Fine. I whipped off my hat and scratched my hand through my hair, then pulled it back on. Lonely, tell Clare I said fine. He went with me earlier, I’ll go with him on this one.
Lonely relayed that.
When he was done, I nodded upstairs. He went and I followed.
What happened with Willow? I thought I told you to keep her away from the Dark Mansion.
“Some people don’t take to crow magic, tarnished one. She was some people. I stunned her and left her here. She must’ve woke up not long after.”
I wanted to hit him, but I didn’t. Something about that sounded right—that Will would be resistant to crow magic. Something about her personality, her way of smiling at you so that you wanted to hang around and talk, the way she never even cussed. I bet Desty would’ve been resistant to crow magic, too. Guess we’d never know now.
Colt
I wasn’t going to make it. The light was leaving my skin and the pain was intensifying every second. Every step ripped muscles and ground my bones against each other like broken glass. Tiffani was sometimes there and sometimes in her head. She tried to stay with me, but she couldn’t.
My body shook. Sometimes I slipped. Once my knees hit the ground. I had to set Tiffani down while I tried to get back on my feet. It felt like the skin seared black and ripped away from my hands and knees when I pushed myself up, but when I looked, no part of me had changed.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t let me fail.”
I’d always felt an answering peace when I prayed on Earth, but here in Hell, I felt nothing. Bright jags of panic shot to my heart. I didn’t want to spend eternity here, cut off from God. Everything about it hurt so much. For a second, I wished I hadn’t come. No one was worth this.
Then I felt Tiffani’s elbow bump my thigh. Hole saws drilled into my leg where she had touched. She screamed and jerked away.
I couldn’t leave her here to suffer for eternity. That would’ve been like cutting off part of my soul and trying to be happy without it. Tiff was a part of me. I had to get her out of here.
But I wasn’t strong enough to do it. That heavenly glow was fading from my skin. Once it was gone, I wouldn’t be able to fight my way through the pain anymore. It would take me over and I would be just as helpless as Tiff or any of the other souls here.
When I closed my eyes, it felt as if the insides of the lids were soaked in hydrochloric acid.
“Please, God. I can’t do this alone,” I whispered. “Please help me.”
Tough
Throughout the night, humans from around Halo trickled into the tattoo parlor. Fighting had broken out between humans and NPs, and stories were coming in about protectors killing their humans or humans killing their protectors. Addison’s brother, Parker, had seen what was left of a vamp out in front of his house on Main Cross. Someone had staked it and left it to rot. He couldn’t be sure whether it was a girl or a guy because it was so old that its body looked like a mummy. That made me wonder whether it was Mitzi. She’d dropped a couple hints while we were together about her true age, but I didn’t think she would be slow enough to get staked by a human. She was too crafty for that kind of thing.
The people who made it to the tattoo parlor brought whatever they could with them for protection—pry bars, chains, splitting mauls, kitchen knives, and Jim had got his hands on a chainsaw somewhere along the way. Most of the newcomers stayed backed against the walls, eyeing the coyotes and crows like they might attack at any second. I bet most of them would’ve given their right nut for Colt to still be alive so they could just go buy a gun from him.
After a while Finn came back, and since most of us had gone to school with him, nobody but Harper objected to him staying. Things were getting cramped. The air conditioner couldn’t keep up with the body heat, which was fine by me and probably Finn, too, but the humans had started to sweat and the coyotes were panting. The noise from the collective heartbeats was deafening if I didn’t stay focused on shutting it out.
“Crow can’t stretch out his wings without slapping somebody,” Lonely said after the hundredth or so new arrival.
“We’re going to have to set up a secondary location for refugees,” Clare said. “If something were to happen to the tattoo parlor, everyone would be wiped out at once.”
“What about Rowdy’s?” Harper said. “Its max capacity is 269. We’ve surely got less than that in here.”
I pointed at Cris, Rowdy’s bouncer, standing over by Jim and a couple of girls from Scout’s class. Harper nodded and led the way.
“Hey, Cris,” she said.
“Hey, Harper. Crazy night, huh? So, you here to enlist, too?”
“Yeah. Who’d have thought? We’re actually looking for a place to expand to, somewhere bigger we can all fit in. What’s going on with the bar? Have you heard anything out of Rowdy?”
Cris shook his head. “Rowdy took off soon as he heard what was going on. Pretty sure he’s just going to hole up somewhere and collect his insurance money if the bar gets torn down in the fight. You know how he is—always got the insurance or the plan for any possibility.”
“You think he’d care if we used it?”
“Nah, surely not.
