“Charlie!” Chancey panicked. He flapped his wings and threw himself on top of me, to push me out of the way. I landed hard against the side of the elevator shaft, squished between the wall and Chancey’s chest. His wings spread wide, flattening us both there.
The elevator car swept past us, at a speed that seemed inhumanly possible. Chancey screamed in my ear… and then he was gone. His weight on me vanished, and his pained cry echoed up the shaft as he was dragged downward by the elevator car.
“Chance!” Ivy screamed, their cry echoing off the walls.
I leapt off the side of the shaft, free falling headfirst behind him as I used my Air to control my descent. Ava fell alongside me, trusting me to catch her fall. The others followed. Chancey’s scream seemed to go on forever, until the crash of the elevator car sounded against the bottom of the shaft. Metal clanged and groaned as the elevator car crunched like a soda can.
“Ouch, that sounded like it hurt,” Alistair said.
“Not helpful,” I barked into the comms.
Ivy had gotten there before any of us, and their panicked cries could be heard all around the elevator shaft.
“Oh no, no, no,” Ivy whimpered, and their pleas made my heartbeat race. What if the elevator car had crushed him?
I landed on my feet on top of the elevator car, which was nothing more than a heap of metal now. I heard Chancey gasp below me, somewhere off to the side. He was still alive.
The elevator shaft housed two elevators, and the vamps had only cut the cable to one of them. Chancey lay on the ground in the space between the elevators, groaning in agonizing pain. He had to be pinned under it!
“My wing!” Chancey cried out in agony, sounding in incredible pain.
I flew to the ground and guided my Air magic to lay Ava gently beside Chancey. Oberi landed in phoenix form beside him.
“I’m going to heal you,” Ava told him, before I felt her healing magic surge through the bond.
“Better be quick about it,” Danny warned. “We’ve got company.”
Above us, the scurry of hands and feet sounded from all angles. There were hordes of vampirescrawlingdown the elevator shaft to get to us. Rishi yowled loudly. Marcus and Eddie were already getting to work prying open the nearest door.
Ivy sounded completely broken. “His right wing is crushed,” they whimpered.
I went to walk around him, and my shoes splashed in the puddles of blood that were seeping out from Chancey’s injuries.
“Leave… me,” Chancey rasped. He sounded on the edge of consciousness, like he was fighting to hold on just to convince us to leave him there.
“I need to help you,” Ava demanded.
“You can’t… heal this,” Chancey moaned. “Healing magic won’t fix a broken angel wing. My wing stays like this, I’m gonnadie… and I know there’s no fixing it now. Just… leave me here. I’ll be okay. I’m ready to go.”
“We’ve got to get the car off of him!” I demanded.
“There’s no time!” Ava cried. The crawling of the vampires grew closer, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before they were upon us.
We had less than a few minutes before the vampires got to us. If they reached us, they’d drag us off to Salvatore, and this would be all over. We didn’t have time to contemplate a decision. Even if we managed to get Chancey free, I knew his wing was too mangled to function properly ever again, and as an angel, he couldn’t live without them.
As the leader of this operation, I was prepared to make tough calls. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I knew I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life. I didn’t want to leave Chancey behind, but we had to. There was nothing more important than getting that key, and as much as I hated to say it, that included Chancey’s life.
The thought flickered through my head in an instant. I tried not to feel anything at all, because I had to keep pushing the team forward. We just had to pivot when we met snags in the plan, as my grandfather taught me.
Oberi knew it, too. She shifted back into a Fire unicorn and stomped her hoof. I grabbed Ava around the waist and hoisted her onto Oberi’s back. “We have to go!”
Ava pushed against me. “Charlie, we can’t!”
“You… have… to,” Chancey begged. His life was fading. He wasn’t going to make it, and I couldn’t waste time trying to save him when everything was on the line.
The vamps were closing in on us— and fast. I could hear their deranged laughs as they approached, scuttling down the walls like spiders closing in on their prey.
“We ain’t leaving him,” Ivy demanded. They shoved past me so hard I flew off my feet and landed against the side of the shaft with a heavyoof. “Chance, baby, I’m sorry. But I’m not letting you die on me.”
