BRAYDEN
NINETEEN
Watching Parker with Lailah told me that something shifted between the two of them while we were locked away.
While I was still pissed that he hurt her and created even more wounds on her heart and mind, I knew they wouldn’t be able to walk away from each other.
They loved each other even if they needed to work on things.
Trust had been broken and it couldn’t be fixed overnight or with a few sweet words.
By no means did I think things were fixed, but I could tell that she was willing to accept his affections and allow him to step up.
Right now, it was more important for us all to put our personal drama aside and focus on getting the hell out of here alive and in one piece.
I could tell he wanted to argue but then he looked between his mother and Lailah, and begrudgingly handed her over to Hudson. Lailah held something out to me and I was shocked to see it was a gun.
“Not everyone in here is possessed and the guards knowingly work for the Dark Lord, so I consider that making them our enemy,” she explained.
Taking the gun, I let my hand linger against hers. “I agree completely with that logic.”
She nodded absently and turned away from me to follow Jay as he led the way back up the stairs.
Someone had turned the alarm off but the strobing lights were still flashing, making everything seem to move in slow motion.
The whole place was overrun with people destroying everything around them.
It made me think of a zombie apocalypse, if the zombies were intelligent and could fight.
Soldiers were fending off swarms of these possessed people and we dove into the thick of it, falling into formation just as we’d been trained.
Never in the years we’d been working together had we ever worked this seamlessly but everything flowed like a well-oiled machine.
They kept telling us this was how all the other groups functioned but we’d never figured it out.
With Lailah added to the mix, it seemed to connect that missing piece.
Seeing as we were surrounded by more of the demon people, I used my spirit weapons, leaving the gun tucked into my pants at the small of my back.
The one bonus of being in the basement was that we were already on the floor we needed to be on to get out the front doors—if that’s where Jay was leading us.
I caught a glimpse of the door but Jay headed the opposite way.
“Where are you taking us, Jay? The doors are behind us,” I called out.
Jay just gave me a look, telling me I was clearly being an idiot. “Yeah, what are you gonna do once you’re out there? Run all the way to the city or maybe back to Cape Town?”
Fuck! Okay, so clearly he had a plan, and I needed to get with the program and follow wherever he led us and shut the fuck up.
As we fought our way out of this mess, I could feel a tug on my powers as Lailah drew more strength from me and a few of the others.
She was bone tired and reaching the end of what she could do without a break.
Who knows what she’d been through before she got to the point she and Parker saved us.
What I wouldn’t give to just collapse this whole building and crush those within it and end this whole mess.
Only right now, I couldn’t, not with us inside.
I was saving the idea for the moment we got into a car and out of this hellhole.
Then we had to find a place to lie low and let everyone rest for a little while before we went toe-to-toe with the Dark Lord.
It was a good thing that Jay knew where he was going because I was completely lost, unsure of where the hell we were going and where we’d just been.
We reached the end of the hall with double doors that Jay kicked open, exposing a back lot full of various vehicles and other equipment.
Lights illuminated the parking lot, seeing as it was well into the evening and the moon was only a sliver in the sky.
We didn’t head for the first vehicle we spotted.
Instead, Jay kept pushing us to the back of the lot where older jeeps and trucks were lining the chain-link fence.
“Everyone, get in the back of the tarp-covered truck. I’ll get it started and bust us out of here,” Jay yelled, motioning us to hop into the back of the green military truck.
Micah all but tossed Lailah into the back of the truck and climbed up behind her, reaching out for Jay’s mom.
Hudson joined them as Parker and I stood watch for anyone who might be lurking in the shadows.
He must be thinking what I was, that this was going too smoothly.
Makoto and his men might be overwhelmed, but this was what they trained to do.
If we could make our way out of it then why couldn’t they?
He had more people, and they were fresher, not having been battle tired or locked away, drugged with venom.
No, there was something else we were missing.
The truck rumbled to life. “Everyone in. We’re getting the hell out of here,” Jay called from the front seat as the door slammed shut.
“Let’s go,” I said to Parker, motioning with my head for him to get into the back of the truck.
He shook his head. “No, Brayden, I’m going to hold them off while you guys make a clean getaway.”
“What are you talking about? There’s no one here to stop us,” I challenged, looking around the space like I was missing something.
Parker grabbed my arm and pulled me to look at him.
“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me but I’m not safe to be around you guys.
There was only one chance to get Lailah out of here and I took it, knowing it would mean giving her up forever.
Please let me do this. Let me love her and protect her the only way that I can since I’m not bound to her. ”
“Nothing you’re saying is making any sense,” I argued. “Just get in the damn truck.”
“No,” Parker stated firmly and took a step back. “I told her I would protect her with my life and that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Realization dawned on my face as the horror of what was about to happen made my stomach twist into knots. “She won’t survive that, Parker. If she loses one of us, she won’t recover from that. It will be the last straw and she will shatter.”
“You don’t know that. She’s stronger than all of us combined and the world needs her to save it.
I’m a fuckup, always was, always will be, but this, this I can do for her,” Parker explained through gritted teeth.
“Please get in the truck and leave. Don’t let her see me go down.
Once I do this, I’ll have broken another oath and it will kill me, dragging me down into hell because I lost all rights to go to Heaven.
Don’t make me beg, Brayden. Take care of our girl.
Be her rock and hold her together. You’re the only one who can do that. ”
My eyes burned as I realized he was right.
We couldn’t take him with us and I refused to let Lailah watch as Parker paid the price for setting us free.
There were no words that I could say to comfort him.
All I could do was what he asked of me. Jay blared the horn and waved at us, leaning out of the driver’s side door. “Get the fuck in. We’ve got to go!”
Parker pulled me in for a hug that I returned, squeezing him tightly. I let go and pulled myself into the truck and pounded on the cab wall so Jay knew we were all clear.
“Wait!” Lailah demanded. “Parker isn’t in yet.”
She rushed to the back of the truck but I snatched her around the waist, pulling her to my chest. “He’s not coming, Angel. He’s keeping his promise and making sure you get out of here alive.”
“No! No, not like this, never like this. I won’t allow him to take the easy way out.
He promised that I could yell at him when all this was over and he would listen to every word I said.
He can’t stay back because that would be breaking a promise,” Lailah rambled, frantically trying to fight my hold on her.
“I won’t forgive him. If he stays there and leaves me again, I won’t ever forgive him. ”
I watched as Parker stood there crying, watching Lailah fight to get back to him, but all he did was smile and raise his hands to make the symbol of a heart over his chest before collapsing to the ground.
“What just happened? Why isn’t he getting up? He should be getting up and fighting to get to me. If he lays there much longer, we’ll get too far and he won’t be able to find us,” Lailah babbled, on the verge of hysterics.
Dragging her back from the sight of Parker crumpled on the ground, I pulled her down with me as I sat.
She stopped fighting me as she continued to say nonsense, rocking back and forth as tears hit my hands, falling from her cheeks.
None of the others said anything, even though questions were written all over their faces, but I didn’t even know what to say to them at this point.
When she stopped rocking, I pulled her onto my lap and cradled her.
She pressed her face into my neck, like a child, as I held her.
Parker had paid the ultimate sacrifice to get us out of there, knowing he wouldn’t be coming with us.
Whatever his agreement was with the Dark Lord, he made it with the understanding he would never follow it and instead used it to his advantage.
I lost track of how far we drove or how long we were on the road, but the early morning light shone into the back of the truck, telling me it had been hours.
Jay pulled into a motel parking lot and cut the engine, waking Lailah and the others up.
There was no way I could fall asleep and not keep an eye on things back here.
In truth, I was waiting for the breakdown I knew was going to happen once I explained what happened to Parker.
We’d seen Lailah in a lot of situations but I truly meant what I said to Parker.
I wasn’t sure she would make it through this and be able to look us in the face.
I don’t know that I could look at myself.
I hadn’t even tried to find a way to work around the fact that Parker just sacrificed himself for all of us.
Instead, I just let him die. What kind of person did that make me?
Jay appeared at the back of the truck with a hotel key in his hand. “I got us connecting rooms. Figured we could all use some sleep before we make our next move. Wait... where’s Parker?”
“I think it’s best if we get to the room before I explain that,” I answered.
Hudson handed off Jay’s mom to him and we made our way to the second floor into room seventeen. Lailah didn’t speak. She just trailed after me listlessly, eyes blank as we entered the room and I sat her on one of the beds.
“Okay, what the hell is going on and why is she like that?” Jay demanded, his voice sharp.
“Parker didn’t get into the truck,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he get into the truck? We were leaving, all of us. He promised me he wouldn’t leave me again and that we would make it through this. That he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
The four of us stood around the double bed, looking at her then each other, unsure of how to even react. Jay turned to me, his hands on his hips. “Explain.”
“I don’t know the whole story, only what he told me moments before we left.
It appears he made an oath with the Dark Lord.
What the oath was, I don’t have a clue, so don’t ask.
He told me he never planned to follow the oath, only using it to get Lailah and us out of there alive.
If he broke the Oath, it would kill him and send him to hell,” I explained, watching Lailah out of the corner of my eye as I talked.
“Dead... did you just say he’s dead?” she asked, her voice cracking, more tears streaming down her face. “No, you’re lying Brayden. It’s not good for you to lie. Tell me the truth, where is Parker? Is he going to meet us here later?”
Now that Parker was gone, I was the only one who could deal with this.
He’d been right that Lailah saw me as her rock but I didn’t think that was what she wanted at the moment.
No, the person who was missing was her heart, the man who could always make her smile or laugh with a stupid joke.
Even if I wasn’t who she needed right now, I had to make good on my promise to Parker and try to hold her together, even if she didn’t want me to.
“Angel, he isn’t coming,” I told her as I kneeled in front of her.
“He kept his promise and made sure you got out of there alive. If he hadn’t done what he did, I don’t think we’d be free right now, and God knows if we’d have ever made it out of there alive.
Parker saved all of us because he loved you and would do anything for you. ”
That statement finally made her snap.