Page 3 of City of the Lost
“Let’s hope we took out the only Lost that managed to escape.” I rubbed my eyes. “I need sleep.”
Noir nodded. “Get some rest. It’s late.”
Almost eleven p.m., to be precise. Usually I’d be up watching old movies, but the last two days had tapped me out. Seeing Noir to the door, I locked up and then headed upstairs to bed.
* * *
A door stoodajar and light poured into the darkness. This wasn’t the way, this wasn’t right, but there was no stopping my feet. There was no going back. The door swung open, and what lay beyond rushed toward me. Death, carnage, and blood greeted me, along with screams for mercy and manic laughter that drifted on the wind like a potent stench. Powerful scaled beasts flew through the air, raining fire on the scattered groups of people on the ground. Frightened faces burned to ash in an instant, and still, the laughter echoed around me. In the distance, up high on a ridge, an emerald dragon perched. It exuded power as its startling green eyes swept over the end of the world.
“Mine,” it said. “All mine.”
I sat up slick with sweat and with that icky feeling in the pit of my stomach that accompanies a nightmare. Tendrils of the dream clung to my mind, mainly the yucky death bits, but most predominately, the evil-villain laugh that the dragon had emitted. Is this what they called work stress-related trauma? This was the fourth time in the last two weeks that I’d had a nightmare, and they were all similar—death and carnage and evil dragons. I had a serious Elora complex.
Shoving off the duvet and pulling on my robe, I headed out of the room in search of a soothing milky concoction to trick my brain into thinkingsafetyandwarmth. What would be perfect right now was one of Matron’s herbal teas. I’d have to pay her a visit and pick up some soon.
The kitchen was shrouded in darkness. I stepped over the threshold and paused, staring at the twin glowing green orbs that stared back at me from the darkness. My heart leapt into my throat to choke me with a triple-fast beat, and then my brain finally deduced what I was seeing.
I flipped on the lights. “Fucking hell, Azren, if you want to give me a heart attack, can you please do it by feeding me excessive amounts of fatty food instead of lurking in the dark?”
He grunted in response and then buried his head in his hands.
Okay, the guy was pretty nonverbal most of the time, but more so of late, and the quick glimpse I’d caught of his face showed smudges under his startling green eyes.
I padded over to the fridge. “Can’t sleep? Oh, wait, you don’t sleep.”
He huffed and raised his head. “I don’t have to, but I was bored, so I drifted off ... It wasn’t pleasant.”
Grabbing the milk, I retrieved a pan from the cupboard. “Bad dreams?”
“Nightmare. Sleep is overrated.”
“Agreed.” I poured some milk into the pan. “You want some hot cocoa?”
He glanced up in confusion.
Oh, yeah. He probably had no clue what that was. “It’s a milky drink that does wonders to chase away the lingering vestiges of bad dreams. It says so on the packet.” I held out the tub to him. “See?”
Fucking Cocoa King had hit a gold mine when they’d hit upon adding that to their promotional material, because what kid didn’t want to chase away the nightmares. Cocoa sales had tripled. Looked like it worked on adults too, ha!
He shrugged. “Sure.”
I made the cocoa in silence. We hadn’t known each other long, but being around the guy almost constantly for the better part of a month had attuned me to some of his more regular moods. This one was what I calledthe classic dark brood: bottom lip slightly pouted, brows fractionally drawn, and gaze distant. Yep, this was one of my favorites because I could so relate.
“Okay, quit stealing my thunder with the classic brooding pose. Spill. What crawled up your arse and died?”
He was silent for a long beat, no eye roll, no snarky comment about my choice of phrase. Nothing. Damn, this was bad.
He ran his hand over his face and sighed. “The lunar eclipse is approaching, and we have nothing to show my liege.” He looked right at me, and my stomach did a mini flip.
Ah, yeah. That particular worry had been giving me a dodgy curry belly the last couple of days too. Luckily for him, we didn’t share a bathroom.
I broke eye contact and carefully poured cocoa into two mugs. “It’s not like we haven’t tried,” I pointed out. “We trawled the catacombs beneath the mausoleum for two days. They’ve taken to ground somewhere else, and until they make a move, we won’t know where that is. Thanks to Valance, we still have two weeks to get something on the Shedim.”
I placed a mug in front of him and took the seat opposite, regretting it immediately when he locked gazes with me. Shadows lurked in his irises, writhing and reaching for me. Dread bloomed like a black orchid in my chest, and my pulse skipped a beat. I hated how he was able to wrench these contradictory emotions from me, a delicate balance of attract and repel. I dropped my attention to my cocoa.
“It won’t matter what efforts we’ve made.” His voice was rough, almost jagged. “She won’t care how hard we’ve tried if there are no results to show for our labors. She’ll make an example of us. I lost the dagger, the special dagger she forged just for this task. Elora doesn’t like to be disappointed.”
My heartbeat picked up, echoing his agitation. “Wait a second. She made the dagger just so you could capture Shedim? When? How did she know you’d get the chance to come this side of the border?”
