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She keeps trying. Sweat beads her forehead. Tears fill her eyes and the silver net shivers, moves, grows, and shrinks, but doesn’t stop the creature.
“Last chance,” the creature calls, and I swear there’s pleasure in its voice.
Asha turns to me, and a tear rolls down her face. “Help me get Max and Braxton out of here.”
My heart races. And I think of this town. The charred bodies. The destruction and the death. “What about the others?”
“Just do it!” She says, her words half a plea and half an order.
We gather up Max and Braxton and haul them away from town, dragging their limp bodies into the forest to a distance Asha deems safe. They slowly stop twitching as we drag them to safety, but neither man gains consciousness. It’s strange to see them so helpless, their complexions a sickly green.
What the fuck was that thing and what did it do to them?Calling it a Blood Mage hardly seemed to do it justice.If that’s what Asha could become… I shiver at the thought.
“Stay here,” she orders.
I grab her arms as she tries to run back. “What are you doing?”
She shakes my arm off. “Whatever I have to now that you three are safe.”
Then Asha races back and I chase after her again, her words ringing in my ears. Whatever she plans to do, I have a feeling it’s bad. Definitely something Max would want me to stop, but more than that, some deep part of me feels responsible for protecting her. But by the time we reach the intersection, the beast is gone.
And all the Enforcers are dead.
She collapses to her knees and I rush to her side. Through tears, she says, “I could have stopped him if… if I gave into the darkness, but I thought I didn’t have to. That I could still try to save everyone.”
I ask who again in vain while holding her, trying my best to comfort the woman I think I’m falling for, but nothing I do matters. She sobs in my arms, her broken words filled with misery. Filled with guilt over the people she can’t save.
God, what must it be like to suffer the way she has?
SEVENTEEN
Asha
In the quietof the motel room, the heavy silence feels oppressive, laden with guilt, defeat, shock. Exhaustion.Shit, I’m tired. After a hot shower, I’m ready to sleep, but Max is outside on a call and I feel like I have to hear about it before I crash. I won’t sleep well if I don’t know.
Braxton lies on the other bed, staring at the ceiling, probably trying to fill in the gap in his memory. Neither he nor Max remember anything. Orson and I let them believe we don’t either. It’s all one big convenient mystery.
Orson click-clacks away at his computer as always. It only took one simple look in the aftermath of the attack, when the twins were coming to, for him to understand what I wanted. Feign ignorance. Let me handle their questions. Play dumb.
And he obliged me. I think it probably has something to do with the moment we shared in the woods, when I fed on him and there was an unmistakable spark between us.. He’s intuitive, clever, and quick. A valuable ally outside the brothers.
The door swings open and Max returns inside, draped in a cloak of solemnity. “High command wasn’t happy we had nothing to offer for the incident report. Enforcers went back in, managed to recover all the bodies. There were no survivors.”
“Except us,” Braxton says.
“Right.” Max flicks his eyes at me, and I sense a hint of contempt. “Except us.”
I slit my eyes and stare daggers back at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Did you let the Enforcers die on purpose?”
I rise to my feet. “Are youserious?”
Max presses two fingers against his forehead and rubs them in little circles. “I don’t know, Asha. It just seems a little strange to me that only we four survived whatever happened out there, yet everyone else perished.”
“You thinkIhad something to do with that? You thinkIkilled your precious Enforcers?”
“See, when you say it like that, how am Inotsupposed to assume you have it out for us?”
