Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(71)

In the living room, Jake was chasing Hannah around the couch with a toy thunder lizard; she was running, and laughing, and turned to hit him in the face with her pillow.

*

By the time Cat finished her interview, Raz was gone.

The explanation took longer than she expected; Jones asked the right questions. Justice supplied memories and words Cat lacked. The other Suits cleaned up: drove Tara, protesting, to a hospital, and the gargoyles to nearby buildings where they could safely drain the stone to heal themselves. The tower roof was crumbling, and most of the gargoyles too hurt to fly. The Suits carried them.

But Raz—when Jones broke off their interview, Raz had disappeared.

You’re hurt, the Suit whispered to her. Get to a hospital. You’ve done enough for the evening.

Where did he go?

Justice integrated and sifted the Suits’ perceptions. Memories not hers melted as she clutched for them.

She remembered climbing crumbling walls, the vertigo of seeing herself in conference with Jones, tending the wounded and the dead. And there, Raz rose and shambled down the dark stairs. As far as the Suits guarding the tower’s base could tell, he never came out.

I have to find him.

No, Justice said. You need a medic. Now.

Hells with this. Cat was off duty. She let the Suit go.

Pain hit her from nine directions at once. The sky dimmed, and the air chilled-warmed-chilled again, her skin unsure what to feel after so long inside the Suit.

Cat walked to the dark stairs because she could not run and lurched down winding steps shafted with moon-and streetlight through fresh cracks in the walls.

Raz lay in a nest of rubble at the tower’s base. His clothes were torn, and his skin intact. He was very still.

She’d seen him gutted at least twice on the tower, and hamstrung once, healing almost as fast as demons could hurt him.

She limped over concrete and broken rock to sit by his side. “Raz?”

No answer.

A millipede scuttled up his pant leg. She brushed it away. The wound in her side pulled beneath her hand. She needed a hospital. Dust rained down. “Got to get you out of here. Place isn’t safe. This isn’t how you bite it.”

His chest spasmed. “Bad—” Coughing. He raised his hand but could not quite reach his mouth to cover it. “Bad choice of words.”

“Scared me for a second there.”

Another shiver in his chest. They didn’t need to breathe—he didn’t need to breathe—but the voice box still worked the same. “Me, too.”

“We should—” The ruined tower spun a sundial’s revolution over her. “We should get out of here. Building’s breaking down. Can you walk?”

“Don’t think so.” His lips moved so slowly they must have weighed as much as continents, and fangs tipped between them. “Glad you found me.”

“Here, I can—” She reached for the chain around her neck, for Justice.

He grabbed her hand before it could close. “Not her,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“This isn’t the time.”

“It’s never the time.”

“I can’t carry you out alone.” His neck was cool as a marble column. “You took a claw meant for me.”

“It didn’t hurt.”

“Let me say thank you, dammit.” She felt his chest swell and contract against her side. “You’re breathing.”

“Old habits,” he said. “Hindbrain knows you’re hurt, tells you you need air. Instinct. Doesn’t help.”

“Story of my life,” Cat said. “Old instincts that don’t help.” She slid her arm around his shoulders and tried to pull him up. They made it halfway together, then slipped and hit the rock hard. Raz laughed.

“I’ll put on the damn Suit,” she said. If she pressed her back against this big rock, bunched her legs under her, and pushed up with them as she leaned— Before she could try, Raz caught her arm. She cursed. “Fuck did you do that for?”

Red unblinking eyes fixed hers. His way of moving reminded her of cellar insects, so still when seen, but look away for half a moment and they’re gone.

He was hungry and hurt and so was she.

Points showed between his lips.

She nodded, then said, “Do it,” to make her meaning clear.

He drew close to her. Her veins sang for the sharp pain and the spreading joy. She wanted to become a candle, a bonfire in the dark.

His tongue flicked her cheek, rough and dry, more like a cat’s than a man’s. It lapped blood from the cut on her forehead, the slenderest of tastes. He swallowed, and that swallow rippled through his body. She felt her self drawn into him—no desperate, fiery whirlpool but a tide receding to leave a slant of sparkling saturated sand.

He drew back. She thought she should say something but couldn’t think of words to match the moment. Too many were questions, and could wait. The roof creaked. She grabbed his shoulder. The firmness of her grip surprised her. “Let’s go,” she said.

They lifted each other to their feet and, leaning, limped from the tower.

*

By the time Ellen emerged from Peter’s room, Hannah had beaten Jake three times at checkers—their détente involved Jake not minding when Hannah won, and Hannah not minding when Jake marched his toy thunder lizard through the victorious checkers, devouring errant disks in a frenzy of dagger-toothed revenge. Matt hadn’t expected his youngest to get on with the Rafferty girl, but perhaps he wasn’t threatening—or maybe Hannah just liked lizards.