“Crocodiles aren’t sweet,” I pointed out.
“Compared to what’s in the dead zone? Yeah, they are. You remember that warden in your living room the night I saved you?”
The memory of the darkness swirling came back to me, made me shiver. Yeah, I remembered it.
“Well, that was a glimpse of one, and there’re plenty of those at full power in the dead zone.”
I poured another mouthful of the drink, swallowing it before I had to taste it.
Not that I could taste much of anything anymore.
Suddenly facing all those things in the ravine sounded like a much better idea than it had before.
Kase spoke up, his tone strained. “And the Court? Should we be worried when we get there?”
“You should always be worried where Lucifer is concerned, but once we reach where his people are in control, I doubt we’ll need to look over our shoulders. At least, Ava won’t. The rest of us are disposable, but he wouldn’t drag her here unless he really wanted to talk to her.”
Kase nodded, then sat back. There were edges to his expression, something that hinted he wasn’t entirely okay. Then again, we were in hell headed to visit the devil. Some amount of discomfort was probably expected.
I knew better than to ask him right then. Men didn’t like outing their shortcomings or injuries, and Kase was every bit the sort of alpha male who lived by that.
The drink clouded my head, and before I knew it, I’d finished off the entire cup. When I reached for Troy’s, Hunter snatched it away and moved it out of my reach.
“That will leave a hole in your stomach the size of my fist, so maybe stick to the weak stuff?”
“Weak?” The idea that what I’d guzzled down had been considered the fruity drink of the underworld made me shudder.
Still, the way my brain couldn’t quite hold on to thoughts was rather nice. I teetered in the booth, leaning first against Grant, then against Kase. The men talked, discussed the plan, the upcoming city, the dead zone.
It all bored me. I’d never been a study-hard sort of woman, maybe because the rules had never applied to me. There hadn’t ever been a ‘how to survive seeing ghosts’ textbook, and somehow books titled How to Draw the Perfect Cat Eye hadn’t seemed all that useful to my problems.
So I let them talk, resting my head against Kase’s shoulder when remaining upright on my own seemed like far too much effort.
The noise in the bar swirled together, and the steady collection of talking, the beat of music, the conversation of the men’s rough, deep voices, all lulled me to quiet.
I never would have figured that I’d fall asleep there, in the middle of a crowded bar in hell, but I managed it.
Chapter Five
Normally, after drinking too much, I’d wake hungover but sober. I tended to sleep hard when I drank, because it was one of the few times when my nightmares didn’t come. It meant I’d sleep long enough to wake to nausea and a splitting headache instead of fun drunkenness. This time, however, was different.
The spinning room had me reaching for my pocket, for the pill that Grant had given me. It tasted chalky, like mints, but almost as soon as I chewed it, my head started to clear.
I waited until the room stopped moving, giving it time to wipe away all the fuzziness before I risked sitting up and peering around. My cloak hung on a hook by the door. The room was small and dirty—everything I’d expect at a by-the-hour motel in hell. In the large bed, beside me, Kase had stretched out, his eyes closed.
It reminded me of the night he’d been naked, when he’d been in my bed back home. His lips had moved over my shoulder and even though his skin was cool, his touch had warmed me right up.
Heat stirred inside me, making me want to experience that again. The fact that I’d been angry with him, or how he’d betrayed me, or how he’d acted like my blood was the vampire version of cold, stale coffee didn’t matter all of a sudden, as if even though I was sober, the ambrosia had left that need in its wake. Or maybe it was just good old-fashioned horniness and I was reaching for another explanation.
He lay still in a way entirely unlike any regular sleeping person. When humans slept, we twitched, we breathed, we shifted. Kase didn’t move in the slightest. He wore his slacks and his button-up shirt—his jacket had been lost somewhere along the trip—though neither looked nearly as pristine as they had before. Between all the walking and the fight with Troy—which seemed like a lifetime ago—he was far less put together. His feet were crossed at the ankle, his black socks on and one of his hands rested on his stomach while his other was to the side next to me. Had he fallen asleep like that to touch me?
I shifted, moving slowly so I didn’t wake him. I really wasn’t sure how deeply vampires slept. My knees pressed into the mattress as I studied him.
His face looked younger right then, when it wasn’t pinched with that self-restraint. It made me wonder against just how old he was. When awake, he had an air of control, of caution. There was always a wall I couldn’t get past, like a ward around him that kept everything away.
Which was why it was odd to watch him sleep, to see him so…approachable. He didn’t look like the vampire who had terrified me, the one so many were afraid of.
I reached out and traced my hand over his arm, the skin beneath the shirt hard.
I wasn’t planning on molesting him, but I was drawn to how vulnerable he was. For once, I felt like I could see him, like he wasn’t hiding.
I moved my fingers down over his wrist to touch his hand, to where I could
