13. Azzie
Thirteen
Azzie
Three years ago, if anyone told me pursuing the prophecies would be the most stable thing I could do with my life, I would’ve laughed them out of the room.
I tried to laugh at my reflection, instead, as I stuffed runaway strands of red into a messy bun and smoothed out my button-down shirt. It didn’t matter how I hung my clothes or how often I ironed them, they were always wrinkled when I walked out the door in the morning.
Davyn and I had been across the country and back multiple times, talking to prophecy experts he knew, getting my driving to a place where his foot didn’t hit the floorboards every time I was supposed to use the brakes, and sparring.
Now we were back in Salt Lake.
The apartment was both too quiet and too loud, with the sound of morning traffic building outside the window of the downtown building. I glanced at Davyn’s bedroom door, as I headed into the living room. He’d be back in a couple of days, and that would help with this cloud of meh , but he couldn’t wipe it away.
I grabbed my things from the table near the front door, gave the place that had been home for almost three months another glance, and left for work.
Well, first breakfast and coffee, and then work. I hated that I’d fallen into a routine—it wasn’t just boring, it was also dangerous for me to be this complacent—but the job I had was good, and sticking to a schedule was the best way for me to keep up with the grind.
I skipped the elevator and took the stairs down four stories. When I stepped outside, warm air mingled with exhaust and washed over me. The dry air wasn’t bad in early May, but in the next couple of months, we would reach suck the moisture from my lips temps.
I fell in with the flow of pedestrian traffic and let the wave carry me toward the bagel shop. Were any of these people a threat? The question was always there, though recently, it felt ridiculous and paranoid. Did any of them realize I was carrying knives? That I was more than a sloppily dressed woman slogging along with the rest of them?
“You’re all the reason Davyn left,” I muttered to no one, despite the fact that it wasn’t completely true.
The image of him, pacing in the living room, flashed in my mind and overlapped with a similar memory and another, until I was reliving some weird sort of collage of moments where I experienced firsthand the meaning of the phrase like a caged beast.
“ Go ,” I’d said to him.
“ Where? I’m not leaving you. ”
I crossed the street to the bagel shop.
“ Wherever you can let the bear out. You’re not leaving me ; you’re taking care of your sanity. ” Despite my attempts to remind him that I’d survived for more than two decades without him in sniffing distance, he slid into the role of protector when we came here.
I stepped up to the counter, and the weekday girl smiled warmly. “Hey, Abbey. Your usual?”
“Yes.” I returned the grin. Wholegrain bagel toasted with cream cheese and slices of tomato and cheese. Plus a large coffee, which would get generous helpings of cream and sugar. One of these mornings, I’d mix things up and try a different item on the menu, but I liked this one. It had yet to let me down.
Maybe when Davyn got back, it was time for us to move on.
Or maybe I needed to get laid. It’d been so long, the simple thought caused a pulse of want between my thighs.
Davyn and I hadn’t come close to the kiss we shared in the woods, the day the shadows attacked. Hands off had been exactly that. Worse, I hated the idea of fucking someone else or of masturbating in the room next to his, knowing he could smell the sex on me.
Not that I wanted to take my physical relationship with Davyn from sparring to sex. He was still hot, we still had a lot of fun, and my giving into temptation and riding that forearm of a cock would fuck up a good thing. He’d become part of my life.
The thought was as terrifying as it was soothing.
“Abbey, your order’s ready.”
Even my walking up to the counter, to retrieve my food and drink, was the same as always. Next, I’d walk across the street and into another building. I’d take the stairs four stories up, to the modeling agency at the end of the hall, I’d sit in the break room, and I’d eat.
I was grateful to Tori for hooking me up with longer-term work at a place that rented booth babes to companies with displays at whatever convention was happening at The Salt Palace. The occasional scuffle when someone got too friendly with one of the models broke up the monotony in my day, and at least once a week, I got to hear?—
“ God , I wish I could eat like that.” Sylith, one of the models I worked with fell into step beside me, as we headed toward said office building.
I held up the bag. “You can have half.”
She seemed to consider it. “Probably shouldn’t.”
Not that she had anything to worry about. With dark hair that always fell perfectly, and impossible curves on a thin frame, she had the kind of ethereal beauty that made me wonder what kind of magic she was hiding. A glance in her direction showed she was wearing a shirt that said Spit. Preworkout. In my. Mouth.
I snorted and shook my head. “Nice shirt.”
“It’s not too much?”
“It’s definitely too much.”
“Perfect.” She sounded pleased.
If this were a movie, she’d be the chosen one, and I’d be the sarcastic sidekick of a best friend.
A woman in a grungy army coat brushed past us, jarring Sylith with her elbow and knocking the model into me.
Coffee splashed from my cup and spilled all over my shirt.
“ Fuck .” I shook my soaked bag of food and tossed both that and the half-empty cup into the closest trash can. A gross shade of brown dripped from me. “ Gods damn it. ”
Sylith studied me with a frown. “You should head home and change.”
The best thing about her suggestion was that it meant breaking the monotony and doing things differently today. “I’ll be late.” My protest was weak.
But what if that was what made today different?
“I’ll tell them where you are. You’re not going to get in trouble,” she said.
I blew out a noisy sigh. Losing my job was the least of my concerns. They didn’t require me to be in the office anyway, when I wasn’t scheduled. I only did it because my life had become a routine. Should I go home? Was the weird crackle of energy in the air because bad things were about to happen, or because I wanted them to?
An eardrum-shattering boom shook the ground, and rock rained down around us. Pebbles struck me, and then stones, and instinct pushed me to protect the woman next to me. But Sylith was gone.
As if she’d vanished.
The madness erupting behind me meant it was more likely she ran and got swept up in the crowds.
Smoke filled the air, as did a chorus of terrified screams. People were bumping into each other, and knocking others over. This was bedlam.
Smoke turned the sky an ashen red, and the side of the building across the street had a gaping hole in the brick, where the windows used to be. A small group of running people shoved me, forcing my attention further down the street. To the state capitol, framed by air that looked like flame, despite there being no fire.
I should be doing something. Anything. Fleeing. Helping.
And I was frozen in place, staring at a picture taken straight out of a prophecy.
What was I supposed to do? Fighting one-on-one with a master—even in random settings, the way I did with Davyn—didn’t prepare me for explosions and crowds of people losing their shit.
Act. Now.
How?
Fuck , this wasn’t what I wanted. Focusing inward, I grabbed for the strength and an idea that would let me help. Why couldn’t now be the moment I ascended? If I could just do a little more… Grab a little spark of power…
Someone collided with me and yanked me out of my spiral. The force shoved me into a nearby wall, and I slammed into the brick. Fortunately, the holster on my hip absorbed most of the damage, but my shoulder felt raw from the abrasion.
Sirens blared in the background, adding to the noise. If anyone asked me for my ID—if that went into a system somewhere—I’d be found. Was that what I wanted if this was the result?
A few feet away, a woman fell to the sidewalk and caught herself on her hands and knees. No one stopped, and the panicked crowds jostled her.
If this happened because of me, I’d already been found. These people might get hurt because I was here, and even if this had nothing to do with my presence, I couldn’t leave them alone. I didn’t wait to offer help simply because I didn’t have any powers.
“Hey, watch it.” I forced my way against the flow of bodies. “Watch out.” This time my voice was harder, as I neared the fallen woman.
The crowds were too wrapped up in their fear to notice either her or me.
Make them listen .
“ Hey .” I barked out as loud a shout as I could.
Everyone around us stopped.
Rather than question it, I rushed forward, to help the fallen woman to her feet as gently as possible while still moving quickly. I pulled her out of the flow of foot traffic. “Thank you,” I muttered at the crowd.
The mayhem whirred to life as if someone had unpaused the world.
As we pressed against the outside wall of a bus stop, I looked her over. Deep red flowed from the cut on her head, matting her dark hair and making it difficult to tell how bad the wound was. I reached into my bag and grabbed a small stack of gauze.
“Are you all right?” I pressed the bandage to her wound and held it in place. I carried a few more instruments for patching myself up, thanks to a steady diet of Davyn’s random attacks.
She stared at me with wide eyes. “You were glowing.”
I frowned. “Does your head hurt? How’s your vision?” I didn’t want to assault her with too many questions, but if she had a concussion, my makeshift bandage wouldn’t fix it. Even if she didn’t, she needed this head wound cleaned and someone who wasn’t used to mild magical healing to determine if she should have stitches.
Fortunately, the blaring sirens were directly on top of us, and a fire-ambulance parked by the curb a few feet away.
“Can you walk?” I nodded toward the emergency vehicle.
“I think so.”
Good. I helped her toward one of the men climbing from the cab. “She’s hurt.”
His gaze fell on my arm. “So are you.”
Was I? I glanced at the gash across my bicep and the dried blood around the wound. Like her head injury, this likely looked worse than it was. The enchants on my knives were likely knitting it together.
“It’s not my blood.” I pushed the woman toward him and stepped away.
Police were arriving. More emergency vehicles. Officers were cordoning off sections of the sidewalk. Herding people this way and that.
What now? I’d dealt with plenty of injuries in my life, but most of were mine or those of fellow students. I’d never been in the middle of this kind of public, mass event. How did I help without getting in the way?
I stood at the edge of the crowd, taking it all in.
The police were working on directing foot traffic, and the paramedics were grabbing the most obviously wounded and doing a sort of triage. The people who were quietly lost or hurt, who were scared but didn’t stand out… No one saw them.
I did, though. I moved from one to the next, helping some find their way out of the mess, sitting with those who were panicked until they were able to move on, and checking the lesser injuries to grab an EMT if needed.
Time slipped away, but that didn’t matter. As long as I could make things better for at least a few of these people whose mornings had been turned into a terror they never thought they’d experience.
“Excuse me, Miss.” A uniformed officer grabbed me as I was heading for another scared person.
A shock of pain raced through my bicep at his touch, and I cringed.
“Sorry.” He let go. “Did you see what happened?”
“No.” I was walking, and things exploded. That wasn’t useful information.
He frowned. “Were you here when the explosion and gunshots went off?”
There were gunshots? There was no way this had been about me. Loki sent the undead. Shadows. Not assassins. “Yes, but?—”
“We’re asking everyone for any details they remember.” He gestured toward a tent at the edge of the scene. “Come talk to us for a minute.”
“Now’s not a good time for me.” Helping was one thing, but talking to police meant they’d want my information. They’d get my legal name. They’d have my location. Everything I learned growing up told me leaving traces of myself behind was a bad idea. “Can I get your card? I can come into the station.”
“We need to talk to everyone now?—”
“Johansson, we need your help.” A voice crackled over the mic he wore on his shoulder.
He looked at me, then at a scuffle breaking out between a few other officers and what looked like a homeless man.
One of the policemen grabbed the man by the sleeve of a battered army jacket, and as the man twisted out of the coat, his shirt pulled down, exposing a tattoo on his chest.
Berserker?
My gut churned. I couldn’t be sure, as he was far enough away I couldn’t make out details, but the way he moved was faster and more predatory than most people.
Johansson looked between me and his colleagues. “Don’t go anywhere.” He rushed to help them.
I wasn’t leaving yet—others needed my help—but I would do a better job of staying out of sight of the cops, and more importantly, the men in suits who were arriving in unmarked cars.
A discarded jacket lay on the ground a few feet away. I tugged it on. The fleece hoodie was too big, and my extra exertion made it feel far too warm, but it would mask my identity from anyone who noticed me before.
I went back to work. Things weren’t the same kind of chaos now, but there were still a handful of injured people who hadn’t gotten help. I helped a few more to the makeshift aid station that had been set up.
As I wrapped the last of my tape and gauze around a long but probably not serious cut on a teenager’s arm, a man with strawberry-blond curls and a warm smile approached me.
“You need to get checked out.” He nodded at my aching arm and the trickles of blood running past the sleeve of the hoodie and down my hand.
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t help them if you collapse from your own wounds,” he said. “And yes, I’ve been watching you.” He wasn’t here with the team, as far as I could tell. He wasn’t wearing a uniform or gloves. His hair was lightly matted, as if he’d had a hat on at some point today. A warmth radiated from him that reminded me of kindness and safety.
But if he’d noticed me, it was unlikely he was the only one.
I looked around the scene. Most everyone had been taken care of in some way. “I’m not going to collapse.”
He studied me for another moment.
What was he looking for? What did he see?
“You’ve helped more than anyone else would,” he said. “They’ve got things under control, and you’ll be safer—they’ll be safer—if you head home.”
Why did he phrase things that way?
“Miss.” Johansson was coming back.
The man stepped between me and the officer. “I’ll take care of him,” he told me. When I opened my mouth to protest his wording, he said, “Not in a bad way. Go home. Clean that wound.”
I wanted to do more. I needed to keep this up. The stranger was right, though. There wasn’t anything left for me to do here. When I got home, I could call around and see who needed volunteers or people to give blood or anything.
If I stayed, I’d be in the way. It hurt to walk away, but my staying didn’t do anyone any good.
I turned away. Leaving like a dog with my tail between my legs sucked.
The trains running into Downtown were shut down—that happened fast. I’d walk until I found where the line was open.
The worst part about this wasn’t the stroll; it was the way I was left alone with my thoughts. My guilt. I hadn’t done enough. The explosion… The madness… It couldn’t be because of me. But if it was, it would be because I got careless over the last few months. I settled into a place and a routine.
Maybe it was a coincidence that this happened around me, and it had nothing to do with me, but fuck , if that scene as the explosion happened wasn’t directly out of one of Mom’s visions. People might be terrified and hurt because of me.
Like what happened with Mom and Rayne, but on a larger scale.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Home wasn’t far by train, but walking the six miles took me more than an hour, and the trek sucked in the flats I wore for work, especially after I spent the last hour or so on my feet. I rested my hand on the hilt of one knife, both out of habit and for the comfort of the grip. The familiar tingle of magic didn’t race through me.
Adrenaline rushed in, burying my exhaustion. The knife pulled out too easily, exposing a blade missing about an inch from the tip, which had snapped clean off and was still in the holster.
This shouldn’t be possible. How did the blade break? How did the enchant break? Was there magic in that attack downtown?
My phone buzzed, and I returned the broken blade to its home with a frown before reaching for the device.
Enid .
“Hey.” As I answered, I reached back to brush my fingers over the hilt of the knife at the small of my back. Still humming with power. At least that was right.
“Thank the gods. Are you all right?” Stress lined Enid’s voice.
I glared in the direction of my broken knife and resumed the walk to my apartment. “ I’m fine. Why? What’s up?”
“Why did you say it like that? Is Davyn all right?” She met Davyn a year or so ago and had been instantly fascinated with him. She never hid the flirting—not that I cared one way or another. “The internet is blowing up with talk about a terrorist attack near you. What’s going on?”
Terrorist attack? The explosion? I frowned, but that made sense from the outside. “Yeah. I’m okay. Davyn’s not in town.”
“You know about it, but you’re this calm? How far away are you? Weren’t you at work?”
She knew to ask because I’d become so predictable that someone I rarely saw or talked to knew where I was almost every morning.
Hearing her concern and giving myself time to pause and replay, the reality of what I’d just been through slammed into me. I paused and leaned against a nearby fence when the strength sapped from me. “I was there.”
“What happened? Are you sure you’re okay?”
Yeah. Fine. Perfectly, totally?—
Fuck . “I don’t know what happened. Something blew up, and parts of it look just like the prophecy describes, including rocks raining from the sky. There was chaos, and I stayed to help as long as I could, but….” I walked away. I should’ve found a way to do more.
“I’m so glad you got out of there safely.” A hint of relief slipped into Enid’s reply.
“Yeah.” But others didn’t. What else was I supposed to do? I wanted someone to give me a solution, and she was the person I was talking to. Nothing about this was right. “What did I expect?” I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
She sighed. “You couldn’t have known.”
“But I could have. Things looked exactly like they were described.” Apparently, regardless of what I told myself, I was convinced this was because of the prophecy.
She made a tsk sound. “They were also described in a way that could have looked like a lot of things.”
No. This wasn’t… “I need to do more. I’ll call you back.”
“Azzie, no.” Her normally non-confrontational tone vanished in the hard retort. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Something. ”
“There are videos of this everywhere. It was a single explosion, and no buildings came down. They’re talking about gunfire, and the place is already chaos. You’ll only add to it if you go back.”
The same thing I told myself when I left. I still wasn’t reassured. I couldn’t fight villains I couldn’t see. I was made for hand-to-hand combat, not explosions or bullets. “I have to do more.”
“Leave.” Enid pleaded. “If they’re looking for you—whoever they are—don’t let them find you.”
“But if they’re looking for me, they’re already here.” And it had gotten people hurt.
The way Enid sighed rattled me to my core.
I knew what she was thinking without her saying it. Even if she wasn’t, I was thinking that my being stubborn was more about pride than helping people, and I was doing this to make lives better, not worse. “Okay.” Where was I going to go? “I don’t suppose you know of any blacksmiths who can work on enchanted blades.”
Walking away felt like surrender. I hated it.
“I’ve heard rumors.” Her voice was tight, but some of the tension had faded. “I can look into it, but I need time.”
I hated what I was about to do, but I didn’t see another way. The police had seen me, and even if this wasn’t about me, I was easier to find now. My staying here didn’t help, and it increased the odds of a bad situation getting worse. “I’m heading to a new town.” I wanted to shout that loudly enough for anyone tracking me to hear. Don’t keep looking for me in Salt Lake. Chase me. Leave these people alone. “I’ll tell you where when I know. If Davyn calls you before I’m settled, tell him I’m safe and I’ll be in touch soon.”
“Okay. Make sure it’s true—that you’re safe,” she said.
“I will.” More importantly, I needed to make sure everyone else was safe.
I hung up and finished the walk to the apartment. Inside, I packed up everything that mattered. We’d acquired too much shit while we were here. Extra clothes. A cheap TV. Furniture.
Too much to travel with. Too much to own. Too many people hurt, possibly because I convinced myself I could settle down.
I needed to talk to Davyn before I left. I grabbed my phone from my back pocket and dialed him again.
“Come on, pick up,” I muttered to the empty room as the line rang in my ear.
Was that a buzzing sound?
No . Heart dropped into my stomach, and I followed the noise. Davyn’s phone sat on his nightstand, screen dim from a battery almost dead. He only kept the phone because I asked him to, so of course he hadn’t taken it with him.
Fuck .
I grabbed the device, then set it on the table again. This was my only way to reach him directly when he came back, but I couldn’t leave him a message, in case someone else got to his phone before he did.
There was a small whiteboard on the fridge, and I scribbled him a quick note. Call the bookstore .
Cryptic to anyone else. To him, it would say that Enid could point him toward me. The actions came without thought—an exit plan I’d rehearsed over and over with Mom, in case I ever had to run without her. Not one I’d needed with Davyn. Not a plan I’d ever thought to talk to him about.
At this moment, with so many unanswered questions, this was something I knew to do when there was trouble.
With a few days of clothes and food in my bag, and my tablet, I gave the apartment one last glance and walked out.
All this chaos, the panic—was this what going after the prophecies did?
Was this all my fault?