Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The alarm wails, scrambling my thoughts and feeding the general panic.
“How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?” Avery pants. “We can’t take the elevator.”
Leo whirls in the opposite direction, whipping me around with him. “The forge!”
Adrenaline propels us down the hall, Avery, Aaron, and Topaz hot on our heels. I glance over my shoulder to see Rime round the corner, Liv slung over his back in the firefighter’s carry. He pauses for half a beat, working out our plan, then races after us.
We spill into the furnace room, swatting at cobwebs and fumbling for our flashlights.
“Give her to me,” Leo orders Rime. “And get everyone else down there.”
Rime passes Liv into Leo’s arms and springs into action, ushering us to the coal chute. Aaron disappears into it first, the gong signaling shortly after. Topaz next, then Rime himself.
“Send Betts,” he yells before he slams the hatch.
I look over at Leo. He and Liv are on the floor, her back propped against the wall and his calming hands on her shoulders. When her dark eyes flutter open, he lays a palm over her mouth, just in time to muffle her scream.
“Betts!” Avery shouts over the shrieking alarm. “Go!”
I tear my eyes from my traumatized best friend, and with a boost from Avery, clamber up into the coal chute.
Urgency overriding my dread of the forge, I launch myself down the hatch and into Rime’s waiting arms. He slows my momentum, bringing my feet gently to the floor mere seconds before Avery drops down, hitting him and the ground with enough force to send them both stumbling.
Rime barely recovers his balance before Leo shouts through the open hatch, “I’m sending Olivia down.”
Liv’s legs flail wildly, knocking Rime in the face several times before he can get a firm enough grip on her to ease her safely to the ground. Once she’s steady, he tries to release her, but she clings to him in blind terror.
Battling a berserker army of emotions, I hardly notice Leo jumping down beside me.
An alchemy lab. Hubris. A man, perhaps more than one, tinkering with the laws of the universe.
I’m so nauseous and dizzy I can barely stand.
I start to harness, because if I don’t, I’ll end up passed out on the floor.
Obsession, devastation, horror—I snatch them out of the air and hurl them into my solar plexus.
“The walls are crumbling over there,” Leo says, pointing at the far corner. “We might be able to dig out.”
“On it.” Topaz aims her hands.
More snakes. But if they can get us out of here—
Leo turns to me, reaching for my head, ready to heal. I must look as sick as I feel.
“I’m okay. I’m harnessing,” I tell him. “Help Topaz.” His roots can do anything the snakes can do.
Stubbornly, he stays by my side as he shifts his attention back to the half-disintegrated wall where at least a dozen black snakes have already congregated.
Topaz tells him, “They say this is the weakest spot.”
“Then let’s see what we can do.”
Together they dig a hole, Topaz’s snakes working from below, burrowing through the cracks and pushing aside stones, and Leo’s roots reaching down from above, loosening and displacing the dirt.
When he fumbles for my hand, I offer it, full to bursting with energy. I feel the pull as his power links with mine, and immediately my nausea ebbs. The roots shovel faster—slithering, slipping, weaving alongside the snakes.
The alarm abruptly stops, blasting us with silence. Shouts reach us from somewhere nearby, along with the screechy grinding of the elevator. No one else knows about this forge, right? Not even security?
“Sound shield,” Leo commands.
I peer over my shoulder to see Rime brush his thumb across the fingers of his upraised hand.
Feeling only slightly more secure, I turn back to the hole we’re digging—and gasp. The roots have formed a tunnel at least three feet wide, with tightly woven walls to hold the loose dirt at bay.
Topaz shoves her head in the opening, then climbs partway up. “I can see the sky!” Her legs and feet disappear, dirt sprinkling out behind her. A second later, she calls down, “I’m out.”
“Avery, go!” Leo orders. As soon as she’s far enough up the tunnel, he sends Aaron.
Rime coaxes a shaking, spaced-out Liv to go next, holding onto her ankle until she climbs out of reach.
Aaron calls down, “We’ve got her.”
“Go, Betts.” Leo releases my hand.
“Don’t you need me?”
“I can hold it until we all get up.”
Figuring rushing is better than arguing, I scramble as fast as I can up the tunnel, planting my toes in the cracks between roots and pulling myself up by the firm handles they provide.
After I clear about twice the length of my body, the sky comes into view, the stars urging me on.
Once my arms clear the top, Topaz and Aaron yank me out the rest of the way, shoving me aside to make room for Rime, who’s so close behind me his head knocks into my feet.
A horrible creaking splits the air.
No, not the tunnel!
Rime spins on his knees and shoves his arms back into the hole. “Come on, Hawthorn, grab my hands!” The earth trembles underneath us, and dust billows like smoke.
“It’s collapsing!” Avery cries.
Rime shouts into the tunnel, “Climb, you son of a bitch.”
Dirt cascades into the hole. An implosion.
“Leo!” I scream. But no sound comes out of my mouth.
Rime lets out a grunt, his arms suddenly going taut. “Got him!”
I jump into action, grabbing Rime’s chest from behind and leaning back with all my weight. Someone else does the same to me.
“Pull!” Rime orders.
Aaron joins him at his side, reaching down to grasp the dirt-caked wrists emerging from the crumbling earth and retreating roots.
Rime’s muscles shake and bulge as Leo’s arms and head break the threshold of the hole. “Everybody grab him!”
He hooks his arms under Leo’s while Aaron clasps him around the chest. As they pull, the rest of us grab hold of whatever part of Leo we can. With a grip on his waistband, I heave with the others until Rime and Aaron are dragging him, stomach-down, across the ground.
Heart at a standstill, I watch as they roll him onto his back.
It’s not until a cloud of dust stings my eyes that I notice he’s gasping and coughing.
Dirt covers every inch of his face and hair, minerals and mica sparkling in the moonlight.
He swipes at his face with a filthy hand and pushes up on his elbows.
Rime sags and lets out a ragged exhale. “He’s fine.”
In one swift move, Leo sits up and pulls me into his arms. I hold him tight, afraid to let go. Afraid he’s still somehow stuck in that hole, dirt pouring down his throat and the collapsing walls crushing his bones.
“I’m okay,” he assures me.
I lean back and grab his filthy face, taking in his bright eyes and the slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Next thing I know, I’m kissing him, heedless of the grit that scrapes my lips and scours my tongue.
Someone nudges my shoulder. “We’ve gotta move!”
The sirens are getting louder by the second. Police cars. Leo and I rush to our feet and join the others, frantically scanning the area for a place to hide. We’re only a few yards from the library wall with the wrought-iron windows, but there’s no way we can squeeze behind the laurel bushes.
“Come on.” Aaron summons us to follow him into the dark.
Fortunately, there’s no one else wandering around this corner of campus, not this late on a Thursday night.
We power-walk across the quad and crouch in the shadows between the lampposts and Blakely Hall.
We’re not exactly hidden, but at least we’re not by the library anymore, looking out of place, filthy, and guilty.
“Aaron,” Avery whispers. “Please tell me you didn’t lose the journal.”
“Still in my pants.”
Sirens scream and red and blue lights flash along the perimeter road. From a safe distance, we watch and wait as the cop cars race down the library service driveway and stop dangerously close to the freight elevator entrance.
I ask anyone who will answer, “Are they alive?”
It’s Rime who replies, “You mean Brier’s crew?”
“Yeah.”
“They were alive when we left.”
Weirdly, this fills me with relief. Could we actually get through this mission without anyone having to die?
“And the roots in the hall have probably retracted,” Leo adds.
Like they did when he ran out of energy in the tunnel.
“Betts, you and Olivia can’t stay in your dormitory,” Topaz warns. “They’ve obviously been following you, so there’s a good chance they know where you live.”
My stomach sinks.
Leo nods in agreement. “They could’ve been following any of us.”
“Burdock must be a bird weaver,” Rime says, jaw tight and eyes narrow.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Topaz admits. “He must’ve recognized your crows and given them new orders.”
He blows out a breath. “Then the safest thing to do is to all stay together until this job is done.”
We agree that Avery’s apartment is the best place to set up camp. Although both she and Aaron are the least likely to have been shadowed, it’s her place that’s in the ideal, central location. No driving required.
Rime straightens and jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll take Betts and Olivia back to their dormitory to clean up and grab their things. The rest of you do the same and meet us back at Avery’s.” He claps Leo on the shoulder. “Pack me a bag.”
Leo nods and pats him back.
Rime would’ve given up his life to get Leo out of that tunnel. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think they were brothers.
Liv is quiet on the short walk to our dorm, while I squirm and fidget, unable to fathom the thoughts and questions swirling around in her head.
Sure, I was blindsided by the truth about what Leo is.
Abruptly, brutally, mercilessly set straight the morning Rime and Topaz arrived.
But there were no snakes or rats involved.
And no one held a dagger to my throat.