Page 50 of Bent Out of Shade
Zev hadn’t been there to save me from Tatiana’s homicide attempt or when Jason Maxwell of the Consortium had come after my family. In the end, his promises hadn’t mattered. My relationships with others plus my magic was what kept me safe.
And I’d keep all of us safe now.
I stepped closer to Zev, kicking a bone out of the way. “Touch anyone of mine and I will come after you with everything I’ve got.” I held up a finger for each ally I named off. “Lonestars, Ohrists, Tatiana, hell, I’ll personally rip out the perception filters of every last cop in the Vancouver Police Department to take you down. I’m done being toyed with. And that’s a promise you can count on.”
Zev blurred to his feet, slamming me up against a wall by my throat. “You bug. You presumptuous nothing. How dare you speak to me that way?”
Shadows swam over my skin, my scythe appearing in my hand, not Delilah’s, its tip pressed to the underside of his jaw.
Both of us froze.
I no longer needed my shadow to kill vampires? What a lucky day. I smiled.
His breath ruffled a lock of my hair, and while the hand that clutched my neck twitched in reminder that I was at his mercy, he held himself absolutely still as if in acknowledgment that he was also at mine.
I scraped the blade along his throat and his nostrils flared, his eyes flashing in warning. I lowered my weapon to my side.
Zev stepped back.
My heart pounded in my throat as I inched sideways to the exit, but he didn’t stop me. I held in the laughter burbling up, but a victory dance was in the very near future.
“You dare speak of a presumptuous nothing?”
My magic shattered at the words that reverberated through the room with the shrillness of a rusty saw, and I turned to the estrie with the same wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression as Zev wore.
“My progeny. A mere child, existing at my whim, forced me from Gehenna to do his bidding?” Kian advanced on Zev in jerky fits and starts. Her footfalls were muffled by the carpet, yet I felt each one shiver up through my feet.
I backed up, but I was already pressed against one of the tapestries.
Were the air not so soaked with a violent current, needing only a single word to make it spark, I’d have relished Zev’s hastily sucked in breath and how the corners of his eyes pinched tight, his eyebrows drawing together.
She cracked her neck from side to side, bones popping in a rippling sound like scales on a piano. “Do you think me so easily cornered?”
My brain screamed Run, but my feet were too heavy to move.
“No.” Zev placed his hands together in supplication. “Mistress, vampires are dying. I called you forth as our only means of survi—”
The estrie flicked her hand and Zev flew across the room, crashing into the pile of books and skidding along the cushions where he fell still.
I pressed a trembling hand against my mouth. I’d intended to get Zev off my back about spying on Eli and I’d succeeded. Allowing me to leave had been his acquiescence on the matter. He wouldn’t have come after me.
Now, however? My mouth was dry and my rubbery legs barely held my weight. I’d seen him bested. The vampire who was always so rigidly in control, in power, had been tossed aside like a rag doll, and I’d witnessed his humiliation.
Zev would kill me for it.
If Kian didn’t get me first.
The estrie rolled her arm backward over her shoulder to point at the torches in the hallway behind her with crooked fingers. “Leave.”
The grotesqueness of her movement spurred me into motion. I sprinted out the door, glancing back for one last look, but the rock panel slid closed with a thunk, and a male scream echoed through the stone.
I ran.
