The Silent: Irin Chronicles Book Five(64)

A flurry of blows met his knee and his kidney, nearly taking Leo to his knees. He brought his elbow around, smashing the face of the Grigori with one quick blow. The man reeled back, stunned by the sudden strike, then Leo darted behind him and brought his blade down quickly and cleanly into the spine of the second Grigori.

Dust in the air.

Leo turned and saw Niran still fighting one of the Grigori guards. The other lay on the ground, clutching his stomach while blood pooled beneath him. Leo started toward him, determined to put the Grigori out of his misery.

“Wait!” Niran said, striking his opponent to the ground with an open hand and a hooked ankle. “I want to question that one.” He struck the Grigori again, snapping the man’s neck with a sickening punch. The Grigori fell in a heap, his neck at an unnatural angle.

Niran walked over and flipped the bleeding Grigori to his back.

“Arindam,” he asked. “Where is he?”

“Not here,” the Grigori said, blood bubbling from his lips. “Not for months.”

“Who took our sister?”

“Irin.”

“You lie.”

“Irin”—he coughed up blood—“and two of our Chin brothers from the west.”

“Where is Prija now?” Niran asked.

“Too… dangerous. Chao-Tzang sent her away. He said she could not stay here. Our brother screamed and grabbed his head. She burned his mind.”

“Yes,” Niran said. “She does that. Tell me where they took her.”

“West.”

“I need more information than that.” Niran pressed the heel of his hand into the man’s belly, ignoring the screams. “Tell me where.”

“Mong Kung,” he said. “The hills west of the city. There is another temple to our father there.”

Niran flipped the Grigori over and drew a blade from a sheath on his thigh. He stabbed the Grigori cleanly and stood as the soldier dissolved beneath him, then wiped the blood from his blade on the coat of the man he’d killed.

“Mong Kung,” he muttered. “We need to find Sura. He’ll know if it sounds true.”

Leo and Niran left the temple, jogging down the stairs and toward the women’s quarters where Sura and Alyah had gone. Leo saw a young soldier fleeing into the forest. He glanced at Niran.

“Let him go,” Niran said. “He’s no threat to us.”

“We get the women and we go.”

Niran nodded.

Leo was worried about Kyra at the side of the road. The Grigori who fled was running in that direction. Who knew if he was the only one.

“On second thought,” Leo said. “You head to Alyah and Sura. I’ll go back to the van.”

“Very well,” Niran said. “Though she’s not as helpless as you think.”

“It’s not that she’s helpless,” Leo said. “It’s that I’d be useless without her.”



Kyra watched the forest from behind shaded lenses and waited. Every now and then, she’d hear something stir, but she thought it was only birds or small animals. She tried to look like a bored tourist, all the time keeping her senses open and aware of the humans and others around her. She didn’t want to listen too closely and threaten her own consciousness. She knew if she reached too far with her hearing, she was deaf to anything else, and the last thing she wanted was to be vulnerable.

She heard an unknown Grigori coming and her hand went to her knife… but the voice veered away before it reached the road, heading back into the hills above her. There were humans up the road, but they were going about their daily life and didn’t appear to be moving either toward or away from her.

Twenty minutes after they’d left, she heard Leo coming through the trees. He sounded easy and happy, and she knew nothing was wrong. She turned toward him before he broke through the bushes.

“There you are,” he said with a smile.

“Everything went fine.”

He nodded and embraced her. “We had to kill four soldiers who came at us with weapons, but the rest fled or we were able to knock them out. Have you heard anything from Sura?”

She shook her head.

Leo said, “Niran was going to look for them.”

“Convincing the women might be difficult.”

“It probably will be, but you never know. Most of it depends on how many women they’ve seen die. Do you remember Prague?”

Kyra nodded. How could she forget Prague?

The Fallen they’d killed outside Prague the year before had abused his human lovers horribly. He’d killed so many that the survivors were plotting to find a way out with their children even before Leo and his previous watcher, Damien, had led a team to extricate them and kill the Fallen. Most of the children they’d rescued were still in Damien’s castle, learning how to control their sometimes fearsome power.

“We’ll give them ten more minutes,” he said. “Then we’ll go in.”

They emerged in eight. Niran carried a little girl, no more than three years of age, while Alyah carried a baby and three women walked behind them, Sura following. One of the women was visibly pregnant, though Kyra suspected another might be from the softness around her face. The other woman looked nearly dead. She followed Alyah closely, and Kyra suspected the baby the Irina singer was carrying was a Grigori son who had nearly drained his mother of life.