There was a moment of glare between us, and then I raised my voice. “Kat! KAT!” I kept watch on the space where the door had been when we had first come to the house, and I saw a blond head peek in from the porch, her face waxy pale, as though the life had been drained out of it. “Get Reed in the van,” I said. “We’re moving in five, just as soon as Clary and I can get our prisoner and Scott up there.” I looked down at Scott, who was still bleeding on the floor. “And I hope you saved some of your strength for your boyfriend.”
It was an operation, and I cursed Clary a dozen times over the next few minutes for cutting off our easy exit by destroying the stairs. The clouds of dust had cleared, and Clary gave me a boost up to the front of the house after I asked him only once. He was strangely silent, cowed into submission at last, no trace of guile or anger on his face; he reminded me of a shamed child, someone bullied into submission and broken in their will. I didn’t have time to feel bad about it, though, because Scott was still bleeding profusely. With Kat’s help I got him up and into the van as the sirens became audible in the far distance.
“Dammit,” I said under my breath. I looked back to the house to see a body ejected out of the basement, hitting the second of the four supporting pillars that held the roof off the porch before taking a slow arc and landing on the same Honda that the van had rammed into my opponent during the fight.
“Oh, God,” Kat said, wavering, as though she might fall at any moment. Against the backdrop of the gray skies and leaf-strewn wet street, she looked like a leaf herself, ready to wilt and fade. “Do you think anyone noticed that?”
“I think we’re pretty much out of time and luck if we want to get clear of this ridiculous turkey of a mission,” I said grimly. “And I hope like hell that the body that just flew out of there wasn’t Clary, because we have no time to subdue that other jackass again before the cops get here.”
“You don’t have your FBI ID?” Kat asked me in slight surprise.
“I don’t think an FBI ID is going to explain us out of this disaster.”
She looked for a moment like she was going to answer, then paled and promptly got sick on the road, hitting her knees.
“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked as I trotted over to the wrecked Honda. I cast a look at the house, where I saw Clary climbing out of the wreckage, then to the road, where Kat was on one knee still retching, and the Honda, where the Omega stooge was laying limp. In the distance, the sirens drew closer.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just...need to get to Scott.” She crawled into the back of the van.
I dragged my Omega enemy off the wreckage of the car and tossed him in the van next to Kat, who was already ministering to Scott as Clary trotted up. “Clary...” I said, favoring him with narrowed eyes.
“What?” he said, perturbed. “I was just trying to make sure we got out of here! If you had a better, faster suggestion to wrap this up other than tossing him like a lawn dart, I would have loved to hear it.”
There was a creaking noise from behind us and I turned my head. The porch roof began to cave in where Clary had taken out the support pillar with his throw, which prompted an additional collapse of some side rooms as the second floor came down on the first. A cloud of dust blew out in a billowing, bellowing mess that swept over us, obscuring my vision.
I held my breath, closed my eyes, and let myself stand there immovable as the white cloud swept over me. I counted a slow count to ten, and when it was done, I opened my eyes and saw Clary standing in front of me, still, his lip quivering, his face caked in white. I looked at my hands and surmised I was likely covered in the dust of the collapse. It was in my nose, my hair, and I felt it cake my face like the worst, driest facemask I could ever have imagined. I glanced briefly at the house; it was as near as it could be to gone, fallen in on itself, with little to show but wreckage, a crater of boards, beams and roofing tiles with almost no structure left on display. Clary stared back at me and I almost thought he was going to cry.