Grandmother did not get out of the way in time.
When Rule pulled her out from under the sleeping behemoth—gasping for breath and flat on her back—she beamed up at them with what Lily could have sworn was the sort of giddy triumph she’d felt earlier. “That went well,” she announced, her firmness hardly impaired by the wheeziness in her voice. “It is not even a bad break.”
? ? ?
THE break Grandmother referred to was her wrist. She’d landed badly, but hadn’t taken any additional damage when Xitil collapsed on her. While one of the Fists wrapped the wrist, Mason came limping up with Max riding piggyback. Cynna went after Cullen and Jude, and Rule retrieved Benedict, who was still unconscious. Not a good sign. He’d have healed a simple concussion by now.
Every one of the demons in the chamber had vanished. Lily figured they didn’t want to be around when Xitil woke up.
The Kanas man started quenching the fires, and Grandmother gave Fang instructions. “The ensorcellment will not last. The sleep will, as long as you are not stupid. Do not try to kill the demon prince. That would only wake her, and she would not be in a good mood.”
Fang answered with a small bow.
“Can you walk out?” Rule asked her tersely from beside his brother’s still body.
“Of course. It is my wrist, not my ankle.”
That was good, because they were running out of strong backs. Max’s leg was badly mangled and Benedict was unconscious. Fortunately, Mason and Jude had only minor wounds. Minor for lupi anyway. They’d be able to walk out. Cullen—woozy but conscious—insisted that he could, too. This was blatantly untrue. He couldn’t stand up. He’d gotten his throat slit at some point and must have nearly bled out before his healing closed it.
They didn’t take time to explain or to hear the others’ stories. They didn’t even wait for Ah Hai to check out Benedict. He was alive. His best chance of staying that way was to be well away from here when the Great Bitch returned her attention to the chamber where her avatar stood—silent, motionless, and untouchable.
They didn’t warn Fang against disturbing her. He couldn’t.
One of the Fists handed Jude a water skin. Jude would be carrying Cullen, and Cullen’s body desperately needed fluids. If he stayed awake, he could drink as they traveled. Rule picked up his brother. Max would ride out on Mason’s back.
They didn’t know how far Xitil’s prohibition on harming them had gone. Cynna said the demon prince could have sent her orders to every part of the ruined palace, even to every demon in her territory, but they didn’t know if she had. They had to be prepared for the possibility of a fight, so Lily took point. All of the mobile lupi were carrying those worse off, so it had to be either her or Cynna, and Lily had her mindsense to give warning. She also had Benedict’s Uzi and enough ammo to comfort her.
Rule would be guiding them, however. The mental map Reno had bestowed on him over a week ago—according to the time they’d lived, that is—was still as clear as ever. And they needed to leave the way he’d come, not the way Lily had. He’d left Carlos in one of those dark tunnels, alone and poisoned by spider-demon venom, unable to walk. Left him with their last grenade in case he was attacked before his healing cleared enough of the poison for him to try to make it out of the tunnels.
Lily did pause briefly on the way out. She stopped in front of Fang, her head crowded with an unsorted mess of things she wanted to say. He’d been her jailer, but an honorable one. His Fists had disarmed the other Fists in the fight at the tower. They’d fought demons here, keeping her alive so she could take down Tom Weng. He and his Fists would be waiting now, waiting and hoping the gate opened before the Great Bitch finished stabilizing the nodes. None of them knew how long either of those things would take, but Reno thought the gate would open first. Maybe.
Would she ever know if he and these men survived? She settled for thumping her chest with her fist in the salute she’d seen him give. “I have been honored by our acquaintance, First Fist.”
His dark eyes flickered with surprise. He returned the salute.
? ? ?
THEY did not have to fight. Not once. They never even saw a demon as they walked and jogged through a dark labyrinth lit by Cynna’s mage light. They did have to stop briefly where a loose pile of rubble partly blocked the tunnel.
Beneath that rubble was Carlos’s body. So were the corpses of two of the spider demons. Those demons had come back, and Carlos had done the only thing he could.
They couldn’t carry his body out. They did uncover enough of him that Rule could remove the gold cross he wore, and Cynna crossed herself and said a very short prayer. Carlos had been Catholic, like Cynna, and he had a grown daughter. Maybe her father’s cross would be some comfort to her.
Benedict woke just before they reached the surface, and that was really good news—both because it meant he was healing and because none of them had come up with a way to carry an unconscious man on a motorcycle. He was in a lot of pain, he was dizzy and disoriented, and he had trouble remembering where they were or how they’d gotten here, even after they told him. But . . . “We need to get out of here,” Rule told his brother, “on motorcycles. Will you be able to ride on the back of one and hold on to me?”
Benedict considered that a moment. “Yes.” All sorts of tight things unknotted inside Lily at that one word. If Benedict said he could do something, he would do it.
Their motorcycles were waiting. So was Daniel.
? ? ?
LI Lei spent the first hour or so of their trip to the node considering buying a motorcycle. This surprised her. She had never taken much interest in motorized vehicles, and she was decidedly uncomfortable—bone tired, with her wrist hurting fiercely. And her cracked rib—which she had declined to mention to the others—had not finished healing.
And yet there was an exhilaration in speeding along, the wind tangling in her hair. It was the closest she had come to flying since she ceased to be a dragon in form. She wondered if Li Qin would enjoy it. Li Qin was rather conservative about some things, but she was not closed-minded.
In the end, she decided not to decide at this time. She was a trifle giddy. She had not expected to be alive.