“Twelve hours,” Wyatt whispered. “That’s not a lot of time.”
“It’s what we’ve got. Thackery knows I’ll try to find him before the time is up, and he also knows I won’t let Phin die if I can stop it.”
“If you trade yourself for Phin, you give Thackery exactly what he wants. He’ll have the components of a biological weapon capable of devastating this city. Hell, the world if he wants.”
“So what do you expect me to do, Wyatt? Tell Thackery to go fuck himself when he calls back? Let him murder Phin, probably after he tortures him for fun?”
His silence was my answer.
“Screw that, Truman. Phin’s my friend, and I’m supposed to be the good guy here. The good guy doesn’t sacrifice her friends.”
“She does when she’s protecting the greater good.”
I snorted. “Don’t feed me that clichéd bull—”
“Thackery’s a pragmatist, Evy. He won’t use his weapon until he’s got his antidote, and he doesn’t have that yet. We can keep him from getting it, which means keeping you away from him.” He inhaled, held it, exhaled. “Phineas cares about you. He’d understand.”
An angry bark—not a sob, not a growl—tore from my throat. “Why not? Everyone I care about eventually gets taken away. I guess it’s just Phin’s turn, right?”
Wyatt flinched back as if struck. I didn’t care. Time hadn’t run out yet. The clock had only just been set. I still had options, and until the clock ticked down to its final seconds, sacrificing Phin’s life wasn’t one of them.
“We need to find David and Kismet,” I said, done with the argument. Wyatt fumbled for his cell as I continued. “David is the only person not in this car or being held hostage who knew the plan.”
“You think David’s playing the other side?”
“It was either him or Kismet, if he gave her the details when I asked him not to, or anyone she—”
“This entire fiasco with Thackery’s been off the books. I can’t imagine she’s brought any other teams in.”
“But you don’t know.” The glare I shot in his general direction went unnoticed—he was concentrating on his phone. Waiting for the call to connect.
He frowned, cleared it, then tried another number. The frown deepened. “She’s not answering her cell.” He snapped his phone shut. It fell into his lap as he turned the key, revving the engine. “The landline at the cabin is disconnected. Keep trying her cell.”
I plucked the phone from between his legs and hit Redial every couple of minutes. It rang and rang, then jumped to voice mail. The phone wasn’t off, so she was either ignoring our call or out of cell range. The latter meant she was at the cabin, which had lost its phone connection.
The city passed in a silent blur. A dozen different scenarios played out in my head—what we might find at the cabin, who might have ratted us out and why, and what I’d do to that person when I got a confession out of him or her. It had been close to two hours since we left David at the cabin, but only one hour since we told him to call Kismet. One hour or two, it was enough time to set us up.
We turned onto the two-track driveway with the full force of the storm beating down on us. Rain swept through the trees, driving water, leaves, and small branches against the car like shrapnel. Thunder and lightning came almost simultaneously, brightening the twilight sky every few seconds. Even with the headlights and the wipers on high, navigation was slow.
I gave up on the phone and leaned forward, squinting through the maelstrom, ready to jump out of my skin. Each lightning crack snapped in my mind, urging me to use the Break. Slip in, shatter, and let it take me away. My mouth was dry, my breathing erratic.
“Do you always feel like this?” I asked. “Ready to fly apart at any moment?”
“It never gets easier,” he replied.
Another flash illuminated the cabin. No lights shone in the windows, casting it back into darkness in between bolts of lightning. We rounded a bend and thumped through a rut in the road. I leaned so far my nose was nearly pressed against the windshield, trying to make out a twisted shape ahead. Rain roared against the car. Lightning broke across the sky and showed me the shape. Four tires were all that identified the skeleton of someone’s vehicle.
“Wyatt—”
Glass exploded as my door caved in. I cracked my chin off the dashboard and flew sideways, hitting Wyatt and the steering wheel with equal force. The car spun, fishtailed, then slammed trunk-first into something hard. The rear windshield spiderwebbed. We stopped. The engine sputtered.
Rain poured through my broken window, twisted like a gaping mouth, jagged teeth of glass sticking up from the bottom. A shadow moved in the darkness. I shivered. My chin stung. Blood dripped down my neck.
“Evy?” Wyatt’s hand was on my shoulder, skating down my arm.
“I’m okay. We need to get out of here.”
“Right.”
The entire car shook as something large and heavy slammed down on the center of the hood, sending cracks through the windshield. The engine died with a wheezing gasp. Through the pouring rain, a hulking, horrifyingly familiar shape was lit up by the raging storm—a hound. A beast of Hell genetically created to house a demon—part human, part goblin, part vampire. They ran on rage and bloodlust, and were damned hard to kill.
Somewhere behind us, one of them howled.
“Oh my God,” Wyatt said.
I reached behind me without looking, unable to tear my gaze away from the open door. I expected snapping jaws to lunge for my throat at any moment. “Take my hand.”
He did. I let the power of the storm drag us into the Break, and it took all of me to hold on to Wyatt. Buffeted by power from two sources, I grasped at the thin strings of the Break, desperate not to lose us both to nothingness. I felt trees and leaves and rain and knew we couldn’t be out here when we materialized. We needed the shelter of the cabin.
I tugged us there, drumming up an image of the main room’s interior. The far corner, away from the kitchen and bedroom. No windows that I recalled, less likely for someone to be standing watch. Or standing at all. I saw it. I felt it. But I couldn’t get there.
The hand clasping Wyatt’s tingled—power surged through me from that single point of contact, as though someone had turned on a second tap into the Break. I didn’t ponder it, didn’t question the reason, just tugged on that extension cord and used the energy to focus on the cabin. Through the solid walls, out of the fury of the storm, I dragged us indoors. My body shrieked as we passed. I saw our destination in my mind and fled for it.
The Break didn’t want to let us go. I fought against the storm. Pushed, pulled, kicked, and screamed my way free. Pressure closed around me like a fist, trying to squeeze me into nothing. My body was on fire. Letting go seemed easier. Simpler and less painful. Except I wasn’t alone. Wyatt’s tap flooded me, tinged with aftershocks of arrogance—his emotional trigger.
I battled the agony and hit the hardwood floor in a wet, tangled heap, with Wyatt on top of me. Tremors raced up and down my body. I coughed and cried out when it sent daggers of pain through my head. Wyatt rolled away. I curled in tight, arms around my knees, eyes shut, desperate to balance myself again. Just focused on breathing steadily and staying whole when my entire body wanted to shatter.
Wyatt’s soothing voice was in my ear, his hand pressed between my shoulder blades. I let his touch center me and draw me away from the fury of the storm. A clap of thunder broke directly over the house. I jumped, then slowly sat up.
We were about where I’d expected, in the corner of a room that had changed drastically since we’d left. The couch was on its side, shoved lengthwise against the front door. The bedroom dresser created a similar barrier over one of the windows. Deep scores in the wood floor marked the path of the refrigerator from kitchen to living room, and it stood against the other window. A blanket-covered lump was by the couch. The bedroom mattress was laid out against the wall by the open bedroom door and held a second blanket-covered lump, and two blood-covered people bore down on us.
“Not that I’m ungrateful for the rescue attempt,” Kismet said, a deep bruise coloring her left temple and both eyes red, swollen, “but I’m guessing your car is in as great a shape as mine?” She looked weary, strained, ready to
