Nakul over me, his mouth open and fangs exposed, his hands on my throat. As he darted in for a killing bite, I grabbed his neck and squeezed, holding him back. With my free hand, I rained down punches on his ribs. He smartly straddled my torso, not my legs, leaving them flailing as I tried to buck him off. He ignored the punishing blows I delivered and continued to squeeze my already bruised and aching neck, trying to break my hold and bite me.
One solid buck knocked his weight up enough for me to pull a leg in and knee him where it hurt. That one he felt, releasing me and falling to the side into the lower cabinets next to us. I shoved him off completely and looked for a weapon. I still didn’t want to kill him. I groped around, realizing my impact with the counter knocked the knife off, but I couldn’t see it.
I ended up pulling open a cabinet and grabbed a pan, but he hit me hard and knocked it from my hands, sending it across the slick kitchen tile. I once again stopped his mouth from getting to me. I was just grateful he was so unused to being in his snake form, he went for the more humane kill. Over the years, he had gotten into trouble at the prison for killing southern cell block inmates just like this when they tried to test their mettle against him as one of the northern cell block inmates. When I had originally sent him there, he had misbehaved a lot.
One of his hands had my neck again while he tried to hold me for a fatal bite.
I didn’t see his other hand until it was too late. The knife caught the light and began to stab down into my stomach. He skimmed my ribs once before I realized what he was doing. He got four hits on me before I was able to use one of my hands to grab his wrist.
I knew this kill. This was how he killed his victims. He butchered them with a hundred knife wounds, just like his wife and son had been killed. I would not allow someone to use a naga to butcher me like this. I wouldn’t kill him either. I wouldn’t destroy my own species like that—not this time. The kitchen knife slowly sank into me as he overpowered me. I watched it go in slowly.
Before I could do any more, a savior finally came.
The pan swung over me and hit him, sending him flying and knocking him unconscious.
I fell back against the cabinets, looking down at the pain in my abdomen, seeing the damage clearly as the blood began to soak through my shirt and hit the floor. The knife was buried a good three inches in the lower right quadrant of my abdomen. There were four other holes, one of which had skidded my ribs. I tried to put my hands over it, wondering if there was really any way I could slow the bleeding.
“Kaliya!” I was picked up roughly and put on the countertop. I saw Raphael over me, his hands covering mine over my stomach.
“He was spelled,” I said weakly. “He tried not to. He didn’t know…” I winced. “Shit. This might be the fucking end of me.”
“No, no, Kaliya, you aren’t dying,” Raphael promised frantically. “What can we do?”
My vision swimming, I could barely focus on his words. All I could really focus on was his warm chocolate eyes and the black creeping into them. I really didn’t want to die before I had a chance with this good guy, and he was so good. He had a goodness to him that made him risk his life when he really didn’t have to. He was a fucking guy who could have hidden, but instead, he helped me at every turn. Through all of this, I knew if I looked over my shoulder, he would be there watching my back.
“I always want the good guys like you,” I admitted, blood loss quickly making me dizzy.
Raphael’s hand was still pressing down as Leith ran over with more fabric of some sort to stop the bleeding.
“We’ll...talk about that later, Kaliya. Please focus.”
I looked down and nodded slowly, the sight of all my blood making my head spin, and black spots began creeping in.
“Yeah, that…Um. Need a healer.”
“The witches! Can we take you to the witches?” He was leaning so close to me now.