Chapter 44

“You don’t understand,” I said, desperate for her to let it go.

Dovie’s hand loosened on my arm and I saw something miserable flash through her eyes. “No… Loki… No. You don’t understand. Please just… don’t push her away? Don’t make her hate you.”

I thought of Basil then. How badly I wanted to see him dead because he was interested in Asire. I was a moron for not packing my bags and leaving then. I was a moron for not doing it when I saw Asire standing on the front porch that first night we arrived in the city.

Mostly, I was a moron for not gathering my Family and getting out of here now. While I still could.

But I was stuck fast. Dovie was right about one thing. I wanted to fix this mess that Asire was stuck in. I wanted to find Millie and give her back to her mother, who better still be breathing when I did. And then I wanted to pull Asire out of the city. I wanted to make her life better.

But I didn’t want to be the reason it was better.

“You should go inside,” I said numbly.

Dovie’s shoulders slumped and she nodded her head. “If you do something stupid, I’ll make sure you hear exactly what I think of it.”

Of that, I had little doubt.

Dovie went inside, leaving me out in the cold. I didn’t really notice the temperature, though. Everything was too intense. It occurred to me, I thought, if I had fought Eve for Asire to be in the Family seven years ago… I didn’t think I’d be in this position. She would have known I was off limits and wouldn’t have been interested in me. Asire would just be another member of my Family that I was living for.

I couldn’t figure out if I should be glad things turned out the way they did or not.

Dovie hadn’t been completely wrong. This was the most alive I’d felt since I had lived through Eve’s death. Nothing made you more aware of your life than agony.

Distantly, I heard the squeal of tires and a metallic screech. All my awareness went to the noise and my stomach plummeted. Following the instinct, I went into the house. Several people were frozen and staring toward the front door.

I was about to ask what happened when a door slammed upstairs. Asire appeared, rushing down the steps. “We’ve been found. It’s the Annihilists.”

“Fuck!” Reggie shouted.

“Everyone out!” Asire shouted down the stairs. “Now!”

A flood of legions started coming down the steps. Asire, neat as could be, took charge, barking orders. “Get the children, grab your cars and run. The gate is holding them up. Their ramming it with an SUV, so who knows how long that’ll last.”

Parents scrambled around the house, grabbing their children and necessary items. Asire didn’t stop talking the whole way through. “There’s a back entrance. The code is 5-8-4-7-0.”

“What if they’re back there too?” a woman asked, snatching up a screaming toddler. She didn’t bother with comforting, just shoved his arms into a jacket and told him to be quiet.

“Then they know more than the city does,” Asire said. “I had it put in three years ago. Kinda illegally.”

The woman relaxed.

“Where are we going?”

There was another screech of tires and a metallic thud.

“Anywhere,” Reggie said. “Split up. Don’t tell anyone where you are, understood? Need to know basis, in case one of us gets captured.”

“What about the Annihilists?” a man asked. One of the few calm people in the sea of chaos before us.

Reggie looked at Asire, who nodded. “We’ll take care of them. Henrik!”

He appeared at the top of the stairs, Lixa on one side and Ella on the other. They were both awake, but neither looked completely coherent. Ella’s eyes were full of tears and rage. Lixa was just rage.

“You, Lixa, Ella, Asire and the Heron Family are sticking with me. We’re going to handle the Annihilists ourselves. I can’t risk any more children.”

Henrik nodded.

“Go, go!” Asire said when a third screech, longer this time, erupted. While legions grabbed the children and mates and darted out the doors, I did a head count for my Family. Regory was looking out the window while Billy told us what was happening at the gates using her tracking ability. Wynn was shoving things into a bag with more expediency than care. Shade was hovering over Sunbeam in case the stress became too much for her. Dovie was helping the last of the Orphans get out of the house. Everyone was here.

Tires burned rubber outside as car doors were shutting. Headlights washed over the windows as people bolted from the safe house they were forced to leave behind.

“What are we doing?” Sunbeam asked. “What’s the plan?”

Asire spoke over her, “Everyone’s out of the house. We need to get going and block that road before they break the gate down.”

Reggie nodded, taking Lixa’s weight from Henrik so he could focus on Ella. Her eyes met mine. “Follow us. If you get lost, I might not be kind enough to turn around for you. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said. Part of my chafed at her being in charge since I was so used to giving orders, but the rest of me recognized that she knew this city better than I did.

“In the cars,” I ordered.

Billy hesitated, looking at her cousin, but Regory was there to put a stop to that. He was used to making difficult decisions and if Asire’s story told me anything, it was that Billy always came first for him. It was how the mate bond was supposed to work. Even if it killed you.

I waited until everyone else was out the door before following. Just before getting out myself, I glanced over my shoulder. Asire hailed Reggie and when the woman looked over, tossed her keys at her. Reggie caught them and then the Orphans were marching out the door.

I left the house as well, closing the door behind me. My Family was piling into the two cars we brought with us. I got behind the wheel of my SUV and started it up. The garage door to the house opened and Asire’s truck backed out. Lixa and Ella were both in the backseat, and Reggie was driving. Asire and Henrik weren’t in the car.

Reggie finished backing out and started driving. I pulled in behind her even though everything in me wanted to hunt down Asire and drag her ass to safety whether she liked it or not. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, I knew. But according to Billy, there were a dozen legions at the gate and even Asire had her limits.

As if on cue, there was another screech, louder this time. I glanced in my rearview and saw one thing that nearly made my heart stop and another that got it going again. The gate was barely hanging on. It was strong and reinforced with technology, but it could only take so much abuse. One more good hit, even with a car as battered as the SUV that was backing up, and it’d open. It was relief to see Henrik and Asire driving cars behind Shade. Asire was in a small red car and Henrik in an SUV not unlike mine.

The relief was enough to get my eyes focused back on the road ahead of me. I followed Asire’s truck around the house and to a small road that wasn’t even paved. I could see the second set of gates that Asire had mentioned, wide open because the Orphans had been in a hurry to escape.

Reggie floored Asire’s truck and I had to stomp on the accelerator to keep up. Halfway down the road, she pulled off the side (which barely counted, the car took up half the path) and I stopped behind her, wondering what she was doing. A glance in my rearview answered the question.

Henrik was pulling over as well, angling his SUV so that it was in the middle of the road. He was backing up so that the entire length of his car would be positioned, taking up what little space this path offered. Asire, I saw, was doing the same with the little red car, lining them up so that it was impossible not to hit one if you chose not to stop the car. And if you hit one, you hit the other.

The two of them parked the cars and then started running. They rushed past my car and to the truck in front of me. Asire jumped into the back and Henrik into the passenger’s seat. Reggie started driving again and I followed.

At the gates, Asire turned around and watched me and Shade drive through them. Then she looked down and must have hit something because the gates began to close behind my Family. She turned back around.

Vaguely, I heard the sound of screeching tires and then of metal crunching. Not like the screech of the gate, but like the sound of one car crashing into another car. I didn’t look in my rearview. I just kept driving behind those in front of me. The anxiety and tension in the car eased after five minutes.

“I don’t think they’re following,” Dovie said.

“They got stalled out in the road,” Billy said. “They haven’t moved since. I don’t know if they’re biding their time or stuck.”

Regory murmured something too low for even our legion ears to hear.

“How did they find the safe house?” Billy asked.

“Maybe they tracked the legions,” Dovie said. “They were all shoved into one house. We can’t track them, that doesn’t mean they can’t track us.”

Billy sighed. “Wynn said he could break the spell when we were talking earlier. Maybe, if we’re lucky, this will all be sewn up in a couple of days.” Though her words were hopeful, there was a note of bitterness in her voice. I knew what it was about immediately. She didn’t want to leave her cousin again.

“Everything will be okay,” Regory said. He didn’t sound as confident about that as he should have been either. Again, because they were supposed to leave Asire behind in all this chaos.

“I think I know where we’re going,” I said, to break up some of the tension in the car. I glanced in my rearview to check on the others and found then still driving behind us.

“Where?”

“A gallery.”

Sure enough, we eventually ended up at Reggie’s gallery. We parked in the back and followed the Orphans into the building. There were tarps all over the place in the entrance. Reggie strolled over to the wall and hit a button. Lights came on, making the construction site look even more dilapidated than it had a second ago.

“Luckily,” Reggie said. “They won’t start until next week so we don’t have to worry about the contractors. They were kind enough to cover the windows and damage so vandals wouldn’t get any ideas.” She sighed. “Let’s head up to my apartment and office, shall we.”

“Isn’t this a little obvious?” Wynn asked.

Reggie shrugged. “That’s the point. If they know where we are, they’re more likely to attack us immediately. Then we can keep the rest of my legions safe because I don’t even know where they are. Besides, we have her to keep us safe.” She nodded her head at Asire, who had a backpack that was on its last threads of life flung over her shoulder. It was brown and limp.

At Reggie’s words something in my chest tightened. Yep, Asire would protect what was hers. All these people, in this room, were hers. It wasn’t her fighting that caused the tightness in my chest. Or even the idea of her dying— though that did make me want to throw up everywhere —it was the knowledge that I was in that group of people.

She would die for me. I don’t think she’d even give it a second thought.

Asire would die for lots of people, but I still felt like I had earned something in being one of them.

The Orphans started moving toward an elevator. Reggie hit a button and nodded for my Family to load onto it. “We’ll follow you up. I had Asire track the insides of the building before we entered. She said it was empty.”

I looked at Asire and her eyes met mine. She was in a deadly serious mood, as she should be, but I still thought we were on the same page. Remembering that kiss up in her room.

I stepped into the elevator that had mirrors all around and my Family stepped in behind me. The doors closed and the last thing I saw was Asire’s face. Dovie’s words repeated in my head, over and over.

She was right about some things.

But so wrong about others.

When the elevator opened, we all stepped out and lined the walls, since we didn’t know where to go. Reggie’s scent was covering the hallway. There were a handful of strangers who had been up here as well, but they were only old footnotes. Other than Reggie, the only people who spent a lot of time in this space were Asire and Henrik.

The elevator dinged and the Orphans unloaded. “I’ll show you my apartment,” Reggie was saying. “Also known as our new war room.”

I found myself falling into step with Asire. Taking in her apple scented shampoo that mixed so well with her natural scent. I thought of everything that had happened today. On this very, very long day. Dealing with the vampires and werewolves. Those stories we told each other. That kiss. Dovie seeing what I wanted and didn’t want to want.

I had to put an end to this.