Page 27 of The Serpent’s Bride (Bloodlines #1)

FOURTEEN

It had taken Nadi twenty minutes to come up with a plan.

It was a shitty plan.

But it was the only one she had.

The reason it was an awful plan was because it relied on her three captors being both nice and kind of stupid. They seemed decent enough, for underworld types, but as to whether they were stupid…she was about to find out.

“Excuse me?” She shifted in her chair. “I know this is—I know this really doesn’t matter right now, given the state of things, and all, but I really need to pee.”

Mick groaned.

“Look, I know! I’m about to die, one way or another, and I’m sorry , but—today has been really terrible, and I really have to pee, and I’ve been holding it for hours , and I’ve been trying to be polite and understanding about this whole thing—” Rambling on purpose, she shifted again and let out a whine.

“Mick,” John muttered. “C’mon. Let her have some dignity. She hasn’t done nothing to be a pain.”

I promise I’ll kill you quickly, John. Poor boy.

“Fine! Fine.” Mick threw his hands up in the air. “Take her around the corner. Let her piss in the sewer hole.”

Oh, thank the deep gods! Relief and hope flooded Nadi, and she let out a breath. Luckily, the men in the room just took it as a woman thankful she was going to be able to empty her bladder. Not someone who was going to make a break for freedom.

John walked up behind her and undid the ropes around her wrists. Bringing her hands around in front of her, she rubbed them and smiled up at him in honest-to-goodness thanks. She’d have nasty bruises in the morning if she lived that long.

The Iltani had a pistol in his hand and gestured with it for her to get up and start walking.

She did so without complaint and glanced back at him a few times to ensure that she was going in the right direction.

He directed her out of the room and around a corner to a smaller area where they must once have hung pigs to cut their throats.

There was a large sewer grate in the center of the floor where all the gore and muck would drain into the underground and into the Wild below.

Humans loved to throw their garbage into the abyss and forget about those who had to live with it.

“Go on, then.” John gestured at her with his gun.

She frowned at him. “Do you mind turning your back?” Curling her shoulders in a little, she tried to make herself look as small and helpless as possible. Just a bride, abducted on her wedding day. Torn, scratched, and bloody from a cut on her arm and her leg. Harmless. Weak.

The Iltani blinked, sighed, and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

Cracking her neck from one side to the other, she changed shape. She picked the largest, toughest, meanest person she’d met in recent memory.

Ivan.

Raziel’s chief bodyguard.

Walking up behind John silently, she tapped him on the shoulder.

“Wh—” John turned. But didn’t get the whole word out. His eyes went as big as saucers as he suddenly looked up at a man twice his size.

“Sorry ’bout this,” she mumbled in Ivan’s voice as she rammed her new train-sized fist into John’s head. His head snapped back and, just like that, he was out cold.

She grabbed him by the front of the shirt to stop his fall, not wanting the other men to be alerted by the sound. Catching the gun before it clattered to the ground, she set John down to the tile and debated her next steps.

A gunshot would warn Mick and Smiley.

She could snap John’s neck.

Guilt stabbed at her. He’d been nice to her. He was a human in a fae clan. Her fae clan. He didn’t deserve to die. He must hate the Nostroms as much as she did. They were on the same fucking side .

This was idiocy. Sheer idiocy. She should kill him. That was the smart decision.

She couldn’t do it.

But the others…If Raziel was going to believe her story, the others needed to die.

With a quiet, bass growl from a set of lungs that weren’t her own, she checked the number of bullets in the gun. Then she stepped over John’s unconscious body and went to find Mick and Smiley.

“It’s probably a trap.”

Raziel checked the clip in his pistol. Full. Good. “Of course it’s a fucking trap, Deniel.” His cousin wasn’t the brightest vampire in the clan, but when one was up against an unknown number of armed fae-loving idiot humans, every additional ally was useful.

A call had come into Raziel’s home, not long after the abduction. The Iltanis had given them an address and a deadline—meet by midnight to discuss a cash settlement in exchange for Monica’s life, or she would be returned to them in a bag.

The place in question was an abandoned abattoir deep in the pits of the metropolis near the docks—where no one would care what would happen.

It was a decrepit place, the windows shattered and dark, the brick exterior covered in moss and creeping vines.

The Wild didn’t wait long to start reclaiming whatever structures were left to their own devices without anyone there to constantly beat back the encroaching corruption.

At the end of all this, Raziel would send a team to this place to have it burned to a crisp. Purified back to a state of pure stone.

The building looked even bleaker in the stark light from the round headlamps of his car. The metal double doors were half fallen off their hinges, rusted, and ajar, revealing nothing of the inside other than a gaping black hole.

It seemed fitting that a place built as a slaughterhouse would see bloodshed once more.

Mael was loading the drum of a machine gun into its receiver, clearly preparing for a heavy firefight.

Raziel preferred handguns—Mael wasn’t a fan of subtlety.

“I’ll take Remmy, Tooks, and Valiart. It’s a long, straight corridor into the depths of that building, and that likely means they plan to block you off from any sort of escape.

We’ll need to find another way in from above or around the sides.

But they have another way in, and so we’ll f—” His older brother broke short as a figure emerged from the darkness of the front door. “What the fuck ?”

Raziel could not believe his eyes.

Looking like a nightmare, like something from a pulp horror novel, a woman stepped out from the gloom of the meat factory.

Or, perhaps to him, a dream.

It was Monica.

Her brown hair was tangled and hung around her face in loose strands.

Her wedding dress was torn, charred black with soot in areas, and soaked in blood.

Her face was spattered with it, streaked in gore.

A deep gash on her arm was oozing crimson.

She had no shoes, her champagne-colored stockings stained with dirt.

And in her right hand, held loosely down at her side, was a pistol.

Her expression was blank. Not troubled, not afraid—simply devoid of anything.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

Raziel was moving before he thought about it, rushing to her. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Monica?”

“Three of them. Two are dead. The last one ran. There were others, but they’re long gone.” She wasn’t even looking at him, she was simply staring through him. “The whole structure is wired with explosives. Don’t go in.”

Raziel stroked some of her hair away from her face. “Are you hurt?”

She furrowed her brow as if she honestly didn’t know. She looked down as if she needed to check.

Gods below, he wanted her.

“Oh. Huh.” She glanced down at herself. She touched her hip, and grimaced. “Oh, yeah. I need stitches.”

Yes, he wanted her very badly. “How did you get free?”

“They were idiots.” She paused for a moment. “I also hit my head on the tile. I might have a mild concussion? Either that, or the champagne picked an interesting time to catch up with me.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, but given what she had been through, he wasn’t surprised. He took the pistol from her, which she gave him without resistance. He tucked it into his belt. Scooping her up in his arms, he held her like, well, his bride.

She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and said nothing as he carried her back to his car.

Everyone was watching them in shock.

Mael was the first to speak. “We’ll…disarm the explosives.”

Raziel nodded as he approached his car. Remmy opened the door for him as he climbed into the back. “I’m going to take her home. If you find any of those fae-fucking bastards, make them hurt. For me.” He paused. “For both of us.”

He didn’t miss Mael’s faint smile. “You got it.”

Remmy shut the door. The driver didn’t need to be told what to do. The engine roared to life as he headed back toward Raziel’s home.

Raziel wasn’t concerned in the slightest about Mael and the others. Now that the Iltanis’ plans had been upended, they were like rats running to ground. They would be hard to catch—but harmless to hunt.

It wasn’t until he was in the small, enclosed space with Monica that he realized a potential problem.

She was covered in blood. And she smelled divine .

Wincing, he had to bite his tongue to keep his fangs from extending in instant, instinctual hunger. He could smell the blood of the two people she had killed mingling with hers. And there was no question which one belonged to his Monica.

His Monica?

When had that started?

A thought for another time.

He could tell which scent was hers. It was…hard to describe. He had never smelled anything similar. It was entirely new to him. Instinctively, he leaned in closer, trying to come up with anything it could even be compared to.

Blinking, he pulled his head back. Without realizing it, his fangs had extended.

What had come over him? He had never lost control like that before.

Perhaps the alcohol had also gone to his head.

It had been a long day. He was tired. That was all.

“I have a doctor on staff at the house. He’s human. He’ll stitch you up.”

“Great.” She sounded exhausted. Beyond exhausted.

“Stay awake, Monica.”

“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Stupid fucking Iltanis.”

“They told you who they were?” Odd.