Ten
The next thing I knew, Donovan was gently scooping me out of the driver’s seat. My head pounded like a drum. “Oh, wow. That hurt a lot more than I expected it to.” And I’d gone to all the trouble of making sure my seatbelt was clipped in and everything. “Who knew that when you crashed into a brick wall it would hurt so much?”
“You are a fool,” Donovan growled softly in my ear. “A reckless fool.”
“You’re the one who charged into battle against an overpowered magic skeleton.”
“Now you are injured. This is unacceptable.”
“It’s just a little whiplash. And I hate to point this out, but you’re literally bleeding everywhere.”
“I told you to stay in the carriage.” He cradled me gently to his chest with one arm and cupped my face with the other, stroking my cheek gently.
I gave up trying to resist and nuzzled into his palm, relishing the contact. “I couldn’t do it. You needed help. This might dent your ego, Donovan, but I could tell that you weren’t going to win a fight against that guy. He was absolutely filthy with dark magic.” I shuddered in his arms. “Is he dead?”
“Purg never dies. He is so corrupted; he is practically a shade.” He carried me gently down the bus steps. “He is injured, though.” He nodded towards the pavement.
I looked. A ratty, shredded black cloak lay on the ground between the bus and the brick wall. “Well.” I shrugged. “He doesn’t look particularly healthy, that’s for sure.”
Donovan’s lips twitched. “The cloak was holding his spirit together—without it, his essence is scattered. Right now, he will be traveling through the shadows, pulling the remains of his consciousness together. Eventually, he will summon enough dark magic so that he can weave another body together. It will take him some time.”
Up ahead, Nate and Eryk were dispatching the last of the banwyn; most of them crawled up the walls to escape. I could see Bart and Cecil’s worried faces peering out the back window of the taxi. Both of them slumped in relief when they saw me.
A vicious scream cut through the new silence. “Let. Me. Out!”
Cress?
I wriggled in Donovan’s arms. “Put me down,” I urged. Running over to the taxi, I looked in and saw Cress, lying on her back, trying to kick the windshield out. I’d assumed she was stabbing banwyn somewhere where I couldn’t see her, but she was still in the taxi. “Cress!”
She rolled upright, face bright red with fury, and punched the window. “Let me out of this prison, Chosen, or I swear I will climb to the top of the heavens and burn the homes of all the gods to the ground!”
Her rage was so intense, I backed away from the window slowly. Oh. That’s why Cress didn’t join the battle. She was stuck in the front seat of the newly armored taxi, trying to punch out bulletproof windows. “Should I let her out?” I asked Donovan.
He sighed. “I can’t see any way around it. We must get to shelter soon so we can rest and heal our injuries.” Nate was already using his healing hands on Donovan’s more visible wounds.
“This is almost scarier than fighting Purg,” I muttered under my breath. I knocked on the window and pointed. “You have to hit the child-lock button, right there, Cress.”
Her head whipped around; she saw it and pressed it. The locks clicked. Letting out a bone-chilling scream of rage, Cress ripped the door open. I wasn’t willing to risk being in her line of fire, so I bolted around the taxi to check on Greg, the driver.
He was frozen, eyes wide, muttering nonsense under his breath.
“Can you do anything for him?” I asked Nate. “He’s been badly traumatized.”
“I know. I can see the invisible scars of battle on him.” Nate gently moved Greg out of the driver’s seat. Down the alley, Cress was ripping Purg’s discarded cloak into bits and stomping on the pieces. “I will try, Chosen. The wounds of war are easy to heal. The mental scars take lifetimes.”
“Please do your best.” But I saw the exhaustion in his eyes. Everyone was near breaking point.
Cecil took a puff of his cigarette. “I would offer to drive, Chosen. But I don’t think I have the energy to switch back to this body after we’re done.”
“It’s okay. I can do it.” I climbed into the driver's seat.
“Of course you can.” Donovan, moving very gingerly, climbed into the passenger seat next to me. “You can do anything. Including, if you are so inclined, running over Cress when you reverse down this alley.”
I checked the rear vision mirror—Cress was still kicking the remains of Purg’s cloak.
Chapter
Eleven
When we pulled up to the curb of the pub where I’d booked the accommodation, my heart sank when I heard the noise of the crowd inside. We were never going to get any sleep. Instead of fighting our way through the crowd in the bar, I found the entry for the hotel upstairs and walked through the unmarked door, heading towards a booth behind the staircase. A little bell sat on the counter; I rang it.
A wizened, bald old man appeared.
I smiled. “Good eve—”
“Hello there, lass. You must be the silver-tongued harlot who talked me into letting the drunk rooms go for the night.” He slapped three keys down on the counter and pointed. “Upstairs. No smoking. No shagging in the communal lounge; it’s a shared space. The bistro closes at nine, so it’s already closed, the pub closes at two, so feel free to grab a drink. Live band on tonight, don’t complain about the noise because we ain't turning it down for you.” He pointed at Cecil, cuddled up in Nate’s arms. “And the baby–”
“We’ll keep him quiet, don’t worry.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. Keep him ten feet away from the bar. And no matter how good Guinness is for growing bones, if I see you putting stout in his bottle, you’re out.”
Cecil burst into tears. “Wahh. Wahh. Waaanker.”
I picked up the keys. “Thank you.” Turning, I held them up. One room for me and Bart, we would just about squeeze into a full-sized bed. One room for Eryk, Nate and Cecil, and the last one for Cress and Donovan. “I’m sorry, team, but there are literally only three rooms available in this whole city, thanks to the games, with only one full-sized bed in each.”
Bart snatched a key out of my hand. “Dibs! I’ll share with Cecil.”
I shook my head, confused. “You want to share with Cecil?” Was there something I was missing? Maybe Bart desperately needed a cocktail.
