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“I thought Dust stopped the ritual.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” I said, a feeling of horrendous dread building in the pit of my stomach. Wasn’t it enough to interrupt the prayer to the Eldest? Surely Scrimshaw hadn’t given us the wrong address. And why did the rift appear so close by? For that matter, what determined where these gateways were supposed to open in the first place?
But I had more pressing matters to attend to. I wasn’t even sure when he’d shown up, but suddenly, there he was: Royce, his hands stuck in his coat pockets, shaking his head as he watched the inferno.
“What the – Royce? What are you doing here?”
His shoulders rose, then sl
umped as he heaved a deep sigh. “Wondering whether I’ll still have a job to go back to in the morning.” He turned to me, the grimace on his face bathed in the fiery glow of the burning house. “Is this how you people deal with your problems? By setting everything on fire?”
“The hell are you talking about?” I bellowed. “Are you being serious right now? Do you even remember the warehouse?”
No fucking way he was going to pin this on my conscience. Once, on the same night I’d first met him, Royce had personally burned down an entire Gridiron warehouse to cover up the deaths of over a hundred normals at a pop concert, their corpses going up in flames in the bargain.
He waved his hand nonchalantly. “Right. Right. But those people were dead.” He gestured at the lawn, at the cultists sprawled across it, moaning and clutching at their burned and broken bodies. “This is different.”
“We’ve grown quite weary of doing the Lorica’s work for it,” Carver said, his voice dangerously even, his gaze lethal. “The bedlam was necessary. We came to put a stop to the opening of another of the Eldest’s rifts. We succeeded where you could not.”
Royce frowned even harder, but he said nothing.
“Why are you even here?” I said. “You’ve usually got a team traveling with you. A few Hands, maybe more Wings. I’m not used to seeing you without any lackeys.”
“About that,” Royce said. “I’m here for a different reason.”
He vanished, and in a flash, reappeared just inches from my face. Before I could dodge, Royce slammed his huge hand against my brow, gripping powerfully around my head. A spike of fear shot through my chest. This was how he controlled people’s minds. I struggled under his touch, but he was too strong.
“I told you to lie low, didn’t I?” Royce muttered.
From somewhere behind him I heard Sterling and Gil growling, animalistic and feral. The glow of green energy told me that Asher was prepared to brawl, having just fed on the power of pain. But it was Carver’s voice that rang loudest over them all.
“Release him, Royce,” Carver snarled. “You will unhand my charge, or I will pull your spine out through your nostrils, so help me.”
I was still shaky and uncertain in Royce’s grasp, but I still found the bravado to back Carver up. “He’s right, you know. I wouldn’t fuck around with Carver if I were you.”
“Shut up,” Royce said. “I’m trying to help you.” He leaned in closer, the smell of cigarettes and whiskey wafting off his skin. I flinched, but he held tight, whispering in my ear. “Head to Igarashi’s apartment. You’ll be safe there.”
Safe from what, I meant to ask – but Royce clenched his fingers harder, so much that my skull felt like it was about to shatter. Then I blinked, and he was gone. So was everyone else, along with the burning house.
Wait. They hadn’t disappeared. I looked around myself, at the quiet and darkness. I was in Heinsite Park, alone. Royce had teleported me away. So many questions, and only Herald, it seemed, had the answers. I sprinted in the direction of Parkway Heights, melting into the gloom once I found my bearings, prepared to shadowstep directly into Herald’s apartment.
Safe from what?
Chapter 12
“From the Scions,” Herald said, his hands clasped together. “Royce was saving you from the Scions.”
I peered into my beer bottle, maybe hoping that I could find at least one answer to my myriad questions in there.
“What do the Scions even want with me?”
Herald pressed his lips together, casting furtive glances around his apartment, as if afraid that someone might hear. He leaned closer across the neat, polished wooden surface he called his dining table, and practically whispered.
“They want you dead, Dust. The Scions want to eliminate you.”
I stared at him with my mouth open for close to a full minute. I didn’t have to ask the obvious question, and maybe it was testament to how close Herald and I were as friends, because he started filling me in without being prompted.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed something interesting about the rifts. They’ve got one thing in common. You’re always around when they open up.”
