“Yeah,” he whispered back. His face was pale, and the dark circles under his eyes stood out even more. “I’m here.”
The doors were wrenched open, and a hand reached out and grabbed me, pulling me out of the car. My hand was yanked out of Ash’s grip as I was dragged out of the car. The hand belonged to one of the goons I had seen before. He had a tight grip on me, his hand burning into my arm, and he practically threw me in front of the one person that I most definitely did not want to see.
“I have to admit,” Dr. Cylon said, her arms folded tightly across her chest, “I’m actually impressed that you managed to make it this far. Of course, you had help, but that was already taken care of.”
I looked up at her towering over me and glared at her. She had killed Tommy. That was how she had “taken care of it.” One person stood up to her and her crazy idea, and that was how he was rewarded. I felt a rush of pain again at the thought.
One of the other goons came and deposited Ash at my feet. He wavered for a moment, struggling to stay up, before collapsing in a heap. I dropped to my knees, reaching for him. His breathing was hard and labored, and there was blood everywhere. “Hang in, Ash,” I said, leaning over him. “Please hang in.”
“We could help him, you know,” Razi said, looking down at Ash. She was giving him the barest of glances, as if he was no more significant than the small spider that was crawling against the hot pavement by my knee. “If you return, willingly, I can help him.”
Ash coughed hard, and blood dribbled down his chin. His eyes were closed, and if it weren’t for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, I would have thought he was dead. My eyes met Razi’s, and I hesitated.
“You are not a fool, Zoey. You know that you tried your best, but you are outnumbered. There is no one else that can put your friend back together. Come back to Sekhmet. Fulfill your destiny, and we will take care of him. You have my promise on that.” Her hands were folded in front of her, and her face was steady and calm.
Everything seemed to be spinning around me, and all I saw was a blur. I was going to be sick, I wanted to be sick, to empty myself of every bad feeling I had felt in the past few months. There was nowhere to run, no place to go, and Ash was dying. Would it be so wrong to go back to Sekhmet and have Liam’s children, if it kept both of us safe and alive?
Ash’s hand was clutched tightly in mine, and I felt his fingers squeeze around mine.
“No,” he said. I looked down at him in surprise. “I know what you’re thinking.” I opened my mouth, but he shook his head, a slight smile on his face. “I always know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. They won’t fix me. You know they won’t, Zoey. And you’ll be stuck forever.”
The realization went rushing, ice cold, through my veins. I could never, for one moment, believe anything that she had promised me. She had locked me up, kept me from the one person I had left, killed people, all for her insane vision.
“He underestimates how much you mean to our vision, Zoey,” Razi said, stepping closer. For the first time, I felt a flash of doubt in her features. For the first time, I really realized how much I meant to her. “I will fix him. I promise.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but a loud crack sounded before the words left my mouth. The man holding my arm fell in a heap next to me, a clean bullet hole in the center of his forehead. I gasped, falling backward on the heels of my palms. Another shot rang out and hit the man on the other side of me, the one who had grabbed Ash. He hit the ground a moment later.
Ash’s eyes flew open. “What is going on? Zoey?”
One by one, the men around us went crashing to the ground, perfect shots in their forehead. Dr. Cylon was looking around frantically, watching as they fell around her. She looked panicked, scared. She started running back to one of the SUVs when it went flying to the side. A beat up pickup truck had come peeling out of nowhere, slamming into the SUV. Dr. Cylon stepped back, her eyes wide. She moved toward another SUV, but a deep voice rang out.
“Stop.” That was it, one word. But it rang out strong, as if the person behind expected nothing less than completely obedience.
Razi froze in her steps. She looked so different than I had seen her in the last few weeks. She had lost the perfect, calm composure that I had come to expect from her. She was breathing hard, looking around, as if looking for an escape.