Bleeder [Blood Magic, Book 1]

Chapter 24: All's Fair in Love and War

"Keel!"

"I know what you're thinking, but don't. Just get us to the van and I'll get us the rest way out, I promise."

He sounded so headstrong and sure of himself, I couldn't help believing in him. Sure, that was loony tunes, but when it came down to it, he'd never given me a reason not to – barring his tiny slips of self-control.

We fell quiet when several pairs of heavy boots clomped down the hallway beneath where we were holed up in the vent work. Neither of us dared move until their thunder had faded to silence. This wasn't the first team we'd heard patrolling the halls. Sometimes, a group of Nosferatu would even loop back, as if attempting to track us, but my blood scent was wafting out of vents all over this floor. They knew I was in here, but there was too much of me to triangulate my location. Taking the duct route had been pure brilliance.

In a way, it was a shame Keel would never become king; he probably would have been the smartest leader they'd ever had.

We crawled a bit further before he informed me we were almost there.

"We have to go up here," he explained. "Then it's a quick right, then we climb up again and go down one more passage."

Two more climbs? Really? I hated them. There was no way to navigate myself up the vertical stretches of vent so the creases in the metal edging didn't tear bloody rivulets into my feet, but I gritted my teeth and carried on, refusing to complain. If Keel could do this all battered and broken, then I had nothing to whinge about. I took some cold comfort in the fact that the Nosferatu were going to have to scrub my smell out of here.

Of course, Keel was tuning in to the fresh blood scenting the air too, his breathing becoming shallower.

"Sorry," I whispered, only half meaning it. "You should have brought me shoes."

Keel ignored my comment and kept crawling, giving me a bit of time to think about a strategy. Even though I'd been blindfolded when they'd brought me in, I remembered the metal catwalk and staircase they'd dragged me up. We'd have to traverse both to get to the main floor of the loading bay. I just hoped Keel knew which van we needed. If we ended up stumbling around lost in there, we were doomed.

By the time we made it up the final incline and reached the right grate, I needed a rest. I didn't know whether it was a result of all the physical exertion or from the magic I'd used earlier, but my arms and legs were shaking and rubbery from the strain.

"Hold up. Let's figure out a plan," I said to Keel, trying to draw his attention away from my exhaustion by refocusing it on the task at hand. He had so much hope pinned on me, disappointing him wasn't an option.

He'd saved me, gotten me this far, and now it was my turn to save him. Whatever it took. But I was going to try to be smart about it.

Finally growing up, Mills? my snarky inner voice asked, but I shooed it away. I didn't need its sarcastic running commentary, not now.

"Okay," Keel obliged. He'd been unscrewing the grate, but stopped, putting down the multi-head screwdriver next to where he'd been working, before shifting to face me.

Enough light drifted up from the hallway to cast his features in muted, moody shadows. The way they laid dark trails across Keel's face only worsened the look of the beating, providing a timely reminder about what we were about to walk into. But at least he was here to face it with me and he was still Keel, my Keel. God, I loved the sound of that.

The girls back in New York would totally eat up his effortless wildness, his rebellious cool, and his terminal aloofness – especially packaged as they were in a body toned from a lifetime of combat training. But when he laughed, and that not-quite-lost boyishness erupted across his face, dissolving all traces of Nosferatu from it, he was enthralling. In those moments, what I'd said didn't matter: I was his, a slave to his sparkling green eyes and the way my chest always felt like it was going to explode whenever he was nearby.