Chapter XIII
XIII
Vic’s heart pounded in her ears as she wrenched open the apartment door and locked it behind her.
Henry looked up from where he was studying on the couch as she bolted past into her bedroom.
Kneeling, Vic pulled her duffel from under the bed and started throwing her belongings into it.
She grabbed an armful of clothes off the floor and shoved them into the bag.
“We’re leaving!” she shouted in a shaking voice. “Now.”
Henry followed Vic into her room. The crease between his brows deepened when he saw her packing. “What’s going on?”
“We have to go.” Vic pulled the drawer out of her bedside table and shook the contents into her bag. “Get your stuff together.”
“Did something happen?”
“We’ll talk about it in the car.” Vic tossed the empty drawer aside.
“Vic, what happened?”
“We don’t have time for this. Where is it? Where is it?” She hoisted the edge of the mattress up and rooted around until she found the knife she’d stashed there.
“Whoa, Vic! You brought a dagger?”
She ignored him, tucking the sheathed knife into the back of her jeans and marching into the living room. Henry needed to hurry. He needed to get his things so they could leave.
“We need to find the car,” Vic said. “It should have enough gas to get us back to the town we passed on the way in. We can get a room there, too. I saw a hotel—”
“Vic.”
“Driving in this weather isn’t ideal, but we’ll be fine if we leave now. The snow—”
“Vic, talk to me.”
Vic spun to face him. “Get your stuff, Henry. Now!”
Her phone was charging in the kitchen. She turned toward it, and—
Henry grabbed Vic by the shoulders and brought her face in line with his. Vic saw confusion in his eyes. Confusion and no small amount of fear.
“You need to tell me what’s happened.”
“Someone is dead,” Vic choked out.
“Who?” Henry asked.
Vic shook her head. “I don’t know her name. She wasn’t there today.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Vic knew she wasn’t communicating clearly. It was a minor miracle she could communicate at all, when she couldn’t think. Her mind was a blank wall of panic. They had to get out of here.
Henry shook her. “You need to calm down.”
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get enough air.
She saw Henry’s face crawling with flies, mouth agape in a perpetual scream, and he was the one lying prostrate on the library floor, torn open by something bigger and meaner than he was. Ribs. Blood. Organs. Clouded eyes staring into nothing.
She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t calm down.
Henry tugged Vic to the sitting area and pushed her toward the couch. She sank into the cushions and fought the urge to flee. Henry took the seat beside her and grabbed her shoulders again, forcing her to look at him.
No bugs there. No blood, no gore. Just Henry.
He was intact. He was okay.
But he looked scared. Scared and small, like he had when Meredith left. Looking at Vic like she might know what to do. Same as the last time, Vic had no idea.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“She works in the castle.” Vic could hardly pull air into her lungs. “She’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I found her,” Vic gasped. “In the library. There was blood everywhere. In the books, the carpet, everything was covered in it.” Heaving breaths failed to soothe the tightness behind her breastbone. “We have to leave, Henry.”
“We can’t leave,” he replied, frowning. “We should find someone, though. We need to report this.”
“No.” Vic squeezed his wrists. “Something’s killed her, Henry. It could still be here. We have to leave.”
“Whatever it is, the Order can deal with it. But we have to tell someone.”
Vic shook her head. “I can’t go back there. Whatever it is could come back.”
“Putting aside the facts that it’s pitch-black outside and that we don’t know where the car is and that neither of us knows how to drive in snow, we can’t just leave.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Do you think we’re better off stranded on the side of the road in a snowstorm?”
They were better off on the side of the road. Anywhere but here.
Henry must have seen her resolution, because he squared his shoulders. “I’m not leaving,” he said gently.
Vic’s hands fell into her lap. “You’re not safe here,” she told him. “No one is.”
“The Order can take care of it, Vic.”
“The Order can’t take care of anything,” she cried. “Don’t you see? It’s all falling apart around them.”
But Henry was shaking his head. He put his face level with hers. “Vic, if you don’t feel safe here, you can leave. You don’t need to protect me anymore.”
Vic opened her mouth. Closed it. Of course she needed to protect him. She’d been protecting him her whole life.
“I can’t leave you.” Vic’s voice sounded frail, distant.
When Meredith left, Henry was ten years old.
He’d just lost his mother, and he was frightened.
Vic was, too, but there was never any room for her to show it.
She had to protect him, had to manage his fear, make him feel safe.
She hid her own weakness from him, determined to deal with it in private.
But eight years later, now it spilled out of her like blood.
She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She was terrified, and she felt weaker than she ever had.
“Maybe you should leave me, Vic,” Henry said. “If things are falling apart, have you considered that maybe you’re making it worse?”
“How can you say that to me?” Vic whispered. “I’m trying to protect you.”
Henry squinted in disbelief. “Are you?” he asked, his voice gentle and low. “I worry about you, Vic, and it’s distracting me. I’m too busy focusing on you—on the shitty things the other recruits say, on whether or not you’re safe—and I’m falling behind. I’m missing things in training.”
Vic was shaking her head.
“I know this has been hard for you,” Henry said, and she shook his hand off her shoulder. Vic hugged her arms around her chest like they were the only things keeping her organs inside. “I know you don’t want to let me go. But maybe…maybe it’s time.”
This wasn’t happening. Vic couldn’t leave him here, not after what she’d seen, not after everything she’d learned.
The Order was on the brink of war—the castle was not a safe place.
Not for Henry, not for anybody. Vic had sworn to Meredith that she would protect Henry, that she would keep him safe no matter what.
“I belong here,” Henry said, “with people like me.”
“I’m like you,” Vic said. “I’m your family.”
“And I love you too much to let you get yourself hurt,” Henry said.
“You won’t go with me. Will you?”
Vic was going to cry. She felt the choked sensation at the top of her throat, and the muscles in her cheeks grew tight. Henry reached for her again, but she slapped his hand away. Vic vaulted to her feet.
“No,” Henry whispered. “I won’t.”
Tears ran down Vic’s face as she watched him. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t leave him.
Vic walked to the door of the apartment and pulled it open. She had to go somewhere, she had to do something. Every instinct in her wanted to fight, break things, hurt herself or someone else. Her hands shook, and she clenched them.
Fleeing down the hallway, Vic had no idea where to go. If she could find Sarah, Vic could ask her, but all Vic knew was that Sarah lived on the fourth floor. Vic needed to find a staircase.
But as she watched, the hallway curled to the left, cutting off access to the stairwell with a loud groan.
Vic swore.
She ran forward in the new direction. There had to be a staircase along here somewhere. She searched the walls for something she recognized.
Of course the castle would confuse her tonight of all nights, when it had left her alone for days. Of course it would send her skittering through dark hallways the one night she knew something prowled nearby.
It didn’t even surprise Vic when the hallway cut itself off short. Dead end. She threw up her hands with a frustrated shriek. But when she turned, she saw a staircase she had missed. Vic didn’t know where she was going but up, or what part of the castle it would spit her out in.
As Vic barreled around the landing, she ran headlong into a familiar figure.
Max grabbed Vic around her upper arms to stop her falling backward. He grew somber as he took in Vic’s teary, panic-stricken expression.
“What is it?”
She stared at his face, watched it twist with concern.
“Someone’s dead. Murdered,” she said. “In the library.”
Max’s eyes betrayed a grim acceptance, like he’d been waiting for something like this to happen.
“Come with me.”
Max—why hadn’t she thought of Max? He could help her. Max would know what to do.
Vic wound through the halls behind Max, fighting to pull her breathing under control. She reminded herself that she was allowed to feel afraid. She had seen something few people would ever see. It would be alarming if she saw that body and felt nothing, wouldn’t it?
The woman had suffered, that much was obvious. Vic imagined what her last moments must have been like—the pain and fear and cold. Vic wanted to rip the image from her mind but it stuck there, nestled deep like some kind of rot.
Max gestured with his right hand, and Vic thought for an instant that she saw some kind of marking, a dark and shimmery tattoo. But the instant she registered it, the mark disappeared, leaving only clean, unblemished skin.
Vic jerked down when a bird flew by above her.
She flung her hands over her head, and her mind jumped to the body in the library.
Max caught her arm and pulled her up with a comforting smile.
His raven, she remembered, his familiar.
Nothing to fear. She caught a streak of black as it disappeared around the next corner. Vic tried to slow her breathing.