AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes,” he growled, his voice low and threatening.
I twisted my body and landed a kick hard on his left leg, the one he wasn’t putting any weight on, and he went down like a sack of bricks, groaning and swearing.
“Fucking bitch!” he roared, and then the knife clattered to the floor, and his hands were wrapped around my throat. His grip was like a vice, and I struggled to breathe, but then I nailed him right in the nuts with my foot. His eyes went wide, and he let out a choked gasp, releasing his hold on me.
Seizing the moment, I rolled away, scrambling for the knife he had dropped. My fingers closed around the cold handle just as Gregor lunged at me. I slashed wildly, catching him across the cheek. He stumbled back, howling in pain. The scent of blood filled the air, and I looked down at the knife in shock.
I was not a violent person, so this was new. Not good-new.
I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart.
“That was a mistake,” Gregor growled.
He advanced, his movements slow and deliberate. My eyes darted around the room, searching for an escape route. There was a door on the opposite side of the room, but I knew that Gregor would be on me before I could make it there.
I needed to take him down.
CHAPTER 24
Zazie
This was so not my jam. I was holding the knife in my hand, looking at a Russian mobster slowly slither towards me like the snake he was, and I thought about how much I just wanted to drink a coffee and watch some Netflix in my sweatpants. Why couldn’t I have that?
Why did I have to be the half-djinn kid? Why couldn’t my parents have been normal? Why did I only get turned on by dragons? Why did I prefer pet rocks to dogs and cats? Like, how bad was my luck?
All of that raced through my head before I charged him, knife out like I was some sort of berserker.
Gregor had not expected me to charge at him. There was a round-eyed look on the man’s face which I read as, ‘Oh, fuck.’ I mean, I wasn’t even wearing a bra; I surely couldn’t have struck anyone with the idea that this came naturally to me. Yet there I was, coming at him with a knife.
And I hit something on his skin as I raced by, propelling myself away from his grasping arms as I struck out with my knife. I had no idea what I hit until I skated by and looked back, and then I noticed him grab his side and fall back on the ground, screaming.
I couldn’t smell that the guy tasted like meat, or bacon, like the guys could. He probably did, but all I felt was a gnawing sense of regret as I looked at him, looked at the knife in my hand that was dripping with blood, and then I hauled ass.
My grandmother was probably screaming in her grave as I ran with that knife. I found stairs, and I was booking it, tearing up the stairs and through doors, looking for dragons and diamonds.
Mostly diamonds.
I stopped at the top of the stairs, hearing the sound of dragons screeching, but then I stood still and calmed my breath, trying to feel out for the diamond.
I forced my feet forward and towards it. I wasn’t going fast anymore; honestly, I was breathing so hard my stomach hurt, I had a side-stitch, my face was bruised, I had a migraine, and my hip hurt for some reason; probably I got jostled when I was knocked out and carried down the stairs.
“Come on, you little dick. Where are you?” I asked the diamond under my breath like I was a babysitter who was long worn out from a game of hide-and-seek with a kid that took the game far too seriously.
I was back in Gregor’s office. My blood was on the floor where I’d been standing before; a big puddle of it. Probably from my nose. There was probably blood on my shirt, too, but I had not realized it. I spun around until I found a display case near the window, the diamond inside.
At first, I looked around for the keys, and then I found myself saying ‘Fuck it!’ and picked up a nearby statue, one that easily weighted seventy-five pounds, and brought it down on the glass.
And again. And again.
And then the wall came down.
The glass display case still didn’t break because Gregor might have been a mob boss, but he believed in keeping his artifacts from getting stolen easily.
There was now smoke, and broken brick, and I was on my ass.
I looked up and could see Caspian’s dragon gazing down at me, looking relieved. I was relieved that my knife hadn’t gone up my ass when the wall came down.
I pointed at the display case. “Get that fucking thing and let’s go,” I yelled at the dragon, stepping to the top of the rubble.
