38 TALIESIN
A ragged gasp cuts through the roaring storm.
Sky’s chest suddenly heaves underneath my palms, her spine arching off the mud as her lungs swell with life-saving oxygen. She sucks in another massive breath, and a mist of swirling, luminescent vapor disappears straight down her throat.
Rory.
Sky’s eyelids flutter open to reveal bloodshot, terrified eyes.
“We’ve got you, Sky,” I choke out, hauling her wet, shivering body into mine. “You’re safe.”
London lets out a strange joyful noise. “She’s breathing! Burt, she’s breathing!”
Wump-ppp.
Ppp.
Wump.
My head snaps around. A few feet away, right beside the dead carcass of the Harpy, Aurora is collapsed in the mud. Her human body is limp, pale, and completely unresponsive. I thrust Sky at London and scramble towards her.
Francois is already there, his face a blood-streaked mask of panic. He hovers his hands over her chest. “I don’t know what to do.”
My fingers go to her neck. There’s a pulse, but it’s ragged and weak.
She’s breathing—just, but I’d bet anything she’s poured every last drop of her own essence into Sky.
“No. No, you don’t, Princess,” I snarl, sliding my hands under her shoulders, pulling her against my chest, while my wolf thrashes beneath my ribs. For a second, I feel completely at a loss.
Sky is shivering violently in London’s arms, barely conscious herself. Jim is clutching his bruised ribs, his shock collar still blinking its threat.
And Rory is dying in my arms.
Get it together, Bevan.
“We have to move!” I yell. “Now!”
I stand, Aurora in my arms, and begin to move. Francois has Jim slung over his shoulder, and London runs while cradling Sky.
We run.
Run.
I can hear gunshots and shouts as the hunt continues, but thank fuck, we don’t come across anyone.
Crashing through the final thicket we burst out at the perimeter wall. The twelve-foot wall is topped with high-voltage vicious razor wire.
Behind us, the estate's backup alarms are starting to wail.
Francois drops Jim and hits the wall first. He slams his palms flat against the base of the bricks as he pours wave after wave of his basilisk fuckery into the barrier. The bricks begin to crackle, and under the green glow of his touch, they seem to rapidly age, shifting into brittle clay.
Just like at Quo, London slams his body into the wall, breaking down a section big enough for us to crawl through.
Before the dust can even settle, shielding Rory, I throw myself through. “Hurry,” I scream, looking back.
Layla’s dad is on his knees, weak, exhausted, and pulling hopelessly at the shock collar.
Fuck.
“Francois!”
The snake turns, reading the situation immediately. Francois places his hands on Jim’s heavy black collar. But his magic is weakened, the green aura hardly visible.
Fuck, this is all taking too long, but how can I leave Lay’s dad behind?
London tugs at my shirt, still holding Sky. “Get her to the car,” I tell him, then look down at Rory’s white face.
“HURRY!” I scream to the snake.
“I’m trying, batard de loup!” Electricity sparks around Jim’s neck, making him whimper. London is through the hole with Sky now and we exchange terrified glances. “RUN, LONDON.”
Jim screams as the collar-device sizzles with blue sparks then breaks into two.
I don’t wait, just start running again, following London. “Keep with me, Rory. Keep with me.”
Tearing through the forest tracks, I see the LandRover in the distance. Nearly there. I can feel Francois and Jim close behind me.
Basil’s head snaps up when he sees us, immediately starting the engine.
London throws open the rear door and clambers in with Sky. I push Rory on top of the faun. “Take her.”
Basil scrambles over the center console back into the cargo area, as Jim heaves into the passenger seat beside me, his breath coming in ragged, painful wheezes.
As soon as Francois squeezes next to London, I peel out, fishtailing in the mud.
Risking a glance behind me, I see London cradling Rory’s head, tears rolling down his face.
“Where are we going, Tally?” Jim pants. “The estate guards will be on us any minute.”
There’s only one place I can think of.
“Home.”
Mom is the best healer in the area, probably all North Havengard. If anyone can help Rory, it’s her. I know it’s a risk to go there, but it’s the only choice I can think of.
I steer the heavy Rover onto the main highway, the wipers slapping uselessly against the torrential downpour.
“I thought you said your parents’ house would be being watched,” Francois hisses.
“It might be, but so what? If Rory dies, nothing matters. Going back to Quo for the rest of my life doesn’t matter if I can’t save her.”
A cold draft spills down my spine. “Do you not think I am of the same mind?” he hisses. “But another battle will delay treatment. She needs help now.”
Gods damn him. “And that’s what I’m trying to fucking get her. You have a better suggestion?”
There is a pause, then he grunts one word. “Non.”
“Then keep your opinions to yourself.”
The vehicle falls silent, save for the roaring engine and Sky’s soft whimpers.
I look in the rearview mirror, my gaze locking onto Aurora. Her short hair is flattened to her forehead, black, blistering burns on her pale skin smoking slightly in the damp air.
It feels like her soul is slipping away with every second.
I can’t feel her. Our connection.
“Drive, Burt,” London says softly. “Shane and I will fight to the death anyone who gets in the way. You take her to your mum. It’s the right place to go, my belly is telling me that.”
Strangely, his support eases my panic.
“D'accord,” Francois murmurs after a beat. “Take her to where she can be saved. That’s all that matters.”
My foot is already flat against the accelerator, but I press harder anyway as we race south.
After too long, I turn onto the muddy road that leads to the tiny farm cottage I grew up in. My parents inherited it from a great uncle years ago. Most of the land had already been sold off, and the roof is full of holes and moss, but it’s warm. It’s hopefully safe.
It’s home.
We bounce through deep, waterlogged potholes, passing a small gray tractor that hasn’t run in half a century, aiming for the yellow porch light that cuts through the sheets of gray rain.
That means my parents are in. Thank Gods.
Easing off the gas and I pull up right outside the porch. The front door of the farmhouse flies open instantly. Mom is silhouetted in the doorway.
Of course.
She’s the first person everyone turns to in a crisis. The amount of times beat-up cars and trucks have skidded to a stop outside our home, someone hurt and bleeding inside, are too numerous to count.
She sprints out, her familiar ragged coat thrown over her shoulders.
“Who is it?” she screams over the wind, her hand shielding her eyes.
I push the driver’s side door open and step out. “Mom.”
Opal Bevan freezes dead in her tracks, the rain plastering her skirt to her shins. Her silver hair is falling out of its braid, and there is a new network of fine lines all over her face.
And she’s the most comforting thing I’ve seen in forever.
Her silver eyes widen with disbelief then fill with tears. “Tally?” she whispers, her voice cracking before she loses it completely, rushing forward through the mud. “Oh, gods, my beautiful boy, you’re here…”
My instinct to wrap my arms around my mom has to be pushed to one side. “I need you.” I take her shoulders in my hands, voice cracking. “You have to help her. She’s everything, Mom. Everything.”
The overwhelmed softness vanishes instantly, replaced by the fierce determination and a strategic mind that has saved a hundred lives. “Then bring her in. Move!”
Francois is already lifting Aurora out, his own wounds bleeding through his shirt. Rory is wrapped in his overcoat. I take her from his arms, her head rolling uselessly against my shoulder, and sprint into the house.
London and Francois can deal with Sky. This is my home, my territory. My mom.
Laying Aurora across the clean white sheets of the room that once was mine, I swallow my despair. Her skin is gray, and covered with black, bubbling chemical burns from the Harpy.
She’s going to be OK.
She has to be.
Mum rushes in, carrying a heavy, battered wooden healing chest and a modern doctor’s medical kit. Taking her scissors, she cuts open Rory’s sweater, her eyes widening at the sight of the caustic burns.
“Her heart, Mom.”
She nods, instantly attaching a stethoscope to her ears. I’m silent as she moves it around Rory’s chest. “It’s too erratic,” she mutters to herself. “Weak.” Pressing the end of the scope a little further down her frown increases. “Fluid in the lungs. Quick, sit her up.”
I go to one side of the bed, and Mom stays on the other, hauling Rory into an almost sitting position. “We need more hands, someone to keep her upright.”
It takes me less than a beat to respond. ‘LONDON!”
Within a blink, he’s there. “What? What?”
“Get behind her on the bed,” Mom orders. “Keep her sitting upright.”
He scrambles into position, as my dear mother strokes Rory’s forehead. “I’m so sorry, Tally, her heart is struggling badly.” Looking up, I can see she's seriously worried. “What can you tell me about her health history?”
Shit.
“Mom, I don’t know. She’s never complained about anything, but she shifted for the first time not long ago.
She became something completely inhuman.
I can’t even…” I take a breath. “She transformed into the wind itself. A silver storm. She fought a fucking hag-predator, then gave her last breath to push air into her dying friend’s lungs. ”
Mom listens, her face growing grimmer with every passing second. “In the hallway closet, I’ve an oxygen tank, get that. And we need the electric heater, set as high as possible.”
“Let me,” London says quietly, and before my mom’s astonished gaze, he half-shifts into his faun, instantly radiating a fierce heat from his body as I leave to rush and get the O2. When I return, Mom is rummaging through her med-bag, pulling out an IV kit. “This should help.”