Chapter 23 Silver
SILVER
Iused to be irritated by Cas’s unperturbable confidence, bordering on indifference, but looking at his taut jaw as he rushed us out of the club, glancing over his shoulder at the feral naked woman who threw herself into the throng of partygoers, screaming, biting, long fingers clawing as she tried to beat her way out, I wish he was as relaxed as ever.
His visible uneasiness was point-blank terrifying.
She wanted to get to us.
There were a good eighty people in the way, but they did their best to move out of her path or get out. It wouldn’t be long before her path was clear.
We stepped out into to the cool night, just as a man doubled over, groaning in a guttural, heart-wrenching cry.
Cas’s arm tightened around me. “Let’s get out of here, fast.”
Nodding, I set out at a run, but not without another glance back at the screaming man. I half expected him to start stripping too, but instead, he suddenly caught fire, engulfed in bright blue flames.
“What the fuck?” I shrieked, my voice drowned by the other screams around us.
“It’s intense magic. Not everyone can take it. Can you go any faster?” Cas demanded, though we’d passed the humans fleeing in all directions around us.
He really was worried.
Nodding, I made myself speed up, pushing my limbs past the usual speed I kept myself to. Cas caught up effortlessly, seeming to walk more than run next to me.
“There’s no way that chick is going to catch up with us, right?” I reasoned, pausing a few streets away.
The sounds seemed to come from far off.
Cas made no answer, his eyes scanning the darkness behind us.
“I mislike this,” he finally said. “The first time I saw her, she felt absolutely irrelevant. Just a simple mortal, with no power. After changing she was…”
He didn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence, but I didn’t need him to; I’d felt the exact same thing. She felt like a threat. Having grown up in Highvale, it was easy for me to differentiate stronger and weaker individuals.
“We ought to put distance between us and that thing. The box’s iron, but I’m not convinced she won’t sense the reserves.”
I nodded. “The hotel’s not far.”
“Too close,” Cas asserted. “We should get out of town.”
“We could get to the airport.” We had what we came from in any case, and our jet would be at Le Bourget in just a few hours. Sooner, if I asked Gideon to get it as fast as possible.
After a quick look at my phone screen, I cursed under my breath. “I was going to take the RER B to the airport, but we missed the last train. I’d say—”
I didn’t finish, as Cas suddenly pushed me into the road, so fast I couldn’t even think to block. Eyes wide, I got off my ass with a wince, ready to yell at him, but the next instant, a motorcycle flew at great speed, crashing on the pavement right where we’d been standing.
At the end of the street, a pack of a dozen naked wild men and women ran towards us, growling like feral hounds, blue eyes blazing.
They were moving fast. I could barely see them.
Cas snatched my hand and set the rhythm this time, running at such a pace my legs were on fire within a minute.
The pack was catching up anyway.
Cas shoved the box under one elbow and grabbed me by the waist, flinging me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I yelped in surprise as he bent his knees and leaped into the sky.
At first I thought he might be flying, but while we reached higher than the tall buildings on either side of us, we landed back on the road with a crash that would make Parisians think there was an earthquake.
One leap made us cross several buildings, and yet, unfathomable as it seemed, the drugged-up creatures were still in view.
“Watch out!” I hollered, spotting the building in our path after his last jump.
Cas was going to crash against the bloody Eiffel Tower. We were so going to get sued. And likely fired.
I underestimated his deftness; instead of colliding against it, Cas landed on the first floor, finally dropping me to my feet.
“We don’t have much time.” Way to state the obvious. I could see the pack starting to climb up the side of the metal tower.
A guard made the dumb decision of attempting to stop them, only to end up getting ripped apart by bare hands.
“I think they’re getting stronger,” I said, my voice hollow.
“They’re berserkers,” Cas stated.
My stomach dropped. The word was vaguely familiar, but while I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, I knew I was scared of it.
“They don’t feel pain and will fight until death. The process works on human and supernatural alike. Humans will die faster, but until they burn through that energy, they’re just as strong as you and I. We can’t take a dozen of them,” he said quickly. “Do you have your searching device on hand?”
It took me a second to realize he meant my phone.
“Oh, yes.” I patted my pocket, before grunting out loud. “I think it dropped on the road when you pushed me earlier. Fuck. I was going to ask Gideon to send the jet sooner.”
Cas gingerly placed the box on the floor, opening its lock before flipping the lid open.
Below, sudden piercing screams told us they sensed the crystals.
“Why the fuck would you do that?” I snapped.
Cas grabbed a crystal in each hand, drew his fist back, and threw one after the next, in opposite directions.
One landed across the Seine, near the Musée de L’homme, and the other crossed the entire Champs-de-Mars. Then he did it again, the crystals flying even farther, towards the Champs Elysées, and somewhere in the sixteenth arrondissement.
“That was smart,” I reluctantly admitted as he shut the box again. Below, I could see some of the berserkers opting to run after the crystals rather than attempt the difficult climb. “How do you always know what to do?”
“I understand strategy.” Cas shrugged. “Winning often requires being willing to lose assets. We still need to get going. You seem to know the city. Is there an Eternal Gold Bank somewhere here?”
I blinked, trying to keep up with him. A Gold Bank?
Rather than questioning why he’d want to know, I nodded.
“I’ve never been, but I remember Gideon saying something about it.
It’s in Montmartre, close to the Sacré-C?ur, I think.
” I vaguely waved to the left. “Maybe three miles away, as birds fly?” Or as Cas jumped.
“All right, that’s close enough. Let’s get going.”
The berserkers who’d chosen to keep chasing us rather than the loose crystals were a few meters down.
Cas handed me the iron box, and this time, carried me under the knees and back rather than tossing me on his shoulder. “I could walk, you know.”
“At the speed of a bloody snail,” he countered before leaping off the balcony, all the way across the Seine.
Every three or two leaps, he stopped to check the direction with me. I was by no means a Paris expert, and found my way in the metro better than up in the city, but Montmartre was thankfully not hard to locate from the Eiffel tower.
After spotting the Arc-de-Triomphe close by, I was a little lost, as I’d thought I’d led us closer to the Seine.
“Where to now?” Cas pressed.
Fuck, I missed my phone and my trusty map app.
“I wanted us to pass by the Petit and Grand Palais, not the Arc.” We certainly could reach our destination this way, but I was far less familiar with this area.
If we remained around the touristy spots I’d previously visited, I could direct myself using whatever landmark I could remember.
“We don’t have time for debates. Where to?” he demanded.
I gestured down the large avenue, towards the Louvre, annoyed to pass the world’s best shopping spot at high speed, in the dead of night, while running from crazed druggies.
We lost the berserkers by the Tuileries, though Cas didn’t slow down or pause.
I was more confident from that point, as I remembered the way to the Moulin Rouge. Kleos and I had visited the Louvre and gone up to watch a show just a couple of years back, in the summer. The day was so nice, we’d walked the whole way.
The Sacré-C?ur was a stone’s throw away from the club—merely four jumps for Cas.
“All right, here’s the basilica,” he said impatiently. “Where’s the bank?”
“As I said, Gideon just said it was around here,” I grunted.
Cas was on high alert, watching the quiet hill from all angles. “I suppose we’d better start looking.”
With danger no longer imminent, I could stop following blindly. “And why, may I ask, are we looking for the bank? It’s probably closed at this time.”
“It’s never fully closed, doll,” Cas said, walking fast as he passed little crêperies, touristy little shops, all shut up at two in the morning. “Not for people with accounts as old as ours.”
“Yes, but why—” I insisted, not really understanding the need to go there now.
The first clue I got that something was amiss was the way Cas tensed, his head snapping towards a disturbance I didn’t feel. Again, he brutally shoved me, and by now I understood he was pushing me out of the way because he sensed danger before I did.
This time, he was too late.
First, I heard a dull sound, then smelled iron and copper. And then pain, the likes of which I’d never even thought existed exploded inside me.
I lowered my eyes to my midsection, shocked to see the jagged end of what looked like a road sign, torn off its post, shoved through my skin—the same ironskin almost nothing had ever breached.
Someone was screaming, and I was vaguely aware that it was me. Shadows loomed, approaching from all sides, as my visions blurred, out of focus. I could see the streetlights blinking, so far away.
I was going to die. I knew it with complete clarity.
I could feel familiar magic, coated with darker intent, spreading through my skin, sucking up my strength.
It was comforting, in a way, to feel Kleos’s presence, however twisted, at the end.
I fell slowly, or so it seemed, to my knees. My blurry vision caught sight of what looked like a living bolt of lightning flash around me as wild screams echoed in the distance.
“Stay with me. Damn you, Silver, stay with me.”
But I couldn’t.
“I promise you shadows, and blood, and ruin if you dare die, you infuriating woman. Keep your eyes open, damn you!”
He had the nicest voice, and such pretty eyes. I managed a smile.
Everything faded to black.