Trailing, he took in Allie’s crumpled form.
Her handcuffed wrists had welts on them from the two days of driving, made worse by her fall down the hill. Her small hands folded together in a neat gesture of prayer. The ripped up uniform with its low-cut blouse and short skirt was now decorated with splotches of blood and caked in mud and dirt, as were her hair and feet. She had a bloody nose from hitting the pavement, fresh cuts and scratches from the fall and she looked pale, overly thin without her light. Looking at her, Revik realized she looked bad. Really bad.
He was struck again by how small she was physically.
She moaned as he thought it, and he felt his body react, so that he had separation pain to deal with on top of everything else.
“Help me,” she murmured. “Help...”
It was soft, but Revik heard it. He also saw the truck driver watching her moving lips. The man’s eyes widened, as he seemed to put two and two together.
“What the hell—”
“Police!” Revik said. He pulled a flip ID with badge from his pocket, miraged it into a local configuration from memory. “Stay in your vehicle! This woman is in my custody!”
Revik felt the worst of his tension dissipate as the man’s face calmed.
He had blundered, but he’d contained it. He felt other humans around him start to relax as well, as soon as they saw the badge and heard his words. She had gone from fleeing kidnap victim to suspect fleeing police custody. Even so, Revik knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He shoved the ID back in his pocket, gave another look around before he bent his knees, crouching down beside Allie. When he glanced up next, the truck driver looked almost blank.
Something about the expression there made Revik pause, however.
Then Revik saw the man’s eyes roll up in his head, flashing with a silver light.
Fuck. They were no longer alone.
Without waiting, Revik looked back at Allie, shoving his arms under her jointed limbs, lifting her ungracefully to his chest before he straightened abruptly to his feet. He saw the truck driver reach behind him as he completed the motion, glimpsed the wooden stock of a worn, pump-action shotgun.
Seeing that much, he turned without wasting another breath.
He didn’t let himself feel, to second guess, or even think.
He gripped her tighter and ran, flat-out for the car.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
8
FLIGHT
Revik sprinted down the sidewalk, holding me against his chest.
Unerringly rhythmic, his feet impacted the sidewalk as if he counted steps alongside his well-regulated breaths. He held me close, and that felt calculated too, as if he’d practiced with potato sacks approximating my weight. When he reached the gravel-strewn hillside, he barely paused before vaulting up the steep bank, sliding in its shale folds at each step but not stopping as he fought his way back up the steep slope.
I felt sick, dazed, unsure on which side I lived.
It becomes clearer as images around me flash in negative...then the Pyramid is everywhere, all around us. Its silver threads shine like bright wires in rose-lit clouds. Tarnished silver entangles the lights of people I can see around us on the sleepy Washington street.
Red eyes surround me, bodies made of wire...
Laughter brings my own gaze higher.
A face hovers below the Pyramid, and I recognize it as a ghostly version of the man from Golden Gate Park. His face morphs in Barrier wind, distorted by silver light. There is symmetry to those flickers of light, though, like film stuttering in a projector. The Pyramid’s shifting cells split and reconfigure, moving on gliding rails like a carnival fun house, and I feel sick from the motion. I feel both out of control and strangely suffocated under that crushing weight as it strangles my light, fighting to insert itself deeper into my mind.
I see you! Pretty bird! Do you know who carries you on such swift wings?
I feel my chest clench.
My mother calls me her bird. She has since I was a kid.
I feel Revik again, his arms around me, the steady beating in his chest. No one has ever felt so much like me. But the other presence feels me thinking that, too.
Terian’s laugh rises. I could tell you such stories about your new friend! Do you know what he used to like to do for fun?
Images start to coalesce, movies that start once I focus directly on them. They draw me in, until I want to see, until I cannot help but look. I feel Revik there, and I know a part of my fascination comes from him. He and Terian stand in a cell-like room with no windows or furniture. On the floor sprawls a young girl with blond hair and inhuman, gold eyes, a beautiful face and Revik is watching her, his own eyes hard, calculating.