Wings of the Wicked - By Courtney Allison Moulton Page 0,153
his face.
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, the fear clear on his face. Of course a reaper would be the only one to hear my screams. “What happened?”
“Rikken bit him!” I wailed. “And he collapsed! I don’t know what’s wrong! I don’t know how to help him!”
If even a single word of what I’d just said was comprehensible, it would’ve been a miracle. Marcus stared at Will, carefully inspecting the wound in his arm.
“Hold his head still,” he directed. When I just sat there, sobbing, he repeated the order more firmly. “Ellie! Hold his head still. He’s seizing. If you want him to live, then you’ve got to pull yourself together. I’ll be right back. Can you handle this?”
No. I nodded anyway, choking on a sob. Marcus vanished and I was alone again, breaking apart bit by bit. I couldn’t lose Will. I couldn’t. For the past few months, I’d tried to force myself into believing that I didn’t need him, but it was all a lie. I needed his comfort, but I could only sit there on the ground in my prom dress as the air grew steadily colder and watch him die.
Marcus came back and put his hand on my arm. “Come on. Let’s get him into the car.” He ripped off the sleeve of his tuxedo and wrapped it around Will’s arm like a tourniquet. The wound wouldn’t heal. Will’s wounds—even the ones a hundred times more severe than this—always healed. He was always fine. He always got better.
Marcus lifted Will’s limp form and threw him over his shoulder. We rounded the front of the house and wove our way through a crowd of kids holding plastic cups. Kate’s red BMW sat in the driveway, and I opened the back door and Marcus laid Will across the seat. I climbed into the back with him as Marcus jumped into the driver’s seat. Will was semiconscious. His head rolled left and right as he groaned in agony. I held his face in my hands and murmured to him. I kissed his cheek, but he didn’t respond to me.
“Will,” I said firmly, turning his face to mine. “Will!”
He tried to tear his head from my hands as he ground his teeth together.
“Will!” I cried again, but he was unresponsive. “Will, damn it. You’ve been telling me all this time to keep fighting. Don’t you give up on me!”
“We’re going back to the house,” Marcus said from the front seat. “Rikken bit him, right?”
“Yes.” I met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“It must be poison of some kind. Venom.”
A rush of coldness swept through me, and the blood drained from my face. “Your strength in heart and hand will fall to a reaper’s bane,” Kelaeno had said. The prophecy. It was all coming true.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Ava. Find Sabina and get to the house as quickly as you can. Will is wounded. I’ll explain when you get there. Yes, she’s with me. Just get to the house.” He hung up.
I swallowed hard. “Will Ava know how to help him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will Sabina?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus drove fast—inhumanly fast. When we blurred into the driveway of Nathaniel’s house, Marcus wasted no time, jumping out of the car to help me get Will out of the backseat. He moaned, and his tuxedo was damp with sweat. Ava and Sabina were waiting on the front porch, their expressions hardened and focused instead of mirroring the fear and grief on my own. I watched them carry Will into the kitchen and lay him on the dining table. I was trembling head to toe.
“What happened?” Ava asked, examining Will’s bite wound.
“Merodach,” I squeaked. “And Rikken. They ambushed us. Rikken bit him.”
“Rikken?” Sabina repeated. “That was the name of the reaper?”
I nodded, my eyes on Will’s shuddering form.
“I know him,” she said. “No one has survived a bite from Rikken.”
A wail escaped from me and Marcus stomped in front of me, snarling at Sabina. “That is not helping. What’s the matter with you?”
Her mouth opened and her eyes widened as if she didn’t know what she’d just said. “I—I’m sorry. Rikken’s venom takes about a week to kill. We have that long to save the Guardian.”
A week. A week left for Will to live. A week of horrific torture and pain. I was starting to hyperventilate.
“I’ll be right back,” Marcus said, touching my cheek to reassure me. “I have to return Kate’s car to her and bring my own back before she