The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(88)

Traffic?

There was no traffic in Oblivion. In Oblivion, there was no sound at all. No sickening odors. No horrible tastes. No slimy surfaces.

A car horn blared.

This makes no sense. No sense at all. He was dead. Wasn’t he?

Maybe not.

He cracked open one eyelid. He was sprawled on his stomach in a dank alley beside an overflowing garbage bin. A door set in a brick wall lay less than ten feet in front of him. A vent above it spewed a greasy odor. It blended nauseatingly with the urine smell. A window, its glass painted black, was cracked open an inch. Luc heard the clank of pots and voices speaking a language he didn’t understand.

He set his palms on the ground. A rank substance oozed between his fingers. His head was pounding. He squinted upward. The buildings on either side of the alley were several stories high. The slice of sky above them was gray, spitting a half-hearted drizzle down on his head.

One end of the alley died into a brick wall. In the opposite direction, about thirty feet away, he could see a street. Traffic passed in a steady stream. A pair of pedestrians—two young women—hurried along the sidewalk. They quickly passed out of view.

Where the hell was he? Houston? Dallas? The last thing he remembered was the oil tank exploding beneath him. He’d made sure escape was impossible. Or so he’d thought.

He was in human form. And his back no longer burned. He peered down at his shoulder, where Mab’s whip had left a particularly nasty gash. All that was left of the wound was a faint red line. The other marks she’d made on him, what he could see of them at least, were completely gone. His thrall collar remained fastened around his neck. But the ruby had ceased to throb, and the wood felt looser.

Strange and stranger. His mind balked at the effort it required to make sense of it. His wounds might be healed, but his human body remained a long way from full strength. It took supreme effort to push himself into a sitting position. Once he managed it, he sagged against the brick wall, panting. The movement startled a rat that had been busily picking at a rotten rind. The creature froze. It scurried away without its prize.

Well. A least Luc was still able to scare something.

It took another few minutes before he felt ready to stand. He rose unsteadily, grasping at the wall, his breath uneven. Long moments passed before his head stopped spinning. Experimentally, he stood straight. His legs, surprisingly, supported his weight.

He glanced down the alley, toward the dead end. The passage was deserted. Luc had no wish to bang on the door of the greasy spoon or on the only other door he could see, about twenty feet down on the other side of the alley. He turned and took a step toward the street.

“Luc.”

A man’s voice, low and smooth. Behind him. Where just two seconds before no one had been. He spun around.

A man of Middle Eastern descent—the kind of guy who wouldn’t last two seconds in a Texas biker bar—stood not five feet away. He was young and lean, dressed all in black, except for the unfastened silver frogs on his vintage military jacket. The costume should have made him look ridiculous. Somehow, it didn’t. The harsh angles of his face, his unshaven jaw, his lean build, and—most of all—the expression in his dark eyes, shouted danger.

Luc tensed. Green sparks crackled on his fingertips. Shifting onto the balls of his feet, he prepared for a fight. One threatening move and he’d blast the guy. But the dark man didn’t react. After about a minute, Luc’s fighting stance began to feel foolish. He dropped his hands and let the hellfire fade.

“It was a very near thing,” the stranger said. “I barely got you out in time.”

Luc blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“That oil tank. It’s still burning. It’s going to take them days to put it out.”

“You—” Luc swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Are you saying you...rescued me?”

“Yes.”

Son of a bitch. “Why?” Luc asked. “How? Who the hell are you?”

Amusement glinted in the stranger’s eyes. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m supposed to be grateful?”

“It’s better than being dead.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Luc snapped. Whoever this creature was, Luc didn’t trust him. He wasn’t eager to test the stranger’s fighting skills though. “Who do you think you are, anyway? My fucking guardian angel?”

The stranger laughed at that, his white teeth glinting. “There’s a thought.” His gaze rested on Luc’s neck for a moment, and his expression sobered. “I couldn’t remove the collar. It’s a pact between Nephilim. I have no power over it.”

Luc stiffened. “What do you know about the Nephilim?”

“More than I wish I did. And yet, somehow, it’s not enough.” He gestured toward the street. “See that building? Go there. Top floor, number 622.”

Luc glanced over his shoulder. “Why should I—” The question died when he looked back at the stranger.

He was gone. Just like that, as if he’d never been there at all. Maybe he hadn’t been, Luc thought, rubbing his temple. Maybe he was hallucinating. Or insane. Or maybe he was dead after all, existing in some inexplicable space between life and Oblivion.

With nothing better to do, he walked to the end of the alley and stepped out onto the sidewalk. As he eyed the building the stranger had pointed him towards, a red double-decker bus rolled by. King’s Cross, the destination sign read.