Page 9 of Slayer

CHAPTER

THREE

“I should have just let them kill her. Why did I stick out my neck for some lost-born?” A familiar male voice growled across the room.

The words cut through the darkness before the pain did. Sound came first. Then pressure. Then the dull, sickening ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat at the base of my skull.

I groaned, peeling open my eyes to see Asher frantically rifling through a pillbox. I reached up to touch the dull throb at the base of my skull where he’d hit me and hissed.

My vision swam, the ceiling above me nothing but a blur of nicotine-stained white and flickering shadows. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, dry and bitter, like I had bitten down on copper. Every breath felt difficult in my lungs as awareness slowly clawed its way back into my body.

I had moved onto my side to attack Asher when his gaze snapped up to mine as the tip of his sword pressed to my neck. “Draw blood on me again and I’ll cut your head off. I am trying to save your life, you idiot.” He looked serious and injured. The scratches I’d made on his cheek were deep and freely bleeding.

The cold kiss of steel anchored me in place. One inch. That was the distance between my throat and death. My muscles locked, instinct screaming at me to fight, to roll, to strike first. But the look in his eyes stopped me cold. Not rage, not fear, but survival and pain.

“Do you have a clotting disorder or something?” I asked.

The words came out rougher than I intended, my voice scraped raw from unconsciousness and adrenaline.

He shot me a glare that had my next retort dying in my throat, but he also lowered his weapon. I sat up slowly, head throbbing as I reached up to rub it and scanned the room for exit points. I was in a dingy motel room with one bed and orange shag carpet. The navy-blue drapes were pulled shut, and the clock read twenty-five minutes past midnight. I’d been unconscious for over an hour by my guess.

The room smelled like old smoke and industrial cleaner. The kind of place that charged by the hour and never replaced the blankets. My back pressed against the cheap headboard, the mattress sagging beneath my weight. The single lamp cast a jaundiced glow over peeling wallpaper and a battered dresser with one crooked drawer.

I stood slowly, and my pulse raced as I cataloged the space. One door. One window. Both bad options.

Asher was fully involved with searching through the metal pill case, and it was a perfect time to bolt from the bed of the hotel room to the door. I steeled myself, ready to make a run for the door, when I saw him pull out a small pill. But it wasn’t a pill. It was more like a flat circle wafer, thin and translucent with a pearl sheen. But that wasn’t what stopped me in my tracks. The symbol on the wafer was. My heart hammered in my chest as I looked at the X with a thick line going through the middle.

The world narrowed to that shape. My breath hitched, lungs locking as recognition slammed into me with more force than the blow to my head ever had.

I’d seen it before. Carved onto the arms of my infant body.

The memory rose unbidden. Pale fresh skin marred in dark black circles and dots and triangles with lines. I had spent my entire life pretending they were meaningless.

He went to put it into his mouth when my hand snaked out and grasped his wrist.

My fingers closed around him before my brain caught up, grip desperate and unthinking. His skin was warm. Solid.

My eyes met his, and I knew if I didn’t play this right, he would kill me. He looked absolutely pissed off.

The air between us felt charged, stretched thin as wire. His jaw clenched, muscles jumping beneath my hand.

“What’s that symbol?” I asked. “I’ve seen it before.”

His expression shifted. Not shock. Not confusion. Something different. Something guarded.

He frowned, yanking his wrist from my grasp, and dropped the wafer on his tongue. I waited for him to zone out, pass out, get high, but instead, the bloody scratches on his face⁠—

They knit together before my eyes.

Skin sealed. Flesh smoothed. The scabs vanished like they had never been there at all.

My breath caught in my throat as the last trace of injury disappeared, leaving behind unmarked skin and a truth I was not ready to face.

I blinked.

I blinked again.

I rubbed my eyes, holding them closed for five seconds, and opened them.