Page 28 of Never Run From An Immortal (Immortals #1)

Chapter nineteen

Rae kept her footsteps light and even as she made her way to the meeting point to find Reed. She hadn’t expected Baxter to accompany her—he knew she could look after herself—but even she could admit to herself as she walked down the narrow alleyway, it had been a mistake to come alone.

Her PAD buzzed in her pocket, but she didn’t want to risk being distracted by it. The first crack of thunder rumbled in the distance as a figure stepped out of the shadows, and Rae hurried over as she realised it was Reed.

“Nim?” Rae asked, catching the Fae’s weight as he stumbled. He didn’t look injured, but that didn’t mean anything. His clothes were crumpled and dirty, and he didn’t make eye contact. Wouldn’t. Fresh panic sliced through her as she helped the Fae to balance.

“Alive,” was all he managed to say, his voice thin and raspy.

Rae took in his empty gaze, the shallow rise and fall of his shoulders, the ashen tone to his usually sun-kissed skin.

Shock or not, her patience was wearing thin.

“Where is she? What happened?” Her PAD was buzzing like crazy now, message after message, but she didn’t dare take her hands off Reed, not until she got some answers about her friend.

Dark green eyes finally snapped up to meet hers. “It all happened so fast.” He swallowed, eyes darting around at the next clap of thunder. “Need to get her out.” The Fae stumbled again, and this time Rae couldn’t hold his weight as he fell to his knees.

“ We ,” she hissed, tugging at his shirt, desperation stealing her breath. “You’re going to show me. Tell me where she is.”

“I…” Reed closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“You don’t understand. What they’re doing down there…

it’s… unnatural.” He shuddered and dragged his hands through his hair as fat drops of rain began to fall around them.

They needed to move, to get inside. Rae swallowed down the lump in her throat and willed the nausea washing over her to ease, silently working through options of where to take him.

Thunder boomed again, and Reed flinched as if struck.

Rae was impatient but not unkind. “Why don’t we go somewhere and talk about this?

” She had a good idea of what he’d seen, what he might have endured, memories of the cells she’d witnessed with Aidan flooding her thoughts.

“Somewhere warm and dry.” At the back of her mind, in the space she’d allowed just for the Vampire Lord, she felt his presence, as if he were trying to get in.

She couldn’t give him access to Reed, not like this—the Fae would be dead within seconds.

So she kept Aidan locked out, opting to deal with him later. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t.” The Fae swallowed, his throat bobbing.

“Nim… I can’t leave her. And the others…

” His voice broke. “I need to warn my friends. Everyone.” Reed’s hair was already plastered to his face, unblinking eyes staring at the way the rain ran over his hands, puncture marks and bruises marring both of them.

Rae shivered. “We will,” she told him, her voice as soothing as she could manage despite the fear that had wrapped around her heart. “We’ll warn them all. Come on, come with me.”

Something flickered on the Fae’s chest as he shook his head.

A red light. Rae didn’t hesitate—she slammed her weight into him, pulling him down in time to see a bullet impact the wet ground behind them.

“Move!” She tugged him into the nearest doorway and murmured a spell to crack open the lock.

“Can you speak when you shift?” The door swung open as more bullets hit the ground beside them with dull thuds.

Reed snarled, snapping out of his stupor and pulling Rae through with him.

She muttered another spell to seal the door shut, listening for movement on the other side and waiting for his response.

“A few words, the teeth get in the way,” Reed snapped as another bullet hit the door behind them. “I can’t shift in here anyway, there’s not enough space.”

“Then get talking and follow me.” Rae darted off through the building, knowing that where there was one human with a gun, there were no doubt more. “Tell me everything, now.”

Another door opened up into a room full of long, narrow machines stretching its length, fabric pooling at their base.

This part of Second District was full of clothing factories, all human-designed.

Rae could barely see over the machines, but that was good; if they stayed low, they could remain out of sight.

Reed said nothing, just kept close, listening for approaching footsteps, Rae presumed, but over the noise of the machines, he’d have little chance of that.

He wore no jacket, his shirt already soaked through from the rain, patches of what she’d thought to be dirt before now unmistakable as blood.

And Nim had been left behind. But there was no time to dwell on her friend’s circumstances.

She unlocked another door, stepping into a room full of rows of sewing machines, stacks of waiting scraps of fabric piled beside each of them, the space dark and silent.

Above, a metal walkway led to another level.

Rae didn’t like any of it, but the only way out was through.

They made it halfway amongst the grid of machines before shots sunk into a stack of fabric beside them, a bullet grazing Rae’s arm.

“ Fuck ,” she hissed, already murmuring another spell.

The scraps of fabric and half-sewn garments beside each machine launched into the air, a flurry of material dancing about them like flapping birds as more bullets pinged off the machinery.

Another brush against her thoughts, her PAD buzzing furiously in her back pocket, but there was no time to stop and gaze at a screen; she needed to focus.

Blood ran freely down her arm, and there was no doubt a crimson trail streaked the floor behind them.

Reed seemed to notice at the same time she did, snatching a scrap of fabric from the air and handing it to her as they made it to the next door.

Rae murmured again, the flurry of garments becoming more frantic, but this time Reed shouldered the door open, pulling her through with him.

“Out is this way. I can smell the rain,” he said gruffly.

Thank the Goddess for that. Rae barely registered the final dark corridor Reed all but dragged her through, the door he slammed open out into the pouring rain, or the second he took to leap through it, one moment a male, the next a wild cat bigger than anything she’d ever seen.

Not a lion, a sabre cat, with canines as long as her forearm and twice as thick as her fingers.

He wasn’t exaggerating when he said they’d interfere with his speech.

A bullet sank into the doorframe beside her, and Rae remembered herself, darting out into the rain after him.

He was an easy target, but he was also her only cover on this side of the warehouse.

They’d come outside to what must have been a delivery entrance, a wide empty quad flanked by buildings, and they still needed a way out.

Rae didn’t possess advanced eyesight, and no amount of spells would make it so.

A spear of lightning split the sky and illuminated two humans crouched behind crates, the scopes of their weapons flashing in the light as Rae ran.

Reed had spotted them too, and the Fae wasted no time barrelling into them both, a roar escaping him as he flung them in the air.

Rae didn’t stop to watch. She needed cover.

Needed to get them out of the quad. She hugged the perimeter of the factory, holding the soaking scrap of fabric to her bleeding arm, trying not to flinch as thunder cracked directly overhead.

Through the rain, she could just make out the vehicle entrance backing out to the street, but she’d have to stick close to the building or risk being seen.

There was no time to worry about Reed, though she didn’t doubt his Fae form was far more impenetrable to bullets than she was.

Lightning struck one of the surrounding buildings, and Rae considered harnessing it, but she was far too exposed for that. She ducked for her dagger instead, a bullet clinking into the metal roller door above her head. Shit.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she muttered, pulling a little power from the lightning as she tossed her dagger, gritting her teeth against the pain of her wounded arm.

The blade flew much further than it would have without magic, the force of it shuddering through her, but Rae didn’t see it hit her mark, only the body as it tumbled from the rooftop and fell to the ground below.

She darted for the gun that had fallen with the human, whirling with it in her hands as a voice cried out from above.

“I’m going to fucking gut you for that,” someone yelled, rappelling onto the ground beside the lifeless human.

Rae pulled back the trigger on her stolen weapon, but nothing happened, angling it to one side to take in the damage it had sustained in the fall.

Double shit. She thrust the butt into the chin of her aggressor, landing a kick against his chest as he stumbled back, and she ran.

Another roar from Reed across the courtyard, but she couldn’t chance checking on him. Car tyres screeched somewhere nearby, and Rae instantly regretted her decision not to call for backup. “Reed!” she called out.

She made it to the vehicle entrance just as two humans opened fire on him, and Rae pulled the metal files from her hair, murmuring a spell as she hurled them, one after the other through the rain. The humans fell, and Reed tore into them both as a black car screeched to a stop beside her.

“Get in,” Aidan commanded, the passenger door already swung open.

“Reed,” Rae called out, rain plastering her hair to her face.

“He’ll follow. Get in the fucking car, Farren.”

She did as he asked, slamming the door shut and pivoting in her seat to make sure Reed trailed them. A tight breath escaped her as the Fae bounded after the car. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him—”

“I’ll find out,” Aidan cut in. “Just give me a minute.”

“Don’t hurt him,” Rae pleaded, her eyes still fixed on Reed’s form slipping away from them as Aidan increased their speed.

“I’m a little busy, human. Fasten your seatbelt.”

“What, can’t multi-task, bloodsucker?”

A quiet puff of air from Aidan was all the acknowledgement he gave. “How much did he tell you?”

“Nothing,” Rae said, finally turning back in her seat to face ahead as Aidan rounded a corner, and that was enough encouragement to fasten her seatbelt. An image of Nim in one of those cells threatened to surface, but she shoved it away. “If you hurt him, Vale, we’re done here.”

“He’s safe. I’ve got Orion pursuing him. You’ve had them running circles for hours.”

Them, and him, with any luck. Rae didn’t try to hide the satisfaction she felt at that. Aidan hadn’t told her she couldn’t leave the manor, and there wasn’t a fucking chance she was going to stay holed up in that place night and day. But she’d ignored his calls, his attempts to reach her.

“I’ve no reservations about having you followed if you and I can’t reach some kind of agreement,” he said when she didn’t respond.

So he was angry then. Rae didn’t rise to it. Didn’t dare to, not when she was wounded, exhausted, and trapped in a moving car with him. “How did you find me?”

“You’re bleeding.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel, and Rae wondered, careful not to let any of her emotions leak through, when he’d last fed.

“It’s just a scratch. How did you find me?”

Aidan flicked his chin, his hair falling across his eyes. “Your blood, Farren.”

She’d been bleeding the first night they met at Rush, and when he’d found her outside the Drunken Ram, so he’d have been able to pinpoint the scent of her blood by now.

Rae knew enough about Vampires to know that.

Though it should have frightened her, she found an odd kind of comfort in it, some primal part of her lighting up at the thought. Goddess. She was fucking losing it.

Soaked through and freezing, Rae pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to massage away the ache. Without pulling a little power from her husband, she’d have to patch herself up the old-fashioned way, because she wasn’t about to risk attempting that when he was conscious for a second time.

Aidan didn’t let up on the accelerator as he tore through the streets of Demesia, despite how hard the rain came down. “He last saw Nim alive, but she was transferred to another unit, and he has no idea where. He thinks his father made a deal to get him out, but he isn’t certain.”

“What are the chances—” That she was still alive. Slim. Rae knew that, the corpses they’d both seen in the cells evidence enough.

“There’s still a chance, and I’ll take it,” Aidan said quietly, and Rae clung to the thought.

If she hadn’t been stubborn. If she’d given him the Goddess damned data, they might have found Nim already.

Rae covered her emotions as carefully as she could, focusing on tying the soaking fabric around her arm where it still hadn’t clotted over.

Only a flesh wound, but it still needed closing up as soon as possible, and she was too fucking tired for another spell. “Reed?”

“He’s shifted out of his Fae form. Orion will get him to the manor.” Somehow, Aidan had already made it back, the gates closing behind them.

Rae couldn’t hide her surprise this time. “They’re bringing him here?”

“It’s the safest place in Demesia.”

She met his silver eyes, knowing he was doing all of this out of desperation, but appreciating it anyway.

Rae tried to focus her thoughts with little effect; they were a match for the storm going on around them as she opened the passenger door.

All the spells had depleted her, but nothing she couldn’t sleep off.

No worse than what she’d slept off before anyway.

“Thank you,” she murmured before stepping out into the rain.

Thunder cracked, followed by a streak of lightning, and Rae couldn’t hide her flinch as she made her way up the steps to the manor, certain Aidan was watching her. Two days. Two days she’d wasted being a stubborn asshole by not handing over Zeke’s data. Two days and Nim could already be dead.

Rae still didn’t trust her husband one bit, but it was time to ask for his help.