Page 79 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Awake?”

Her question escorted me out of the room.

27

KALI

“Hands off,” Gedeon barked.

My irritation be damned, I ceased playing with the soft fabric he’d tied around my eyes and clung to him as he led me along what I’d guessed was a hallway.

The longer we walked, the more unsteady my legs became, and I stumbled over the first step down the stairs. He caught my waist to stabilize my wobbling, and I had to close my eyes despite being blindfolded to push away what had occurred mere minutes ago. How it’d felt to have them cornering me. How, for some reason, I’d trusted them with touching me. How it hadn’t been enough.

I lowered my foot onto the next steep step. “Where are you taking me?” I whispered, as if the scarf obstructing my vision would make my voice boom in…thisplacehe was bringing to me to.

“You will see,” Gedeon said, helping me down another step, and the drop in temperature raised the hair on my arms.

I mumbled a curse at this refusal to grant me an actual response. With each loud and clumsy step down the stairs, my exasperation rose. Last night had been the first time I’d slept through the night without any nightmares. Of course, I hadto wake up in an unfamiliar room tangled in the smoothest bedsheets of my life. Because why not? It had become a regular occurrence at this point.

The bedroom had been black in its entirety, from the hardwood floor to the furniture, except for the gray walls and the white, too-thin-for-my-preference bedsheets.

My guess? Gedeon’s bedroom. I hadn’t seen him dress in any color apart from black so far. Not that I was complaining. It suited him.

Zion had likely spent the night there too, based on the scarce splotches of what resembled dried blood on the floor. How did I know it? I’d smelled it. Sprawled on the floor and brought my nose to the suspicious splotches. Because I was not licking them. Nope. Even if curiosity was going to kill me one day, it had its limits.

However, my awakening on an as-bouncy-as-a-cloud mattress meant they’d found me in the clearing and carried me back.

As if they cared.

I’d come to the conclusion that as selfish as I was for wanting to stay, I could use everyone here. They were planning to storm the city, and Zion had shared he hoped to do it soon. Gedeon wouldn’t allow it for now, as we supposedly weren’t ready, but who said I couldn’t persuade him otherwise?

He secured his hold on my waist. “Careful, last step.”

My heavy footfalls echoed as I lost my balance and bumped into a damp wall. Careful, my ass.

“Are you okay?” He removed the scarf blindfolding me.

“So far.” I blinked rapidly to adjust to my vision. Two light bulbs hung on strings above us. One illuminated the small steel table with a glass bottle and a syringe on a glinting tray set on top, and the other, the large silvery table with a corpse chained to it.

But something about the human remains was familiar. I shuffled closer and the stench of mangled flesh hit me, together with recognition. This was the body of that sordid guard who’d let me through Ilasall’s gates for a price.

“Do you like your present?” Zion asked, coming up from behind the table, his thumbs hooked in the loops of his well-worn and ripped jeans. Black, similar to Gedeon’s, because “You can’t see blood on them,” as he’d once explained.

“I—” I staggered back, away from that dead abomination.

Iron mixed with bleach invaded my nostrils, singing the tiny hairs inside. Moldy concrete loomed above us, as disgusting as the person I’d paid favors too many times to count, and I focused on the shadows swarming in corners of what I supposed was a basement. The illusion of endless space due to the darkness erasing the walls pacified my nausea.

I wasn’t in Ilasall anymore.

There were no walls trapping me here.

“You are free to act as you wish,” Gedeon said.

“To do what?”

He prowled toward me, and his hand slid into the waistband of my shorts. I rolled my lips not to make a sound. Plucking my knife, he offered it to me. “Whatever you want. Or tell us what you dream of, and we will make it happen.”

Zion poked the round stomach of the despicable guard with the knife he carried with him at all times. “I promised to repay you for eating your dinner.”