Bound by Forever (True Immortality #3) - S. Young Page 0,125
balancing act. Giving the crowds a show but ending the fight as expeditiously as possible. Kiyo would allow this to draw out for another twenty minutes and then he’d end it so he and Niamh could get the hell out of there.
Blocking Emil’s increasingly aggressive swing, sensation blasted into Kiyo, sending him stumbling backward.
The feeling was pain.
Agony.
He felt it as if through a barrier.
Like he felt Niamh’s emotions.
Fear lurched in his chest as spun to stare out through the rows of spectators to where he’d left his mate.
He couldn’t see her.
Moving forward, he scanned the park, not seeing a familiar head of pale-blond hair.
Or Sakura.
Or Daiki or Haruto.
Fire slammed into his temple, taking him to a knee, and he couldn’t see in his right eye.
Blood.
There was blood in his eye.
Turning just in time to stop another blow from the hilt of Emil’s katana, Kiyo channeled all his fear and rage into the German.
He forced the hulking giant back and moved at supernatural speed, a blur, spinning until he was behind the wolf. With two quick slashes, he cut the wolf’s Achilles tendons and watched him sprawl to the grass in a roar of pain.
Dropping his katana, he straddled Emil, took his head in hand, and snapped his neck.
Then he was moving.
Niamh.
What had happened?
Was it Astra?
Why was Sakura, Daiki, and Haruto missing too?
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” A werewolf dressed in a tuxedo stood in his path. “Get back in there and give us a real fight.”
Kiyo broke his neck in less than two seconds and watched in satisfaction as the rest of the complaining crowd melted away. He ran. He ran at full speed, cutting through the crowds as he followed his mate’s scent out of the park and into the city.
The skies opened above him as if in answer to his anguish and rage. Kiyo cared nothing for the humans witnessing his super speed, for the way he lunged over moving cars like an animal in the jungle or the way he handled the rain-slicked streets the way an ice dancer’s skates became one with the ice.
Humans in his way were shoved aside by his speed and strength, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t in him to care about anything but Niamh in that moment. It took him only five minutes to reach the hotel where Niamh’s scent was the strongest.
Kiyo skidded to a stop across the street from the familiar building, his chest rising and falling, not with tiredness but fury. Sakura, the arrogant bitch, had kidnapped Niamh and taken her back to her own hotel.
Did she really think she was powerful enough to withstand a war with Kiyo?
Drawing in a deep breath, Kiyo zoned in on Niamh’s scent.
The basement. Where the fights used to be held.
He couldn’t feel her, though.
He couldn’t think about what that meant.
If he entered the hotel, their security cameras would alert them to his arrival.
But what Sakura didn’t know was that her uncle had entrusted much knowledge to him.
There was another way into that basement. Through the public subway.
A woman hurrying down the street in a light green dress lifted her umbrella to see where she was going. She halted at the sight of Kiyo standing in the rain half-naked.
In the time she took to blink, Kiyo was already gone.
It was worse than the time in that horrible apartment with Kiyo. The weariness was so much worse.
And there was also the pain.
Niamh laid on her stomach panting against the damp concrete floor, unable to move, as though paralyzed. Torturous flames of sensation shot up her spine and down both legs.
“You are awake,” Sakura’s voice drifted somewhere above her.
Niamh let out a grunt, trying to ask her what she wanted, but the words came out a mere whisper.
What was wrong with her?
“You have a very large iron dagger stuck in your spine,” Sakura answered, as if Niamh had voiced the question out loud. “You are not going anywhere anytime soon, faerie.” Her face came into view as she bent low to the ground to stare into Niamh’s pained eyes. Horror suffused Niamh as Sakura swung a familiar jade pendant in front of her face. “And our Kiyo-chan will not be able to save you.”
35
The silence in the abandoned tunnels that led to the basement of the Iryoku Towers was palpable. Kiyo could hear the overly loud, much too fast beating of his own heart as he tried to move swiftly without making a sound.