16. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Felix

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you myself.”

Rolling my eyes, I spit a little more blood on the floor and keep pacing in front of the door.

“I’m terrified . Please, hit me again and tell me how you can smell your sister on me after she’s been holding me hostage for three goddamn days.”

Rae lunges for me again, growling some sort of threat as Silas all but clotheslines him.

“I told you to knock that shit off.”

He did, and for some reason, the demon listened.

After speaking on the phone, Zia’s brother met us at my apartment in record time—which means he was already lurking around topside. He followed us inside, then sucker punched me in the jaw before trying to gut me with his bare hands.

Silas had to pull him off me, and he’s had to play referee ever since because it’s making Rae very angry that I smell like his sister.

“Tell that blood sucker to shut his fucking mouth. Hostage or not, he didn’t have to take advantage of—”

“ Don’t you fucking say it.” His throat is in my hand and I’m squeezing before he can even blink. “Everything that happened between Azizia and I post-kidnapping was nothing but consensual and actively agreed upon.” I let go as the veins in his neck start to bulge, then grab his cheeks and squeeze his lips into a fish face. “And it’s the only fucking way we’re going to find her, so if I were you, I’d be pretty goddamn grateful your sister was fed from and fucked by a vampire.”

Patting his cheek and royally pissing him off, I turn away from Azrael seconds before he disembowels me, and as soon as my back is to him, I pull a face.

What the fuck was that?

Never, and I do mean never , have I been a cocky shithead who picks fights with anyone. Not even when Davina let me loose on—

I shake my head. This isn’t like then, but it isn’t like me, either.

Sure, there was a time when I had more confidence , if you will, and far less restraint, but even then I didn’t play around the way I have been.

Playing isn’t the right word.

Or… Maybe it is because honestly, I feel a little like I’m playing with my food, and though I don’t plan on eating Zia’s brother, that’s how this feels.

It feels like it used to .

Shaking the thought from my head for a second time, I check the clock, again , as I wear a path into the linoleum floor.

I swear some days are actually longer than others.

The seconds are moving like molasses, slow as hell while they drip from the proverbial tap, sticking to every surface including each exposed inch of my skin. I can almost feel time moving at a snail’s pace and the more I focus on it, the angrier I become.

I shouldn’t have let her go alone.

I had to. Zia couldn’t have been found inside the studio with me, but sending her to the car without any sort of protection was moronic considering the situation we’ve found ourselves in.

And I should have known better.

Of all people, I know what it’s like to have a target on your back while trying to hide.

“Tell me more about Xadrian.” I don’t take my eyes off the clock but I stop directly in front of the door, waiting for the sun to set so I can kick the damn thing open and start looking for that unhinged little vixen.

“What is there to tell?” Rae grunts from behind me. “He’s dangerous, he’s a bastard, and he’s got my fucking sister. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

I fold my arms against my chest with a sigh. “He’s a warlord, right? Relatively high ranking?”

“Yes…”

“And he’s had control of the same section of Hell for a couple of centuries?”

“He has,” Azrael says slowly.

“As sadistic as they come, right?” If memory serves, anyway. “With an affinity for control and unorthodox means of gaining it?”

I hear both of them shift around behind me before the demon speaks. “Did Zia tell you this?”

Rolling my lips between my teeth, I pause and think over my answer.

It wasn’t until I fed from Azizia the second time that things started to click. Her so-called husband does have a reputation, one that made it all the way to Purgatory and intrigued Davina, but I’ve never made contact with him. I didn’t get the chance to before that half-assed truce was put into effect and that bullshit treaty was drawn up.

Demons stay in Hell, vampires stay in Purgatory, no one goes to Heaven, and the surface is sort of a gray area. Though we all know we aren’t welcome.

It was very simple, very straightforward, and within a week of signing it, Davina had me exiled.

I don’t need to share any of that with the demon currently staring daggers into the back of my head while he simmers behind me, not now. But I can tell he’d be both shocked and angered to find his sister had shared so many details with me in such a short time.

Not that finding out I’d been given sensitive information regarding Hell, or that I was relatively familiar with his homeland, would make Rae very happy, either.

So, I glance at Silas briefly, noting how close he still is to Azrael before the tread carefully flashes in his pale colored eyes, then do as that look said.

“She didn’t.”

“Then how do you—”

“Her blood.” A loud growl and what could possibly be the sound of his knuckles cracking has me rolling my eyes at Rae once again. “When we feed from someone, it’s possible for us to see their memories, their life prior to meeting them.”

“Right. Yeah, I forgot about that.”

With a frown, I turn to face them. “Pardon?”

“I’m a soldier,” Azrael says as he clears his throat, his eyes darting from mine briefly before he meets my stare. “We get briefed on history and vampires and shit..”

“Mhm.” That’s my only response because I can’t refute what he’s saying. I have no knowledge of the way demons train, and for all I do know, they could get briefed the same way we did by detailing the ins and outs of the enemy so we were prepared for anything.

I’m just not entirely sure what purpose that fact would serve considering there’s not a whole lot of time mid battle to stop and make a snack out of the opposing side.

Either way, it is true.

Feeding from Zia the second time had some of her memories creeping into my conscious thoughts, and it works as an excuse for now.

I’ve been up here so long, I have no idea what kind of relationship vampires and demons have at this point, and dredging up the past by sharing my role in a rather dark part of our shared history isn’t a great plan.

Not when Rae already wants to kill me for defiling his sister.

Especially when I intend to do it again as soon as she’s safe, and as often as she’ll allow in the future that follows.

“Do you have a plan?”

With an annoyed grunt, I scrub a hand over my face then take off my glasses and start cleaning them.

“No, not really. The fresh feeding will be helpful once we’re close to the portal, assuming there’s only one nearby?”

Azrael nods. “There isn’t another one for a few states.”

“And it’s close?”

“About two hours away by car,” Silas says, and when I arch a brow because how the hell does he know that, he adds, “It’s part of my regular patrol.”

I stare at him for a few seconds, curious as hell, but opt not to call him out. Silas and I don’t talk about his work, not anymore, and once again, I’m so far removed from everything down below I couldn’t begin to guess what the regents have him doing. All I know is how risky it is for Silas to have contact with me and that’s enough.

“Okay,” I say as I turn back to the clock. “Then the plan as of now is to find a bigger car, get to the portal, pick up Zia’s scent, and let her do the rest.”

Because she will.

All I need is her scent, the active life force thriving inside that psychotic little female, and she’ll bring me right to her.

I just have to hope the assholes who took her are too stupid to mask her scent, and too cocky to think she won’t be missed.

Unfortunately for them, her brother seems pretty fucking set on finding her, and I’m not exactly one to share.

Azizia is mine and I won’t stop until I get her back.