Chapter 287: The end is near 2

LUCIAN

I stood there, breathing hard, the gun heavy in my hand. The younger one was on his knees, clutching his throat, his face turning purple. The older one was cursing, trying to reach his weapon.

I should have killed them. I should have put bullets in their skulls. But my shoulder was on fire, and when I looked down at the wound, I saw the telltale silver-gray and some purple residue around the entry hole.

Wolfsbane.

"Fuck," I hissed.

They had loaded their weapons with wolfsbane rounds. The poison was already working, burning through my bloodstream like acid, slowing my reflexes, dimming my vision at the edges. And worse, the scent of it was distinctive. Sharp, herbal, and wrong. What was worse was the blood. Every sentinel in a three-block radius would smell it now. They would know exactly where I was right after the bullets had informed them enough.

I grabbed the radio from one.

And without wasting a second, I stumbled toward the fire escape, my left arm hanging useless, the gun clutched in my right. The younger sentinel made a wet, choking sound behind me, but I didn’t look back. I climbed onto the ladder, my foot slipping on the first rung. The metal was hot from the sun, burning my palm, but I gripped it anyway and climbed, my boots ringing against the rungs.

Below me, I heard the older sentinel shouting into his radio. "Subject is hit! Wolfsbane tagged and bleeding!"

I hit the ground floor on the other side hard, my knees buckling under the drop. Pain spread through my shoulder, a cold numbness replacing the burn. That was bad. That meant the nerve toxin was working.

I ran.

The alley blurred around me. I kept one hand pressed against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding, but my fingers came away sticky and black. The wolfsbane was mixing with my blood, leaving a rich trail a blind pup could follow.

I needed to get to the car. The stolen sedan was still blocks away, parked behind a dumpster where I’d left it. If I could reach it, I could get out. I could disappear.

My breath came in ragged gasps. The world tilted. I caught myself against a brick wall, my forehead resting against the cool stone.

"Subject is bleeding heavily," a voice crackled from a radio somewhere not too far away from me. So did the one I had stolen. "Follow the trail."

They were on to me.

I pushed off the wall and kept moving.

Left foot.

Right fucking foot.

I was close.

The car appeared around the next corner, a dark shape promising escape. I fumbled for the keys in my pocket, my fingers clumsy and thick.

The trunk popped open when I hit the button. The smell hit me immediately — copper and decay. The couple I’d killed that morning was still inside, wrapped in the bloody sheets I’d found in the man’s car. The woman stared up at me with now milky eyes, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

I looked from her to the driver’s seat. An idea formed, desperate and half-formed.

I dragged the man’s body out first. He was heavy and limp, his skin already cooling. I propped him against the car, my shoulder screaming in protest, then opened the driver’s door and shoved him inside, arranging him behind the wheel, buckling the seatbelt across his chest.

The stolen radio, now in my pocket, crackled. "We’re closing in."

I didn’t have time to be careful. I shut the boot after.

I then reached in and turned the key.

The engine roared to life. I put it in drive, wedging the dead man’s foot against the accelerator, adjusting his weight to keep the pedal down.

The car lurched forward.

I slammed the door shut and jumped back, pressing myself against the alley wall as the vehicle accelerated down the narrow passage. It clipped the far wall with a screech of metal, rebounded, and shot out onto the main street, its tires squealing.

Then I ran the other way.

Behind me, I heard shouts. "There! The car!"

"Stop him!"

Gunfire erupted, bullets pinging off the sedan’s frame. The car kept going, accelerating wildly, swerving across lanes. I didn’t wait to see where it went. I was already moving opposite where I had gotten their attention.

I ducked into a service alley behind a shuttered laundromat, chest heaving, the wolfsbane grinding through my veins like broken glass dragged on a string.

They’d be swarming the wreck by now, picking through a dead man’s body behind a shattered windshield, buying me minutes. Not more.

I needed the story to hold longer than minutes.

I found a second car three streets over, an old delivery van with the keys somehow still dangling in the ignition, because the universe liked to remind me sometimes it wasn’t entirely without mercy. I didn’t take it far. When I was two blocks away, onto the old railway bridge that arched over the river on the east side, I killed the headlights, put the van in gear, and let it roll to the guardrail at a crawl.

Then I climbed out, and I put my shoulder into it.

It took everything I had left.

The van’s front tires caught the low concrete lip, tipped, hung a moment like it was deciding, and then the whole thing went over the side in a long groan of metal and a spray of rust flaking off the rail. It hit the water hard enough that I heard it from where I stood, swallowed in the dark, my hand pressed so tight against my shoulder that my fingers had gone numb with the pressure rather than the poison.

I didn’t wait to watch it sink all the way. I turned and ran, keeping to the tree line along the embankment, putting the bridge and the sirens and the whole burning wreck behind me.

By the time I stopped, miles later, doubled over with my hands braced on my knees and my vision pulsing black at the edges, I already knew where I was going.

Valcourt.

Not because it was safe. Nowhere was safe now, not with the scent of treason still clinging to me like a brand. I was going because I wanted Margaux.