Page 49 of Obey

Oh, shit.

My eyes turned from the men on their bikes to the street, desperately searching for the men who had been fighting only moments ago. But the street was empty. I saw an enormous burn mark in the midst of it, and scraps of fabric. Blood everywhere, like someone had been right in the middle of the explosion when it happened.

Blood. Someone had been right in the middle of the explosion.

I felt the panic building but tried to keep it down, knowing that it wasn’t going to do me any good right now. I had to stay rational and keep my brain moving. I darted glances from the right to the left, looking at the spot where I last saw Knight and seeing nothing.

Nothing. No shoes, no jacket, no sign that he’d ever been there in the first place.

I didn’t see Devil, either, and I fought to remember what had happened right before the explosion. I’d been standing up and watching, my hands over my mouth and my heart screaming at how close Devil was to losing the whole battle. Everything had been going wrong, but then Knight had turned the tables on Devil and thrown him to the ground, pinning him down with his body and forcing him to lie still for at least a moment.

He’d been talking to Devil. I hadn’t been able to hear what he was saying, but I’d seen his mouth moving, his face intense and pained, and his shoulders stiff. And then something had happened and he’d started screaming, his face a mask of fury.

What had happened then?

I frowned and pulled hard at my memory. I’d been watching, I was sure of it, and that must have meant that I’d seen what had happened. Something else must have happened before that explosion. Someone had done something. Someone had—

The memory came back in bits and pieces. Devil grinning up at Knight, who’d been screaming in anger. Devil moving suddenly and holding his hand up.

Knight looking at Devil’s hand in horror and growing quite still.

Knight jumping off Devil and running for me like his life actually depended on it, his expression terrified, furious, and hopeless, all at once. I’d looked from Knight back to Devil, trying to figure out what was going on, and seen him sitting up and holding...

A grenade. Devil had been holding a grenade. And he’d looked like he won.

Oh, shit.

I screamed and fell to the ground again, the memory frozen in my head at that point. Knight had been sprinting for me, his eyes on mine but full of regret. He’d known he was going to die, and though he’d been giving everything he could to get back to me, he’d known he wasn’t going to make it.

He’d been staring at me and saying goodbye with his eyes when the explosion happened.

I crawled to the edge of the car and raked the street with my gaze, desperate for some sign of him. The smear on the street, I realized, had to be what was left of Devil. The burn marks, the spray of blood...

I gagged and turned my eyes frantically to the rest of the street. I scanned the cars, looking under them for a set of feet or a body. Nothing. I scrambled to the other side of the car and looked around, desperate for something.

Some sign of him. Some sign that he hadn’t been vaporized by the explosion.

“Knight!” I screamed. “Knight!” I got to my feet and ran to where I’d last seen him, eyes going back and forth as I searched. Surely, he was here somewhere.

Surely, he’d survived. We’d just finally said how we felt about each other. We’d finally figured out that this was it for us.

He couldn’t have vanished into thin air now, when we’d just discovered how we felt.

Around me, the Banshees were circling the area and searching for their wounded. They were capturing what was left of Devil’s men and shuffling them through to the clubhouse—and the jail I knew they had in the back, I assumed—while moving bikes into safer positions. They were dragging the dead to the sidewalks and lining them up, to be collected later—or left, as the Banshees ran from the cops who were bound to show up soon.

But none of the bodies were Knight.

He wasn’t here, and every new body I saw that wasn’t him broke my heart a little bit more.

I turned and saw Mandy and Gemini hobbling toward me, Gem leaning heavily on Mandy’s shoulder and trying to move as quickly as he could. Their eyes were on me, not the street or the smears of blood.

They were coming to collect me, not find Knight. And though I’d been holding on to hope that he’d still be here somewhere, the fact that they were looking at me alone made me suddenly think that he might actually be dead.

Knight might actually have gone beyond my reach and left me here alone.

CHAPTER 23

SARAYA