Adrian ran over to a looming clock tower that was surrounded by an iron fence. He easily scaled it, even with me still clutched to his chest. Once on the other side, he ignored my demand to be let down. He also ignored the door at the base of the tower and went around to the exterior stairs. He ran up those as though being chased, but unless he saw something I didn't, no one was coming after us.
About two stories up, we came to another door, and this time, Adrian broke through it with one kick. The softly lit interior showed what appeared to be the mechanical guts of the clock that crowned the top of the tower. Adrian finally let me down inside here, but I had barely formed all the questions in my mind when he found the single emergency light and killed it, plunging the room into near-total darkness.
"What's going on?" I whispered, blindly reaching out.
His hands covered mine moments later. "Shh."
I stayed quiet, letting him guide me around the objects I'd only gotten a second to glimpse. I don't know how he made his way without running into things, or how he found the staircase that took us at least another story higher in the tower. But he did, and a bracing, icy wind greeted us when we reached the top, which had large lookout points cut into the stone. At once, Adrian broke the small lights that lit up the exterior clock. If the castle hadn't been near enough to see the lights that still illuminated it, the night would've resembled a wall of pitch.
"We should be safe here for a while."
Adrian's voice was low, but it wasn't the whisper he'd used before. That, combined with his words, eased the knot that had formed in my stomach since my otherworldly tattoo had begun to glow and burn. Then he looked around, leading me to a corner where only a tiny window interrupted the stone.
"This spot should have the least amount of wind, and the stone walls will still retain a little heat from before."
He paused on the word before, and I took in a slow, choppy breath. Right, before, when this tower and everything around it was being warmed by a bright desert sun. Now, nothing in this place would ever see the sun again. Another gust of wind blew by, a plaintive noise echoing on it that might have been a coyote's howl, and I closed my eyes in silent grief.
No sunlight meant that every living thing here would die of starvation, if the cold didn't kill them first. I wanted to howl, too, at the horrible fate that had literally dropped onto this place and everything in it. Find something else to fight for, Costa had urged me just days ago, and as I looked around, I knew that I had. If I could stop even one more place from suffering the awful future that awaited this one, it would be well worth the fight, whatever it cost me.
In the meantime, though, I could do nothing. The realization was no less bitter for its roots in logic. The staff wasn't here, so all I could do was survive this realm in order to live to fight demons another day. I leaned back against the wall, a small, inadvertent sound leaving me when my back was warmed by the faint heat in the stones that would soon be gone.
"Why'd we come here?" I asked after a long moment. "Why didn't we go back to the car?"
Adrian slid down the wall until he was resting on his haunches next to me.
"When people are afraid, they tend to stay indoors," he replied, his tone matter-of-fact. "Add in the dark and the cold, and you almost never find them in exposed places outside. That's why the demons and minions who arrive here will first look for humans in houses when they do their initial round-up. Then they'll search all the cars, and eventually, they'll get around to other open-area places, like the top of this tower. That means we should have a day or two at least to sneak past them to get to the gateway."
Again, his almost casual way of describing this bothered me on many levels, but I had to focus on getting out of here.
"What if I'm wrong?" My voice was soft in case I wasn't, and supernatural ears might be close by. "What if there is no demon, and the only people in that castle are a bunch of terrified humans?"
Adrian took my right hand and slid the jacket farther up my arm. "Do you see anything?"
It was very dark, but with the residual glow from the nearby castle, I could make out enough to see that the slingshot had faded back to its normal brown color, not to mention that my arm no longer hurt. "No. Not anymore."
He let me go, and I thought I glimpsed a small, tight smile. "Exactly. The slingshot was glowing and now it's not. To me, that means the demon is no longer near enough to active it."