AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Prescott had to physically remove me from Sunny’s side.
He dragged me away from the edge of the hole, arms locked around my waist while I kicked and screamed and tried to claw my way back. I was beyond reason. There was nothing rational left in me.
My heart had been ripped out and replaced with a black hole that would suck me apart from the inside out. Soon I would be nothing. I’d be a vacuum where there had once been a soul.
Prescott pushed me against someone, and said, “Maybe you can calm her down.”
Arms wrapped around me, a familiar clean smell totally at odds with the cloying dust in the air.
I looked up and saw Cade staring down at me. His face was streaked with blood, but he looked otherwise unhurt. Leo was right behind him, staring at me as if he co
uldn’t believe I was real and not a ghost.
“He killed Sunny,” I wailed, burying my face in Cade’s filthy shirt. This was unfair to Prescott, who had only done the humane thing for my sister, but I needed to blame someone, and if Death presents you with a physical aspect of itself, that’s where you point the finger first.
Leo’s features darkened instantly and he grabbed Prescott by the front of his shirt. The demigod’s fists went to the cleric’s throat before Cade pried them apart.
“Stop,” Cade said. “He didn’t kill her, he let her go.”
Pres didn’t defend himself or correct me. He hung back a few feet, giving Leo an apologetic look. After a moment he wandered off, guided either by the pull of his mistress or his own knowledge of whose time had come. Wherever he went, death was sure to follow, so perhaps it was better if he didn’t stand anywhere near us for the time being.
Funny that he’d been right beside me when this happened and I had walked away physically unscathed. Emotionally, that was a whole different story.
Cade was stroking my hair, whispering meaningless words of comfort. It was all just a dull roar. My relief that he was okay was going to war with my anguish over losing Sunny and Sawyer. How could I feel so happy to be safe in his arms and so broken all at the same time?
The lightness his presence gave me was like a direct betrayal. I shouldn’t be allowed to feel anything but grief. Life shouldn’t get to go on.
“Where’s Sawyer?” Leo’s voice was strained with worry.
That did it, my brief reprieve was shattered. I glanced from Cade to Leo and shook my head, unable to say the words.
Cade held me closer, and I cried into his shirt until I had nothing left but hiccups and a headache.
The front door was mostly clear now except for a few people lying still, either exhausted or injured from those who had crawled over them. A breeze was creeping in over the broken glass.
Firefighters and paramedics were making their way in, first clearing the bodies in the doorway, then progressing farther into the heart of darkness.
I scanned the crowd, trying to make sense of all this carnage, but there was no sense to be had. People were dead, others were lying in ruin. Cameramen were weaving their way through the lobby desperate not to miss anything while the rescue crews worked.
This was being broadcast live to the world.
The gods had let this happen.
So much for the harvest of belief.
My gaze landed on a man standing near the empty registration desk. He looked pale and shaken, but something in his expression made me stop on him.
A thin twist of a smile curved his lips upward.
His expression was one of pure triumph.
The expression faltered when he caught my eye.
I pushed myself off Cade and bolted across the room, narrowly dodging a BBC cameraman who was filming a firefighter digging through the rubble. The two of them noticed me, and while the firefighter didn’t stop his work, the cameraman followed, jogging behind me with his gear jangling.
The man by the registration desk saw me coming and peeled off in the opposite direction. He made like he might loop back and head for the front door but thought better of it when he noticed the wave of police making their way in.
