Fabian nodded, looking sad as he glanced around.
“I came here before, when it was new. I love books, but it’s so hard for me to read. I have to float behind people as they turn pages—”
“Fabian, where did the ghosts say Katie was?” I interrupted.
He snapped out of his reminiscing. “Follow me.”
Fabian passed through one of the barricaded doors of the hut-like structure on the roof. Impatience made me want to kick it open, but that would be too loud. I waited while Bones telekinetically pulled out the boards, then opened it as quietly as the rusted hinges allowed.
I still flinched at the noise it made, that creaking sounding like two pots banging together with my frazzled nerves. Once inside, it only took a glance at the deteriorated metal staircase to make me mime a “we’re flying” directive.
Bones grabbed Tate, holding him with an ease that belied the other vampire’s heavier build. Soundlessly, we streaked down the stairwell, following Fabian, who weaved in and out of the narrow space until he disappeared through another door.
This one wasn’t boarded up. It was cracked open, letting in a putrid whiff of the smell beyond. I pushed myself through with as little sound as possible, my gaze widening at the room beyond.
The scent of old smoke was almost overpowered by the odor of rotting paper, urine, death, and desperation. Books, magazines, and manuals lined the floor a foot deep in places, the ink almost unreadable from time and exposure to water. Small creatures had made nests in the literary rubble, some of them still there, though in varying states of decomposition.
From the smell, they weren’t the only bodies in this room, but as Fabian beckoned me onward, I didn’t pause at the shoe sticking out from a pile of ruined parchment. That person was long past my ability to help, anyway.
The scent of fresh smoke teased my nose the closer I got to the end of the room. Fabian paused, hovering near the ceiling, and pointed down.
Candlelight cast a faint amber glow amidst a pile of books stacked up like a partial igloo. At my angle, I couldn’t see over it, so I went higher, brushing the decaying ceiling in my eagerness.
I caught a glimpse of a little girl crouched over a half-rotted book when plaster crumbling from my nearness jerked her head up. Our eyes locked, and as I watched, hers began to turn bright, glowing green. My dormant heart began to beat in an erratic, staccato rhythm from the excitement that gripped me.
She was alive, well, and—once we got her out of here—safe.
“Katie,” I breathed, flying faster toward her.
Her hand snapped up as if she were waving at me. Then something burned in my chest. Bones dropped Tate and grabbed me, spinning me around. That made the burning sensation worse, but I still strained to see Katie before the intensity of the pain finally made me look down.
A knife jutted out from between my breasts. The handle was some strange combination of paper and old leather, but from the fire that spread through my body, the blade was silver.
Thirty-three
I’d forgotten how much it hurt to be stabbed in the heart with silver. Most vampires only felt that once; lucky me, this was my third time. As awful as the pain was, it didn’t frighten me as much as the weakness that made every muscle limp with instant paralysis. Then came the blurred vision and blunted hearing that caused everything to seem very far away. Only the pain was near, burying the rest of my senses under a merciless cascade of agony.
That grew with unbearable ferocity as the knife in my chest moved. Someone screamed, a shrill, anguished sound. I would have fled in any direction to escape the terrible pain, except my limbs didn’t work. Worse, a great, oppressive weight bore down on me, crushing me.
Maybe the building had collapsed, a still-functioning part of my mind reasoned. That would explain the crushing sensation and feeling like the knife jerked with brutal, scissoring motions. If so, I should be dead already, so why did it still hurt so much—
Another scream tore out of me, and I convulsed as nerve endings surged with sudden, spastic motion. Then I saw the glint of moonlight on a red-smeared blade before it crumpled as though being smashed by an invisible fist.
“Kitten?”
Pain faded with his voice, leaving me dizzy with relief. Weakness was slower to release its grip, though, so it took me two tries to sit up.
“Where’s Katie?” were my first words.
A muscle flexed in Bones’s jaw.
“Don’t know. She ran after she threw the knives.”
I jumped up and promptly started to fall because my legs refused to hold me. Bones caught me before I landed in the pile of books he’d laid me on.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I moaned. “You could have frozen her in place with your power!”