Chapter 50 #2
“You killed—” Penny gasps. “You killed—”
“I’m going to explain everything,” I tell her, out of breath. “For real this time. But first we need to get out of here, okay?” I fish my phone out of my pocket and shoot Fiona a frantic text: High Thane at docks. Edgar dead. They have Reid—HURRY.
“We have to move fast,” I manage. “There are others.”
Penny sobs. “Oh god.”
“We’re going to be fine. Come on.”
The sun outside is beginning to descend in the sky, painting the licorice-black sea with caps and spindrifts of sparkling gold. Unless Reid pulls off a miracle and executes the High Thane’s son and all of his men, we have very little time before they’re all after us.
And Reid—
I cannot think about Reid.
When we take off running, I realize I’m in even worse shape than I thought. Each time my legs pump me farther down the dock, currents of pain spasm up and into my shredded, scorched back. The tendrils of the spell tingle in my bones like a beetle underneath my skin.
When we cross from the docks into the buzz of Half City, I can hardly stand upright, but I can hear the rapid footfalls of at least three Brood demons chasing after us. Steam rises from subway grates into the crisp air. Car horns blare, and I nearly careen into a couple sharing a foamy latte.
“Faster,” I urge Penny, her hand in mine, my boots squelching in dirty melted snow.
When I spy the STC police station, I tug us behind a snow-capped dumpster and press us against the chilled alley wall. It sizzles against my back like an egg in a frying pan.
“When I say go”—I wince—“you need to run to the police station.”
“What are those things? They have claws, Viv.”
I muster any strength I have left to tell her, “You never saw your captors and I was never here. It was a botched ransom for your dad’s money, and you escaped on foot, okay?”
Penny nods vigorously. Her eyes are bloodshot, her hands shaking with adrenaline. “What about you?”
The Brood doesn’t care about Penny—they don’t even know who she is. Only Edgar knew who I was—who my friend was—and his only use for her was to lure me to them. They’ll let her go. At least for now.
But with the syrabraxa in my back…Finn will follow me to the ends of the earth.
And despite the way my vision’s dotted with black spots, one thing is crystal clear: I have nowhere to go.
I cannot save Reid in the state I’m in. Not alone, that’s for certain.
And I can’t go back to Harker, where I have no idea who I can trust. Nor can I go to my friends or family and put them in the crosshairs of the most dangerous deviants in existence.
Anywhere I go, I’m jeopardizing everyone around me.
I’m thoroughly, completely, and desperately alone.
But I know this city. I just need to think. We’re pretty deep South of the Chasm. In fact, we’re not too far from—
Demon voices echo around the corner. Muttered words about where we might have run.
“I’ll figure something out,” I whisper, eyeing them on the bustling street. The demons are scanning the sidewalk, nostrils flaring, scenting the air. When they turn their backs, I urge her on. “Go now.”
“Stay safe, please.” She grasps my hand, which is gripping my dagger. “I love you.”
I look down at my father’s blade between us. The swirling serpent, now caked in blood, coiling itself around the hilt.
Hellion.
When I look back up, Penny’s already crossing the busy intersection to the police department, out of sight of the stumped demons. But beyond her, looming in the distance, nine stories high, with lights already blinking, lies Fever Dream.
It’s a little warmer down here. Snow melts into gray slush at my feet as I drag my limp body to the wide stone entry.
Pale violet light slants against the towering building, telling me it’s nearly dusk.
Too early for the club’s usual line around the block and too late in the day for the building to be empty.
Baz, the same vampire bouncer who tossed us out a week ago, is sitting on his rickety stool outside the eerily quiet nightclub.
He’s thumbing through his phone, a modern act that feels so at odds with the ancient darkness that emanates from him.
He could have been Bram Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula, and here he is scrolling Grindr.
“I need to see Deacon,” I say to him. Only my voice is almost entirely gone, and it comes out a mere whisper that even his vamp hearing doesn’t pick up on.
Though my limbs are numb from the cold and my teeth are chattering, I slink closer. “I need”—I cough, blood on my tongue—“Deacon.”
As gut-wrenching as it is to admit, Reid’s brother is my only hope. Fever Dream is heavily protected and not owned, run, or operated by the Brood, Harker, or the Elders. An outlier in the battle at hand. A neutral zone. A strobe-lit, techno-filled safe haven.
But more importantly, Deacon could have killed Reid and me that night I broke into his office. He could have, but he didn’t. I have to believe the fact that he spared Reid’s life once means he’ll care enough to save it again.
“Please,” I choke.
Finally Baz looks up at me with an unimpressed frown. “Fuck. You look awful.”
I brandish my daggers as best I can, wiping sweat from my brow with my forearm. “Get me your boss.”
Baz only lifts a brow, still perched on his stool like a crow. “You’re that hunter we kicked out last week…He’s going to drink your soul like a beer on tap.”
“I’d kill him first,” I snarl.
At that, Baz’s lips curl with the hint of a lazy grin. “Good fucking luck killing Deacon Graveheart.”
“Listen to me. I need his help.” Baz’s gaze is back on his phone, but I press onward. “I’m not leaving here without speaking to him.”
“Doesn’t look to me like you’re leaving here at all.” That voice…like razor blades and honey. Goes down smooth and rips you up.
Baz and I both turn to see Deacon strolling around the corner. He stubs a cigarette out on the wall of his club and lets it fall into the snow with a wet sizzle. I forgot how hulking he is. How deadly that roguish smile is, aimed right at me.
“Jesus, Vivienne.” His eyes gobble me up with pure, fiendish delight. “What happened to you?”
“The High Thane’s twisted son.” I’m seized by a violent cough that splatters blood on the snow at our feet.
Deacon eyes me curiously, his gaze sliding over all my wounds and stretches of bare skin. It’s almost as violating as it is humiliating. He tsks. “How dare they break my favorite doll…”
“I need your help, Deacon.”
“You shouldn’t have come back here.”
I stare into his glacial eyes and try not to cower. “I had nowhere else to go.”
Deacon pouts at me facetiously. “How sad.”
Baz looses the first chuckle I’ve heard out of him.
“But I did tell you I’d kill you if I saw you again,” Deacon says. “And I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”
Before I can respond, Deacon’s got his massive hand tangled in my hair and is dragging me toward the club’s entrance. My scalp blares in pain while I fight to wrench free. My legs burn as he tugs me along rough, icy asphalt. “You don’t”—I cry out—“want to kill me.”
“Wrong,” he purrs. “I really do.”
He tries to haul me inside, but I twist in his grasp to show him the back of my ruined shirt. “No, you don’t.”
Baz jolts up from his stool in awe. The fibers that have fused to my skin rip, and I wince, catching my breath, allowing Deacon and Baz to study the wound down my spine.
The clear and sinister wound from the syrabraxa.
Like I’m a fluorescent frog warning predators of the poison running through my blood.
Deacon releases me instantly and I fall to the ground.
“Interesting,” he drawls.
I whimper in the snow, every synapse in my body failing. Seconds from unconsciousness. I can hardly inhale.
Deacon lowers to a crouch before me. Wicked curiosity dances in those depthless blue eyes as they fill my vision. “Why are you here, Vivienne?”
The low sun gilds his ice-white hair and the menacing tattoos on his neck as I get a whiff of tobacco and human souls on his breath.
I steel my stomach. This can only go one of two ways.
“It’s about your brother…”
I barely get the words out before Deacon yanks me up and hurls me inside his club, the cavernous doors slamming shut behind us.