Chapter 43 Normal Business
Normal Business
Flying, driving snow swirled around them.
It was goddamn unsettling to have snowflakes melt before them, pushed aside by a hard invisible shell.
It was even worse to bury her face in Erik’s shoulder and feel the invisible force propelling him along, his footsteps muffled by falling flakes.
He didn’t so much contact the ground as glide over at high speed, a toe or heel occasionally touching down to propel them in a slightly different direction.
Maybe he just stayed still and let the planet whirl away underneath him. Which was another horrifying thought, and Liv curled up tighter. Once you got over the indignity of being hauled around like a sack of potatoes, it was sort of nice being carried.
Except it gave her too much time to think about monsters, about falling into dark holes, about golden-rainbow fire shading through every color in the spectrum plus a few she was sure weren’t, and the hard lump of the oneiros digging into her breastbone when Erik shifted.
The world stopped spinning. He was still for a long moment, head upflung, and if it bothered him to cart her around like this, he gave no sign.
Liv pried her eyes open and peered at his profile, trying to ignore how she was clinging to his shoulder, one arm around his nape like a dopey illustration on the cover of a romance novel.
Her grandmother had loved those. Especially the bite-sized read-in-one-afternoon numbers withimplausible titles, farfetched wish-fulfillment plots, and airbrushed couples clinching on the covers.
Liv didn’t blame Gramma Poe one bit. Fantasies were often the only comfort available in the huge pile of bullshit that was adult life.
Snow somehow avoided Erik’s damp dark hair, and there were pinpricks of that strange bluish light in his pupils. It was paler than the glow in Ignatius’s eyes, and somehow comforting. Sort of.
Not really.
Liv turned her head, peering into the driving snow and failing afternoon light. Erik stood on a rooftop amid a collection of buildings clinging to the interstate and huddling under the lash of a white wind. They were atop a four-story building, in fact; she didn’t recognize this town.
We’re not even in Rochester anymore. How in the hell…?
Except she knew how. Magic, or something like it. If they could move this fast, why had they bothered driving?
Another high, trilling bugle call lifted in the distance, stuttering uncertainly through the storm.
She should have been freezing her ass off, but the invisible shell over them both kept body heat trapped.
It was a welcome luxury, and one she didn’t want to think too deeply about since it might be related to the little trick they did with her meals in the other stone house.
“They’re still looking for us,” she whispered, aware that she was stupidly stating the fucking obvious, but after being thrown down a mineshaft she didn’t quite mind being a little off her game.
“And it’ll be dark soon.” Erik didn’t look at her, too busy scanning below. “We need transport. I could carry you the whole way, but…”
“I’m too heavy?” It was a pale attempt at a joke, and he barely noticed, giving her a short, distracted, sideways glance.
“Hardly.” Those pinpricks in his pupils swelled for a moment, and a strange warm breeze, like a just-started heating unit, ruffled her hair. “I could run for weeks with you.”
Let’s do it, then. Let’s just keep going. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could say to a guy who’d just fought off a bunch of monsters before something happened and they turned into dry, grainy dust. “But?”
You know what happened, Liv. That was you.
“But you’re safer in a car. So I’m looking for one.”
“Oh.” If she focused on grand theft auto, maybe she could get through the next few minutes without bursting into tears or screaming. It was a mercy her bladder was now empty. “We’re going to steal a car?”
“Probably. But not we, beautiful.”
“I see.” Not the first time he’s called me that.
Liv decided it wasn’t a bad nickname, even if wildly inaccurate.
At least he didn’t call her cupcake, like Jake did.
Or honey, like Sal Kinnock; her boss probably had a brand-new paralegal to harass by now.
“I was looking forward to committing a felony, though.” It was another pale attempt at a joke, and this time, it gained her a long considering stare.
With his ferocious stubble and dark circles under gleaming eyes, he looked raffish and exhausted at once, and one corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “I expected you to be screaming by now. Or passed out.”
“Tried that. Didn’t work.” Nevertheless, she was pretty glad he was still cradling her. Standing on her own seemed damn near an impossibility. “So, we’re not stealing a car?”
“You’re not. All you’ve gotta do is stand still and look pretty.”
I don’t feel pretty. Liv’s eyelids were heavy. They drifted down, and the last thing she heard was Erik’s voice, soft and reflective.
“Don’t worry, beautiful. I’m on the job.”
* * *
Like a CD player being jostled, or a momentary loss in coverage causing streaming music to hiccup.
One moment she was curled in Erik’s arms during a snowstorm, the next her eyes flew open and she stared uncomprehending at a windshield, snow-choked wipers moving in leisurely arcs and a cone of headlight glare dancing off whirling flakes.
It was still coming down hard, real blizzard conditions. She blinked and turned her head, hoping the disconnected feeling filling her skull didn’t mean a nightmare.
“You passed out from overload.” Erik was in the driver’s seat.
It was yet another SUV, pale blue, jacked up high, and with chained snow tires biting through a slippery soft blanket of killing white.
A faint ghost of cigarette smoke clung to the interior under the screen of that funny, musky cleaning-magic; this vehicle wasn’t nearly as nice as the others.
Is that what happened? Liv couldn’t find a single blessed thing to say.
“It’s normal after a fight like that,” he continued softly. “But good news, we’re almost there. You feel it?”
She felt something, all right. At least it wasn’t the miserable need to pee. “Weird,” she managed, her tongue a little too big for her mouth.
The road before them looked freshly plowed.
Buildings pressed close to either side, and there was a rising seashell murmur slipping directly into her skull if she looked out the window and concentrated, so she didn’t.
Instead, she studied the dashboard, the cigarette lighter—God knew you couldn’t leave that out of an American car—and her jean-clad knees sitting obediently side by side.
She was dry, she was warm, but the strange sea-noise was getting louder. Was she hearing their mad god? “I can hear things.” Her hands turned into fists, well-bitten nails digging into her palms. The childhood habit of chewing on her fingertips had returned with a vengeance. “All sorts of things.”
“I know.” It was either deeply comforting or completely irritating that he sounded so calm and certain; she couldn’t decide. “It’ll be better inside the temple, but for right now just close your eyes and think about walls.”
“Is it him?” Funny, how she was laying the same stress on the word the three of them did.
“What? Oh, no, Dreamers are immune. It’s probably just telepathy.”
Oh, is that all? “Where are we?” Her empty stomach lurched again, informing her it was definitely not impressed with any of this bullshit.
“Just outside St. Cloud. Don’t worry, I can feel the temple here. They chased us almost to the city limits; good thing you were out cold.”
Yeah. Super. “It’s getting louder.” The urge to clap her hands over her ears rose, but it wouldn’t do any good. The call, as Jada would intone during Movie Night, was coming from inside the house.
“I don’t doubt it.” Erik hit the blinker, swinging them into a wallowing left turn. “Keep your eyes shut and think about walls, Liv.”
What the fuck? “Why walls?”
“It’ll help you keep them out.”
“Them?” How strange; she’d thought her fear-maker was busted under recent strain, but apparently it was still capable of cranking out the high-octane stuff. “What’s them?”
“People, beautiful. Just normal people going about their business.” Erik sucked in a harsh breath, but he didn’t hit the brakes.
The vehicle wallowed a bit before chains bit again and they crept forward.
“It’s natural, and it’ll be okay. I was betting you’d show the usual secondary talents as soon as you met the Flame, too.
Just relax. They can get loud, but they can’t hurt you. It’s just like a turned-up radio.”
“It’s in my head.” Unsteady, oozing panic began to beat behind her breastbone. “Oh God, Erik, it’s inside my head—”
“Yes.” A single short, sharp word. “Once we get inside the shields it’ll be better. I need you to hold on, Liv.”
Oh, sure. Hold on. That’ll do it. But it helped to know what was happening, and helped some more that he sounded crisp, authoritative, and absolutely in charge of the situation.
Her throat was dry as the Sahara. “Is this ever going to stop?” The darkness behind her eyelids wasn’t comforting, but did help turn the volume down a little. It was like hearing your neighbor play music so loud the words were gone and your dishes chattered a little in the cupboards.
She was never going to see her condo’s tidy, sunflower-themed kitchen again. There were people who cleaned up houses and apartments after violent crimes; there had to be ones who took care of the disappeared. How many of the statistics were people like her?
How many had been eaten by monsters? Liv laced her shaking fingers together and tried not to think about it, squeezing hard.
“Temple walls are shielded,” Erik continued. “It’ll be nice and quiet there. They’ll get you looked at, get you fed, get you settled in a liraim and—”
“Another cell?” She shivered, though the vents in the dashboard were giving out plenty of heat.