Chapter 35 #2
All three of the guys stare at me like I just spouted the entire Declaration of Independence. Obviously they didn’t think I was capable of making a reasonable point.
Alongside my irritation comes a surge of resolve. Yes, I am a loose cannon and a criminal and sometimes a little psycho, but I’m just as good a match for Elodie as any of them are. And if I have to do this thing on my own after all, then—
“You’re right,” Worth says, looking as if he hates the taste of the words. “Let’s get closer, and we can—”
His voice stutters at the same time as a flash of sensation shoots up my arm from my palm. Panic and distress, so sharp the emotions are radiating from Elodie into us.
No more time for talking. My feet are already moving. “We have to get to her!”
The others hurry after me. Ephemera tickles around us as one or another of them must wrap us in more layers of concealing magic.
As we race closer to the club, my awareness of our match gets even stronger. She’s definitely in that building. But… down?
In the basement. Near the back. What are the scalders doing with her?
Without consulting the others, I dash down the alley next to the club and into the wider lane around back. My feet have just jarred to a stop when a jolt of pain smacks me from the palm to the heart.
The impact reverberates through the damaged nerves in my neck and shoulder with a jittering sting. My own panic flares, throwing me into motion. “They’re killing her!”
Worth springs toward a door in the back of the building. Asher scrambles around the nearby dumpster looking for other access.
My innate magic roars through my body, ready to pummel straight through to my match.
I fling out my hands to guide my power, and the pavement lurches. A square some four feet across crumbles into a deepening pit.
My instinctive sense of the materials in my surroundings snatches at dirt and rock and wood from the ground, from the rubbish heap behind me, from the buildings next door.
The energy peals through my body, lighting up every cell, but I can’t appreciate the high of the power. All I can think of is pushing it farther, farther—
Then my feet are hurtling down the staircase I just carved in the middle of the lane that leads straight to a new doorway into the basement below.
I burst into the bright room, and my stomach flips over.
Elodie is lying slumped near the room’s actual doorway, blood soaked through the back and side of her green dress.
The other guys have charged after me. As I drop to Elodie’s side, searching for the wound, Professor Raith jars to a halt a few feet away. His lips draw back with a snarl that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.
He barely sounds human.
His shoulders hunch, his arms tensing—and Elodie blinks up at us with a hitch of breath. Her gaze latches on to the professor.
“Cole, no,” she says, soft and ragged but firm.
I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’m just glad she’s capable of talking at all.
She reaches over and grabs Cole’s wrist. He stares at her, and a little of the tension in his stance loosens.
Then she pushes herself into a sitting position.
A noise of protest escapes me. “Hold on, Elodie. You’re bleeding—you’re hurt—”
“No, I’m not,” she says, just as softly. “Not anymore.”
I follow her gaze to the other figure I dismissed in my urgency to get to my match, collapsed in a heap farther across the room. At the same moment, that figure stirs.
The unfamiliar woman manages to lift her head, blond hair sliding across her face. A shudder runs through her slim frame.
Her blouse is soaked with even more blood than Elodie’s, pooling beneath her as she tries to adjust her position.
As she gropes toward a pistol lying on the floor just beyond her reach.
I fling myself forward, just as a lightning-like bolt smacks into the weapon from thin air.
An instant later, nothing remains but a lump of fused metal and a grimly satisfied smile on Worth’s face.
The woman hisses through her teeth. “You… You already have it. Even worse than they thought.”
The pieces click together in my head. She shot Elodie, but Elodie’s glim rebounded the fatal wound back to her.
Near-fatal. This bitch isn’t dead yet.
And she knows more about my match than could possibly be safe.
Without another thought, my switchblade is in my hand. Pressing the enchanted control on the handle, I flick it out to sword length.
I lunge like I would at a void creature.
The blade slams straight through the woman’s neck. A flare of light—some kind of magical defensive measure, maybe—streaks through the room, too late to do her any good.
As I blink the glow from my eyes, her head has rolled over, slack features hidden in the now-much-larger pool of blood.
“Cosgrave!” Worth blurts out with obvious chagrin. Asher’s mouth has set in a queasy line.
When I look at Elodie again, her eyes have blown wide with horror.
My gut twists tight.
I tuck my weapon away and bend down to scoop her into my arms. “I had to. She knew too much—she’d tell other people. She already tried to kill you.”
To my surprise, it’s Professor Raith who backs me up. “It needed to be done. Now let’s get out of here before anyone else realizes what happened.”
I don’t need the suggestion twice. I’m already running up the stairs I made with Elodie tucked tight in my embrace.
The other guys can think whatever they want about me. If I have to be the one to do the dirtiest work, so be it.
Because I’ll do whatever it takes to get my match through another day.