“Deacon!”
“The bridge! Lily, the bridge!”
He was right. Across the stream—less than five feet away—the bridge had appeared, an orangish cylinder of mist and light, and I needed to be inside there. Needed to be whisked to safety, but it wasn’t happening because I was being sucked into the hell beast’s arms.
Deacon was at my side, Kiera at my feet, and I grabbed on to her lifeless body as Deacon took his knife and slashed my arm. “What the fuck?” I yowled, but he wasn’t listening. Instead, he was smearing his arm with blood, and then, as I watched, he took the jade box I’d retrieved from the stream and, using his bloody hand and arm, thrust it into the water and filled it up. Then he ran toward the warrior, drops of acid burning holes in the rock as it sloshed out over the sides of the container.
He hurled the acid toward the warrior’s face, and though I’d expected his flesh to melt away, in fact, all it did was make him howl, a thunderous roar that shook the very walls of the cavern.
But it was enough. Because it also shook off his hold on me, and before he could reach out with his mind and grab me once again, Deacon grabbed up Kiera, and he and I lunged forward, jumping over the stream, and thrusting ourselves through the mist and into the bridge that led back home.
The darkness consumed us once again, and I could see nothing. Could hear nothing. And then I felt the press of Deacon against me, his body hard against mine, his lips firm and demanding, and then his low whisper. “Remember your promise.”
And then my hand was closed not around Deacon’s hand, but around Kiera’s.
Deacon was gone, and it was just me and Kiera and a job well-done.
FIFTEEN
“Paralytic,” I said, as I put Kiera gently onto the floor in Zane’s office. “She’ll be okay.”
“How?” Zane asked, and since I wasn’t sure what, if anything, Kiera had seen, I had to answer truthfully.
“Deacon Camphire.” I met Clarence’s eyes. “I almost took him out,” I lied, intrigued by the way he winced when I said that. “But I lost the opportunity.”
As I’d expected, relief flashed on his face, so brief that I wouldn’t have seen it had I not been looking for it. But it was there, and I didn’t understand why he wanted Deacon alive.
I was, however, going to figure that out.
“We got away, though,” I said, because I didn’t want to linger and give Clarence the chance to realize how very interested I was in the subject. “There was another demon—huge—and he and Deacon got at it. And in the midst of all the scrapping, I got the relic.”
“And this other demon?”
“The dude we met before.” I smiled wryly. “I don’t think he likes me much. And he’s got power, Clarence. Just like we told you. Serious power. He shows up again, there’s no guarantee I can beat him.” And that was an assessment I really didn’t like to make.
What I also didn’t like was what I was going to say next. Except that a part of me did like it. Because I liked the hit. Liked the power. And I needed more power and more strength if I was going to win. “I need more,” I said, looking hard at Zane. “I need to train, and I need to train hard and fast and often. I want to be as strong as I can be. If I’m not, Tattoo Boy may end up getting it all in the end, and that’s not going to make anybody happy.”
Zane inclined his head. “Very well. We shall train, and we shall train hard.”
I nodded, trying not to look too excited by the possibility, by the knowledge that soon I would feel the kill inside me, and it would fill me up and make me strong.
I shivered, hating myself for those thoughts but realizing that they were coming more and more often. I was changing. I knew it. I could see it.
And I didn’t know how to stop it.
I ran my fingers through my hair. “At any rate, on the whole, a successful mission.”
“Where is it?” Clarence said, moving toward me, his hand outstretched.
I hesitated, knowing that in the end Johnson wanted the thing, but when I looked over at Rose, now curled up on the bench and watching me impassively, there was no sign from Lucas that I shouldn’t cooperate. I didn’t know what plan he had for getting the key back from Clarence and Penemue, but apparently it wasn’t thwarted by handing the necklace off to Clarence.
Not that I intended to let him follow through on whatever plan he was hatching. My priority might be getting Johnson out of Rose, but that didn’t mean I was keen on Penemue getting his hands on the Oris Clef. And since I was finding the key in pieces, I was beginning to think that the best thing to do was use the third piece to bargain for Rose, then somehow turn the tables on Lucas and Penemue and prevent them from getting the Oris Clef altogether.