Page 45

Aidan didn’t think, just grabbed a horn, smashing the male against the metal hard enough to impale him into it, but Daire simply laughed, peeling the side panel away like it was paper as he freed himself.

The thing lunged towards Rae’s broken window, and Aidan moved for the hybrid at the same time, throwing his weight against the frame to shield Rae as best he could, hands wrapped around Daire’s horns to hold the creature back, his Provident abilities still inactive.

A blade slammed into Daire’s throat, dragging deep across the flesh, warm blood spilling over Aidan’s chest as the hybrid struggled and then stilled. Aidan shoved it away, chest heaving as he looked up at Rae, still hanging from her seat like she gave zero shits about the whole situation.

“Next time, Vampire, I’m driving.” She used the blade to cut her belt, hopping from her seat in a way that told him she’d beenin this precise situation at least once before. He wheezed a quiet laugh, reaching a hand into his jacket for his vials of blood.

“Fuck,” he muttered. The vials he’d given to Baelin.

Rae nudged him aside to pull herself out of the window, shoving her switchblade back into her boot. The wound on her forehead wasn’t bleeding enough to be deep, but she tried to hide a wince when she stood. The Witch toed her boot against Daire’s body, rolling him over to look at his face.

“Test subject?” she asked, her attention taking in the road around them, the upturned safety vehicle, the buildings at the far side of the road. She crouched beside Aidan, glancing up to wait for his nod of confirmation as she pulled her PAD from her pocket and waved it at him. “Smashed during the explosion.” She cast it into the car. “You called your boys?”

“More of them will come,” Aidan spluttered, his hand pressed to his side as he flicked his chin at Daire’s lifeless body. Rae raised an eyebrow, slipped a hand into her jacket, pulled out a vial of blood, snapped off the cork, and handed it to him. She shook her head at his words, or maybe at the fact that he didn’t take the vial from her, Aidan wasn’t sure which.

“You think I’d agree to live with you without bringing more menu options?” she said dryly, wrapping his fingers around the vial and bringing it to his mouth. As he knocked back the contents, she slipped a hand into his jacket, her fingers covered in blood when she pulled out his PAD, completely destroyed from his tussle.

“What the fuck, Vale?” Rae breathed, discarding the PAD and pulling another vial from her jacket. This one Aidan took without hesitation, even though it tasted like shit.

“What is this, horse?”

Rae shrugged. “Squirrel. Maybe.” The smallest hint of a smirk tugged at her mouth, but there was concern there too. “That was all I had. Can you stand?”

Aidan nodded again. The blood would help him heal faster, but that first bullet he’d taken through the windshield was still lodged in his chest, the pain sharp, like it was scraping against something vital. They were almost the entire city away from the manor, and with no vehicle, no PAD, minimal Provident abilities with whatever was coursing through his veins and dawn fast approaching, this night was turning into a monumental fuck up.

The drain on his abilities… had it started with Daire or before? Aidan pressed a hand to his chest as if it might tell him what kind of bullet was lodged there. “The night we met. Did they take my blood?”

Rae shook her head. “They only got you with the sedative. A tranquiliser, Zeke called it. A lot of it.”

A tranquiliser. Inside the bullet? There was only one way to find out. He followed Rae’s line of sight to the upturned safety vehicle. “They’re dead.”

“First Unit?”

Aidan shook his head. “Sixth.”

Something flickered in her expression that might have been regret, even though she’d shown nothing but disdain for his kind, Baelin the only exception. “How long until your teams start looking for you?”

He hadn’t told her he’d dismissed Beck from First Unit, and she hadn’t seemed to notice. He wasn’t taking any chances on a Vampire that couldn’t control his bloodlust around her. “They’ll already be on their way, but we can’t stay here.” Daire was an asset, and whoever made him would come looking for him soon enough. Aidan only hoped his team didn’t come at the same time they did.

The Witch glanced back down the road into the dark, and he knew she was weighing their options just as he had been. “It’ll be dawn in a few hours.”

“Then they’ll follow protocol. When they can’t find us here, they’ll return to the manor until nightfall.” He shifted his weight, the bullet scraping inside him, and he inhaled a ragged breath. “Enough talking. We need to get moving.”

“This way.” Rae didn’t wait for him, and Aidan wondered if she knew how badly he was injured, or if she just wanted to get out of the rain. Her clothes were soaked through, her hair plastered to her face, and again he silently questioned what her natural shade was. How much of herself she changed with spells.

The blood she’d given him had been weak, and as he moved, his body trying to heal itself, the bullet lodged deeper. Sleep would be enough to expel whatever remained of the tranquiliser in his blood, but Rae would have to knock him out before that happened, and at this rate, he wasn’t certain he would wake.

He followed her through the dark in silence, the rain the only sound. He’d been trying to reach Baelin or anyone from First Unit to warn them to stay away. If more of those things were coming, they needed a strategy. Otherwise, they were walking into a massacre.

After a while of snaking through gaps between buildings and down dark alleyways, he felt the first stirrings in his Provident abilities. Not much movement in their proximity, but back the way they’d come, he could sense multiple bodies. Humans, mostly.

Baelin,he tried again.

Here.

Aidan’s chest twisted with relief.Whereverhereis, stay there.

You and Rae?Baelin asked.