All at once, I’m moving before I realize it. I shove Dorian and Raven back.
“Go!”
They sprint in the opposite direction, toward the cell, and I turn to follow, but the malum hisses, and searing pain hits me.
I scream, but I don’t stop running.
The shadow is right behind me. It’s hungry. It wants blood.
Dorian and Raven run ahead of me, and I stumble to keep up.
It’s coming.
We crash through Adelina Ward’s office, back into the secret passage, back into the cage. Raven is the first to arrive, then Dorian. They’re screaming my name. The hissing and snarling of the malum drown out the world and grow closer—
I stumble, overcome with pain, dragging myself into the cell.
Dorian slams the door shut, and the malum crashes against the bars.
The iron, it’s protected, or so I guess. Maybe this magical prison can keep something out just as easily as it can keep something in.
The wards hold. For now.
Dorian stumbles back as the shadow drifts about the cell, its strange and spindly head turned toward us as it paces aroundthe perimeter of the room. As it goes, it melts into darkness, into a place the light cannot touch, but we still hear it, that unsettling hiss, like air being let out of a tire. I’m reminded of a shark circling an underwater cage. Only a few bars separate us from the predator.
Then the pain of my wound hits me. It cuts through me like a knife, and I cry out, falling to my knees.
“Oh God, Atticus! You’re bleeding!” Raven cries.
The back of my sweater is wet and warm. It sticks to my skin. My flesh burns, my nerves on fire. I know it’s bad. Raven’s hands fly to her mouth, and Dorian whips off his sweatshirt to press it against my back, hoping, perhaps, to stanch the bleeding.
My whole world is pain.
My vision blurs.
Raven and Dorian are yelling, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. I want to tell them to stop, to leave it alone, but I can’t. The pain prevents me from speaking. The hurt overwhelms me. Hot tears dribble down my cheeks as the sickly sweet tang of blood fills the air. I taste it on my tongue.
I try to move, but the agony prevents me.
I think I’m going to die.
“No, you’re not,” says Raven.
Did I say that out loud? I don’t know, my mind isn’t my own.
“Hold on, Finch,” says Dorian. “Hold on.”
I feel Dorian’s warm embrace. His bare hands are touching me.
The world is slipping.
The pain, it’s fading…but so am I.
“Hold on,” says Dorian again. His voice sounds far away. “Just let me…”
And I fall into darkness.
25
