I expect him to haul it over his shoulder. Instead he tosses it in my direction.
It lands with a soft thump a few feet in front of me.
"I would keep that on you at all times."
Is he being wry? I dart forward and grab it, greedy as a scavenger, and quickly remove the orb, stuffing it deep into my jacket pocket.
The howling voices are so close-definitely heading our way.
"Come with me, Daryn."
Something large flies past me, whooshing by my ear.
Marcus's scythe turns end over end as it sails through the air. Enormous. As if a helicopter has shed its propeller.
Samrael lunges aside and it misses him by inches, biting into the bark of a tree behind him with a crack.
Samrael dashes to his horse and mounts smoothly. "A message? For Sebastian?"
He's finally understood I'm not going with him.
"Tell him I won't give up. Tell him I won't stop until I bring him home."
"He already knows," Samrael says, turning his gray, "but I'll tell him."
I watch him ride away, wondering if I've made a terrible mistake.
Marcus rides up moments after. He sees Samrael's retreating form. Then his furious eyes find me. "You okay?"
I nod, but I honestly don't know. I'm shaking all over.
"The orb, D?"
"I have it."
He nods. "We got hit hard. We better get back." He retrieves the scythe. I loop my lariat around the white mare and we ride back toward the cabin.
My body never lets go of the fear. Every passing shadow makes me tense, anticipating the Harrows coming down on us. But the woods are eerily still. I don't see any Harrows anymore, yet I don't feel like they've left us, either.
Gideon is waiting in front of the cabin as we ride up. Jode stands to one side of the porch, Maia to the other. Gideon takes a long look at Marcus and walks up to me. There's blood on his cheek, four stripes like dragged fingers. And a fierce pain in his eyes that makes my stomach drop. "We need to go."
"What happened?" I ask.
Gideon grabs Shadow's reins to keep her steady and looks up at me, some emotion that I can't place burning in his eyes. Marcus has jumped off Ruin and disappeared into the cabin with Jode.
"Gideon, who's hurt? What happened?"
"We have to get home, Daryn." His voice is in shreds and his eyes begin to shine with tears. Marcus comes out of the cabin carrying someone over his shoulder. Then Jode does.
And I understand.
Not here. Not yet.
Home first.
With half of our team either slumped or strapped to saddles, I open the portal and bring us back through to Nevada, where blood is scarlet red under the bright desert sun.
CHAPTER 16
GIDEON
Jode takes a pull from the whiskey bottle and grimaces. "Acid." He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, wincing. "Or is this petrol?" He passes it to me. "I can't tell."
I reach across and take the bottle. Robohand's working again, now that we're back out. I'm not sure the rest of me is, though.
I don't feel right.
"If it gets the job done, does it matter?" I say, slurring all over the place. I don't drink. At all, really. I have a hard time with anger when I drink. Harder time. And it's murder on my stomach. But tonight there was no choice. Right now, life is pain-the kind you do anything to try to stop.
We're lined up on top of our trailer-the three of us-our legs hanging over the side. Below, the camp's spotlights illuminate about twenty feet of desert; then it's nothing but darkness and stars.
"Tell me how close you were to splitting Samrael open again," I say to Marcus.
Five minutes ago we were all staring at the ground and trying to figure out if we'd break anything if we fell. Marcus got dizzy, which is why he's lying back. Jode and I are still sitting. Even though I'm dizzy, too. Except the dizziness is somewhere inside me. My soul may have a concussion.
"I've told you three times already," he says.
"I'm trying to focus on happy things."
"Close. A couple inches."
"And you threw the scythe how far?"
"Don't know. Forty feet."
"That's really good, Marcus. But maybe get practiced up. So you don't miss if you get another chance."
"I'll do that."
He's joking. We're joking. You don't throw a scythe. But I bet he actually will practice. He wants to end Samrael. Almost as much as I do.
We've hit another conversational dead end, so I drink.
It's terrible. Like petrol.
Why am I doing this?
Oh, yeah. Because I don't want to think.
"Suarez is leaving in the morning," Jode says. "Soraya told me a little while ago. He's going to Texas to see Low's family."