I’d always ignored the corruption in the I.S. because I’d never been able to do anything about it. But now, seeing Nash beg me to leave and find Zack, I decided that had been an excuse. I’d always been able to do something. I just hadn’t wanted to deal with the fallout. I was a coward. Nash was paying for it.
Never again, I thought as I looked at the blood-lily on the wall, tears blurring my vision as my guilt and anguish almost swamped my anger.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. You can’t save him,” David said, and my lips pressed. Though he still breathed, Nash was gone. I couldn’t save him. Now, it was about saving me.
“Jenks. Watch my back,” I said as I took Nash’s hand more firmly, then closed my eyes, stretching my awareness out for the demon collective, funneling every last ounce of rage and frustration into a single, solitary cry.
Algaliarept! I shouted into the swirling chaos, searching for the collective, not sure if I’d be able to reach it or not. Al said I didn’t need the mirror anymore. Algaliarept, talk to me! I shouted again, gasping when my awareness seemed to sort of slip sideways and drop two feet. I was in.
Good God. She’s using his full name, I caught, the anonymous thought mocking and bitter. Frustration-not-mine rose up, a nameless demon’s anger that I hadn’t killed Hodin when I first saw him, then another demon’s amusement that I was trying to reach Al, a mocking surety that I wasn’t up to the task of taking on Constance on my own, and hadn’t everyone said as much?
But the barrage vanished when the smallest afterthought annealed tightly to mine. I’m a little busy right now.
Al’s thought slipped through me as if it was my own, seeing as it sort of was at the moment. My grip tightened on Nash’s hand, and I latched a thought into Al’s psyche as he tried to slip away. I need your help.
When don’t you? he thought, but I had only the teeniest fraction of his attention, and I wormed my way deeper into his mind. He was arguing with someone. No . . . someone was yelling at him. Someone other than me.
Dali? I questioned, my grip on Nash spasming when Al sort of jerked, enveloping my mind in an annoyed presence, spiraling us down to a level of conscious so low it was almost sleep. Al, I need your help. Now, I thought, trying not to notice the dark shadows of guilt and shame. I couldn’t tell if they were mine or his.
“Rache?”
The spoken word zinged through me, ignored. It was Jenks, but Al had finally focused on me, Dali’s ongoing tirade fading into a background nothing. I’m trying to explain to Dali where his books went, Al thought in annoyance.
The ones you gave me? I thought, and Al’s smug pride swelled almost into a laugh. Somewhere, I felt Dali become choleric.
“Rache?” Jenks’s wings tickled my ear, and I stifled a sneeze.
Crap on toast, he gave me stolen books? But my private thought was anything but, and I felt Al steel his thoughts, hiding mine from Dali’s. Al, she eviscerated Nash, I thought, frantic. She did it because I drove her from her daylight quarters with that lily smell. I can’t fix him. I can’t move him. Please! I need a healing curse.
“Rachel!” Jenks poked my ear with his sword, and I jumped. “He’s gone!”
I blinked, trying to focus, my mind splintered between the hellhole of Piscary’s downstairs kitchen and the swirling confusion of Al’s thoughts. My sight cleared, and I felt Al’s mirth vanish as he saw through my eyes. Agony filled me, and I didn’t care that Al knew the pain of my soul. He’d seen it before.
Rachel? Al questioned, our minds suddenly empty of his thoughts of Dali.
And somehow, as I felt Nash’s hand warm in mine, I knew it was true. I couldn’t tell you what was missing, but Jenks was right. Nash was gone. That awful, awful stillness. I’d seen it before in a cruddy little hospital when my dad died.
Blinking fast, I stared at Nash’s face, gripped his hand tighter as I held my breath. I tried to pull my thoughts from Al, but he clung to me. Grief raked my soul, leaving it open and raw, and I staggered, almost unable to bear it. It wasn’t all mine. Some of it was Al’s.
Never mind, I thought, and a deep, hot, dangerous anger flashed through us both.
Now you may survive, he thought, and I jerked from him, stumbling as I found myself entirely in the present, my feet sticking to the floor, Nash’s hand still warm in mine.
Surviving wasn’t exactly on my mind at the moment, and a hot anger drove everything else out.
“Rachel, I’m sorry,” David said, and my head went up as if I could see through the layers of dirt between me and that disposable vampire Constance had left for me.
“Rache?” Jenks questioned, but anger had tightened my chest until it was all I could do to breathe.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered harshly as I set Nash’s hand on his chest. “I’ll see Zack safe.”
I would cry later.
“Bring him,” I said as I turned and walked out of the room.
“Rachel? Think before you act,” David called after me, but I was already halfway across the large room, my feet leaving smaller and smaller bloody prints. I hit the call button for the elevator, catching the door and holding it as I waited for David. I wasn’t worried anymore about Constance crying foul for me having found and taken Nash. There would be no reprisal for this. Constance wanted me to find him. Wanted me to see her blood-lily.
But even so, I’d exhaled in relief when the doors had opened and the elevator had been empty. A part of me had expected Constance to be in there, smiling and happy to make my bad day worse.
“She did this hoping you’d do something rash,” David said as he staggered into the elevator. He held Nash like a baby, wrapped in his long duster.
“Yeah. I’m easy to read, aren’t I,” I said, then smacked the “close door” button to hurry this along.
Jenks hovered uncertainly over my shoulder. I knew David was right but I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to stop myself. If I had been able to jump the lines, I could’ve popped Nash into emergency. If I had been skilled enough, I could have done a healing charm. Or put him in stasis. Or something! But I hadn’t been able to do any of those things.
David leaned into the corner of the elevator, using the walls to help him hold Nash. Finally the doors opened and I strode out. “Put him on the couch,” I said as I stormed through the kitchen and stiff-armed the swinging doors open.
I could hear David talking, but the words flowed over me without meaning as I stood beside the vampire sleeping off his whiskey, my hands shaking. The couch, though, was full, and I shoved everything off, sending boxes flying as David staggered closer. Jenks hovered close as David knelt, exhaling as he gently settled the coat-wrapped elf down, his head on a flat pillow.