But she couldn’t be sure. Considering all she’d just witnessed, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was all a part of the deranged high her child had given her.
Kinzer grabbed the guard closest to him by his hair, forced him off her, and bashed his face against the wall. As he started to get up, Kinzer sliced his sword through his neck.
The other guard dropped Maggie, and she plummeted to the floor, landing on her ass.
The pain in her tailbone wasn’t enough to evoke a reaction, as she had far worse pain radiating through her.
The remaining guard slid his sword from his sheath and started for Kinzer, but Maggie used what little strength she had to set her foot in his path. He tripped and fell down beside her.
Hayde rushed out of the same door Kinzer had come from and stabbed him in the back of the neck with his dagger.
Now Maggie was sure she was hallucinating. What was Hayde doing there? And was he helping Kinzer?
Kinzer knelt beside Maggie.
She couldn’t believe he’d really come.
She wrapped her arms around him.
From the door, another familiar figure stepped out.
Kid… the boy she’d met so many months earlier, the night she’d first met Kinzer. She hadn’t known him well, but in a way, she felt like she’d always known him. They were both mortals caught up in this immortal war. They were the weaklings… nothings to these creatures… to the God they had both grown up hearing about.
She cried, not because of the relief, but because of the crippling pain that only intensified with every moment.
Kinzer pulled back and looked her over. She could tell by his concerned expression that he’d noticed how shriveled and aged she looked.
“What have they done to you?” he asked.
“It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Kinzer stared at her like he didn’t understand who she was referring to, but his gaze relaxed as he seemed to make sense of her rambling.
“The Christ?” he asked.
She felt protective, guarded. She knew what Kinzer wanted to do to him, because she’d planned to do the same. But now that she’d seen him, known him, loved him, she knew she couldn’t. He was a monster, but he didn’t have to be… not if they didn’t give Veylo and Janka the chance to make him one.
He could have been her son. He could have been good. She had to believe that.
“Where is it?” Kinzer asked.
It?It saddened her to hear Kinzer referring to him like that. Nothing she could say would change Kinzer’s mind. He would always see him as a beast.
She wanted to help Kinzer. They’d worked so hard to get to this point… the point where they could destroy the Christ. But she couldn’t. Jeroda was a part of her, and she couldn’t help Kinzer take him away.
“I’m not sure,” she lied.
“Okay. Kid, you think you can get her out of here?”
“Definitely.” He knelt beside her and wrapped her arm around his neck. “You up for it?”
Maggie nodded. “I think so.”
“Take that same route we just came from,” Hayde said. “Get her to the first floor and out the way we came in, and you should be good, got it?”
“I got it.”
Hayde slid a dagger from his belt and handed it to Kid. “In case you run into trouble.”
