Chapter 63 Survived

Chapter 63 Survived
The Honda Civic rattled violently as Julian took a corner too fast, tires screeching in protest. We were only ten blocks away from the tower, weaving through traffic that was oblivious to the impossible drama that had just played out above their heads.

In the back seat, I held Sylvia in a death grip. She was sobbing silently against my chest, her small body trembling like a tuning fork struck hard. She smelled of stale fear and the antiseptic soap of the panic room.

"It's okay, Lil-bit," I whispered into her matted hair, over and over, rock smoothing her back with my good hand. "We're out. You're safe."

She didn't seem to hear me. She just clung tighter, her fingers digging into the canvas of my borrowed jacket.

In the front seat, Vesper was making sounds that terrified me more than my dad with a gun ever could. They were wet, shallow gasps, hitched with pain that he was trying desperately to suppress. His head was lolled back against the headrest, eyes closed, his skin gray under the layer of grime and dried blood.

Estava was twisted in her seat, her gnarled hands hovering over his chest, glowing with a faint, diagnostic green light.

"Damn fool hybrid," she muttered, her voice tight with genuine worry. "He cushioned the impact for both of you. He took twenty stories of gravity on his spine."

"Is he... will he heal?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"His healing factor is running on fumes," Estava snapped. "He hasn't slept or eaten properly in three days, and he just re-broke half the ribs my father cracked, along with probably fracturing a vertebrae. If we don't get him somewhere safe to crash, his body will just shut down."

"Where are we going?" Julian shouted over the roar of the engine, eyeing the rearview mirror as if expecting Enzo to appear in a black helicopter. "The Slaughter Yards are compromised. Seratti knows we were in the city."

"We need to get out of the human sprawl," Estava said. "Head west. Route 9. Towards the Ironwood Preserve."

"That’s nowhere," Julian argued. "It's just thousands of acres of state forest."

"Exactly," Estava said. "It’s old land. Deep roots. The canopy is thick enough to block satellite imagery, and the earth magic there is primal, chaotic. It will muddy Hera's tracking better than the city noise."

We drove into the night, leaving the glittering skyline of Keystone City behind in the rearview mirror. The further we got from the city lights, the darker the world became. The suburban sprawl gave way to exurban darkness, and finally, to the towering black walls of ancient pine forest.

Julian turned off the main highway onto a dirt fire road that was barely wider than the car. Branches scraped against the doors like skeletal fingers. We drove for twenty minutes deep into the woods before the road ended at a small, abandoned ranger outpost—a squat log cabin with a collapsed porch and a rusted gate.

Julian cut the engine. The silence of the deep woods was absolute, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine and Vesper’s ragged breathing.

"Out," Estava commanded. "We carry him."

Getting Vesper out of the car was an agonizing ordeal. He was barely conscious, a dead weight of dense muscle and bone. Julian took his shoulders, Aleera took his feet. I tried to help support his middle with my good arm, ignoring the fire in my own shoulder.

Every movement drew a low groan from deep in his chest that made my own heart seize.

We managed to get him into the cabin. It was musty, smelling of mouse droppings and rotted wood, but it was dry. There was a large stone fireplace dominating one wall and a couple of sagging cot frames.

We laid him on the cleanest of the cots, spreading our few remaining blankets over him. He was shivering violently now, his body going into shock.

Estava immediately began barking orders. "Julian, wood. Build a fire, big as you can. Aleera, water. There's a pump out back, hope it still works. Sylvania, get that sister of yours settled, then get over here. I need your heat."

I led Sylvia to the corner near the fireplace. She hadn't let go of my hand since we left the car. She looked around the creepy cabin, her eyes wide and terrified, then looked at Vesper.

"Is he dying?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.

"No," I said fiercely, cupping her face. "He's tough. Tougher than anyone I know. He just needs to sleep."

"He... he jumped out a window, Sylvie. With us tied to him." She looked at me with a more speculative gaze. "You jumped too. You did something... with purple light."

I hesitated. How much could I tell her? How much could she handle after being locked in a box for days?

"The world has changed, Sylvia," I said softly. "Or maybe it was always like this, and we were just kept blind. There are monsters. Real ones. But we're learning how to fight them."

I kissed her forehead. "Stay here. Aleera will stay with you. I have to help Vesper."

She nodded jerkily and sat on a overturned crate, pulling her knees to her chest, watching everything with haunted eyes.

I went to the cot. Estava had cut away Vesper's ruined t-shirt. His torso was a horrifying landscape of black, purple, and yellow bruising.

Estava was forcing a thick, vile-smelling paste between his lips. "Swallow, boy. It'll stop the internal bleeding."

Vesper gagged but managed to swallow. His eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. They wandered around the ceiling before locking onto me.

"Did... did we get her?" he rasped, his voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah," I said, kneeling beside the cot, taking his freezing hand in mine. "She's right over there. She's safe."

A ghost of a smile touched his split lip. "Good. The jump... the bubble... you held it."

"I held it," I confirmed, feeling a sudden, crushing wave of exhaustion now that the immediate danger was passed. The magic I’d used had drained me more than I realized. "We flew."

"Warlord's woman," he mumbled, his eyes drifting closed again. "Always... the strongest thing... on the battlefield."

He passed out then, his breathing hitching into a deeper, though still pained, rhythm.

"He's stable for now," Estava said, sitting back on her heels, wiping sweat from her wrinkled forehead. "The paste will help knit the vertebrae. But he needs heat. His blood is trying to heal too many things at once, it's dropping his temperature."

"What do I do?"

"Strip down to your base layers," Estava commanded. "Get under the blankets with him. Skin to skin. You have that infernal hybrid energy brewing in your gut now—use it for something good. Share your warmth."

Under normal circumstances, I would have hesitated. But looking at Vesper—the man who had literally cushioned a twenty-story fall with his own body to save my sister—there was no room for modesty.

I awkwardly shimmied out of the oversized canvas jacket and my jeans, down to my tank top and underwear. I kept the sling on. I slid under the heavy wool blankets, pressing my body against his left side, the side that wasn't an exposed map of broken ribs.

He was freezing. It was like lying next to a marble statue.

I wrapped my good arm around his waist, pressing my face against his shoulder, right over the Warlord's brand. It was hotter than the rest of him.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, his shivering began to subside as he leeched the heat from my body.

The cabin quieted down. Julian got a roaring fire going, casting dancing orange shadows on the log walls. Aleera managed to get the rusted pump working and brought in a bucket of icy water. She sat with Lily, murmuring quietly, trying to coax her into drinking.

I lay in the dark, listening to the crackle of the fire and the wind howling through the endless pines outside. I felt the slow, deep thud of Vesper’s heart against my ear.

We were alive. We had Sylvia.

But as I drifted toward an uneasy sleep, Seratti’s words from the penthouse echoed in my mind, poisoning the victory.

You’re half-monster, just like your boyfriend here.

I closed my eyes tighter, squeezing Vesper’s ice-cold hand. Three days left until the Onyx Moon. Three days until the monster who made me came to claim her property.