Page 60 of Pride: Kneel Before None

I chuckled. “Get in the helicopter, Eve.”

There was a pause between her ineffective glare and her hand slapping down into my outstretched palm. She climbed aboard, ducking slightly as she did. Releasing her after the initial step, I gave a curt nod to the pilot before following my Little Spade onto the bird.

In only a matter of minutes, I got Eve and myself strapped in, secured our headsets, and the pilot started the engines with a thumping whir.

The helicopter lifted into the air, a smooth takeoff into clear skies.

I stretched my legs out, at ease. It was at complete odds with how Eve looked. Her fingers dug into the leather seat, her back as straight as a rod, and she stared straight ahead like she could burn a hole into the hull itself.

Right before her fainting spell out on my balcony, I had discovered there was more to my Little Spade than met the eye. Her powers had taken on a whole new flavor.

She still retained her precognitive abilities, albeit they had expanded beyond glimpses into the immediate future and bridged the gap between my long-range visions and her shorter ones.

More interesting was the taste of me lingering on her, clinging to her identity like cobwebs that never quite got wiped away. To say that it had left me intrigued would have been the understatement of the millennia. For sure, Eve was not a Knight of Hell. For her to even have a shadow of my abilities was impossible.

Unless…

“Well?” Eve’s voice cut through the headset, her tone clipped.

I extended an arm behind her along the back of the seat, not that she was sitting back against it. Her ass was on the very edge, lucky to be making contact at all.

“Well, what?”

That earned me a death glare. A cute one.

Her words came out strained through clenched teeth. “Where are we going and how long to get there?”

“Blackscale Prison. ETA roughly thirty-four minutes,” I provided the exact flight time to either put her at ease or torture her. Both allowed me to be her savior.

The leather creaked as her grip bleached her knuckles.

Torture it was.

“If I’d known you were a nervous flier, I’d have found other means of keeping you relaxed.” My boyish charm oozed through the smile I offered her.

Silence stretched between us with just the occasional static crackling inside the headset.

She turned to stare at me, looking for something she wouldn’t find. I’d sat through enough poker games to master the art of deception.

“Are we going there to…” Her question trailed off unfinished.

Something twisted under my ribs, not guilt but perhaps a close cousin.

“No. We’re not bailing your brother out. Not yet anyway,” I let her down as easily as I dared.

As she opened her mouth, I lifted a hand to stop her. “Not yet, Eve.”

Her head quickly turned to look away from me, peering out her window. It didn’t take a genius to know she was hiding her disappointment and frustration.

The helicopter flew across the expanse of desert that appeared endless, like a never-ending blanket of golden crystals.

Blackscale was located over the crest of mountains, the far western range to be exact. That was the drop-off—an all-consuming canyon that could only be accessed via aerial transport. Jagged cliff faces ensured that even the most agile paranormal beings could not scale them, and if they tried? They’d find themselves plunging into an acidic bath that would either kill them slowly or torture them for eternity, depending on what brand of filth they were.

Entry to the compound where Blackscale had been built was nearly as difficult as convincing the walls to let you leave once you were sentenced to your all-inclusive stay. The escape from Superbia’s most restrictive prison would be a headache larger than a bullet to the skull. Unless you were Superbia’s favorite Knight of Hell.

The landing pad could hardly classify itself as much more than a fairy-sized spittoon. It was a glorified stony platform that provided a landing area barely large enough to support a rat, let alone a modern-day chopper. If you didn’t botch the descent onto the designated area, you could look forward to crossing a suspended footbridge that had seen better days.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I had visited Blackscale, but I could confirm that it hadn’t improved its conditions. Luckily for us, we successfully landed on the designated platform, but Eve was less than thrilled with the footbridge. The narrow spikes of her heels got caught up in the divots of the weathered boards that lined the expanse of the suspended walkway.