Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

“What is it?” Angie asked.

I hesitated, unsure of how they were going to react. “Guys, I think you should stay down there for now.” They opened their mouths to respond, but there was no time to argue, and the more we spoke, the more likely it was the creatures would hear us. “Trust me on this,” I whispered. “I’m gonna try to figure out where they are in the house, then locate an exit. If… If I think I can make it out, I’m just gonna run for it and get help, okay? There’s more chance one of us will make it out of here than all three at the same time.”

Their faces fell, and I could see what a hard pill that was to swallow. I felt it too, but it was the only way to go about this.

They looked at each other, then back at me, and nodded.

“Okay,” Lauren said. “Just please be careful, Riley.”

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, then backed away from the hole, staying on my hands and knees as I crawled to the open doorway. Once I reached it, I stilled, listening. Everything seemed quiet. There wasn’t even the faintest sound of the injured guy—perhaps he had fallen asleep.

Straight ahead was the staircase, and I moved toward it. I peered down cautiously until I was certain it was empty. I wasn’t ready to attempt going down the stairs yet, as I worried about how much noise that would make. As I had told my friends, the first thing I had to do was pinpoint the monsters’ location, assuming they were still in the house. I passed the staircase and crawled deeper along the corridor. Splinters wedged into my hands as I moved, and the floor was rough on my knees, but none of that mattered—all my brain could focus on was the location of our strange neighbors.

After a couple of minutes, I detected the sound of deep voices. I was sure they were coming from below the room directly opposite me, so I crawled into it, more careful than ever to move slowly and avoid creaking, until I was positioned directly over the room. I pressed my ear against the floorboards, and held my breath, listening.

“I can’t believe we didn’t sense their arrival,” a voice muttered.

“Navan already warned us of this,” a voice I had not heard before spoke up. It sounded older than any of the others—which made me realize that there were more of these creatures than we had seen. His voice held a maturity that I would attribute to a human in his late fifties. “This level of heat renders a coldblood’s senses practically worse than a human’s.”

Coldblood?

“Anyway, what’s done is done,” the older voice continued. “There’s not a lot we could have done to prevent it, and I would rather focus on deciding what to do next.”

“What if, come morning, they still refuse to take the Elysium?” another voice asked. It sounded like Navan’s brother. “It’s not like we can bring them back to Vysanthe.”

Vysanthe?

“They will take it,” said the deep voice I now clearly recognized as Navan’s. Chills shot down my spine as I recalled the demonic vision of him.

“They’re going to have to take it within twelve hours of their arrival here,” the older voice pressed, “or even the Elysium won’t be an option, and we will have no choice but to knock them off.”

“That is not an option,” Navan replied pointedly, and in spite of all the other questions crowding my brain, I wondered why he appeared to be so against “knocking us off.” Maybe he was afraid of the police after all? I couldn’t imagine why he would be, when they could all just apparently fly away.

My curiosity burned, wishing I could better gauge his expression, and that of everyone else in the room. I lifted my head, searching the floor for cracks. I spotted one that I figured might just be large enough to peer through, a few feet away, and cautiously made my way over to it. The floor was thin enough that I could see through the hole and still hear what they were saying at the same time.

The room was small, about the same size as the one we had been locked in, and lit by three gas lamps. It was bare, except for three long sofas positioned around the edges, and some sort of coffee table in the center, which held a round steel bowl filled with a large pile of the same silver vials Navan had showed us earlier.

Navan, in his humanoid form and still wearing his ripped shirt, was prowling around the room, while three other men were reclining on the sofas. The three men consisted of Navan’s brother, the fair-featured man with long blond hair who I guessed might be Ianthan, and another man with similar fair features, but clearly older… though not nearly as old as his voice sounded, which was odd. He looked perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s. I wondered if he and Ianthan were related.

Silence engulfed them as Navan continued to prowl, and I tried very hard to breathe only as much as necessary. My eyes bulged slightly as Navan’s brother leaned forward and plucked one of the vials from the bowl, opened the lid, and downed it. Ianthan did the same, which made me realize that those silver tubes were probably just general containers they used for various liquids—in this case, some kind of beverage. Surely, they wouldn’t be taking Elysium.

The older blond-haired man, after reaching for his own silver container and drinking from it, interrupted the quiet. “Killing them might have to be an option, unless you force the Elysium down their throats,” he stated. “We simply can’t afford to have leaky holes. Those girls will not keep quiet, despite what they may promise you now—especially not after your display, Navan.”

Navan stopped walking, and I could make out the deep scowl settling over his face as he looked at the older man. “Jethro, this conversation is going around in circles. Just leave this mess to me—I’ll deal with it, one way or another. In the meantime, I suggest you all get some sleep.”

With that, he headed for the door and left the room, closing it sharply behind him.

Panic suddenly washed over me, as I feared Navan might be heading upstairs and would find me, but his footsteps did not reach the staircase—rather, they seemed to be heading deeper through the house, in the opposite direction. Hopefully, he was retreating to another room downstairs to rest.

I refocused on the room beneath me. The two younger men exchanged glances, and then sighed, before settling themselves down on one sofa each. The older man, Jethro, on the other hand, looked a little twitchy, like he wasn’t quite done with the conversation. But after a few moments, he too sighed, before dimming the lights.