“I was hoping I could be the one to find you, you know,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to be the one.”
Her smile. Her eyes. Everything about her said she loved him. Desired him. But Jez was going to kill him. He knew it. And he accepted it. It would be alright.
“Asher will love me for being the one.”
Six feet away.
And suddenly an arctic light pierced the veil, a pulse of blinding white shocking him back to himself. He reflexively shielded his eyes. In the next instant he glanced back to Jez, who was momentarily stunned by the flash. Their eyes met for a split second, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Three closed the gap and lashed out, striking her across the throat with the web of his hand.
Jez reeled backwards choking, but as Three advanced she snapped her head around, whipping her long braids towards him. Not realizing the threat he tried to strike through the attack, but felt the sudden impact and sting across his face as the razortips woven in her hair bit deeply into the flesh of his cheek and neck and brow. The shock blurred his vision, and he missed his target.
Three followed with a forearm, but Jez slipped the blow and swiped upward with her palm, aiming for his eyes. Three threw his head back, narrowly dodging the attack. He snatched her wrist with one hand and wrenched her elbow with the other, using the leverage to slam her face-first into the alley wall. Before she could rebound, he drove his knee into her lower back. And as she arched backwards from the strike, he grabbed her head in a lock and twisted nearly to the point of breaking.
It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been in her position, a fraction of an inch and a few pounds of torque from dead. Jez started to go slack, and Three forced her down on to her knees, keeping a strong stance behind her. Another day, in that critical moment, he would’ve snapped her neck without hesitation. But the sudden realization that if not for Dagon’s mercy he would be dead was enough to give him pause. Locked together as they were, his cheek pressed hard against the back of her head, Three could hear her choking breath as Jez’s throat continued to spasm from his blow. The whole left side of his face was wet and sticky with blood, one eye blinded with it.
“Please,” Jez rasped, barely forcing the word out through his chokehold. The power of her voice was gone. So, it seemed, her will to fight. Jez wasn’t like Fedor or Kostya. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a manipulator, a seductress. And somehow, now, caught in his arms that were so much stronger, she seemed suddenly fragile. Not altogether unlike Cass.
At the far end of the alley, towards the city, the white light continued to pulse. Three recognized the source now. Wren’s strobe from the Vault. He’d forgotten the boy even had it. Three glanced behind him with his good eye. Wren was there, standing in the courtyard. Watching. Three loosened his grip on Jez.
And suddenly—
“Asher, he’s here!” she called out in her damaged voice.
Three strengthened his hold.
“Wren,” he called. “Look away.”
He left her body behind the building and together with Wren fled towards the center of the city. They were careful to dodge other citizens until Three could get the bleeding stopped and the blood washed off his face. Crouched behind a one-story clothing shop, he used a maintenance pump to splash ice cold water across his latest wounds, and scrubbed them clean as best he could.
The cuts sprayed across his face were thin but deep, the kind of precision pain only a razor can deliver. The one across his eyebrow was the worst. He was fortunate not to have lost the eye completely. Wren stood quietly by, pale with fear, brave in his silence.
Three wiped his face and shook his hands dry as well as he could, and caught Wren’s eye. “You OK?”
Wren nodded slightly.
“Where’s Ran now?”
Wren’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Heading back towards the middle of the city.”
“Governor’s compound?”
Wren shrugged. “I guess. Yes, that seems right.”
Three wondered why. Why Asher wouldn’t send Ran after them immediately. Frightened? He probably didn’t know about Dagon yet, not for sure. But he’d lost Fedor and Jez within eight hours. Maybe in his panic, he was calling all security back home. But Three’s hope of that was quickly lost. The next moment, all across the city, alarms began to blare.
Wren reflexively stepped into Three’s body, buried his face against Three’s neck. Three threw his arm around him protectively.
“They’re coming!” Wren said in a terrified whisper. He gripped Three so tightly, it nearly choked him.
“I’m not gonna let ’em take you, Wren. Not now.”
It was a promise. He said it, and he meant it, even though he had no idea how he was going to keep it. His brow still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, but if they were alerting the whole city there was no reason to worry about that now. And there was no way to figure out a plan, no time to strategize. Three didn’t know how many guardsmen a city the size of Morningside had, but it was likely in the hundreds. They had to move.
“Come on, Wren,” Three said, picking the boy up.
Morningside’s security forces would most likely seal the gates, and work their way from outside in. That made the Governor’s compound literally the last place they’d look. And maybe he’d get a shot at Asher before all was said and done.
They raced together through the streets as citizens began flooding out of their homes, and it didn’t take long before Three realized something else was going on. Something terrible. The citizens of Morningside were in a panic, fleeing together in a mad rush, a churning human current that swept Three and Wren along with it, all going in the same direction. Towards the Governor’s compound. And then above the cries of panic, Three heard a shriek that pierced his heart.
The Weir were attacking.
Thirty-One
Three and Wren were among the first of the crowd to reach the Governor’s compound, and as they approached, Three slowed his pace. Already a thin line of citizens was pressed against the gate, pleading with the guards on the other side to let them in. The guards stood dispassionately, clad in black, grim-faced and motionless. Their only job to protect the Governor, not his subjects.
“Governor Underdown! Governor, we need you!” came the cries. “Governor, please!”
From the clamor of the crowd, Three picked out news that the eastern gate was already overrun, that the guards had been cut down before they could seal it. The Weir were inside.
Three’s mind reeled at the prospect. He had walked the open for decades and never once seen the Weir roaming in daylight. Images flashed from his walk through the streets the night before, images of the people he’d passed. So clean, so carefree. Soft. He could only imagine how quickly the Weir must be cutting through them now.
Wren was sobbing on his shoulder, sucking in choking breaths, gripping Three’s coat in his trembling fists. “Asher. He’ll know. He’ll know I’m here!”
“I know, Wren,” Three answered. “We’re counting on it.”
The crowd swelled as more citizens joined the ranks, crushing together around the compound, piling against the gates, clamoring for Underdown to appear. Their Governor. Their savior. Three kept clear of the crowd, held steady around the edges, alert for any sign of the Weir. Watching for Asher.
“Tell me if Ran shows up,” Three said. Wren didn’t respond, so Three dug the boy’s face out of his shoulder and looked in his eyes. “I need you to do that for me, OK?”