believe me.
“Don’t you dare sideline me, Nico. I’m going in there and getting my brother.” Gabriel’s gaze cut to me. “We’re going in together.”
“In a minute. Give the antitoxin time to work, and for your leg to mend.” I pressed my palm to his chest for one long second, his heart thudding beneath my hand. Our eyes locked, and I wanted to say something. To tell him…
Nico straightened, eyes scanning the dark beyond the wall hiding us. “Both of you… pay attention. We’re at the outer walls, and we have to get through the underground passageways and after that…” He paused, his expression turning grim. “The labyrinth.”
My grip tightened on my blade. “Labyrinth, huh? So… like a maze?”
“Exactly like a maze.” Nico sounded worried. “A rambling maze of tunnels and corridors carved into the rock. They are old and twisting and designed to confuse. Designed to—”
“To keep prisoners from escaping,” Gabriel finished, his voice rough.
Nico’s lips compressed. “And us from finding the way in.”
Even with my vampiric senses, this place was a void. Maybe there was a dampening spell on the prison. Or because of the sand or the rock, but sounds were dulled, my ears straining and giving me nothing but a distant creak and the faint, irregular drip of water somewhere deep underground.
The desert stretched out all around us, with only a few low huts and withered bushes jutting up from the flatness beneath the new moon. No, the threat was beneath us, under the surface, and Dante was somewhere down there.
In fact, if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could almost…
I took a deeper inhale, trying to figure out why my senses were going wild.
“Once we enter, stick close,” Nico counseled, rechecking Gabriel’s wound. “These corridors are meant to be confusing. There are false turns. Dead ends. If we get separated…”
“We won’t,” I cut in. “We’ll stay together.” But my gaze drifted past him to the smudge of deepest black, like a wound in the earth.
The Fossa.
Even from here, I sensed how the air tasted like suffering. The way silence pooled like a river, ready to swallow us whole. A shiver hit me out of nowhere, hair on my arms rising, stomach cramping as I rechecked my weapons, bent to retie my boot laces.
I’d worn these boots since before the explosion, my last possession from my original arsenal besides one measly knife. A good pair of boots, my father had always counseled, could save you in a pinch.
One day. How I wished my mother had spelled things out more plainly.
Why hadn’t I asked more questions? Why were my fucking dreams always so unhelpful?
I drew another deep breath, sifting through layers of rancid odors, hunting out the one thing I desperately needed to find, and then…
There it was, the familiar scent hitting me so sharply, my knees nearly buckled.
Him. Smoke and iron. Leather. The faint spice of cloves that always clung to him, as if his skin was saturated with the rich, sweet spice.
Dante.
My throat tightened, my body tensing as if even my bones recognized how close he was.
The scent was fresh… he was alive.
I stumbled to my feet and started toward that dark hole, drawn toward that scent as if it had hooked into my ribs and was tugging me along, unable to resist.
Nico caught my elbow and dragged me back behind the wall. “Where are you going?” he hissed as Gabriel struggled to rise, grunting in pain. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I smell him,” I whispered. “Oh gods, I can smell him.”
Gabriel’s head snapped up. “What?”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the darkness, couldn’t make my heart stop racing. “Dante. He’s… he’s this way. He’s right here.” The scent surged again, stronger now, undeniable, pulling me forward.
Nico’s expression sharpened, calculating. “You’re positive? This could be a trap.”
“Yes,” I breathed, my knees shaky all of a sudden as everything I’d hoped for seemed to have come true.
Yes, I feared we would be too late, but we were here, and Dante was alive, and this was going to fucking work, even if I had to kill every single guard in this hideous place to free him.
“I’m sure it’s him. He’s alive, Gabriel. Alive.”
Gabriel gripped my shoulder, firm, those wild blue eyes meeting mine. Anchoring me to this moment. “Then let’s go get him.”
I grinned up at him, something dark burning inside me, like a fire that was only getting hotter. My fucking uncle sent my husband here to suffer, and I would make everyone here bleed for hurting him. And once we were back in Venice, once Dante was safe, I would make my uncle bleed, too.
Nico motioned us forward. “Stay low and quiet. Keep close to the wall on your left. We keep going until we reach that break in the stone, which is the intake tunnel. That’s where we enter.”
We became three shadows slipping along the outer wall of an encampment that shouldn’t have existed in a world that pretended to be civilized.
The rock beneath my boots was uneven, as if it had been carved out by hand, dropping lower, then lower still, like a ramp.
We kept going until we reached the break—a jagged slit, lit by two pitifully guttering torches.
Beyond them, there was only black, like a mouth that wanted to swallow us whole.
The air leaking from that opening reeked.
Not just of fresh blood and decay. Of something far worse. Of a waiting evil that had every one of my instincts screaming… run.