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Brooks let out an earsplitting cry. I didn’t need to look to know she had been hit. Her entire body tensed.
r /> And we plummeted.
The ground rushed toward us at surprising speed.
“Brooks!” I yelled.
Her desperate voice reached me telepathically. Zane, my wing!
My heart punched my ribs with such ferocity I couldn’t breathe.
She struggled, extending her one good wing, arching her back, and tensing her muscles as she tried to glide us to safety.
Adrik’s expression was a contorted look of horror. “We’re going to crash!”
We won’t crash. We won’t crash, Brooks chanted. I can do this. But there was no doubt she was losing the battle with gravity. And then all the fight left her. Her body went slack.
We tumbled through the air. In ten seconds, our heads were going to bust open like melons.
Down.
Down.
Down.
I felt a sudden jolt. My hands slipped a few inches. My stomach dropped. I looked up to see that Quinn had Brooks by the back of her neck.
“Adrik!” Alana shouted as she clung to the eagle’s back.
“Quinn!” I hollered. “We have to get to the gateway!”
She struggled with the weight of the entire crew, her wings beating the air with tormenting slowness. Buildings passed beneath us at tortoise speed.
No way could we lose our window of opportunity. I had no idea how serious Brooks’s injury was, but a demon dart had to be bad. I had to get her home quickly—Rosie’s magic saliva could heal her.
Adrik readjusted his hold on Brooks’s talons. “Can’t the eagle change into a dragon or some other massively powerful creature?”
No, I thought. Hurakan had once told me that only Itzamna had the power to turn into a dragon. “We’ll get there, okay?”
Quinn shrieked. She redoubled her efforts and flew across the night like everything depended on it. The second I looked down, my stomach clenched. Ik and another demon were racing on foot below us, keeping pace. Their necks lengthened and bent unnaturally so their beady eyes could watch our every move. A few cars cruised the street, but thankfully there were no pedestrians to get mowed down by the monsters.
“We’ve got company!” I shouted to Quinn.
“Are you joking me?” Adrik cried. “They’re unkillable—like cockroaches.”
I called on Fuego. A second later, my spear zipped toward Ik in a motion nearly untraceable to the human eye. Just as Fuego was about to hit the traitor, Iktan transformed into a column of silvery-purple mist. The spear stabbed the demon she’d left behind, and a loud cry echoed through the night.
My eyes searched frantically for Ik. How much time had I bought us? There. The deceitful monster reappeared, racing across the tree-lined street.
We had a fifteen-second head start, tops.
When we finally set down outside the laundromat, Brooks shifted back to her human form, then fainted.
I caught her before she collapsed. “She’s burning up!” All I could think was Please don’t let there be poison.
“It’s locked!” Quinn cried, banging on the door. “And the gate’s disappearing!”
I looked through the window and, inside a giant commercial dryer, caught sight of the familiar shimmer of a closing gateway—a swirl of gold and silver with flecks of blue.
