Page 49 of The Serpent's Bride
Mick walked in front of her, holding his gun down at his side. He was older than John and Smiley by a few years but might be related to them both. A brother, maybe? He also looked like he had seen some serious shit. A scar ran down over his cheek and into his lip, and when he talked, he was missing a few teeth on one side.
“You want to know so badly? Fine. We’ve put in the call to the Nostroms. They have until midnight tonight to walk in here to negotiate cash for your safe release, or else they can come get you in a black bag. They come, and we blow them to the ancestors. But if theydon’t?Well…something you ought to know ’bout us Iltanis, whether we’re fae or human.”
Mick lifted the pistol and placed the end of it squarely into the middle of her forehead.
“We don’t make idle threats.”
Nadi sighed.
No.
That was something the Iltanis very much did not do.
It was settled.
Either she died. Or they died. Now, she just had to figure out the small matter ofhowshe was going to get out alive. No pressure. “What time is it?”
Mick dropped the gun, snorting in a half-laugh at her dismissal of the gun against her forehead. “Eleven thirty.”
No pressure at all.
FOURTEEN
It had taken Nadi twenty minutes to come up with a plan.
It was ashitty plan.
But it was the only one she had.
The reason it was an awful plan was because it relied on her three captors being both niceandkind of stupid. They seemed decent enough, for underworld types, but as to whether they were stupid…she was about to find out.
“Excuse me?” She shifted in her chair. “I know this is—I know this really doesn’t matter right now, given the state of things, and all, but I really need to pee.”
Mick groaned.
“Look, I know! I’m about to die, one way or another, and I’msorry,but—today has been really terrible, and I really have to pee, and I’ve been holding it forhours,and I’ve been trying to be polite and understanding about this whole thing—” Rambling on purpose, she shifted again and let out a whine.
“Mick,” John muttered. “C’mon. Let her have some dignity. She hasn’t done nothing to be a pain.”
I promise I’ll kill you quickly, John.Poor boy.
“Fine! Fine.” Mick threw his hands up in the air. “Take her around the corner. Let her piss in the sewer hole.”
Oh, thank the deep gods! Relief and hope flooded Nadi, and she let out a breath. Luckily, the men in the room just took it as a woman thankful she was going to be able to empty her bladder. Not someone who was going to make a break for freedom.
John walked up behind her and undid the ropes around her wrists. Bringing her hands around in front of her, she rubbed them and smiled up at him in honest-to-goodness thanks. She’d have nasty bruises in the morning if she lived that long.
The Iltani had a pistol in his hand and gestured with it for her to get up and start walking. She did so without complaint and glanced back at him a few times to ensure that she was going in the right direction. He directed her out of the room and around a corner to a smaller area where they must once have hung pigs to cut their throats. There was a large sewer grate in the center of the floor where all the gore and muck would drain into the underground and into the Wild below. Humans loved to throw their garbage into the abyss and forget about those who had to live with it.
“Go on, then.” John gestured at her with his gun.
She frowned at him. “Do you mind turning your back?” Curling her shoulders in a little, she tried to make herself look as small and helpless as possible. Just a bride, abducted on her wedding day. Torn, scratched, and bloody from a cut on her arm and her leg. Harmless. Weak.
The Iltani blinked, sighed, and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
Cracking her neck from one side to the other, she changed shape. She picked the largest, toughest, meanest person she’d met in recent memory.
Ivan.
