19. The Sudden Stop At The Bottom
NINETEEN
THE SUDDEN STOP AT THE BOTTOM
Seven
T oo much air.
Too much space.
Far, far too high …
I gulped in breath after breath, clinging to Jack as he unfurled those huge, glimmering wings. I focused on those because the world …
It was so big.
His wings. Focus on his wings.
They were so much bigger than Nineteen’s had been. And they glowed.
So beautiful , the whisper sighed in my mind.
“Do you even know how to use those?” I managed, my voice a breathless rasp. Jack … or the shifted version of him … laughed.
“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” he said, his voice too deep, too rough. It wasn’t him speaking to me anymore. This version of him sparked little electric pulses through me.
Because you know he would Join you so well.
What does that MEAN?
Those wings beat. Once, twice, the air whooshing around us.
Magnificent male , the whisper swooned. I scowled, trying to hold onto anger. It was better than the numbing terror I felt at the thought of that drop. At the sight of the sky.
Endless darkness, pricked with lights. Stars … I vaguely remembered learning about them at some point when I was very young. Before everything became about fighting, and killing, and rape.
The door we’d just come through burst open.
“Stop!” an agent shouted.
Jack growled, the rumble vibrating through his chest where he held me against him. I peered around his bulk.
“Three of them. With guns,” I whispered.
Jack scoffed, beating those wings faster and faster.
“I said stop! I’ll shoot!” the agent warned, his voice trembling.
“Hold on tight, Blossom,” Jack muttered, his knees bending, readying to leap.
My heart stuttered in my chest. I hated myself so intensely for my mind-scrambling fear as I clung tighter to him, burying my face against his chest.
Damp, rich earth invaded my nostrils.
A bullet exploded behind us. And another. The whizz of them through the air was too close.
I pierced my lip with teeth that shifted involuntarily. I clamped down hard on myself. I couldn’t shift. He’d drop me!
So much open air … so far down …
“The smell of your blood is not helping right now,” he growled. I sucked the punctured lip into my mouth.
My stomach lurched as he took a flying leap of faith, and we rose into the night sky.
They kept shooting. We kept rising. Higher and higher into the sky. Further and further from solid ground.
“Don’t you dare drop me!” I gasped.
“Bit frightened of heights?” he asked, his voice strained.
“I’m more frightened of the sudden stop at the bottom, to be honest!” I snapped. “I might be immortal, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be lying broken … down there, when Baxter and his agents find me!”
He huffed out a laugh as more bullets whirred past. He clenched his jaw.
“I have no fucking desire to be shot again,” he muttered.
I blinked. “Again?”
But he didn’t answer, instead grunting out, “Hold on tight.”
I barely had time to sink my claws deeper into him before he had changed direction, tucking his wings and …
The ground zoomed up to us as he dived towards the forest.
I tried to breathe. I couldn’t.
Couldn’t think about anything but how much the impact was going to hurt. The pain of every bone in my body breaking. Of lying there as my body regenerated a broken spine.
Of what Baxter would do to us when he caught us, trying to escape.
“Stop thinking,” he snarled through gritted teeth. The trees shot towards us.
Bullets sang on either side, and as he banked, opening his wings to slow us, just above the tops of the trees, it happened.
He grunted.
Tilted sideways.
The smell of his blood soaked the air.
And we crashed towards the trees.