Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“Graves, come on.”
“Then you go with him,” he snarled.
Kierse ground her teeth together at the words and the tone.
“You’re injured. You’re pissed. I get it, but we’re still fleeing from half of the monster leaders in the city, and none of us have any magic. So either we keep going down more stairs and get trapped, or we follow Quint here who can get us out.”
Graves didn’t look back at her, and for a moment, she thought he would keep heading down the endless flights of stairs. He coughed hard, spitting blood onto the ground. The vampires who originally ran this place would have had a field day.
“Fine,” he said, slowly turning. “We follow the vampire.”
“About time,” Lorcan grumbled.
Graves’s glare could have turned someone to stone. And Lorcan was utterly unfazed. She was irritated with them both, but still she hung back and offered Graves her support.
“Let’s just get home.”
He shrugged her off, refusing aid as he followed Quint down the dark tunnels.
Kierse stared after his disappearing back. Lorcan’s gaze was locked on her.
“Songbird?”
“I don’t want you in my head anymore.”
The bond went silent, and Lorcan barely masked a hurt expression.
She took a fortifying breath and kept walking, ignoring him. They needed to get home, and this would all work itself out.
Quint’s directions were meandering, and they did end up having to take one more flight of stairs down before they came upon a door that led into the subway tunnels.
“Third Floor access,” Quint said as they stepped through to the tunnel.
“Wonderful,” Kierse said.
Trains passed them at alarming speeds as they walked the line to an empty platform. She looked up in surprise to find that they were half a mile away from the Amberdash building in Midtown.
Quint jumped to the platform first, offering Kierse his hand. She swung up next to him, and then Lorcan joined them. Graves clenched his jaw as he raised his bloody hands to his enemies and let them haul him up. He dropped to a knee, spitting out more blood.
“Graves,” she said softly.
He held up a hand as he slowly dragged himself to his feet. “Does anyone have a working phone?”
None of them had been allowed technology. No phones allowed in Amberdash’s party.
“I thought you had one,” Kierse said.
Graves retrieved his phone from his pocket. It was shattered from the brass knuckles. “Broken. I had George follow a lead, and I can’t reach Edgar now.”
Then he dropped back down to his knee again, coughing up more blood.
“Why aren’t you healing? You have your magic back.”
“The runes,” Lorcan said. “They’re supposed to reduce healing times. They have to be old as fuck.”
“Where did he get all that shit?” Quint asked. “The amulet. The brass knuckles. The stone.”
They all looked around at each other. It was a good question. A treasure trove of impossibly rare objects all at Amberdash’s fingertips. And none of them had answers as to how he’d gotten them.
Lorcan paced across the subway platform. “We need to get out of here. I don’t trust Amberdash to not try and kidnap you to make you his attendant.”
Graves’s eyes lifted, cold and lethal. “What?”
Kierse glared at Lorcan. “I heard his attendants say that’s what he wanted with me when I was on the job.”
“That is never going to happen,” Graves snarled.
“Obviously,” Lorcan agreed. “So we need to move. Now.”
“I’d offer my motorcycle, but I don’t think that would help,” Quint said.
No one suggested they take the subway they currently stood in. The city was too close to erupting, and they were too easy of marks to survive a subway run.
“Let’s just get you into a cab,” Kierse said.
“Cab is going to take one look at him and keep driving,” Lorcan said.
“Then what do you suggest? Because right now no one else is offering real suggestions.”
“Maureen is waiting around the corner. It’s two blocks north,” he said as he stared her dead in the eyes. “I could take you home.”
Kierse wanted to deny him. He wasn’t doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He was doing this for her and to prove a point. She could feel it in the shift of Graves’s attention. But he was right about a cab. What other option did they have?
Graves laughed as he came back to his feet again, his hand held his side as if it kept his guts in. “The Druids are driving us home. Now that’s one for the books.”
“I didn’t say anything about you,” Lorcan snapped.
Quint muttered under his breath, “And I thought my life was fucked up.”
“You’ll drive us both or neither,” Kierse said. “Now lead the way.”
The walk out of the subway station was tense. The troll looked sideways at their quartet like they could possibly be their next meal, but apparently they looked too pissed off to do anything about it.