“You heard her,” Jev said.
Gabe’s jaw clenched. “No. He’s mine. I’ve been waiting months for him to turn sixteen. I’m not walking away now.”
“There’ll be others,” Jev said, looking uncannily relaxed as he laced his fingers on top of his head. He shrugged. “Walk away.”
“Yeah? And be like you? You don’t have a Nephil vassal. It’s going to be a long, lonely Cheshvan, pal.”
“Cheshvan is still weeks away. You’ve got time. You’ll find someone else. Let the Nephil and the girl go.”
Gabe stepped up to Jev. Jev was taller and smarter and knew how to keep his cool — I’d gathered that in all of three seconds — but Gabe had the advantage of bulk. Where Jev was long and lean like a cheetah, Gabe was built like a bull. “You turned us down earlier. Said you had other business tonight. Far as I’m concerned, this isn’t your call. I’m sick of you strolling in at the last minute and calling the shots. I’m not leaving until the Nephil swears his oath of fealty.”
There was that phrase again, “oath of fealty.” Vaguely familiar, and yet distant. If on some deeper level I knew what it meant, the memory wasn’t resurfacing. Either way, I knew it would have terrible consequences for B.J.
“This is my night,” Gabe added, punctuating the fact by spitting at his feet. “I’m ending it on my terms.”
“Wait a minute,” the guy in the gray hoodie interrupted, sounding stupefied. His eyes swiveled in both directions down the alley. “Gabe! Your Nephil. He’s gone!”
We all turned toward the spot where B.J. had lain inert only moments ago. An oily stain on the gravel was the only sign he’d been there.
“He couldn’t have gone far,” Gabe snapped. “Dominic, go that way,” he ordered the guy in the gray hoodie, pointing down the alley. “Jeremiah, check the store.” The other guy, the one in a white graphic T-shirt, took off jogging around the corner.
“What about her?” Jev asked Gabe, nodding at me.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and go bring me back my Nephil?” Gabe shot back.
Jev raised his hands level with his shoulders. “Have it your way.”
I felt my stomach tumble to my knees as I realized that this was it. Jev was leaving. He was friends with, or at least an acquaintance of, Gabe, and that alone was enough to make me nervous of him, but at the same time, he was my only shot at getting out of here. Up until this point, he’d appeared to take my side. If he left, I was on my own. Gabe had made it clear he was the alpha male, and I wasn’t going to pretend I thought his remaining two friends would stand up to him.
“You’re going to walk away, just like that!” I yelled after Jev. But Gabe rammed his shoe into the back of my leg, forcing me to collapse to my knees, and before I could say more, my breath was knocked out of me.
“It’ll be easier if you don’t watch,” Gabe told me. “One solid hit, and it’ll be the last thing you feel.”
I lunged forward to escape, but Gabe grabbed a fistful of my hair, jerking me back. “You can’t do this!” I screamed. “You can’t just kill me.”
“Hold still,” he growled.
“Don’t let him do this, Jev!” I yelled, unable to see Jev, but certain he could still hear me, since I hadn’t heard the SUV start up yet. I was rolling in the gravel, trying to turn around so I could see the tire iron and try to dodge it. I wrapped my fist around a scoop of rocks, twisted violently just long enough to spot Gabe, and flung them.
His big hand came down, grinding my forehead into the ground. My nose was bent at a painful angle, rocks biting into my chin and cheeks. There was a sickening crunch, and Gabe collapsed on top of me. Through a haze of panic, I wondered if he was trying to smother me. Killing me quickly wasn’t enough, was it? Had to draw out the pain as long as possible? Gasping for breath, I clawed my way out from under him.
I scrambled to my feet and flipped around. I braced myself in a defensive position, expecting to find Gabe prepping to take a second shot at me. My gaze dropped. He was facedown on the ground, the tire iron jutting out of his back. He’d been stabbed with it.
Jev wiped his sleeve across his face, which glistened with sweat. At his feet, Gabe twitched and shuddered, swearing violently and incoherently. I couldn’t believe he was still alive. The tire iron had to be straight through his spine.
“You — stabbed him,” I blurted, horror-struck.
“And he’s not going to be happy about it, so I’d suggest you get out of here,” Jev said, twisting the tire iron deeper. He glanced over at me and did an eyebrow raise. “Sooner rather than later.”
I backed away. “What about you?”
He watched me for an absurdly long moment, considering the circumstances. A brief expression of regret flicked across his features. Once again, I felt a powerful tug to my memory that threatened to mend the bridge holding everything out of reach. I opened my mouth, but the conduit between my mind and my words had been destroyed. I was at a loss as to how to connect the two. I had something to say to him, but I couldn’t nail down what.
“You can sit tight, but I’m guessing B.J. already put a call in to the cops,” Jev said, screwing the tire iron deeper, causing Gabe’s body to spring taut at one moment, and fall limp the next.
As if on cue, the distant wail of sirens shrilled across the night.
Jev grabbed Gabe under his arms, dragging him into the weeds on the far side of the alley. “On the back roads, at the right speed, you can put a couple miles between you and this place in no time.”
“I don’t have a car.”
His eyes sliced into mine.
“I walked here,” I explained. “I’m on foot.”
“Angel,” he said in a way that sounded like he sincerely hoped I was joking.
A few moments together hardly qualified us for pet names, but nonetheless, my heartbeat went a little erratic at the endearment. Angel. How could he possibly know that name had haunted me for days now? How could I possibly explain the eerie flashes of black that intensified the closer he came?
Most unnerving of all, if I connected the dots …
Patch, a voice whispered from my subconscious, a quiet syllable that dashed itself against a cage deep within. The last time you felt this way was when Marcie mentioned Patch.
The single syllable of his name opened me up to a swarm of black, maddening, consuming black that flooded from every direction. I concentrated through it, eyes intent on Jev, trying to make sense of a feeling I couldn’t put words to. He knew something I didn’t. Maybe about the mysterious Patch, maybe about me. Definitely about me. His presence cut me with emotions too deep to be a coincidence.
But how were Patch, Marcie, Jev, and I connected?
“Do I — know you?” I asked him, unable to come up with any other explanation.
He gazed at me, unflinching. “No car?” he confirmed, ignoring my question.
“No car,” I repeated, my voice considerably thinner.
He arched his neck back, as though to ask the moon, Why me? Then he jerked his thumb at the white SUV he’d pulled up in. “Get in.”
I shut my eyes, trying to think. “Wait. We have to stay and testify. If we run, we might as well be confessing our guilt. I’ll tell the police you killed Gabe to save my life.” Further inspiration struck me. “We’ll find B.J. and get him to testify too.”