Chapter 5 #3
“You want to murder those fucks you call siblings, don’t you?
” Kalo grinned wide, flashing those teeth of his once more.
“You want to burn it all down and take it for yourself… and that’s fine by me, vuampi.
But you cannot do it alone. You need help.
You need bodies. Bodies with guns.” He held his hand out wide to the gathered caravan of wagons around him.
“Bodies with guns willing to die if it means they can take out a few of your stinking kind with them.”
Raziel arched an eyebrow. “And why would you help me?”
The snort of laughter from Kalo made Raziel want to break the fae’s sharp-featured face in.
He somehow still managed to make it sound pretty and Raziel hated him for it.
“I don’t want to help you, you constipated turd.
My happiest ending is you all kill each other.
But Nadi is fae. She is my people. And we do not turn our backs on our blood.
” Those silver eyes went from him to her.
“Even if they turn their backs on us. And if she needs our help, we answer.”
Nadi jerked again as if he had stabbed her, that time taking a step back.
“Besides.” Kalo pushed up from the stairs with a grunt. “Revenge is lovely. I hate them all.”
“You were selling our people to them, Kalo. Don’t pretend you are somehow clean in all this,” Nadi snapped. “I saw them. I saw what Braen was doing to them—”
“You saw what they willingly signed up for, little fish.” Kalo chuckled, as if she were a little girl who was just learning how the world worked.
“Do you think you are the only fae who learned to kill? Who learned to use their flesh to lure in their prey? I know what our blood does to them. I was teaching our kind to kill these vuampi when they are at their most vulnerable. The agents I sent to the surface killed dozens of his kind until you both ruined our operation!”
Raziel furrowed his brow, and then started to laugh.
“Oh, you must be kidding. You were behind all those disappearances?” Vampires had been known to die of mysterious causes for years.
But no one had ever been able to connect what had happened to them all.
Everyone had just written it off to bad luck with dangerous lovers.
How right they had been.
“Not me. I just put them into the right hands.” Kalo shook his head.
For the first time, his sneer faded and Raziel glimpsed the gaping chasm of the void that was left behind by that much death and pain.
“They knew they likely wouldn’t survive.
Very few returned.” And it was gone a second later.
“So I was getting my own revenge, Nadi. Just not with my own two hands. Though it seems yours got complicated.”
“It did.” Nadi’s jaw ticked again.
“Go back to your wagon. Dinner will be brought to you. As for him?” Kalo glared at Raziel. “You can feed him. Or he can starve. I care not.”
The walk back to “their” wagon was done in silence and under the scrutiny and muttering curses of those who traveled with Kalo. Raziel ignored them. His mind was full with the swirling thoughts and new knowledge from the conversation.
Climbing up the narrow stairs, he slumped down into the corner of the tiny wagon onto the pile of pillows, glad to be somewhere dark and away from the stares of the humans who traveled with the fae.
He needed rest.
Then, he could begin to unwind the madness.
Nadi sat down at his side, placing her head in her hands.
There was one last thing to settle before he could sleep. “Are we safe here?”
She lowered her hands to her lap. “Safe as anywhere. Kalo won’t kill us. We’re his ‘prisoners.’”
“We could escape.”
“And go where, Raziel? He has a valid point. We need him and his help.”
“That doesn’t make us his prisoners.”
“It means he gets to take us to Grandmother Ebiti, who I guarantee is the one who told him to find us—and therefore likely to be working with Mael and Lana—”
“Slow down.” Reaching out, he placed a hand on her leg.
Even if it meant he had to move both hands to do so, what with them being chained together.
“Word of your disappearance from the ship may have leaked. Kalo’s people, or some fae clan, had spies in Mael and Lana’s family during the wedding.
They may have heard through those channels. ”
No, she was right. Ebiti was likely to blame.
But Nadi was spinning herself up into an anxious ball. And there was no use in that.
The look she shot him told him how little she believed his words. Sighing, he settled his head down, and gestured for her to join him. She did, if a little hesitantly. “If it was this Ebiti, then we will deal with it when we know for certain. Together.”
“This wasn’t how I wanted to return home.” Nadi rested her head on his chest. “But I’m not sure how I expected it to go otherwise.”
“Kalo was right about one thing, Nadi. It has been a long time since you have been here.”
She let out a long breath. “Yeah.”
“We both need rest.” He kissed the top of her head. “And for now, we are safe. Sleep, Nadi. We will figure out who we need to kill when we can both think straight.”
She chuckled quietly. “Raziel?”
“Hm?”
“I meant what I said. When I said I love you.”
Tilting her head to look up at him, he smiled down at her. How tragic they were. “And I love you, my little murderer.”
Slowly, tenderly, he kissed her.
It was a much better nickname anyway.