Page 13 of He’s A 10 But… He Bites

"Someone who wants you dead slightly less than the people behind us do."

The phone goes again. Gabriel this time, and he doesn't wait either.

"Please tell me you didn't kill the asset and plan to sort out the consequences later," he says.

"She's in the car."

"Oh, thank every god. You grew a strategic bone." A breath. "Listen, brother, this is past us now. Four factions, maybe five, all converging on one piece of obsidian. You can't recover this clean — not anymore. And if you put that woman in the ground, you lose the only living person who can wake the map. You know that. I know you know it, because you've gone quiet, and you only go quiet when I'm right."

I despise that he's right. I despise the easy warmth in his voice while my whole disciplined world tips a few degrees under me.

"I'm handling it," I hang up.

Riley has coiled in her seat, the stillness of something that's decided to wait for one opening. "Stop the car."

"No."

"I'm not your prisoner."

"No," I agree. "You're a liability with a heartbeat, and every monster in Europe is currently driving toward the sound of it. Run, and you're dead by tomorrow. Hand me the relic, and you're dead within the hour — because the moment I have it, I have no reason to keep you breathing, and they have every reason to make sure you never talk. I'm not offering you trust. I'm offering you the only version of tonight where you wake up tomorrow."

Her fingers tighten on the bundle. Frost spiders across her knuckles. She's furious, and beneath the fury she's running the same brutal arithmetic I'd run in her chair. Drop worthless. Every door she counted on, on fire.

"Temporary," she says at last, biting down on the word. "We figure out what this stone actually is. Then I walk."

"Temporary," I answer.

It isn't agreement. It's two armed enemies laying their weapons on the same table, neither one looking away from the other's hands.

On the relic, the seam of light brightens and narrows to a point. Not a full map. Not yet. Just a broken line, a southern pull, and one symbol I recognize from old archive sketches: a monastery mark, carved by hands that should have been dust centuries ago.

Riley sees me looking. "What?"

I turn the wheel before the pursuing headlights find us again.

"It gave us a direction," I say. "And I know where the first door is likely to be."

9

RILEY

The road quits a full mile short of the monastery we're headed to, so we climb the rest on foot — up through olive trees gone feral and grass nobody's cut since somebody decided God had moved out. Nico goes ahead of me, no sound, no effort. I hate it a little.

"You could fake being tired. For morale."

"We don't get tired like humans do."

"Must be nice." Every bruise I collected in Vienna has its own pulse tonight, and the strap of my bag has worn a groove into my shoulder I'll feel for a week. I keep three steps behind him on purpose. Far enough to bolt. Close to see his hands.

He stops at a gate that used to be iron and is now mostly rust, hanging off one hinge. Beyond it, the monastery sits low against the hill — gray stone the color of old teeth, a bell tower with no bell, windows that are just holes now. A garden once. I can see the bones of it: dead hedges, a fountain choked with leaves, a stone saint snapped off at the knees, his face worn smooth.

"Charming," I say. "Real honeymoon spot."

"Quiet." Nico's voice drops to something I feel more than hear. "Stay behind me until I know what's awake in there."

"Awake." I let the word sit. "You're going to keep doing that. Saying things that make me want to run."

"Then run."