The Viper, page 13
“I’ve got you,” he said as he picked her up. “But we have to go fast.”
“Wait, wait.” Extending a hand to the floor, she tried to reach her hood. “I need—”
He swooped down and grabbed the fall of dark fabric. Giving it to her, he started striding off as she yanked the cover back into place. As her face was draped once again, her breath was an unpleasant blasting of heat, and she thought of how good it had been to breathe more freely, even if she had hated revealing herself.
Even though she’d been about to die.
Looking around Kane’s bulging arm, she focused on the stained wall, and wondered how much longer until the head of the guards came back out. “Hurry.”
He began to run, and as they zeroed in on the stairwell’s doorway, she found herself praying unto the Scribe Virgin. So close, so close… but the danger seemed to magnify as they covered more and more of the distance.
Down at the exit, Apex swung the steel panel open and urged them on, his frantic hand motions as if he could remove obstacles out of their way—
The head of the guards emerged back where the pegs and the stains were.
“Run faster,” Nadya hissed. “They’ve seen us.”
At which point, the head of the guards shouted and drew a gun.
Later, Nadya would wonder the hows of everything that happened next, but she knew the “why”: In a split second, she pictured Kane getting shot in the back, and she could not let that happen.
Moving with a desperation that meant she ignored the pain, she shoved her hand down under Kane’s arm, got the gun that was on his hip out of its holster, and lifted the weapon up over his shoulder. She was so weak that she had to use two hands, and after she flipped the safety off, she just started pulling the trigger without bothering to aim. As a bullet exploded out of the muzzle, and another, and another, Kane put another surge of speed into their escape—and the head of the guards ducked back behind the door.
Nadya shot again and again, the discharges hitting the wall, picking off pegs and putting holes in the stained gray panels. Sweat broke out across her forehead and she struggled to keep the gun up, but fear gave her what she needed.
And then they were in the stairwell.
Apex grabbed the weapon from her just as her hands lost their grip, and he quickly reloaded with a clip from his own gun belt.
“Smart thinking,” he said to her as he shoved the muzzle back out the door. “Take the hand! Go to the chute!”
“I have the key,” someone said. “To one of the vehicles down in the lot. We can drive out!”
Everyone glanced at the male who spoke up. White-haired, and very definitely not scenting like a vampire, he was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, with a flashlight in one hand and a large gun in the other.
Before he could say anything else, a barrage of bullets sprayed the door Apex was at, pinging off the steel, shattering the wired glass window. The male braced the thing closed and winced, sure as if the lead was going into his own body.
Kane ducked down. “Can you dematerialize—Nadya, can you—”
“No,” she said grimly. Then she gripped his massive shoulders and looked at him through the hood. “Leave me, you’re free—”
As more bullets hit that metal panel, he shook his head. “As long as you’re in here, I am not free.”
At that moment, the world seemed to stop and she stared at his face. In the raw light from overhead, she still couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Who did you feed from,” she whispered. “The Scribe Virgin Herself?”
There was a brief pause, as if the guards down at the other end were reloading, and Apex jumped up, cracked the door—and pulled his trigger again.
“Go!” he barked. “I’ll hold them as long as I ca—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. The white-haired male with the flashlight and the car key locked a hold around his chest and hauled Apex right off his feet.
Kane took off up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. When he got to the next floor, which would be the first that was aboveground, he couldn’t reach the handle on the fire door with her in his arms and he stamped his boot like he was impatient with waiting even a moment. Apex and the other male were arguing as they arrived on the landing, but the former paused long to yank the handle—
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Centralized locking has been engaged, and there’s no reader for the hand. Stand back.”
Kane turned to the concrete wall and sheltered her with his body as Apex discharged three bullets at the juncture of the door and the jamb. Then he pulled the panel open.
The alarm that went off was loud enough to wake the dead.
Meanwhile, right under them, what sounded like an entire army flooded into the stairwell, the clamoring boots, mix of scents, and waft of gunpowder the kind of thing that spelled deadly defeat.
“Don’t even think about staying here to cover us,” the male with the white hair said. “I picked you up once, I’ll do it again.”
Apex grabbed his arm. “Get them out. That’s all that matters. Please.”
Kane didn’t wait for them to sort things out. He started running again, Nadya catching the door as they were the first across the threshold into the hallway. As she glanced around his arm, gunfire was exchanged, but she couldn’t track who was shooting first, Apex and his friend or the males in uniform.
Did it matter, though. They were out-gunned, outmaneuvered, and dawn was coming fast.
There was no way this ended well for them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kane was all adrenaline as he burst out onto the first floor of the central building. After a quick orientation, he went to an open doorway on the left and prayed he was facing the rear parking area. And that there was a window. And that the guards were new recruits with bad aim. And…
There was a window at the far end of the narrow room, and he quickly surmounted an obstacle course of broken office furniture and ceiling debris. When he got to the intact panes of glass, he considered how to keep a hold of Nadya and get the sash up—
A body streaked by him, went airborne, and solved the problem by crashing through the frame and shattering everything. As a waft of fresh air broke through the moldy stink of rot, Kane leaned out of the hole.
Down below, the wolven sprang up from a crouch and spun around. Holding his arms out, he yelled, “I’ll catch her. Come on—drop her to me.”
As gunfire continued to echo around in the stairwell, Kane looked at the female in his arms.
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“You can just save yourself,” Nadya said. “Really, you can.”
The hellfire chaos of bullets began to come down the hall, suggesting Apex had changed position—or been killed and the guards were trampling his dead body to finish their job.
Tilting out of the hole the wolven had made with his body, Kane extended his arms. On the ground, the other male sank into his thighs, bracing for the catch.
“Get ready,” Kane said. And wondered who he was trying to prepare.
His heart was in his throat as he let her go. And time halted as she dropped. She was so fragile, she wouldn’t survive a—
The wolven made a new friend for life as he snatched Nadya out of the free fall, swinging her around so that the landing against his chest was as gentle as possible. And after Kane logged a permanent memory at the flop of her thin arms and emaciated legs, he hopped up on the sill and free-fell himself.
Landing in a crouch, he didn’t have to ask the other male for what he needed. The slight load was transferred, and then the wolven took off for the lineup of vehicles. For a split second, Kane glanced up at the building. In the darkness, the discharges from the guns were brilliant flashes, and the sounds of gunfire were a staccato snare drum.
He set off running after the wolven.
When they got to the car, the other male knew what to do with whatever small device was in his hand, lights flashing at the four corners of the vehicle as all the locks were disengaged. While Kane piled into the rear with Nadya, he had a thought that this was what Apex had done for him, stuffing his broken body into a lifeboat that had four wheels.
The wolven didn’t waste a second. He started the engine, slammed the gear shift back, and then they were off, exploding into reverse. The squeal of the tires was followed by a lurch that was so violent, Kane rebounded off the door he’d shut, and he did what he could to keep Nadya from flying loose and getting knocked out.
“Take this. It’s fully loaded.”
As a gun was tossed into the back seat, Kane caught it just as another screeching sound screamed in his ears and they shot forward. The lane ahead was illuminated by the headlights, and he measured the distance and direction. There were no meaningful conclusions to be drawn, however. He didn’t know where they were going. Where they could go.
“I have a place,” the wolven said. “Five miles from here.”
“Go faster.”
There was a corresponding increase in the engine roar, and soon enough, they were off the property and on a road that was better maintained.
Shifting Nadya around in his arms, he breathed in to see if she was bleeding.
“Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely.
“I think so. But Apex—”
The rumble on the roof was like something dropping out of the sky and landing on top of the vehicle, and immediately the wolven started wrenching the wheel back and forth like he was trying to lose whoever or whatever had attached themselves up there.
Damn it.
It was a guard. It had to be—one of them had dematerialized onto the roof. Cursing some more, Kane trained the muzzle of the gun upward, covering Nadya’s ear with his forearm. Just as he was about to pull the trigger—
“Don’t shoot!” came the holler over the din. “It’s me!”
“Apex?” Kane yelled back.
The wolven glanced upward. “Hold on tight, vampire! I can’t stop!”
There was a final surge of speed, as if the male behind the wheel had stomped his foot and demanded all of what was mechanically possible out of the engine. Outside the windows, the forest that crowded up to the road whizzed by in a blur, and as they rounded a curve, he caught sight of a vehicle that had been involved in a crash. There were bodies next to it, lying in the road.
The wolven drove past the wreckage—and over some of it.
“Are you okay?” Kane asked again softly. When there wasn’t a reply, he felt a stab of fear. “Nadya?”
“Yes. I think so—yes.”
Kane glanced behind them. When there was only darkness in the road, he told himself they were going to make it.
But he wouldn’t have bet much on that outcome.
* * *
For Nadya, it was such a whirlwind, from getting thrown out of the building to being caught by a stranger. And then the car ride.
Her mind couldn’t keep up with it all, and she felt like that was a good thing. The risks were too obvious; she had heard the gunfire and smelled the acrid smoke of the discharges back at the prison camp. And now felt the lurching of the vehicle they were in, and heard the yelling among the males.
So she wasn’t sure how to answer the question that Kane kept posing to her, and decided to just go with the reply that would make him feel a little better. Besides, what was really bothering her the most didn’t have anything to do with the guards or the mortal threats.
What she was really struggling with was that he’d seen her. That revelation, which she had never intended, seemed more traumatic than the very obvious risks of this escape. Rescue. Whatever this was—
“Nadya…”
The way Kane said her name, with such compassion and sympathy, was the reason why she hid herself away, his pity the worst possible reminder of how bad she looked. And it was even more terrible because it was him. She just wanted to look how she’d been before for him. Which seemed so superficial given they were speeding away from the camp with a male on top of the car and at least a half a dozen guards free to come after them.
She glanced at Kane. As the world rushed by, he was still staring down at her, and she thought of what it had been like to sit by his bed, safely under her robing, hiding and yet feeling whole because he had been so broken.
“What happened to you?” she asked quietly.
The driver spoke up over the roar: “It’s not much farther.”
As if he had misunderstood the question.
When the car went around a tight turn, Nadya grabbed on to the front of Kane’s stolen uniform, and his arms tightened around her. The corner was so sharp, she was sure they would roll over—they did not. Somehow, the vehicle righted itself and continued on its course—
The brakes were hit and they went into a fishtailing skid, the sedan dead-ending in a dusty swirl.
“Get out!” The male at the wheel wrenched around. “Take these keys. I’ll be back for you at nightfall—this car likely has a tracer on it so we’re rolling a lot of dice right now. I have to get it good and lost.”
Kane did not hesitate. He took the keys, opened their door, and gathered her as he would any kind of delicate package.
Carefully.
The moment they were free of the car, she looked up to the roof. Apex was gone, not anywhere that she could see or scent. There was no time to ask where he was—and it was likely the white-haired male did not know any more than she or Kane did.
With spinning tires, the car tore off in reverse, as if the driver knew there wasn’t time enough to turn around. In its wake, more loose dirt spooled up into the night air and a faint whiff of gasoline lingered.
“He’s right,” Kane said. “If they kept collars on us, they definitely put locators on their vehicles. Come on.”
As if she were walking beside him instead of in his arms.
At first, she was too distracted by how it felt to be so close to him. To have his scent in her nose and the beat of his heart under her cheek. To be held with such strength. But as he paused to put a copper key into a copper lock, the hunting cabin registered: Single-story, falling down, the kind of place that had been abandoned for far longer than the prison camp’s tuberculosis hospital. Indeed, except for the dead bolt, the place seemed utterly worthless, gaps in the exterior boards, the windows cloudy, the roof sporting a crumbling chimney.
The interior was just as bad, the floorboards cracked and sprung, no furniture around, dust on everything. There was also no bathroom, just a stretch of chipped countertop with a sink that was rusted out, and no appliances, only a gap in the cupboards where a refrigerator might have been.
Both of them looked at the gaping hole in the roof at the same time—and that was when the glow registered. With everything so frantic, she hadn’t noticed that dawn’s arrival was imminent… but now, through that wide-open aperture, the subtle shift from the deep black of night to the prodromal gray of day was alarming.
“There has to be an underground hideout. Callum never would have sent us here—”
“Lights!” Nadya said. “Through the trees. Someone is coming.”
A dance of illumination sparkled, the sets of headlights piercing the landscape and strobing as the trunks and branches broke up the beams’ penetrations.
Guards. It had to be.
“Goddamn it,” Kane muttered as he spun around.
Nadya glanced to the empty hearth and entertained a brief and unsatisfying idea that they could hide in the chimney. But what else could they do? They were sitting ducks, for both the guards and the dawn. If they lived through the former, they were certainly not living through the latter.
“I feel like this night is never going to be over,” Nadya said under her breath.
Kane slowly lowered her to the flooring. “Can you stand on your own?”
“Yes.”
“Stay behind me. I’m going to do what I can.”
Reaching up, she touched his face—and something about the contact made both of them go still. “Please leave me?”
“Never.”
Unexpected tears flooded her eyes. “You have nothing to repay me for.”
Car lights washed the front of the cabin, and with the door open, the dark interior was bathed in false illumination as bright and dangerous as the sun.
“Thank you,” Kane said roughly.
“For what?”
“Taking care of me. You eased me.”
“I didn’t have any medicine to give you.”
“Your presence was balm enough.” He was careful as he brushed the hood as if he were stroking her cheek. “It was you more than anything that gave me relief.”
His eyes burned with such emotion that she struggled to comprehend what was in his face, in his heart.
“How can you look at me like this?” She moved his hand away. “You know what I am.”
She tried to turn away, but he gently moved her chin back. And then with steady hands, he slowly lifted the hood. She was so shocked, she didn’t fight him.
“I see your soul,” he said. “That is why I find you beautiful.”
Tears fell from her eyes as no more than twenty feet away, the guards got out of their vehicles, the unlatching of the doors, the crunch of combat boots on the ground, as alarming as gunshots.
“Please leave,” she whispered urgently.
Kane shook his head. “That’s not how this is going to end.”
With that, he lowered his lips and softly brushed her own. As she gasped, he arranged the hood back in place and looked away to the males who were outside.
The change in his face was so total, he became a stranger even as his features remained the same: Violence, dark and powerful and evil, transformed him. And then he picked her back up and moved quickly. Going over to the hearth, he set her in the corner, facing away from the door.
“Do not move from this position. Do not look.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “Nadya. You don’t look. Swear to me.”
It went without saying that there was no reason for any vow because they were both going to be killed—or worse, taken alive.
