Page 41 of Creatures that Breathe

She blinks big hoarfrost eyes at me. “Right now?”

“Unless you have a reason to keep it from me.”

I can’t look at her, don’t want to see the hurt when she realizes my insinuation. I scan the detritus blown down the block. Spot an abnormally large body on the ground. Motionless.

Lev.

I lurch for him and stagger. My knee is shattered. The tendon, the bone. I suck down a laugh. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be.

Gruffly, I tell Leni, “Hold on to me.” I pin her hand to the strap of my holster under my jacket, and hobble across the street, teeth clenched.

When I get to Lev, I force him onto his back, careful to brace his neck. He’s black and blue and swollen, but the gouge in his throat is already cinching, healing.

I drop my head to my chin, relief rushing through me a second time. “Thank—”

He explodes in a blur of motion.

I have only enough time to angle Leni out of Lev’s range before explosive dark energy jumps to my fingertips and I catch a sledgehammer to the face.

I crash backward, barely dodging Lev’s next swing with a roll. No chance to catch my breath before three hundred pounds of mafia launches at me.

Fueled by unseen power, he snarls, grappling for a vicious hold. Each strike is precise and potent. Meant not to weaken but incapacitate.

He wants a head for a pike.

I don’t want to fight my best friend.

Straining against instinct, I banish the shadows, throwing them off like water in a sinking boat. My power roils in my blood, lashing with barbed wire, making its displeasure known.

“Lev!” I shout, ducking a fist, tasting dirty blood.

Our breaths are harsh and labored. We don’t have time for this.

He gets me in the teeth. My lip tears.

We clash and grapple, and when he pins me to the ground, I kick him off, knee wrenching. “Stop!” I holler, trying to reach him. “Mikhailov, godsdammit! It’s me!”

The sheer desperation in my voice brings Lev to an uneasy pause.

I push my palm to my freshly cracked rib. “You know me,” I snap, zoned in on his fists, prepared for round two. “The tattoos aren’t because I’m a fan.”

Slow, and cruel, the truth slinks back to him, faint glimmers of the past century.

I never know how much he remembers.

How he used to reach over and squeeze my shoulder when I provided war altering information in the king’s study. How he used to fight Zeke to switch night watch shifts so we’d be together. The countless times he’s thrown me to the mat only to stick his hand out for me, eyes twinkling as he yanked me up. How we clung together when Calydon died. How he shuddered in my arms, and how I gripped him tighter.

The apple in his throat bobs, shining under a blaze. Pressure builds in my chest. He remembers.

Neither one of us says sorry, for the same reason no mortal apologizes for their hunger or exhaustion. My shadows, his wrath, they’re simply desperate functions of our survival.

“Finally,” Lev croaks, shutting the distance between us as he rakes ash from his hair. He has two sunken black eyes, and his forehead is stitching together around an embedded shard of glass. “Thought you were staying close.”

Which is why he had. “I was. But our plans changed, we—” I stop talking. Turn a full circle. Where is she?

Urgency at an all time high, I call, “Leni!” Spin again, as if pink commonly blends in with wreckage. She’s gone. I turn to Lev, “We have to find her.”

He smacks a palm into my chest to halt my charge. Dark gaze darting wildly, voice unusually calm, he orders, “Let her go.”

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