Chapter 3
THREE
Nadi woke up in Raziel’s arms, feeling like she’d been run over by an automobile. She grunted and buried her head into the crook of his arm. He chuckled quietly and stroked his fingers through her hair, his sharp nails grazing her scalp.
“Hello, little murderer. Welcome back.”
He still had that tone from before. A voice that she remembered from her nightmares. For a while, she thought she had imagined it. It was something about him that she’d watched almost vanish over the last few weeks after she had first met him face to face as Monica.
Now it had returned full force. No. Worse than before. This was the Raziel—the Serpent—from her childhood. The one that was certain of his actions. One that was hungry for violence.
The question was, did she still have a real part to play in it? Raziel Nostrom had loved her, but how much of that man had been left at the bottom of the ocean and been allowed to die, once and for all?
Nadi wasn’t a vampire, but it didn’t take much of an imagination to understand the difference between a simple death and being left to die forever at the bottom of the ocean.
What Mael and Lana had been willing to do to Raziel…
it was beyond cruel. She couldn’t imagine being betrayed like that by family.
She had killed her uncle, Luciento, when he’d discovered her identity and plot to kill the Nostroms.
She hadn’t condemned him to an eternity of suffering.
Of never dying.
If someone in her family, even an enemy, had done that to her? It might have driven her insane. Opening her eyes, she was relieved to see that she could, well, in fact see. Raziel had taken them somewhere where the vines were still growing overhead, filling the space with purplish light.
And he’d redressed her. How thoughtful. Touching her throat, she cringed. He’d bitten her hard. Mercilessly.
“I simply got carried away.” One of his arms that was draped lazily around her lower back tightened ever so slightly. “I can almost hear the gears whirring in that head of yours. No. You aren’t trapped with a rabid animal. I simply have a clearer mind than I have in a very long time.”
Clearer. Or shattered. That would remain to be seen. “We should get going. Things that stay in one place for too long don’t survive in the Wild. Especially this far down.”
“I think we are getting closer to the surface. I can hear what I believe is the sound of…” He paused, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
Tilting his head, he looked as though he were straining to hear something.
“Wheels. Large wheels. A repeated pattern, like vehicles rolling in large numbers. You said your people moved in caravans. Would that sound right to you?”
That got her attention fast. Pushing up, she groaned and lowered her head just as quickly as the world spun around her. “Fuck. Damn the Mother, vampire—”
“I said I got carried away.” He stroked her hair away from her face.
“You’ll be all right. The bruises are already fading.
” There was regret in his voice. At least there was some semblance of humanity left in him.
“There are vibrations in these vines that seem to have infested every ounce of this forsaken place. Vibrations that if I listen hard enough, I can make out patterns, as I said.” When she watched his face, he was staring up at a vine intently.
He wasn’t making it up.
All the vines of the Wild were connected. They were all part of one massive organism. If his vampiric hearing was truly that powerful down here, it was fully possible that he could hear the sound of the caravans rolling along the heart-vines.
Or, he could be entirely insane.
Five days in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean was a long time.
But it was hope. Hope that they were drawing closer to her people. To the surface. To a chance to have some support in this… war.
It had long since gone far past the point of a simple tale of revenge. She was no longer just infiltrating the Nostrom family to kill them all. No, this would devolve into family versus family. Blood versus blood.
If they were lucky.
If they didn’t die before they got that chance.
“Can you tell which direction it’s coming from?” She took more time to get up to her feet. Her head spun less when she didn’t jerk it around abruptly.
“Yes. I think so.” Raziel kept his hand gently on her arm as they both stood, holding her close to him as if he was concerned she might fall over.
His touch was tender, a far cry from the violence he’d shown her during their…
well, it wasn’t exactly love-making. Whatever it was.
Not that she hadn’t enjoyed it immensely.
He headed off down a corridor to her right. It was the direction she would have guessed—where the vine was becoming thicker, toward the heart-vine.
Oh, by the moons. He wasn’t lying. He truly could hear the caravans! They were getting closer. But the question was, how close was “closer”? How strong were the vibrations? Picking up the bag and throwing it over her shoulder, she followed after him.
The idea of meeting a fae clan in the Wild. Questions and emotions churned over in her mind. What would they be like? How had they changed? Who had they become in her eighty-plus years of absence? Which clan would they be? Would the fae help them? Would they try to kill Raziel on sight?
Each question had an equally horrible answer in her mind.
What would they be like? Changed. How had they changed? For the worse. Who had they become in her eighty-plus years of absence? Violent and jaded. Which clan would they be? Not mine. Would the fae help them? No. Would they try to kill Raziel on sight? Yes.
Why would the fae ever help them? A vampire and a traitor? No. The fae were far more likely to just open fire or slit their throats the moment they laid eyes on them. But it was the only chance they had.
They couldn’t take on Mael and Lana alone.
Not with the whole of the Nostrom and now the Rosov family backing them.
Lana and Zabriel Rosov being married meant the two most powerful vampire families were now joined as one.
It would take far more than a maybe-slightly-better-than-average assassin and a single vampire to take them all down.
They needed the fae of the Wild.
Double or nothing.
* * *
Raziel never thought he would desire the chaos and din of the metropolis, but here he was. At least the very firmament metropolis wasn’t alive. At least it wasn’t beating with a billion little heartbeats and pulses of liquid that squished and squelched around him.
It was going to drive him insane.
And he was probably already halfway there by the time he had arrived in this void-forsaken hellhole. They were following the sound of the rumbling wheels for about an hour in silence before he had to break it to drown out the agonizing discord around him. “Why did you really come back for me?”
Nadi was eating from a can of preserved peaches. He had been unkind to her the night before—if it was night, it was impossible to tell—and she needed food. He couldn’t quite say that he blamed her. His little murderer paused for a long moment. “I told you already.”
“I want the truth, Nadi. Please. I was not only as good as dead, but suffering. Better than you could have possibly hoped for. And my idiot siblings had given you perfect access if you wanted to continue with your original goal of murdering them all.” He glanced back over his shoulder.
Her expression was carefully blank. “You had everything in your hands. You threw it all away. Why?”
“I—”
She never got the chance to lie to his face again.
A sound cut her off.
A sound that made them both freeze.
It was a rustle from down one end of the cave in the darkness. Larger than anything else he’d heard so far. And large meant dangerous. He bared his teeth. Predator. Something primal in him boiled in fury.
Slowly, silently, Nadi moved to stand beside him.
She slowly set her bag down from her shoulder, put the half-eaten can of fruit beside it, and lifted the bolt cutters she still carried as a weapon.
Amusingly, she lifted her hand to him, telling him to wait, as if that alone would stop him from rushing into the darkness to attack whatever waited there.
Then came another sound that echoed in his bones.
A hollow, rasping howl that sounded like part animal scream, part grinding metal. The noise bounced off the walls and seemed to come from everywhere at once. Raziel wrapped the silver chain around his palm once more. It burned and chafed. He did not care. It was effective as anything.
“Wait—” Nadi hissed. “Don’t m—”
It was too late.
The attack came from above.
It slid at them over the surface of the stone and vines, a blur of hundreds of legs that framed a segmented body. It moved almost impossibly fast for something of its size, and its head was all teeth and eyes—so many eyes—pointed in all directions, black and covered in feelers.
Barbed quills ran along its body like hairs, each one dripping with something that sizzled when it hit the ground.
The creature dropped from directly above them. Raziel shoved Nadi aside just as the creature’s tail—tipped with a stinger the size of his forearm—struck where she’d been standing. The impact cracked the stone floor.
“What in the bleeding moons is that thing?” He unwound the silver chain from his hand, letting it swing free. His palm was raw from where the metal had burned into it during their long walk, but the pain helped sharpen his focus.
“Talk later!” Nadi rolled to her feet, bolt cutters in hand. “Kill it first!”
Muscle memory took over. He was designed to kill. And this thing, no matter its purpose, no matter its size—was designed to die.
Raziel met its charge, wrapping the silver chain around one of its front segments and yanked hard. The creature stumbled but didn’t fall, its other body sections compensating with disturbing efficiency. Its head snapped toward him, coming dangerously close.