The Sweetest Burn (Broken Destiny #2)(27)

"Ivy."

The amusement in Adrian's tone broke through my near-blasphemous thought. I turned away, feeling a blush burn my cheeks. I was going to die from embarrassment and then go straight to hell. That was my real destiny.

"Yes, I have warmer clothes," he went on, his tone turning husky. "I didn't occur to me to change into them until you weren't looking, and now, I'm glad I didn't."

Me, too! the shameless part of me replied, but the rest of me was still cringing over being caught gawking at him as if I'd never seen a naked man before. Okay, so I hadn't in real life, but the movies and the internet had to count for something.

"Are you dressed yet?" I said, keeping my back turned.

A rustling sound, then he said, "Enough."

I turned around, marveling that my hearing was back to normal. The manna must have healed more than my cuts. Adrian was now by the trunk of the car, and the taillights revealed that he had on pants and calf-high boots. As I watched, he pulled a sweater over his head, then grabbed a large knife and what looked like a bag of dirt from the trunk.

"What's with the dirt?" I asked.

He tucked the knife into his pants. "It's hallowed."

I hadn't felt anything from it, but with my hallowed sensor being out of shape, that wasn't surprising. Plus, it was only a bag. Not an entire plot of ground. "Grave dirt?" I guessed. 

He shot me a quick grin. "Not just any. It's dirt that's tossed onto caskets as relatives say their final goodbyes. All that emotion plus being blessed soil turns it into a weapon, so to demons, it's like little grains of dynamite."

I gave the bag an admiring look. "Do we have any more?"

He tossed it at me. "Nope, so if you need to use it, make it count. Now, let's find our way out of here so we don't have to use any of it."





  CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE CHALLENGER HAD a flat tire, but Adrian didn't use manna to fix it. Yes, manna worked on everything. Since we were low on our supply and didn't know if we'd need more for future injuries, we just drove at a slow pace, the flat wheel causing us to thump-thump-thump our way across the desert playa.

Adrian kept one hand on the wheel and the other outside the window, feeling the air as if it could provide us with directions. For him, it could. I wanted to look for Jasmine and Costa first, but Adrian said that finding the exit took precedence because without it, we were all stuck here.

He was right, but I was still worried over whether they'd made it out or not. If they had, we only had ourselves to hustle out of here, and we'd made it out of demon realms under worse circumstances. If Adrian was right and this place was currently empty, we weren't even in any real danger yet. Well, if you overlooked the fact that we were in a now frozen desert with no water, food or shelter aside from a windowless car, anyway.

Because I had nothing else to do at the moment, I kept texting Costa to see if he'd respond. It was possible he'd get them since Jasmine's cell had briefly worked after she'd been pulled into a realm. It was how I learned that she was in trouble all those months ago, when her frantic texts of help and trapped had put me on a collision course with my fate.

After well over an hour of driving, Adrian turned, and a paved road was revealed in our headlights. We must now be clear of Racetrack Playa. We'd left the bus parked near the Grandstands off this road because no one was supposed to drive onto the Playa. Adrian had ignored that when he took me on our ride, but Costa had followed the rules. Minutes later, I held my breath as we drove by the Grandstand area. So far, no familiar tour bus, but headlights from other vehicles lit up the parking lot, and when I saw large shapes moving around, I was horrified.

"There are people here!"

Adrian kept driving after casting a single, grim look at the Grandstand area. "Tourists. They would've gotten dragged along like we did when this area was sucked into the realm."

Horns began to sound behind us, and I thought I heard shouts. "We have to turn around," I stated. "Those people have no idea what just happened. They must be terrified!"

"And you think telling them they've been pulled into a demon realm will help?" he asked sardonically. "Even if they did believe you, that would only make them more hysterical. Only finding the exit will help them, Ivy. If the gateway's gravitational fields haven't settled yet, it might even be weak enough that they'll be able to cross through on their own without me needing to pull them through."

What he said made total sense, yet I was still bothered by the way he said it. I looked behind us, not able to see the cars' headlights anymore even though we hadn't driven that far. That was how complete the darkness was. It swallowed everything-and everyone-within it permanently.