Passcode, dummy.
As he caught his breath, he saw in the beam of the flashlight that there was a passcode pad to the left, and he launched himself at it. Entering the digits, he slammed that pound key—
On the far side, he heard with his keen ears the sound of a fight.
This was good. It meant she was alive.
He shoved against the panel. Nothing gave way.
Entering the code again, he banged with his fist so she might hear that he was coming for her—
The lock did not budge. The code he had did not work.
As Ahmare slid belly-down over the floor, she felt the chair leg go into the meat of her shoulder.
The penetration was so deep, her momentum stopped as the wooden stake pinned her in place to the linoleum.
Even through the pain, she stayed focused on the pearl, reaching, straining. Inches, she had only inches—
“Is that all you’re after?” the Dhavos said through heaving breaths. “Chalen’s worthless beloved?”
Thunderous impact. Over on the far wall. Like someone had hit it with their entire body.
Duran, she thought.
There was a sudden hush, as if the father had recognized the son’s presence. And then . . . an inhale. A long, slow inhale.
“Dearest Virgin Scribe,” the Dhavos whispered with reverence.
“I thought you only believed in yourself,” she muttered.
Another impact, so loud she could have sworn Duran was going to come through the plaster.
“No,” Duran’s father said. “Your blood . . . so long it has been for me. A proper feeding . . .”
Pounding now, like Duran was hitting the other side with his fists.
“He’s coming for you,” she vowed grimly. “Let me go, and run for your life. I’ve seen what he’s like when he attacks, and I promise you, you will not live through it.”
The chuckle above her was evil. “I’m not worried. That’s a steel door. He will not make it through—so we have plenty of time here together to get acquainted.”
All at once, the stake was removed and she was freed—from the floor at least. But before she could twist around and get at him, he gripped the back of her neck and pushed down so hard, she thought her face was going to be crushed—
Sucking. On the wound.
The bastard was taking her blood.
Ahmare felt a wave of power come into her, and suddenly, it didn’t matter that he was a male and he was strong and he weighed more than she did. Planting her palms, she did the push-up of all push-ups, lifting her chest and the body on top of her off the floor. So great was her anger at the taking, she got her knees up under them both as well.
And then she let out a roar and threw Duran’s father off her, sending him flying into the stacks of chairs.
She was on him in a heartbeat, attacking with her own fangs, taking a hunk out of the side of his neck—except he didn’t fight her. He went limp and laid himself open, his eyes rapturous as he looked at her, her reaction captivating him in an unholy way.
Yeah, she would cure him of that one.
Ahmare kneed that bastard in the nuts so hard, he sat up like a schoolboy, cupping what she’d nailed, his eyes popping from pain.
She wanted to keep going at him.
But she had to get the beloved.
Stumbling, slipping in her own blood where it had pooled on the floor, she went back to where he’d stabbed her. Where the fuck was it?
She checked over her shoulder. The Dhavos was where she’d left him, curled in and coughing.
Getting down on her hands and knees, she patted around the mess on the floor. It must have been kicked aside. Into the chaos of chairs.
“Goddamn it—”
The crash came from overhead, part of the ceiling breaking free, something enormous dropping through and bringing with it all kinds of ductwork.
Duran landed like a superhero, boots planted, body ready to fight, half of a section of venting falling off his huge shoulder and clanging as it hit the floor.
The sound he made was that of a T. rex, shaking the very foundation of the compound.
Behind him, his father jumped up and disappeared, leaving through a hole in the wall that appeared like a hunting dog summoned, the escape closing up in his wake as if it had never been.
“Your father!” She pointed across the room. “He went through there!”
28
DURAN’S BRAIN TOLD HIM to bolt after his father. Get his revenge. Tear the male up into pieces and eat some of them.
But his body refused to move the instant he caught the scent of Ahmare’s blood in the air. “You’re hurt!”
She dropped down to the ground. Like she had passed out.
“You’re dying—”
“The pearl!” She looked up over her shoulder. “I’m trying to find the beloved! It fell out while we were fighting—”
“He stabbed you!”
They were both yelling in the silence, her while she patted around, him while standing over her. And she became more frantic the more she looked without finding it while he got more enraged.
Duran knelt and captured her hands, bringing her focus to him. With a pounding heart, he measured her pupils, her skin tone, her breathing. “You’re bleeding.”
“I can’t feel anything—”
“You’re in shock—”
“I have to find the pearl!” Her voice vibrated with urgency. “I can’t go back without it. Go after your father!”
Duran looked across the storage area.
A ragged path had been cut in stacks of chairs, like a body had careened through them. Streaks of red painted the floor. There was a trail of blood drops as well, one that ended at the wall.
His father. Escaping.
“Go,” she said urgently. “I’ll find the pearl and get out. You told me how—follow the spokes, not the curved corridors, and I have the code that works. If you go after him now, you can catch him—maybe through the ceiling again?”
He thought of his mother’s bones on that cot, and the way her skull had seemed to look at him.
“Duran, go—it’s what you came here to do. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes returned to Ahmare. Blood from that shoulder wound was dripping out the bottom of her windbreaker. What the fuck had his father stabbed her with? The hole in that light, waterproof fabric at her shoulder was too big for a dagger.
“I’ll be okay,” she repeated with sudden calm. Along the lines of that being the only outcome she could contemplate.
For as long as he could remember, he had always assumed his life would come down to one moment, one crucial, all-encompassing moment . . . where he plunged a knife into his father’s black heart. Or snapped the male’s neck. Or shot him in the face.
The method of killing didn’t matter, and in his fantasies, it was often different. But that point of no return, when death took his sire unto Dhunhd, that was always going to be Duran’s defining moment, what his life’s toil boiled down to, his seminal event.
It was a shock to realize he’d been wrong about all that.
His defining moment actually came down to whether he helped a female he’d known for barely twenty-four hours . . . or left her to fulfill the destiny he had declared was his own.
It turned out to be no contest.
Duran dropped down beside her. “You search that way, I’ll head over here. We’re not leaving until we find the beloved.”
She hesitated only a moment, but he couldn’t read her expression. He was too busy patting around on the pale linoleum, trying to find a pearl that was almost the exact color of the flooring, in a room where there was debris all around and blinking fluorescent lights overhead.
He didn’t think about his father. There would be time for that later.
Right now, he cared only about the pearl. Only what Ahmare needed to get her brother free.
Sweeping his vision from left to right, using his hands to feel around, he moved fast but with care, searching . . . searching . . . searching. When he came to a tossed wooden chair, he picked it up and put it behind himself. And then he arrived at a hole in the floor.
A place where something had been driven into the linoleum.
Ahmare’s blood marked the point of impact. And there was more of her blood all around, already drying, making him think of the deaths in the arena. But he had to reroute from that. He needed to pull right the fuck out of thinking how she had been hurt or his head was going to explode, the tension between his love for this female and his—
His love.
For this female.
Duran glanced over at her. Her dark head was bent, her fresh blood leaving a trail even as she pressed on, her determination so fierce, he was convinced that she could lift the whole mountain they were under to locate what she was after.
He loved her. Probably since the moment she had come into that dungeon.
Take out the “probably.”
The dark spices that had come out of him upon her arrival in the dungeon should have been his first clue. But whatever the increments had been, now was the realization—
With a shift in his torso, he put his hand down to catch a tilt in his weight.
A smooth nub registered under his palm.
“I got it!”
Ahmare flipped around as Duran shouted in triumph, and her wounded shoulder let out a holler—not that she cared. “Thank God!”
They met in the middle of the storage room, reaching for each other as he held the beloved between his forefinger and thumb. She kissed him without thinking, and he returned the contact without hesitation, their mouths meeting in a rush of relief.
As she pulled back, she frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Duran just stood there, staring at her. Then he seemed to snap out of whatever place he had gone to in his head and pressed the pearl into her hand. “I’ll show you where to go. So I know you get out of here.”
The reality that they were parting hit her as he took her over to the door. She still didn’t have a solution for what was going to happen when she got back to Chalen’s alone. She supposed she’d thought Duran would come with her now, and they could take down the conqueror together. But he had scores to settle here.