26. Ben
There was a particular look in Garroway’s face. One that said he was going to bolt before he actually did it, running full pelt away from the four of us.
Oh no you fucking don’t, I thought, struggling back to my feet. The mending rune had made sure I wouldn’t die from the sucking chest wound he’d given me, but that didn’t mean I was ready to run him down.
“A little boost?” I asked Geo while Cress disappeared in a swirl of Braza’s shadows to give chase.
Geo reluctantly turned his attention away from the vapor of white shadow still enveloping Phaeron. “Yes,” he said, running at me with his wings flaring out. He lifted me by the hips, and I clung to him with my arms. We gained ground on the retreating vampire.
“You want to double back for Big P?” I suggested.
“He can handle himself,” Geo rumbled.
I wasn’t so sure. But then again, he was an indescribably old being from another world, while I was squarely twenty with a deep grudge for the vampire trying to escape his rightful death, so I didn’t argue.
Garroway snaked his way around some of the unnatural creatures and enslaved supernaturals. They had found another way to the top floor but had frozen in place, white-glazed eyes staring out at nothing. “Eerie,” I muttered to myself.
Of course, when I could’ve wished for the monsters to attack someone and drag him off, they didn’t bother.
“The Hunger must be dead,” Geo commented.
But it wasn’t a mission accomplished. Not yet.
Static crackled in my ear, and I nearly ripped off the tiny mic taped to my ear. Bianca and Wren had spoken on and off during the less dangerous parts of our trip, just to go silent with the big battle. “…Ben? Ben, you there?” Wren asked.
“Oh, thank fuck. The stream is back,” Bianca said a moment later. “You okay?”
“Mostly okay,” I answered. The mending rune had closed the worst of the wound, leaving a raw edge of pain below my collar.
“Want to tell the audience what happened, then?” Wren prompted.
“Just…give us a few minutes,” I said, flustered. If they’d missed all of that battle, then I didn’t have the breath to explain what’d happened.
Light was starting to pour in from the dirty windows overhead, courtesy of a few gaps in the storm clouds. They appeared to be receding as rapidly as they came on…almost like they were magically created.
Below us, Garroway struggled with a trap of black and purple shadows. His ankle was caught in a thorny loop of them, and he bared his fangs in a frustrated snarl while glancing up at the sky. If the freak storm was fading, that meant he was stranded here with us and whole bunch of monsters until nightfall.
Sounded like my kind of party.
Geo dropped lower to the ground and released his hold on me, giving me a running start. He flapped his wings hard before coming down on Garroway with his full obsidian weight. The vampire gave up trying to escape the shadow trap and rolled his ankle at a brutal angle to avoid getting crushed.
The snare disappeared, and Garroway straightened, favoring his broken foot. He came face to face with Cress, her head and hair bare of Braza’s power, though it leapt off her hand and around her glowing sword. He recoiled and pivoted, but he was boxed in by Geo and me.
“Oh no. Nowhere to run,” I mocked, flipping a dagger between my fingers.
“All right, I admit it,” the vampire drawled, slowing raising both hands. “You’ve got me. How much will it take for us to part ways peacefully? A million each?” He flashed his most charming spider smile toward Cress. “Two, perhaps? I can have the funds wired to your bank account tonight.”
Cress tilted her head, pretending to consider. “I think for many, Garroway,” she said, tapping her chin with an elongated shadow claw, “your death is priceless.”
Face morphing into a snarl, he turned and pointedly met my gaze. The force of his vampiric compulsion reached for purchase within my mind, but I was beyond used to his tricks after a lifetime of them.
“Fucking shank him already,” Bianca muttered in my earpiece.
“With pleasure,” I said, already in motion, signaling Geo. I snapped my fingers, casting a power-level-two spell. A new trick just for him—a series of exploding stars right in his face. Geo clamped onto Garroway’s upper arms to force him to take the brunt of the stinging burns that broke out all over the vampire’s exposed skin.
“The magic I was supposed to have,” I said. I pictured the spiked rune that made the spell possible, about to snap my fingers to set it off again.
“You insolent—” Inky darkness slid over his mouth, cutting off anything else he might say. His eyes bulged in their sockets, and he thrashed, struggling in futility to break Geo’s hold. Shadows had twined around and through his legs, rendering him completely immobile.
Geo nodded, and Cress gestured. He was all mine.
I sheathed my dagger. My fingers shook with the sheer force of my anticipation. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I asked, daring to step into his space and stare him down properly. “To be silenced and held down. At the complete mercy of another person.”
Something like fear lit in his bloody gaze, along with something pleading, something that said, “Maybe three million?”
“I don’t want your blood money. I don’t want your contacts or your resources or even your pocket dimensions,” I told that expression, hoping to see that light of hope die when he realized he was about to pay for his sins.
He glanced away and made a muffled sound. It wasn’t until Phaeron spoke that I realized he’d snuck up on us out of the shadows. “There’s one thing I want before you go on.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Goddamn, Big P. We’ve got to put a bell on you,” I muttered.
“I would not wear it, Little B,” he said.
I stepped aside for him, figuring he had a few things to say to Garroway after his time under the tender mercies of him and Myuna. Phaeron looked like he’d rolled in flour, something white and powdery smeared on his face, horns, and clothes. Otherwise, he seemed…fine? Maybe better than fine, with some new confidence in how he held himself. Cress eyed him closely, and he winked back at her before reaching for Garroway.
He unbuckled the sword strapped at the vampire’s side with one hand and the aid of his shadows. More muffled sounds came from Garroway, along with a futile thrash of his whole body.
Phaeron fastened the sword to his belt and tipped his head my way. “Sorry to interrupt. Might I help? Though it looks like you all have it well in hand.”
Well, that was the gist of my grand revenge speech anyway. I glanced up at the peaceful blue sky left now that the storm had passed. “He needs to greet the sun,” I said.
“I’ll carry him,” Geo rumbled.
“And I’ll keep him bound in shadows,” Cress said in a two-toned voice.
I saluted them playfully, and together, they took him down to the bottom floor. Phaeron offered his free hand, the other curled in a loose fist. “Little B?” I asked.
“If you must call me something silly, am I not permitted to do the same?”
“I think…” I slowly grinned up at him and took his hand. “I’m finally rubbing off on you.”
“Frightening.” He grinned back, baring his fangs, then turned into shadows slower than normal, giving me plenty of warning to close my eyes before we were jerked to another location.
When I felt tile below my feet again, I jumped back in surprise with a shout of “holy shit!” A massive rat-shaped unnatural scurried toward the doors we’d entered the mall through, joining a stampede of monsters and people alike. They hadn’t bothered with the mechanism of the doors, instead going straight through the glass in the middle.
Cress, Geo, and a viciously struggling Garroway stood just to the side, while Phaeron and I had landed amidst a group of stragglers. I palmed a dagger, but these unnaturals weren’t interested in fighting anymore. They ran like their life depended on it.
“She’s taken control of them. She knows we’d kill them otherwise,” Phaeron remarked. He casually grew shadow talons and ended the lives of a pair of rat creatures that brought up the rear. Whatever good cheer that’d come over him faded quickly as he dragged the corpses outside by their naked tails. “They took the torchbearers I unbound from her will. And the burn pile.”
“Looks like we’re not going to be invited to do another supply run anytime soon,” I snarked.
Unfortunately, this was being recorded on stream, which meant Roe’s mom was going to be pissed. The truck was destroyed—the wheels popped by ragged slashes, the doors and hood torn clean off. Truck guts littered the front of the mall. Here, a half-shredded seat; there, a chunk of metal that could’ve been part of the engine torn straight from the front.
“Roe is going to be so mad we didn’t bring her,” Cress whispered.
Phaeron had ditched the rats to help pick up and bind Garroway instead. He had the ankles in one hand while Geo had the shoulders. The vampire resembled a worm with how he was bound in two layers of shadowy ropes and reduced to squirming as the two men carried him out of the shade of the building.
“Right here’s great,” I said. They dropped him on the wet pavement, and I made sure he was face-up to greet the sun properly. His skin was already starting to redden as rays kissed his face.
“That looks like it hurts,” I taunted the vampire, squatting by his head. Phaeron lingered close by, weaving shadows back into place when the sun threatened to fray away the ropes that bound Garroway.
“In your most needy moments, where is the goddess who declared you her right hand?” the dimensional added with a low chuckle. He was watching for Garroway’s death nearly as avidly as I was. Did that make us a fucked-up pair?
I pulled the phone out of its sling, swiftly killing the stream and pulling the mic off my ear before Bianca could cuss me out. The public didn’t need to see us gloating over this.
Black spots broke out over Garroway’s face, the skin charring and flaking away. “I want you to remember how many people you killed like this. Burning in their own agony, often from the inside out,” I said with a sneer.
The shadowy gag was wearing away, poorly muffling his screams. He jerked, trying to roll over and hide from the unforgiving sun. Obsidian hands seized his legs, slamming him back onto his back. Geo nodded toward us and backed his shadow away. He put his arm around Cress, who watched from a healthy distance, a concerned frown on her face.
I pinned the vampire’s shoulders down, careful of any snapping fangs as the heat damage accelerated. “Better enjoy the coolest moments left,” I said with malicious glee. “Hell is hotter still.”
His skin and facial hair caught fire, his whole body going concave as he entered the last stages of burning to ash. Garroway’s screams faded to one last moan of agony before only char remained of him and what he’d been wearing. The breeze started to break apart the man shape left around the burnt clothing when Phaeron and Cress withdrew their shadows.
I snapped a picture and texted it to Bianca. Instead of the stream of abuse I expected, she merely texted back, “Wish I could’ve seen it. :(”
The excitement was fading about as fast as it’d been to kill Garroway out in the sun. “It was too easy for him,” I texted back before pocketing the device. Any death would’ve been too easy, though. What would’ve really satisfied me, when he was the reason I’d lost my mom and childhood? When Lucas was still in a coma in a hospital we were about to evacuate.
There was an awkward silence between the four of us. Well, they had just helped me murder a man, no matter how deserving he’d been. I didn’t know what to say after it was done, either.
“Shopping spree?” I suggested.
Cress breathed a disbelieving laugh.
“No,” Geo grumbled.
“Stay if you wish. I need to borrow Little B,” Phaeron said.
Cress covered her mouth, trying to contain a string of tired giggles. “You’re really calling him that?”
“Yes, and I will bring him back shortly. I owe you all phones, after all.” Phaeron glanced toward the wreckage of the truck. “We’ll need to steal another truck, I presume?”
I handed Wren’s phone over to Cress. “Here. Call Bianca. She knows how to hotwire a car. I’m sure you can get tools from the mall somewhere.”
Geo raised a stony brow. “And if the unnaturals return?”
“They won’t,” Phaeron said confidently. He rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait, you never told me why—” And we were off in a puff of shadows.
I saw why Phaeron didn’t like cars now. Traveling by shadow was way faster, though by the time he released me, I was about to throw up over his leather boots. We’d arrived in a hospital room in what felt like no time at all. Dizzy, I fell toward the nearest trashcan and fumbled it under my chin to dry heave until my stomach felt better.
“Sorry. Time is of the essence,” the dimensional said. He offered me a hand up once I set the trashcan aside.
We were in Lucas’s room. The steady hum of machinery beeped around his still form swallowed up in its sea of white sheets.
Phaeron turned toward him too. He leaned over my little brother, presumably staring at his soul. “Such a long possession by the Hungering Darkness has left him quite damaged. But he is the last victim,” he murmured. “And a chunk of his soul remained in the belly of the monster.”
I choked on a breath. “You’re going to save him? You…you’re holding that piece of his soul right now?”
“I cannot make any promises,” he warned. “But my soul was just made whole, and the process was…easy. The missing piece knew exactly where to slot.” He untucked Lucas from his hospital sheets and drew aside the collar of the gown. I went to the other side of the bed, watching with my heart beating erratically in my throat.
Phaeron opened his fist and placed his palm flat against the skin over my brother’s heart. A jolt passed through Lucas. His fingers twitched; his legs shifted. He was waking up!
Above the ventilator strapped to his face, his eyes flared open. The irises were a shade of gray one small notch off from white and swam around in a panic as he spotted the two of us standing over him. “Lucas,” I breathed.
He clawed the mask off his face and started screaming. Dragging his nails over his cheeks, he nearly scratched furrows into himself before I caught his wrists. “It’s okay. You’re in control. It’s okay,” Phaeron was saying.
“Look at me,” I begged as Lucas continued screaming his lungs out.
The door into the hall slammed open, and in rushed Mama Rollins at the head of a trio of nurses. Thank fuck she was here—anyone else would’ve seen what was happening and immediately assume the worst.
“Use some magic. Check him,” Cress’s mom barked toward the fae nurse behind her.
Phaeron slipped into the shadows and reappeared at my side in moments, giving the green-skinned woman space to work. “Lucas, you’re okay,” I said, giving his wrists a shake. “You’re in a hospital, and you’re safe.”
“You are your own person, free of the Hungering Darkness,” Phaeron added.
The title seemed to catch his attention. Lucas relaxed back into the bed and looked around again in earnest. Green tinged his skin from the fae nurse’s magic. She was quickly checking him head to toe.
“Ben?” Lucas rasped. He hiccupped dryly, his face creasing like he was going to cry. “Ben, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to run off like that.”
“Shh.” I looped one arm under his shoulders, awkwardly bending down to hug him when he was still hooked up to several machines. “It doesn’t matter. All I care about is that you’re finally back.”
I looked up at Phaeron. “Thank you,” I said, properly teary for my brother and me both.
He dipped his chin in acknowledgment, a hint of something like grief and longing passing over his expression. “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said.