She gave the slightest of wiggles, her whole body getting into it for just a second.
“Ready?” I looked at Easter and she nodded.
“Let’s go.”
I took a step and Eligor grabbed my hand. “They’ll find you again. I . . . I didn’t bring them here. I swear it.”
I looked down at him, feeling him try to get into my head and quickly shut that down. I pulled my hand free. “I suggest you run, Eligor. Because Easter and I are about to go hunting.”
His face, which was already pale, went ghostly white. “You can’t kill the fallen.”
Easter laughed. “You were in her head all that time . . . how the hell do you for one second believe she won’t find a way? She freed me, and you think she won’t find a way to fuck up those who captured us?”
Eligor looked to her and then back to me. “They’ll kill me, but they’ll take my mind first. They’ll know everything about you.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “You have to kill me.”
I looked at Easter and she shrugged. “We could use him,” she said. “He has information.”
That had been my thought, but I didn’t quite trust myself when it came to Eligor. I believed his intentions were good and that made me trust him when I wasn’t sure I should.
“Why?” I asked again, knowing that I was using up precious time, but despite my penchant for killing first and asking questions later, sometimes I did it in the proper order.
“You have to kill me,” he whispered again. “They will find you through me and they will kill all your friends, your son, anyone they find to hide their shame.”
I stood next to him and really looked at him. “Why do you care so much, Eligor? When the others were taking us down, why did you not hurt me? You could have broken me, and we both know it.”
He started to shake, and a tear slid from one closed tight eye. “You are not the only one motivated to do what you do for the love a child you’d protect.”
A rush of air slid out of me. The fallen who was my grandmother had said as much, that the other fallen were wiping out their own children. “Is your kid alive?”
“No,” he whispered. “I . . . broke her mind myself and . . .” a sob rippled out of him and he covered his face with his hands.
I lifted Dinah and pressed her muzzle against his heart. “If I thought I could kill you on my own, I would. But we both know that isn’t possible. Is it?”
His eyes opened and I motioned for him to back up. He looked down at his feet and I squeezed Dinah’s trigger. She gave a surprised Ooh! as the bullet slammed into him and flipped him over the bodies of those who had died.
“I wasn’t actually expecting that,” she said. “I mean, I’m all for it. But you just—”
“He’s like Justin,” I said. “At least in a way. They’ll find him and make him respawn into another body, and another, and another. But he’s right. He can’t come with us.”
“So why shoot him?” Easter asked.
“Because they will hurt him no matter what, but maybe a little less if they think I tried to kill him so easily,” I said.
I hopped out of the car down to the tracks. “Watch that third rail.”
The lights of the subway car quickly faded as I led us back to the previous stop.
Down there in the dark, the sounds of the city were muffled. The smell of the homeless who lived here was heavy.
Easter and I moved quickly, jogging through the darkness, moving in quiet tandem.
The smell of burnt wood tickled at my nose.
I slowed and frowned, picking up the sharper intense scent of an abnormal that I normally wouldn’t have found except that I had smelled someone like him before.
Easter took a sniff. “You getting that too?”
“Here, it’s coming from here.” I held up a hand and found myself stopping beside a service door. I stepped up to it and touched the handle. The door swung open and I was through, following the smell of someone I knew all too well no matter how impossible it was. Because they were all dead. Weren’t they? Another strong whiff of abnormal with the blend of burning wood and I knew without a doubt who we were tracking.
Someone from my family.
One of my siblings was here in the subway.
22
Easter didn’t question my choice of direction. “You know who it is?”
“I am hoping I’m wrong.” I kept my voice low as did she. This was not the time to be shouting about our presence.
I made my way through the semi-darkness with only emergency lights flickering here and there, leading us forward in conjunction with the scent that shouldn’t have existed. That fact that the light and the smell were together made my skin crawl on my back.
My siblings were all dead. All of them. So who the fuck was I smelling? Maybe a bastard child of Romano’s? I supposed that was possible, but he kept close track of all his dalliances and any children produced from them. I couldn’t believe that any would have slipped his leash.
I followed the smell of my sibling—whoever they were—letting it lead me through tunnels that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to navigate. Luck came with being an ascendant. Luck and coincidence to help survive what would kill most others.
Which was why it was so easy for me to follow my feet and the freakishly familiar smell and not lose my mind over the ease of it.
The only sounds were that of water dripping and the click of Ruby’s claws on the concrete. Otherwise, we were quiet. Dinah included. The three of us knew that silence was a tool to be used liberally.
Impossible, that was what kept running through my head, and
