The Dam’s palms trembled as they hovered above her mate’s chest.
You would think a bloodbath would be next, and it certainly would be the case if there was much capacity left to feel aftersomething so terrible. I could only describe it as shock, denial of the vision before her. Vipera were not supposed to die, not by anything less than a snap of the neck, a task requiring an inhuman amount of strength. Even I felt the air of unease, the improbability of the thing we just witnessed. A predator was born; the scales of nature had tipped. Evolved.
“Leave!” she wailed, a slender finger pointed at Alina. “Leave!” A horrid sob followed before she, herself, crumbled over her lover.
Georgiana hid her face, dedicated to the delicate corpse. The scent of tears pinched my senses. The amazing thing about our keen senses was how you could read minds. The body was honest, Alina used to say. She was right. The Dam’s tears were of some sorrow, but the overwhelming tang of adrenaline nearly aroused my own instincts. Her shaking was not of grief, not from her cries, but because her body was fighting the overwhelming inclination that there was something in the room that was able to kill us without as much as a lifted finger.
Alina was still, amid the havoc, unmoving before lifting her gaze from the pile of a man. She looked directly at me.
The girls did not scatter, nor did they panic at such a grotesque happening.
In her eyes, I wished I saw rage. I hoped she would scream at me, shout, or spout profanities like she once did. Considering the event, I would have taken a smug look from her at the very least.
No, she simply shook her head and walked from the abode, her girls neatly filing behind her without a word needing to be said.
Something burned in my chest, and it wasn’t the liquor. It could have been jealousy of their fervent loyalty, but was it from power? From fear? Both? Somedays I thought her allure was that she was beautiful and hard to catch. The revelation should havedawned on me earlier, but it was her terror. Raw yet tame. A fire I wanted—Ineeded. To possess such a thing that brings gods to their knees—or rather, turns them to dust. The ultimate flirtation with death.
I glanced at Luka, frozen, pale, and betraying a slight tremor, a once-steady man reduced by the image of what could have been all those yearsago.
24
THE FIXER
There wasn’t much to say about what we saw the night before, but the gravity of it settled hard the next day. Things were different now, a shift in the air. My heartbeat was uncomfortable, all too aware of my own blood pumping through my wrists, my temple, even the twitch of my good eye.
My hand shook as I pulled the stitch through the patient’s skin with forceps. I tied a few knots as I closed up the wound on the patient’s forearm. “You are set to go. Keep it clean until it scabs. The stitches should fall out on their own,” I instructed as I stood, glancing over at Edith.
She was occupied with a stiff patient, a sickly woman in a hospital gown and a blue scarf holding the hair away from her clammy face.
Edith was fidgeting with something, focused. Her body hunched over a little, hiding.
I approached and peered over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“We are low on venom. I was going to use my own.” She turnedaround to show me the glassware with gauze stretched over the entrance. “Or would you care to donate some of your own?”
“It wouldn’t be much use if I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have low venom potency.”
“How do you feed, then? Does it not hurt your Hosts?”
“Through the spine. It is just strong enough to numb someone if you inject it there. Besides, spinal fluid isn’t half bad.”
Edith kept me in the corner of her eye as she turned back to her patient, her nose scrunching as she processed my answer.
“Relax, Mrs. Foster. Just one pinch,” Edith assured the older woman, sticking a syringe of amber substance into her arm.
The sickly woman immediately relaxed, settling into the sterile white sheets. She could not have been older than forty, with fine lines blessing her face. When her pain was taken away, she looked about ten years younger.
“You shouldn’t rely on venom.” I followed.
“A little more won’t hurt.” She placed the syringe in the sink.
“Nothing good comes from saying a thing like that.” I leaned against the counter.
“She is low risk,” she muttered as she washed her hands. “It is unfair to let someone suffer due to chronic ailments. It is the least I can do.”
