It takes several long moments before I realize Grace hasn’t responded. I look over to find her staring off into the middle distance. “Grace?”
“Just thinking,” she says slowly. “Did you reject the bargain?”
“He’s coming tomorrow to collect his answer.” It speaks of long experience that he gives his marks time to consider the offer. It’s easy enough to reject something with such a high cost, but given enough time to realize how few options you have? Seven years begins to sound much more reasonable. “It’s not going to matter. I might be willing to pay the price of time, but I won’t pay with our lives.”
“We’ll think of something.” She still sounds strange, distant, as if her mind if jumping forward a thousand times faster than mine.
Considering how woozy I feel, that’s not saying much. I finish my cracker and set the package down, waiting for my stomach to decide if it will hold. I don’t have high hopes. Nothing stays down. I press my hand to my neck where Rylan bit me in the dream. It doesn’t feel any different, but I can’t get the memory out of my head. Even if my blood didn’t suddenly become poisonous, my vampires won’t agree to drink from me when they see how haggard I look. I hardly have blood to spare at this point.
“We keep saying that, but no solutions are magically appearing.” I look down at my stomach. If I had my magic under control… If I could even access it…
Then I think about how fierce Malachi was at the thought of my being pregnant. That was before it even happened. I press my hand to my stomach. If I lose them… My brain tries to shy away from the thought, but I force myself to power through. If I lose them, this baby might be my only connection to them.
Selfish thought. Horrible in so many ways. I still can’t shake it.
I squint at the sky lightening through the cracks in the curtains. “What time is it?”
“Early. Five.”
Five? I slept through the night, even if I hardly feel rested at all. That seems to be happening more often than it’s not. No matter how many hours I sleep, I still wake exhausted. I shake my head slowly. “Wait a minute. It’s tomorrow. That means Azazel—”
The lights go out.
“Fuck!” Grace scrambles for the lamp on the nightstand between our beds. It clicks, but the light doesn’t come on. “What the hell?”
“Little hunter.” Azazel’s voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I twist, trying to see, but even a vampire needs a little light to see. A dhampir needs more yet, and there is none to be had in this room.
“Little seraph.” His breath tickles the shell of my ear. “Did you think to trap me?”
Fear surges through me. Azazel has always been scary, but it’s nothing compared to what he is now. I try to swallow past the need to scream. “No. No one’s trying to trap you.”
“And yet you are here with her.”
“Not for that!” I can’t guarantee Grace isn’t here for that. She’s overly interested in Azazel and has good reason to be. She wants answers about her mother. Would she try to kill him, even if it meant I failed?
I don’t know.
“Do you know what I do to people who try to cross me?”
I can’t move, can’t think. Panic bleats through me, as worthless as the ever-present exhaustion weighing me down. It builds and builds, a rising tide that washes away all rational thought. “Stop!”
Flames lick at the air around me, Malachi’s power manifesting out of my pure desperation. The flames are nowhere near as strong as I’ve summoned in the past, but they’re enough to break the unrelenting dark. I get a glimpse of a monster crouching behind Grace, massive shoulders and arms, horns like a bull coming from either side of its head.
No, no it.
Him.
Azazel.
My flames go out, but this time the darkness only last a moment. The light at the bedside table flickers on, weakly doing battle with the shadows seeming to gather in every corner of the room. And there Azazel is, once again wearing his human skin, standing at the space between the ends of our beds, his hands in the pockets of his slacks. His eyes flare red, not quite managing to keep things under wraps. “Explain yourselves. Quickly.”
There’s no explicit threat tacked onto the end of that sentence, but there doesn’t need to be. It hangs in the air, thicker than smoke.
I exchange a look with Grace. She seems shaken but determined in a way that does nothing to reassure me. If she attacked Azazel, neither of us will survive the next few minutes. “Don’t do anything foolish,” I snap.
Her gaze flicks my way and she tenses. “You took my mother.”