Chapter Seventeen Charlotte
Chapter Seventeen
Charlotte
I dash across the rooftop, unable to think of anything other than the terror in the little girl’s face.
She can’t be older than five, fresh out of preschool.
I know exactly what that kind of terror feels like.
What it means to be hurt, to be frightened in the name of a wrathful God who was supposed to love you.
A piece of stray glass slices into my foot, and a sharp pain tears through me.
But I don’t let it stop me.
I don’t think of anything else—not even my own pain—as I desperately search for a way to reach her, and fast. There’s no way I can swim against the receding tide that’s cascading like a raging waterfall being funneled back between the buildings, and I can see her small hands starting to slip.
I don’t hesitate.
I become shadow and plunge toward her.
When I come out the other side, I’m balanced on a larger gathering of branches nearby, but a gush of the receding water immediately knocks me off my feet.
I go down and into the icy current, hard, cold, adrenaline shooting through me as I use what little strength I have left to fight my way back toward the surface.
I reach for one of the tree’s branches, my lungs screaming.
My powers are rapidly draining.
They’re like a muscle.
Built from time and training, but now tired from overuse.
Not infinite.
And I used nearly everything I had holding back the flood.
I’m running on empty.
Despite my fear, I reach down inside myself, summoning what little righteous fury I can muster at the unfairness, the injustice, of all this as I reach the water’s surface.
Black spots start to swim in my vision.
I burst out of the water a second later, my lungs seizing as I grab on to the nearest branch and use it as an anchor against the oncoming waves.
My muscles scream in protest as one of my hands slips.
Holy shit!
The branch is slippery.
But still, I manage to pull myself up enough that I’m able to throw one of my legs over the tree’s edge until I’m straddling the branch.
That was a lot harder than I expected, honestly.
“Hang on!” I shout to the little girl.
The fear and shrillness in my voice sound like the old me.
The one who was just as terrified as the little girl is.
I inch and shimmy my way down the wet branch toward her, the shakiness in my limbs and the rush of the tide making me unsteady as I get as close as I can to grab her without the branch breaking. If she lets go for even a moment, she’ll be washed away like the rest of them.
The rest of them . . .
Oh God.
The precautions I tried to plan aren’t going to mean a damn thing.
I draw nearer, just a little more, and the waterlogged limb cracks beneath me, lurching suddenly.
Shit!
The little girl screams.
But by the grace of everything that’s holy, I manage to grab her at the same moment the skinnier part of the limb she’d clung to washes away. It crashes into a floating dumpster.
I tug her toward me, fighting against the tide to pull her onto my part of the branch.
But she’s no longer looking at me.
For one brief moment, I wonder if my serpentine eyes are to blame.
If it’s me she’s so terrified of . . .
But then I see the floating taxi, lifted and carried by the rapid waters, heading straight toward us.
Oh fuck.
We’re both going to die, aren’t we?