Chapter Forty
KHALIDA
Khalida walked out of her guestroom, her mind still trying to process all the information she had just absorbed, when a sixth sense stopped her. A slither of darkness descended over her.
Kade.
Perceiving movement a second before he stepped behind her, she moved on instinct—grabbing him by his right arm and twisting it back until it popped before she slammed his head against the wall, the sound not as loud as she would have liked thanks to the thick red wallpaper that decorated the corridor.
Kade’s sleeve rode up as she continued to twist his arm, the only warning she gave him, before pressing her dagger to his throat.
A single drop of blood streaked down his neck.
“You may not be aware, but I don’t like surprises, hunter. And after your show and tell an hour ago, my sentiment hasn’t changed.”
Kade had the audacity to chuckle as he turned his head toward her. “I am now aware.”
She could see her reflection in his dark wraparound glasses. Snarling, she pressed the blade into his neck to reinforce her point before stepping back and dropping the dagger to her side, close enough that Kade would think twice if he tried to attack her.
Kade pulled down his sleeve, rolling the shoulder he had popped when he hit the wall. Faint white scars, resembling small cut marks, littered his forearm. Atlanteans rarely scarred and never to the extent that she had just glimpsed on Kade.
“I want to talk to you. Alone.”
“By trying to surprise me? Someone needs to teach you better manners.” Khalida looked around. “Have you been waiting for me for long?”
Kade ignored the second question. “Talik said you were good. I wanted to see how good.”
It wasn’t an apology, but it was the closest she was going to get from Kade.
The corridor they were standing in was empty.
As far as she was aware, no one else was staying at the villa, and she had barely seen the staff.
Talik had volunteered to stay behind in the armory and observe if anything else triggered the relic.
She had not thought twice about it, had just not wanted to be around Talik’s presence—not when the emotions were still so raw, at least for her. But now, she wasn’t so sure. “And?”
Kade smiled. “I don’t give compliments.”
“Get on with it, Kade. I didn’t take you as the social type.”
Kade glanced around before he took off his glasses.
Pure black eyes, without a hint of white, stared back at her. So dark, they reminded her of a night sky without a hint of stars. It was disconcerting. He had the gaze of an apex predator.
“You can sense it too.”
Taken aback, she wanted to argue, or ask what Kade was alluding to, but she didn’t. “Talik,” she whispered, not wanting to be right.
He nodded.
Khalida clenched the dagger.
“Since the catacombs, his scent has been not quite right.”
She looked around, not wanting to have this conversation in public, not when Talik could accidentally stumble across them. “Follow me.”
Not waiting for Kade’s acknowledgment, she walked back into her room.
Slipping the blades back into their sheaths, she walked toward the center, stopping at the point where she could feel the warmth of the sunbeam on her skin. The dark curtains covered most of the window, but there was a sliver of light peeking through.
“In the mood for redecorating?” Kade nodded at the semi-destroyed dresser.
Wincing, she flicked her hair over her shoulder. “It annoyed me.”
Kade stayed in the shadows, near the door, leaning against the wall. He held his arms loosely by his sides. Khalida couldn’t see any weapons on him, but she wasn’t na?ve enough to think he wasn’t armed.
Finally, Kade spoke. “What happened in the catacombs?”
Khalida walked to the window and drew back the thick curtains.
She was safe enough that she didn’t care that she’d turned her back toward Kade.
Despite her misgivings about hunters in general, Kade wouldn’t attack, not without provocation.
“We were ambushed. Talik was stabbed by one of the immortal blades. The gallu must have found it in one of the tombs. But he had no other injuries. No other marks.”
“And you were with him the entire time?”
She shook her head. “I left him alone to find a way out. I came back, and Talik was undisturbed, hadn’t moved.”
“But?” Kade prodded.
Beneath them, the bustling city of Rome lay unaware of the danger that had been imprisoned for thousands of years beneath the city.
For the sake of the Atlanteans and humans who called the eternal city home, she hoped it would stay that way.
Focusing on the lively streets, she continued, watching Kade through the reflection.
“I could scent something different. It was subtle at first, a hint every so often.” She remembered how Talik had come to, demanding she tell him his name.
Had that been when it had occurred? She’d been so focused on Talik being awake that she hadn’t paid attention to the specifics.
Turning to face Kade, her throat suddenly ran dry.
“Do you think Ninhursag has marked him?”
Kade flinched. The first time she had ever observed such a visceral reaction from him. “What makes you think that?”
Turning around, she wrung her hands together and took a deep breath as she stared at the carpet.
Maybe Talik’s reaction to her vulnerability had nothing to do with Ninhursag and more to do with that, after five hundred years, he’d finally gotten the goodbye he was looking for.
No. When she had first suggested that they never see each other again, she had tasted the vehement refusal that had slammed into Talik. “I offered Talik a peace offering.”
Her damn heart. “A second chance.”
Kade moved from the wall. “And he said no?”
He sounded just as surprised as she had been. She glanced up, but his face was inscrutable. Brushing her hip, she wished she’d had the foresight to be wearing her swords. “What have you sensed?”
“Hints of something that shouldn’t be there. In the catacombs, it was sporadic. I had thought I had imagined it.” Kade scratched his face. “But in the armory, when the sphere started to spin and projected the landscapes, I caught something else, something ancient.”
Khalida nodded. Her heightened senses were nowhere near Kade’s predatory level, but she believed the hunter. “What do we do about it?”
“We kill Ninhursag.”
Khalida took a step toward Kade, her heart thundering in her ears. “You said you can’t kill an Anki.”
Kade grimaced. “I don’t know how far gone Talik is. But you can kill the Anki—drain their power enough and their bodies can be destroyed. As long as the O’hurani is alive, anyone who carries the Anki bloodline will not die.”
A small piece of her felt guilty that the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind of how many innocent Atlanteans and humans, unaware that they carried the ancient bloodline, would die along with the O’hurani—it hadn’t even been an afterthought.
“The archives have a scroll dating back to Atlantis that details a binding ritual of the Anki and how to weaken them,” Kade continued.
“How?”
“Iron. The tunnels and catacombs were coated in iron, and Ninhursag could not use most of her power, but she was not entirely powerless. Instead, somehow, she has grown stronger through the centuries. There must have been a crack somewhere that she has managed to exploit.” Kade frowned.
“We thought the iron manacles and a prison would be enough. We should have forced her to ingest the iron. Once it is in their system, it slows down their ability to heal and decreases their power.”
“The iron just needs to enter her bloodstream? A knife or a round will work?” She blinked, hope filling her as Kade nodded. She was going to need to get close enough to Ninhursag that the god would assume she wasn’t a threat. “I want to do the honors.”
“I thought you would say that,” Kade said. “We will only get one chance.”
“When Ninhursag is distracted looking for the ?a,” Khalida added, grimacing. It was a risky plan—but they really didn’t have a choice. And as much as it pained her, she had to be realistic. “We are going after a god.”
Kade lips curled. Khalida wouldn’t describe it as s smile.
“Being close to the ?a will weaken Ninhursag. A failsafe from the O’hurani, that he could not be overthrown by the ambitions of the Anki,” Kade continued as he took a step closer to the window.
“Combined with the exertion of finding the relic and not being at full power because of her imprisonment, we stand a chance of stopping her.”
Dante had reinforcements, but she wanted to know what Kade was hiding. “How many hunters do you have?”
“We are not that friendly.” Kade smirked. “You haven’t asked what the ritual was used for.”
Because she didn’t care? But she was willing to play along with Kade. “What was it used for?”
“To transfer the ?a of an Anki into another body.”
Khalida blinked, not sure what to do with that. Or the fact that Kade had become overly talkative. He must be worried about Talik if he was sharing information. “Their body can die, but their power doesn’t. Some form of reincarnation.”
“Is that how they are planning on resurrecting the O’hurani?”
Kade nodded solemnly. “We need to ensure that the binding can’t be used by Ninhursag once we have weakened her. We need to destroy the ?a to prevent her from inhabiting another body.”
Khalida flexed her hand. It would not be a problem.
Khalida was going to turn Ninhursag into a pile of ash after she killed her.
Talik may still not want to see her again after the mission, but she would ensure that he wasn’t beholden to anyone.
She swallowed; she didn’t want to ask, but she needed to know the answer. “What do we tell Talik?”
“What do you want to tell him?”
Her gaze flicked to the window and the bustling city in the distance. If they made the wrong assumption, it wasn’t just their lives on the line. “We tell him the plan, but—” She swallowed again. “But, we only tell him that the iron will slow Ninhursag down.”
A small lie, but one that still made bile rise in her throat. “And that we will contain her with an iron-coated net or container until she can be transported. I’m sure we can find something in Rome.”
The door opened without a knock, and Dante slipped into the room. Any other time she would have been annoyed at his audacity, would have thrown one of her knives at him and then asked questions. Now she needed all the help she could get. First Kade and now Dante, both in her room.
“Palatine Hill,” Khalida said. Dante’s ability to source information was one of his more impressive skills. “That is what we are preparing for.”
Dante looked at both of them but mentioned nothing about Talik not being there. It was better this way. Khalida wasn’t sure she could tell Dante what had happened with Talik. Whatever Kade had told him was enough for now.
“I will have reinforcements in place,” said Dante.
Khalida crossed her arms as she glanced first at Dante, and then at Kade. She was putting a lot of trust into Dante, more than she ever had. “And you can hold her?”
“Yes,” Dante answered before he nodded to Kade. “All you need to do is subdue her. There are places below Rome that can imprison her.”
“How long will it take for the iron to affect her once she has been hit?” Khalida asked. Their entire plan hinged on the assumption that the metal still affected Ninhursag.
“One minute and full paralysis will set in,” Kade answered.
Seconds could last a lifetime in their line of work, and a minute could be an eternity.
“What happens if she knows that we are at her location, waiting for her? She is a god.”
“We assume she knows we are there. It isn’t about the element of surprise, like a typical ambush.
What she will not be expecting is our weaponry.
She has been trapped beneath Rome for thousands of years and is nowhere near her full strength.
The last time she was on the surface, all we had were swords and spears.
” Kade flicked Dante a look. “We have placed snipers within the vicinity of Palatine Hill. If we cannot make the shot, they will.”
Khalida snorted. Playing a potential decoy for an angry, malicious god was not on her bucket list, but here they were.
Dante sighed. “We need her to retrieve the relic first.”
It was the crux of their plan—they needed the relic, and none of them knew exactly what it was, and only Ninhursag knew where it was located.
“We have once chance for this to work.”
Neither of them disagreed.
Khalida flexed her hand. “And I should trust this information?”
Dante stared at her, his green eyes unflinching as the surrounding temperature swiftly dropped to an artic chill. “I would not risk Rieka’s safety otherwise.”
Khalida spun on her heels and headed toward her door, her room all of a sudden too small, too crowded, and she needed fresh air. Something to stop the sense of foreboding that was threatening to suffocate her.
She reached the door, hand on the metal handle when the words reached her. Barely louder than a whisper, they slammed into her. “Or Talik’s.”