Her hand squeezed mine, and she moved her legs, wincing as she straightened them. She could move, and I remembered how to breathe.
“Marsha and Luke are gone,” Jenks whispered as he hovered by my ear.
Like I freaking cared?
She was trying to sit up, and I gingerly helped her as the heat from the stopped car bathed us. “Little fish,” Ivy said, hair coming out of the bun as she held her middle. “They weren’t after them. Oh God, I think I cracked a rib.”
“Don’t move,” I said, stiffening as a siren lifted into the air. “The ambulance is coming.”
“No hospital.” Her black eyes fixed on mine, and she went whiter still as she tried to take a deep breath. “No safe house. I’ve been marked.”
Marked? Her gaze went to the pain charm around her neck, and she gripped it tight, shocking me. She never used my magic. Avoided it. “You need a hospital,” I said, and she hissed in pain as she tried to turn her head.
“No.”
“Ivy, you were hit by a car!” Jenks had dusted her cuts until they were only a slow seep, but her eyes were dilated and she hadn’t taken her other hand off her middle.
“Cormel,” she said softly, hatred temporarily overriding her pain. “I told you Marsha and Luke weren’t worth all of this. I wasn’t supposed to walk out of that apartment alive. That charm was aimed at me, too. He wants me dead . . . so you . . . will figure out how to save the souls of the undead. The car was a last effort to salvage their plan before going back with failure.”
My heart seemed to catch, then it raced as I looked at the surrounding faces for anyone watching too closely—their eyes holding fear. Ivy moaned as she breathed in my alarm, but I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t distance myself. The lethal charm had been aimed at all three of them. If I hadn’t been there to break it, Ivy would be dead and I’d be getting a call from the second-rising morgue.
“I don’t want to become a dead thing,” she whispered, then clenched in pain. “Rachel?”
I closed my eyes. Ivy groaned, her pain doubling as my panic pulsed through her, bringing her alive even as she struggled to stave off death. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be her scion. But I knew I would if it came to that. Cormel had grown tired of waiting for his soul. If Ivy was dead, me finding out how to return the undead their souls would move way up on my to-do list.
We had to get out of here. Even the safe houses held death, and the hospitals would only make her passing smell of antiseptic. Why had I worked so hard to save their miserable existences? I wondered as I found my bag and looped it over my head. But it hadn’t been just the undead in the balance when I’d freed the mystics last July, it had been the entire source of magic.
Jenks dropped down as I gathered my resolve. “They’re everywhere, Rache,” he whispered, his fear easy to read on his narrow, pinched features, and Ivy nodded. Surrounded by onlookers, we had a small space to breathe, but we couldn’t stay here.
Slowly I began to think. Trent. He had a surgery suite, one that wasn’t staffed by people who could be bought. I wasn’t sure where he was, but I could text him. Ivy was sitting. Maybe she could move. “Ivy,” I said, blanching at the blackness in her eyes when she looked at me from around a stray strand of hair. “Can you move?”
Her boots scraped as she shifted them under her. “If I can’t, I’m dead.”
A few in the crowd protested, but they backed up when Jenks rose, his fast, darting shape and the sharp sword in his grip making him a threat. My stomach turned when every hold I tried to help Ivy with only brought more pain. Teeth clenched, I tucked my shoulder under her arm and rose, staggering until we found our balance. Ivy’s eyes closed. We hung for a moment, waiting to see if she was going to pass out. In the nearby distance, a siren rose—but it brought death, not life.
“Okay, nice and easy,” I said, and Jenks kept everyone back as we started for the curb. Ivy’s head was down, and she moved in sudden, painful limps. Step, pause. Step, pause. Her weight on me was solid, and her scent was tinged with sour acid. Tears threatened, and I ignored them. I couldn’t live with Ivy if she was dead. I couldn’t be her scion, but I knew I’d do it, even as it would destroy me. I’d try to keep Ivy sane, knowing it was a bitter fallacy. I couldn’t kill her a second time as she would want me to. I was a bad friend.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said as we reached the curb and she took her hand from her middle long enough to use the lamppost to help her step up.
“This isn’t your fault,” I barked so I wouldn’t cry. “We’ll get you to Trent’s, and you’ll be fine.” His compound was almost deserted since the serious inquiries into his illegal bio labs had begun, but he probably had a surgeon on call.
Seeing her standing to catch her breath, I dug in my bag for my phone. “Can you hold this?” I said, giving her my splat gun, and she held it loosely. My fingers shook as I scrolled for Trent. He was the last person I’d called, and knowing he might not take a call but would always check a text, I wrote 911 and Eden Park and hit send.
My stomach was twisting as I tucked my phone in my back pocket. It was all I could do. But we couldn’t stay here. Each moment seemed to weigh more heavily on Ivy. She was slipping, and her living vampire endurance would mean nothing if she gave up.
“You can’t go to the car, Rache.” Jenks hovered before us, watching us and our backs both. “They’ll run you down.”
Shit. He was right. Tears of frustration pricked, and Ivy leaned against the lamppost. Behind her, people were turning away, leaving us to die.
“Where else can I go, Jenks?” I shouted, frustrated. “Nowhere on earth is safe from them!”
He shrugged, even as his dust grew dismal, but behind him was Eden Park, and a flash of hope lit through me. Ivy sensed it, and her eyes opened, glazed with pain.
“The park.” I wiggled under her again, and we staggered into motion. “Ivy, hold on.”
“The park!” Jenks echoed in disbelief, and then he nodded, rising up to fly five feet over us where he could keep watch.
The park. There was a ley line in it, thin and broken, but it was there. I couldn’t jump the lines without Bis. He wouldn’t be awake until the sun went down, but I could shift realities if I was standing in a line. The ever-after was a poor choice, but no one could follow us there, and maybe we could walk to the church’s ley line and pop back into reality.
Ivy stumbled as we found the grass, and we almost went down. Her moan sounded almost like pleasure. Old toxins were being pulled from her tissues to cope with the pain as her body struggled to stay alive. But this time it wasn’t a master satisfying his blood urge that was killing her, and her breath quickened as she took in my fear and kindled her own long-suppressed desires.
“Almost there,” I panted, struggling under her weight as I scanned the open grass between us and the footbridge. It was exposed, but they probably wouldn’t shoot her and risk hitting me by accident. Cormel needed me alive and Ivy dead. They only had to wait.
This was partly my fault, and I felt the helpless tears trying to start as I took more of Ivy’s weight. There was no way to bind a vampire’s soul to his body once he died, and as we slowly limped across the green space to Twin Lakes Bridge and the broken ley line, a warm tear ran a trail down my cheek.
“Don’t cry,” Ivy slurred. “It’s going to be okay.”
I wiped my eyes between our lurching steps, my stomach roiling. “Almost there.”
Jenks dropped down, worry pinching his features. “Her aura isn’t looking good, Rache.”