The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(110)

“Two blocks north of here,” one of the soldiers told them. “They’re holding against the loyalists near the old theater. Watch your backs.”

They walked away from the riot but in the opposite direction from where the soldiers had gestured—away from Lehrer, away from the screams and gunshots that felt like they followed Noam a half step behind. He didn’t like the way the soldiers looked at them, even behind this barricade. Their gazes lingered too long, fingers on triggers.

Without rioters, the street felt too empty, trash scattered across the sidewalk from an overturned garbage bin and tumbling along in the breeze. Noam hung on to Dara’s arm like that was going to make a difference. Broken glass crunched underfoot. Noam kicked an empty tear gas canister out of the way, and Dara jumped.

“Sorry,” Noam muttered.

“We can’t,” Dara said. He came to a sudden stop, yanking Noam to a halt with him.

At first Noam thought he was going to start up on the quarantined zone shit again, but then he followed Dara’s glassy stare. A platoon marched this way, blue-ribboned soldiers with machine guns trained on a line of loyalist prisoners. Noam opened his mouth to say, It’s fine—they don’t care about us, but then there was a break in the line, and he saw the bodies slumped against the ground. Blood splattered against brick wall.

A fresh group of five facing the firing squad.

“Okay,” Noam said, pushing Dara ahead of him toward the other side of the street. “Okay. Keep walking. Just keep walking.”

His head buzzed with white noise. He kept taking in shallow gulps of air that never seemed to reach his lungs, heat pouring into his veins.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

Noam tripped over a loose brick on the sidewalk, and Dara heaved him up by the elbow. Their eyes met, and as if by silent agreement, they broke into a run.

Someone shouted behind them, but Noam couldn’t make out the words. Run. Everything condensed to that. He barely felt the bullets bouncing off his electromagnetic shield.

“Just go!” Noam shouted at Dara when he turned around to look, shoving his hands against Dara’s back. “Go!”

They sprinted down the next alley, both tapping superstrength to make each stride count. Bullets were one thing, but Noam didn’t want to find out if that platoon had witchings. He sensed more soldiers up ahead, a tank.

“No—no, not this way,” he said, and they changed direction again, up a lengthy street. Without cars and cabs and carts full of fruit and flowers, the road reminded Noam of a long black scar carved into the city’s flesh.

They careened onto the parallel street, Noam on Dara’s heels, and yes, yes—that was traffic far ahead at the intersection. They could lose themselves in the city, catch a bus to the Southpoint suburbs. Then maybe, maybe they’d steal a car, drive until they hit the fence that barred out the quarantined zone. After that, Noam didn’t know, but they’d figure it out. They’d walk all the way to York if they had to.

“Freeze!”

Noam and Dara stumbled to a stop, the air cracking like thin ice under the weight of that shout. Noam spun around, hands up, not sure if he was ready to fight or surrender.

Soldiers, blue-ribboned ones, guns up. But no antiwitching armor.

No Lehrer either.

“We’re Level IV,” Noam said, because it worked last time. Only last time, his voice didn’t shake. Last time, his mouth didn’t feel like it was stuffed with gauze.

“Yeah,” the lieutenant said, his slow smile unsheathing like a knife. “I know.”

And Noam understood. He understood without looking, certainty shooting him like a lethal arrow—but he looked anyway, turning his back on the raised guns to face a worse threat.

For a split second, Noam reached for his magic, that silver-blue spark answering easily now. But what could he possibly do against 123 years of power? Lehrer would quench him like a struck match.

It was too late to run. Too late for anything now.

To his left, Dara was still—so very still.

Lehrer’s hand fell to Noam’s shoulder. In the bright summer sunlight, he looked like a hero straight ou legend, tall and fair haired with a streak of someone else’s blood on his cheek. Like the revolutionary of the twenty-first century, stepped from the pages of a history book.

“What did he tell you?” Lehrer asked. His colorless gaze lingered on Noam’s just a beat too long—then he lifted his hand.

Noam couldn’t move. His feet had grown roots into the concrete, into the center of the earth.

Lehrer’s fingertips grazed Noam’s temple. It wasn’t the touch Noam expected. It was light, delicate, like a caress.

Lehrer sighed. “I see.”

His touch dropped again, this time to curve round Noam’s neck, the edge of his thumb pressed against a knobby vertebra. Noam didn’t dare breathe.

I won’t be the reason you die, Dara told him, and Noam should have listened.

He should have listened.

“No,” Dara said. “Please—don’t . . .”

This was it. This was it, after all this—after all this time, this was how Noam died after all: the June heat seeping through Noam’s skin, Lehrer wound tight into his mind like so many golden threads, Brennan’s blood on his hands.

He looked at Dara—the last person he wanted to see. Dara’s face, twisted with anguish and slick with feversweat.