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He hit the cement floor with a crunch of glass, chemicals and debris showering down around him.
Minutes passed. Minutes, and he couldn’t move, not one twitch of a finger. He could barely breathe. Smoke filled up his lungs and plugged his airways, choking him.
There was a ringing in his ears. A trickle of blood ran from both nostrils, both ears. Even his mouth tasted metallic, and when he slowly lifted his head, he saw a pool of red on the cement, dribbling off his chin.
Blinking against the fog threatening to close in on him, he glanced about, grasping for his bearings.
Small fires were burning around where the body had been. A hole had been blown in the floor, and the door had literally broken off the tracks, the metal warped. Most of the walls and roof were still intact, the spells keeping them from fully coming down. The fires made it slightly easier to see as Darien staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth against the deep ache in every muscle. Every bone.
“Malakai?” he called, limping through the wreckage. For a moment, he didn’t recognize his own voice, he was that messed up. It sounded far away, the ringing in his ears nearly swallowing it right up. Everything was coated in a shimmering wash of sepia, every object desaturated and blurred. His body felt like it was floating as he staggered through the warehouse. It was the same feeling he got when he dreamed vividly and couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t think coherently.
He caught sight of a boot near the west wall.
Stumbling over to it, wincing in pain, his right foot dragging more than the left, he started pushing wood and rock and warped metal off Malakai’s unmoving form.
“Don’t be dead,” Darien panted. But his chest was too still, his features too slack. “Don’t be dead, you stupid asshole.”
The Reaper coughed. He pressed a hand to his forehead, chest shaking with a breath—another shot at life. “What the fuck, man.”
“Thank the gods,” Darien gasped, bending over to brace his hands on his knees. The ground lurched beneath his feet, as if he were standing on a ship in the middle of an ocean, waters chopped up by a storm.
“I didn’t know you liked me that much,” Malakai wheezed around a lungful of smoke. He sat up, blinking fiercely.
“I don’t,” Darien said. “But aside from me, you’re the toughest son of a bitch in this city.”
Malakai waved the smoke and dust out of his face. “Help me up.”
Darien took his hand and pulled him to his feet. Both of them were covered in so much dust and ash, they were gray with it, their faces bloody and charred.
“Well,” Darien said, swallowing a mouthful of blood, “that didn’t go as planned.”
“We gotta do that more often,” Malakai panted, dusting his hands on his filthy jeans. “That was the best sleep I’ve had in years.” He glanced about. “What the hell happened, anyway?”
Wiping blood off his mouth with the back of his ripped glove, Darien strode over to where the body had been, every step a little easier to take than before. Thank god for his ability to heal quickly. There was nothing left of the hellseher now; his body had fully disintegrated, along with the man’s clothes.
A flash of silver caught Darien’s eye. He bent, wincing as his back muscles spasmed, and picked up a small silver square from where it was hidden under a burst pipe. Pinching the object between his thumb and forefinger, he turned, still crouching, and held it up, showing Malakai. “This was what he used. This is why he exploded.”
Malakai’s brows pulled together, causing the wound in one of them to ooze blood. “I’m not following.”
“It’s an emergency weapon, like the one the other guy used. A means of committing suicide before anyone can make you talk. He had this in his mouth, and he bit down on it when we cornered him.”
“Shit.” Malakai braced his hands on bent knees, looking just as pained and exhausted as Darien felt. “And I guess he meant for us to follow him to hell, didn’t he?”
“Probably.” On Gaven’s strict instruction. The only thing the prick hadn’t seemed to anticipate, or perhaps had been too cocky to worry about, was losing all his valuable stock in the process.
“What do you want on your gravestone?” Malakai asked.
Darien blinked. “What?”
“Like, engraved. What do you want it to say?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When Gaven kills you.”
“Fuck you!” Darien snapped, shooting to his feet. Malakai wore an evil grin. “Let’s get out of here.”
—
