Page 37 of Flames and Blood

“It’ll be better tomorrow,” Kent agrees, and then, “He does that all the time. I think he enjoys it.”

Meyer snorts but doesn’t disagree.

We sit watching the fire for a while.

We didn’t get her out.

Despite everything. The planning. The risks. I left her back in that goddamn truck.

“You good?” asks Kent.

I look up at him. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine. Did they leave some lead in you?” When I don’t answer, he continues, “Or is it the mission?”

“What do you think, Kent?” I look up at him. I’m not used to failure. It’s a risk, obviously, but after six decades of this, I generally get things right.

I don’t fucking like not getting things right. That’s why this pisses me off so badly. I messed up.

I play every moment back through my head. Her eyes as I opened that door. My frustration as I wrestled with the fucking chains I should have planned for. Runed. Of course they’d be runed. That outfit builds everything it owns to hold creatures like her. And me too, if I’m honest with myself.

Idiot. You should have known.

I watch the sun creep inside the entrance. Eventually, it stops.

I stay well behind it.

Meyer walks to within a stride of the line where the light ends and stands there looking out at a strip of gravel and a bit of hillside.

“Anything?” Kent asks, rising.

“A bird.”

“What kind?”

“A brown one.”

“Riveting.” Kent stretches his arms overhead. “This is the worst part of this job. Not the shooting or the bleeding. This.”

“Sit down and be still before you knock that arm on something,” Meyer says, and comes back and sits down himself.

Kent sleeps for a while. Meyer doesn’t, and doesn’t pretend to. He leans against the wall, stares straight ahead, and cracks his knuckles in a way that makes me want to kill him. Which would be a problem, since he’s already undead.

I think about those glowing gold eyes again.

Where is she right now?

That convoy has been driving since before first light. It’ll drive all day. Every hour of it puts more road between her and me, and I’m sitting on a stone floor in the dark with nothing wrong with me at all. Aside from being allergic to daylight.

Fuck’s sakes!

The sun has controlled my life for sixty years. I plan around it because that’s just how things are for me.

It has never left me feeling this helpless.

I had my hands on that cuff, and the runes burned through it into both of us. She got down beside me and pulled on that plate with her bare hands, and her palms blistered, and she kept pulling. Mine healed while I watched. Hers didn’t.

Her skin was hot. I’ve put my hands on every kind of person and creature, and I’ve never touched anyone who ran that hot without going up in flames.