Chapter 65: Rescued

For a moment none of them moved.

The house burned with the steady, deliberate hunger of a fire that had been given fuel and permission. Beams cracked, glass burst outward in sharp pops, and heat rolled across the street in waves that made the morning air ripple. Then Mai ran forward.

Felix shouted after her, yelling about the danger and for her not to be stupid. Dean’s heavier voice joined in, but Mai did not slow down. If he was inside, every second she spent calculating was a second he didn’t have. She hit the service-side entry where the flames were less advanced, shouldered through heat that tried to peel the breath from her lungs, and went in under a half-collapsed lintel.

Smoke turned the interior into a maze of black and orange. She dropped lower, hood pulled over her nose, eyes stinging, and searched on instinct—rooms off a short corridor, a kitchen already lost, a stairwell she did not trust. She called once and got no answer that was not the fire answering for itself.

She found the cell by the smell of silver and blood under the smoke.

The figure against the wall was not Asher, it was a vampire, hung in an X of chains, body a map of open wounds and dark blood, head slumped forward until the heat and her entry made him stir.

He was beaten past ordinary endurance, barely on the near side of consciousness, and he was not Adrian. He had a taller frame, and a different face under the blood. Even though he was bruised and badly beaten, Mai still recognized the face. This was Marcel Thorne, Adrian’s elder brother. Was he the second vampire the receptionist spoke of?

Mai froze with the fire chewing at the structure above them.

Beastkin and vampires were not allies. They were polite avoidances on a good year and quiet hostilities on a bad one. Leaving him was the probably the best choice, but leaving him was also leaving the only person in this burning house who might know where Asher had been taken and whether he was still alive.

Felix and Dean found her at a run, both of them coughing, both of them stopping hard at the sight of the chains.

"That is not the human," Dean said.

"I know," Mai agreed.

Felix’s ears were flat against the heat. "We should go. The ceiling—"

"He might know where Asher is." Mai was already at the left cuff, testing the silver with a scrap of cloth wrapped around her hand. It burned through anyway. "Help me or get out."

They both stared at each other for a second, wondering if they should really be saving a Vampire. They did anyway.

Dean took the load-bearing strain when the first chain came free and Marcel’s full weight sagged forward. Felix worked the ankles with a short pry tool from his belt and a string of curses aimed at palace engineering. Mai caught the Vampire Lord under the arms when the last restraint gave, and the three of them hauled a body that should have been too heavy for a clean carry through a corridor filling with collapse.

A beam came down behind them hard enough to shake the floor. Heat blistered the edge of Mai’s cloak. Something in her shoulder seared and kept searing as they broke out into open air and staggered away from the house while the eastern side folded inward in a roar of sparks.

They did not stop in the street. Felix led them into a service lane, then another, then a longer cut that took them away from the fire’s audience toward the rented base they had used that morning. Marcel hung between Dean and Mai, boots dragging, blood leaving a trail they could not fully hide. He did not speak, he barely even breathed.

By the time they got him onto the narrow bed in the rented room, all three beastkin were marked by the rescue. Mai’s left forearm and the side of her neck were burned where the heat had found gaps in cloth, Dean’s palms were raw, and Felix had lost the tip of one ear’s fur to a falling ember and would not stop touching it.

They treated themselves with the practical speed of people who had been hurt before, then they turned to the vampire.

The silver had done more than restrain him. The wounds along his torso and limbs were inflamed in a way ordinary injury was not, edges refusing to close, blood loss still active in slow seeps. Mai cleaned what she could. Dean held him still when unconscious muscle jumped under the cloth, but none of their efforts looked sufficient.

Felix stood back, arms folded, eyes on the Vampire Lord’s color.

"He needs blood," Felix said. "His kind does not come back from this on water and bandages. Not at this depth."

Mai and Dean both looked at him. They knew it was true. Knowing did not make the offering simple. Feeding a Vampire Lord was a line beastkin crossed rarely and never lightly. It created debt, memory, and possible fixation. It also, in this room, looked like the only way to get answers out of the only lead they had.

Mai stared at Marcel’s ruined face and the slow, inadequate rise of his chest.

"I’ll do it," she said.

Dean started to argue, but she wasn’t listening. "I brought him out, so I will decide. If Asher is alive, this one knows. If he dies on this bed, we lose the trail."

She scored a clean line across her unburned palm with a short blade, waited for the blood to well, and pressed the wound to Marcel’s mouth.

For a second there was nothing. Then the Vampire Lord’s responded on instinct. His cracked lips began to seal, and minor wounds began to close as well. Mai gritted her teeth and counted the seconds, she didn’t plan on giving him anything that was substantial enough to help him heal completely. When she pulled her hand back, Felix was ready with a wrap, and Dean watched Marcel’s face as if expecting violence on waking.

The change took minutes rather than hours. Color returned in uneven washes, the worst edges of the silver-inflamed wounds began to knit with unnatural speed, and Marcel’s breathing deepened. His fingers twitched against the blanket, then his eyes opened, black, sharp, and already hunting.

He came up off the bed too fast for his condition. Mai stepped back. Dean moved to block the door without thinking. Felix’s hands rose, empty, placating.

Marcel’s gaze swept the room in one hard pass: three beastkin, they weren’t his targets.

The first thing he said was not a thank you and not a threat.

"Where is Asher?"