Whatever it is they’re grousing about reaches me, and I freeze, my head snapping up while my frantic gaze starts searching. I know that noxious smell. I’ve been breathing in that cloying stench for months.
The Tainted are here.
They found me.
Chapter 21
MY GAZE LANDS ON A faintly familiar face across the street. A tall male with sharp angular features stands next to a narrow alley, his entire focus trained on me and the guards.
Disquiet whispers a warning in my ear, and foreboding wraps a heavy arm across my shoulders and pulls me closer. A rush of light wind tries to ease the olfactory assault, but I can already taste the taint on my tongue.
The male across the way lifts his arm, and the flashing lights from a nearby sign glint off the weapon he has clutched in his hand.
“Gun!” I scream in warning, diving for the drake that’s closest to me.
I wrap my arms around Tove and, with surprising strength, force us both to the ground.
“What the fuck?” she grunts as our bodies kiss the pavement. She growls something else, but I can’t hear it over the shouts and snarls now filling the street.
I look up to see the Tainted male making a run for it down the alleyway, but the guards around me are approaching a sky craft that I recognize from earlier and not paying attention to the fleeing man. Realization collides with fury, and I’m up and sprinting toward the alleyway after the male. He was in the car that I thought was following us on our way here, and now I know that’s exactly what they were doing.
“Frills, no!” someone barks at my back, but I’m already pounding down the tight lane that’s barely wide enough for me to fit down.
“That’s not my fucking name,” I grumble as I pick up speed.
The Tainted fuck in front of me looks back over his shoulder, his face flashing fear when he sees me barreling after him. He trips over his feet as he faces forward and tries to run faster. He stumbles but catches himself, just barely managing not to fall. I quickly close the distance between us from forty feet to twenty.
The alley we’re in meets up with another street, and he darts left and then right, trying to lose me, but I’m right there with him. I don’t recognize the male from anywhere other than the flyway this morning, but that doesn’t mean fuck all. Too many times, I was out of it after being bled and tortured. I couldn’t even lift my head to see who was dumping food or water in my cell, carrying me to another location, or kicking my bucket of piss and shit all over. Even if I didn’t have direct contact with this asshole, he’s part of the Tainted’s network, which means he’s a dead man. I’ll hunt each and every one of them down if it’s the last thing I do.
My days of running from the enemy are over.
Now, they’re going to run from me.
“Better move faster, motherfucker,” I taunt the panicking male, leaping past the edge of a food stall and slicing through a small cluster of people queued up for an afternoon snack.
A vicious smile stretches wide across my face as the male looks back again and sees me gaining on him with every stride. He whimpers, and sweat dots his brow. His chest heaves with exertion, and I know he doesn’t have much more flight in him. He’ll make a stand soon and try to fight.
I pull my butter knives from my boots and get ready to use them as we squeeze down another small vein of passage that connects one run-down lane to another.
“Please,” the male starts to beg. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have taken it if I knew,” he beseeches, but I ignore it. My prey, my kill is only a handful of feet away now.
I reach for him, but the fucker dekes to the other side of the widening throughway and dodges my grab. I push to get even closer, and he stumbles again. This time while he’s struggling to get his footing, I grab him by the back of his shirt and shove him into the opposite wall. A satisfying thud fills the alley as skin meets stone, and I have the bastard facing me with a knife to his throat before he’s even done screaming from the first face-breaking hit.
“Where the fuck is Wistan?” I snarl in the male’s face, pressing him into the rough rock of the building like I’m about to make him the mortar that holds it all together.
Someone drops into the alley behind me, and I whirl to address the unwelcome visitor with my other butter knife. A bright blond male rears back in surprise when I press the metal of my knife firmly against the bronze skin of his throat. He lifts his hands in silent surrender, but the gleam in his mossy green gaze screams trouble. So does the scale armor and the insignias on his arms marking him as yet another member of the Royal Wing.
Apparently, they’re everywhere these days, worse than sand fleas if you ask me.
The gloomy light of the alley makes the teal color of his scale armor lean more green than blue. A black bolt of lightning forks up the middle of his throat and chin, the dragon mark stopping just under his plump bottom lip. A lip that slowly curves up as I stand in the alley, arms out, dull knives pressed against two separate throats on each side of me.
“Who in the bloody fuck are you?” I snap at the drake.
“Is that…are you threatening me with table cutlery?” he asks, his already raised eyebrows hiking even further up his forehead. “I don’t know if I’m impressed or offended. You’ve got quite the pair of balls on you to threaten a member of the scion’s Royal Wing, let alone do it with such substandard…weaponry.”
“Ovaries,” I correct slowly so he doesn’t miss a syllable. “I’ve got ovaries, not balls, and I guarantee they’re infinitely tougher than anything dangling between your legs. Now, Stormer, answer my question, or I’ll be happy to demonstrate exactly what I can do with mysubstandardweaponry.”
A delighted smile stretches wider across his face before he purses his lips with faux offense. “Stormer? Come now, dragoness, that’s so cold, so impersonal. Call me Herm, I insist. And feel free to press a little closer. I’ve never been buttered before; the sheer anticipation is doing all kinds of things for me.”
