Page 15 of Creatures that Breathe

“Same reason you don’t use a gun,” I return sharply. “Thought I warned you not to come down here.” I keep my tone low, but hostile to match the surrounding voices, and step closer than anyone sane would dare to the Bastard of the Bratva.

The echoes of my power scatter lingering gazes, and slowly wipe his name from their memories.

The black bands of our curse repel mortals with a drugging sense of dread and doom. However, to creatures, the tattoos excite rather than terrify. The unnatural warning becomes a challenge, a glove thrown on crisp green grass. They’re hungry to prove they’re worse, deadlier. Crueler.

They aren’t.

“Find anything?” I repeat.

Lev shakes out his dark mane. “Nothing. I pretended to be an incoherent drunk. Dropped my name around. Worked too well. A crone threw anise in my hair and some gutter rats filched my watch. I chased them down here before I lost them.” Lev’s shoulder glues to mine, voice thick from shouting. “Not a total loss. No good matches tonight. Money’s with the house, so the Dryads are betting information.”

“Chire?”

“No the Dryads. Listen to this—”

“The rats,” I clarify. “Were they Chire?”

“Two,” Lev confirms.

Shit. I chew on the edge of my lip. “Blonde? Wise beyond their years?”

Lev nods. “Fingers like magnets.”

I hiss a breath. “Me too.” We exchange a sharp look and then we’re moving, shoving through creatures. Over my shoulder, I tell him, “It’s the female. She drew us here, she wants us off the map, we’re—”

“Run!”

Her voice is so out of place here. The tender lilt suggesting a proper childhood with things like tutors and lessons and studies.

At first, everyone stares at her, eyes skidding to the exit to behold the outlier, the beauty among beasts.

I take a half step back, striving to calm my racing pulse and gather my wits—attempting to play ignorant. Until she calls, “What are you doing? Don’t just stand there. Get over here. Hurry!”

I step forward. Lev growls, grabbing to pull me back. A blinding spotlight pins him.

“Next in the ring,” the showrunner speaks like a snare drum, winding into a big finale. “The Annihilator will take on …” He stumbles, lips moving in silence before the notecard in his hand bursts to flame. “Get your wallets out, my friends. The Blackguard have come to bleed.”

No hiding anymore.

I haul Lev forward by the front of his shirt, urgency surging.

Thirty feet away, Leni’s holding open the door, eyes wide, waving her arm.

The spotlight slides to me. Sticks.

The showrunner shouts, “Grab him!”

It’s immediate. The pounce of bodies.

“Not. Him,” Lev snarls, panicking, swinging out at the incoming creatures.

Boots thunder against the floor, hands slam into me, aggressive and angry, Lev’s talking in Russian, saying things like take me, not him.

I catch Leni’s gaze across the room and dye the pages of her file black.

Enemy.

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