His lips pulled into a thin line as he lifted the gun to point it straight at her forehead. “In. Now.”
Yeah. All right. Fine. She walked into the estate. The sun had just finished setting, but her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness inside the ruins. She liked the dark, honestly. A single bright moon gave her plenty of light to see by, casting dark and jagged shadows through the broken windowpanes of the building.
When she hit the first fork in the hallway, she paused. She had no idea where the chapel was. For all that she knew about Raziel, she knew nothing about his ancestral home. Why would she have ever bothered?
Raziel pressed the end of the gun to the spot between her shoulder blades. The cold metal sent an immediate shiver down her spine. “Left, beautiful.”
Gritting her teeth, she turned left.
Buildings were a lot like bodies, in their own way. They had bones. Flesh. And now, with plumbing and electric lights—veins, of a sort. And just like bodies, when left to the mercy of nature, they would rot away.
Nadi had a theory when it came to buildings. That two places, built identically and put side by side, would age differently if one was lived in and the other was abandoned. She had no idea why. But a place like this—a place that had no life in it—was like a corpse left to decay in the ground.
Its doors were stuck in the positions they were left in centuries ago, never to open or close again. Wallpaper peeled and flaked like dried skin. The detritus crunched under her feet as she walked. She’d never had a chance to put her shoes back on. Whatever—once she had been used to walking barefoot through the Wild. This was nothing.
And the Wild was present here, as well. For wherever humanity and vampires weren’t hard at work to destroy it, nature would be eager to fill the gaps. Vines and growth were pushing through the stones at every opportunity, finding every crack and gap.
The faint purple glow coming from the vines felt like home to Nadi. The smell of it was welcome—almost comforting, given the insanity she’d been through lately. Some of her kind were almost able totalkto the Wild. And there were legends of some fae who could command it—but she was very far removed from anythinglike that. Still, she could almost feel a low hum that called to her whenever she was close by. Like a song, resonating within her.
Finally, they reached an enormous set of arched double doors. There were symbols carved into their wooden surfaces, but they were faded and worn—whatever they might have depicted was now impossible to make out. At least to her untrained eye.
“Open them.” Raziel was still behind her, pointing the gun at the back of her head.
Bristling a little at once more being commanded by him, she stepped up to the doors and gave them a tug. They were stuck.
Cracking her neck from one side to the other, Nadi shifted her form to the biggest, strongest man she knew. Ivan. Raziel’s hulking bodyguard.
“Huh!” Raziel laughed. “Nowthatis quite something. Clothes and all. How does that work? You tore your stockings earlier.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Can we save the explanations for another time?” She answered him in a voice that was now very much not her own.
“Oh, that is bizarre.” Raziel grimaced. “I suddenly realize how uncomfortable you could make a great many things for me. My imagination is suddenly running wild with all the ways you could use that ability to make things…deeply strange. Such as our sexual encounters. Please return to your truer shape as soon as you open the doors.”
“I’m fuckingworkingon it, asshole.” She lowered her shoulder and put all Ivan’s strength and weight into ramming herself into one of the doors, pushing it open a few feet.
“Although I’m sure Ivan would be flattered to know you thought of him.” Raziel was still staring at her with a look that seemed to combine fascination and disgust.
Once she finished shoving one of the arched doors open far enough for them to pass through, she dropped Ivan’s form. She wasn’t particularly keen on continuing to wear it around either. Ivan’s form was convenient to use, but being that big and lumbering just felt unnatural. Combing a hand back through her dark hair, she barely got a chance to even blink before Raziel was gesturing with his gun again for her to walk down the center aisle of the chapel.
Now that she could take a moment to see it, she let out a small, surprised and impressed whistle.
The wooden pews were carved from dark mahogany. Their surfaces were black at first glance, only glinting reddish-gold in the reflection of the moonlight where they hadn’t been damaged by time and weather.
At the head of the room was a stone altar. It wasancient—weathered and worn by time. It looked even older than the rest of the estate, if she had to guess.
But along the walls, framed by the columns that held up the suffering structure of the chapel, were paintings. Friezes that revealed what the chapel was built to worship. Not the Mother or Father moon. Not even the older, darker gods. It was a chapel in service to—and in worship of—vampires.
Pale figures, ghostly things illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through holes in the roof, all were gathered in procession facing the altar, each one bowing their head in reverence, hands raised in supplication.
“How much do you know of the history of Runne?” Raziel asked the question from behind her. “What do they teach you fae in the underground?” His tone was free of any sort of accusation or judgment. In this moment at least, he seemed honestly curious. “You seem educated. But you spent most of your life in the metropolis, from what I can gather.”
His voice echoed in the room. The ceiling was tall, soaring high above them. There were several holes through it, and the rest was damaged, revealing the beams of the ceiling like a ribcage.
“I know enough. Why?” She glanced behind her. He still had the gun pointed at the back of her head, and the corpse slung over his shoulder.
“I’m interested in your side of the story. I know what was taught to me.” He briefly gestured with his gun toward the paintings on the walls.
“Which was?” Nadi walked down the aisle, tracing her hand along the curves of the pews as she did.
