Something was eating me. For a white-hot second, I felt the sting, but that wasn’t right. I’d changed clothes, I’d wiped down. There might be draug residue, but it wouldn’t be enough to hurt me.
I was okay.
Overhead, thunder boomed and lightning danced in the clouds.
I made it to the edge of the roof and peered over. There was no railing; this wasn’t some terrace or balcony—it was just tar, gravel, and a sharp drop for three floors, straight down to a parking lot.
And a big, square, gray armored truck that was still sitting right where we’d left it. Of course they were okay. I believed it, I knew it. Just like I knew they wouldn’t leave me behind.
Stinging. A breathtaking wave of it, again, flashing over me and then fading into a wave of calm. Everything is okay. Look, they’re here. They’re waiting for me. We’re okay.
I saw the driver’s side door open and Michael step out on the running board. Even in all that gray, dim light, his fierce grin glowed right along with his blond hair. “What’s with the prisonwear?” he shouted up.
“You know me. I’ve spent so much time behind bars I miss the fashions.” I looked at the drop. It didn’t get any better. “I’m cut off, man. Is Claire—”
“She’s here, screaming her head off. She made us turn around for you. I think she’s about to stake Myrnin, and me, and maybe Eve if we don’t let her come find you, so save us, get your ass down here.”
“Uh, I’d love to, but I’m not half superhero like you. And I left my Spider-Man costume at home.”
Michael got serious. In one fluid move he was out of the van and leaping up on the roof like some big, dangerous cat.
He was staring up at me, and in a calm, clear voice, he said, “Jump.”
“Dude, I am not jumping.”
“I mean it.”
“You mean you’re going to catch me like some old-school damsel in distress? No way in hell, man.”
He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other, and then I felt a damp breath of chill on the back of my neck, and I knew, knew the draug were there, they were rising up out of the puddles on the roof, dripping down out of the clouds, coming up in a liquid rush from the stairwell ….
Something was eating me. Part of my brain was screaming, but the thick wave of calm descended again, smothering it. It’s all okay. Everything’s okay. Jump.
I jumped.
It wasn’t a hero kind of thing, I didn’t do a swan dive or let out a warrior yell or anything. I probably looked stupid as hell, actually. It seemed to take forever, but I was sure Claire could have told me exactly how long it took me to fall, simple math and all that, and then something cushioned me and bounced me up on my feet again with a solid thump, so smooth and fast that it was like Michael hadn’t actually caught me at all.
Which he had, of course, but we pretended really hard that it had never happened.
“Get in the back,” he told me, and swung himself down into the truck’s cab. I jumped from the top of the truck to the ground—ouch, even that small distance was tough on the knees—and opened the back door.
Claire was fighting with Myrnin, and by God, she looked like she might just win. Well, probably not, but from the expression on her face she was never going to give up, ever. I kind of froze for a second, because I had never seen her look like that, so focused and burning with rage and just …
Beautiful.
And then she saw me, and the look changed, and it was something even more amazing. There’s this word I always had trouble with in schooclass="underline" transcendent.
But that was it, right there.
Myrnin let her go without a word, and she flew into my arms so hard I almost tumbled out the back again. She was all soft skin and tensed, trembling muscle. I hugged her hard, just for a second, and then let go to slam the back door shut and lock it. “Go, Mikey!” I yelled, and then grabbed Claire again. I kissed her. I wanted to kiss her forever. No, that wasn’t true—I wanted a hell of a lot more than that, but it wasn’t going to happen in the back of an armored truck with a damn vampire leaning up against Amelie’s velvet throne, watching us with an expression somewhere between distaste and longing.
Claire looked vague and dumbstruck for a second when I let go, but she grabbed a handhold—me—as the truck backed up. “Hey,” she said, “what the heck are you wearing?”
“I went shopping,” I said. “What do you think? Straight off the runway.”
“Where, at the detention center?”
Banter was tiring, suddenly, so I resorted to the truth. “I had to ditch my clothes. They were full of draug.”
She winced, and unsnapped the top of the jumpsuit to see the red marks on my skin. The bleeding had stopped, at least, though the worst bites had leaked into the paper, making it look either festive or horrific, depending on how your mood ran. Me, I was just happy to be alive and have my girl holding me. Today, that was one hell of a win. “Did you get hurt anywhere else?”
“We can explore that somewhere better than this, but I think I’m okay. Got away clean. I mean that like a metaphor, because I could really use a shower.”
Then I felt the sting again, hot as acid rain. I got away clean …. No, I couldn’t have. I didn’t get away. Nobody gets away. Something is eating me. I know it. I feel it. … No. No, I was okay. Everything was okay. Claire was right here, holding on to me. It was all fine.
“Did you close the valves?” Myrnin asked.
“One was stuck,” I said. “All the others are closed. You don’t think they can open them?”
“Unlikely. Magnus can manifest enough physical strength to manage it, but he is about to have much more to worry about,” Myrnin said. “I flushed the lines with silver nitrate. They can’t use the pipes with any safety. We’ve slowed them down considerably, at the very least.”
The truck did a three-point turn and accelerated, which was a relief. I’d been afraid the draug were going to do some end run around us and trap us all. But from the roaring of the engine, Mikey wasn’t going to let anything at all stop us now, and if the draug wanted to splash the windshield I supposed they were welcome to try.
Myrnin sat down on the cushy throne that was decorated with the Founder’s symbol on the top, and heaved a big sigh. He was smiling. Not the usual look for him, either—this had a certain gleeful cruelty to it that made me glad he wasn’t directing it at me.
“Can you hear that?” he asked us. He had his eyes closed and his head tipped back against the heavy velvet padding.
“Is it the draug?” Claire asked anxiously. “Are they singing? Is it getting to you or—”
“Not singing,” he said, and the smile grew wider. “Screaming. They’re screaming. And it is lovely.”
There was something off about him, I thought with a weird, fleeting chill. The Myrnin I remembered was a crazy asshole, but he wasn’t some kind of sadist. Then again, I supposed they’d been afraid of the draug for so long that maybe a little gruesome victory dance might not be so strange.
He opened his eyes and looked at me, and for a moment there was something wrong in him. Something not Myrnin at all.
It hurts. It shouldn’t still hurt. Something’s wrong. I need to … to wake up ….
No. There was no pain. I was fine. Everything was fine.
“We should definitely celebrate that we did not die,” Myrnin said. “I believe you’re all old enough for champagne, are you not?”
“Yes,” I said, and heard Michael and Eve chorus from the front.
“No,” Claire blurted, and her cheeks turned adorably pink. “Oh, come on, you already knew that. And by the way, none of us are legal drinkers yet.”