Noah slowed, partly because his legs were threatening to give out and partly because he thought he was going to be sick. The fire was still burning, out of his control but finding plenty to feed it. It was wicked and poisoned now, growling maliciously in the back of his head. Everything in Moore’s sphere grew corrupted. He took a couple breaths and made himself calm down, and headed over to Dane and Lindsay.
“It’s time to go,” he said, stopping a few feet from them. “We’ll all be in the van.” He turned away before his knees gave out and nearly fell over something. Someone. Jonas. Again.
“It’s time to go,” Jonas said clearly. He wasn’t looking at Noah, though, he was pulling up handfuls of grass.
“Back in the van.” Noah would worry about what was wrong with Jonas later. It would keep him busy. He had a feeling he was going to want to be busy as much as possible for a while.
One moment, Lindsay was immersed in Noah, the next he was alone in the middle of chaos, cold and stiff with being still so long. The door. While his mind fought to adjust to this reality, his body was scrambling out of the van and sprinting toward the door he’d seen through Noah’s eyes, the one Dane would be coming out of.
Hounds and humans raced past him and Kristan’s shouts followed him, but he didn’t heed any of it, just kept running. The door opened and Dane stumbled out, a dark shadow at his side. Three more steps, two, one, and then Lindsay was in Dane’s arms.
Dane grabbed him and held on like Lindsay might fade away, ducking his head to bury his face in Lindsay’s neck. His breath was ragged and labored, and tremors ran through his body.
“You’re safe now,” Lindsay whispered, reminding himself as much as Dane. The warmth of Dane’s arms made it real. “You’re safe. I’m sorry. You’re safe.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” Dane kissed Lindsay’s neck and his ear, working his way over to kiss him on the mouth. “I missed you. Every time they brought more in, I was afraid of seeing you.”
“I was safe. They didn’t get me.”
Lindsay took a step back to see Dane’s face. He didn’t want to say this. He didn’t want to think about it being true. But he had to. If he didn’t, he’d have to hide the truth from Dane, and that would be worse.
“They nearly caught Zoey and Ylli. Cyrus died saving them. I’m sorry, Dane. He’s gone.”
For a long moment, Dane’s face was a study in misunderstanding. “No. I can’t hear him, but...it’s the collar. He’s not. He wouldn’t let them.”
“I’m sorry.” Lindsay felt sick. He didn’t want to hurt Dane like this. “Lourdes might have been lying to me, but Ylli...” He felt like he was twisting a knife. “Cyrus saved them from the Hounds and that weather witch, he got them away safely, but he didn’t make it. Ylli said he could hear Cyrus when it happened, that Cyrus was just gone. I’m so sorry.”
Dane inhaled like he was getting ready to argue, his brow knotted into a frown, but Lindsay could see it seeping in.
“He should have told me this was coming,” he said slowly. “He was right. About everything.” Now, he looked lost. “I failed him.”
Oh, Dane. Lindsay cupped Dane’s cheek in his hand and drew him back down. “I’m so sorry,” he said again, wrapping his arms around Dane as best he could. “I wasn’t there. If I had known...”
He never would’ve sent Zoey and Ylli back to Cyrus. There would’ve been no reason for Cyrus to fight, he would’ve been able to simply run. Lindsay couldn’t fix anything now. At least he’d been able to save Dane. Noah had saved Dane.
Noah. Noah had been speaking to them a moment ago, Lindsay realized, and he hadn’t acknowledged it.
Noah was walking away, herding Jonas back into the van. Ylli leaned out to pull Jonas in and gestured at Lindsay to hurry up. Zoey was slouched in the passenger seat of the van, a hand over her eyes, Kristan was already in the driver’s seat.
“Go on.” Dane let go of him. “We can’t stay here.”
In the van, the second row was taken up by Ylli and his wings, and Jonas and Noah were in the third row. Lindsay slid the door shut and led Dane to the last row.
“Hold on,” Kristan said as she started to pull out.
They had parked on the lawn and the van was hardly designed for any off-road usage. Lindsay had to grab the seat in front as they bounced across the grass and off the curb with enough speed that something scraped as they hit the road.
“Guns!” That shriek was Zoey, and the thud from the front was probably her sliding off of her seat and taking cover.
“Oh, grow up. They’re not shooting at us.” Kristan took a corner so fast that the van groaned with stress, and they were on two wheels for a moment. The next thing Lindsay knew, the van lurched wildly and there was a sickening crunch as something went under the wheels. “Oops.”
“That’s one way to take them down,” Ylli said tightly.
Jonas was babbling about the Hounds being able to see them. Noah’s calm voice was a steady counterpoint to it until Jonas trailed off, apparently soothed by the reassurances that Lindsay couldn’t hear over the rumble of the van. Noah seemed to have a nearly infinite amount of patience, even for people who had tried to hurt him—at least once they were disarmed.
When they were clear of the laboratory campus, Lindsay reached out for Dane. This wasn’t how Lindsay had wanted to bring Dane back to them, with news like that.
Dane pulled Lindsay in and let him stay close, but it didn’t feel the same. He was staring out the window, hardly reacting when Kristan had to swerve wildly to avoid a fire truck barreling through. Dane didn’t pet him this time, either. Nothing was quite the same. They were together again, but right now it didn’t seem like much consolation to Dane.
Still, they were both alive.
Lindsay would have to be content with that for now. He closed his eyes and let the sound of the engine lull him to sleep.
It took a long time to calm Jonas down to the point that he slept, but Noah remembered a wounded bear that had found its way to his mother—a feral, trapped in its animal form by pain and illness—and the way she had calmed it. Not all ferals were blessed with regeneration the way Jonas and Dane were. At least Jonas’s gift meant Noah hadn’t killed one of his own.
An old lullaby in Quebecois French settled Jonas down so quickly that Noah had to wonder if the man had roots in the same back country as the Quinns. He was relieved when Jonas closed his eyes and curled up on the seat, and when Jonas’s humming faded away into a soft, intermittent snore. The relief didn’t last long. It was then that he felt the dead tension in the van, the cold silence of shock and horror.
“We should have brought clothes.” Ylli’s soft voice drifted back over the seats.
“We’ll stop when it’s safe,” Kristan said. Noah caught the violet flicker of her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Not sure how safe it’s going to be with that thing you have there.”
“Quiet.” Dane’s voice was low, but his tone was as hard as a fist. “It’s safe enough. Stop whenever you want. Be smart about it. And shut up.”
Noah looked back to see Lindsay sleeping, almost hidden in Dane’s arms, oblivious to the poisoned sweat and antiseptic reek coming off all three of them who had been in the lab. He turned his attention to the tube still stuck under his skin. The wound where they’d cut him to insert it had barely scabbed over.
Something larger was under there. If he picked the stitches out, he might be able to remove it.
It should have hurt more than it did. The dull voice in the back of his head noted that he was probably still in shock. His hands were shaking, but he kept picking at the coarse black knots, pulling off the dried blood and worrying them loose. He had two kinked stitches in his palm and was working on the next when a low hiss broke his concentration.