Alistair zips a black jacket up to his chin and gives Luca a long look. “We’d better get moving.”
“Any idea where we are?” I lace my fingers with Luca’s as guilt threatens to drag me under. This is my fault. I led us into a trapor a trial or some bullshit game of my father’s making—like the veydra he sent to fight me at the Mouth of Hell.
He’s toying with me. That’s obvious, but I can’t figure out how he’s staying one step ahead.Not now. There will betime to beat myself up later. We have bigger problems pending, case in point, the massive planet inching closer to the distant sun by the second.
Charcoal-colored slate trembles under my feet, scattering bits of ice all around. Great. The ground is unstable. I add it to our growing list of pressing concerns.
“Are there earthquakes here, too?” I ask.
Luca’s lips flatten into a thin line. “No.”
That’s exactly what I was afraid he was going to say. Because if the ground isn’t shaking itself, then something is shaking it. And anything big enough to shake a planet—no matter how fucking small the planet happens to be—is not something I want to tangle with.
I point to the forest of white-tipped trees between us and the mountains. “That way?” I’m not sure if it’s east, west, or a straight shot to our doom, but as long as we’re not here when the ground-shaker arrives, I don’t care.
Luca nods, and we take off running.
It’s not long until gasping is all I hear. Air carves a burning path through my lungs, as if I’m inhaling open flames instead of oxygen. I’m not sure about Ciprian or Alistair, but Luca, Malach, and I jog often. We shouldn’t be winded this quickly.
“The air,” I sputter.
“W-what fucking air?” Ciprian wheezes.
“Conserve your breath,” Malach says evenly. I shoot him a jealous glance. His cheeks are flushed. The pink adds a boyish look to his chiseled face, but he sounds perfectly fine.
The forest looms like a legion of angry Christmas trees. They’re spiky and antagonistic—as if they recently quit smoking and are spoiling for a fight. Now that we’re getting closer, there’s no visible curve around the edges anymore.
Luca checks the position of the sun and increases his pace. “There’s an emergency bunker in the forest,” he says. “I’ll find it, Celine. Ipromise.”
I squeeze his fingers to reassure him without losing any oxygen. I wouldn’t blame Luca if he weren’t able to find an underground bunker he’s never been to before, but I hope he can. If I ever meet his parents, I’ll thank them profusely for their paranoia.
We reach the first few trees, and my skin crawls.
There are more ice pebbles here. They crunch beneath our shoes as the pissed-off trees stare menacingly, like they wish they could do the same to us. It’s colder in the forest, and the cold takes away what little air I’ve been able to steal.
The deeper we go, the sturdier the trees become.
When Luca finally grinds to a halt and starts counting trees with the fingers of his free hand, I’m too tired to be relieved. My brain is foggy from oxygen deprivation, and a slight headache throbs in the center of my skull, altitude sickness on steroids.
“It should be around here somewhere,” Luca mutters, dropping my hand as he focuses. He kicks at the base of the thickest tree, grunting as the toe of his sneaker hits a fat, gnarled root.
I stay quiet. He’s not talking to me, and the itch between my shoulder blades tells me the consequences of a distracted Luca could mean the rest of us don’t survive the hour.
Ice pellets fall around us, whistling faintly as they penetrate the tree canopy. My hands and cheeks sting whenever they make contact. I pull my hands into my sleeves and tilt my head down. I don’t have much experience with snow, but this stuff is a far cry from the soft, fluffy flakes that occasionally fall in Vegas, melting before becoming anything more than a novelty.
“I could do without the ice bullets,” Ciprian grumbles, protecting his head with his arm.
“They’re covering our tracks,” Malach says. His voice is tight with tension.
“From what, though?” I glance over my shoulder.
A frenzied bellow echoes in the direction we came from, as if Isummoned it from the deepest recesses of my brain where my worst fears live. It sounds excited.
“I don’t want to find out,” Alistair mutters, stepping closer to me.
“I found it,” Luca says, his voice cracking like a whip.
I lurch to his side, chafing my upper arms with my hands to keep the blood moving. “How can we help?”
