Nobody moved, though Layla almost opened her mouth to tell the doctor to put a Band-Aid on her leg and take care of Abigail. The pain emanating from Zoe was palpable.
“This won’t take but a few minutes,” Dr. Patel assured her.
Zoe stuck up her chin and stalked out, her hands fisted at her sides.
The door hadn’t slid shut when Talia rounded on the doctor. “How bad is Layla?”
Dr. Patel cleared his voice. “She’s got an ugly scrape, that’s all. I’ll keep an eye on her, just in case. Adam seemed inordinately concerned when he called about it as well.”
Probably because she was supposed to die any minute now.
Layla felt the moment Talia finally settled her gaze on her, and she was immediately filled with a pressing, bright warmth. It was a mixed-up feeling, so sharp and sweet as to be near pain.
And Khan? Where was he?
“I promised my father that we’d keep you alive,” Talia said. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”
“I’m not dying,” Layla said.
“Ever,” Patel added, deadpan.
“Well, that’s good news,” Talia said, grinning.
Layla forced her gaze back on the table. She concentrated on the microstriations in the metal to get her mind off the pressure in her heart. Reincarnation. A family. After all these years.
And somehow too late.
“But I still plan to keep you inside and out of harm’s way for the rest of the day,” Talia said.
So Talia knew, too. Damn Khan. It seemed he’d filled everyone in, but her.
“You could meet the kids—” Talia’s voice broke. “If you want, I mean.”
Talia Thorne’s children. Her little boys. The shadow hanging over Segue.
The fullness in Layla’s chest turned painful, cutting off all her air so that the beat of her heart drummed loud in her head.
A baby smell sweetened the clinic’s air. It was a mother smell, too. She concentrated on the pain of her scrapes, let it burn, burn, burn, so she wouldn’t embarrass herself. If they were trying to wreck her, completely demolish her, they were doing a fantastic job. Meet the kids, but sorry, any time now you’re going to die.
“Or not,” Talia said. “That’s okay, too.”
But Layla could hear the hurt in Talia’s voice.
Layla’s face heated. Her eyes and nose pricked, ready to embarrass her. Damn it. The pressure in her chest was going to kill her if she didn’t do something.
With a cough, she cleared the thickness blocking her voice. “No, really, I’d love to meet them. That would be . . . just . . . great. And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow a camera.”
Chapter 11
Khan stood back from the angels as they lowered the gate into a cavern in the mountains not far from Segue. How clever of the angels to find a place inaccessible to humanity, as well as ever steeped in Shadow. Places like this, where darkness had long reigned, hovered on the edge of the Otherworld, its cave-dwelling creatures as skittish and wary of light as the fae. kat-a-kat-a-kat. The gate demanded, Open me!
And how foolish to put a gate to Hell at its mouth.
Another group of angels had rigged a makeshift forge, and nearby, an anvil, black, with a horn on one end, much like the one he’d used to create the gate.
The hammer rested on the anvil. How he hated the slippery, contrary thing, but he’d wielded it on Kathleen’s behalf, and now he would wield it on Layla’s. Strange how each of her lives echoed the other.
“I found this in the warehouse,” Custo said, coming up behind him. Khan felt no sear at his approach. In this place, Shadow was stronger than even Custo’s angelic light.
“Leave it, and move out of my way.”
Next to the hammer on the anvil Custo placed the black flower Khan had created as a trial piece for the blooms that adorned the gate. Three petals, one for each of the worlds, surrounded and protected an inner core, a soul. The iron, of course, was black—black for deep Shadow, black for Death. He’d welded the flowers onto the vertical bars along a clinging vine. They had represented his hope that Kathleen could survive in Hell, her spirit intact, until he could find her.
Then she’d found him.
“I thought you might try the flower first, then move on to the gate.” Custo, who’d agreed to kill Layla if The Order found this tactic to be ineffectual.
Khan turned to face him.
“Shadowman, if it wasn’t me, it’d be somebody else,” Custo said, his gaze steady, though a sick desperation rolled off him. “The gate has to be destroyed.”
Khan stoked Custo’s discomfort. “Haven’t you killed enough innocents?”
Khan knew Custo’s past. The life he’d led before his passing had been filled with as much violence as good. If not for his last selfless act as a man, his existence in the Afterlife could have been very different. And now he was preparing to walk the fine line between darkness and light again.
“I gave you the hammer. It’s my responsibility.” Custo regarded the hellgate and shuddered. “There’s no way that thing can remain on Earth, but I don’t want Layla to die. I’ll help you in every way that I can. Just tell me what to do.”