Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
The three of them got clear of the grate and looked around.
They were in the maintenance ravine, just as Severin had thought. It was a narrow cut between black stone ridges running under a sky the color of old bruises. Far above, the crystalline spires of the city glimmered faintly through drifting mist. In the distance, barely visible through the haze, stood the communications tower—a tall, skeletal structure rising from the ridge like a broken needle.
It looked much farther than two kilometers.
Cassandra must have thought the same thing, because she stared at it and then at Severin.
“That’s where we’re going?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Through zombie country.”
“Yes.” He nodded again.
“With my arm glowing, Ravik only half-cured, and you carrying some kind of bite-delivered orgasm medicine in your fangs.”
Severin looked at her. When put that way, it did sound absurd. But there was no other way.
“Yes,” he said again, at last.
Cassandra nodded slowly.
“Great. Just checking.”
Ravik lifted his shock blade and rolled his shoulders.
“Come on—we need to fucking move.”
Severin studied him in the gray light. The Beast Kindred looked strong— almost fully himself—but there was a faint haze in his eyes and tension in his jaw.
Luckily, Cassandra was right beside him, her scent still stabilizing him.
Severin’s altered essence pulsed behind his fangs, demanding use, demanding delivery, demanding that he finish what he had started.
But Ravik still wouldn’t take the bite and even if he would, this wasn’t the place or the time. They need to be someplace safe—someplace where, even if his bite and the cure overpowered the ones he bit—they wouldn’t be helpless and vulnerable to the zombie hordes.
Severin swallowed his fear and frustration, forcing both down into the hard place where he kept everything he couldn’t afford to feel.
“All right,” he said. “We move fast, we stay quiet, and no one breaks formation.”
Ravik glanced at him.
“And no one gets left behind.”
The old words made Severin’s heart thud. It was something Ravik had said to him in half a dozen war zones, usually right before doing something reckless and heroic and deeply inconvenient.
“No one gets left behind,” Severin echoed.
Cassandra looked between them, her expression softening despite the fear in her eyes.
She seemed about to say something but just then a muffled explosion shook the grate behind them, followed by the shrieks of the Infected below.
Severin tightened his grip on his pulse pistol and started toward the communications tower with Cassandra between them and Ravik at her back. The bunker was lost, the cure was untested, and the argument they still needed to have hung between him and Ravik like a blade.
But for now, survival would have to come first.
43
CASSIE
Cassie had thought the bunker was terrifying when she first got there…she’d been wrong.
The bunker had been narrow and cold and full of strange Visskous equipment, yes. It had smelled like metal, old air, antiseptic, alien food, and the kind of science Severin seemed to think made perfect sense even when it involved glowing honey samples and bite-delivered orgasm medicine. But it had also had walls…thick walls. Not to mention doors, locks and a ceiling that didn’t’ show the bruise-colored sky above Visslick Prime or the jagged black ridges on either side of them, stretching away into the mist.
Out here, there was nothing between them and the Infected but distance, darkness, and two very large Kindred warriors who were both acting like they were perfectly capable of fighting off an entire planet full of zombies.
Which was at least reassuring.
Cassie walked between Ravik and Severin through the narrow ravine, trying not to slip on the wet black stone beneath her bare feet. The stones hurt her soles and the air smelled awful—rot and ash and something sour that made the back of her throat want to close up. Every breath tasted wrong—like she was inhaling the remains of a world that had died months ago and was rotting away.
The communications tower rose in the distance, thin and crooked against the gray sky. Cassie couldn’t help thinking it looked impossibly far away.
“Tell me again that’s less than two kilometers away,” she said, gripping the charge baton in both hands.
“It is less than two kilometers,” Severin said from ahead of her.
“Now tell me it’s going to feel like less than two kilometers,” she begged.
“I’m sorry but it’s not going to feel like less than two kilometers,” was the Blood Kindred’s implacable reply. “Not in this situation.”
Cassie shot a glare at his broad back.
“You could have lied.”
“I could have,” he said, glancing back at her. “But I didn’t think this was the best time to begin a pattern of false reassurance.”
Behind her, Ravik gave a low grunt that might have been amusement.
“Sev doesn’t lie well,” he remarked.
“Good to know,” Cassie said. “Though honestly, right now I would accept a few comforting lies. Something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, Cassandra, there are definitely no flesh-eating lizard zombies hiding behind those rocks.’”