Page 67 of Maksym

I looked away from his mouth.

“He came onto the bed,” I said. “He grabbed my hair and turned my head. He wanted the throat. Of course he did. They always wanted the throat when they wanted you to know they could end you.”

My voice nearly changed. I forced it back into line.

“He bit.”

No one breathed.

“The bite hurt,” I said. “He did not use venom. They never did; I know that now. Pain went white behind my eyes. That helped. Pain can make the body stupid, but it can also make it simple. There was only one thing left to do.”

I lifted my hand and placed two fingers against my own neck, just at the jugular.

“I drove the spike into him here. I used as much force as I could. I didn’t know if his vein would rupture like mine or not. I didn’t know if vampires had some trick with organs. I didn’t care. I used both hands and everything left in me.”

The sound came back. Not his scream. Not first. The wet shock of wood entering flesh.

His mouth tore away from my throat. Blood went everywhere. Mine, his, I did not know. He made a sound I had never heard from a vampire before. Surprise. Not pain first. Surprise. Like the universe had insulted him by permitting me to act.

“I don’t know how badly I hurt him,” I said. “I didn’t stay to check. He fell off the bed. He grabbed at the wood. I kicked him in the face.”

Remy’s laugh this time was quiet and feral.

“I fell too,” I said. “My legs weren’t working properly. I hit the tile. I crawled to the door.”

The lock. God, the lock.

The slippery metal under bloody fingers. The impossible complexity of something simple. The certainty that he would rise behind me. That Lucian would appear. That the world would take back the one breach I had made in it.

“My hands were wet,” I said. “I couldn’t turn the lock at first. I kept wiping my fingers on the carpet, but there was no carpet. Tile everywhere. I finally used the sheet. Wrapped it around my hand. Turned the deadbolt. Then the knob. Then I was in the hallway.”

I looked down at the table.

“I expected more guards.”

“There were none?” Taras asked.

“None that I saw. Lucian’s arrogance saved me more than any mercy ever did.”

Maksym’s face had gone terrible again. I continued before anyone could make another vow to me.

“The front door had a keypad and a deadbolt. I knew the code because the guard was careless and because people think if you are chained, you are not listening. I had heard the tones. I had counted them. I guessed the sequence on the second try.”

Remy smiled slowly. “Of course you did.”

“I am very good at patterns,” I said.

“I am beginning to understand that.”

“I ran.”

That was not accurate. I had not run well. But run was the legal category. Movement with intent to escape.

“I was barefoot,” I said. “The pavement was still warm. There were rocks. Broken glass. Trash behind restaurants. Music from somewhere. Men laughing near a service entrance. A delivery truck idling. Neon reflecting in puddles that smelled like beer and old oil.”

My feet remembered before I looked at them. The soles had healed now. Of course they had. My body had erased even that.

“I stayed out of the main streets when I could,” I said. “Alleys. Service lanes. Behind hotels. I moved toward the Strip because I knew Amethyst was near it, but not on it. Lucian had mocked that, too. Said you wanted proximity to human vice without lowering yourself to tourist spectacle.”