Maybe if he touched her—if the two halves of the luceria connected—she could find the strength to carry them out. It was worth a shot.
Cain was nearer the exit, and the flames surrounding her and the dying man were flickering out.
“Hold on,” she told him. “I’m going to get you outside.”
“No. Can’t go. The sun. I always wanted to see the sun.”
Right. She’d almost forgot he was one of the Synestryn, unable to stand sunlight.
“What can I do?” she asked, her desperation obvious even to her own ears.
“My son. His mother. I put them here.” He touched her head, giving her an image of where Ella and Ethan were stashed. “Save them.”
“I’ll try,” she said, and as she spoke, the vision of her face—the one coming from him—winked out.
He was dead.
The weight of the promise she’d made to him bowed her shoulders. She didn’t know how she was going to manage to save them, much less herself, but she wasn’t going to give up yet. Not when there was still time to fight for survival.
Rory lifted herself up out of the ring of fire, letting it die down. She stood on a disk of solidified air, hoping she didn’t fall off into the black sea of teeth and claws. As she moved, she saw herself from hundreds of eyes. A single ray of sunlight bounced off her pink hair.
Hope filled her up. If there was sunlight, there was a way out. All she had to do was find it. And yet not one of the demons dared look in that direction. She couldn’t use their eyes. She had to find a way to take control of her own.
A pulse of power spilled into her, an offering from Cain. She clasped on to it, struggling to use it to do her will. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not force even one of the demons to look toward the sunlight so she could see where to punch through.
Cain was safe inside a dome of protection, but the poison was acting fast, stealing his strength. Hers was fading with his, their connection vibrating under the strain. He couldn’t open his eyes. She couldn’t use him to see, either.
Rory turned her head in the right direction, but the flood of visions was too dense, blinding her. She focused Cain’s power into a wedge, hoping to shove all the other sights aside.
A flash of light filled her eyes. Her real eyes. The beam was shining directly on her face, giving her a tiny glimpse of the rising sun. Brilliant golds and oranges flowed through the tiny crack. Freedom was so close, she could feel its heat, but the opening was way too small for her and Cain to fit through.
I always wanted to see the sun.
That man or demon or whatever he was had given his life in an effort to save them. She wished now that he’d lived long enough for her to show him this beautiful sight.
He was gone, cursed to eternal darkness, but she could show all of those demons what she saw. Maybe she could scare them away.
A flare of hope lit inside of Cain. He was still with her, feeding her the power she needed to stay aloft.
Show them. Show me. Show me the sun.
Rory gathered Cain’s strength into herself, and concentrated on making one single demon see what she saw. At first she wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but then her target below began to scream a high, painful cry. It ran in stark terror, slamming so hard into the wall that it went still.
That was it. She’d done it. Now all she had to do was do that again about two hundred times.
She wasn’t sure she could do it, but she was sure she was going to try. The thrill of the challenge strengthened her. Cain felt it, too, offering her silent encouragement and complete trust. He truly thought she could do this. His faith in her did not waver in the slightest.
She’d witnessed it before when he’d leapt after the falling demon, trusting her to catch him. She hadn’t had time to marvel over it then, but she couldn’t help but do so now. He didn’t see her as weak or helpless. He didn’t see her as someone who needed to be saved. He saw her as an equal. A partner. To him, she was not broken, but whole and solid and beautiful. She was going to save them.
Something in her clicked, some fundamental understanding that she’d been overlooking dawned, and everything fell into an orderly array. Her eyes started to work properly. She was no longer ruled by the visions of those around her. She ruled them.
She began sorting through the things she saw, taking in knowledge from everything she witnessed through every creature present. Cain’s breathing was shallow. His heart was slowing. Ella was trapped in a room nearby, and dark, twisted demons began to tentatively cross a wet line drawn across the doorway. She wrapped herself around her baby, protecting him with her body as the monsters closed in.
Rory had no more time to learn how to do what she needed to do. She sucked in huge gulps of Cain’s power, hearing him groan as she forced him to give her what she needed. The air in front of her shimmered as she reshaped it, forcing it to focus the beam of sunlight into a tiny band. It hit her eyes, searingly bright and perfect for her needs.
Rory stared into the light until tears wet her cheeks. She forced the creatures below to see what she saw. She gave them no way to hide. No way to escape. Even when they shut their eyes, her vision was still there, forcing its way into their brains—the way her visions had always done to her.
The smell of smoke choked her. The agonized screams of dying demons filled the air. Her eyes burned as the blinding light drove into them. She welcomed the pain, refusing to blink until the last shrill, hissing scream faded into silence.
She floated down until her feet hit something solid. Globs of blotchy color faded from her sight, leaving her standing in blackness. She couldn’t see Cain or Ella. She couldn’t see anything. She was blind, and Cain was dying.
She felt Cain’s presence, felt the luceria tying them together, and followed that connection. She pushed her way through piles of dead demons, using her boots to shove them aside. Cain’s clothes were wet with blood. She could feel the burn of poison in his skin, but had no idea how to fix it.
Her hands shook with fatigue, and it was all she could do to stay upright. Weariness weighed her down, and she could no longer tell if what she was feeling was coming from him or her.
With an excruciating effort of will, she pulled on his power, channeling it over his skin to close his wounds. She had no idea if it worked. He was still slick with blood.
A second later, she fell, too weak to sit up. His hard body cushioned her fall, and beneath the stench of demons, smoke and blood, she smelled his skin. So warm, so familiar. Like home.
Rory had lost everyone she’d ever loved. Her mother, Nana. She’d lost her quiet little life and her home. She would not lose Cain, too. Not as long as there was even a single spark of power left in either of them.
She grabbed his big hand and held it to her throat so that his ring latched on to her necklace. There was only a faint trickle of power, but she took hold of it and pulled, demanding that it go on a seek-and-destroy mission inside his body. As the magic spilled out of her, she deflated, sagging over his body. She couldn’t move anymore. She could barely pull in her next breath, but she kept funneling power into him, ordering it to clean away the poison.
Cain jerked under her hand, letting out a pained gasp. A terrible choking sound rose between them, and a second later, she heard him vomit. Then he went still.
Only the steady beat of his pulse kept her from spiraling into complete panic.
Nothing mattered except keeping him alive. She no longer cared about anything beyond feeling his next breath fill his chest. She didn’t care if she lived. She didn’t care if she spent the rest of her life plagued by debilitating visions. She didn’t even want to find the person who made them go away anymore. That would only separate her from Cain, which would make her life a far bleaker place than temporary blindness ever could.
She needed him to pull through. She needed him in her life, at her side, safe and happy. She swore that if she lived, she’d give up her search for freedom from her visions and learn to accept them. Whatever price she had to pay in exchange for Cain’s life would be a bargain. Whatever the universe demanded of her, she would gladly give up. Even her life.
Please don’t let him die.
Rory saw nothing but blackness, but heard a faint quivering sound. Motion. Footsteps.
Someone was coming. She didn’t know if it was friend or foe, but it didn’t matter. She’d done all she could. There was no fight left in her. Whatever came would come, and if she died, at least she’d die holding the man she loved.
Chapter 33
Justice had no idea where she was going. All she knew was that she was late, thanks to an accident on I-35.
Impatience burned in her gut, making her hands fidget on the steering wheel. Her Porsche didn’t like these pockmarked, backcountry roads, but that was too bad. If it didn’t behave, she’d ditch it and find another ride. Maybe a nice pickup truck that wouldn’t complain so damn much.
A freight train’s light caught her attention, coming from the west. Sunrise shone off of its metal cars, which stretched out in the distance. If she didn’t beat the train, it would slow her down even more, and she didn’t have that kind of time.
She gunned the engine, enjoying the smooth shift in gears and the powerful hum sliding through her. Up ahead, the striped, wooden barricades were falling slowly, the lights and bells chiming to warn her of the impending danger.
A rush of excitement trilled through her, stretching her mouth with a grin. She was going to make it. Probably. Maybe.
The Porsche went airborne as it hit the slight ramp in the road leading to the tracks. She sailed through the railroad crossing, the hood of her car clipping the wooden barricade.
She landed hard enough to rattle her teeth. The back end of the Porsche swayed with the wind the train created.
Justice watched the train pass in her rearview mirror, wondering what it would have been like if she’d been just half a second slower. She’d woken up years ago, naked, alone and confused, with no memory of who she was. As she crouched beneath a looming billboard advertising a seedy law firm, the giant, glowing letters asking the question “Seeking justice?” mocked her. She’d been seeking a lot more than that since that night, and now, years later, she was still no closer to finding answers. She didn’t even know her own name.
If that freight train had hit her, would she have disappeared just as suddenly as she’d appeared, going back to wherever it was she’d come from?
Apparently, she wasn’t going to find out this time. Maybe tomorrow.
She slowed at the next intersection and took a left. She didn’t know why, but after more than a decade of bouncing around the country like a pinball, she’d stopped questioning why she went anywhere. She followed her gut, and ignored the world spinning past her. Nothing these people did could touch her. She, however, touched them often. Sometimes hard.
As she neared her target, she couldn’t help but feel like this time was different. Special. She could feel it radiating in her bones, filling her lungs with anticipation.
Whatever waited for her this time was going to be one for the diary. She only wished she knew how it would end. Would she need a kind word this time, or her gun?