Page 18 of Never Run from an Immortal

Zeke swallowed again.

Rae’s PAD chimed, and she made a scene of reading the notification discreetly, eyes widening as she took in the message. “Better hurry. Vale’s asking me where I am.” It wasn’t Aidan. It was Nim, sending a selfie of her and Reed, Nim’s eyes glassy with whatever they’d been indulging in. Weed if Rae had to guess. Reed had that look in his eyes as he stared down at her friend, that look that was far too telling. The lights from the fairground rides at the docks lit up their faces, Nim’s smile as soft as Reed’s.

The Fae shifted beside her. “They—” he started, but a quick glance about the room told Rae no one around them was paying any attention. Even if they were, she’d slipped another of hermarket charmsaround their booth anyway. Best to take precautions. She tapped her knee against his, offering him some reassurance. “They’re taking a piece of every Vampire house and testing it on humans and Fae,” he said quietly, fiddling with the tension in his prosthetic hand, fingers flexing open and closed.

Rae had guessed as much the minute she’d seen the vials. It surprised her, really, that some sick human hadn’t come up withthe idea sooner. A group of Hooves cheered at the bar, one of them hanging upside down on a stool and downing a bottle of something green. Nasty shit. Beside him, a Shifter choked, his friends laughing as he fell in a heap on the floor.

She’d forgotten what Friday nights at the Ram were like—another on the list of venues she tried to avoid. Not only were the clientele young and reckless, but none of them made the kind of money worth pickpocketing, and that meant they were of absolutely no use to her. She turned her attention back to Zeke. “What’s the purpose of the tests? What do they hope to achieve?”

“To create something better.” The Fae eyed his glass, a frown pinching his features.

“To tip the scales,” Rae murmured, watching the way he slumped over his ale.

Zeke nodded.

Rae thanked the waiter as he dropped off her drinks. “Another two in about”—a quick glance at Zeke—“twenty minutes?”

The male laughed, tapped her order into his PAD, and left them to it.

“Torrin?” she asked Zeke, eyeing her first glass of visk. Another nod. Goddess, he was a male of few words. “And which human faction?”

“The ISA, I think.”

In Support of All, the acronym stood for. Though Rae hadn’t exactly seen any evidence of that. Still, of the three human factions currently operating throughout the city, it didn’t surprise Rae that the ISA would be the ones to work with Torrin, the Fae with a greasy hair problem and an inclination to start fights with Vampire Lords. Nor was it a surprise to her that Torrin was stepping on Elred’s toes, since the murmurs suggesting the Fae king was close to meeting his end had become more frequent lately.

“Was Vale tested?” She thought of the way it had taken five Fae to take him down, the way he’d fought against whatever they’d injected into him with the savagery of a Fae in their animal form. A wild beast, far from the tamed Lord he’d been at her side in the moments before.

A shake of Zeke’s head. “No. He was due to be.”

“I saw him injected with something.”

“Just a tranquiliser courtesy of Calder. The Witch he slaughtered.”

Rae didn’t let her disgust show. Calder could have been spared—should have—

“And the rest of the test vials?”

“Destroyed.”

“Oh?”

Zeke’s brown eyes slid to hers. “Also courtesy of your colleague.”

So Aidan had some brain cells in his thick skull then. She’d considered asking him to destroy the facility but didn’t want to muddy their agreement. Didn’t want to give him any loopholes in what she knew was already a weak deal. She was just banking on his desperation for him to follow through.

Rae sipped at her visk in silence, contemplating in which direction the night should go. Zeke stole glances at her from time to time, but he didn’t make any attempt at conversation, and that suited Rae just fine.

The Fae wasn’t as young as she’d first thought the night before. Now, beside him in slightly better lighting, the scattering of freckles across his nose close enough to count, Rae could see he was nearer her age, perhaps even a little older. He ran the prosthetic hand through his tight red curls, the colour a shade darker than Nim’s, and pushed his glasses up his nose as if it were a nervous habit. He was a little more skittish than his fellow Hooves, and Rae supposed it might have been charminghad it not been for the very vivid memory of his work-time entertainment choices and the crusted tissues scattered over his desk.

“Why did you meet me tonight?” she asked after finishing her visk.

Zeke blew out a breath and glanced around them again, beyond their booth. “Because what they’re doing is not what I signed up for. It’s sick. I hate Vampires as much as the next guy, but the effects the tests had on the subjects… it will haunt me for the rest of my life. Vale did me a favour smashing that place to shit. It gave me an excuse to get the fuck out of there.”

The truth, all of it. She didn’t need Aidan’s Provident abilities to know that. The Fae was terrified. “What about your data, all your files?”

“What about them?”

“Where do you keep your backup?”

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