Chapter 45

45

SYLAS

I let her drive us home, but it was stupid; I should've opened a portal and taken her and her car back to her apartment parking lot at once, and thus not wasted any of the remaining time I had with her. As it was, I had to be patient, sitting in the other chair, keeping my hands to myself, while my thoughts and feelings —yes, somehow, I had them —run wild over me.

I was scared to look at myself with my other vision now, knowing that decisions opening and closing would be the only thing I'd see. I feared I would look like a creature made of winking eyes, as too many possibilities to count came into existence around me and then disappeared.

But in all of them, I wanted her the way it seemed she wanted me, which was a thing I could not fully understand, but would not question.

Mina'd pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt when we'd gotten into the car, and it allowed me to see the bottom of her hourglass mark again, counting down the life she had left. I didn't like that. I wished that I could rip the mark from her—or that there was a way for me to go back in time, as I was now, knowing her, and resist her temptation in Royce's offices, sending her safely back home.

But home to what?

The pills in her nightstand and the memories that made her cry?

It was hard to believe that death with me was better, as she proclaimed, but yet maybe she was right and it would be.

Somehow I would make sure that it was so.

When she pulled into her apartment's parking lot, there was a suspiciously large vehicle next to her regular parking space.

She noted it too. "They're going to come for us, Sylas," she said, driving around and parking far away.

"Let them," I said, grabbing her hand.

I surrounded her and pulled her through a portal into her own apartment immediately. "Pack what you want—and then we'll leave this place."

"And go where?" she asked, but didn't fight me—she ran to get a bag from her closet at once.

"Someplace safe. I'd rather not guard your whole building, and I suspect you'd feel bad if you got your neighbors harmed."

"But we're not going to stop, are we?"

"Never," I growled. I'd snaked a portion of myself outside, where I could see the van opening its door. "You don't care if I kill and feed from the men attacking you, right?"

I wasn't sure what Mina's next plan was, things might take time, and I would lose the ability to harvest the fear we'd caused from Nolan's display when we left the vicinity. She didn't answer, she just laughed, and I was full of some strange and uncomfortable emotion for her.

"Good," I said, and pulled out the heart of the first man on the stair.

The men outside were surprised, and more so when I started pulling their limbs off like the wings of so many flies, while cauterizing the wounds enough to stop them from dying, as I reassembled them incorrectly, giving them legs for arms, or putting someone else's arms on them in reverse.

I made the mistake of leaving them their throats though, and Mina heard them screaming. "What was that?" she asked, emerging from her closet. She had her purse, a backpack, and a bag.

"Nothing, my queen."

"You're a bad liar," she said, putting out her hand for mine—then yanking it back. "Wait!" she said, and ran for the bathroom.

But I noticed she'd left everything in her nightstand behind, and I was pleased.

"Okay," she announced, returning, hand out.

I paused a moment to finish ripping the hearts out of the men we left behind, then took it.