Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(72)
She nodded, her face relaxing a little as she realized I knew him.
“How long ago?” I said urgently, having to concentrate to keep from squeezing her arms.
“Like, two minutes. Did—”
John and Quinn ran in, John starting to panic in earnest. “John, I need you to stay calm and keep this quiet,” I said. “I can get her back, but we can’t—”
“You must be joking,” he interrupted. “We gotta call the police right now, time is everything—”
I met Quinn’s eyes. The vampire didn’t look confused or upset; he just gave me a calm, what-do-you-want-me-to-do look. “It was Kirby, and it just happened,” I said, ignoring John. “There’s no time. I’m going after him.”
He nodded. “I’ll press them and join you in a second.”
I winced, but he was right. If we let John make a big fuss and call the police, Itachi would throw his resources into containment rather than an investigation. “Tell him she’s spending the night at my house,” I said grimly. “He’ll be okay with that.”
John started to yell at me, and Dani burst into tears, but I couldn’t worry about any of that.
I was already running.
Holding the front of my dress, I raced down the stairs at neck-breaking speed, skidding down the last few steps so fast I had to catch myself on the wall. I raced out of the stairwell and burst outside, looking wildly to my left and right. At first I figured he must have used a car for his getaway, but would he have gone for the southeast lot or the southwest one? I took a few steps southwest and realized that traffic was jammed up around the building. The fickle autumn weather had decided on a breath of warmth, and people were everywhere. Between the party and all the regular Saturday night events on campus, a car wouldn’t have been a very dependable way to get anywhere. He would probably have fled on foot, at least at first.
But that didn’t tell me anything about where he would have gone, goddammit. I turned in a slow circle, peering around the campus, hoping for a flash of movement, for the sight of someone running. There were plenty of people around, but I didn’t see Kirby, or anything else suspicious. I grabbed at my hair, ready to scream. The frat house, I thought suddenly. Would he have gone there to get his car? No, it wasn’t too far, but he would have had to take busy Broadway to get there, which would make it too likely that he’d run into people who knew him.
The smart thing to do, I decided, would have been to park a block or so away from the UMC, someplace out of the immediate traffic but easily accessible by foot. And if he was planning to get on Highway 36 toward Denver . . .
Grabbing the bottom of my dress again, I turned and sprinted southeast toward Macky Auditorium, ignoring the renewed surge of pain from my feet. There was a huge lot on the other side of the auditorium, with easy access to the highway and not much visibility. That was where I’d park, if I were stealing a kid.
I tried to figure out how many seconds I’d lost while I was considering my options. Thirty? Sixty? I ran harder, trying to make it up. The heels were making it hard to move, but my only other option was to take them off, and that’s how I’d hurt my feet in the first place. So I pelted down the sidewalk as fast as I could, ignoring the joggers and strolling couples who stared and murmured as I raced by, my emerald skirt flying behind me like a banner. I put everything I had into forward movement, well aware that if my shoe caught the asphalt wrong I was done. I wondered why my shoes felt wet, then realized that my cuts had reopened.
I ran across Euclid Ave, weaving through traffic, disregarding the honks and curses. I hit the grass in front of Macky—
And recognized the wall of muscle twenty feet in front of me. Kirby was strolling along the green lawn abutting the music building, wearing something strapped to his back. I skidded to a stop, but it was too late—he’d heard the crazy woman pounding along the sidewalk in heels and, like everyone else on the lawn, he had turned to look at me.
There was a long, frozen moment when I registered that he was wearing a BabyBj?rn with my niece inside, her eyes wide and unfrightened, looking around the lawn with mild interest. She was okay.
And then she was turned away from me, as Kirby moved to run.
I chased him, but I was much too slow. “Stop him!” I screamed desperately to the students loitering on the lawn. “That’s not his kid!”
Several of them stood up, and two male professors in their forties began to halfheartedly chase after Kirby, who started running full-out. The gap between us began to widen, and I knew I was seconds away from losing Charlie. “No!” I howled, and without thinking I pulled on my mindset again, trying to target Kirby and pull the goddamned motherf*cking undead life out of him . . .
I’d forgotten about what Charlie could do.
Kirby ran out of sight, completely protected from me by my niece’s power. I kept going for another moment, screaming, knowing it was useless, and then the two professors in front of me dropped to the ground like stones in a pond.
Then the group of students on the lawn nearest them. Then a jogger. Then two dog-walkers.
I was watching them in horror when my foot caught a tree root. I went flying through the air, crashing down hard on my right shoulder. I screeched with pain as it dislocated. By the time I managed to struggle to my feet and look around, every single person on the wide Macky lawn had collapsed on the grass.