Coldbloods (Hotbloods #2)

“Who are you?” Navan demanded.

“A loyalist. Unlike you, clearly,” the coldblood replied sharply, his nose wrinkled up in disgust at the sight of me. “But I’m not an unreasonable man. If we can come to some sort of arrangement, perhaps I won’t announce your betrayal to the entire party…”

Kalvin scowled. “You dare to blackmail us?”

The coldblood shrugged. “You’ve made it so easy,” he purred. “Not that I’m interested in you. I don’t even know who you are. It’s Idrax I’m after.”

Navan frowned, visibly struggling to keep his cool. “What do you want?”

The coldblood grinned, looking me up and down. “How about you give me the girl for an hour or two, and we’ll call it even? I’ve never experienced her species before.”

With the coldblood’s attention turned entirely on Navan, he didn’t notice Kalvin lunging for him until it was too late. Snatching a concealed knife from within his suit jacket, Kalvin plunged the blade through the back of the coldblood’s neck, pushing so hard that the sharp point ended up coming out the other side. A sickening gurgle erupted from the coldblood’s throat as dark liquid oozed out of his mouth. A few seconds later, his eyes went blank, the life gone.

Leaping to action, Navan tugged a tapestry from the palace wall and laid it flat on the ground, and Kalvin let the dead coldblood fall onto it.

As they hurriedly wrapped up the body, Kalvin hissed, “That was too close, even for you.”

For the first time ever, I saw Navan rattled. Pure fear flickered across his face. Our relationship had almost blown our cover, and I was beginning to think it was more dangerous than even I knew.





Chapter Twenty-Four





“We need to hide him, fast!” Kalvin whispered, pulling the tapestry toward the recess the coldblood had been hiding in.

There was a door hidden in the shadows. Running toward it, I opened it, letting Kalvin drag the dead body over the threshold. Navan was out in the hallway, mopping up any evidence he could find with the edge of a curtain he’d torn away.

Beyond the door I’d spotted was a storage room. It didn’t look like the type to be frequented much—there was hardly anything in here, except for a pile of boxes—but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t come in and find what we were trying to conceal. Still, it was our only option for now. The outside world was too far away, and we couldn’t exactly drag him through the main celebration hall.

Navan entered the room a moment later, and he and Kalvin hid the dead coldblood behind a stack of boxes. The corpse couldn’t be seen from the door, and discovering him would mean someone had to sift through piles of stock, but it did nothing to settle my nerves.

“We’re going to have to come back for him after the celebration, when the palace is quieter, and dispose of him properly,” Kalvin said. “Sooner or later someone will find him, especially when he starts to crumble.”

I frowned. “Crumble?”

Kalvin nodded, wiping a sheen of nervous sweat from his brow. “When coldbloods die, their bodies crumble to ash. The scent is overpowering—like pure ozone. We’ve got a few days before he starts to go, but who knows when we’ll have a chance to get back here.”

“It’ll have to do for now,” Navan said, dragging another set of boxes in front of the makeshift burial site. “We’ll be missed if we stay out here too long,” he added, glancing tensely at the door.

Leaving the coldblood behind, the three of us stepped back out into the hallway and closed the door firmly behind us. After dusting ourselves off, we returned to the main hall, though I didn’t think I’d ever be the same again. I was shaken, fear bristling in my veins, putting me on edge. Turning to Navan, I could see that he was feeling it too.

Kalvin hung back, and out of the corner of my eye, I realized he was discreetly forcing the knife through the soil of a nearby potted tree. He then covered it over, as though nothing had ever happened. A smart idea.

With that, we returned to the main room and headed for our seats, with Kalvin moving away from us to join a different table at the far side of the hall. The dancers had gone, but the music was still playing, with several coldblood couples taking to the floor. Everyone seemed to be in a celebratory mood, clinking glasses of red liquid and downing the contents in one swift gulp. I couldn’t help feeling disgusted, yet I couldn’t stop watching.

I stood behind Navan since I hadn’t been given a seat, and gazed out over the revelers, taking everything in. My senses were on high alert, suspecting everyone of knowing what had happened. It wouldn’t take much for the coldblood to be discovered, and then we’d be done for.

Navan was sitting at a table with a dozen or so members of the Explorer’s Guild, by the sound of their conversation. As much as I wanted to glean more knowledge about Navan and his prestigious position as a Chief of Exploration, I couldn’t fully concentrate. Every moment that passed, I was convinced we were going to be found out.

“How about you, Idrax? Looks like you found at least one interesting thing on your travels,” an older coldblood teased, glancing my way. My ears perked up.

“Not really,” Navan said coolly, casting a casual glance my way. “Picked her up from a little nowhere planet. Weak race, weak blood. Could wipe them out in one go if I wanted.”

“What is she?” another explorer asked.

He shrugged. “Need to go over the books in the library, see if she matches up to anything we’ve found before. Her blood tasted awful though—easily digestible, but made me feel queasy for a week.” The table erupted into laughter, and I realized everyone’s focus was on Navan. It was clear he was the “cool kid”, with all these other coldbloods trying to win his attention.

As the minutes ticked by into hours, I began to feel myself relax. A few more hours, and we could be out of here, getting that body far away from where anyone could discover it. Just a few more hours. I could manage that.

I spotted Kalvin at the opposite end of the room, in deep discussion with some of the others at his table. As they lifted their heads, I realized they were Nestor, Cristo, and the two shifters, now in the guise of Kiel and Grillo. A risky move, bringing the two shifters here. What if their fa?ade slipped? What if their fa?ade slipped, and someone found the body? Two strikes, and we’d be out.

A scream went up from the crowd, startling me. My heart thundered.

“He’s dead!” a coldblood waitress wailed, rushing into the throng, her hands covered in a dark substance.

All semblance of relaxation shattered.

Navan scraped back his chair and rose to his feet, as the rest of the room descended into chaos. People were screaming, everyone was running, and nobody seemed to know what was going on. Guards strode forward, brandishing their crackling pikes, their menacing eyes scanning the room for any sign of trouble.