The Sweetest Burn (Broken Destiny #2)

“Neither,” I said, with a quick look around to make sure that I wasn’t speaking too soon. “Something hallowed.”

I began to walk away from the river, letting the supernatural sensor inside me guide my steps. Adrian and Brutus followed me, the latter snarling even louder when I took us well outside of the shelter of trees that had hugged the riverbank. Up ahead, I saw a line of warehouses, but in the clearing before that, on the gentle rise of a small hill, there was a crumbling stone structure that looked to be several hundred years old. Next to that, on a flat section of earth, I felt the ground beneath me change from grass and dirt to something harder. And the hardened ground sent my hallowed radar into overdrive, although it didn’t physically knock me over or hurt to be near it the way it had when I’d walked into the crypt under the chapel at the campus.

“Here,” I said, my voice a little hoarse from the mystical energy pouring into me.

Adrian knelt beside me, pulling at the grass. It didn’t take long before he revealed large, flat stones. Judging from their size and placement, these weren’t natural formations. They were the base of a structure that was no longer here.

And the hallowed item contained somewhere beneath these stones felt like it was calling out to me.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Adrian said with obvious relish.

I looked around, realizing that in our haste to get here, we’d forgotten something very important. Namely, any tools that we could dig the staff out with.

“Um,” I began, hoping that there was a French version of a Home Depot nearby, but Adrian just started talking to Brutus in Demonish. When he was finished, the gargoyle went over to the slab and pounded his broad, leathery heel onto it.

The impact shook the ground. Brutus beat his wings to increase his momentum, and his foot repeatedly slammed down to the accompanying sounds of stone breaking. He used so much force, I was worried that he’d hurt himself, but his apelike features actually looked like his version of happy. Maybe he was. He now had something to take out his frustration on, and he was making that stone slab pay for his being out in sunlight.

But when Brutus had stomped his way down about three feet, I caught a flash of purple among the pale gray stones. Then shards of the same color flew out, and when one of them hit me, the supernatural vibes coming from it made me realize that it was different from the other stones in more than color.

“Stop!” I said, and Brutus paused with his thickly muscled leg still in midstomp.

I went over to the slab, looking down at the small crater that Brutus had made. Most of the shattered rocks inside the hole were pale gray to match the slab. But a few shards of purple remained at the bottom, and I followed their trail to a hollow purple rectangle embedded inside the stone blocks. When I touched it, power sizzled through my veins.

“Is that it?” Adrian asked, crouching next to me.

I jumped into the hole for a better look. Then, even though it hurt, I stuck my hand inside the rectangular purple casing, sliding it in until I’d gloved my arm almost to my shoulder.

“No,” I said, glad that the pain wasn’t as bad as when I’d touched the cloth back at the campus chapel. “But I think that this used to be its casing.”

Considering its location and the power coming from it, it had to have been in contact with an extremely hallowed item. So, why did the power coming from it feel far fainter than the power that the cloth had given off? If not for the long, rectangular shape of the casing and the inlaid gold etchings in the form of locusts, frogs and a large river or sea, I’d think that the casing had once contained another hallowed artifact instead of the staff. But the shape and etchings were too specific to be anything else, not to mention that this was where the former chapel that had housed the staff used to be.

Maybe time made the difference, I mused. It had been almost a hundred years since the chapel had resided here. If it had been that long since the staff had been in the purple casing, that could account for the lessening of the supernatural imprint it had left.

But the staff had been here. I knew that as surely as I’d known that I’d found David’s slingshot when I touched it for the first time, but it wasn’t in the box now. I withdrew my arm, and while the pain lessened at once, trepidation replaced it.

Only Adrian and I knew that the staff was no longer here. If Blinky or another demon had managed to translate the runes on the tablet, they could show up any second, and they wouldn’t be in a talking mood. We’d beaten them here, but that didn’t mean we were safe.

“Ivy,” Adrian said, and the urgency in his voice told me that he’d come to the same conclusion. “We need to leave. Now.”

*

ADRIAN DROVE LIKE a proverbial bat out of hell back to the basilica. We had sirens blaring behind us for the last five minutes, but Adrian drove the van right into the wooded section that led to the gateway. When the van could go no farther, he had Brutus fly us the rest of the way. We’d marked the tree closest to the gateway, not that I needed the big X to know where it was. Being in contact with the staff’s casing had put my hallowed senses into overdrive. I could’ve found the gateway blindfolded and with both hands tied behind my back.

“Come on,” I said when we reached it, and held my arms out. Shouts in French plus the sound of crashing through the woods meant that the police were almost upon us.

Adrian ducked under my right arm and Brutus hunched to fit under my left, but when I was about to pull them through the gateway, Adrian stopped me.

“Don’t go back to the realm where Jasmine and Costa are. Think of New York City instead.”

I didn’t ask why. There was no time. The last thing I saw before I pulled everyone through the gateway was a group of policemen bursting out from the trees, but by the time the officers reached us, me, Adrian and Brutus were long gone.

We tumbled out on the other side of the gateway to land with a splash into foul-tasting, chilly water. I coughed, trying to expel what I’d inadvertently swallowed, and Brutus let out a howl that blasted my eardrums. He shot out of the water as if fired from a cannon, flying around in mad dips and turns. It was night here, but Brutus was easy to see against the huge, lighted bridge above us, not to mention the wall of brightly illuminated buildings on either side of the waterway.

Adrian pounded on my back to help me cough out the water. Once I was breathing normally again, he withdrew his knife and carved an X onto the stone support beam next to us.

“This looks like the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said, the knife disappearing under the water to presumably go back into his pants. “Remember that.”