“Warehouse ahead,” Misha growls, wiping blood off his blade with his sleeve. “Two blocks.”
I’m here, Lisichka. Hold on.
The last block is the bloodiest. Giselda’s people swarm us, dozens of them howling like animals. My soldiers hit them head-on. Steel screams as blades meet blades. Gunfire rattles and screams choke the air.
I push through the center, carving a path with my knife. One slash, two, a thrust up under the jaw. Blood rains warmly on me, my boots slipping in it, but I don’t falter from the fight.
One of her soldiers tries to crawl away, but I stomp his spine until it snaps. Another begs for his life, but I cut his tongue out and leave him gurgling in the gutter.
Every kill is a prayer. Every corpse is an offering. Every heartbeat I silence is a message that I’m coming.
Nothing will stop me.
Nothing will keep me from her.
From them.
The warehouse looms black against the storm, the windows boarded and doors chained. A scythe has been painted in red across the metal, dripping down it like it was drawn with someone’s blood.
With Giselda, it is likely.
I gesture and my men fan wide, taking positions. Misha stands at my side, breathing steady, calm in a way only he can be when the world is about to burn.
“Inside?” he asks.
“She’s there,” I say, my voice certain because I can fucking feel her.
The bond is my beacon now. Her heartbeat pounds against it, terror and fury both, the rhythm of my own violence.
“I feel her,” I snarl.
Misha nods once. “Then let’s take her back.”
I step forward, press my palm to the warehouse door, and whisper to the darkness inside me.
“Let’s show them why they fear us.”
Then I draw my knife, signal the charge, and kick the fucking door in.
thirty-three
Konstantin
Steelgiveswaybeneathmy boot when I kick in the door. The moment they burst open, the scent of blood and sulfur hits me like a freight train. My boots echo off the stone floors, the screams of dying men bouncing off the walls as my soldiers decimate Giselda’s people.
The Bogeyman has come to collect, and I’m not leaving without her.
Cressida’s fear cuts into me like a barbed wire, but it’s also the compass that leads me straight to her.
The compound bleeds around us as new bodies find company with old ones on the ground. My vision sharpens, enhanced by adrenalin and bloodline power, the world around me slowing to a crawl. I can smell the gunpowder, the ash from the fires outside, the tang of concrete soaked in sins.
I charge through the bodies blocking my way to her, my blade always on the move. Giselda’s people fall at my feet, and through it all, I wear a fucking macabre smile as I bathe in their blood.
I am what death looks like when it’s in a fucking hurry.
At the end of the warehouse are a set of double doors, and I crash through them, straight into hell.
Chains hang rusted from rafters, their scaffolding looming like the bones of the people she’s killed here.
