Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde

1

Zeus

The moment Brigit’s hand drops away from my face, I know I’m fucked.

We’re both fucked.

She is especially fucked and the hot blood on my hands and sleeves underscores the point. My eyes burn. Tiny shards of glass? I have no idea and I don’t care. I don’t care about anything anymore. I was wrong to ever care.

Up ahead, in the dark of the street, a shadow runs away from me dressed like Reya. For a moment I feel a wild, pulsing hope, but it’s gone in a flash. I know what I saw. She’s dead, and Brigit saw it too. If dead Reya had only been a hallucination then Brigit wouldn’t have tried to save her.

Brigit tried to save her, and then I walked her back to her death.

My ears ring, a flat tone that won’t go away no matter how much I shake my head. It won’t go away until it does and then the air around us is a riot of noise. Wind kicking up through the city blocks. Sparks flying on the air. Ash, painting the sky. Something explodes behind us and I know it’s the building. Whatever took out the back half will be lighting the rest ablaze. More fire catches with every step I take.

The sirens begin at the end of the block.

What happened to the rest of them?

My body tries to turn. To find out. There are so many women at Olympus and I only saw three, three in the ballroom. Three and my dead secretary. I don’t know where they are and my bloodied, thrashing heart has ceased to function in a way that will let me think. Think.

How long is the walk to the hospital? Twenty minutes, if I hurry, but the horrifying truth is that Brigit is getting heavier.

She was helping before, in the way that a person will help you carry them if they’re conscious. I saw her eyes. Her face was left untouched by the apocalypse we lived through. But now her head has dropped back.

I steal a look at her eyes and all of me jolts in an embarrassing involuntary startle because it’s not her, it’s Katie, it’s Katie, bleeding out all over my shirt in her red dress. A blink transforms her back into Brigit but my gut twists, my heart stops. Cold grief digs its nails into my spine. I would give anything for Brigit to hold on that tightly. But she doesn’t move.

She doesn’t move.

I’m crossing intersection after intersection, hardly looking, and no one is looking for me. Three fire trucks speed by, sirens screaming, lights painting us in red and white.

I don’t have a plan, other than to get to the hospital.

And then what?

What, if she’s dead? I make a vague decision to throw myself off the roof, if that’s the case. It’s a mindset issue, really. I will never be in the mindset to live past this, if Brigit is dead.

A familiar black SUV jumps over the sidewalk curb in front of me. It misses the brick facade of the store we’re in front of by inches. The door opens, kicked out by James, who sprints toward me with both hands up. I don’t stop walking. If I stop, I’ll crumple to the ground and none of us will get where we need to be.

He puts himself between me and the road. “You’ve got to stop.” He’s breathing hard and scared, the whites of his eyes showing. “You’ve got to get her there faster. Get in the car.” He points, a slow gesture meant for an idiot. Is it possible I’ve gone into shock? I doubt it. I’m not capable of shock. But I am finding it difficult to perform the unique calculus of walking from the curb to the SUV.

James puts a hand on my shoulder. “Get in the car.” His voice cracks. “Please.”

“Hurry, then.” I sound so casually irritated, as if I’ve been asking him to appear all along and now he’s done it, a few minutes off schedule. He pushes in front of me and throws open the back door. We get in.

I get in. Brigit flops lifelessly into my lap and the red of her blood in the lights of the SUV is so bright that it pulls me headfirst into somewhere else. My knees on the carpet. Katie’s red dress.

“We found the charges in the back,” James says. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Charges?”

“The explosives.” He stomps on the gas and reverses into the street, the SUV rocking. Brigit rolls against