by Box Set
I expected more arguing. Clearly the thought of spending the day stuck in a room with me—even sleeping—was not pleasant. If Bryson had a problem with it, I could understand why Alec would be hesitant. His girlfriend was going to love it.
And of course he would tell her. Because he didn't keep secrets like I did.
"I promise, I will stay on my side of the room," I said more gently.
"That's not what I'm worried about," he grumbled as he turned and sorta stumbled away. "You can sleep in my shirt again if you want."
I froze. That memory nearly demolished me. He froze, too, which told me he wasn't completely unaffected, either. Hastily, I cleared my throat, trying to keep the pain from climbing its way out. "It's okay. I have pajamas here."
"What?" he asked without turning. He was asking me that a lot lately.
"You're gone a lot." Bryson shrugged as he wafted past Alec. It sounded so much worse than it was. Bryson and I had never done a thing.
"I told you she couldn't be here, Bryson." Alec's voice was deadly in the quiet apartment. And it tore through my chest like one of those arrows that have the split, spread tips, leaving a horrible gaping wound that only I could see.
"It's not like that, Alec. I only—" I started but he shook his head, glaring at Bryson.
I was too tired for this. I went into Bryson's room and dug through the drawer he'd designated for me, pulling out my fluffy pajama pants and a tank top and thank the heavens, a toothbrush.
"Can I take a shower without you standing guard?" Alec asked when I emerged. He was leaning against the door frame, eyes dark and unreadable.
There were no windows in the bathroom, so I nodded without looking at him and went to wait on the couch. Bryson appeared next to me, looking forlorn. "Hey." I rolled my head to the side so I could watch him. "How ya holdin' up?"
"I’ve been better. Do you think she’s safe at the hospital?"
"Yes. And Death will know what to do." I smiled encouragingly. "We'll get this all figured out in no time."
"Yeah. And while we're doing that, how about you remember that you swore him off? He’s gonna hurt you again, Navi."
I sat up, blinking because I couldn't even think of a cohesive response to that. "What?" I finally asked. It was as good as I could come up with.
"I’m only saying this because I’ve been there while you tried to get over him. I’ve seen the worry in Konstanz’s eyes, and the pain in yours." He eyed me. "And I mean this is in the most supportive way possible, but what can you really do? You’re tiny."
Seriously. The big guys thinking I was a helpless little girl was getting old. So old. "Bryson, I understand that you are struggling right now with everything that has happened," I said through gritted teeth, "But trust me when I say I am doing the job I was born to do, despite how inefficient you both think me to be."
"I don't think anything, Navi." I'd been so mad at Bryson I hadn't even heard Alec get out of the shower until his voice was right behind me. "Except that I'm tired, so you must be exhausted. Ready?"
I peeked over my shoulder. He was towel drying his hair, his basketball shorts resting low on his hips and he wasn't wearing a shirt.
Dear sweet heavens.
I closed my eyes and prayed for strength or a cold shower or a semblance of rational thought. None appeared, so I nodded meekly and followed him into his room. It hadn't changed at all since I'd been there last. The bed was unmade. That was about it.
"Bryson, can I borrow your comforter and pillow?" I asked, but he didn't answer. I stuck my head back into the living room, but he wasn't there. "Awesome."
"You can sleep in my bed." Alec sounded like he was forcing the words past a lump the size of Mount Fiji in his throat. "I'll sleep on the floor."
Strength. Cold shower. Rational thought.
Nothing.
"No, no," I yelped. "No. Despite the fact that you don't think I can protect you, I need to stay between you and the window."
"I never said you couldn't protect me, Navi."
"Well then good. You won't argue with me."
He swallowed hard, looking from the bed to the floor to me and back again. "I'll sleep by the wall. You can sleep on the bed between me and the window."
By the wall. In the bed. In the bed next to me. "We can build a pillow fort if it'd make you more comfortable." I could swear I heard hope in his voice. Or vulnerability. Or maybe that was my hope or vulnerability and I was projecting it onto him.
I was so confused.
And tired.
And weak. So weak.
Because I nodded. "Okay," I whispered. "I'll sleep next to you."
Chapter 47
I should have known I wouldn't get any sleep. And not because Alec was lying next to me, as tense as that made everything. Not even because Bryson had figured out how to interact with objects and was making as much noise as ghostly possible in the other room.
No, I should have known because I know demons. And when they hunted, they were fast and ruthless.
Alec's clock read 4:56 p.m. when I heard the scratching at the window. It sent chills of terror up my spine, but Alec was snoring lightly and didn't hear it. Praying I was wrong or paranoid or anything else, I slid out of bed, being careful not to wake Alec, and crossed the room to the window.
A face, distorted and discolored, stared back at me.
It was still struggling to figure out how to use its fingers, so it scrabbled at the window where it clung, two stories up. Swallowing my revulsion, I inched closer, my breath caught in my throat, so I could see around it. "Please be alone. Please be alone." My face was dangerously close to its face, only separated by the thick glass, and I could see into its very soul through the red, glowing eyes. Tearing my gaze away, I checked the ground below, wincing as it squealed right next to my head and bashed its face against the glass.
The other one I'd lost last night stood below it.
Awesome.
"Navi?" Bryson asked, appearing next to me.
And promptly started screaming. His screams woke Alec, who swore in three different languages as he sat up. "What the hell?" he finally sputtered.
"You need to go into the living room. Get your shoes on and your car keys and be ready to run." Despite the way my heart was pounding in my chest, I sounded perfectly calm. Go me.
"Holy shit!" Alec yelled. Ah, so he'd just now noticed the demons clawing at his window.
"Alec, go!" I yelled, abandoning all sense of calm. I heard him crash out of the bed and stumble around, probably trying to free himself from the blankets he'd been tangled in, but I couldn't look away to check. If I looked away, the asuwangs would make their move and I would miss it.
And we'd die.
"Navi, come on. We'll run."
"Alec, they'll chase us. If I fight them—"
He was having none of that. "No." He snarled behind me. "I'm not going to leave you here to face them." He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me out of the room, grabbing his keys off the table. "I'm gonna put you down and we're gonna run like hell to my truck. Do you understand me?" His voice didn't sound calm at all. He sounded scared out of his mind.
"Alec, I can fight them. It will give you enough time to run—"
"Dammit, Navi!" he yelled, cutting me off, somewhat impolitely. "I know you can fight them. But there's not enough willpower in the world to make me leave you so if you don't want me in there fighting with you, you're running with me."
The window broke.
Alec spun, grabbing my wrist, and we sprinted out the door. He leaped down six stairs, dragging me with him, half-turning to catch me when he realized my legs weren't nearly as long as his. I shoved him forward and he raced to his truck as the creatures crashed through the door above us.
Metal splinters rained down on my head. I skidded to a stop, searching desperately for anything that could be dangerous at all. Squealing when I heard the asuwangs on the stairs, I grabbed a metal shard that looked like it could be useful and smashed i
t on the ground twice, shattering the blunt end into sharp, lethal looking pieces. I whirled around, hurled it end over end at the first asuwang's face as it appeared on the stairwell. It screamed and clawed at the shard, but I'd blinded it, and it fell the rest of the way down the stairs, shoving the piece further in.
Right into its brain.
It wasn't dead. It could only be killed by soul blades, and I had none. But it was immobilized for who knew how long.
Unfortunately, the other one wasn't, and it didn't even seem to notice that its friend was laying with a stick shoved into its head. The human form leaped over the twitching demon and ran straight at me, zombie-like in the unfamiliar shape, but still faster than I'd been expecting.
"Go. We’ll take care of this one." Elizabeth was suddenly just there, Bryson already running toward the fallen demon, and I spun away and ran for all I was worth toward Alec's truck. He leaned across the driver's seat, swearing at me as he shoved open the door.
I leaped in like a hurdler and he slammed on the gas. The truck rocketed out of the parking lot while I struggled to pull the door shut behind me. Alec had a death grip on my wrist, like he thought I might get any crazy ideas about jumping out or something.
"You couldn't just run. You had to stay and fight. They almost had you, Navi!" he bellowed as he drove like a madman through rush hour traffic. Which, in Astoria, was thankfully very light.
I slumped against the seat, breathing hard. "I need some weapons. And maybe some shoes. Can you take me to my apartment?" I worried for my ghosts. Elizabeth could take down the one I'd hurt and keep it down until dusk when their weapons would allow them to kill it, but what if the other one stayed to fight? What if he took her soul? And Bryson wasn’t trained at all, but he’d jumped right in after Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have left them. But if I’d stayed, Alec would have been in even more danger.
Why had no one figured out how to clone me yet?
"I thought you said your sword things didn't come until nighttime?" He spun the wheel hard as we careened around a corner, watching the rear view mirror more than he was watching the road in front of us.
"They don't. But I have other weapons that can slow them down until I get my swords. Something a little better than broken door bits."
He stared at me like I'd grown two heads. And to him, I probably had. The sweet little girl he'd grown up with would never have played with weapons or decapitated demons.
But she wasn't me. Not really.
Chapter 48
Alec
I'd just been attacked by demons. Demons that looked human but not quite. Like, zombie humans, maybe. Or someone with a really bad migraine. I don't know. I wasn't thinking clearly.
And I'd just seen Navi pick up a broken piece of door and throw it hard enough to impale that migraine-zombie-person-demon thing in the face. My Navi, the one so sweet she wouldn't even tell our high school math teacher his addition was wrong because she didn't want to hurt his feelings.
And now she was talking about weapons and fighting and shoes and I couldn't make her be the person in my mind she had been before. She was different.
Scary.
And I was still in love with her.
I pulled into her parking lot and checked the rear view mirror for the twenty-fifth thousandth time. "How fast do those things move?"
She looked over her shoulder, too. So I wasn't just being paranoid. "They're fast, but not truck-fast. We have a bit."
"Okay. Get your shoes... and stuff. Then I have questions, Navi."
She nodded and slid out of the truck, padding barefoot and adorable up to her door. "Come on, Alec."
"If you can fight them off, why can't I?" I asked as I followed her in.
"Well... technically you could. You can't kill them, though. It's just really dangerous, Alec. It isn't worth it. One claw into you and..." Her face paled as she stared up at me, and for the first time in all this, Navi looked scared. "They'll take your soul, Alec."
I didn't want Navi to be scared. I wanted my brave Navi back. "Grab your stuff. Let's go."
"Hey there, Navi. I was wondering where—Alec?" Terrie dropped the magazine she was holding as she stared at me. "What are you still doing together?"
"Bryson got himself into some trouble." Navi didn't even hesitate as she breezed through the apartment. Her shoulder had started to bleed again through the bandages. I watched Terrie to see if she'd think it was weird that Navi had massive war injuries, but Terrie was too busy glaring at me to notice.
That, or this wasn't an unusual thing for them.
"I thought you agreed, Alec," she hissed as soon as Navi left the room. I seriously, seriously didn't have the energy to defend myself while waiting for something to come exploding through the door to kill me.
"So apparently you talked to Konstanz?" I asked, not taking my eyes from the window.
"Yes I did, and she said you agreed to stay away from her."
"I do agree, Terrie. I'm keeping my distance."
"Yeah." She glowered harder. "I can see how you're keeping your distance."
"What's that supposed to mean? I haven't touched her!"
She shook her head and tossed her magazine to the side, storming out of the room. I paced, alternating between worrying about Navi and watching the door.
Bryson appeared next to me.
"You're not supposed to be here." I kept my voice low so that Terrie wouldn't hear me. Heaven knows that's all Navi needed—someone else to protect if Bryson happened to open her eyes.
"I thought Navi would like to know that her ghosts are okay." He floated past me toward Navi’s room.
"Bryson..." I growled, but he ignored me. Just like Navi ignored him when she came around the corner. She saw him—I know she did because her eyes narrowed just slightly and her shoulders tensed, but she walked right through him.
"Let's go, Alec." She called over her shoulder, "Terrie, I'll talk to you in a bit."
I led the way to my truck, eying her bag suspiciously, wondering what she kept in there. Bryson appeared as soon as she buckled her seat belt.
"I told you to stay out of there, Bryson." Her tone was colder than when she'd told me to go to hell. Did he really not realize how important her roommates were to Navi and how much danger he was putting her in?
"I was trying to help." Bryson threw his hands in the air, sort of going right through the truck’s window. "I know how worried you are about Elizabeth!"
I focused on the road, because if I didn't know better, that thing was close. I swear I could feel it. I had no clear destination in mind. Just to drive. To escape. To run away from this nightmare that Navi dealt with on a daily basis.
Navi sighed. "I’m sorry, Bryson. I do appreciate knowing she’s okay. I just can’t afford to have someone else to protect. I’m already trying to be in three places at once." She twisted so she could see backward. She felt it too. The demon was coming.
"I’m just scared, Navi. I’m doing the best I can," Bryson said quietly. "I thought you’d want to know."
"I can feel Elizabeth. I can tell when she’s in trouble. But thank you." She slid around in her seat, running a hand through her hair. I risked a glance before I went back to watching the road. Navi was completely exhausted. There were circles under her eyes.
She caught my look and smiled. "It's okay, Alec. I'll heal as soon as the moon rises."
I nodded. "Where am I going, Angel?"
I snapped my mouth shut. I hadn't meant to call her that. It had just happened and now I didn't dare look at her to see if she was furious or only hurt.
"Inland. The farther from the water they get, the slower they move." Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her.
"She's not your Angel anymore, Alec." Bryson appeared next to my ear. He was getting good at this popping up all over thing. I did not enjoy it.
"Shut up, Bryson."
Chapter 49
I finally had to stop for gas a little before seven p.m. The sun was setting low in the s
ky. Navi was having an intense discussion with Elizabeth that I was pretty positive involved me, and Bryson watched it all while he floated back and forth through the gas pump. "What's going on?" I asked when she got back in the truck. It was the first time we'd spoken in hours. All my questions were not getting answered, not with Bryson there all the time, hissing in my ear.
"Well." She winced. I wasn't going to like what was coming, clearly. "See, I've been waiting for the moon because I'd have power to kill the one asuwang chasing you, and somehow completely forgot that the sea witch will probably send a whole lot more of them after you as soon as it’s dark. Especially if she realizes you're important to me."
I almost wrecked the truck.
Navi sighed. "I'm too tired to skate around this issue anymore. Alec always has and always will be very important to me. There, I said it. We all knew it anyway. Now we have to figure out—"
"I'm important to you?" I asked. My voice shook and I didn't dare look at her for fear she'd see the hope in my eyes. She'd just told me that a whole herd of demon things were about to be unleashed on me and all that mattered was that I was important to her.
"Yes, Alec. Obviously." Her voice was as quiet as mine in the silent cab, but it didn't shake. "So somehow we have to keep you safe while I meet with Death and try to figure out how to help Bryson."
"Why can't I just go with you to meet this... this Death?" I asked, although it was pretty much the last thing on earth I wanted to do. Ever.
"You can't. No mortal can look into the face of Death and survive. But, I think we have a plan." She nodded enthusiastically. "My mama."
"Your mom is our plan? I'm not sure..." Too slowly, I remembered that Navi's mom was the same thing she was—not just a regular probation officer like I'd always believed.
Navi watched realization dawn on my face and nodded. "Elizabeth went to her earlier. They're driving toward us now. We should meet them within the hour. Elizabeth will stay with you and my parents. This far inland, it will be hard for any escaped asuwangs to catch your scent, except the one that's still following us. Then Bryson and I will meet Death and my army will try to stop the demons when they come out of the sea witch's doorway." Navi took a deep breath. "Yeah. Easy peasy."
