I didn’t think she actually meant me and Penny. I suspected she meant Penny and my gran.
Robert kept close to my side. “We have to keep moving, you injured the necromancer, but I don’t think that it will do more than slow him down. Not if he didn’t take serious damage from getting his face sliced in half.”
Jacob limped a few steps behind me and Louis slumped along next to him, breathing hard and swearing in French under his breath, one hand pressed to his chest with his fingers spread wide.
I looked at Jacob. “You got any juice left?” I didn’t bother asking Louis—he’d barely had any juice to start with.
Jacob shook his head. “He drained Louis and me of our connection to the dead. It will take days to regenerate it. If it comes back at all.”
Of course, it had gone down like that. Our luck had pretty much run out, from what I could tell. I stepped over a rail that would have carried a cart full of park goers through the tunnel, helping Penny over it. A scuffling noise could be heard behind us, and we both turned, Penny holding her little lights high so we could see.
The multitude of glowing eyes near the floor told me all I needed to know. The gators were still on us and they were moving quicker now, pushed along by whatever magic held them. I was beginning to think they were not even alive. Hard to tell with a gator, but their eyes glowed a bright blue in the dark, and that was not normal. The objective was obviously to hurry us along to our deaths, and it was going to work at this rate. I motioned to Penny. “Come on, time for a piggyback.”
She didn’t argue, and I got her up and onto my back in a swift move. She was light, barely a hundred pounds, but I could feel the extra weight in the ache of my thighs and calves. I didn’t know how long I could carry her. What I wouldn’t give for a good dose of fairy honey right then.
Alan took that moment to drift back to us. “If you stay to the left, you’ll get out of here.”
“Thanks.” I adjusted my hold on Penny, and she tightened an arm around my neck. The pressure made me grimace, but I said nothing. Jacob and Louis took the lead, Missy right behind them, holding up a series of small magic lights. Robert stayed with me, about ten feet back from the two necromancers, and the gators scooted along about thirty feet behind me. I broke into a slow jog, just enough to keep us ahead of the many, many gator teeth in play.
“Something is off with this whole thing,” Robert whispered.
On my back, I felt Penny bob her head in agreement. “I don’t like it. Why didn’t they kill us out there? They had the fire power to do it.”
I focused on keeping my feet moving and under me as the sweat slid down from my armpits and dripped off the backs of my elbows. The slope of the tunnel was slowly going downward, following a set of tracks that had been part of the ride at one point, and I leaned back to counterbalance Penny’s weight. On the walls were paintings and 3-D caricatures on hinges that had them leering over our heads.
Creepy as hell if you asked me.
“I’m betting the necromancer needs you,” Penny whispered. “If Celia really did have a homing spell on her, then she could have keyed it to you and you alone. He may need your help.”
“Why didn’t he take me in Jackson Square then?” I gasped the words out.
“He tried,” Robert reminded me. “But you literally slid through his fingers. Maybe he didn’t realize yet that he needed you?”
“No, I think he did. I think he was testing my . . .”
Testing my defenses? As if my guts couldn’t be more twisted up, a scary as hell thought hit me.
Crash had been pulled away time and time again by the fae in the city.
Corb and Sarge were gone.
None of the local witches would even answer Penny.
We’d basically had a good chunk of our allies or potential allies stripped away.
Robert grabbed my arm and held me steady as the realization made me wobble. But gators and the witches of darkness were behind us, and there was nowhere to go but forward.