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For a moment, Nadia thought she might have him. Unlike the other hybrids, he had always eluded her. She could see the features he’d passed on to their daughter even through the pained grimaces on his face now. He had not always been like this. But the thought of her child who was now living in hiding because of this monster who’d terrorized an entire city … Nadia bit her teeth together and held on, fighting the frenzied attempt to shake her off, to keep the silver knife at bay. She had him. She could rejoin the others. They were so close—
A strike to her side sent pain smashing through her and she flew sideways. She lost her grip on the silver chain, felt Darrow be yanked with her halfway in her fall, and then slammed into the cold, hard stone floor. She heard one step, then her head was pulled back by her hair before a cold, large hand found her throat and squeezed.
Nadia wasn’t prepared and didn’t draw a desperate breath before her windpipe was closed off under that waxy white and chilly hand. Slowly, she was lifted from the floor, by her neck, until she was held up, face to face with a vampire. Unforgiving ice-blue eyes void of empathy stared right at her.
For a moment, she thought it was Darrow. But no, he couldn’t have done this, he’d been weakened by her chain. She could hear him coughing somewhere behind this vamp, catching his breath in desperate gulps.
“Nadia Navarra,” the vamp rasped and despite the differences between a human and vampiric voice, she recognized him.
“Kassemyr,” she mouthed more than gasped.
“A thorn in my side,” he said. “And a weakness in his,” he added with half a glance over his shoulder before he stared her down again. Everything hurt. Her lungs, her throat, and her neck. She needed to breathe.
Kassemyr smiled, his fangs in her face, drops of blood still on his lips. “Time to end that.”
Chapter 12
The floor below her blurred and came into focus repeatedly around Nadia. There were moments when Kassemyr moved, dragging her with him, still with his unforgiving hand clamping down on her throat, that she managed to get a little air in.
It wasn’t enough.
A door was kicked open, and voices, laughter, and cries of pain and fright all died down.
Nadia tried fighting, but her feet found no traction on the tiled floor where she was dragged. Orange, cream, and black-colored squares passed beneath her. Her mind was getting confused. She’d seen those before, hadn’t she?
“Here you are, gorging yourselves!” Kassemyr shouted, his voice clipped.
Nadia felt the hand around her throat change, become smaller. Then she was dumped on the floor like garbage. Her body immediately took over, forcing air down in pained gasps. She reached for her throat. It hurt everywhere. She knew she needed to get up, but she couldn’t and instead curled up, trying to focus, to see.
“And you didn’t even hear the enemy right outside?” Kassemyr went on from somewhere above her. She heard another strained gasp and a suppressed grunt of pain.
The room swam before her eyes and she shook her head, blinking hard to be able to see. When she managed to focus, still gaping like a fish and trying to gulp down air, she wished she could go back to almost passing out.
Nadia was inside the throne room. She still had her weapons, but there was no point in using them. Also in the throne room were about forty of the hybrids, and around seventy Agarthans who sat huddled in frightened groups or were in the clutches of the hybrids. The smell of blood was overpowering—so sickly and metallic. Nadia wasn’t one to be squeamish in the presence of blood, but this situation was something else. She forced the rising fear away, calmed down, and tried to focus on the here and now. But the here and now was so horrible. She noted at least six bodies on the floor. She was sure five of them would never wake up again. The reports on the hybrids losing control were not unfounded.
“You disgust me!” Kassemyr said and Nadia looked at him. He had shifted back into his human form and looked the epitome of a handsome man in a tailored suit. His chestnut hair lay perfectly combed back over his shoulders. “With all the power I have given you, you act like pests. Filth! You didn’t even see that one of your own has fallen from my grace.”
Nadia blinked and then noticed her silver chain in his hand. His gloved hand. Nadia cursed her slow, oxygen-deprived mind. She needed to focus. How had she not seen Darrow first? He lay on the other side of Kassemyr, barely conscious, the chain still around his neck. He’d been dragged inside the throne room that way. Two puncture wounds in his neck told her how. Kassemyr was an old vampire. He’d learned the trick of draining blood without puncturing the arteries. Blood trickled from the wounds, but she could see them healing already. Kassemyr’s creatures were indeed powerful. He was right about that.
“But, Kass,” one of the hybrids said, his lower face covered in blood, a man and a woman slumped down by his feet. Neither made a sound. They merely held each other’s hands, waiting for him to finish them off or let them go. Nadia thought it looked like they lived in a stage of petrified uncertainty. “That’s Darrow.”
“It is, you fool! And he did nothing to stop a Ghost from entering my premises.”
“I did,” Darrow wheezed from the floor. “You saw …” he gritted his teeth together and slammed his hand on the floor attempting to get up, but Kassemyr kicked him so hard he rolled over. Nadia saw the anger on Darrow’s face when he managed to draw breath again.
“I saw you fight her off. Not once did you try to kill her. She’s a nuisance. This Wraith, or Ghost, has done nothing but get in my way. She should have been killed a long time ago. By you!”
“I have—”
“I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” Kassemyr bellowed. The anger on his face made his enhanced beauty look like a mask of snarling horror. “I don’t care what secrets she’s hiding. She is your weakness, and I loathe what you have become, Darrow. Prideful, treacherous, weak!”
“Hey,” Nadia said, her throat hurting at every word, but she could talk. “You talk bravely for someone who needed to make his own monsters to protect him.”
Kassemyr was stumped for a moment. Then he looked down at her and smiled. That smile sent shivers of dread down her spine. Not that she’d let him know.
“Only the sun prevented me from killing you when you broke into my home and murdered all my new creatures.”
“The nekrós? Notyourcreatures.”
