Another blast of Sebastian’s Stone magic erupted through the mausoleum, making me pitch forward onto Cesar, as though he were a lover I was about to kiss. I grimaced at the cold chill of death embracing me, a death that I was responsible for, but I forced myself to wiggle past Cesar, so that his body was the one that was exposed to the falling rocks, while I was partially covered by the tomb lid. Even then, the left side of my body was still out in the open, so I gritted my teeth, reached out, and grabbed Cesar, pulling him close and using the dead man as a shield.
It was one of the cruelest and most horrible things I’d ever done.
“Die, bitch!”
Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that I heard Sebastian scream those words even through the cacophony of the falling rock. I pressed myself more tightly against the inside of the tomb and closed my eyes, knowing what was coming next.
Then the rest of the mausoleum collapsed in on itself, burying me in the tomb in the cold, dead embrace of the innocent man I’d murdered.
24
I don’t know how long I lay in the tomb, my fingers digging into Cesar’s stiff, lifeless shoulders, the marble shrieking and wailing all around me, like banshees calling out for death—my death.
But I lay there, and I endured it. There was nothing else I could do. At some point, I opened my eyes, although all I could see was darkness. Clouds of dust from the broken stones wormed their way down into the tomb, trying to choke me, and I buried my nose and mouth in Cesar’s suit jacket to keep from inhaling the dust, even though the stench of death filled my nostrils instead, along with the faint scent of his roses.
But the cracks, crashes, and bangs eventually slowed, then stopped. I felt the marble give out one final, great, heavy shudder, before the foundation settled back into place, the jagged edges scraping together like the tectonic plates of the earth after a violent quake. The stone continued to wail, though, its anguished cries ringing in my ears.
Somehow I managed to shut the sound out of my mind and focus on my own body. The lid of the tomb had shielded me from the worst of the falling rocks, so I was in more or less one piece, although the same couldn’t be said for poor Cesar. His body had been buried in the rubble, the mountain of stone blocking my easy escape from the tomb.
Once again, I’d used him, hurt him, ruined him. Even in death, Cesar Vaughn couldn’t rest in peace. At least, not from me. The thought sickened me, the cold, hard knowledge that I’d killed an innocent man and had then been forced to desecrate his mausoleum, his tomb, and his body in such a horrible manner.
But it had been the only way for me to survive, and I still had a chance to live through this—and to warn Finn and Fletcher. They might not be innocent, not like Cesar had been, but they were my family all the same, and they were in danger because of me.
I’d just started to move when I felt a presence ripple through the shattered stone.
Sebastian.
I froze, my hands curling around Cesar’s half-buried shoulders again. The vibration surged through the mausoleum, and the dark mutters started once more. Sebastian must have been using his magic to listen to the marble, to try to figure out whether I was still alive. For a moment, a wild, panicked desperation rose up in me to get as far away from Cesar as fast as I could, to get out of his tomb, out of his mausoleum, and just run, run, run away from all the reminders of how wrong I’d been about everything.
But I couldn’t do that. Not if I wanted to live. Not if I wanted to save Finn and Fletcher. I had to save them. Otherwise, all of this would have been for nothing.
So I thought of the old man and all the lessons that he’d tried to teach me over the years about being calm, focused, patient. I closed my eyes and made my limbs go absolutely slack and still, and I let the cold chill from Cesar’s body sink even deeper into my own, even though I wanted nothing more than to get away from him. Then I listened to the stone, and I let all of its murmurs fill my mind, blotting out everything else—murmurs of death, despair, destruction. I listened to them, and I embraced them, until I almost felt as if I were one with the stone, just another broken piece of rock in agony over the horrors that had been visited upon it.
In a way, I supposed that’s exactly what I was.
For a long time, that was all I heard, and that was all I felt. But then that dark, evil presence rippled through the shattered marble a third time, and I felt Sebastian’s magic brush up against mine, like black vines of kudzu winding through everything, poisoning, strangling everything they touched. I held back a shudder and concentrated harder on the stone, willing it to see me as just another piece of itself—small, broken, and unremarkable.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but the black vines of Sebastian’s magic slowly slithered away, and I felt his presence withdraw from the stone.
For a long time, there was silence. Then—
“She’s dead,” Sebastian said, his voice muffled by the splintered stone that stood between him and me. “You can put your gun down now, Porter.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. There’s no sense of life inside the stone.”
“I don’t know,” the giant rumbled back. “She might have found a place to hide in there. From what I’ve seen so far, she’s a tough little bitch.”
“Well, she might have been a good assassin, but even if she were still alive, I just dropped a couple of tons of rock on top of her,” Sebastian drawled. “Trust me, Porter, there’s no way she’s crawling out from underneath all of that. But if it makes you feel better, we’ll drag her body out of there when we start clearing away the rubble in a few days.”
They debated some more, but in the end, they both seemed satisfied that I was as dead as Cesar.
“But what about the mausoleum?” Porter asked. “What are you going to tell people when they ask what happened to it?”
“I’ll tell them that I decided to tear it down and build a larger and much more fitting monument to my father,” Sebastian said. “I always hated that thing, anyway. Now, come on. Call your men. I want two teams, three men each, sent out, one to deal with the old man and the other to handle Gin’s brother, just like you planned.”
“Consider it done,” Porter said.
“Good,” Sebastian replied. “Then let’s go have a celebratory drink now that we’re almost finished with this whole mess.”
The two men started talking again, their voices becoming even more distant before fading away altogether. They must have headed back toward the mansion.
Sebastian thought that I was dead and that he’d finally won. Now he was going to send Porter’s men after Finn and Fletcher. Not if I could help it.
The bastard had already played me for a fool. He wasn’t taking away my family too—the people who truly cared about me.
So I drew in a breath and started to dig my way out of my tomb.
• • •
For once, I’d gotten lucky, and the rocks piled on top of Cesar were small chunks of what had been the ceiling, so I was able to shove them out of my way and wiggle out from underneath the lid of the tomb. But then my luck ran out, and I was stuck. I peered into the gloom, but the moonlight slipping in through the cracks in the stones made everything a dull shade of gray.
The mausoleum had collapsed in on itself, as Sebastian had intended, but the columns had crisscrossed one another, forming a sort of support that had kept the ceiling from completely flattening everything inside, including me. Now the columns resembled spikes lining the inside of a coffin—my coffin, if I didn’t find a way to get out of here.
Slowly, very, very slowly, I began to move forward.
The mausoleum hadn’t been all that large, maybe fifty feet wide, but it might as well have been a mile. I felt like a worm trying to work my way through a jigsaw puzzle, one with jagged edges that sliced into my body with every move I made. I would slither forward a few feet, only to come up against a piece of marble that was too large for me to crawl around or under. So I??
?d have to backtrack and try to find another way through the maze of stone.
The good thing about being trapped inside for so long was that it gave my body time to flush the last of the drugged champagne out of my system. I might be buried under a couple of tons of rock, but I finally felt like myself again—especially when it came to my rage.
It burned inside me, as black as Sebastian’s magic, keeping perfect time to the slow, steady beat of my heart. Revenge, revenge, revenge . . . that was the thing that kept me going, that kept me moving, that kept me crawling through the broken stone, even though all I wanted to do was slump over and stop. But I kept crawling, kept fighting, driven by my need for revenge against Sebastian for everything that he’d done to Cesar, Charlotte, and me and what he had in store for Finn and Fletcher.
Finally, I neared the edge of the mausoleum, only to find my path blocked by a large chunk of stone. It was about the size of a kitchen table, much too big and heavy for me to shove out of the way. It was the only thing standing between me and escape, and I was going to have to use my magic to blast it out of the way if I had any hope of warning Finn and Fletcher in time.
I paused again, listening, but I didn’t hear anything other than the still-wailing marble and the soft sounds of the night beyond the ring of stone. Sebastian was nowhere in the area. Even if he was back in the mansion, he might still be able to sense me using my magic, given how strong he was in his own power, but it was a risk that I had to take.
So I held my hand out in front of me, flattening it on the stone. Then I reached for my magic, just a trickle, just enough to let me connect with the marble boulder in front of me. I sent my magic deeper and deeper into the stone, looking for any cracks that I could pour my power into. Then, when I found the stone’s weak spots, I exploited them, just as Sebastian had exploited my weaknesses—weaknesses I hadn’t even realized that I’d had.
Arrogance. Impatience. Pride.
Thinking about Sebastian made a snarl rise in my throat, and I sent out another wave of magic. Piece by piece, crack by crack, bit by bit, I slowly shattered the stone in front of me, boring a tunnel straight through the center of it like a convict digging her way to freedom. Every few seconds, I stopped to listen, but Sebastian didn’t come to investigate.
He thought that I was dead and buried and no longer a threat to him. He should have made sure. Because his mistake was going to cost him his fucking life.
I sent out one final burst of magic, and the last layer of stone crumbled to dust in front of me. I choked on the ashy cloud of marble, but I put my hands on the far edge of the mausoleum and pulled myself through the opening I’d created. I slid forward, then tumbled off the rocks and down onto the dewy grass. I lay there for several minutes, panting and trying to get my breath back. Above my head, the midnight sky twinkled with a thousand stars, while the moon shimmered over the pond a few feet away, as if it was peering down at its own bright, silvery reflection.
When I felt like I could manage it, I rolled over, then slowly got on my hands and knees, before finally staggering up and onto my feet. I wavered back and forth, and the moonlight bounced off a smooth surface, catching my eye. I looked down and realized that it was my silverstone knife. Somehow I’d managed to hang on to the weapon through everything that had happened. My fingers curled around the hilt. Good. I was going to need it to go after the giants hunting Finn and Fletcher.
But the mausoleum hadn’t been as lucky as I’d been. The once-beautiful structure had been reduced to little more than a heap of rough, ragged stones, like a cairn for the dead. That’s certainly what Sebastian had intended it to be for me.
I dragged my gaze away from the mausoleum and looked toward the mansion itself. Golden light spilled out of the library windows on the third floor. The curtains had been drawn back, and a figure moved back and forth behind the glass: Sebastian.
Even from this distance, I still recognized his sinister shadow. He seemed to be holding court with someone, probably Porter, judging by the way he kept throwing his hands up into the air.
I tightened my grip on my knife and took a step forward, but the motion made pain shoot through my body. I might have escaped being crushed by the rocks, but I’d still taken a beating tonight—physically and emotionally—and I was a torn, tired, tattered mess. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises decorated my body from head to toe, my dress was ripped in at least two dozen places, and most of the moonstones had flaked off the jeweled straps and bodice. I’d even lost my shoes somewhere in the mausoleum, just like the Wicked Witch of the East.
Still, despite my injuries, I wanted nothing more than to march back up to the mansion, storm into the library, bury my knife in Sebastian’s heart, and watch him die. For a moment, I seriously considered it. After all, he thought that I was dead, so I’d have the element of surprise on my side.
Then my gaze flicked to the crumbled stone in front of me, and I forced myself to rein in my temper. No matter how much I wanted to kill Sebastian, I wasn’t going to give in to my arrogance, impatience, and pride. Not this time. Not when I was bruised and battered, and he wasn’t. Even more important, his giants were on their way to kill Finn and Fletcher. I needed to move, not stand out here in the dark and brood about my revenge.
I’d be back for Sebastian, though—soon enough.
25
I hiked through the trees on the back side of the estate until I reached the main road. Then I started walking. There was nothing else I could do. The Vaughn estate wasn’t out in the boonies, but it wasn’t exactly close to anything either—except Mab Monroe’s mansion.
I stopped and peered through the gates at the enormous compound that served as the Fire elemental’s home, but there was no way that anyone inside would help me, and I wasn’t going to be dumb enough to try to sneak onto the grounds and steal a vehicle. Mab had dozens of giant guards at her disposal, any one of whom would have been happy to kill a car thief. So I shuffled on past the mansion.
I kept walking down the road, moving as fast as I could. Still, I knew that it would take me hours to get to Finn’s apartment and even longer to make it to Fletcher’s, which would be far too late to save either one of them—
Headlights appeared behind me.
I was so surprised that I stopped dead in my tracks. It was long after midnight now, and I wondered who would be out so late, especially this close to Mab’s mansion. But the lights kept coming and coming, catching me in their hot glare.
I hesitated, then scurried up to the edge of the road and stuck my left thumb out.
Hitchhiking wasn’t something that I normally did, not even when I was living on the streets and wanted to get from one side of Ashland to the other. In this city, you never knew whose car you were getting into, and the nicest Northtown smile could hide the cruelest heart, something you wouldn’t know until the locks had clicked shut, trapping you with whatever evil was behind the wheel. But I was out of options.
I squinted against the oncoming glare and dropped my right hand down by my side, so that my knife would be out of sight against my body. If worse came to worse, I could always stab my way free. The mood I was in, I was more than willing to do that and pretend that I was killing Sebastian all the while.
The car rolled forward, and I fully expected the driver to ram his foot onto the gas and zoom right on past me, especially since I looked like some haint from a horror movie, but the car slowed, then stopped. The passenger-side window rolled down, and I warily approached the vehicle, still clutching my knife.
A guy who was a few years older than me sat in the driver’s seat. His black hair disappeared into the darkness, and the dim blue light from the display cast his face in shadows, although I could still see the crooked tilt of his nose, as though someone had smashed a fist into it once upon a time.
The guy leaned forward so he could get a better look at me through the open window. His eyes flicked over me, taking in my ruined, tattered dress, my dusty bird’s nest of hair, and the gray grime that streake
d my arms, chest, and face. The only sound was the steady hum of the engine.
“You look like you could use some help,” he finally said, popping the door locks. “Get in.”
I hesitated again, wondering if this was really a good idea. Nice guys, good guys, didn’t pick up girls who looked like me, especially not this late at night. He probably thought that I was some hooker who’d gotten the shit beat out of her by her pimp and that I would give him a freebie for the ride. But I didn’t have time to be choosy. Not if I wanted to save Finn and Fletcher. So I made sure that my knife was down by my leg out of sight, opened the door, and slid into the car.
“Where to?” the guy asked.
I eyed him, taking in the thick muscles in his arms and chest. He wasn’t a dwarf or a giant, but he obviously did regular, hard, physical labor. You didn’t get muscles like that working out in the gym. At best, he was much stronger than I was. At worst, he had magic to augment his physical abilities. I didn’t sense any elemental power radiating off him, though. Either way, I’d just have to take my chances.
“Just like that?” I asked. “You pick up some strange chick on a deserted road late at night, and you offer to drive her wherever she wants? What are you, some sort of Prince Charming?”
The guy shrugged, making the muscles in his chest roll with the motion. “Just trying to be nice, ma’am.”
I let out a crazy, bitter laugh. He kept staring at me. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, only that they were light, almost like marbles set into the rough, rugged planes of his face.
“All right, then,” I said, rattling off the address of Finn’s apartment building. “Take me there.”
“You got it.”
He threw the car into gear and steered down the street. I studied my would-be rescuer out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing dark blue coveralls, although the front was partially unzipped, letting his pale blue T-shirt underneath peek through. His clothes were wrinkled and rumpled, as though he’d been wearing them all day long, and small black holes marred the sleeves of his coveralls, as though some sort of hot sparks had landed on his arms and burned through the heavy material. Maybe he was a mechanic or welder.