Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(78)

Foxglove started running toward the shed before Jupe broke down and did the same, his sense of urgency outweighing his eagerness to rack up coolness points with Leticia. Then the damn dog started barking, and Jupe couldn’t shut her up. No sense trying to hide things anymore; Cady and Dad would definitely know they were coming now.

“Jupe!” Leticia called out, just behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw her pointing up at the sky, then swung back around to follow the direction of her finger. He saw it, too: a black shape falling like a torpedo. It was too big to be a person, too dark to be a falling star. A gigantic boulder? Crap, maybe it was a meteor! Foxglove was going nuts now, heading straight for it.

Jupe saw the light inside the shed, and his mind registered Cady and his dad standing under the utility light that shone down from the roof. But as the falling thing rocketed past the tops of the trees, he realized what he was seeing, and he couldn’t stop himself from crying out.

The summoning circle was fully charged. Everything was ready. We’d wait until the Holidays called to confirm that they were safe inside the house with Jupe, and then all I had to do was call down my mother.

Lon had swapped the Lupara for a full shotgun. We’d both already transmutated. “Whatever you do, don’t use your moon power until she’s inside the binding,” he warned. “Don’t give her any opportunity to connect with you during the summoning, or she might end up outside the trap.”

“I know,” I said testily. We’d gone over this a million times. I’d call her into the circle, and the second she manifested, Lon would shoot her. If for some reason he missed, I would burn her to a crisp, just as I’d burned Dare. Brutal, but what else could I do? She was beyond redemption and a threat to everyone around me. A rabid dog who should have been put down a long time ago. I wanted to skip the shotgun and do the deed myself, but Lon said a child should never have to kill her own parent.

“You already have enough blood on your hands,” he said, reading my second thoughts. “You don’t kill. I kill for you.”

“How can I ask you to do that?”

“You don’t have to. I’m volunteering. Besides, you don’t even know how to use a gun, and now’s not the time to learn. You summon, I execute. This is just like that green Pareba demon that chased you down the cliff the first night you came to my house. Just call her. I’ll do the rest. I can’t say I’ll take pleasure in it, but I won’t be lying awake regretting it, either. So don’t worry about me.”

I flicked my tail and exhaled slowly. No use pretending that I wasn’t worried, because I was, and he knew it. My own empathic ability was gone when I awoke from the too few hours of sleep we had managed earlier in the day. I missed that connection to Lon, but at the same time, I already had enough crazy emotions jumping around inside me, so I supposed I didn’t need his, too.

And I definitely didn’t need another random knack to replace the empathy, so thank God I hadn’t noticed one.

“It all seems too easy,” I said, checking the summoning circle one last time. Even though she’d be coming from the Æthyr, she wasn’t a demon, so I seriously doubted I could trap her in a binding triangle. But I charged one inside the circle, just in case. “I don’t trust it.”

Lon didn’t, either, but he remained silent.

A distant sound caught my attention outside the workshop. Something approaching? The road leading up to Lon’s house was heavily wooded, so it could be any number of animals—foxes, rabbits, deer. Lon said he’d even seen a bobcat on his property a couple of years ago. But we were outside the house ward, and I was already in freak-out mode, so when the sound changed from something approaching to something racing, I rushed out of the shed to see it.

“What the hell is that?” Lon said, striding behind me.

Barking.

“Foxglove,” I said, recognizing the dog’s glow-in-the-dark purple collar bounding down the road toward the shed.

“What the hell is she—” But Lon never finished, because between the Labrador’s sharp warning barks, Jupe’s voice carried in the wind. He was shouting at Foxglove, then answering someone. A girl’s voice. As she cleared the trees and came into sight with Jupe, both of them running as if the devil himself was at their heels, I heard what the girl was shouting.

“Up!”

Up? I swiveled around and tilted my face to the sky. A black shape was falling, picking up speed, getting bigger and closer and—

“Lon!”

The shape knocked him sideways and hit the ground hard enough to shake the soles of my shoes. As Lon scrambled to right himself, I rushed to help him and cried out when I spotted what lay on the ground a few feet away.

“No, Jupe! Get back!” I shouted as his long legs picked up speed and carried him straight for what had fallen out of the sky. But he wasn’t listening, concern for his father giving way to horror as he skidded to a stop behind the fallen shapes.

Two figures, one female, one male, untangled their limbs as Foxglove barked furiously, hackles up. The female was riding on the back of the male. She unwrapped her arms from the choke hold she had around his neck and squatted next to him.

“Get up!” she shouted at him, and my heart shriveled inside my chest.

Priya whimpered and pushed himself up. Blood streamed down his face and chest. One of his wings was broken and wouldn’t retract. He cried out in pain when the woman jerked his arm to pull him in front of her like a shield.