Chapter 7
NICO DRACONI
The heat would have cooked us alive if it weren’t for my shadows, and still, Dante stood motionless in the center of the hallway as we searched each cell for Rocco. His head hung low, flames pouring off him in great, devouring waves, naked as the day he was born.
Must be fucking nice.
“Hey,” I shouted. “Be part of the solution, not the problem. We could use your help, asshole.”
When I got no response, I cursed, then went back to maintaining the thick, impervious shield around Gabriel and me.
But even inside my bubble, the air scalded my throat with every breath.
Rivulets of sweat poured down my face and throat, soaking my shirt, and I gritted my teeth, fighting to keep my shaking hands steady.
Gabriel scanned the thinning shield, then me. “How much longer can you maintain this?”
“A few minutes, no more. Stop your yapping and try the next door.”
He’d wrapped fabric around his hand, a flimsy protection from the glowing hot doorknobs.
Dante had turned this entire corridor into a death trap.
I only hoped he hadn’t cooked Rocco along with the Ashbound, or Valeria was going to be sadly disappointed when we carted her crispy excuse for a father back home.
We stepped over another corpse… if you could call a pile of ash and bone a corpse. Not that I was complaining.
The creepy fuckers deserved to die.
If you could even kill something that was already dead.
“Empty,” Gabriel grunted. “Where the fuck did they put him?”
“What if they executed him?” I wiped the sweat out of my eyes. “I mean, it’s a miracle we didn’t kill the slimy fuck. Not much motivation for Giovanni to keep Rocco alive now that he’s worthless to the cause.”
“Only one more room,” Gabriel muttered, meeting my gaze before he set his hand on the doorknob. The heat was concentrated down at this end, having nowhere else to go, but beneath the smell of woodsmoke lurked the thick, cloying scent of old blood. Rot.
Fear.
I reinforced my shield one last time and nodded. Gabriel opened the door. The air inside the room was barely breathable, the smell of putrefaction so strong, my eyes watered. As soon as the door closed, I cast another layer of my shadows over the blistered wood, sealing us inside.
The stench of rot crept in.
Thick enough to choke.
A shirtless Rocco lay on his side with his back to us, hair askew, his skin translucent beneath flaking layers of dried blood. Iron shackles around his ankles locked down his magic. He’d been beaten as badly as Gabriel, and his right arm ended in a thick bundle of filthy, blood-soaked bandages.
Where his hand should have been.
We both froze.
Because of the iron, he couldn’t heal.
And Giovanni had left him here to suffer. To bleed to death.
Genuine regret crossed my friend’s face. Because that’s who Gabriel was. Beneath all his ruthlessness, under that cold, calculating exterior, he actually cared. “I didn’t… I thought he’d go straight to a healer after I sent him away. Giovanni must have gotten him first.”
“He stalled us while Emberline was being tortured. That’s the kind of male he is, Gabriel. Don’t waste your regret on this bastard.” I reminded him as I knelt down, pressed my fingers to his bony wrist. A thready pulse fluttered weakly, faint enough to know he wouldn’t have made it to morning.
A shame. He would have missed his own execution.
“He’s alive. Barely.”
Rocco’s eyelids cracked open. “Who is that? Nico Draconi? Come to finish me off?”
“Gods, I wish. Funnily enough, we’re here to rescue you, you ungrateful bastard. Not that you deserve it, but we owe your daughter a favor, so here we are. How would you like to get the fuck out of here?”
“Yes, I want out. But you’ll never get past those… things.”
“Those things are the least of our problems. Up you go,” I lifted him into a sitting position, and Rocco braced his feet on the floor, then immediately tried to stand.
His bowed legs buckled, and I caught him before he hit the floor.
The amount of blood he’d lost was staggering, given how soaked the mattress was, and he’d lain in that mess for two days.
“We can’t dematerialize with him in this condition.” Gabriel stared down at Rocco with that steady calmness that told me he’d already mapped out our entire route back to the boat. “It’ll kill him.”
And what would be so bad about that?
I bit back my retort and heaved the old goat to his feet and threw one of his arms over my shoulder, Gabriel propping Rocco up on the other side.
“Then we do this the hard way. I’ll keep us shielded until we reach the end of the hall.
We have a boat close by. Valeria has healers waiting at the rendezvous point, and we’ll get you back to the island. ”
“You’re working with my daughter?”
“On a trial basis,” Gabriel hissed through gritted teeth. “Now save your strength because chances are, getting out will be harder than getting in.”
“Prove it,” Rocco’s bristly eyebrows knit together as he dug his heels in and turned into dead weight. “That Valeria sent you.”
“Fucking stella marina. Is that good enough for you?” I snapped. “If it’s not, we’ll leave your worthless ass here to rot. I’m sure your execution tomorrow morning will be fucking spectacular.”
Rocco’s jaw worked as he tried to come up with a retort, then a sound echoed down the silent hallway.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
I went still. “Were those…?”
“Fucking gunshots.” Gabriel was already moving toward the door, dragging Rocco and me across the floor and out into the corridor from hell. The old vampire moaned out a little sound of horror at Dante, still burning like a pillar of fire.
More gunfire, louder this time.
“We have to fucking go, come on.” But Gabriel’s and my every step was bogged down by Rocco’s weight, his utter refusal to move his own godsdamned feet.
To survive the scorching heat, all three of us had to stay within my shadows, which meant we were stuck limping along at a fucking snail’s pace, giving Dante a wide berth as we passed.
“Get your fucking ass in gear, stronzo,” I snapped on our way by. “That was gunfire you heard.”
I wasn’t even sure Dante registered our presence, and maintaining the shield while hauling Rocco’s bulk stretched my strength—and my magic—to the absolute limit. By the time we reached the storage room, my shadows failed completely, heat searing my face.
“Fucking move your ass, you old vulture,” I hissed, my nerves shredding in my panic to get to Emberline.
Something had gone wrong.
She was in danger.
And we were moving too godsdamned slow.
The three of us stumbled through the storage room, emerging onto the dock in a disorganized tangle of sweaty arms and legs, relief surging through me until I realized two things. The boat was gone.
So were Emberline and Luca.
A dozen figures burst from the stacks of rotting boxes, seven Ashbound and Lord Blackwood’s personal guard in their prissy black uniforms, living shadows twining around their gloved hands. Shadows I recognized all too well, with the same creeping horror I would recognize my own death.
No, no, no.
Fear became a living thing, writhing in my gut as I studied their necks… Oh gods, black veins outlined beneath their skin. I swallowed hard, frantically searching their uniforms for…
All five of them had silver stars.
On their lapels.
Fear choked the warning from my throat when they formed a defensive line, and behind that barrier of thick, burly bodies lurked the Ashbound, a secondary defense, embers floating around their skeletal forms.
Gabriel cursed. “So much for an easy escape.”
But I wasn’t even looking at the Ashbound. Those guards were the real threat. All I saw was that splat of tarry black on the wall, glistening magic oozing down the wall like sap.
And the trail of black goo tracked across the dusty dock, leading into one of the open corridors.
Then I smelled Emberline’s blood. Sweet and rich, tinged with citrus. My breathing went wonky, logic disappearing into a smear of mindless fear and panic.
No bodies. There were no bodies.
The boat was gone. They got out.
They must have escaped.
My hand shook so much, I nearly dropped my weapon. “We have to leave,” I grabbed Gabriel’s shoulder, fingers digging into tensed muscle. “And we have to get out of here now.”
He shook me off. “Not without Emberline and Luca. Do you see them?”
“They aren’t here,” I stayed focused on that oozing black mark. “The boat’s gone, so they must have escaped. We’ll have to dematerialize with Rocco. We don’t have a choice.”
But there was no clear way out and those guards… there were five of them.
Five.
I didn’t have time to explain how dangerous they were. What they were capable of. “Stay down.” I shoved Rocco behind a broken crate and wrapped a cocoon of shadows around him. “Don’t fucking move.”
And still, I didn’t take my eyes off that dripping black spot, ducking low, scanning shadows and corners, looking for something that shouldn’t even exist.
Where did it go?
Maybe it hadn’t hatched.
Sometimes, they didn’t hatch.
As one, the five guards raised their leather-gloved hands, palms out, dark shadows twining around their hands like living serpents. I didn’t have time to shout a warning before they attacked. But not with weapons.
With magic.
Streaks of inky darkness rocketed above us, and I tackled Gabriel to the ground, my ears hollowing out as their magic collided with the stone behind us like battering rams. Boom, boom, boom. One of the beams overhead collapsed, bricks and cement and choking dust crashing onto the dock.
“Fuck,” Gabriel swore. “Let me up.” But I kept him pinned down, squinting through the swirling dust, trying to see where the magic landed, trying to see how many…
Out of the swirling dust, an Ashbound lunged, claws extended like knives.
I wrapped my shadows around its throat and twisted, snapping its neck. Another came, then another. Gabriel knocked me off, then lunged forward, driving his blade through its hardened chest and out through its spine, those deadly, snapping teeth an inch from his face.