“The Court … moves. He moves it where he wants it.”
“Where is it now?”
“A place … north … west … Capilano … among the thāitav, by the river … They gather to worship and summon … and destroy.” His mouth split in a bloody grin. “They enslave kings and name payashē their queen. Gh’idrūlis. Esha hh’ainun zh’ūltispela.”
The red sheen in his eyes dimmed, his gaze losing focus. The phantom spines and horns rising off his body had faded, and his chest rose and fell with faint, rapid breaths.
“Thank you, Havh’tan,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
His eyelids drooped. “If you had … I would have killed you.”
“I guess that’s fair.”
The demon smirked, then the breath wheezed from his lungs. His face slackened, and all light in his eyes died. Daniel and Havh’tan were gone.
I pushed up from the floor, blood shining on my leather pants. Blood all over the floor. Blood everywhere. Bodies everywhere.
My gaze jerked to the doors, terrified that Justin and Makiko were dead too, but Justin was sitting up, and he’d bundled his jacket and tucked it under Makiko’s head. Aaron had knelt beside Blake’s crumpled form, and as I took an unsteady step toward them, my boot squelched in the blood.
My stomach jumped. I lurched away from Daniel’s body, bent over, and retched.
The nausea abated quickly, and I spat several times. Kai passed me a hanky, and I almost laughed as I took it. A hanky? A pristine white hanky, hidden somewhere among his throwing knives and bladed stars? Why did he have a hanky?
Hysterical amusement spun in my head, but I couldn’t laugh. I didn’t know if I could ever laugh again after this.
“Kai!” Aaron called sharply. “Get over here!”
The electramage sprinted for Aaron, still kneeling beside Blake. I rushed after him.
“He’s alive.” Aaron tugged down Blake’s jacket zipper, exposing a bloody mess. “We need to—”
Blake’s eyelids fluttered. He cracked them open.
“Blake!” I exclaimed, my voice cracking. “Hold on. We’ll get a healer for y—”
“Get out of here.”
My mouth hung open. “Huh?”
“If you’re caught down here … with four dead members … they’ll kill you. Get out.”
“But what about you—”
“There’s an … emergency button … just outside the room. Hit it … Someone will come.” Panting for air, he smiled weakly. “I won’t die.”
“But—”
Kai grabbed my arm and pulled me up. “Let’s go. The sooner we hit that button, the sooner a healer will be down here.”
I gave Blake one more frantic look, then let Kai draw me into a jog. As we rushed toward the exit, my gaze caught on Russel’s torn body and I faltered.
Leave the amulet, my brain screamed. Useless. Worse than useless. Leave it behind!
Squashing my revulsion, I veered away from Kai and rushed to the dead officer, trampling the scattered papers from his folders—all blank. The amulet’s chain lay in the blood that had pooled around the dead demon mage, so I picked the medallion off his palm instead.
I remembered running across the room to join the others, but after that, my memory of leaving the building got fuzzy. I recalled hitting a red “critical injury” button beside the door, and rushing up the stairs behind Kai, who was carrying Makiko. After that, I could vaguely remember Aaron gently pushing me into the passenger seat, murmuring quiet words that had turned to mush in my ears.
When I blinked again, we were on the highway, nothing but flat farmland as far as I could see. The sun glowed on the horizon to the west, bathing the landscape in orange light and deep shadows. Where had the last several hours gone?
“You’re awake,” Aaron murmured, glancing at me before returning his attention to the highway.
“Was I asleep?” I glanced into the backseat, where Justin and Makiko were slumped, Kai squashed in one corner beside his fiancée. The big first aid kit Aaron kept in the trunk sat on his lap. “They aren’t …”
“Sleeping,” Kai said. “I gave them healing potions. They aren’t badly hurt.”
“Oh … that’s good.”
I settled into my seat, and dull pain flared through my arm. I frowned at it where it rested across my thighs. A chain hung from my fist, and I uncurled my fingers to find the Vh’alyir Amulet. Bile rose in my throat and I threw the artifact onto the floor between my feet. Pain flashed through my arm with the motion, and I pushed my sleeve up. A vibrant purple bruise in the shape of Russel’s hand had darkened my wrist.
“You okay, Tori?” Aaron asked.
No. Not one tiny little bit of me was okay. “Just a bruise. Where are we?”
“Idaho.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “I don’t think anyone from the Keys followed us, but we don’t want to hang around and find out.”
“There’s no way to know what the fallout will be,” Kai added from the back. “Assuming Blake survives, he can tell them what happened—but will they believe him? He has no proof that Russel and the others were traitors. We may be facing murder charges in a few days.”
Fear pierced the numb despair that had settled over me. “What do we do now?”
Aaron rubbed the back of his neck. “We go home.”
My throat constricted until I couldn’t breathe.
“With everything we’ve learned about the cult and its sects, and not knowing how the Keys’ will react … this is more than we can handle alone. We need to go back and tell Darius.”
“What about Ezra?”
His gaze flicked to my feet, where the amulet lay. He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to.
The amulet, upon which Eterran and I had hung all our hopes, hadn’t saved a demon mage. It’d killed him.
Its magic worked on regular contracts. I’d seen that. I knew it. But whatever magic went into a demon-mage ritual was different, and the amulet had only broken part of the binding. It hadn’t been enough. It was worse than nothing.
Even if a better understanding of the ritual that bound Ezra and Eterran would allow us to make the amulet work, how would we get a cult grimoire? Havh’tan had tried to tell us what he knew, but his broken description of the location was meaningless. And even if we could figure it out, should we? Every secret we’d uncovered since Enright had led to an even darker cesspool of deceit and danger. Assassins. Demon mages. Corrupt guilds.
There was nothing else we could do.
I buried my face in my hands, sobs fighting to escape my chest. I gulped them back, breathing hard, but I couldn’t stop the silent tears from streaming down my face. As anguish swamped me, the flame in my heart, the desperate hope I’d clung to since learning of Ezra’s impending fate, flickered and died beneath the flood.
Chapter Twenty-Two
- EZRA -
I walked the motorcycle down the alley so the engine’s rumble wouldn’t alert my babysitter for the night—assuming he was here without me. When I hadn’t returned home for the evening, he might’ve left. My phone was on silent, tucked in my pocket.