Chapter 5 #2
Luciento had been one of the last fae in the Iltani clan. And now it was just her.
“How can we use this?” It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He did. No small part of his heart lurched in sympathy for her. But they had bigger problems to deal with. And if it meant that it allowed her to move freely, it meant that it provided her leverage.
Her expression went dead. Whatever pain she was feeling, she shut it away in a box in her heart. They could cry later. If they had the chance to.
But some part of him knew a piece of her died, putting that pain away in the box. He knew, because how many times had he had to do the same thing?
I am still killing her, inch by inch, little by little.
But these are the choices we’ve made.
“He’s taking us to Grandmother Ebiti. One of the few remaining elders of our people. She is nearer to the surface. And she… knows where the rest of my people are, my clan. What remains of them anyway. Kalo says they’ve taken residence up at the old dockyards that Luciento used to run.”
Raziel dug through his memories. “Mael ran him out of there a long time ago.”
“You always did love to liken my kind to vermin.” She smirked. It wasn’t a kind expression. She got up to her feet. “Come on. Kalo will want to see you now that you’re awake.”
Raziel stood carefully, pleased when the world didn’t immediately spin. Whatever they’d given him to cure the poison had worked. He was weak, depleted, but functional. The chains made things awkward, but he managed to follow Nadi out of the wagon with some dignity intact.
She didn’t help him.
Either for appearances or because she was annoyed. Couldn’t say he blamed her, regardless.
The camp was even stranger up close. He paused to stare at the scenery before him. There were buildings buried beneath the twisting and glowing ubiquitous vines. Buildings that looked… odd. He didn’t recognize the architecture.
They looked neglected, abandoned—ancient. Not like the ramparts that held out the Wild or any of the other structures he was used to seeing “topside.”
Where was this place? What had it once been?
The midday sun filtered through the cavern in spots where the ceiling had collapsed, creating shafts of light that mixed with the purple glow. They were much, much closer to the surface by the looks of things.
No. That wasn’t quite right, was it? The ceiling hadn’t collapsed, had it? The ceiling had been formed. Or perhaps the whole cavern had been created when the ground fell in. Some of the buildings themselves looked crumpled.
The contrast was disorienting. Natural sunlight and the Wild’s alien luminescence occupying the same space—human-made buildings that had been subsumed by the Wild.
The humans wandered around them, all dressed in threadbare, or pieced-together, odd collections of clothing. Raziel noticed how they all gave him a wide berth. Some stared openly, hostility clear in their faces.
Many of them were hunkered around the fires, slumped over in a manner Raziel recognized on sight. There was a smell in the air he also knew quite well—the chemical tinge of powdered drugs being warmed over a fire before they were injected into a vein.
Mushrooms.
It seemed the fae were not just growing it to sell to the surface. It seemed they had fallen prey to it as well.
Others whispered behind their hands, no doubt spreading word of what he was. A vampire in the Wild, in chains, following a fae woman like a trained dog.
He kept the rage that bristled in him from his features.
“Vampire scum,” someone muttered in a thick accent as he passed.
“Should have let him die,” another agreed.
“The laws are the laws,” a third voice said, though they sounded unhappy about it.
Nadi led him to the largest wagon at the far end of the circle. This one was more elaborate in its organic architecture, with vines growing through its walls in deliberate patterns, flowering with blooms that glowed softly even in daylight.
Reclining there on its stairs was a man who instantly made Raziel’s fangs fight to extend. It took everything in him to restrain his desire to kill on sight. To fly into a murderous rage and tear the thing in front of him limb from limb.
A predator knew a predator.
A killer knew a killer.
And the fae sitting there, one foot on the stairs, knee bent, the other leg stretched out in front of him, twisting a knife between his fingers in a lazy show of seeming indifference, was far more deadly than the multi-legged hebek that had nearly taken Raziel’s life.
There was too much intelligence in the fae’s eyes, for one.
His skin was a pale, almost blueish hue that grew more saturated around his wrists and closer to his pointed ears. His hair was a deep shade of ocean cerulean. Woven into the braids of his hair were silver beads and the teeth of creatures that Raziel would never hope to be able to name.
And down his bare arms, exposed by the vest he wore that was stitched with elaborate patterns of thread in various metallic colors, was strange writing tattooed onto his skin like the stripes of an animal.
Marring them were scars that showed him that Kalo had been in far more than a few fights for his life and won.
His eyes were a glinting silver tone that made them look nearly white in the shadowed light of the wagon.
“So.” Kalo tilted his head back slightly, regarding Raziel with the same carefully calm gaze that Raziel was struggling to keep etched on his own features. “The vampire lives.”
“I am certain you are disappointed.” Raziel kept his tone neutral.
“I didn’t go through all the trouble of saving you on a whim.” Kalo snorted. “I wasn’t certain the cure would work on your putrid blood, vuampi. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
“Ensuring I lived gains you favor with Nadi.”
“I could have waited thirty more minutes if I wanted that.” He grinned, revealing his pointed, bestial canines.
“You would be dead, and I could have ‘found her’ innocently enough. No, bloodsucker, I saved you because you are useful to me. And now you owe me a favor. And that is the simple fact of it. Do you accept it?”
Fuck. Raziel tried to keep the disgust off his face. He tried. And likely failed.
Kalo Lohti howled in laughter, as though Raziel had just told him the most amazing joke. “And this is why you are chained! Because the moment I take those off you, you will go about slaughtering us all! Because you have no honor, vuampi. I saved your life. And it means nothing to you.”
Nadi’s jaw ticked. And she said nothing.
Likely because Kalo was right.
Raziel was thinking precisely the same thing.
What was to stop him from simply murdering them all?
He had no interest in owing Kalo Lohti a blood debt.
He had come here to raise an army to overthrow his family and take over Runne, not to be trapped with a band of savages, recovering from nearly being poisoned to death, owing favors.
Everything was going just.
Fucking.
Swimmingly.
He needed time to think. Time to rest, recover, and think.
Nadi’s situation was a new complication.
“We are going to see Grandmother Ebiti. She gathers what little is left of the other elders.” Kalo cracked his neck from side to side. He didn’t sound perfectly thrilled about the idea.
“Is she the one who sent you after us?” Nadi asked.
A beat of silence as Kalo watched Nadi carefully. Whatever history passed between them… Raziel was left on the outside, only looking in. “Word travels fast in the Wild. You have been gone a long time, little fish.”
Raziel tightened his hands into fists. Little fish.
He hated it.
He wanted to rip out the tongue that had uttered the words.
Because with those two, insignificant words, he saw Nadi flinch in pain like daggers that had been shoved into her stomach. Each one a fresh blow. Each one a fresh memory of the past. Of the life and the people she’d left behind.
Would her loyalty change?
Would he have to ensure that it didn’t?
“How long is the travel?”
“A few days.” Kalo sniffed dismissively. “He will be confined to the wagon. For his… safety. You understand. You are free to wander the camp when we make camp, but you stay inside of it when we are moving. I remember your gifts. I do not need you causing chaos or making a run for it.”
“What’s to stop me from picking the lock on his chains, killing a few of your guards, and us escaping the first chance we get, Kalo?
Half your people are too high to stop me.
” Nadi tilted her head to the side slightly.
“You’re right. I have been gone a very long time. And you don’t know me anymore.”
That’s my little murderer. Raziel smiled at Kalo, just a little proudly.
Kalo smiled back. Just a little too proudly in return.
“Our issues with the drugs wouldn’t be a problem without the influence of his kind, remember that.
But that’s not why we’re talking. We’re talking because I can hazard a guess as to why you two are here.
You could have taken to the plains and started a new life, little fish.
But you didn’t. You’re headed to the same place we are. And I think for the same reason.”
“And why is that?” Raziel interjected.