He turned, and I did just that, flinging that giant grain silo open and grabbing hold of the golden threads attaching me to my friends. The bonds between us were stronger than ever, even with the distance between us.
East, my friends were east of here, and the pull from them was steady as well as the shock they felt that I was connecting with them. Wally had been taken far away already, and was with the boys now too.
Ash was right about needing to find them. I wouldn’t have thought they’d already be that far east.
“Rory was on 17th Street, near a smoke shop.” I hurried past him, wishing I could feel Rory the same way I could feel the rest of my crew inside my head.
And then I thought about him kissing Gen, and I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. Yeah, strike that. Of course, I was just thinking these things because I didn’t want to consider the possibility that we would arrive too late. That I’d lose him the way I’d lost Tommy and Colt.
In the back of my head, Gregory, Pete, and Orin were freaking the shit out. Wally was trying to calm them, and Ethan . . . he was quiet. And not with the others at all. He was in the opposite direction.
I twisted around as we came to an intersection. “Ethan helped Frost.”
“I suppose it is possible,” Ash said, though his tone said otherwise. “More likely his father has something to do with it.”
I had to shake it off. Ethan was the least of my worries right then. Through the connection, I could tell he was still suffering from the sickness, but it felt like he was healing. I could almost see him turn his head toward me at the realization we were connected once more. So much for cutting him off from the crew as I’d tried to do.
Something I was going to do as soon as I could. Maybe killing him would do the trick? I mean, it was only fair considering he’d killed Colt. Yet the idea of killing Ethan didn’t appeal to me. Not that I loved him, it was more like . . . I couldn’t believe that all we’d been through together meant nothing to him. Again he’d turned on us. I wasn’t sure that killing him would make any of it better.
I gave myself a mental shake and put all that aside for now.
The only one of my friends who was in danger of actually dying right that second was Rory.
Picking up speed, I didn’t wait for Ash to stick close, and a moment later, he flew above me, the push of air from his wings tickling at my face. I glanced at the next street. One more to reach 17th.
I turned the corner and bolted down the nearly empty road, my body tensing as my awareness of danger grew incrementally. But I didn’t slow. I couldn’t. Not with Rory somewhere around here needing help.
From above, Ash called down to me. “They put a shield on him so no human could find him.”
And so that he would die for sure. “I’m going to kill her.” So much for not being like my uncle. In the last few minutes, I’d promised myself I’d kill two different people. To be fair, I wasn’t even sure which ‘her’ I meant. Ruby or Frost. “Them,” I amended. Maybe three people then.
I slowed my feet and narrowed my eyes, doing what I could to look through the shadows that had been cast everywhere. Not natural shadows but ones cast by Ruby.
Tricks of the trade that I didn’t truly understand, but I had to figure them out if I was to find Rory.
“Come on,” I whispered as I reached out and touched one of the shadows. It stuck to my fingers as if I had glue on the tips. I flicked it off, and it slid back to where it had been.
“Try again,” Ash said gently. God, why couldn’t people just be like they seemed? He seemed kind, but he was attached to the Shadowkiller. Ethan had always pretty much seemed like a douche, but there’d been times when he was a likeable douche.
I dug into the shadows with both hands and took hold of them. A sting, like biting ants, rippled up and over my skin as I yanked the shadows away. This could all be a trap, but I didn’t care. I was going to get to Rory if it was the last damn thing I did.
Rory was somewhere in here, and he was . . . dying. I didn’t have to be connected to him like I was to my crew to know he was in trouble.
“Damn it,” I growled as sweat broke out along my brow. The biting feeling intensified as I peeled the shadows back, one by one. By the time I’d removed them all, my hands were burning, bright red as if I’d had them inside a fire.
But I found him. I found Rory.
He lay face down on the cement, far too still for my liking. Rushing to his side, I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear to his back while I worked to find a pulse in his neck, wincing as my skin brushed against his shirt.
I held my breath and tried to still my own heart, waiting for his to thrum in my ears.
Silence.
Then a beat, finally, but he was still alive, and it would have to be enough to get him through this. “It’s bad. I need to call for help.” I fumbled with my bag, my fingers aching as I finally managed to pull out the radio, flicking it on to hear the Sandman’s voice.
“Goddamn it, Johnson, answer me!”
I depressed the button. “Nice to hear from you too.”
He took a sharp breath. “Where the hell are you?”
“17th and Driftwood, just past the old smoke shop. Bring a healer.” I clicked the radio off and stuffed it back in my pack. Carefully, wincing, I slid my hands under his shirt until I found the wound I knew would be on his body somewhere. I found it, a warm wet spot right in the middle of his back. I pulled the thick pack of bandages from my bag, folded two and pressed them against the wound with one hand. Then I ran my fingers over the rest of his body. Because if I’d wanted to incapacitate a Shade as good as Rory there wouldn’t be just one wound. There would be at least two or maybe even three to make sure he didn’t get up and come after me.
“Why not just kill him?” Ash muttered. “That would destroy you. What is her game?”
A second warm wet spot on the inside of Rory’s right thigh stopped my hand. “Ash, can you bind up his leg? There’s gauze in the bag. But you’re wrong, it wouldn’t destroy me.”
Tommy’s death hadn’t. It had hardened me, made me less willing to negotiate.
The gargoyle crouched beside me, took a strip of gauze out of my bag and wrapped it around Rory’s upper thigh with a smooth dexterity that surprised me given those big claws of his.
“You have excellent control of your emotions,” Ash said, “especially considering who this is to you. But I want you to think on the fact that this could be a trap.”
“Already have considered it,” I said. “But if I were Ruby or Frost, would I want to send me into a rage there would be no coming back from? Because that’s what would happen if Rory died. They want me worried, distracted, but not out for blood. That’s why they didn’t kill him.”
It was a different kind of trap.
A trap of the heart and mind. And I would have to leave him once help arrived if I was going to get to Wally and the others. I would have to, and I would do it. Didn’t matter how much I wanted to stay with him.
I kept the pressure on Rory’s back and continued checking his body for other injuries. “Help me roll him onto his side.”
I chose not to respond to his comment about my emotions, because he was right and he was wrong. My fear for Rory was through the freaking roof. If it had been me in trouble, that would have been another discussion. I struggled to truly be afraid for my own hide. Live or die, that was life every day in my world, more so now than ever before.