Unbound (The Captive #7)(50)
She lifted her head to look at him. They’d come from two completely different worlds, yet he was her friend and protector. “No,” she said. “It’s not, and we both know it. Queens are not allowed to fall apart.”
He rested his cheek against her hair and rubbed her back. “That is not always true.”
“It is now.”
He kept his hand on her back as she rose to her feet and carefully made her way toward where Max was keeping watch over the house. He turned toward her when she knelt at his side. “Anything new?” she whispered.
“I haven’t seen her and none of the guards have changed,” he replied.
Aria settled in beside him. “If you want to sleep, I’ll watch.”
“I’m fine,” he replied as Xavier sat on his other side.
Aria peered through the thick underbrush before her. Thirty feet of bushes, vines, and trees separated them and the vampires who were most likely guarding the evil woman inside. If the vampires did smell them, there was little difference between their scent and the other vampires of their town. They were too far away for Max’s heartbeat to be detected.
Her gaze drifted around the woods behind them. She cautiously scented the air as she searched for any hint of a shift in their environment, but she detected nothing. Turning her attention back to the house, she carefully watched everything as the moon crept higher into the sky. She lifted her glasses to rub at her eyes again when a curtain above pulled back to reveal the white-haired vampire often at Sabine’s side.
“Goran,” she murmured as she recalled what William had said his name was.
Xavier and Max followed her gaze to the window. The man stared out it for a minute more before settling the curtain back into place. Aria restrained herself from jumping up and running to the building next door to climb to the roof.
If Goran was in there, then that bitch was too.
***
Aria
The next day, Aria stood sixty feet back in the woods, staring through the trees and brush to the house next to the one Sabine was in. They’d spent all last night and most of today trying to learn as much as they could of the vampires who had invaded the town. There were thousands of vampires, far more than they’d seen in the woods before. It was one more bit of information to file away, one more piece of the puzzle they hadn’t had before.
To get inside the house with Sabine and Goran could be the best way to get more information, but how was she going to land safely on the roof and then climb up it? The roof was nearly a ninety-degree pitch in some places. Even if she could find tacks or nails or something to stick through the soles of her boots, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be spotted or wouldn’t plummet onto the vampires standing guard below.
Death was not an option for her, not right now, and neither was being caught. They had to get closer, but how? By going inside?
Even she had to admit it was one of the crazier ideas she’d ever had, but Sabine had yet to leave the residence and Tempest and William had said she’d rarely been seen outside while in Badwin.
“Crap,” she hissed between her teeth.
“I second that,” Max said.
“The reasons to go inside are sound.”
“Many things are sound and still stupid,” Max replied, and she had to agree with him. “What are you going to do once you’re in there? What if she smells you? You’re going down a chimney so you’re going to have soot all over you. You’ll never be able to leave the chimney with soot all over you, because you’ll leave a trail bigger than the one they left that led us here. Staying inside the chimney isn’t an option either as you won’t be able to hear anything inside the stone walls.”
“What do we do then?” she asked. “We risked our lives to come here. We need more information than they have bigger numbers than we first thought. Not exactly morale boosting.”
Max lifted his hand to rub at his temples. The sleeve of his too big shirt fell down to reveal the bites and burn scars marring his wrists. He’d obtained those scars during his days as a blood slave. It had been well over a year since Aria had seen his scars. He usually kept them covered up, but wearing borrowed clothes instead of having his own, had made that impossible for him.
She was glad she wore the glasses. If he’d seen the direction of her eyes, he would have covered the scars back up and shut himself off from her. Max had come a long way since he’d been freed from his captivity as a blood slave, but any reminder of it still caused him to withdraw.
“I have an idea,” Xavier said from behind her, and she turned to look at him as he unfolded himself from the tree he’d been leaning against and walked toward them. His eyes focused on Aria when he stopped beside her. “You’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t like many things, but I’m willing to do anything to stop her,” she replied.
“Those soldiers, not all of them are overly loyal to her. I’d bet at least half of them, if not more, are following her out of fear and because of the vast amount of power she has.”
“True,” Max said.
Xavier’s gaze went past them to the vampires gathered around the building and patrolling the streets. “We capture one of them and make them tell us what they know about her.”
The blood drained from Aria’s face. She knew Xavier; if he got a hold of one of Sabine’s followers, he would do anything necessary to make them talk. Yes, she’d just told them she would do anything to stop Sabine, but could she condone this action? Could she help carry it out?