Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(49)

The explosions were getting closer, and the collapse that was happening deep inside the colony was creating a hot, front draft of wind that pushed against her body. The smell of gunpowder and chemicals, of electrical burn and earth, of linoleum on fire and wood as well, made her panic like an animal.

She couldn’t believe this was how she was going to die. Here, in the almost-out, on the very verge of freedom and safety.

Ahmare yelled again even though there was no one to hear her, the heat making her sweat under the windbreaker, her mind splitting so that it felt as though a calm part of her was watching her struggle.

It was that section of her brain that went to her parents. Had this been what it was like for them when they’d been murdered? Had they struggled against the lessers as the attack happened, fighting in an untrained way against a greater, better-equipped killer, falling down, succumbing to mortal wounds . . . as a version of themselves played witness, marveling that it was happening in this way.

That in this particular fashion, they were leaving the earth.

Did everyone think that at the end? Especially if it was unexpected, an attack, an accident?

“Help!” she screamed—

The flare of flame on the far side of the bars came out of nowhere. One second, it was all black on the other side, her beam having settled so it faced her boots. The next, there was a very distinct, totally controlled blue flame floating in front of her.

“Get back.”

The voice was female.

“Nexi?”

“No time. Get the fuck back.”

The Shadow set to work on the mesh, a blowtorch eating through where the steel had been soldered into place. And all the while, the now not-so-distant explosions were going off, one by one, a drumbeat of devastation.

Ahmare yanked against the bars even though that did nothing. “Why did you come?”

“I don’t know.”

“You killed the guards.”

“I did. But I couldn’t make myself go into that compound. My body refused—besides, that was your business in there, not mine.”

“Duran is still—”

“I can’t think about that right now.”

In the light from the sparks that kicked up where the torch was eating its way through steel, the Shadow’s concentration was complete, her eyes locked on the mesh, the planes and curves of her face strobed, her hundreds of braids falling forward. She was going fast as she could.

“You’re going to have to calm yourself,” the female said. “I’m only going to peel back a section, we don’t have time to do anything else. Close your eyes and get calm, I’ll let you know when. You’ve got one shot.”

Ahmare shut her lids tight and tried to get control of the adrenaline rushing through her veins. All she could hear was the rumbling. All she could feel was the hot breath on her back, the gust getting stronger. And now the ceiling was splintering and hitting her head and shoulders.

It reminded her of Duran crashing out of the ductwork to save her— Calm. She needed to be calm. Calm. Calm . . .

Oreo cookies did the trick.

It should have been the Scribe Virgin, but she tried that and got nowhere. It should have been Duran’s face, but that only made her want to weep. It was most certainly not the fact that he’d told her he loved her— Had he done that? Had he really said the words— Oreo cookies. The original ones. The old-fashioned original kind, fresh out of the blue cellophane wrapper, unrefrigerated, though some people liked them from the icebox, Oreo cookies. She pictured one in her hand and watched as her fingertips gripped and twisted, pulling off the top, leaving her with one side that had all the frosting and one side that had just the shadow of the vanilla center.

You always ate the frosting first.

Then the two hard cracker-cookies, the one that was fresh and dry and the other that you’d had to scrape with your front teeth.

The taste was youth. And summer. And treats.

It was the contrast of the dark chocolate and the fluffy white inside— “Now!” Nexi yelled.

Just as the corridor was crushed by thousands of pounds of dirt and rock, the mountain reclaiming the hollow spaces that had been carved out from beneath its ascent, Ahmare dematerialized her physical form and traveled in a scatter of molecules, ushered by the explosive wind, out into the night.





31




AHMARE RE-FORMED A QUARTER of a mile away from the tunnel’s cabin, and from that distance, she watched the mountain sink into itself, a great cough of dust and debris expelled over the tree line as the components of dirt, rock, and tree found a lower level. The sound was thunderous, and then there was a silence so consuming that a mosquito dive-bombing her ear was loud as a dirt bike.

She thought of the moths, now gone.

Of the skeletons, now buried.

Of Duran . . . now dead.

As the pain hit, there was a part of her that railed against having met him at all, under the guise of Haven’t I been through enough—as if his fate had been predetermined and she could have avoided this agony now if only destiny had recognized that she’d already lost her parents, and maybe still her brother, and accordingly provided her with an alternative path to the pearl because she’d given at the office. So to speak.

But that didn’t last.

Especially as she heard his voice in her head: I don’t want it to be like I never existed.