Chapter 29
It feels good to step into the crisp nighttime air. A proud, full moon looms blue and blinding in the sky, and I find myself grateful. A moon like that will help Ward heal quicker. But right now, his eyes are bloodshot and his knuckles are white. The guy needs some vampire blood stat.
Only a minute later does my phone begin to buzz in the back pocket of my pants. When I fish it out, my eyes adjust to the searing brightness against the inky night, and I see a handful of missed texts from thirty minutes ago. I must not have had any service in Nicco’s office.
Deacon wanders out, and I watch as he pays the valet for his bike. My eyes widen when he hands the kid a crisp hundred-dollar bill and refuses the change. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on him, I’m somehow still off base. Maybe I owe him the truth about Reid. What I saw today.
I amend my own thought. Maybe I owe him the truth about Reid after some time has passed. I’d hate for him to think I pulled that stunt in Nicco’s office out of some displaced heartbroken frustration that his brother is more interested in some artifact than in me.
My eyes scan the incoming messages: Sophia’s asking how it went and if I am absolved of all essays this semester because Crowley’s just assigned something heinous.
Fiona’s sent something about gala parking in our family chat, where my mom is still lambasting me for “hurting James’s feelings” at the luncheon.
Penny texted to let me know she got my email about my phone being dead and to meet her at the apartment.
All the blood drains from my face.
“Oh my god, Penny—”
Ward’s eyes are clear as a dog’s on the hunt once her name leaves my lips. “Where is she?”
“Someone pretended to be me. Told her to go to the apartment.”
Our place is probably fifteen minutes from here by cab. Twenty by subway. Nine minutes if I sprint faster than I ever have in my life.
I’m off before I can hear his reply.
My feet pound on uneven pavement, which transforms into the stairs that lead up the Erebos Bridge.
My scar hums through my flesh as I bolt over the Chasm.
Few tourists crowd the bridge’s walkway this late on a weeknight, but I still manage to nearly trip over some teens passing a joint as they stare out at the view.
As I run, I try to count every reason why I could be overreacting. Why nobody lured her to the apartment to hurt her. To punish me for evading capture. To draw me out as successfully as they did when I chased her to the docks. I cannot come up with a single one.
So I pivot to bracing myself for whatever is waiting for me. Citadel hunters, ready to execute me on the spot. Caspar, prepared to capture me until the new moon. Finn, human chess on his mind.
As I race through the city streets I rack my mind for how this could have happened—someone would have had to have known Penny’s identity to get her email. That points to Finn, not the Elders, not his dad—the whole reason she’s been on the run with me is to stop him from kidnapping her again.
The Brood. At the restaurant.
He saw me without Penny. And that’s when Finn took his shot—
Out of breath, I arrive at our building.
Someone is singing terrible karaoke inside Cobwebs.
My feet leap the steps of our walk-up three at a time until I’m bursting through the hallway toward our apartment.
I barely notice the four slithering limbs that flash in my mind.
I’m too relentless in my stupid hope that I’m about to make a fool of myself in front of a completely fine, sketchbook-holding Penelope Pine.
If only the gods were that kind.
Inside our apartment Penny is screaming.
The creature that lunges for her as she darts around the counter in our kitchen isn’t one I’ve ever fought before.
Textured reptilian skin covers the humanoid body of a feral, slithering, half-man, half-serpent.
He hisses at me, then turns back to Penny, who I realize is wielding a pale wooden spoon.
I slam my body into the creature without thinking.
Mostly to get it away from Penny so she can run, but also because I have no idea what this thing is so I have no idea how to kill it.
The creature snaps its rows of teeth at me, narrowly missing my neck.
When I slam my fist into his jaw, his eyes go rolling in all directions the way an iguana’s might.
I’m nearly free of him when his cold, scaled fingers rip at my clothes, yanking me back.
Fangs slice into the skin of my wrist. I shriek from both the surprise and the splitting pain.
“Viv!” Penny cries.
But the three of us aren’t alone. The glass of the fire escape window shatters as the Brood demon from Simon and Son’s climbs inside. His eyes light when he sees Penny and me at the mercy of the slithering creature.
“Knock out the aeon,” he tells the beast before looking at Penny. “I’ll handle the mortal.”
“No!” Penny shouts as the demon grabs her by the waist and hoists her up like a quarterback headed for the end zone. Fear as pure and pointed as a blade stabs through me. I find the strength to kick the creature in the jaw and scramble free of its reptilian grasp.
I hurtle toward the Brood demon who has Penny, the soles of my shoes skidding on crushed glass and floorboards wet with my blood, until my fingers grasp flesh—his, hers, I have no idea—and I drag all three of us down in a heap.
My knee buckles under our weight. Groans sound. I pray I haven’t broken any of Penny’s fragile mortal bones.
“Run,” I gasp, prying the demon’s claws from her waist. I stab the demon in the heart with my dagger.
But the reptilian creature hasn’t given up that easily. He lands on me with a screech, and I hack on demon ashes as Hellion and Angel slash at the snake creature until they land in his gut with a wet squelch.
I back away, waiting for his twitching limbs to fade to stillness, but no such slowdown occurs. He’s clearly impervious to silver. If anything, I’ve made matters worse. Infuriated the thing by killing his demon friend and stabbing him repeatedly.
I curse as the snake creature scrambles toward me once more, leaking yellow blood all over my kitchen.
“Oak!” Penny screams. “You’ve got to kill nagas with oak! But be careful! Once they die they—”
Thank god someone was paying attention in class this semester.
But I don’t hear the rest of her instructions.
Not when the thing—this naga—is inches away from plunging its teeth into me.
I raise my hand in the air and hope Penny understands what I’m asking for.
Fifteen years of best friendship should award us some kind of telepathy, right?
When she sees my fingers spread wide, Penny launches the oak cooking spoon she’s been wielding toward me and I’m able to catch it and drive the end into the naga’s neck.
The next few things happen all at once.
Penny screams something repeatedly, but I can’t hear it over the gaseous, bubbling gurgle the naga makes as it dies.
It collapses, heavy and groaning atop me, and try as I might to crawl out from underneath it, the creature weighs more than I expected.
At the same time, I hear our apartment door slam open.
Terror melts into relief as I sense Deacon and Ward.
And then all I can hear is Deacon’s low roar before the naga explodes on top of me and world-bending pain bleeds into every inch of my skin.
“Viv,” Penny cries. “What’s happening to her? Viv!”
“Get her out of here,” Deacon commands. He’s kneeling beside me, face drawn into lethal focus. Head of surgery about to operate on the president. General Deacon, leader of men. I’d cower, if I could move.
A still-wounded Ward wraps a comforting hand around Penny’s shoulder in an attempt to steer her out of the apartment.
Instead, she collapses into his chest, wrapping her arms around his middle.
My fuzzy, half-awake brain thinks only: Man, he is so much bigger than her.
A literal wolf and Little Red Riding Hood.
The sight should make me uneasy—he could crush her, if he wanted to—but somewhere in the consciousness that is spinning away from me, I find only a tickle of humor at Ward’s expression, hovering over her curly blond head.
He looks like he’s new to this planet and doesn’t know if chest-to-chest contact is an act of war or a peace offering. Hug her back, you dope, I want to say.
Ward succeeds in pulling Penny away from the sight before her—me, sprawled on the kitchen floor, dying, I think. Though I’m not sure why. I killed the creature, not the other way around. Why did it burst?
I realize, to have made it so soon after me, Ward and Deacon must have run here from Simon and Son’s. Deacon left his prized bike. Ward ran here on a leg that was impaled. I don’t care if he did that for Penny or for me or for Deacon. He sure as shit didn’t do it for fun.
“Nagas explode when killed,” Deacon says, sliding his hands beneath my body with a wince and lifting me off the ground.
“Like an anthropological booby trap. The venom they secrete contains a paralytic toxin. Needs to be rinsed off within minutes to avoid permanent damage.” A shade of worry has slipped into his usually assured features. “You still with me?”
But I can’t speak. The movement jarred me out of whatever petrified, liminal space I was held in, and now the pain is back. I open my mouth and only a gasp of agony slips out.
“Atta girl,” Deacon grunts, even as he continues to grimace, which I don’t understand. I know how strong he is. I saw him weight train with a stone dining table.
But the question dissipates as he hurries us toward the bathroom. With each movement it’s as if every single inch of my body has been covered in oil and set aflame. I’m cooking. I’m burning alive.