It wasn’t a second too soon. Someone was rattling the safe house’s locked front door, then pounding when it wouldn’t open. “Lorenzo,” a man’s voice shouted. “You know you’re supposed to keep this door unlocked!” More rattling, more pounding. “Lorenzo, answer me, damnit!”
Wes slung Ade across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and Ash shoved them through the secret door and into the stairwell. He turned and waited for her, expecting for her to lead the way.
But Ash grabbed the mesh door and slammed it shut from inside the apartment. While Wes watched in confusion, she used the heat from her hands to weld the door shut.
Wes shrugged Ade onto one shoulder and used his free arm to tug at the door from the other side. “Ash, what the hell are you doing?”
Ash’s eyes grew teary just seeing Ade so vulnerable, knowing that he’d been just days away from execution. “You may be a superman with the sun down, but the boy slung over your shoulder isn’t. This isn’t his fight. Thirty-eight flights of stairs is going to take even you some time to travel down. So I’m going to give you a head start.”
The pounding on the front door intensified, and Wes smashed his fist against the metal. “Damnit, Ash. I will break this door down. Those guards may not be fireproof, but you aren’t bulletproof, either. We can all make it.”
“Wes, this sacrifice could have been you if I hadn’t stumbled upon that boat Tuesday night. Now it’s one of my best friends, and . . . I don’t have many of those left. I’m done pretending this isn’t personal.” She touched his knuckles that were blanched white from gripping the steel mesh and let just a lick of warmth touch his skin reassuringly. “You have thirty-eight floors. Get moving.” With that, she pulled the tapestry back over the escape door.
By now the guard at the front door had returned with the keys. Ash could hear him madly trying them in the dead bolt to see which one would work. Ash started across the room, hoping to surprise him when he entered, but he burst into the apartment when she was only halfway to the door. She spun quickly and tried to look busy with the fish tank.
“Who the hell are you?” the guard barked.
Ash tried to assume her best innocent “This isn’t what it looks like” face when she turned around. “I’m with aquarium services, here to clean your fish tank, and . . .” She stopped talking when she saw the guard’s face. It was the same man-boy she’d kicked in the head three nights ago on the deck of Lesley’s ship.
“You?” he said. He reached up and tenderly touched his mangled nose, which was in a splint.
“Shit,” Ash said. “Just my luck they didn’t fire you after Tuesday.”
The guard’s spell broke, and he reached out for the gun at his side. Ash panicked, and in the heat of the moment, she went for the only cover in sight. She seized the edge of the tall fish tank and pulled herself up to the rim, intending to hurdle over to the opposite side. Her leg, however, got stuck in the process. As a result her body flopped into the water and dropped like an anchor to the bottom.
A piece of coral ripped into her shoulder, but she barely had time to process the pain, because there was a sharp crack from the guard’s gun, muffled by the water around her. Her eyes shot open in time to watch the blur in the water as a bullet torpedoed past her face.
The wall to the fish tank exploded under the impact of a second bullet. Ash rode the cascade of water and glass out onto the red carpet. Through her water-blurred eyes she saw the guard’s arm twist around to line up a shot. He wasn’t taking any chances.
Ash palmed a handful of the water that was still pouring out onto the carpet. She ignited her hand and slung the water into his face at the same time. It turned to steam by the time it hit him square in the eyes, and he erupted in a series of high-pitched shrieks.
Ash rose up out of the water and cracked him in his already broken nose. He fell flat onto the carpet with a heavy squish, landing in a bed of fish tank debris, including the poor aquatic casualties of the firefight, which were now drawing their final breaths on the carpet.
Footsteps rumbled up the hall. Ash slammed the door closed and threw the dead bolt just before the other sentries from the next room could get inside. She scooped the gun off the waterlogged carpet.
Without any keys the guards outside began to shoot at the lock on the door. Apparently they weren’t concerned about noise complaints from the neighbors. Ash scrambled across the room, heading for the secret metal door. With any luck Wes had had enough of a head start with Ade that the hidden stairwell was okay to use. She reached out to pull aside the tapestry so she could melt her way through the door.
Then, over the gunshots at the front door, she heard more footsteps. These ones coming up the stairs. She backed away from the tapestry just as a new set of guards began to pound on the metal door.
With no exits left, Ash ducked behind the broken fish tank’s wooden base. Keeping her back pressed against the new cover, she whipped out her phone and speed-dialed Aurora. She hit the speakerphone button and dropped the phone to the ground so she’d have both hands free.
The phone rang twice before Aurora’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Ashline? Where the hell are you?” Rain spattered the receiver on the other end.
“Trapped in the penthouse, and I have two very important questions to ask you.” Ash held the gun up in front of her face. Even though she had no intention of actually shooting anyone, the sound of gunfire was something the guards would recognize and hopefully fear if she needed to buy herself time.
“I’m listening,” Aurora said.
“First, how much weight can those wings of yours support?” Ash asked. “Another person?”
Behind her a final gunshot took care of the lock, and the door splintered in after several kicks. Just as the door burst open, Ash popped up over the base of the fish tank just long enough to fire a wild warning shot. It splattered the wood of the door frame, and the point man ducked back out into the hall. Ash dropped back into a sitting position as a barrage of gunfire from a semiautomatic drummed against her cover.
“Is that gunfire?” Aurora yelled.
“Yes or no, Aurora?” Ash shouted back.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Aurora said.
“Good enough,” Ash said. “Second question—I need to know how good your hand-eye coordination is. Did you ever play any sports where you had to catch something?”
There was a long pause, then Aurora stuttered, “Oh, n-no. Ash, you’re not thinking of—”
Whatever Aurora said next was drowned out by a wave of cover fire. Ash could hear the heavy footsteps of the point man as he dashed into the room and dove for cover somewhere near the entrance, probably behind the dining table. Ash fired another two bullets over her own cover to warn them, but a teenage girl wielding a pistol wasn’t going to keep away a roomful of trained mercenaries for long.
“Look for the broken window,” she instructed Aurora. “I’ll see you in ten seconds. Have faith.” On the other end it sounded like the cell phone clattered to the rooftop. Ash hoped that meant Aurora had understood the message loud and clear.
This was going to take more courage than anything else she’d done in her life. Ash reached out to the room service cart and ignited the white tablecloth with the hottest blaze she could. Within seconds the cart had transformed into an inferno. Ash mustered all the strength she had left and shoved the cart. The fiery vehicle rattled across the wet carpet on a collision course for the front door, just as a second syndicate member was trying to slip inside.
With the guards hopefully distracted, Ash fired one last bullet—this one intended for the balcony window. The whole pane shattered, and a torrent of rain and wind was sucked through the opening and into the apartment.
Keeping her whole body low to the ground, Ash sprinted across the floor. She dashed over the broken glass onto the outdoor balcony.
At the last moment she wasn’t sure she had the nerve to make the jump.
A bullet sizzled past her ear, giv
ing her just enough blind courage to maintain her momentum.
And she dove headlong over the edge of the balcony.
In the brief seconds that followed,
Ash spread her arms as though they were wings,
felt her body succumb to free fall,
felt the blistering wind suck the moisture right from
her open eyes,
and instead of her life flashing before her eyes,
she really just kept wondering how long she had
until she hit the road below,
but behind this curtain of
wild,
choppy,
random thoughts,
she heard a steady chant pulsing through her mind,
two words,
two little words:
Have faith.
Hands caught her under her armpits, which then slid down into the crook of her savior’s elbows. There was a flutter sound like a parachute opening—Aurora’s wings billowing out. Aurora grunted in pain with the addition of the extra weight. Ash’s shoulders felt ready to rip free of their sockets and leave the rest of her armless body to plummet to its death, but her descent slowed significantly.
Still, Ash knew that Aurora’s wings couldn’t be accustomed to supporting the weight of two people. Sure enough, even as the leathery appendages flapped, the two girls continued to descend at a steady pace to the street. The cement loomed beneath them, close enough now that Ash could make out the spaces between the yellow stripes in the road, the headlights of the cars driving either way down the street. Ash was quickly sliding down the length of Aurora’s rain-slick arms. In a last-ditch attempt to hold on, Aurora grabbed Ash’s arms with her fingers—
But there was only the horrible sinking feeling of wet flesh failing to grasp wet flesh.
Ash dropped free of Aurora’s hold with fifteen feet left to go. Her body rotated enough for her to watch the wind whip Aurora back up into the skies as though she had a bungee cord strapped to her back.
Ash hit the grassy median hard enough to knock the sense completely out of her. Her body bounced right off the curb and into the middle of the road. Dazed, she struggled to make it onto her hands and knees.
A light—
No, two lights—
Twin lights—
Side by side—
Approaching her.
She peeled her head off the asphalt and had to cover her eyes. A tractor trailer was rattling toward her. She knew she should crawl out of the way, but after the hard fall her body wouldn’t cooperate. Directions blurred. The truck’s horn blared. Hope died.
A streak crossed the avenue like a comet. Strong hands slipped underneath her body. Lifted her off the road. Carried her out of the path of the truck.
Wes dove with her onto the median just in time. They landed in the grass, with his arms and chest cushioning her fall. She felt a heavy vortex swirl around them in the wake of the tractor trailer as the truck barreled past the nearby curb.
Ash couldn’t remember much of the next few minutes. One minute she was draped over Wes’s back, wondering how she could still be alive. The next they were in the Cadillac with Aurora behind the wheel and Ade asleep and strapped into the passenger seat. Wes was leaning over Ash, touching her face tenderly. “Ashline,” he whispered. It may have been the first time he said her name. It may have been the fiftieth.
“We did it?” she whispered. Trying to collect her wits was like wrangling an entire bag of marbles as they scattered across the kitchen floor.
Wes smiled and nodded to the unconscious Ade. “We’ll take him back to my penthouse and watch over him until he comes to.”
“No,” Ash blurted out.
Wes frowned. “I don’t think taking him to a hospital is a good idea.”
Ash leaned around Wes. “Go to the train station,” she instructed Aurora.
Aurora shrugged and did a sharp U-turn around the median.
“If Ade wakes up in your penthouse and finds out what’s going on,” Ash said, “he’s going to want to stick around and help.” She turned to the rain-tracked window so she wouldn’t have to see Wes scrutinizing her. “Sometimes being a good friend is offering to fight your friends’ battles with them. And sometimes being a good friend means refusing their help so they stay out of harm’s way.”
Wes lingered for another minute before he accepted that the conversation was over and slipped back into his seat.
Ash was lodged in a memory of Blackwood Academy, when Rolfe was still alive, when they were all still just mischievous kids with an addiction to breaking curfew.
By the time they got to the Amtrak station, Ade was already beginning to toss and turn as the sedative wore off. Together Wes and Ash managed to get Ade’s hulking body on board the Silver Service train and comfortably into a seat. Ash turned his head so that it was looking out the window and then tucked his one-way ticket halfway into the pocket of his shirt so the conductor could punch it on his way down the aisle. It was a six-hour train ride to Tampa. Hopefully Ade would eventually wake, disoriented but alive, and find the water bottles Ash had left next to him.
She gave Ade a last look as the conductor outside made final call and the train’s whistle blew. Ade’s eyes flickered open for just a brief moment before they drooped closed again, but Ash swore that he had seen her.
She met Wes back outside on the platform. Her phone buzzed, and she was grateful for the distraction so she wouldn’t have to watch Ade’s face through the window while the train chugged away, or wonder whether she was doing the right thing keeping him at a distance like this.
It was another message from Lesley. This one read: “Red Rose in hand. Midnight, tonight, at the Venetian Pool.”
“Lesley again?” Wes came up behind her shoulder, attempting to read the screen.
She flipped the phone closed. “Yes. She’s ready to give us Rose.”
“When?”
Her mouth started to form the word “midnight,” but it twisted and mutated until what came out instead was: “Noon. Tomorrow.”
When they returned home, Aurora’s stomach was growling something fierce—as was Ash’s—and the winged goddess demanded that they go out for a “slightly late” dinner, since an eleven p.m. supper wasn’t unheard of in nocturnal Miami.
“Can’t we do takeout instead?” Wes whined from the couch, where his body had already molded into the cushions. “After that jailbreak, I’m completely exhausted.” He rubbed the spot on the couch next to him, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Ash.
“Nice try, Wes,” Aurora said, “but the whole exhaustion excuse? Doesn’t really fly when you’re a night god. Ash?”
Ash, who had been resisting Wes’s attempts to coax her over to the couch, shook her head. “You two go out and have a nice dinner. I could use some alone time here to touch base with my parents.” It wasn’t a total fabrication, after all, even though she had no intention of calling them once the other two gods left. Her eyes darted to the clock on the kitchen wall. She had barely an hour to make it to the drop point where Lesley intended to deliver Rose.
Unfortunately, when she tore her eyes off the clock, she found Wes watching her carefully. “Got a date?” he asked. Any warmth that he had been showing toward Ash before melted off him and dripped between the seat cushions. Wes’s moods were every bit as transparent as Ash’s, and it sounded like he might be under the impression that she intended to go meet Colt.
Ash wondered what would make Wes angrier, believing that she was visiting her ex-boyfriend’s hotel room, or finding out that she was purposely walking alone into what could be an ambush. She managed a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I have a date with one cell phone, two angsty parents, and a shot of cold medicine to help me sleep.”
Aurora, who had been trembling uncontrollably with jitters since they’d gotten home, took a shot of something clear and then pointed the empty shot glass at Wes. “You don’t need drugs to knock you out when you live with Miami’s resident sandman.”
“Can you promise good dreams, too?” Ash asked. Her eyes unconsciously flitted to the clock again.
“Only the dreams about me.” Wes stood up. “Let’s go, Aurora. I’ll call for a table at Atlantic Liberty when we’re on our way. A table for three in case Magma Maggie here decides to join us later on.” He didn’t even look at Ash as he said it, and the tension as Wes and Aurora finally filed out the door was enough to sandpaper a bed of nails smooth.
Mood ring that she was, lying had never been Ash’s strong suit, especially when it involved lying to people she cared about.
Even when she was doing it to protect them.
Ash had originally been filled with a blind sense of excitement about meeting Rose for the first time, but by the time she pulled her Vespa into the deserted lot outside the Venetian Pool, her anticipation had diluted into fear and uncertainty. As she walked down the palm-lined path to the pool, questions buzzed around her like she’d just smashed a hornets’ nest. What would she do when Lesley handed Rose over? Would they have anything to say to each other? And where the hell could Ash even keep her? Short-term, she supposed they could stay with Wes. But beyond that, would Ash bring her back to Scarsdale?
Try explaining that to the Wildes. I know Rose doesn’t have a birth certificate or any proof that she actually exists, but believe it or not, she’s my long-lost sister, and I really hope she helps to fill the void your oldest daughter left when she ran away from home and then got imprisoned in hell.
She was so preoccupied with these daydreams of having a new sister that she almost didn’t notice the change in the air. The hot Miami night seemed to cool a few degrees with every step she took toward the gates. Even more concerning, where the air had been humid before, Ash felt her slick skin instantly dry, as though all the vapor had been sucked clean away.
Ash came to the black metal gates. One side swung open with an ominous creak under her touch.
Ash had never visited the Venetian Pool before, but it was apparent from the get-go that something wasn’t right. The rain had since died away, but the overcast clouds blotted out the stars and moon so that the only light came from a few candy-striped lampposts that rose out of the pool like skinny gravestones. Under their faint glow everything appeared far too still, all the way across the pool to the stone fortress in the back. Stranger even, the temperature continued to plummet with each step forward she took.
Embers and Echoes Page 18
