Page 43

43. She’s Gone

Rome

I slammed out of the room, careened down the hall, and stumbled outside. The fresh air helped, but not enough. I made it around the corner of the building before I emptied my stomach on the grass.

When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and turned around, but the world spun and I had to hang on the brick wall to keep myself from pitching backward into the mess I’d made.

“Are you okay?” Mira’s eyes swiveled to the doorway. “What’s in there?”

“Don’t go in,” I rasped. “It’s Maddy. What’s left of her, anyway.”

“Maddy?” Uh-oh. Travis had heard me. “What do you mean, what’s left of her?”

“Travis, I am so sorry. Maddy’s—” I had to swallow hard. “Maddy’s dead.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. She can’t be. She can’t be!”

He strode toward the building, Gigi following in his wake, and I hustled over to stop him.

“Move!” he growled. “I want to see her!”

“You don’t want to go in there.” I blocked the doorway. “Trust me.”

Kid, I wish I could pour bleach in my ear and wipe that room out of my memory. I wouldn’t even care if it took a few brain cells along with it. Anything to forget that . No way I’m letting you in there.

“I want to see her!”

“No, you don’t. Not like this.”

“Get out of my way!”

“I can’t do that.”

“Move!”

He slammed the heels of his hands into my chest, but I didn’t go on the defensive because I knew grief and rage drove him. In other circumstances, I’d say he had the right, but I couldn’t let him in that room. I wouldn’t. No one should see his girl like that.

Kerry came up behind me and saw what was going on. I moved aside a little to let him by, but he shook his head sharply and angled his eyes downward. With a single glance, I understood. His hands and shirt were stained with Maddy’s blood. Travis didn’t need to see that, either.

“She’s gone, Dragon.” Kerry let out a deep breath. “We’re too late. I’m sorry.”

“ NO! ” Travis fisted his hands in his hair. “No! She can’t be. She can’t be dead!”

“Take him away from here, Gigi.” Mira, at least, was thinking. “This is not where he needs to be right now. Take him to John.”

Gigi grabbed Travis’ shoulder and they disappeared in a wink.

I let out a long exhale.

Kerry and I left the doorway, and he went to find an outside faucet to clean up. At the same time, Mira slung off her backpack and took out a bottle of water.

“Here.” She held it out to me.

Grateful, I took it, swished out my mouth, and spat. My throat was raw from the bile. I took a long drink, which helped me settle down.

“What do you need done?” She touched my elbow with the tips of her fingers.

“Can you seal up the room?” I straightened my spine. “I want to keep predators away and preserve the scene until we can get some wardens out here.”

“Lots of metal around, so that’s easy. Anything else I can do?”

“Just seal it up.”

With a curt nod, she walked away, but I couldn’t move. My brain kept going back into that gore-crusted room. It was too much to take in, the carnage overwhelming, but one detail stood out with crystal clarity. Kerry had spotted something under a bench, and I’d moved closer to see what it was. He hadn’t even flinched as he held up a mask of skin with a hank of blood-soaked hair hanging from it.

“Maddy,” he’d rumbled.

Then he’d carefully laid the scalp on the bench and returned to searching the room without a second look at it.

As a warrior, I admitted a small part of me wished I was that hardened. The rest of me, though, prayed I never would be.

#

Gigi and Kerry came back within a few minutes of each other, by which time I had myself under control. The edges of the sky were getting lighter; dawn wasn’t far off. Mira sealed the room tighter than a tomb, and we decided to look around in some of the other buildings. Before we separated into pairs, Kerry stopped Mira and held out his hand. Coiled up in his palm was a grace of refuge.

“Take it,” he told her. “Long as you wear it, it’ll protect you from anything Holy or Divine, like Rome said. So if you decide you wanna go to the Sanctuary, you’re set.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” She raised her eyebrows.

“No. I want you to stay with us, but you should have the choice. Look, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and my gut says this is the right thing to do.”

“All right. Thank you.”

She went to take it, but he jerked his hand back.

“You gotta promise to always keep it on unless you’re giving it back to me.”

“Okay.” She nodded.

“And don’t lose it or pass it on to anyone else. If you don’t want it or don’t need it anymore, give it back to me and me alone.”

“Okay.”

“It’s really important, Mira. It was entrusted to me. Now, I’m entrusting it to you.”

“I understand. And I promise. I won’t take it off or lose it or give it to anyone but you.”

“Your word is good enough for me.” He dropped the necklace in her hand and watched as she put it on.

I didn’t know why he was making such a big deal out of this. Sure, a grace was special, but it wasn’t rare or irreplaceable.

Maybe he doesn’t know that. He hasn’t spent more than a few months at the Sanctuary, and I doubt Diabolical markets deal in graces of any kind.

Then the girls went to the left and Kerry and I to the right. We found a garage-type building and realized this was where our friends had been kept. At least, there was bedding and cots strewn about and the bathroom sink was still damp.

And Kerry swore he could smell a trace of Gemma in the air. I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to argue with him when he was dropping power like a shower of sparks from a welding torch.

“Kerry!” Gigi came in with a scream and made us both jump. “Gemma lit the candle! The bird found her! She lit it!”

“Where?”

She pointed and he took off running.