One Last Breath (Conjuring a Coroner Book 5)
Page 19
She stopped, panting, and searched for source of the screams.
It has to be a child.
The scream carried above the din of the city. It was close.
Kasey leapt off the fractured sidewalk and into the street. The scream grew louder. Weaving through the traffic, Kasey spotted a sedan with its rear door open. A woman was leaning into the open door, and she seemed to be struggling with something in the back seat.
Kasey ran over to the sedan to find a young mother wrestling with her daughter's car seat. Tears ran down the mother's face as her shaking hands failed to shift the jammed buckle. As the daughter wailed, her mother only grew more frantic. Kasey pulled the mother aside and reached into the car. Grabbing the lock, she fought the mechanism. It wouldn't budge.
Out of time, Kasey whispered, “Agored!” The mechanism popped free and Kasey lifted the distraught toddler from the car. Handing the child to her mother, she shouted, “Run! Get away from here now. The city is not safe. Head inland as quickly as you can.”
The woman nodded, swiping tears from the child’s cheeks.
“Thank you,” she stammered.
She turned and bolted down the street, her child clasped against her chest.
Kasey watched her for a moment but tore her eyes away. There was nothing more she could do for her now.
Turning, Kasey ran in the opposite direction. The city was tearing itself apart, but a greater threat still approached. Determined to meet it head on, Kasey made for the bay.
At the traffic light, she turned right. Overhead, the sky was darkening, but it wasn’t the setting sun. Boiling black clouds filled the air as they blended with the dense green smoke rising from the city. As they mixed, the clouds took on an emerald hue. Lightning played through the sky as thunder peeled overhead.
The storm was preparing to break, and it was unlike anything Kasey had ever seen. With her heart pounding in her ears at each loping stride, she ran for all she was worth. Her feet pounded against the sidewalk.
The earth shook again. Kasey staggered sideways, almost colliding with a trashcan. Wrapping herself around it, she steadied herself and waited for the tremors to subside.
She looked down the street. A yawning cleft had opened in the face of a towering residential building behind her. Although once a tower full of luxury apartments worth millions, none of that mattered now. The gaping wound in the building's face expanded in a rippling spiderweb of shattered steel and glass. The building swayed as it tore itself apart.
Kasey knew what came next. With the earth shaking underfoot, she darted through the crowd swarming away from its shuddering shadow. Terrified screams followed her up the street.
“The building, it's collapsing,” a voice shouted over the chaos.
They should run.
Kasey pushed herself onward. A thunderous crack split the air as the broken building imploded on itself. Risking a glance over her shoulder, Kasey witnessed the dust cloud billowing out from its base.
She had to place more distance between herself and the building. The dust cloud would suffocate her in seconds. She continued to run.
The cloud billowed outward, racing down the street in every direction from the collapsing building. Kasey was already blocks away, but still it surged up the street behind her.
She ran until her side ached. With a deep breath, she looked over her shoulder. The dust’s advance was slowing.
That was close. Too close for comfort.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the first building to come down and it wouldn't be the last. For all the destruction that had been visited upon the city, Kasey knew the worst was still to come.
She couldn't believe it had come to this. She'd fought so hard. With every fiber of her being she'd resisted them, but all about her the city told a different story. She had failed.
With more than a decade's warning in her visions, she'd still been powerless to stop the city she called home from being laid low and turned into a wasteland.
The storm broke overhead, and rain bore down on the city in heavy sheets. In moments, she was saturated. Her clothes clung to her as she ran onward.
She wept openly. The heavy tears rolled down her cheeks.
She had given it everything she knew how, and yet it had all come to nothing.
Worse than nothing.
She'd paid a terrible price for that failure. Her heart broke as she thought of John, bleeding out on the floor of the Underpass, her magic powerless to save him, as Akihiro loomed over him. The agony tore into her soul.
Now millions of others would know pain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. In the distance, a deafening rumble signaled the collapse of another New York City superstructure.
Others would soon follow. They would be either laid low by the tremendous upheaval beneath them, or their collapse from the structural damage caused by the fall of the surrounding buildings. The city was interconnected, and each successive collapse would further weaken the city's urban superstructure.
The earth shook again. This time the seismic tremors were growing closer together. The Shinigami plot was drawing to a close. There was no hope of halting the devastation.
Kasey simply hoped she could do something to save some lives. Something had to be done to mitigate the disaster that was about to occur. The cost of each human death was twofold. Every life was precious, and every death strengthened their foe.
She had no doubt that Akihiro’s lingering presence in the city was merely to steal the life force of its inhabitants as they expired. As the carnage unfolded around her, Kasey remembered her earlier visions. In them, the Shinigami’s bastion, 432 Park Avenue had stood unmoved and undamaged. Strengthened by whatever preparations Akihiro had laid, it had seemed immune from the seismic activity. As lives by the thousands had been lost, their lifeforce had run up the skyscraper, the building itself taking on a sickly tinge of green.
She'd seen the same transference of energy when John had died at the Shinigami's hand. The thought made her dry heave. The enormity of the Akihiro's callousness still overwhelmed her.
Raising her gaze, she saw her destination come into view. She was at the southernmost point of Manhattan. She ran to the city's edge and grasped the steel rail as she looked out over the bay.
The dark waters had a green tinge to them. Whether it was her imagination or an actual result of the subterranean chaos, she didn't know.
A deafening explosion rang out behind her as the earth reeled beneath her feet. Stumbling, Kasey fell to the ground. Pain shot up her arms as the abrasive surface of the sidewalk skinned both her palms. Kasey was thrown onto her back as the earth shook once more.
This is it. The Shinigami device had been detonated.
If Vida's prediction was accurate, it was already too late. The monolithic detonation far beneath Manhattan would have vaporized the Serpentinite deposits. The vast chasms created would undermine the city and reduce it to ruin.
The earth shook for what felt like an eternity. From flat on her back, Kasey couldn't tell how many buildings had been laid low. Fortunately, those nearest to her managed to stay upright, at least for the time being—likely a result of their distance from Park Avenue. Kasey had run as far as her legs could take her and had reached the southern point of the island in the nick of time.
It wasn’t a bid to escape her fate. She intended to stand against what would come next.
As the tremors ceased, she struggled to her feet. Her body roared its pained protest at the abuse it had suffered over the recent weeks.
Not much longer now. It will all be over soon.
As she teetered on her feet, she grabbed the steel rail for support. She looked over the rail into the murky depths of the bay. The water was already receding. The inky black waters rolled away from Manhattan like it was low tide. The water couldn't escape the city quick enough and as Kasey watched it recede, she knew Vida was right.
Damn him. He's always right.
The seconds ticked inexorabl
y by, each one coming and going as the city burned to ashes behind her. She couldn't worry about that now. The worst still lay ahead.
Then she saw it. At first, against the horizon, it was almost indiscernible among the angry storm clouds that blended seamlessly with the sea beneath. As it rolled toward Kasey, she could see it clearer and clearer with each passing moment. The wall of water was almost a hundred feet high, racing toward the city.
This was the implacable, crushing conclusion to the Shinigami plot.
The immense wall of water would be the end of New York City. It would sweep through the structurally weakened cityscape doing incalculable damage. Anyone on the street would be drowned or battered to death by the debris.
It was even larger than Kasey had imagined. As the wall of water rolled toward her, she realized the impossibility of her task.
Join Kasey as she fights for her life in Until My Dying Day.
Warning: One you start Until My Dying Day you may be unable to stop.
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“Oh yes, Durales told me about your little trick with the fire,” the slaver answered.
“Unfortunately for you, those chains were forged by dwarven folk with a talent for rune work. You aren’t the first magician we’ve bound, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Save your strength, you’ll need it for the slave pits. Don't worry, if Eleen blesses our voyage, we’ll be there in less than a month.”
Syrion could not contain himself. Despite the pain, he burst out laughing so hard that he staggered in his cell. The slavers looked on in slack-jawed amazement; in all their years they had seen newly captured prizes react to their lower station in many ways: fear, anger, uncontrollable weeping, they had even been spurned and spat upon. Never had they been laughed at.
The first mate Durales turned to the captain: “Perhaps I hit him too hard and he’s gone mad. It’s happened before.”
“It’s possible,” the Captain mused. “Boy, what is so funny? Care to share it with the rest of us?”
Syrion endeavored to compose himself but contented himself with getting out a few syllables between bursts of laughter. “You said Eleen . . . bless our voyage,”
Durales began nodding, content that his assessment was correct, and Syrion had indeed been rendered witless by the blow to his head.
“I did,” replied the captain. “Pray tell, why is that so funny?”
Syrion answered, his countenance slowly changing from mirth to menace: “It’s just the goddess whose name you invoked, you called her Eleen, the Patron Saint of Sailors, right? Mistress of the Wind, Soul of the Storm and the embodiment of Nature’s Wrath— that Eleen, right?”
“Aye, one and the same, boy. Still doesn’t explain the laughter.” The captain grunted.
Syrion met his captor's gaze, “Her name is rendered differently by the Valaar. They call her Elaina, and she is my mother. When she discovers I am missing and tracks me to this ship, your blessed voyage is going to come to a world-shattering end.”
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Other Books by S.C. Stokes
Conjuring a Coroner Series
Dying to Meet You
Life is for the Living
When Death Knocks
One Foot in the Grave
One Last Breath
Until My Dying Day
A Kingdom Divided Series: A Coronation of Kings
When the Gods War
A Kingdom in Chaos