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Angelthene

STATE OF WITHEREDGE

In the backof the prisoner transport van, the brimstone cuffs robbing him of every last drop of magic, Darien fought.

He threw all his weight against the doors, but they didn’t budge, didn’t dent. The chains confining him to the bench snapped taut with every lunge, his cuffs cutting into the skin of his wrists.

Bleeding—his wrists were raw and bleeding.

He was running out of time.Theywere running out of time. Travis and Max?—

He couldn’t breathe. Chest heaving, heart pounding so hard he was damn near passing out, he threw himself against the doors, bruising his body to the bone.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Through the gaps in the window guards, he watched as Angelthene’s urban sprawl faded with distance.

Sometime later, the van turned a corner. Kept driving and driving and just fuckingdriving. All signs of city life faded, not one person or vehicle to be seen for miles. Nothing but barren hills and chainlink security fences, loops of barbed wire at thetop. The green bubble of Angelthene’s forcefield was hardly visible from here.

Too far. He was too fucking far.

The van came to a brief halt at the controlled entry point to Blackwater Penitentiary. He could hardly hear the muffled voices of the guards over the pounding of his heart, the roaring of blood in his throbbing head. Boots crunched in the dirt as the guards performed their security checks. Eyes peered in at him. Flashlights shone.

A few more minutes went by, and then the van rolled forward.

The thick spells covering the maximum security prison washed across the vehicle like a crushing tide, so strong, they made him dizzy. Lightheaded.

He shook his head to clear it and threw all his weight against the doors—bang.Again—bang.Again—BANG.“Come on,” he panted. He kept trying, refusing to give up. He almost knocked himself out, his chains yanking him backward with each lunge.

BANG. CLANG.

BANG. CLANG.

“Come on—please.Please. Please. PLEASE!”

But it was no use. He was trapped, and because of him, because he hadn’t been more careful, Travis and Max were going to die.

As the van drove up to the entrance to Blackwater, he crashed to his knees, the chains of his cuffs clanging as he bowed his face to the floor?—

And screamed.

“Doyou think I was too hard on him?” Roman’s eyes flicked to Dean’s reflection in the rear-view.

The long drive had given Roman plenty of time to think. To calm down and realize that his reaction back at Heaven’s Gate was completely uncalled for. His uncle had done nothing but help him. He didn’t deserve to be yelled at like that.

They were back in Ker. They’d gone a different route and had made it across the state-line without incident—likely because the last place Donovan would expect to find his sons was in Ker. If anything, Yveswich was—oddly—the safest place for them right now.

“He’ll forgive you,” was all Shay said. She was getting nervous—Roman could tell. Going back to Yveswich…fuck, he didn’t like it, either.

“Hey,” he said softly. Slowly, she raised her eyes to his face. “It’s going to be okay.”

She merely nodded, her hands clenched and white-knuckled in her lap.

Donovan wasn’t the only threat scouring the states of Ker and Witheredge in search of them.