Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
“Move!” Luke orders, shoving me into the wall by sandwiching his body against mine. The arrow whistles past the spot I just vacated, stabbing into the stone with a resounding crack that leaves its feather fletching quivering.
“Get Krystal,” he tells me as the statue advances, notching another arrow. “She’s in there.”
Luke points to the door where the statue paused outside. Of course. The statue stopped because he must have heard them inside.
“What about you?” I ask, guilt brimming that our cover is blown because of me.
“I’ll handle him.”
Another arrow flies our way, but Luke deflects it with his dagger and lunges at the statue.
The two parry down the hall, a blur of steel and leather against stone and feather.
Luke pushes their fight away from me so I have an unobstructed path to the door.
I dart across the hall, turn the knob, and push open the thick wood.
The hinges squeak.
The archer’s head whips toward me, followed by an arrow. Its metal tip gleams in the dim light from the chandelier overhead as it soars straight toward my neck. I didn’t even realize he’d let it loose.
I’m knocked to the floor. A burst of pain makes white dots sparkle across my vision as my injured knee hits the stone. I catch myself with my hands and look down.
I expect to see red. I expect to not even be able to breathe. But the arrow missed me. Luke pushed me out of the way just in time.
“Go!” Luke orders, a blur of motion as he rushes the archer.
I crawl into the room. Not wanting the door to lock from the outside, I close it to avoid any stray arrows, but not all the way.
When I turn around, all the oxygen feels vacuumed from my lungs.
Huddled on the stone floor are four bodies. They wear normal clothes, but the outfits are filthy and wrinkled and ripped. The room is bare, only a toilet and sink tucked into the corner. No bed or blankets. All I have to go by is the waning light filtering in through the grimy window.
And then I see her. Krystal’s unmistakable caramel coils. Her back is against the far wall, knees pulled to her chest and head down.
“Krystal?”
My whisper is like a ghost crossing the room. Delayed, her head rises. I nearly scream as her eyes meet mine.
A milky film has swallowed her hazel irises. She blinks slowly, as if waking up. Her chapped lips part, a shaky breath escaping. “Brie?”
“I’m here,” I assure her, closing the distance between us. Falling into a crouch in front of her, my hands hover uselessly. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Her head falls back against the wall, as if too heavy to hold up. “You found me.”
Tears choke me as I lay my hand on her bare arm. Her flesh is hot, a fever coursing through her. “Of course I found you. And now I’m going to bring you home. To Amelia and your kids.”
A tear leaks out of her left eye. She doesn’t bother wiping it away. Instead, her hand grips mine tightly. “Promise me you’ll tell them I love them.” Her voice is faint, but urgent. “Promise me.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Tell them yourself. Besides, you can’t leave me at Curated Care alone. Who am I going to commit time theft with by debriefing the latest Love Island season? Carol?”
A shallow exhale escapes, that might be as close to a laugh as she can get. “More importantly, who’s going to set you up with Luke?”
As if hearing his name, the door flies open, slamming against the wall as the archer lunges into the room. His bow is in his hands, another arrow notched, but both clatter to the ground as his body dissolves in a storm of swirling dusky clouds.
Luke stands behind him in the hall, dagger outstretched from stabbing it into the archer’s back. Relief surges through me.
Until I see the arrow sticking out of his chest.
“You got hit!” I exclaim, forgetting to keep my voice down. He doesn’t reprimand me, which means we’re already fucked. The ceiling creaks with the movement of feet on the roof. The other archers are coming down.
“I’m fine,” Luke grits out. “We need to get them out of here. Now.”
“But your—”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
The arrow is embedded in his left shoulder, just beside his collarbone. Thanks to his jacket, I can’t see how bad it is, but shiny blood is already seeping into the leather. When he turns to glance at the open door, I get a full view of his back. It didn’t pierce through him, thankfully.
But if it hit something major—
“We have to go,” he tells the group. The other three women are waking from whatever unnatural slumber they’re in.
I barely recognize Poppi Parker. Like Krystal, her eyes are glazed, pale skin coated in a layer of feverish sweat.
Her platinum-blond hair is matted, splayed around her head like a halo as she stares up at Luke.
“Are you Jesus?” she asks, quiet as a prayer.
“Not even close,” Luke refutes. But in one swoop, he helps her to her feet, then does the same with the other two women I don’t recognize. I help Krystal, though she leans heavily on me.
Luke sucks in a sharp breath as one of the women falls against his chest, jarring the arrow. Her eyes flutter as his arm comes around her to stop her body from crumpling.
“What’s wrong with them?” I ask him, looping Krystal’s arm over one shoulder and Poppi’s over the other to keep them standing. He does the same with the other two women, but keeps them both on his right side to avoid his shoulder.
“They must have been poisoned. Beliar would know better than to give a killing dose so they wouldn’t die before the eclipse. We’ll figure it out, just not here.”
I follow him into the hall. Krystal trips over something on the ground, landing hard on her knees before I can catch her. It’s the archer’s bow.
She grips it, using it like a cane. “I’m okay.” She coughs, feebly evading my attempt to take her weight again. “Help the others.”
We make it down the stairs to the second floor before coming to a grinding halt. Archers roam the halls, blocking the way back to the bedroom we came through and the path to the main staircase.
“This way,” Luke orders in a hushed voice, turning down another hallway with a staircase at the end. The one that leads to the butler’s pantry and the back door.
I hear it before I see it: the whir of an arrow.
I drop my weight to the ground and swipe my leg out, tripping Krystal and taking Poppi with me.
Luke pushes himself against the wall with the other two women just in time for the arrow to embed in the giant canyon painting at the end of the hall.
It tears the canvas, its wooden shaft sticking out.
“Take them.”
Luke shoves the women into my arms as I get to my feet. In a seamless movement, he pulls two guns from his jacket pockets. The Glocks. He fires one in the time it takes for the archer to notch another arrow. It hits the archer in the forehead, and he immediately turns to smoke.
“Where have you been hiding those?” I gawk at him.
“Obsidian bullets. Too rare to waste. And loud. Though it seems our time for a quiet escape has come and gone, so…” He shrugs, then grimaces in pain. “I’ll take care of the archers. We won’t be able to leave as long as they’re here. Stick to the plan and I’ll meet you at the van.”
“That wasn’t the plan,” I argue, but I’m far too aware there’s no time for it. “We should stick together. You’re hurt.” An awful realization hits me. “You’re hurt because of me. That happened when you pushed me to the ground, didn’t it? That arrow would have killed me, and you took it instead.”
His hand comes up to push a wild curl that escaped from my braids behind my ear so his dark eyes can meet mine. “Yes. And I really don’t want to do it again, so please listen to me for once and get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
They’re the words of a liar. We both know it, but can’t lose any more time. Not with the stampede of archer feet coming and our rescues fading fast.
“I’ll see you at the van,” I tell him, more of a threat than a promise.
I take Poppi and one of the other women.
Krystal hobbles behind me with the fourth, depending on the bow to hold them up.
It’s slow work, but we finally get to the first floor as a series of gunshots ring out from above.
All I can do is hope Luke’s aim is better than a Stormtrooper’s.
“We’re almost there,” I whisper, trying to boost morale. They breathe heavily, feet stumbling and fingers clinging to me. We turn into the kitchen at the other end of the pantry and stop short.
The back door is in sight, across the expanse of tile and counter and steel. In front of it are two archers, arrows poised to find their mark.
I’m not delusional enough to think I can take them.
Instead, I gently nudge us into the open doorway beside the entry to the pantry.
The back door is a no-go, which leaves the front door, since there’s no time to seek another exit.
The hallway we creep into is short, leading to a spacious living room with a giant brown leather sectional and a fire roaring in the hearth.
Like moths to flame, Krystal and the woman using the bow bend toward the heat, anguished expressions smoothing at its warmth.
I sit Poppi and the fourth woman on the stone ledge in front of the fire, debating what to do.
A wall of windows separates us from outside.
My gaze hooks on the fire poker. Maybe I have time to break one of the windows and get everyone through before an archer or Beliar arrives.
Doubtful, plus it’d be nearly impossible to make sure no one got cut on broken glass. We have to use the front door.
“Okay,” I say to myself to calm my quaking nerves. I turn to the fire where Krystal and Poppi and the two nameless women wait, bodies shivering and gazes equal parts hope and terror. “Okay,” I repeat, stronger, though still quiet. “We’re going to rush the front door. Quietly. Stealthily.”
I help them get to their feet, resuming my position of supporting Poppi and one of the women while Krystal and the other use the support of the bow. As a last-ditch impulse, I grab the fire poker and force it into the woman’s hands to my left.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She pauses, as though trying to remember. “Madeline.”
“Don’t think,” I tell her, closing her fist around the fire poker. “Just swing.”
She nods with quiet determination, gripping it tightly.
We creep toward the opposite end of the living room. As I hoped, it leads to the foyer. It’s as spacious and grand as the rest of the mansion, making for a risky sprint to the double doors leading outside. And sprinting isn’t even on the table. A speedy shuffle is more like it.
“Ready?” I ask. Madeline nods, raising her poker in a shaking hand. Poppi sucks in a breath. Krystal and the other woman cling to each other.
“Go!”
The word is barely a breath, but we launch ourselves into the foyer like a steed freed from its stall. I’m all but dragging Poppi and Madeline to meet my pace, while Krystal and the other woman hobble behind. I should have asked for her name, too. She must have been targeted to replace me.
We’re nearly to the door when we pass a large archway to our left. I make the mistake of looking in.
It’s a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining all three walls.
Or maybe an office, for a giant wooden desk rests in the center.
Sitting behind the desk is a man. He’s broad and foreboding, seeming to fill the entire room with his presence.
His hair is salt-and-pepper, a betrayal of an age that doesn’t match his smooth face or muscled physique.
But it’s his eyes that clue me in to who he actually is.
They’re black, like the eyes of Demon Luke who stood in my living room trying to trick me.
Beliar.