Too bad the grasses had been allowed to grow to knee-high. That was plenty long enough to hide Naasir’s form, such grasses an environment which part of his nature knew how to utilize instinctively. He reached the outer wall of the citadel without being spotted. From there, it wasn’t difficult to avoid the vampiric guards, but it did take precise timing to make sure he remained unseen by the winged squadron.
He could smell rain on the winds. That could be an asset or it might be a threat. It would depend on the skills of the woman with secrets who smelled like his mate. The heavy cloud cover was an undisputed gift, hiding as it did the light of the moon. Naasir could use the moon’s light to his advantage, his body a rippling ghost, but Andromeda’s lickable, honeyed skin would’ve been spotlighted by it.
Prowling along the edges of the wall, he watched the guards, listened to their conversations, and when one of them went to answer the call of nature just as the sentry in the sky angled off in another direction, he slipped over the wall right under their noses.
Cunning and stealthy and unseen.
Reminding himself of Jason’s words, he spilled no blood and left no trace of his presence as he went over the second wall and jumped down into the inner courtyard. He landed in an easy crouch on the cobblestones, his bare feet absorbing the impact through his entire body without giving him a hard jolt.
Slightly spoiled meat and blood and the ugly miasma of fear.
A predator at home in the moonless night, he made his way toward the tainted meat that must’ve been lying in the sun for hours. It was alive, he realized as he got closer. Alive and marked by the scents of multiple dogs. Feathers told him the meat had been an angel before being fed to the dogs. It was now in pieces, though the head remained attached to the gleaming, exposed spinal cord.
Either exhausted or simply weak, the meat was motionless but for a closed eyelid that flickered in a rapid pattern—as if the angel was dreaming. His other eye socket was a gaping hole clotted with viscous fluid that had either dried in the sun, or was a result of his body attempting to regenerate itself.
Brutality didn’t interest Naasir; he’d seen more than one pitiless punishment over the centuries and he wasn’t going to judge this one without having the details. What did interest him was the scent that lingered around the man.
Andromeda.
She’d been here recently. Why?
He looked at the meat again and had the thought that maybe the woman who smelled like his mate might have a soft heart. From the position of her scent, he could tell she’d stood or sat close by the head, possibly in an effort to provide what comfort she could.
Deciding he liked the idea of a mate who had a soft heart, he tracked her scent into the citadel. Seeing an angelic courtier up ahead, he jumped up to the ceiling and held himself there using his claws to hook into the ridged detail. He dropped down as soon as the courtier was out of earshot and continued to track the delicious, unique scent of his warrior-scholar.
There were many overlapping trails; Andromeda had clearly been exploring the citadel with a view to escaping. But Naasir’s senses were acute and he had no trouble pinpointing which scent was the freshest.
Sliding behind a wall to avoid a guard, he found himself trapped between two oncoming individuals, one from either direction. He didn’t waste time, went up to the ceiling again. No one ever looked up. You’d think angels would, but inside their homes, they never did. It was as if their wings blinded them to the fact that there were other ways of going high than just flying.
Moving across the ceiling using his clawed hands and feet to get a grip, he was careful not to dig so deep that his passage created dust or fine curls of whatever it was that made up the ceiling. It amused him to go right over Philomena’s flame-red head. He wanted to pounce on her and go “Boo!” but he’d save that for another day.
Tonight, his priority was Andromeda.
Climbing the top part of a wall and around a corner, he froze in a pool of shadows.
Xi.
According to what they’d learned during the battle above and in the streets of New York, Xi was only violently powerful when Lijuan fed him power, but that didn’t change his tactical mind and military training. He was dangerous and Naasir respected him as another predator. If Xi hadn’t been fighting for the other side, Naasir would’ve invited him over for a drink and talked to him about tactics.
Now, he stayed motionless.
Xi paused right under where Naasir was hooked onto the wall, the general’s attention caught by a vampire who’d emerged from another corridor. “Yes?”
The slender male bowed deeply. “The scholar has returned to her room. She sat with Heng until he lost consciousness again, and she told him stories of fantastical beings.”
Naasir grinned. He’d been right; she had a soft heart.
“Such gentleness is to be expected of a scholar,” Xi said at the same instant. “Do you have anything further to report?”
“It appears from her movements that she is searching for a way to escape the citadel.”
“Unsurprising,” Xi responded, no irritation or anger in his tone. “Show her to the library tomorrow. That will distract her and give her another outlet for her frustration.” Xi paused. “Be careful with her.”
Naasir heard the same thing that had the vampire bowing deeply again: a faint thread of possessiveness. It appeared Xi found Andromeda attractive. Naasir wanted to rip out the angel’s throat for that, had to dig his claws deeper into the wall to keep from acting on his instincts. If Xi thought he could court Andromeda, he knew nothing.
The general was too civilized for her. Xi didn’t understand secrets, didn’t understand that Naasir’s scholar was a sword dancer who liked fighting and whose blood ran hot. That secret truth in mind, he held his strained position for an entire minute until after the vampire and Xi both disappeared. Only then did he drop soundlessly to the stone floor and prowl along Andromeda’s scent trail.
There were fewer guards in this wing. Naasir understood why—situated in one of the corners of the citadel, it gave the illusion of freedom because of the number of windows and doors, but the outside was heavily guarded. Andromeda was smart not to have tried to escape from this direction. If she’d gone to ground, she’d have been run to the earth by the hounds that Naasir scented below. If she’d gone up, she’d have been shot down by the squadrons above.
The dogs could prove a problem if the rain didn’t come. Naasir could handle them, but it would be an annoying distraction, and there was a risk that someone paying attention would work out that the dogs were whimpering away from a certain point with their tails between their legs.
Reaching the door beyond which he could scent Andromeda, he listened carefully, heard nothing. He smiled and, instead of turning the knob, scratched lightly on the carved wooden panel. It was pulled open from within mere heartbeats later. Hauling him inside with a grip on his olive green T-shirt, Andromeda shut the door with conscious quietness.