Chapter 18 #2
I wish I could say that I’m not terrified by that thought.
That since hundreds of thousands of others will be killed if I don’t stop this, I easily recognize that me getting hurt, badly or not, is a small price to pay.
But even though I really want to be some kind of hero, I also want to keep breathing.
I’ve just found out that I can have a happy, guilt-free life.
It would suck so much to have that life end before I got a real chance to taste it.
I could bail. Maybe finally call those Feds for help. With my enhanced muscles, I’m sure I could make it out to the street in one piece, and even the most clueless authorities wouldn’t be able to ignore the wicked magic in the air.
But my mother was right. The government’s not going to be able to fix this. And there’s no way I could face Rafa if I just turned around here. Not after what he risked for me. Not after he was so sure I was worth it. He believed in me. So did Collin.
Crap.
All right. Let’s think about this. I’m still full of juice. I’ve already seen I can recover from a bullet to the chest. If I can protect my head, I should be able to get through, right? It’s just going to hurt like hell.
If I’m lucky, anyway.
Well, if anyone is due for their luck to change, it’s got to be me. Time to stop thinking and suck it up, buttercup!
I give myself a couple more willpower-focusing breaths, raise my arms to cover the top of my head with my elbows, crouch forward, and run down the narrowing section of stairs at a full sprint—yelling at the top of my lungs for good measure.
I can’t see through my arms at all, but I lead with my left shoulder in the probably insane belief that if (when) I get hit, it’ll knock me toward the rocky wall on the right instead of the caustic barrier to my left.
I honestly can’t tell you if that bit of wishful vector math actually pans out because I’m almost immediately blasted straight through the stomach and then again through my chest on the way down the stone steps.
These are shotgun shells, so each strike is such an exquisite, body-shaking explosion of pain and shock, my vision completely blacks out.
I only know I’ve reached the cavern below because I feel myself crash into two bodies, and we all go rolling into a heap onto the floor.
Getting shot in the lung before with a handgun bullet was the most painful, terrifying experience of my whole life.
This is worse. I’m in a twisted jumble over a mass of Kevlar-clad elbows and knees that smell like death.
I’m filled with nausea and frothing agony.
My arms, legs, and face drain ice cold. I can literally feel my life pouring out of me through my chest and stomach as blood soaks through my shirt, pants, everything.
I can’t move. (Did a slug hit my spine? Did it even have to?) And I’m blind.
But I’m not dead. Not yet. My vision comes back first. I glance up to see that my incubus-fueled momentum carried us about a third of the way into the room.
Valiente is on the far end of the cavern on that big stage in a freshly pressed, richly textured charcoal three-piece suit.
Like with the stairs, the toxic Hell barrier divides the entire space, including the raised platform he’s on, front to back, into a right half and a left half before disappearing into the cavern’s edge behind the stage.
I’m obviously still on the right side. Valiente’s standing on the left—behind the deadly floor-to-ceiling magic—glaring daggers at me.
Lining the flanking walls are the kids, chanting softly, six of them on Valiente’s side of the barrier, and seven on my side.
Jerky lavender energy snakes its way out of each of their chests, and near each group of kids is a single Hunter-vampire.
As luck would have it, the vamp on Valiente’s side of the barrier is Rafa’s mom, lurking right next to a blank-faced Emma.
But what matters most right now is the watch.
It’s in the middle of the room, on my side of the barrier, about forty feet in front of me, hovering just above the raised birdbath altar.
The timepiece’s hinged cover is open, and a bright cord stretches up from the center of its face directly into Collin’s heart.
He floats fifteen feet above the altar’s silver dish, struggling like a fish on a hook, while the tentacle-like siphons coming from the kids plunge into his torso from all sides.
Their lavender magic doesn’t seem to be stopped by the barrier at all.
He can’t see me because his gentle, beautiful eyes are squeezed shut, his brows winced tight. He looks like he’s in pain.
I want to keep staring at him, desperate to find out how hurt he is, but then I notice that the vibrating Hell wall next to the altar is crazy distorted.
It bulges outward to the left, away from the silver-and-marble pedestal, half of a giant bubble easily several yards in diameter.
As it stretches, a large oval section in its center lightens and thins, like a membrane about to rupture.
That must be the tear this ritual is creating—the death god’s way in.
I see something shadowy shift behind the rip that’s forming.
Something not in our world. Something big.
That’s definitely disturbing. But warmth is quickly filling my ravaged guts.
I’m healing. I’ve made it back to Collin, just like he said I would.
And seeing as he’s out of the watch, I’ve even arrived at just the right moment to stop the ritual.
From a glass-half-full perspective, everything’s going to plan.
All I need now is for the vampires to give me a minute to, you know, not be paralyzed and stuff.
That can’t be too much to ask for, right?