Chapter 16 BEE
SIXTEEN
BEE
I fucked up.
I should have stayed with Gary in the apartment. But when I peeked through the curtains and saw the crimson flames in the distance, I couldn’t climb the stairs fast enough before I came staggering out onto the roof.
I meant to track them.
I meant to circle their position on the map, trace their path, their direction, then get the hell out of here. But by the time I made it up to the roof, those thirty floors of stairs, and forced the locked door open with the help of a crowbar, the flames were closer.
Too close.
I don’t know how long it took me to get from the apartment on the first floor, all the way up here to the short cement ledge at the end of the roof—but it was long enough for the dark unit to reach the streets below.
I crouch behind the wall, hidden from the destroyers swarming the streets.
That is what they are.
Destroyers.
I watch them steal what’s ours, lift their flaming torches to the walls of buildings, and even stone erupts in sudden bursts of fire. Others weave through alleyways and wind though smaller streets, hunting for humans to give them a good fight, hoping for a challenge in their prey.
The warriors on hairless, skeletal steeds splinter off from the road to patrol the borders of their section.
Crouched at the short wall, I study them.
I haven’t gotten this close to the dark fae in a while. Never this close in the invasion.
There’s something earthy about their movements, the way their muscles slink beneath their skin, a quiet, lethal power lurking under the surface.
I think of wild, regal beasts that hold power even in soft, quiet strolls—because no predator can stand against them.
Even the humans in all their arsenal and weaponry… nothing more than rabbits baring teeth in the face of a beast.
What’s one human with a gun against a unit of a hundred dokkalves, a race of fae sculpted from pure muscle, powered by the kill and the hunt and the blood and the death?
It’s best to adopt my strategy.
I am not foolish enough to face them.
I hide in the darkness that they unleashed upon these lands. More than the darkness of night with stars and moons, a pure blackness, thick and blinding.
In this new, dark world, everyone is blind.
Everyone but the dark fae.
I watch them down there in the streets of this dead city. And I can only see them thanks to the fires they set—fires that devour the buildings, the cars, the concrete paths and lampposts.
The red gleam of the flames rises to the smoke starting to gather and billow in the air. But I don’t watch the flames that jump buildings and inch ever closer to the high-rise apartments I’m on.
For now, I study them.
Too many surviving humans have banded together in groups. Dozens of survivors hoping there’s safety in numbers. But the truth of survival is the exact opposite.
The dark fae are hunters. Their senses are sharper than any human’s, sharper, stronger, better than any species in existence in any of the worlds, and so I know my chances.
I have a bigger goal in mind than just surviving this extermination.
I have no choice but to track them.
Plague.
That’s the word thrumming in my mind as the dark warriors scale buildings with nothing more than their solid black metal daggers to propel themselves up, slaughtering the few humans they find, howling their war cries into the air, inhaling the smoke like it’s their life source—
And a small band of fae who seem to be guarding a cringing group of humans.
That’s new.
At least, it’s something I haven’t noticed before from a distance.
It’s that small group of humans that I shift the aim of my binoculars to. Like I said, I haven’t been this close to the dark fae units before. So those humans—who sit on the snowy road, shuddering against the cold, dark warriors circled around them like guards—hook my attention.
None of the faces are familiar to me. But each one is either panicked or weathered.
I shift my focus to the guards.
The glimmer of the blaze flickers over their faces—and like the captive humans, none of them are familiar to me.
I know very few dark fae.
The ones I do know, I need to avoid. My life depends on that.
But none of that matters right now.
I can’t waste any more time on searching those faces, on studying this unit, and their human captives.
With how fast the blood flame is eating through the streets of this city, I have just moments to get the fuck out of here. Not just out of the building, but far from their territory.
My scent might be a problem, enough of a problem to give me pause, because my scent is up here on the roof now, and definitely in the apartment down the high-rise.
We camped out on the first floor.
Gary is still in there, rugged up in the bed.
If he wakes up, and realises not only that I am gone, but that the dark fae are upon us, he would get out of here in a hurry and leave me behind.
That’s if he’s smart.
I am.
I’m not going back for him.
My mind races to form a plan of escape.
I peer down at the street once more. The leather of my gloves creaks softly, but it’s hardly a whisper.
I watch the unit below, which lanes they take, how far ahead the general stays on his steed and watches over his warriors, a black diadem pulled tight onto his head. I study their movement for a long moment before I decide they aren’t headed more than a block north.
That’s where the border of their section is, their mapped-out area of destruction in this city ends one block north.
So that’s the direction I’ll take—and if I cut through the highway, I can make a straight shot through the golf course, then turn back for the hospital.
That’s an hour journey on foot—but only in perfect conditions. An hour, but without the blackout, without the snow.
I can do it.
I can do unnoticed.
I don’t take my eyes off the warriors as I reach down for the map. My fingers pinch the thick edge, already folded, and held down by the bone of my knee. I tighten my grip and lift it, careful, from the snow.
My breaths are pinned to my chest.
One wrong move, and it crinkles, maybe loud enough that a warrior hears it.
My throat bobs.
I gently slide the map into the backpack, then brace myself. Bones and muscles cringed, I glide the zipper shut.
The cold air mists at my face with each fractured breath.
I sling the backpack straps over my shoulders. Can’t risk buckling it around my midsection. Too noisy. So I loop the strap of the binoculars over my head and lift my chin.
I give a final sweep of the street below as my legs tense, ready to push up.
And just as I’m about to move, a glimmer of gold and blue aims right at me through the smog.
I squint to sharpen my sight through the billowing ribbons of smoke thickening in the street below.
No.
My heart drops. It hits my gut, hard.
No.
My grip tightens on the ledge.
No. No. No.
Gold and blue, gilded metal and a pale diamond. The moment I realise what that is, and why it is aiming at me, my stomach turns.
The gleam of eyes, one golden, one pale and struck with a scar.
A burn of nausea unfurls through me.
The dark warrior stands in the mouth of a lane.
Lean with muscle, his marble-toned chest is shielded by a inky vest and bound with weapon-straps. Leather trousers blend seamlessly with his soft-soled boots. Weapons glint from all over his person, the belt around his hips, the strap around his bicep, the holsters on his thighs.
The dagger in his bloodied fist is slick with crimson, and so I know it is human blood.
The body of a man is crumpled at the warrior’s boots, but the dark male has his chin lifted and his dual gaze fixed up at the roof of the high-rise…
And he’s looking right at me.