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“Come on!” someone was hollering, and someone else screamed, and the rest of the world narrowed down to the throbbing in my back and the stinging of my skin, and God help me, I wanted to peel it right off of my flesh, or—
Hands caught me, hauling me off the hood of the truck. Something clattered to my right. I was hefted between two bodies that I had the vague impression were much too slight to really be able to carry me.Magic, I thought dazedly, and then,Rose.
They were pulling me away from her. They were—
I wasn’t sure how much I even managed to move. I must have at least flailed a bit. One of my rescuers cursed, and the other did something that froze my limbs in place with a chill that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. And then Rose’s voice was there, only a foot or two from my ear, quavering with panic but present. That was all I could have asked for.
“Will he be okay?” she said. “Is he—”
As if my mind had been holding on just to confirm her presence, I never got to hear the rest of that sentence. The world tumbled away from me completely.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rose
“Seth? Can you hear me yet?” I rested my trembling hand against my consort’s cheek, the gentle strokes of my fingers willing more magic from me to him.
We’d been tearing down the road for a couple of minutes now, and he still hadn’t woken up. With each passing second, my heart thumped harder with the worry that he might never wake up at all.
The enforcers who’d grabbed Seth off the hood of the truck had carried him to the nearest vehicle: the minivan that had arrived with our extra supplies. We were tucked into the middle seat, the air around us tart with the scent of lavender, three enforcers in the back and two up front. The wheels shuddered over the pot-holed surface as the engine roared at speeds this road was never meant to endure.
Seth’s brawny body sprawled awkwardly in the tight space, one leg on the verge of sliding off the seat. I had his head and shoulders on my lap, a reversal of the pose I’d found myself in after my last encounter with the demon. Except then I’d passed out from overextending myself. Seth had been caught head-on in a blast of demonic energy. I didn’t even know how much damage he might have taken.
I was healing every injury I could see: the scorched-gray streaks on his arms and where the unnatural magic had burned through his clothes, the cuts where shards of broken glass had sliced into his skin. But I didn’t know how to stir him out of unconsciousness, or if I should even try to. None of the enforcers who’d leapt into the van with us in our hasty escape had more than the standard first aid training.
Engines were rumbling all around us. Horns blared as we careened onto the main road toward the city. Was the blockade still up on the freeway to stop people from heading this way? Did it even matter?
The demon’s hollow roar carried over the landscape behind us. There was a thunderous thud and a smash like crumpling steel. My stomach flipped with the certainty that it had caught one of our cars and dashed it against the ground with all its monstrous strength.
“Where the fuck are we going to go?” one of the enforcers up front was saying. “We can’t stop that thing.”
“We regroup at the Assembly building. That’s the plan,” the other said.
“Andthenwhat?”
“I don’t know. There’s got to be something.”
There’s got to be something.I traced my fingertips over Seth’s slack face again, fighting to focus on the healing magic I was offering him and not the turmoil of emotion inside me. I didn’t even know where Jin was—I hadn’t seen him in the final chaos.
He had to be alive. I wouldn’t be if he wasn’t. The connection between us still shone through my veins, and without the pained flicker of my bond with Seth. But I had no idea how close the demon might be on his heels. The cries and the thunder of its approach seemed to be getting louder.
A tree blackened and torn up by the roots hurtled past us to crash by the side of the road. The driver swerved, just barely avoiding the nearest branches. Buildings loomed ahead of us, lights glittering against the growing darkness, and a deeper queasiness formed in my gut.
The demon would slow down soon—when it reached the city with all the possibilities for carnage that lay there.
I was speaking before I’d even thought the words through. “We have to—”
I cut myself off. Had to what? Stop and make some kind of last stand? I didn’t for a second believe we could push back the demon right now, scattered and panicked and many of us wounded.
We’d always known the creature had more power than we could contend with directly. But all of our ideas to try to outsmart it had failed. Lady Northcott hadn’t sounded as if she had much of a back-up plan when I’d talked to her an hour ago.
The enforcer in the front passenger seat twisted around to look at me. I expected annoyance, but all I saw in her face was desperation. She wanted me to have an answer.
I opened my mouth and closed it again. “I’m sorry.”
Her lips pursed. “Youshouldn’t be apologizing. That thing is just… I wish we could feed the traitors who summoned that creature to it and watch it choke on them.”
I doubted it would work exactly that way, but I couldn’t deny the image was a little satisfying. Why weren’t the Frankfords and my father and the rest of them out here facing the results of their crimes?
