Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Asha Rosov moved like a dancer. Silk and razor-sharp pain.
Nadi barely had time to register the blur of pale pink silk before the vampire was on her, those too-wide eyes gleaming with childlike delight as her fingers closed around Nadi’s throat. The guards scattered, apparently having learned to give the youngest Rosov room when she decided to play.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Asha whispered, her voice singsong and dreamy. “Ever since you stabbed me. That wasn’t very nice, you know. I’m going to have to teach you some manners.”
Nadi drove her knee up into Asha’s stomach and felt the vampire’s grip loosen—just enough.
She twisted free, drawing her blade in the same motion, putting distance between them.
Her throat burned where Asha’s fingers had pressed, and she could already feel the pinpricks from her nails starting to ooze blood.
Raziel was already moving. He’d used the chaos of Asha’s attack to close the distance between him and the guards, his movements brutal and efficient.
Both of the human guards were quickly turned against the others with Raziel’s gift, bullets now flying as his quiet orders were heeded without hesitation.
“Kill them!” someone was shouting. “Kill them both!”
But the guards were hesitating, caught between their orders and their very reasonable fear of getting between Asha and her prey. They’d seen what happened to people who interfered with the youngest Rosov’s games. None of them wanted to be next.
Asha giggled, circling Nadi with that unsettling grace.
The pink silk of her dress was already spotted with blood.
Nadi didn’t want to think about where it had come from.
Because it was probably hers. And that meant she was bleeding from wounds she couldn’t feel yet.
“Your little vampire is busy. That means I have you all to myself.” She tilted her head.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?
I’m going to break every bone in your hands first. So you can’t hold your pretty knives anymore. Then I’m going to—”
Nadi threw the blade.
It wasn’t a killing strike—she knew better than to think she could take down a vampire of Asha’s age with a single thrown dagger. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to make her move.
Asha dodged, predictably, flowing aside like water around a stone. Which put her directly in the path of Raziel’s charge.
He hit her like a battering ram, driving her into the wall with enough force to crack the plaster and send fragments raining down around them.
Asha shrieked—more in outrage than pain—and raked her nails across his face, leaving bloody furrows from temple to jaw.
The wounds were deep, weeping dark blood that ran down his neck and soaked into his collar.
“Nadi!” Raziel snarled, struggling to keep the smaller vampire pinned. For all her delicate appearance, Asha was strong—centuries of accumulated power coiled in that petite frame. “The guards!”
Right. The guards. Whoever wasn’t being gunned down by Raziel’s commands would have to be dealt with. Let the vampires fight each other—they were far more suited for this nonsense than she was.
Assassin. Boxer. Different words for a reason.
She dove for her fallen blade, rolling as bullets sparked off the marble floor where she’d been standing. The smell of cordite filled the air, mixing with the copper tang of blood and the faint floral perfume that still lingered from the interrupted party.
One of the guards got too close, and she hamstrung him with a quick slash across the back of his knee. He went down screaming. Another one—she drove the blade up under his chin before he could bring his gun to bear. The body crumpled at her feet, and she was already moving to the next threat.
She hated fighting like this. Hated it.
The hallway had become a charnel house. Blood slicked the polished floor, making every step treacherous.
Bodies lay in crumpled heaps—guards who’d been too slow, too unlucky, too confident in their numbers.
And still the sounds of battle echoed from outside—Kalo’s forces providing the distraction that was supposed to have gotten them in and out cleanly.
So much for clean, Nadi thought grimly, driving her elbow into another guard’s face. She felt cartilage crunch beneath the blow, heard him howl as he staggered back with blood streaming from his shattered nose.
Behind her, she could hear Raziel and Asha locked in combat—snarls and crashes. She wanted to help him, wanted to turn and fight alongside him, but the guards kept coming and coming and she couldn’t spare a single moment of attention—
A gunshot. Close. Too close.
Nadi felt the bullet punch through her side like a fist made of fire.
She staggered, her vision going white at the edges, and barely managed to block the final guard’s strike with her rapidly weakening arm.
The pain was extraordinary—a burning, tearing agony that made it hard to think, hard to breathe, hard to do anything but keep fighting through sheer force of will.
“Nadi!” Raziel’s voice, sharp with something that might have been fear.
She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t do anything but try to stay on her feet as blood soaked through clothes, spreading in a warm, wet stain that she could feel running down her hip. The wound was bad—she could feel that much. Fae healed fast, but not that fast. Not from something like this.
The guard she was fighting must have seen the weakness in her eyes. He pressed his advantage, driving her back step by stumbling step, until her shoulders hit the wall. The impact sent fresh waves of agony radiating from her wound.
“End of the line, fae,” he said, raising his gun. His finger tightened on the trigger.
A blur of motion. A wet crunch that seemed to echo in the sudden silence. The guard’s head snapped to the side, and he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.
Raziel stood over the body, his face a mask of blood and fury.
His suit was shredded, revealing pale skin marked with slashes and defensive wounds.
His left arm was hanging at his side in a way that suggested the shoulder had been dislocated, and there were deep gouges across his chest that wept dark vampire blood.
But he was alive. He was standing. And behind him—
“Is Asha—?”
“Dead.” The word came out flat. Final. “She won’t be getting up.” He moved to her side, his good hand pressing against the wound. The pressure hurt, but she knew he was trying to slow the bleeding. “You’re hurt.”
“Noticed that.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a pained wheeze. “We need to move. More will be coming.”
“Can you walk?”
“I can try.”
She pushed off from the wall, and immediately regretted it as her vision swam and her knees buckled. The world tilted sideways, and she would have fallen if Raziel hadn’t caught her, pulling her arm over his good shoulder and taking most of her weight.
“Together,” he said quietly. There was something in his voice—something soft and fierce all at once. Something that made her chest tight for reasons that had nothing to do with her injuries.
She had to pull her shit together. She had to. Ripping off a portion of her shirt, she wrapped it around her side as tight as she could. Pressing it into the wound hurt like a whore, but it helped. Nodding, she gestured that she was ready to continue.
They made it maybe twenty feet before the corridor ahead of them filled with new figures. Not human guards this time—these moved with the fluid grace of vampires, their eyes gleaming in the dim light like predators catching scent of wounded prey.
And at the head of them, his face carved from cold fury, stood Zabriel Rosov.
Fuck.
He looked different than Nadi remembered.
The careful stillness was gone, replaced by something raw and dangerous.
His usually immaculate hair had come loose from its ponytail, dark strands falling across a face that might have been handsome if not for the terrible rage burning behind those amber eyes.
There was blood on his shirt—though whether it was his own or someone else’s was impossible to tell.
His gaze swept past them, past the carnage of the hallway, and found the body of his sister crumpled against the wall. Asha’s dress was torn, her dark hair splayed around her like a halo, and there was a silver blade protruding from her chest—directly through the heart.
Something broke behind Zabriel’s glasses. Something that might have been grief, or rage, or some terrible combination of both.
“Asha,” he breathed. Just the name. Nothing more. But the weight of it filled the corridor like a physical thing.
Then his gaze shifted to Raziel and Nadi, and the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop by ten degrees.
“Take them.” His voice was quiet. Controlled. Somehow that was worse than if he’d been screaming. “Alive. My wife and brother-in-law will want to deal with them personally.”
Raziel’s grip on Nadi tightened. She could feel the tension thrumming through him, could see him calculating odds that had just shifted dramatically against them. Vampires, all of them fresh and uninjured. He was wounded. She was worse. There was no way out—not this time.
“Zabriel,” he said, his voice carrying that old, familiar smoothness despite everything. “This doesn’t have to end badly. Your sister attacked us. We—”
“Silence.” Zabriel didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to. The single word cut through Raziel’s protest like a blade through silk.
“Your little fae and I have something in common now… you have slaughtered my whole family, Raziel. Braen. Nabrisi. Now Asha.” His lip curled with undisguised contempt.
“There is no version of this that doesn’t end badly for you, Serpent.
The only question is how much you suffer first.”