by Lisa M Basso
She huffed and darted into the street before I could grab her. What about Fallen flying around everywhere didn’t she understand? At least she stayed out of sight when she made it to the other side of the street. She studied the buildings on either side of this one, and then pointed to the one on the left. A corner hugging apartment building with a storefront on the ground floor. She looked up at the top before running back.
“What are you doing?” I growled, grabbing her arm and not letting it go.
“The top back of the corner building is missing. It’s taller, but we might be able to drop in and maybe come down from the roof.”
“Don’t you think they would have thought of that? They have the front door covered, odds are they have the roof entrance rigged too, you know, against the flying men!” My voice rose too loud.
Ray pinned me with a glare that she probably thought was menacing. She inched forward along the wall, dragging me with her. There was no way I was letting her out of my sight again.
And I’d never tell her this, but it was a damn good plan. The storefront was an abandoned cafe with blown out windows. We crunched over the glass, through the window framing, and toward the back door, which was left unlocked during business hours, according to the red and white sign above it. It led to a storage room with a computer. The door closed behind us, leaving the room pitch dark. I wrestled a flashlight out of my bag.
“No luck,” I said, shining the light around the room for another door.
“There has to be a way in.”
I shone the light on her. Her face was half gray with soot, strands of hair burst wildly from her ponytail, and her eyes were frantic. She had never looked more beautiful. But after leaving the motel room in Colorado, I made a promise to myself. We weren’t in Hell anymore. She wasn’t mine any longer.
But being back on Earth and having her in my arms again, wanting nothing but her—it was incredible, like nothing I’d ever felt before. Like that motel room had been our own little slice of heaven. Then the hunger had come. The gut-wrenching, all-encompassing, black-eyed hunger. It took all the control I had that night not to take her up on her offer, to be with her in a way I’d never been with any other woman, in a way that mattered. It had taken everything I had not to suck her soul from between those luscious lips.
Still, here and now, nothing would have made me happier than to slam her up against the wall and make her forget where we were and why.
The wall. I chuckled to myself.
“What about this is funny?” She hissed.
I unsheathed the large dagger from my back pocket and used the handle to tap lightly against the wall, listening until I heard a hollow spot. I drove the knife in, cutting through the sheetrock and insulation, following in between the supportive studs, pipes, and wiring. I cut a hole big enough for Ray. Then I kicked in the sheetrock on the other side. Without waiting for me to finish, Ray slid in and passed through.
“It’s the first-floor hallway,” she said from the other side, widening the hole from her side so I could fit. “We’re right next door. There has to be a way in from here.”
“How tall was the building next door?” I asked once I crawled through.
“Five stories, I think.”
She took off up the stairs. I followed close behind, shining the light up ahead for her since the entire electrical grid was cut off. On the sixth floor, she opened the fire door to the side stairs. A draft drifted down from whatever floor had been opened up above to create a new rather large skylight above us.
“Careful,” I warned. “Watch the windows.”
She crept low, gauging the skies, and then stood to look straight down the six-story drop. “There’s a piece of the building next door missing, a small chunk on the back corner.” She dropped down beneath the window, keeping her body pressed into the corner. “We might be able to reach it from the fifth floor.”
I nodded and held my hand out to her.
She shook her head. “A huge chunk of the fifth floor is missing from this building, too.”
I dropped my head back against the wall. “That’s it. We tried. We’re going too far off course. We do have an endgame here.” I sighed before I realized she might see it as weakness. “We need to get you to the angels so you can finish this. That’s how you’re gonna save those people. Not like this.”
She glowered at me, all the excitement draining from her face. “Cam is the new priority. He could be in there with them.”
“That’s a long shot and you know it.”
Fire tinged her cheeks. “Cam. Then the angels.”
“No. We’re burning daylight. Let’s get moving.”
She lifted a defiant brow. “Fine. We’ll get moving.” She stood up in front of the window, unlatched it, and heaved it all the way open. She had to be looking at a story and a half drop to jagged concrete. A fall that could kill her.
My eyes blazed black, hunter instinct taking over. I bolted toward her to tug her back. She pulled herself onto the sill. I lunged forward, misjudging the distance, and came up short. The corner of her shirt ripped as she let go. I stared at the piece of fabric in my hand, and then out the window.
Below, a living, breathing Rayna rolled to her feet toward the crumpled opening of the other building’s roof. The story and a half drop hadn’t slowed her much.
Damn it.
I checked the sky to make sure it was clear and jumped after her, cursing all the way.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rayna
I dropped into the building where the voices had come from, scurrying to a dark corner to wait for Kade. Or maybe to see if he would come.
I pushed the bitter thought aside. Not the time for that.
Kade dropped in, stalked forward, and pulled me to him, hints of black swirling in his eyes. His face may have healed, but streams of blood had dried to his skin and hid under layers of city dust. “Don’t ever do that again.”
I tried to push off him, but he maintained a stunningly tight grip on my arm. I jutted my chin up, proving how unafraid of him I was. And how pissed I, too, could be.
Hadn’t it only been days ago I was prepared to give him all of me, trusting him with not just my body, but my soul as well? I didn’t regret that, and I never would; I just wished I understood what had changed in him, and why the same easy shift didn’t loosen the fist around my heartstrings as well.
He was lucky he could let go of what we had so easily. I was still struggling with it every second.
And it was intensifying the anger I needed to keep in check so I didn’t accidentally turn him to ash. He was seriously throwing me off my game.
Finally he released me. “Let me go first, in case they have a gun.”
A gun. Great. I hadn’t thought of that; but yeah, if they had mines, they probably had guns too.
We found the stairway and descended it as quietly as we could, kicking rubble down with every other step. We checked the rooms one at a time. Whispers sounded from the other side of the hallway on the second floor. When Kade checked, it was the only door we’d found that was locked.
With no warning, Kade kicked the knob off the door and stomped in. I peered around him to find a group of six people huddled together in a windowless bathroom, three men and three women.
No one spoke. The fear in their eyes said everything.
I tiptoed around Kade. Keeping my voice to a low whisper, I said, “It’s okay, we’re here to help.” I dropped my pack in the center of them. “There’s food and water in there.”
I could feel Kade’s heated stare through the back of my skull.
One of the men, the one on the right dressed in sweatpants and a heavy coat, crawled forward slowly, as if he thought I might strike. He yanked the bag back as he returned to huddle in his previous place. With his arms wrapped around the bag, he sunk his teeth into a bar before removing the wrapper.
I waited until he had taken two more bites. “Please, share,” I said, a hint of warning in my voic
e.
He swallowed and, keeping his eyes on me, peeled the bag from his chest and shoved it to his left.
I waited until all six of them had either food or water in their hands, then I knelt, leaning into the dirty, tattered group. “A friend of ours, one of the ones that can fly, was taken down by two other men near here early this morning. Did any of you see anything like that?”
All of them shook their heads.
“See, nothing,” Kade said. “We have to leave.”
“He’s right,” I said to the group. “Gather your things.”
Kade locked a grip around my wrist and hauled me around the corner, back into the windowless hallway. “What are you doing?”
“We have to get them out of the city. They’ll die in here.” I jerked my wrist hard to be free of his grip. “And pull on me one more time and I’ll break your nose again.” Just like I had the last time we were in the city together. I thought he had betrayed me when I overheard him making plans to join Lucifer’s army with another Fallen.
He huffed out a sound that was so not a laugh, but a warning. “We have to get you to the angels. That’s the priority.”
I knew what Kade was saying was right, that getting to the angels would end this, but deep down I wasn’t ready to face the angels, to stand with Elyon, the man that had murdered my mother and faced no consequences for it, to ask him for his help, and hope he didn’t somehow turn on us too. “No, these people are the priority. Cam is the priority.” Cam we could trust; the other angels … they were the gamble.
“Stopping the Fallen is our only priority. When are you going to get this through your head? What has to happen in order for you to understand that you’re the key? You’re the only person on this planet capable of stopping all of this. Now quit stalling and do your goddamn job.”
I rocked back on my heels, feeling the weight of his words bury in my stomach.
“Everyone else is expendable,” he said.
I shook my head. That wasn’t true.
“Yes,” he said. “What’s your plan here? Uproot these people from probably the safest place in the city right now, take them outside so we can go look for Cam? Eight people on the street, six of them weak with hunger? All that will do is paint a huge target on all of us.”
My chest constricted. My throat closed over a lump.
“I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but we have one chance at this. That’s it. One.”
Sweat formed in my palms. Fear doubled my pulse. I couldn’t breathe.
Anger fired in Kade’s face as he waited for me to concede. After a long stretch of silence, his frown deepened and he sighed.
“Fine. A compromise. We call Cam at sundown and have him meet us here. He can contact the angels and tell them there are people here who need help.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Let’s just go with that. For now. Okay?”
As compromises went, it was a decent one. For now.
We returned to the small bathroom. Eight people cramped in close quarters, the six survivors’ eyes always shifting, as were Kade’s.
Hours passed in silence until the sun fully set. Kade left the room. When he returned, his face in the candlelight wasn’t what I expected.
“What? What is it?” I asked.
“He’s not picking up.”
Shock blew me almost completely out of my body. “Does that mean that he’s … ?”
“It just means he’s not answering. No one else answered in his place, so that’s good.”
“We have to go look for him. We might be more covered at night.”
“It’ll also be harder to see.”
I sliced him with a determined look.
“You aren’t leaving us, are you?” The older, dark-skinned lady asked. She was curled up in the bathtub with a forty-year-old woman that shared her high forehead and slim mouth. They had to be mother and daughter.
Her question broke my heart. Couldn’t Kade see how much they needed us? I couldn’t meet her eyes.
Kade answered for us. “We’re just going to look for our friend. We’ll be back.”
This news arrived to mixed reviews. Some of them didn’t like the fact that we were leaving, while others didn’t seem keen on us returning at all.
An idea began to form. “We should take them with us.” I said. “It’s perfect. We can find Cam, send him to the angels, and they can get these people to safety.”
“Angels?” asked the man on the far right.
Whoops.
“Sorry,” I whispered to Kade.
He ignored the sudden rustle of the survivors. “It’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, Ray. These people are safer here. We have to get you out of here.”
I scanned the fearful faces of the six strong survivors. “We can’t leave them.”
A woman maybe in her late twenties in camouflage pants and an Army t-shirt scooted up from between the tub and toilet. “We should take a vote,” she said.
“That’s fair,” I said to her, suddenly understanding where the mine at the front door had come from.
The vote was four to two for leaving with us. To Kade’s disappointment, he and I didn’t get a vote.
“Pack what you need, and only what you need,” Kade bit out “You.” He pointed to the Army woman. “Help me disengage the claymore. We can set it up at the next place. The rest of you be ready in five minutes.” He didn’t spare another glance at me, but he surveyed the survivors. “If any of you can’t keep up, I have no qualms about leaving you behind.”
***
Kade and I started down the street, watching the night sky for any close or brighter-than-usual stars that might hint to a Fallen flying nearby. With the lights of the city dark, the stars shone like they had in the country. It was a beautiful—and terrifying—sight.
When we reached the end of the block we waited for the survivors as they followed, one by one. We walked for hours that way, taking turns calling Cam’s phone. Each time he didn’t answer I sank back a little further from the others. I tried not to worry, but he could be anywhere and in any condition.
The second the group started to complain about fatigue and making more noise than they should have, Kade checked out a few buildings and found us a place for the night. Despite our slow pace, he didn’t bark another word about leaving anyone behind.
I swore sometimes Kade was like a big, unloved dog. All bark and no bite. Except he wasn’t unloved and he knew it. He knew because I had told him. He was the one that said nothing back.
An imaginary knife twisted in my side.
“The windows on the first floor are low enough that you won’t be seen as long as we don’t take the units on the street side. And absolutely no lights,” Kade said. He helped the military woman, Rosa, engage the mine thingie at the front entrance.
I chose a unit at the far back and waited for Kade to finish, knowing he’d have something to berate me about when he returned.
“This is dangerous,” he hissed after closing the door behind him. “Those people in there are unpredictable. You shouldn’t have uprooted them from what they know.”
“What makes you have so little faith in humanity?”
“Because I’ve seen what humans can do when they’re scared. I’ve seen how fast they can turn their backs or raise a weapon to those they love. What gives you so much faith in a group of people you didn’t know ten hours ago?”
“I have to believe in them, okay? I need those people to make me feel human again. All I can feel lately is anger and hate and this darkness Lucien put inside me. Those people haven’t turned on each other. They’ve been out there with no food and nowhere to go for weeks. They’ve taken care of each other, given each other love and support, when all you and I have done is fight.”
Kade pulled back. There were two, maybe three seconds of understanding before he dealt the blow.
“Here’s a tip for you. Never pin your hopes on someone else. You’ll only end up disappointed.”
I reeled
my anger in. I couldn’t take any more of him without wanting to reach for that dark place inside me. Instead, I pulled a blanket out of the closet, laid it on the floor, and curled up in a ball, waiting for sleep to come.
***
A set of hands jolted me awake, dragging me out of bed. I jumped back, fighting off the faceless hands and arms. Three people stood in the black room. “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to pick them out in the darkness.
They grabbed me again, all rough hands and strong grips. This time I let them pull me into the apartment one door down the hall where the six of them had set up camp together. Whatever this was, they needed me for it, and not Kade.
A candle flickered in the center of the room, against Kade’s orders, but they had covered the windows with black trash bags. The other three waited—the old woman, her daughter, and the Asian man in his fifties.
Rosa, the ex-Army soldier, pushed me down in a chair while the other two men watched.
“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. I had no idea what time it was, but my guess was it had to be an hour or two until sunrise.
“I thought you looked familiar when you busted in,” the man in the tattered suit said. “When your partner called you Ray, it all came together. You’re the one they’re looking for.”
I pushed out of the chair. Rosa jerked my shoulders back, shoving me back down. Heat enflamed my cheeks. An instant flash of anger oozed from my pores.
No. These were humans; the people I was trying to save.
“You don’t understand. We’re the good guys. I’m here to stop them.”
The three on the floor wouldn’t meet my eyes. They must have taken another vote, and this time it seemed to be a fifty-fifty split.
“If we turn you in, all this stops. Everything goes back to normal,” the overweight man in sweats that had been first to accept my offer of food said.
“You aren’t getting it. That’s not how this works. You turn me in and things only get worse. You think those men out there are going to leave Earth in peace? No, they’re going to suck everything good out of it and leave it an empty husk. And that’s just the beginning. They’ll turn it into Hell on Earth.”
