Chapter 20
Lev’s expression blanked when the building tremor faded only to be replaced by the faint hooting of alarms. “Time to go. Cameron, do you know where your clothes are?”
“Do I know…Are you serious?” Teeth clenched, Cameron eased the IV out of her arm. “Ah…shit, that hurts.”
The ex-military man stooped over her, flipping her blanket back with a decisive motion to slip one arm around her shoulders, the other under her knees. “Gown and wheelchair it is.”
“Hey! Get off,” the woman demanded. Angry, she gave him a smack.
Lev immediately backed away, his hands in the air and a scowl on his face.
“I have been out for a day. I can walk,” she insisted, looking breathless as she swiveled her feet to hang over the bed.
Her hospital gown had ducks on it, and she was clearly embarrassed.
“Turn around. I have to get my catheter out.”
“Um…” Lev started, and I put a hand on his shoulder to spin him to the window.
Pluck? I thought as Cameron exhaled, clearly feeling some discomfort. The oddest sensation was rippling over my skin. It felt like a spiderweb blowing into me, and I shuddered. The vaults are full here. Thoth wouldn’t risk a dross flow by cracking one. Would he?
Pluck swirled out from under the bed, a flicker of solid mass showing for a moment as he pushed past the vertical blinds to look out the window. I’m sensing free dross. Moving. A lot of it.
He’d blown a full vault. Shadow spit. Not again.
“I told you to leave me there,” Cameron said. “You can turn around now.”
I spun to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, clearly trying to catch her breath. Lev, though, had joined Pluck at the window, standing to the side to peek out past the blinds.
“Ah, guys?” he said, voice tight. “I think the hospital vault just went.”
My attention lifted from Cameron and a sick feeling swirled through me. The hospital vault was under the three-story parking garage—the same one that Lev was looking at.
“Go.” Cameron still sat on the edge of the bed, her head low as she tried to gather her strength. “If no one sees you, they might believe me when I tell them it was Thoth.”
“It’s too late,” I said. The nurse hadn’t recognized me, but she could identify me.
Benedict, too, had been detained. Drawn by Pluck’s horror, I went to the window, aghast when I saw a thin stream of brightly glinting dross pouring out of the garage’s exits, strands of it clinging to the landscaped cacti like plastic bags in a flood.
“Ah, I think the structure is cracking,” Lev said, pushing the blinds all the way open, and we stood watching as a little blue car tore out of the parking garage as if it was on fire, which it sort of was.
“See the supports?” he asked, sounding almost pleased when he added, “Pluck, you are better than a demo espionage team. You sure you won’t come work for us? ”
“That isn’t helping, Lev,” I muttered.
“Well, the university isn’t going to want you after this.” Lev ran a hand across his chin in approval. “They’ve known shadows can take out vaults since Pluck destroyed the one under the auditorium. Your promise that they wouldn’t do it again is running thin.”
All because of one deluded shadow, I thought, my sick feeling growing when a spiderweb of cracks raced up the pilings.
It was like watching two hundred years condensed into thirty seconds.
Please…No one be in there, I thought at the approaching sirens.
A scattering of people ran from the garage, and I jumped, horrified at the muffled thump of uncountable tons of cement hitting the earth.
Dust billowed, looking worse than it probably was with the setting sun gleaming through it.
Lev swore softly when it was followed by a glittering mass of dross, vomited from the structure to flood the street.
It was my living nightmare come again. Fear clenched my gut.
Please. Please let no one have been in there.
Cameron scuffed to a halt behind me, a pained, heartbroken expression pinching her features. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You should have—”
“Let you die there?” I finished, and Lev’s eyes widened. “Dana would have blamed me for that, too. Get dressed.” With a panicked quickness, I pushed past her to rummage in the dresser until I found a clear plastic bag with her things. “You’re coming with me to Herm’s safe house.”
“I’m not going to hide in a safe house,” she said as she dumped the bag on the unmade bed, frowning at Lev as she stuffed her feet into her pants and hiked them up under her gown.
Her breath was fast as she struggled, and I stared at the growing crowd on the hospital lawn, everyone staying clear of the receding flood.
Across the street, a hundred-year-old cactus slowly tipped and hit the ground.
“I need a phone,” Cameron said, voice muffled as she probably tried to get her shirt over her head. “Bring in some backup. Damn it, why am I so weak? I was only out for a day. It’s only been a day, right?”
“They had you on some wicked drugs,” Lev said, and then we both jumped when the second floor of the parking structure fell into the lower one. Alarm sounding, a car slid from the garden level into the street, nose first.
“My phone is dead,” Cameron said in disgust as she stuffed it in her pocket. “Lev? Give me yours.”
“I have a burner.” I felt sick, and I tried to get her moving. “You can make as many calls as you want from the grotto. We gotta move.”
Cameron’s brow furrowed as she pulled away from me, catching her chancy balance against a wall. “Grady, give me your phone. Now.”
Lev yanked her into motion. “I can understand you being a little confused, ma’am, but Thoth just took out the hospital vault full of dross. He’s changed his modus operandi and is therefore unpredictable. You’re the only one with firsthand knowledge of his actions.”
“Me hiding won’t solve anything,” she protested as he pushed her to the door.
“Yeah?” I scowled at her. “As long as you are alive to say he busted the vault, he’ll come for you. It would be smart to be a little less accessible.”
Cameron stopped fighting Lev. “The grotto?” she whispered, worry pinching her expression as she looked at the setting sun. “At night?”
“Aasta is down there, but she knows you. Better, she hates Thoth.” I lifted my head, searching.
“Pluck?” I could feel his dread from here, and I touched the amulet around my neck in invitation.
There was so much dross out there. Sure, it would burn me like the sun, but I wouldn’t dissolve like Pluck.
“Where’s my stick?” I added, snatching it up as Pluck hazed my feet.
“Okay.” Lev cracked the door and an excited chatter filtered in. “I had to park out at C lot. Some good luck there. Cameron, when we find a wheelchair, you’re in it.”
“I can walk,” she grumbled, and he looked at her hospital slippers, a sly smirk curling his lips up. Her shoes hadn’t been in the bag, and I wondered if they were still in my apartment.
Lev glanced again into the hall, then gestured for us to move. “Ladies?”
Cameron pushed forward, clearly struggling.
Pluck was a cold chill wrapped about my wrist, his every emotion pinging against mine as I followed her, balking at the chaos.
What had been an empty hall moments ago was now full of people clustering at the windows.
The sound of sirens persisted, and reflected lights were flashing against the ceiling.
“Go back to your rooms!” a harried nurse demanded, ignored. “The hospital is not being evacuated. You’re safe here.”
But as I caught a glimpse of the collapsed parking structure and its moat of burning dross, it was hard to believe her. Please, no one be in there…
Lev’s hand cupped Cameron’s elbow, a subtle help her pride could accept as we made our way down the hall pretty much ignored.
The chatter was loud, and head down, I paced as quickly as we dared, my remorse pinging against Pluck’s as we both remembered a day just like this on a larger scale when the auditorium collapsed under a thousand little things going wrong with its construction. Death by a million cuts.
Shadow spit. I bet he used Benedict’s frozen dross to break it from the outside. Can’t we go six hours without a major breach? I thought, and Pluck fizzed, his coils on my wrist tightening.
Not if they keep storing dross like this, he thought dryly.
But “this” was how they had always done it, and I tensed as we passed the nurses’ desk.
“Stairs,” Lev said. “I’m not getting in an elevator. Cameron, you doing okay?”
“Have I said anything to imply otherwise?” Cameron panted, and Lev tucked his shoulder under her arm and took her weight.
“You’ve got her?” I yanked open the fire door, and he nodded.
Cameron was gripping him in a white-knuckled strength.
If I hadn’t guessed it before now, it had become obvious that Lev felt responsible for Cameron.
I understood why, though I didn’t agree with it.
He’d left her where she lay in my apartment for who knew how long, thinking that Pluck had downed her.
He could have gotten Thoth off her far sooner, but the reality was that the damage had probably already been done by the time she hit the floor.
“They will have a wheelchair in the lobby,” I said, trying to hide my stick when someone raced past us on the stairs, the woman yanking the fire door open so hard it slammed into the wall.
She was gone in an instant, and the sounds of sirens and someone on a bullhorn slowly faded with the door closing.
“You think she recognized you?” Lev asked when we reached the landing, and I shrugged, pulling the fire door open.
It was even more chaotic in the lobby, and Pluck’s grip on my arm tightened. Knots of people clustered before the tall windows, and I had a thought that Thoth’s stunt had one good outcome: we could walk right out the door and no one would notice.